THE TREE OF HEAVEN

by

MAY SINCLAIR

Author of _The Belfry_, _The Three Sisters_, etc. 

1918

PART I

PEACE

I

Frances Harrison was sitting out in the garden under the tree that herhusband called an ash-tree, and that the people down in her part of thecountry called a tree of Heaven. 

It was warm under the tree, and Frances might have gone to sleep thereand wasted an hour out of the afternoon, if it hadn't been forthe children. 

Dorothy, Michael and Nicholas were going to a party, and Nicky wasexcited. She could hear Old Nanna talking to Michael and telling him tobe a good boy. She could hear young Mary-Nanna singing to Baby John. Baby John was too young himself to go to parties; so to make up for thathe was riding furiously on Mary-Nanna's knee to the tune of the"Bumpetty-Bumpetty Major!"

It was Nicky's first party. That was why he was excited. 

He had asked her for the third time what it would be like; and for thethird time she had told him. There would be dancing and a Magic Lantern, and a Funny Man, and a Big White Cake covered with sugar icing andRosalind's name on it in pink sugar letters and eight little pink waxcandles burning on the top for Rosalind's birthday. Nicky's eyes shoneas she told him. 

Dorothy, who was nine years old, laughed at Nicky. 

"Look at Nicky, " she said, "how excited he is!"

And every time she laughed at him his mother kissed him. 

"I don't care, " said Nicky. "I don't care if I am becited!"

And for the fifth time he asked, "When will it be time to go?"

"Not for another hour and a half, my sweetheart. "

"How long, " said Nicky, "is an hour and a half?"

 * * * * *

Frances had a tranquil nature and she never worried. But as she satunder her tree of Heaven a thought came that made a faint illusion ofworry for her mind. She had forgotten to ask Grannie and Auntie Louieand Auntie Emmeline and Auntie Edie to tea. 

She had come to think of them like that in relation to her childrenrather than to her or to each other. 

It was a Tuesday, and they had not been there since Friday. Perhaps, shethought, I'd better send over for them now. Especially as it's such abeautiful afternoon. Supposing I sent Michael?

And yet, supposing Anthony came home early? He was always kind to herpeople, but that was the very reason why she oughtn't to let them spoila beautiful afternoon for him. It could not be said that any of themwas amusing. 

She could still hear Mary-Nanna singing her song about theBumpetty-Bumpetty Major. She could still hear Old Nanna talking toMichael and telling him to be a good boy. That could only end in Michaelbeing naughty. To avert naughtiness or any other disaster from herchildren was the end of Frances's existence. 

So she called Michael to come to her. He came, running like a littledog, obediently. 

 * * * * *

Michael was glad that he had been sent across the Heath to Grannie'shouse with a message. It made him feel big and brave. Besides, it wouldput off the moment when Mary-Nanna would come for him, to make him readyfor the party. He was not sure that he wanted to go to it. 

Michael did not much like going to Grannie's house either. In all therooms there was a queer dark-greenness and creepiness. It smelt ofbird-cages and elder bushes and of Grandpapa's funeral. And when you hadseen Auntie Edie's Senegal wax-bills, and the stuffed fish, and theinside of Auntie Louie's type-writer there was nothing else to see. 

His mother said that Grandpapa's funeral was all over, and that thegreen creepiness came from the green creepers. But Michael knew itdidn't. She only said things like that to make you feel nice and comfywhen you were going to bed. Michael knew very well that they had putGrandpapa into the drawing-room and locked the door so that the funeralmen shouldn't get at him and take him away too soon. And Auntie Louiehad kept the key in her pocket. 

Funerals meant taking people away. 

Old Nanna wouldn't let him talk about it; but Mary-Nanna had told himthat was what funerals meant. All the same, as he went up the flaggedpath, he took care not to look through the black panes of the windowwhere the elder bush was, lest he should see Grandpapa's coffin standingin the place where the big table used to be, and Grandpapa lying insideit wrapped in a white sheet. 

Michael's message was that Mummy sent her love, and would Grannie andAuntie Louie and Auntie Emmeline and Auntie Edie come to tea? She wasgoing to have tea in the garden, and would they please come early? Asearly as possible. That was the part he was not to forget. 

The queer thing was that when Michael went to see Grannie and theAunties in Grannie's house he saw four old women. They wore blackdresses that smelt sometimes of something sweet and sometimes like yourfingers when you get ink on them. The Aunties looked cross; and AuntieEmmeline smelt as if she had been crying. He thought that perhaps theyhad not been able to stop crying since Grandpapa's funeral. He thoughtthat was why Auntie Louie's nose was red and shiny and Auntie Edie'seyelids had pink edges instead of lashes. In Grannie's house they neverlet you do anything. They never did anything themselves. They neverwanted to do anything; not even to talk. He thought it was because theyknew that Grandpapa was still there all the time. 

But outside it the Aunties were not so very old. They rode bicycles. Andwhen they came to Michael's Father's house they forgot all aboutGrandpapa's funeral and ran about and played tennis like Michael'smother and Mrs. Jervis, and they talked a lot. 

Michael's mother was Grannie's child. To see how she could be a childyou had only to think of her in her nightgown with her long brown hairplaited in a pigtail hanging down her back and tied with a blue ribbon. But he couldn't see how the three Aunties could be Grannie's otherchildren. They were bigger than Grannie and they had grey hair. Granniewas a little thing; she was white and dry; and she had hair like hay. Besides, she hardly ever took any notice of them except to make a faceat Auntie Emmeline or Auntie Edie now and then. She did it with her heada little on one side, pushing out her underlip and drawing itback again. 

Grannie interested Michael; but more when he thought about her than whenshe was actually there. She stood for him as the mark and measure ofpast time. To understand how old Grannie was you had to think backwards;this way: Once there was a time when there was no Michael; but there wasMummy and there was Daddy. And once there was a time when there was noMummy and no Daddy; but there was Grannie and there was Grandpapa. Nowthere was no Grandpapa. But he couldn't think back far enough to get tothe time when there was no Grannie. 

Michael thought that being Grannie must feel like being God. 

Before he came to the black window pane and the elder bush he had to rundown the slopes and jump the gullies on his side of the Heath, and crossthe West Road, and climb the other slope to Grannie's side. And it wasnot till you got to the row of elms on Judge's Walk that you had to gocarefully because of the funeral. 

He stood there on the ridge of the Walk and looked back to his own side. There were other houses there; but he knew his father's house by thetree of Heaven in the garden. 

 * * * * *

The garden stood on a high, flat promontory jutting out into the Heath. A brown brick wall with buttresses, strong like fortifications on abreastwork, enclosed it on three sides. From the flagged terrace at thebottom of the garden you looked down, through the tops of thebirch-trees that rose against the rampart, over the wild places of theHeath. There was another flagged terrace at the other end of the garden. The house rose sheer from its pavement, brown brick like the wall, andflat-fronted, with the white wings of its storm shutters spread open, row on row. It barred the promontory from the mainland. And at the backof it, beyond its kitchen garden and its courtyard, a fringe of Heathstill parted it from the hill road that went from "Jack Straw's Castle"to "The Bull and Bush. " You reached it by a lane that led from the roadto the Heath. 

The house belonged to the Heath and the open country. It was aware ofnothing but the Heath and the open country between it and Harrow on theHill. It had the air of all the old houses of Hampstead, the wonderfulair of not acknowledging the existence of Bank Holidays. It was liftedup high above the town; shut in; utterly secluded. 

 * * * * *

Anthony Harrison considered that he had done well when he acquired WestEnd House for his wife Frances, and for his children, Dorothea, Michael, Nicholas and John. 

Frances had said that, if he was thinking of her, he needn't buy a bigplace, because she didn't want one. But he might buy it for the childrenif he liked. Anthony had said that she had no idea of what she mightn'twant, once she began to give her mind to it, and that he would like tothink of her living in it after he was gone. Not that he had anyintention of going; he was only thirty-six (not much older than Frances)and incurably healthy. But since his wife's attention had becomeabsorbed in the children--to the exclusion of every other interest--hewas always trying to harrow her by the suggestion. And Frances onlylaughed at him and told him that he was a silly old thing, and that heneedn't think he was going to get round her that way. 

There was no other way open for Anthony; unless he were to go bankruptor get pneumonia or peritonitis. Frances would have been the first toacknowledge that illness or misfortune constituted a claim. And the onlythings he ever did get were loud, explosive colds in his head which madehim a mark for derision. His business was so sound that not even arevolution or a European war could shake it. And his appearance wasincompatible with his pretensions to pathos. 

It would have paid him better to have been small and weedy, orlamentably fat, or to have had a bald place coming, or crow's feetpointing to grey hairs; for then there might have been a chance for him. But Anthony's body was well made, slender and tall. He had blue eyes andblack-brown hair, and the look of an amiable hawk, alert, fiercelybenevolent. Frances couldn't see any pathos in the kind of figure shehappened to admire most, the only kind she would have tolerated in ahusband. And if she _had_ seen any pathos in it she wouldn't havemarried it. Pathos, she said, was all very well in a father, or abrother, or a friend, but in choosing a husband you had to think of yourchildren; and she had wanted boys that would look like Michael andNicholas and John. 

"Don't you mean, " Anthony had said, "boys that will look like me?"

"I mean, " she had answered, "exactly what I say. You needn't be soarrogant. "

_Her_ arrogance had been beyond all bearing since John, the third son, had been born. 

And it was Frances, after all, who had made him buy West End House forher own reasons. Both the day nursery and the night nursery had windowsto the south. It was the kind of house she had always dreamed of livingin, and of Michael, or Nicky living in after she and Anthony were gone. It was not more than seven minutes' walk from the bottom of the lane tothe house where her people lived. She had to think about the old peoplewhen the poor dears had come up to London in order to be thought about. And it had white storm shutters and a tree of Heaven in the garden. 

And, because they had both decided that they would have that housewhatever happened, they began to argue and to tease each other. Anthonyhad said it was all right, only the tree of Heaven wasn't a tree ofHeaven; it was a common ash. He was one of the biggest timber merchantsin the country and he ought to know. Frances said she mightn't knowmuch, but she did know that was the kind of tree the people down in herpart of the country called a tree of Heaven. Anthony said he couldn'thelp that. It didn't matter what they called it. It was a common ash. 

Then she told him he had no poetry in his composition. She had alwaysdreamed of having a tree of Heaven in her garden; and he was destroyingher dream. He replied that he didn't want to destroy her dream, but thetree really _was_ an ash. You could tell by the bark, and by the leavesand by the number and the shape of the leaflets. And anyhow, that wasthe first he'd heard about her dream. 

"You don't know, " said Frances, "what goes on inside me. "

She said that if any of the children developed an imagination he needn'tthink _he_ had anything to do with it. 

"I shan't, " said Anthony. "I wouldn't have anything to do with it if Icould. Facts are good enough for me. The children must be brought up torealize facts. "

An ash-tree was a fact and a tree of Heaven was a fancy; unless by anychance she meant _ailanthus glandulosa_. (He knew she didn't. ) If shewanted to know, the buds of the ash were black like ebony. The buds ofthe tree of Heaven were rose-red, like--like bad mahogany. Wait till thespring and look at the buds. 

Frances waited till the spring and looked at the buds, and, sure enough, they were black like ebony. 

Anthony also said that if they were choosing a house for the children, it was no earthly use to think about the old people. For the old peoplewould go and the children would remain. 

As if to show how right he was, Grandpapa had died early in that summerof 'ninety-five, one month after they had moved into West End House. That still left Grannie and Auntie Louie and Auntie Emmeline and AuntieEdie for Anthony to look after. 

 * * * * *

She was thinking of them now. She hoped that they would come early intime to see the children. She also hoped that they would go early, sothat she and Anthony might have their three sets of tennis beforedinner in peace. 

There would be no peace if Louie and Edie wanted to play too. The onething that Anthony could not stand was people wanting to do things theycouldn't do, and spoiling them for those who could. He used to say thatthe sight of Louie anywhere near the tennis court put him offhis stroke. 

Again, the faint illusion of worry was created by the thought that thisdreadful thing might happen, that Louie and Edie might want to play andthat Anthony would be put off his stroke and be annoyed, and that hisannoyance, his just and legitimate annoyance, would spoil theperfection of the afternoon. And as she played with the illusion it mademore real her tranquillity, her incredible content. 

Her hands were busy now putting decorative stitches into a frock forJohn. She had pushed aside a novel by George Moore and a volume ofIbsen's plays. She disliked Ibsen and disapproved of George Moore. Herfirm, tight little character defended itself against every form ofintellectual disturbance. A copy of the _Times_ had fallen from her lapto her feet. Jane, the cat, had found it there, and, purring loudly, hadtrodden it down into a bed, and now lay on it, asleep. Frances hadinformed herself of the affairs of the nation. 

At the bottom of her mind was the conviction (profound, becauseunconscious) that the affairs of the nation were not to be compared forinterest with her own affairs, and an attitude of condescension, as ifshe honoured the _Times_ by reading it and the nation by informingherself of its affairs; also the very distinct impression that eveningpapers were more attractive than morning papers. She would have admittedthat they owed their attraction to the circumstance that Anthony broughtthem home with him in his pocket, and that in the evening she was notobliged to inform herself of what might be happening. Anthony wascertain to inform her. 

Not that anything ever did happen. Except strikes; and even then, nosooner did the features of the strike begin to get dramatic than theywere instantly submerged in the flood of conversation that was let looseover them. Mrs. Anthony pitied the poor editors and reporters whileParliament was sitting. She saw them as rather silly, violent anddesperate men, yet pathetic in their silliness, violence anddesperation, snatching at divorces, and breach of promise cases, andfires in paraffin shops, as drowning men snatch at straws. 

Her imagination refused to picture any end to this state of things. There would just be more speeches and more strikes, and still morespeeches, going on for ever and ever at home; while foreign affairs andthe British Empire went on for ever and ever too, with no connectionbetween the two lines of sequence, and no likeness, except that bothsomehow went on and on. 

That was Anthony's view of England's parliament and of her imperialpolicy; and it was Mrs. Anthony's. Politics, Anthony said, had becomestatic; and he assured Frances that there was no likelihood that theywould ever become dynamic again--ever. 

Anthony's view of politics was Mrs. Anthony's view of life. 

Nothing ever really happened. Things did not change; they endured; theywent on. At least everything that really mattered endured and went on. So that everything that really mattered could--if you were given tolooking forward--be foreseen. A strike--a really bad one--mightconceivably affect Anthony's business, for a time; but not all thestrikes in the world, not all the silly speeches, not all the meddlingand muddling of politicians could ever touch one of thoseenduring things. 

Frances believed in permanence because, in secret, she abhorred thethought of change. And she abhorred the thought of change because, atthirty-three, she had got all the things she wanted. But only for thelast ten years out of the thirty-three. Before that (before she was Mrs. Anthony), wanting things, letting it be known that you wanted them, hadmeant not getting them. So that it was incredible how she had contrivedto get them all. She had not yet left off being surprised at her ownhappiness. It was not like things you take for granted and are not awareof. Frances was profoundly aware of it. Her happiness was a solid, tangible thing. She knew where it resided, and what it was made of, andwhat terms she held it on. It depended on her; on her truth, her love, her loyalty; it was of the nature of a trust. But there was no illusionabout it. It was the reality. 

She denied that she was arrogant, for she had not taken one of them forgranted, not even Dorothy; though a little arrogance might have beenexcusable in a woman who had borne three sons and only one daughterbefore she was thirty-two. Whereas Grannie's achievement had been fourdaughters, four superfluous women, of whom Anthony had married one andsupported three. 

To be sure there was Maurice. But he was worse than superfluous, considering that most of the time Anthony was supporting Maurice, too. 

She had only known one serious anxiety--lest her flesh and blood shouldharbour any of the blood and flesh left over after Morrie was made. Shehad married Anthony to drive out Morrie from the bodies and souls of herchildren. She meant that, through her and Anthony, Morrie should go, andDorothea, Michael, Nicholas and John should remain. 

As Frances looked at the four children, her mouth tightened itself so asto undo the ruinous adoration of her eyes. She loved their slenderbodies, their pure, candid faces, their thick, straight hair that partedsolidly from the brush, clean-cut and shining like sheets of polishedmetal, brown for Dorothy, black-brown for Nicholas, red gold for Michaeland white gold for John. She was glad that they were all made like that;slender and clear and hard, and that their very hair was a thing ofclean surfaces and definite edges. She disliked the blurred outlines offatness and fuzziness and fluffiness. The bright solidity of their formshelped her to her adored illusion, the illusion of their childhood asgoing on, lasting for ever and ever. 

They would be the nicest looking children at Mrs. Jervis's party. Theywould stand out solid from the fluffiness and fuzziness and fatness ofthe others. She saw people looking at them. She heard them saying: "Whoare the two little boys in brown linen?"--"They are Michael and NicholasHarrison. " The Funny Man came and said: "Hello! I didn't expect to seeyou here!" It was Michael and Nicholas he didn't expect to see; and thenoise in the room was Nicky's darling laughter. 

Music played. Michael and Nicholas danced to the music. It was Michael'sbody and Nicky's that kept for her the pattern of the dance, their feetthat beat out its measure. Sitting under the tree of Heaven Francescould see Mrs. Jervis's party. It shimmered and clustered in a visionaryspace between the tree and the border of blue larkspurs on the otherside of the lawn. The firm figures of Michael and Nicholas and Dorothyheld it together, kept it from being shattered amongst the steep bluespires of the larkspurs. When it was all over they would still hold ittogether, so that people would know that it had really happened andremember having been there. They might even remember that Rosalind hadhad a birthday. 

 * * * * *

Frances had just bestowed this life after death on Mrs. Jervis's partywhen she heard Michael saying he didn't want to go to it. 

He had no idea why he didn't want to go except that he didn't. 

"What'?" said Frances. "Not when Nicky and Dorothy are going?"

He shook his head. He was mournful and serious. 

"And there's going to be a Magic Lantern"--

"I know. "

"And a Funny Man"--

"I know. "

"And a Big White Cake with sugar icing and Rosalind's name on it in pinkletters, and eight candles--"

"I know, Mummy. " Michael's under lip began to shake. 

"I thought it was only little baby boys that were silly and shy. "

Michael was not prepared to contest the statement. He saw it was thesort of thing that in the circumstances she was bound to say. All thesame his under lip would have gone on shaking if he hadn't stopped it. 

"I thought you were a big boy, " said Frances. 

"So I _was_, yesterday. To-day isn't yesterday, Mummy. "

"If John--John was asked to a beautiful party _he_ wouldn't be afraid togo. "

As soon as Michael's under lip had stopped shaking his eyelids began. You couldn't stop your eyelids. 

"It's not _afraid_, exactly, " he said. 

"What is it, then?"

"It's sort--sort of forgetting things. "

"What things?"

"I don't know, Mummy. I think--it's pieces of me that I want toremember. At a party I can't feel all of myself at once--like I do now. "

She loved his strange thoughts as she loved his strange beauty, hisreddish yellow hair, his light hazel eyes that were not hers and notAnthony's. 

"What will you do, sweetheart, all afternoon, without Nicky and Dorothyand Mary-Nanna?"

"I don't want Nicky and Dorothy and Mary-Nanna. I want Myself. I want toplay with Myself. "

She thought: "Why shouldn't he? What right have I to say these things tohim and make him cry, and send him to stupid parties that he doesn'twant to go to? After all, he's only a little boy. "

She thought of Michael, who was seven, as if he were younger thanNicholas, who was only five. 

 * * * * *

Nicky was different. You could never tell what Michael would take itinto his head to think. You could never tell what Nicky would take itinto his head to do. There was no guile in Michael. But sometimes therewas guile in Nicky. Frances was always on the look out forNicky's guile. 

So when Michael remarked that Grannie and the Aunties would be thereimmediately and Nicky said, "Mummy, I think my ear is going to ache, "her answer was--"You won't have to stay more than a minute, darling. "

For Nicky lived in perpetual fear that his Auntie Louie might kiss athim. 

Dorothy saw her mother's profound misapprehension and she hastened toput it right. 

"It isn't Auntie Louie, Mummy. His ear is really aching. "

And still Frances went on smiling. She knew, and Nicky knew that, if alittle boy could establish the fact of earache, he was absolved from allsocial and family obligations for as long as his affliction lasted. Hewouldn't have to stand still and pretend he liked it while he was beingkissed at. 

Frances kept her mouth shut when she smiled, as if she were trying notto. It was her upper lip that got the better of her. The fine, thinedges of it quivered and twitched and curled. You would have said thevery down was sensitive to her thought's secret and iniquitous play. Hersmile mocked other people's solemnities, her husband's solemnity, andthe solemnity (no doubt inherited) of her son Michael; it mocked thedemureness and the gravity of her face. 

She had brought her face close to Nicky's; and it was as if her mouthhad eyes in it to see if there were guile in him. 

"Are you a little humbug?" she said. 

Nicky loved his mother's face. It never got excited or did silly thingslike other people's faces. It never got red and shiny like AuntieLouie's face, or hot and rough like Auntie Emmeline's, or wet and mizzlylike Auntie Edie's. The softness and whiteness and dryness of hismother's face were delightful to Nicky. So was her hair. It was cold, with a funny sort of coldness that made your fingers tingle when youtouched it; and it smelt like the taste of Brazil nuts. 

Frances saw the likeness of her smile quiver on Nicky's upper lip. Itbroke and became Nicky's smile that bared his little teeth and curled upthe corners of his blue eyes. (His blue eyes and black brown hair wereAnthony's. ) It wasn't reasonable to suppose that Nicky had earache whenhe could smile like that. 

"I'm afraid, " she said, "you're a little humbug. Run to the terrace andsee if Grannie and the Aunties are coming. "

He ran. It was half a child's run and half a full-grown boy's. 

Then Mrs. Anthony addressed her daughter. 

"Why did you say his ear's aching when it isn't?"

"Because, " said Dorothy, "it _is_ aching. "

She was polite and exquisite and obstinate, like Anthony. 

"Nicky ought to know his own ear best. Go and tell him he's not to standon the top of the wall. And if they're coming wave to them, to showyou're glad to see them. "

"But--Mummy--I'm not. "

She knew it was dreadful before she said it. But she had warded offreproof by nuzzling against her mother's cheek as it tried to turn awayfrom her. She saw her mother's upper lip moving, twitching. Thesensitive down stirred on it like a dark smudge, a dust that quivered. Her own mouth, pushed forward, searching, the mouth of a nuzzling puppy, remained grave and tender. She was earnest and imperturbable in hertruthfulness. "Whether you're glad or not you must go, " said Frances. She meant to be obeyed. 

Dorothy went. Her body was obedient. For as yet she had her mother'sbody and her face, her blunted oval, the straight nose with the fine, tilted nostrils, her brown eyes, her solid hair, brown on the top andlight underneath, and on the curve of the roll above her little ears. Frances had watched the appearance of those details with an anxiety thatwould have surprised her if she had been aware of it. She wanted to seeherself in the bodies of her sons and in the mind of her daughter. ButDorothy had her father's mind. You couldn't move it. What she had saidonce she stuck to for ever, like Anthony to his ash-tree. As if stickingto a thing for ever could make it right once. And Dorothy had formed thehabit of actually being right, like Anthony, nine times out of ten. Frances foresaw that this persistence, this unreasoning rectitude, might, in time, become annoying in a daughter. There were moments whenshe was almost perturbed by the presence of this small, mysteriousorganism, mixed up of her body and her husband's mind. 

But in secret she admired her daughter's candour, her downrightness andstraightforwardness, her disdain of conventions and hypocrisies. Franceswas not glad, she knew she was not glad, any more than Dorothy was glad, to see her mother and her sisters. She only pretended. In secret she wasafraid of every moment she would have to live with them. She had livedwith them too long. She foresaw what would happen this afternoon, howthey would look, what they would say and do, and with what gestures. Itwould be like the telling, for the thirteenth time, of a dull story thatyou know every word of. 

She thought she had sent them a kind message. But she knew she had onlyasked them to come early in order that they might go early and leave herto her happiness. 

She went down to the terrace wall where Michael and Nicky and Dorothywere watching for them. She was impatient, and she thought that shewanted to see them coming. But she only wanted to see if they werecoming early. It struck her that this was sad. 

 * * * * *

Small and distant, the four black figures moved on the slope under theJudges' Walk; four spots of black that crawled on the sallow grass andthe yellow clay of the Heath. 

"How little they look, " Michael said. 

Their littleness and their distance made them harmless, made thempathetic. Frances was sorry that she was not glad. That was thedifference between her and Dorothy, that she was sorry and always wouldbe sorry for not being what she ought to be; and Dorothy never would besorry for being what she was. She seemed to be saying, already, in herclearness and hardness, "What I am I am, and you can't change me. " Theutmost you could wring from her was that she couldn't help it. 

Frances's sorrow was almost unbearable when the four women in black camenearer, when she saw them climbing the slope below the garden andthe lane. 

II

Grannie took a long time crossing the lawn from the door in the lane tothe tree of Heaven. 

She came first. Her daughters followed, forced to her slow pace, advancing with an air of imperfect cohesion, of not really belonging toeach other, as if they had been strangers associated by some accident. It had grown on them in their efforts to carry off the embarrassment ofappearing as an eternal trio. Auntie Louie carried it off best. Sharpand rigid, Auntie Louie's figure never lent itself to any group. But forher black gown she really might not have belonged. 

Mrs. Fleming went slowly, not because she was old, for she was onlysixty, but because, though she said, and thought, that she was wrappedup in Frances and her children, she was still absorbed, fascinated byher sacred sense of bereavement. She moved as if hypnotized by herown sorrow. 

To her three unmarried daughters she behaved with a sort of mystichostility, a holy detachment and displeasure, as if she suspected themof getting over it, or of wanting to get over it if they could. But toher one married daughter and to her grand-children she was soft andgentle. So that, when they happened to be all together, her moodschanged so rapidly that she seemed a creature of unaccountable caprice. One minute her small, white, dry face quivered with softness andgentleness, and the next it stiffened, or twitched with the inimical, disapproving look it had for Louie and Emmeline and Edith. 

The children lifted up their pure, impassive faces to be kissed at. OldNanna brought Baby John and put him on his grandmother's knee. Dorothyand Nicholas went off with Mary-Nanna to the party. Michael forgot allabout playing with himself. He stayed where he was, drawn by thespectacle of Grannie and the Aunties. Grannie was clucking and chucklingto Baby John as she had clucked and chuckled to her own babies long ago. Her under lip made itself wide and full; it worked with an in and outmovement very funny and interesting to Michael. The movement meant thatGrannie chuckled under protest of memories that were sacred toGrandpapa. 

"Tchoo--tchoo--tchoo--tchoo! Chuckaboo! Beautiful boy!" said Grannie. 

Auntie Louie looked at her youngest nephew. She smiled her downward, sagging smile, wrung from a virginity sadder than Grannie's grief. Shespoke to Baby John. 

"You really are rather a nice boy, " Auntie Louie said. 

But Edie, the youngest Auntie, was kneeling on the grass before him, bringing her face close to his. Baby John's new and flawless face wascruel to Auntie Edie's. So was his look of dignity and wisdom. 

"Oh, she says you're only rather nice, " said Auntie Edie. "And you'rethe beautifullest, sweetest, darlingest that ever was. Wasn't she anasty Auntie Louie? Ten little pink toes. And _there_ he goes. Fivelittle tootsies to each of his footsies. "

She hid herself behind the _Times_ disturbing Jane. 

"Where's John-John?" she cried. "Where's he gone to? Can anybody tell mewhere to find John-John? Where's John-John? Peep-_bo_--there he is!John-John, look at Auntie Edie. Oh, he won't pay any attention topoor me. "

Baby John was playing earnestly with Grannie's watch-chain. 

"You might leave the child alone, " said Grannie. "Can't you see hedoesn't want you?"

Auntie Edie made a little pouting face, like a scolded, pathetic child. Nobody ever did want Auntie Edie. 

And all the time Auntie Emmy was talking to Frances very loud and fast. 

"Frances, I do think your garden's too beautiful for words. How cleverof you to think of clearing away the old flower-beds. I hate flower-bedson a lawn. Yet I don't suppose I should have had the strength of mind toget rid of them if it bad been me. "

As she talked Auntie Emmy opened her eyes very wide; her eyebrowsjerked, the left one leaping up above the right; she thrust out her chinat you and her long, inquiring nose. Her thin face was the play ofagitated nerve-strings that pulled it thus into perpetual, restlessmovements; and she made vague gestures with her large, bony hands. Hertongue went tick-tack, like a clock. Anthony said you-could hear Emmy'stongue striking the roof of her-mouth all thee time. 

"And putting those delphiniums all together like that--Massing theblues. Anthony? I _do_ think Anthony has perfect taste. I adoredelphiniums. "

Auntie Emmy was behaving as if neither Michael nor Baby John was there. 

"Don't you think John-John's too beautiful for words?" said Frances. "Don't you like him a little bit too?"

Auntie Emmy winced as if Frances had flicked something in her face. 

"Of course I like him too. Why shouldn't I?"

"I don't think you _do_, Auntie Emmy, " Michael said. 

Auntie Emmy considered him as for the first time. 

"What do you know about it?" she said. 

"I can tell by the funny things your face does. "

"I thought, " said Frances, "you wanted to play by yourself. "

"So I do, " said Michael. 

"Well then, go and play. "

He went and to a heavenly place that he knew of. But as he played withHimself there he thought: "Auntie Emmy doesn't tell the truth. I thinkit is because she isn't happy. "

Michael kept his best things to himself. 

 * * * * *

"I suppose you're happy, " said Grannie, "now you've got the poor childsent away. "

Auntie Emmy raised her eyebrows and spread out her hands, as much as tosay she was helpless under her mother's stupidity. 

"He'd have been sent away anyhow, " said Frances. "It isn't good for himto hang about listening to grown-up conversation. "

It was her part to keep the peace between her mother and her sisters. 

"It seems to me, " said Auntie Louie, "that you began it yourself. "

When a situation became uncomfortable, Auntie Louie always put her wordin and made it worse. She never would let Frances keep the peace. 

Frances knew what Louie meant--that she was always flinging her babiesin Emmy's face at those moments when the sight of other people's babieswas too much for Emmy. She could never be prepared for Emmy's moments. 

"It's all very well, " Auntie Louie went on; "but I should like to hearof somebody admiring Dorothy. I don't see where Dorothy comes in. "

Dorothy was supposed, by the two Nannas, to be Auntie Louie's favourite. If you taxed her with it she was indignant and declared that she wassure she wasn't. 

And again Frances knew what Louie meant--that she loved her three sons, Michael and Nicholas and John, with passion, and her one daughter, Dorothea, with critical affection. That was the sort of thing that Louiewas always saying and thinking about people, and nobody ever paid theslightest attention to what Louie said or thought. Frances told herselfthat if there was one emotion that she was more free from than anotherit was sex jealousy. 

The proof of it, which she offered now, was that she had given upDorothy to Anthony. It was natural that he should care most for thelittle girl. 

Louie said that was easy--when she knew perfectly well that Anthonydidn't. Like Frances he cared most for his three sons. She was leavingDorothy to Anthony so that Anthony might leave Michael and Nicholasto her. 

"You might just as well say, " Frances said, "that I'm in love withJohn-John. Poor little Don-Don!"

"I might, " said Louie, "just as well. "

Grannie said she was sure she didn't understand what they were talkingabout and that Louie had some very queer ideas in her head. 

"Louie, " she said, "knows more than I do. "

Frances thought: Was Grannie really stupid? Was she really innocent? Wasshe not, rather, clever, chock-full of the secret wisdom and the secretcruelty of sex?

Frances was afraid of her thoughts. They came to her not like thoughts, but like quick rushes of her blood, partly confusing her. She did notlike that. 

She thought: Supposing Grannie knew all the time that Emmy was unhappy, and took a perverse pleasure in her knowledge? Supposing she was notreally soft and gentle? She could be soft and gentle to her, because ofher children and because of Anthony. She respected Anthony because hewas well-off and efficient and successful, and had supported her eversince Grandpapa had gone bankrupt. She was proud of Frances because shewas Anthony's wife, who had had three sons and only one daughter. 

Grannie behaved as if her grandchildren were her own children, as if shehad borne three Sons and only one daughter, instead of four daughtersand only one son. Still, Frances was the vehicle of flesh and blood thatcarried on her flesh and blood in Michael and Nicholas and John. Sherespected Frances. 

But Frances could remember a time when she had been unmarried like hersisters, and when Grannie had turned on her, too, that look that washalf contempt and half hostility or displeasure. Grannie had not wantedher to marry Anthony, any more than she would have wanted Louie orEmmeline or Edith to marry anybody, supposing anybody had wanted tomarry them. And Frances and Anthony had defied her. They had insisted onmarrying each other. Frances knew that if there had been no Anthony, hermother would have despised her in secret, as in secret she despisedEmmeline and Edith. She despised them more than Louie, because, poorthings, they wanted, palpably, to be married, whereas Louie didn't, orsaid she didn't. In her own way, Louie had defied her mother. She hadbought a type-writer and a bicycle with her own earnings, and bypartially supporting herself she had defied Anthony, the malebenefactor, Louie's manner intimated that there was nothing Frances hadthat she wanted. She had resources in herself, and Frances had none. 

Frances persuaded herself that she admired and respected Louie. She knewthat she, Frances, was only admired and respected because she hadsucceeded where her three sisters had failed. She was even afraid that, in moments of exasperation, Grannie used her and Anthony and thechildren to punish Emmy and Edie for their failure. The least she coulddo was to stand between them and Grannie. 

It was possible that if Grannie had been allowed to ignore them and giveher whole attention to Frances or Michael or Baby John, she could havecontrived to be soft and gentle for an afternoon. But neither Louie norEmmeline, nor even Edith, would consent to be ignored. They refused toknuckle under, to give in. Theirs was a perpetual struggle to achieve anindividuality in the teeth of circumstances that had denied them any. Frances acknowledged that they were right, that in the samecircumstances she would have done the same. 

In their different ways and by different methods they claimed attention. They claimed it incessantly, Louie, the eldest, by an attitude ofassurance and superiority so stiff and hard that it seemed invulnerable;Emmy by sudden jerky enthusiasms, exaltations, intensities; Edie by anexaggerated animation, a false excitement. Edie would drop from achildish merriment to a childish pathos, when she would call herself"Poor me, " and demand pity for being tired, for missing a train, forcold feet, for hair coming down. 

There would be still more animation, and still more enthusiasm whenAnthony came home. 

Frances prided herself on her power of foreseeing things. She foresawthat Anthony would come home early for his game. She foresaw the funny, nervous agony of his face when he appeared on the terrace and caughtsight of Grannie and the three Aunties, and the elaborate and exquisitepoliteness with which he would conceal from them his emotion. Sheforesaw that she would say to Annie, "When the master comes tell himwe're having tea in the garden, under the tree of--under the ash-tree"(for after all, he was the master, and discipline must be maintained). She foresaw the very gestures of his entrance, the ironically solemn bowthat he would make to her, far-off, from the terrace; she even foresawthe kind of joke that, for the life of him, he would not be able tohelp making. She was so made that she could live happily in this worldof small, foreseen things. 

III

And it all happened as she had foreseen. 

Anthony came home early, because it was a fine afternoon. He made thekind of joke that calamity always forced from him, by some perversion ofhis instincts. 

"When is an ash-tree not an ash-tree? When it's a tree of Heaven. "

He was exquisitely polite to Grannie and the Aunties, and his manner toFrances, which she openly complained of, was, he said, what a womanbrought on herself when she reserved her passion for her children, hersentiment for trees of Heaven, and her mockery for her devoted husband. 

"I suppose we can have some tennis _now_, " said Auntie Louie. 

"Certainly, " said Anthony, "we can, and we shall. " He tried not to lookat Frances. 

And Auntie Edie became automatically animated. 

"I can't serve for nuts, but I can run. Who's going to play with _me_?"

"I am, " said Anthony. He was perfect. 

The game of tennis had an unholy and terrible attraction for AuntieLouie and Auntie Edie. Neither of them could play. But, whereas AuntieLouie thought that she could play and took tennis seriously, Auntie Edieknew that she couldn't and took it as a joke. 

Auntie Louie stood tall and rigid and immovable. She planted herself, like a man, close up to the net, where Anthony wanted to be, and wherehe should have been; but Auntie Louie said she was no good if you puther to play back; she couldn't be expected to take every ball he missed. 

When Auntie Louie called out "Play!" she meant to send a nervous shudderthrough her opponents, shattering their morale. She went through all thegestures of an annihilating service that for some reason never happened. She said the net was too low and that spoiled her eye. And when shemissed her return it was because Anthony had looked at her and put heroff. Still Aunt Louie's attitude had this advantage that it kept herquiet in one place where Anthony could dance round and round her. 

But Auntie Edie played in little nervous runs and slides and rushes; sheflung herself, with screams of excitement, against the ball, her partnerand the net; and she brandished her racket in a dangerous manner. Theoftener she missed the funnier it was to Auntie Edie. She had beenpretty when she was young, and seventeen years ago her cries and tumblesand collisions had been judged amusing; and Auntie Edie thought theywere amusing still. Anthony had never had the heart to undeceive her. Sothat when Anthony was there Auntie Edie still went about setting astandard of gaiety for other people to live up to; and still she wasastonished that they never did, that other people had no senseof humour. 

Therefore Frances was glad when Anthony told her that he had asked Mr. Parsons, the children's tutor, and young Norris and young Vereker fromthe office to come round for tennis at six, and that dinner must be putoff till half-past eight. 

All was well. The evening would be sacred to Anthony and the young men. The illusion of worry passed, and Frances's real world of happinessstood firm. 

And as Frances's mind, being a thoroughly healthy mind, refused toentertain any dreary possibility for long together, so it was simplyunable to foresee downright calamity, even when it had been pointed outto her. For instance, that Nicky should really have chosen the day ofthe party for an earache, the worst earache he had ever had. 

He appeared at tea-time, carried in Mary-Nanna's arms, and with his headtied up in one of Mr. Jervis's cricket scarves. As he approached hisfamily he tried hard not to look pathetic. 

And at the sight of her little son her whole brilliant world ofhappiness was shattered around Frances. 

"Nicky darling, " she said, "why _didn't_ you tell me it was reallyaching?"

"I didn't know, " said Nicky. 

He never did know the precise degree of pain that distinguished thebeginning of a genuine earache from that of a sham one, and he felt thatto palm off a sham earache on his mother for a real one, was somehow asneaky thing to do. And while his ear went on stabbing him, Nicky didhis best to explain. 

"You see, I never know whether it's aching or whether it's only going toache. It began a little, teeny bit when the Funny Man made me laugh. And I didn't see the Magic Lantern, and I didn't have any of Rosalind'scake. It came on when I was biting the sugar off. And it was aching inboth ears at once. It was, " said Nicky, "a jolly sell for me. "

At that moment Nicky's earache jabbed upwards at his eyelids and cutthem, and shook tears out of them. But Nicky's mouth refused to take anypart in the performance, though he let his father carry him upstairs. And, as he lay on the big bed in his mother's room, he said he thoughthe could bear it if he had Jane-Pussy to lie beside him, and hissteam-engine. 

Anthony went back into the garden to fetch Jane. He spent an hourlooking for her, wandering in utter misery through the house and throughthe courtyard and stables and the kitchen garden. He looked for Jane inthe hothouse and the cucumber frames, and under the rhubarb, and on thescullery roof, and in the water butt. It was just possible that on a dayof complete calamity Jane should have slithered off the scullery roofinto the water-butt. The least he could do was to find Jane, since Nickywanted her. 

And in the end it turned out that Jane had been captured in her sleep, treacherously, by Auntie Emmy. And she had escaped, maddened with terrorof the large, nervous, incessantly caressing hands. She had climbed intothe highest branch of the tree of Heaven, and crouched there, glaring, unhappy. 

"Damn the cat!" said Anthony to himself. (It was not Jane he meant. )

He was distressed, irritated, absurdly upset, because he would have togo back to Nicky without Jane, because he couldn't get Nicky whathe wanted. 

In that moment Anthony loved Nicky more than any of them. He loved himalmost more than Frances. Nicky's earache ruined the fine day. 

He confided in young Vereker. "I wouldn't bother, " he said, "if thelittle chap wasn't so plucky about it. "

"Quite so, sir, " said young Vereker. 

It was young Mr. Vereker who found Jane, who eventually recaptured her. Young Mr. Vereker made himself glorious by climbing up, at the risk ofhis neck and in his new white flannels, into the high branches of thetree of Heaven, to bring Jane down. 

And when Anthony thanked him he said, "Don't mention it, sir. It's onlya trifle, " though it was, as Mr. Norris said, palpable that the flannelswere ruined. Still, if he hadn't found that confounded cat, they wouldnever, humanly speaking, have had their tennis. 

The Aunties did not see Mr. Vereker climbing into the tree of Heaven. They did not see him playing with Mr. Parsons and Anthony and Mr. Norris. For as soon as the three young men appeared, and Emmeline andEdith began to be interested and emphatic, Grannie said that as theywouldn't see anything more of Frances and the children, it was no goodstaying any longer, and they'd better be getting back. It was as if sheknew that they were going to enjoy themselves and was determined toprevent it. 

Frances went with them to the bottom of the lane. She stood there tillthe black figures had passed, one by one, through the white posts on tothe Heath, till, in the distance, they became small again and harmlessand pathetic. 

Then she went back to her room where Nicky lay in the big bed. 

 * * * * *

Nicky lay in the big bed with Jane on one side of him and hissteam-engine on the other, and a bag of hot salt against each ear. Nowand then a thin wall of sleep slid between him and his earache. 

Frances sat by the open window and looked out into the garden whereAnthony and Norris played, quietly yet fiercely, against Vereker andParsons. Frances loved the smell of fresh grass that the balls and themen's feet struck from the lawn; she loved the men's voices subdued toNicky's sleep, and the sound of their padding feet, the thud of theballs on the turf, the smacking and thwacking of the rackets. She lovedevery movement of Anthony's handsome, energetic body; she loved thequick, supple bodies of the young men, the tense poise and earnestactivity of their adolescence. But it was not Vereker or Parsons orNorris that she loved or that she saw. It was Michael, Nicholas and Johnwhose adolescence was foreshadowed in those athletic forms wearing whiteflannels; Michael, Nicky and John, in white flannels, playing fiercely. When young Vereker drew himself to his full height, when his young bodyshowed lean and slender as he raised his arms for his smashing service, it was not young Vereker, but Michael, serious and beautiful. When youngParsons leaped high into the air and thus returned Anthony's facetioussky-scraper on the volley, that was Nicky. When young Norris turned andran at the top of his speed, and overtook the ball on its rebound fromthe base line where young Vereker had planted it, when, as by a miracle, he sent it backwards over his own head, paralysing Vereker and Parsonswith sheer astonishment, that was John. 

 * * * * *

Her vision passed. She was leaning over Nicky now, Nicky so small in thebig bed. Nicky had moaned. 

"Does it count if I make that little noise, Mummy? It sort of lets thepain out. "

"No, my lamb, it doesn't count. Is the pain very bad?"

"Yes, Mummy, awful. It's going faster and faster. And it bizzes. Andwhen it doesn't bizz, it thumps. " He paused--"I think--p'raps--I couldbear it better if I sat on your knee. "

Frances thought she could bear it better too. It would be good for Nickythat he should grow into beautiful adolescence and a perfect manhood;but it was better for her that he should be a baby still, that sheshould have him on her knee and hold him close to her; that she shouldfeel his adorable body press quivering against her body, and the heat ofhis earache penetrating her cool flesh. For now she was lost to herselfand utterly absorbed in Nicky. And her agony became a sort of ecstasy, as if, actually, she bore his pain. 

It was Anthony who could not stand it. Anthony had come in on his way tohis dressing-room. As he looked at Nicky his handsome, hawk-like facewas drawn with a dreadful, yearning, ineffectual pity. Frances haddiscovered that her husband could both be and look pathetic. He hadwanted her to be sorry for him and she was sorry for him, because hismale pity was all agony; there was no ecstasy in it of any sort at all. Nicky was far more her flesh and blood than he was Anthony's. 

Nicky stirred in his mother's lap. He raised his head. And when he sawthat queer look on his father's face he smiled at it. He had to make thesmile himself, for it refused to come of its own accord. He made itcarefully, so that it shouldn't hurt him. But he made it so well that ithurt Frances and Anthony. 

"I never saw a child bear pain as Nicky does, " Frances said in herpride. 

"If he can bear it, _I_ can't, " said Anthony. And he stalked into hisdressing-room and shut the door on himself. 

"Daddy minds more than you do, " said Frances. 

At that Nicky sat up. His eyes glittered and his cheeks burned with thefever of his earache. 

"I don't mind, " he said. "Really and truly I don't mind. I don't care ifmy ear _does_ ache. 

"It's my eyes is crying, not me. "

 * * * * *

At nine o'clock, when they were all sitting down to dinner, Nicky sentfor his father and mother. Something had happened. 

Crackers, he said, had been going off in his ears, and they hurt mostawfully. And when it had done cracking his earache had gone away. AndDorothy had brought him a trumpet from Rosalind's party and Michael atin train. And Michael had given him the train and he wouldn't take thetrumpet instead. Oughtn't Michael to have had the trumpet?

And when they left him, tucked up in his cot in the night nursery, hecalled them back again. 

"It was a jolly sell for me, wasn't it?" said Nicky. And he laughed. 

IV

It seemed that Nicky would always be like that. Whatever happened, andsomething was generally happening to him, he didn't care. When he scaledthe plaster flower-pot on the terrace, and it gave way under his assaultand threw him down the steps on to the gravel walk, he picked himselfup, displaying a forehead that was a red abrasion filled in with yellowgravel and the grey dust of the smashed flower-pot, and said "I don'tcare. I liked it, " before anybody had time to pity him. When Mary-Nannastepped on his train and broke the tender, he said "It's all right. Idon't care. I shall make another. " It was no use Grannie saying, "Don'tcare came to a bad end"; Nicky made it evident that a bad end would belife's last challenge not to care. No accident, however unforeseen, would ever take him at a disadvantage. 

Two years passed and he was just the same. 

Frances and Anthony agreed behind his back that Nicky was adorable. 

But his peculiar attitude to misfortune became embarrassing when you hadto punish him. Nicky could break the back of any punishment by firstadmitting that it was a good idea and then thinking of a better one whenit was too late. It was a good idea not letting him have any cake fortea after he had tested the resilience of the new tyres on his father'sbicycle with a penknife; but, Nicky said, it would have been more tothe purpose if they had taken his steam-engine from him for a week. 

"You didn't think of that, did you, Mummy? I thought of it, " said Nicky. 

Once he ran away over the West Heath, and got into the Leg of MuttonPond, and would have been drowned if a total stranger hadn't gone inafter him and pulled him out. That time Nicky was sent to bed at fouro'clock in the afternoon. At seven, when his mother came to tuck him upand say Good-night, she found him sitting up, smiling and ready. 

"Mummy, " he said, "I think I ought to tell you. It isn't a bit of goodsending me to bed. "

"I should have thought it was, myself, " said Frances. She almostsuspected Nicky of insincerity. 

"So it would have been, " he assented, "if I didn't 'vent things. Yousee, I just lie still 'venting things all the time. I've 'vented threethings since tea: a thing to make Daddy's bikesickle stand still withDaddy on it; a thing to squeeze corks out of bottles; and a thing tomake my steam-engine go faster. That isn't a punishment, is it, Mummy?"

 * * * * *

They said that Nicky would grow out of it. But two more years passed andNicky was still the same. 

And yet he was not the same. And Dorothy, and Michael and John were notthe same. 

For the awful thing about your children was that they were always dying. Yes, dying. The baby Nicky was dead. The child Dorothy was dead and inher place was a strange big girl. The child Michael was dead and in hisplace was a strange big boy. And Frances mourned over the passing ofeach age. You could no more bring back that unique loveliness of twoyears old, of five years old, of seven, than you could bring back thedead. Even John-John was not a baby any more; he spoke another languageand had other feelings; he had no particular affection for his mother'sknee. Frances knew that all this dying was to give place to a morewonderful and a stronger life. But it was not the same life; and shewanted to have all their lives about her, enduring, going on, at thesame time. She did not yet know that the mother of babies and the motherof boys and girls must die if the mother of men and women is to be born. 

Thoughts came to Frances now that troubled her tranquillity. 

Supposing, after all, the children shouldn't grow up as she wanted themto?

There was Nicky. She could do nothing with him; she could make noimpression on him. 

There was Michael. She couldn't make him out. He loved them, and showedthat he loved them; but it was by caresses, by beautiful words, by rare, extravagant acts of renunciation, inconsistent with his self-will; notby anything solid and continuous. There was a softness in Michael thatdistressed and a hardness that perplexed her. You could make animpression on Michael--far too easily--and the impression stayed. Youcouldn't obliterate it. Michael's memory was terrible. And he had secretways. He was growing more and more sensitive, more and more wrapped upin Himself. Supposing Michael became a morbid egoist, like Anthony'sbrother, Bartholomew?

And there was Dorothy. She went her own way more than ever, with theabsolute conviction that it was the right way. Nothing could turn her. At thirteen her body was no longer obedient. Dorothy was not going to beher mother's companion, or her father's, either; she was RosalindJervis's companion. She seemed to care more about little fat, fluffyRosalind than about any of them except Nicky. Dorothy was interested inMichael; she respected his queer thoughts. It was as if she recognizedsome power in him that could beat her somewhere some day, and was humblebefore a thing her cleverness had failed to understand. But it was Nickythat she adored, not Michael; and she was bad for Nicky. She encouragedhis naughtiness because it amused her. 

Frances foresaw that a time would come, a little later, when Nicky andDorothy would be companions, not Nicky and his mother. 

In the evenings, coming home from the golf-links, Frances and Anthonydiscussed their children. 

Frances said, "You can't make any impression on Nicky. There seems to beno way that you can get at him. "

Anthony thought there was a way. It was a way he had not tried yet, thathe did not want to try. But, if he could only bring himself to it, hejudged that he could make a distinct impression. 

"What the young rascal wants is a thorough good spanking, " said Anthony. 

Nicky said so too. 

The first time he got it Nicky's criticism was that it wasn't a bad ideaif his father could have pulled it off all right. But he said, "It's nogood if you do it through the cloth. And it's no good unless you _want_to hurt me, Daddy. And you don't want. And even if you did want, badlyenough to try and hurt, supposing you spanked ever so hard, you couldn'thurt as much as my earache. And I can bear that. "

"He's top dog again, you see, " said Frances, not without a secretsatisfaction. 

"Oh, is he?" said Anthony. "I don't propose to be downed by Nicky. "

Every instinct in him revolted against spanking Nicky. But whenWilliams, the groom, showed him a graze on each knee of the pony he hadbought for Frances and the children, Anthony determined that, this time, Nicky should have a serious spanking. 

"Which of them took Roger out?"

"I'm sure I don't know, sir, " said Williams. 

But Anthony knew. He lay in wait for Nicky by the door that led from thestable yard into the kitchen garden. 

Nicky was in the strawberry bed. 

"Was it you who took Roger out this afternoon?"

Nicky did not answer promptly. His mouth was still full of strawberries. 

"What if I did?" he said at last, after manifest reflection. 

"If you did? Why, you let him down on Golders Hill and cut his knees. "

"Holly Mount, " said Nicky. 

"Holly Mount or Golders Hill, it's all the same to you, you youngmonkey. "

"It isn't, Daddy. Holly Mount's much the worst. It's an awful hill. "

"That, " said Anthony, "is why you're forbidden to ride down it. You've_got_ to be spanked for this, Nicky. "

"Have I? All right. Don't look so unhappy, Daddy. "

Anthony did much better this time. Nicky (though he shook with laughter)owned it very handsomely. And Anthony had handicapped himself again bydoing it through the cloth. He drew the line at shaming Nicky. (Yet--_could_ you have shamed his indomitable impudence?)

But he had done it. He had done it ruthlessly, while the strawberrieswere still wet on Nicky's mouth. 

And when it was all over Michael, looking for his father, came into theschool-room where these things happened. He said he was awfully sorry, but he'd taken Roger out, and Roger had gone down on his knees andcut himself. 

No, it wasn't on Holly Mount, it was at the turn of the road on the hillpast the "Spaniards. "

Anthony paid no attention to Michael. He turned on Michael's brother. 

"Nicky, what did you do it for?"

"For a rag, of course. I knew you'd feel such a jolly fool when youfound it wasn't me. "

"You see, Daddy, " he explained later, "you might have known I wouldn'thave let Roger down. But wasn't it a ripping sell?"

"What are you to do, " said Anthony, "with a boy like that?"

Frances had an inspiration. "Do nothing, " she said. Her tranquillityrefused to be troubled for long together. 

"Nicky's right. It's no good trying to punish him. After all, _why_punish Nicky? It isn't as if he was really naughty. He never does unkindthings, or mean things. And he's truthful. "

"Horribly truthful. They all are, " said Anthony. 

"Well, then, what does Nicky do?"

"He does dangerous things. "

"He forgets. "

"Nothing more dangerous than forgetting. We must punish him to make himremember. "

"But it doesn't make him remember. It only makes him think us fools. "

"You know what it means?" said Anthony. "We shall have to send him toschool. "

"Not yet, " said Frances. 

School was the thing in the future that she dreaded. Nicky was onlynine, and they were all getting on well with Mt. Parsons. Anthony knewthat to send Nicky to school now would be punishing Frances, not Nicky. The little fiend would only grin in their faces if they told him he wasgoing to school. 

It was no use trying to make impressions on Nicky. He was as hard asnails. He would never feel things. 

Perhaps, Frances thought, it was just as well. 

V

"I do think it was nice of Jane, " said Nicky, "to have Jerry. "

"And I do think it was nice of me, " said Dorothy, "to give him to you. "

Jane was Dorothy's cat; therefore her kittens were Dorothy's. 

"I wouldn't have given him to just anybody. "

"I know, " said Nicky. 

"I might have kept him. He's the nicest kitten Jane ever had. "

"I know, " said Nicky. "It _was_ nice of you. "

"I might want him back again. "

"I--know. "

Nicky was quiet and serious, almost humble, as if he went in the fear oflosing Jerry. Nobody but Jerry and Dorothy saw Nicky in that mood. 

Not that he was really afraid. Nothing could take Jerry from him. IfDorothy could have taken him back again she wouldn't have, not even ifshe had really wanted him. Dorothy wasn't cruel, and she wasonly ragging. 

But certainly he was Jane's nicest kitten. Jane was half-Persian, whitewith untidy tabby patterns on her. Jerry was black all over. Whateverattitude he took, his tight, short fur kept the outlines of his figurefirm and clear, whether he arched his back and jumped sideways, orrolled himself into a cushion, or squatted with haunches spread andpaws doubled in under his breast, or sat bolt upright with his four legsstraight like pillars, and his tail curled about his feet. Jerry's coatshone like black looking-glass, and the top of his head smelt sweet, like a dove's breast. 

And he had yellow eyes. Mary-Nanna said they would turn green some day. But Nicky didn't believe it. Mary-Nanna was only ragging. Jerry's eyeswould always be yellow. 

Mr. Parsons declared that Nicky sat for whole hours meditating on Jerry, as if in this way he could make him last longer. 

Jerry's life was wonderful to Nicky. Once he was so small that his bodycovered hardly the palm of your hand; you could see his skin; it feltsoft and weak through the thin fur, sleeked flat and wet where Jane hadlicked it. His eyes were buttoned up tight. Then they opened. He crawledfeebly on the floor after Jane, or hung on to her little breasts, pressing out the milk with his clever paws. Then Jerry got older. Sometimes he went mad and became a bat or a bird, and flew up thedrawing-room curtains as if his legs were wings. 

Nicky said that Jerry could turn himself into anything he pleased; ahawk, an owl, a dove, a Himalayan bear, a snake, a flying squirrel, amonkey, a rabbit, a panther, and a little black lamb of God. 

Jerry was a cat now; he was two years old. 

Jerry's fixed idea seemed to be that he was a very young cat, and thathe must be nursed continually, and that nobody but Nicky must nurse him. Mr. Parsons found that Nicky made surprising progress in his Latin andGreek that year. What had baffled Mr. Parsons up till now had beenNicky's incapacity for sitting still. But he would sit still enough whenJerry was on his knee, pressed tight between the edge of the desk andNicky's stomach, so that knowledge entered into Nicky through Jerry whenthere was no other way. 

Nicky would even sit still in the open air to watch Jerry as he stalkedbees in the grass, or played by himself, over and over again, his ownenchanted game. He always played it in the same way. He started from thesame clump in the border, to run in one long careening curve across thegrass; at the same spot in the lawn he bounded sideways and gave thesame little barking grunt and dashed off into the bushes. When you triedto catch him midway he stood on his hind legs and bowed to youslantwise, waving his forepaws, or rushed like lightning up the tree ofHeaven, and climbed into the highest branches and clung there, lookingdown at you. His yellow eyes shone through the green leaves; theyquivered; they played; they mocked you with some challenge, some charm, secret and divine and savage. 

"The soul of Nicky is in that cat, " Frances said. 

Jerry knew that he was Nicky's cat. When other people caught him hescrabbled over their shoulders with his claws and got away from them. When Nicky caught him he lay quiet and heavy in his arms, pressing downand spreading his soft body. Nicky's sense of touch had been hardened byviolent impacts and collisions, by experiments with jack-knives and sawsand chisels and gouges, and by struggling with the material of hiseverlasting inventions. Through communion with Jerry it became tenderand sensitive again. It delighted in the cat's throbbing purr and thethrill of his feet, as Jerry, serious and earnest, padded down his bedon Nicky's knee. 

"I like him best, though, " said Nicky, "when he's sleepy and at the sametime bitesome. "

"You mustn't let him bite you, " Frances said. 

"I don't mind, " said Nicky. "He wouldn't do it if he didn't like me. "

Jerry had dropped off to sleep with his jaws closing drowsily on Nicky'sarm. When it moved his hind legs kicked at it and tore. 

"He's dreaming when he does that, " said Nicky. "He thinks he's a pantherand I'm buffaloes. "

Mr. Parsons laughed at him. "Nicky and his cat!" he said. Nicky didn'tcare. Mr. Parsons was always ragging him. 

The tutor preferred dogs himself. He couldn't afford any of theexpensive breeds; but that summer he was taking care of a Russianwolfhound for a friend of his. When Mr. Parsons ran with Michael andNicky round the Heath, the great borzoi ran before them with long leaps, head downwards, setting an impossible pace. Michael and Dorothy adoredBoris openly. Nicky, out of loyalty to Jerry, stifled a secretadmiration. For Mr. Parsons held that a devotion to a cat wasincompatible with a proper feeling for a dog, whence Nicky had inferredthat any feeling for a dog must do violence to the nobler passion. 

Mr. Parsons tried to wean Nicky from what he pretended to regard as hisunmanly weakness. "Wait, Nicky, " he said, "till you've got a dog ofyour own. "

"I don't want a dog of my own, " said Nicky. "I don't want anything butJerry. " Boris, he said, was not clever, like Jerry. He had a silly face. 

"Think so?" said Mr. Parsons. "Look at his jaws. They could breakJerry's back with one snap. "

"_Could_ he, Daddy?"

They were at tea on the lawn, and Boris had gone to sleep under Mr. Parsons' legs with his long muzzle on his forepaws. 

"He could, " said Anthony, "if he caught him. "

"But he couldn't catch him. Jerry'd be up a tree before Boris could lookat him. "

"If you want Jerry to shin up trees you must keep his weight down. "

Nicky laughed. He knew that Boris could never catch Jerry. His fatherwas only ragging him. 

 * * * * *

Nicky was in the schoolroom, bowed over his desk. He was doing animposition, the second aorist of the abominable verb [Greek: erchomai], written out five and twenty times. (Luckily he could do the last fifteentimes from memory. )

Nicky had been arguing with Mr. Parsons. Mr. Parsons had said that thesecond aorist of [Greek: erchomai] was not [Greek: êrchon]. 

Nicky had said, "I can't help it. If it's not [Greek: êrchon] it oughtto be. "

Mr. Parsons had replied: "The verb [Greek: erchomai] is irregular. " AndNicky had retorted, in effect, that no verb had any business to be asirregular as all that. Mr. Parsons had then suggested that Nicky mightknow more about the business of irregular verbs if he wrote out thesecond aorist of [Greek: erchomai] five and twenty times after tea. Asit was a particularly fine afternoon, an imposition was, Nicky admitted, a score for Mr. Parsons and a jolly good sell for _him_. 

Mr. Parsons had not allowed him to have Jerry on his knee, or even inthe room; and this, Nicky owned further, was but just. It wouldn't havebeen nearly so good a punishment if he had had Jerry with him. 

Nicky, bowed over his desk, struggled for the perfect legibility whichMr. Parsons had insisted on, as otherwise the imposition would do himmore harm than good. He was in for it, and the thing must be donehonourably if it was done at all. He had only looked out of the windowstwice to make sure that Boris was asleep under Mr. Parsons' legs. Andonce he had left the room to see where Jerry was. He had found him inthe kitchen garden, sitting on a bed of fresh-grown mustard and cress, ruining it. He sat like a lamb, his forepaws crossed, his head tiltedslightly backwards. His yellow eyes gazed at Nicky with a sweet andmournful innocence. 

Nicky did not hear the voices in the garden. 

"I'm awfully sorry, sir, " Mr. Parsons was saying. "I can't think how itcould have happened. " Mr. Parsons' voice was thick and his face was veryred. "I could have sworn the door was shut. "

"Johnnie opened it, " said Anthony. He seemed to have caught, suddenly, one of his bad colds and to be giving it to Mr. Parsons. They were bothin their shirtsleeves, and Anthony carried something in his arms whichhe had covered with his coat. 

The borzoi stood in front of them. His face had a look of foolishecstasy. He stared at Mr. Parsons, and as he stared he panted. There wasa red smear on his white breast; his open jaws still dripped a pinkslaver. It sprayed the ground in front of them, jerked out withhis panting. 

"Get away, you damned brute, " said Mr. Parsons. 

Boris abashed himself; he stretched out his fore legs towards Mr. Parsons, shook his raised haunches, lifted up his great saw-like muzzle, and rolled into one monstrous cry a bark, a howl, a yawn. 

Nicky heard it, and he looked out of the schoolroom window. He saw thered smear on the white curly breast. He saw his father in his shirtsleeves, carrying something in his arms that he had covered withhis coat. 

Under the tree of Heaven Dorothy and Michael, crouching close againsttheir mother, cried quietly. Frances was crying, too; for it was she whowould have to tell Nicky. 

Dorothy tried to console him. 

"Jerry's eyes would have turned green, if he had lived, Nicky. Theywould, really. "

"I wouldn't have minded. They'd have been Jerry's eyes. "

"But he wouldn't have looked like Jerry. "

"I wouldn't have cared what he looked like. He'd have _been_ Jerry. "

"I'll give you Jane, Nicky, and all the kittens she ever has, if thatwould make up. "

"It wouldn't. You don't seem to understand that it's Jerry I want. Iwish you wouldn't talk about him. "

"Very well, " said Dorothy, "I won't. "

Then Grannie tried. She recommended a holy resignation. God, she said, had given Jerry to Nicky, and God had taken him away. 

"He didn't give him me, and he'd no right to take him. Dorothy wouldn'thave done it. She was only ragging. But when God does things, " saidNicky savagely, "it isn't a rag. "

He hated Grannie, and he hated Mr. Parsons, and he hated God. But heloved Dorothy who had given him Jerry. 

Night after night Frances held him in her arms at bed-time while Nickysaid the same thing. "If--if I could stop seeing him. But I keep onseeing him. When he sat on the mustard and cress. And when he bit mewith his sleep-bites. And when he looked at me out of the tree ofHeaven. Then I hear that little barking grunt he used to make when hewas playing with himself--when he dashed off into the bushes. 

"And I can't _bear_ it. "

Night after night Nicky cried himself to sleep. 

For the awful thing was that it had been all his fault. If he had keptJerry's weight down Boris couldn't have caught him. 

"Daddy said so, Mummy. "

Over and over again Frances said, "It wasn't your fault. It wasDon-Don's. He left the door open. Surely you can forgive Don-Don?" Overand over again Nicky said, "I do forgive him. "

But it was no good. Nicky became first supernaturally subdued andgentle, then ill. They had to take him away from home, away from thesight of the garden, and away from Mr. Parsons, forestalling themidsummer holidays by two months. 

Nicky at the seaside was troublesome and happy, and they thought he hadforgotten. But on the first evening at Hampstead, as Frances kissed himGood-night, he said: "Shall I have to see Mr. Parsons to-morrow?"

Frances said: "Yes. Of course. "

"I'd rather not. "

"Nonsense, you must get over that. "

"I--can't, Mummy. "

"Oh, Nicky, can't you forgive poor Mr. Parsons? When he was so unhappy?"

Nicky meditated. 

"Do you think, " he said at last, "he really minded?"

"I'm sure he did. "

"As much as you and Daddy?"

"Quite as much. "

"Then, " said Nicky, "I'll forgive him. "

But, though he forgave John and Mr. Parsons and even God, who, to do himjustice, did not seem to have been able to help it, Nicky did notforgive himself. 

Yet Frances never could think why the sight of mustard and cress madeNicky sick. Neither did Mr. Parsons, nor any schoolmaster who came afterhim understand why, when Nicky knew all the rest of the verb [Greek:erchomai] by heart he was unable to remember the second aorist. 

He excellent memory, but there was always a gap in it just there. 

VI

In that peace and tranquillity where nothing ever happened, Jerry'sviolent death would have counted as an event, a date to reckon by; butfor three memorable things that happened, one after another, in thesummer and autumn of 'ninety-nine: the return of Frances's brother, Maurice Fleming, from Australia where Anthony had sent him two yearsago, on the express understanding that he was to stay there; thesimultaneous arrival of Anthony's brother, Bartholomew, and his family;and the outbreak of the Boer War. 

The return of Morrie was not altogether unforeseen, and Bartholomew hadannounced his coming well beforehand, but who could have dreamed that atthe end of the nineteenth century England would be engaged in a War thatreally _was_ a War? Frances, with the _Times_ in her hands, supposedthat that meant more meddling and muddling of stupid politicians, andthat it would mean more silly speeches in Parliament, and copy, at last, for foolish violent, pathetic and desperate editors, and breach ofpromise cases, divorces and fires in paraffin shops reduced to momentaryinsignificance. 

But as yet there was no war, nor any appearance that sensible peopleinterpreted as a sign of war at the time of Morrie's return. It stoodalone, as other past returns, the return from Bombay, the return fromCanada, the return from Cape Colony, had stood, in its sheer awfulness. To Frances it represented the extremity of disaster. 

They might have known what was coming by Grannie's behaviour. One day, the day when the Australian mail arrived, she had subsided suddenly intoa state of softness and gentleness. She approached her son-in-law withan air of sorrowful deprecation; she showed a certain deference to herdaughter Louie; she was soft and gentle even with Emmeline and Edith. 

Mrs. Fleming broke the news to Louie who broke it to Frances who in herturn broke it to Anthony. That was the procedure they invariablyadopted. 

"I wonder, " Grannie said, "what he can be coming back for!" Each timeshe affected astonishment and incredulity, as if Morrie's coming backwere, not a recurrence that crushed you with its flatness and staleness, but a thing that must interest Louie because of its utter un-likeliness. 

"I wonder, " said Louie, "why he hasn't come before. What else did youexpect?"

"I'm sure I don't know, " said Grannie helplessly. "Go and tell Frances. "

Louie went. And because she knew that the burden of Morrie would fallagain on Frances's husband she was disagreeable with Frances. 

"It's all very well for you, " she said. "You haven't got to live withhim. You haven't got to sleep in the room next him. You don't know whatit's like. "

"I do know, " said Frances. "I remember. You'll have to bear it. "

"You haven't had to bear it for fourteen years. "

"You'll have to bear it, " Frances repeated, "till Anthony sends him outagain. That's all it amounts to. "

She waited till the children were in bed and she was alone with Anthony. 

"Something awful's happened, " she said, and paused hoping he wouldguess. 

"I don't know how to tell you. "

"Don't tell me if it's that Nicky's been taking my new bike to pieces. "

"It isn't Nicky--It's Maurice. "

Anthony got up and cleared his pipe, thoroughly and deliberately. Shewondered whether he had heard. 

"I'd no business to have married you--to have let you in for him. "

"Why? What's he been up to now?"

"He's coming home. "

"So, " said Anthony, "is Bartholomew. I'd no business to have let you infor _him_. "

"Don't worry, Frances. If Morrie comes home he'll be sent out again, that's all. "

"At your expense. "

"I don't grudge any expense in sending Morrie out. Nor in keeping himout. "

"Yes. But this time it's different. It's worse. "

"Why worse?"

"Because of the children. They're older now than they were last time. They'll understand. "

"What if they do? They must learn, " Anthony said, "to realize facts. "

They realized them rather sooner than he had expected. Nobody but Louiehad allowed for the possibility of Morrie's sailing by the same steameras his letter; and Louie had argued that, if he had done so, he wasbound either to have arrived before the letter or to have sent a wire. Therefore they had at least a clear five days of peace before them. Anthony thought he had shown wisdom when, the next morning which was aWednesday, he sent Grannie and the Aunties to Eastbourne for a week, sothat they shouldn't worry Frances, and when on Thursday he made her gowith him for a long day in the country, to take her mind off Morrie. 

They came back at nine in the evening and found Dorothy, Michael andNicholas sitting up for them. Michael and Nicky were excited, butDorothy looked grown-up and important. 

"Uncle Morrie's come, " they said. 

"Dorothy saw him first--"

"Nicky let him in--"

"He hadn't got a hat on. "

"We kept him in the schoolroom till Nanna could come and put him tobed. "

"He was crying because he'd been to Grannie's house and there wasn'tanybody there--"

"And because he'd lost the love-birds he'd brought for Auntie Emmy--"

"And because he couldn't remember which of us was dead. "

"No, Mummy, nobody's seen him but us and Nanna. "

"Nanna's with him now. "

Uncle Morrie never accounted, even to himself, for the time he had spentbetween the arrival of his ship at Tilbury on Sunday morning and thatSaturday afternoon. Neither could he remember what had become of hisluggage or whether he had ever had any. Only the County Council man, going his last rounds in the farthest places of the Heath, came upon asmall bundle tied in a blue handkerchief, a cap belonging to E. D. Boulger, of the S. S. _Arizona_, a cage of love-birds, and a distinctimpression of a recumbent human form, on the grass together, under ayoung birch tree. 

In the stuffy little house behind the Judge's Walk the four women livednow under male protection. When they crossed the Heath they had nolonger any need to borrow Anthony from Frances; they had a man of theirown. To make room for him Auntie Louie and her type-writer were turnedout of their own place, and Auntie Louie had to sleep in Grannie's bed, a thing she hated. To make room for the type-writer the grey parrot wasturned out of the dining-room into the drawing-room. And as Mauricecouldn't stand either the noise of the type-writer or the noises of theparrot he found both the dining-room and the drawing-room uninhabitable. 

Day after day Dorothy and Michael and Nicky, on the terrace, looked outfor his coming. (Only extreme distance made Uncle Morrie's figure smalland harmless and pathetic. ) Day after day he presented himself with anair of distinction and assurance, flushed, and a little battered, butstill handsome, wearing a spruce grey suit and a panama hat bought withAnthony's money. Sheep-farming in Australia--he had infinitely preferredthe Cape Mounted Police--had ruined Maurice's nerves. He was good fornothing but to lounge in Anthony's garden, to ride his horses--it washis riding that had got him into the Cape Mounted Police--to sit at histable and drink his wines, and, when there was no more wine for him, toturn into Jack Straw's Castle for a pick-me-up on his way home. 

And before July was out three others were added to the garden group:Bartholomew and Vera and Veronica. And after them a fourth, Vera'sfriend, Captain Ferdinand Cameron, home on sick leave before anybodyexpected him. 

Frances's tree of Heaven sheltered them all. 

VII

Bartholomew, Anthony's brother, lived in Bombay and looked after hisbusiness for him in the East. He had something the matter with him, andhe had come home to look after his own health. At least, Bartholomew'shealth was what he was supposed to be looking after; but Dorothy hadheard her father say that Bartie had come home to look after Vera. 

Vera was Bartie's wife and Veronica's mother. Before she became Mrs. Bartholomew Harrison she had been Frances's schoolfellow and her dearestfriend. Frances Fleming had been her bridesmaid and had met Anthony forthe first time at Vera's wedding, when he had fallen in love with her;and she had fallen in love with him when they stayed together inBartholomew's house, before Bartholomew took Vera to Bombay. 

Bartie had not been married ten months before he wanted to get Vera outof England; and Vera had not been in India for ten weeks before hewanted her to go back. They were always coming backwards and forwards, but they never came together. Vera would be sent home first, and thenBartie would come over in a great hurry and take her out again. 

Twelve years after their marriage Veronica was born at Simla, and thecoming and going ceased for three years. Then Bartie sent them bothhome. That time Vera had refused to travel farther westward thanMarseilles. She was afraid of damp and cold, and she had got the ship'sdoctor to order her to the Riviera. She and Veronica had been living fortwo years in a small villa at Agaye. 

This summer she had come to England. She was no longer afraid of dampand cold. And Bartie followed her. 

Dorothy and Michael had no difficulty in remembering Vera, though it wasmore than six years since they had seen her; for Vera looked the same. Her hair still shone like copper-beech leaves; her face had still thesame colour and the same sweet, powdery smell. And if these things hadchanged Frances would still have known her by her forehead that lookedso broad because her eyebrows and her eyes were so long, and by herfine, unfinished, passionate mouth, by her pointed chin and by her ways. 

But though her brother-in-law's ways had always been more or lessdisagreeable, Frances was not prepared for the shock of the renewedencounter with Bartholomew. Bartie was long and grey, and lean even whenyou allowed for the thickness of his cholera belt. He wore a white scarfabout his throat, for his idea was that he had cancer in it. Cancer madeyou look grey. He, too, had the face of a hawk, of a tired and irritablehawk. It drooped between his hunched shoulders, his chin hanging abovethe scarf as if he were too tired or too irritable to hold it up. Hebehaved to Vera and Veronica as if it was they who had worried him intocancer of the throat, they who tired and irritated him. 

Vera talked to him as you might talk to a sick child whose peevishnessprolongs, unreasonably, its pain. Bartie's manner almost amounted to apublic repudiation of her. The whole house vibrated to the shutting ofhis door at Good-night time. Yet when Bartie came down in the morning, late, and more morose than ever, Vera's mouth made as if it kissed somevisionary image of the poor thing's absurdity. She didn't believe forone minute in his cancer. It was an excuse for the shutting of his door. 

She kept out of his way as much as possible; yet, when they weretogether they watched each other. They watched; Bartie openly withsudden dartings and swoopings of his hawk's eyes; Vera furtively. Hereyes were so large and long that, without turning her head, or anyvisible movement, they could hold his image. 

But for Captain Cameron Vera's eyes had a full, open gaze. Spread wideapart under her wide forehead they were like dark moth's wings; theyhovered, rested, flickering, vibrating to the fine tips oftheir corners. 

Whatever had been the matter with him in India, Captain Cameron hadrecovered. His keen, fair, Highland face made Bartie's face lookterrible. Ferdie was charming; not more charming to Bartie's wife thanhe was to Frances; not more charming to Frances than to her sisters; sothat even Louie unbent, and Emmeline and Edith fell in love with him. Heflirted with Frances under Anthony's nose; and with the Aunties underGrannie's nose. The corners of Vera's mouth followed the tilt of herlong eyes' corners as she saw him do it. 

You could not think of Vera as the children's Auntie, or as Bartie'swife, or as Veronica's mother. 

Veronica was a very little girl who sang songs and was afraid ofghosts. 

She slept in her mother's room, and so never could be put to bed tillhalf-past seven, or till her mother was dressed to the last hook of hergown, the last hairpin, the last touch of powder (adhesive withoutbismuth), and the last shadow drawn fine about her eyelashes. When Verabeautiful in a beautiful gown, came trailing into the room whereeverybody waited for her, Veronica hid herself behind Uncle Anthony'sbig chair. When her father told her to come out of that and saygood-night and be quick about it, she came slowly (she was not in theleast afraid of Bartie), showing herself bit by bit, honey-colouredhair, eyebrows dark under her gold, very dark against her white;sorrowful, transparent, lucid eyes. A little girl with a straight whiteface. A little, slender girl in a straight white frock. She stood byAnthony's chair, spinning out the time, smiling at him with her childishwavering mouth, a smile that would not spread, that never went higherthan the tip of her white nose, that left her lucid, transparent eyesstill sorrowful. 

She knew that Anthony would take her on his knee, and that she could sitthere with her head tucked under his chin, smiling at him, prolongingher caresses, till Vera told him to put her down and let her go. 

Bartie growled: "Did you hear your mother telling you to sayGood-night?"

"Yes. But I must kiss Uncle Anthony first. Properly. Once on his mouth. Once--on his nose. And once--on--his--eyes. And--once--on--his dearlittle--ears. "

After that, Veronica went slowly from chair to chair, lingering at each, sitting first on Frances's lap, then on Vera's, spinning out hercaresses, that spun out the time and stretched it farther and fartherbetween her and the unearthly hour ahead of her. 

But at her father's chair she did not linger for a single instant. Sheslipped her hand into his hand that dropped it as if it had hurt him;she touched his forehead with her small mouth, pushed out, absurdly, tokeep her face as far as possible from his. For, though she was notafraid of Bartie, he was not nice either to sit on or to kiss. 

Half-way across the room she lingered. 

"I haven't sung 'London Bridge is broken down. ' Don't you want me tosing it?"

"No, darling. We want you to go to bed. "

"I'm going, Mummy. "

And at the door she turned and looked at them with her sorrowful, lucid, transparent eyes. 

Then she went, leaving the door open behind her. She left it open onpurpose, so that she might hear their voices, and look down into theroom on her way upstairs. Besides, she always hoped that somebody wouldcall her back again. 

She lingered at the foot of the stairs till Bartie got up and shut thedoor on her. She lingered at the turn of the stairs and on the landing. But nobody ever called her back again. 

And nobody but Nicky knew what she was afraid of. 

Veronica was sitting up in the cot that used to be Nicky's when he waslittle. Nicky, rather cold in his pyjamas, sat on the edge of it besideher. A big, yellow, tremendous moon hung in the sky outside the window, behind a branch of the tree of Heaven, and looked at them. 

Veronica crouched sideways on her pillow in a corner of the cot, herlegs doubled up tight under her tiny body, her shoulders hunchedtogether, and her thin arms hanging before her straight to her lap. Herhoney coloured hair was parted and gathered into two funny plaits, thatstuck out behind her ear. Her head was tilted slightly backwards to restagainst the rail of the cot. She looked at Nicky and her look remindedhim of something, he couldn't remember what. 

"Were you ever afraid, Nicky?" she said. 

Nicky searched his memory for some image encircled by an atmosphere ofterror, and found there a white hound with red smears on his breast anda muzzle like two saws. 

"Yes, " he said, "I was once. "

A lamb--a white lamb--was what Veronica looked like. And Jerry badlooked at him like that when he found him sitting on the mustard andcress the day Boris killed him. 

"Afraid--what of?"

"I don't know that it was 'of' exactly. "

"Would you be afraid of a ghost, now, if you saw one?"

"I expect I jolly well should, if I _really_ saw one. "

"Being afraid of ghosts doesn't count, does it?"

"No, of course it doesn't. You aren't afraid as long as I'm here, areyou?"

"No. "

"I shall stay, then, till you go to sleep. "

Night after night he heard her calling to him, "Nicky, I'm frightened. "Nobody but Veronica and Nicky were ever in bed on that floor beforemidnight. Night after night he got up and came to her and stayed besideher till she went to sleep. 

Once he said, "If it was Michael he could tell you stories. "

"I don't _want_ Michael. I want you. "

In the day-time she went about looking for him. "Where's Nicky?" shesaid. "I want him. "

"Nicky's in the schoolroom. You can't have him. "

"But--I _want_ him. "

"Can't be helped. You must do without him. "

"Will he be very long?"

"Yes, ever so long. Run away like a good little girl and play withDon-Don. "

She knew that they told her to play with Don-Don, because she was alittle girl. If only she could grow big quick and be the same ageas Nicky. 

Instead of running away and playing with Don-Don, Ronny went away byherself into the apple-tree house, to wait for Nicky. 

The apple-tree house stood on the grass-plot at the far end of thekitchen garden. The apple-tree had had no apples on it for years. It wasso old that it leaned over at a slant; it stretched out two great boughslike twisted arms, and was propped up by a wooden post under eacharmpit. The breast of its trunk rested on a cross-beam. The posts andthe cross-beam were the doorway of the house, and the branches were itsroof and walls. Anthony had given it to Veronica to live in, andVeronica had given it to Nicky. It was Nicky's and Ronny's house. Theothers were only visitors who were not expected to stay. There was roomenough for them both to stand up inside the doorway, to sit down in themiddle, and to lie flat at the far end. 

"What more, " said Nicky, "do you want?"

He thought that everybody would be sure to laugh at him when he playedwith Bonny in the apple-tree house. 

"I don't care a ram if they do, " he said. But nobody ever did, not evenMr. Parsons. 

Only Frances, when she passed by that way and saw Nicky and Bonnysitting cramped and close under their roof-tree, smiled unwillingly. Buther smile had in it no sort of mockery at all. Nicky wondered why. 

"Is it, " said Dorothy one morning, "that Ronny doesn't look as if shewas Uncle Bartie's daughter, or that Uncle Bartie looks as if he wasn'tRonny's father?"

However suddenly and wantonly an idea struck Dorothy, she brought it outas if it had been the result of long and mature consideration. 

"Or is it, " said Vera, "that I don't look as if I were Ronny's mother?"

Her eyes had opened all their length to take in Dorothy. 

"No. I think it is that Uncle Bartie looks--"

Frances rushed in. "It doesn't matter, my dear, what you think. "

"It will some day, " said Dorothy. 

It was perhaps the best thing she could have said, as showing that shewas more interested in the effect she would produce some day than in thesensation she had created there and then. 

"May I go round to Rosalind's after lessons?"

"You may. "

"And may I stay to lunch if they ask me?"

"You may stay as long as they care to have you. Stay to tea, stay todinner, if you like. "

Dorothy knew by the behaviour of her mother's face that she had scoredsomewhere, somehow. She also knew that she was in disgrace and yet notin disgrace; which, if you came to think of it, was a funny thing. 

About this time Frances began to notice a symptom in herself. She wasapt to resent it when Vera discussed her children with her. One lateafternoon she and Anthony were alone with Vera. Captain Cameron had notcome round that day, and Bartie had gone into town to consult either hissolicitor or a specialist. He was always consulting one or the other. 

"You're wrong, you two, " said Vera. "You think Michael's tender andNicky's hard and unimpressionable. Michael's hard. You won't have tobother about Michael's feelings. "

"Michael's feelings, " said Frances, "are probably what I shall have tobother about more than anything. "

"You needn't. For one thing, they'll be so unlike your feelings that youwon't know whether they're feelings at all. You won't even know whetherhe's having them or not. Nicky's the one you'll have to look out for. He'll go all the howlers. "

"I don't think that Nicky'll be very susceptible. He hasn't shown anygreat signs so far. "

"Hasn't he! Nicky's susceptibility is something awful. "

"My dear Vera, you say yourself you don't care about children and thatyou don't understand them. "

"No more I do, " said Vera. "But I understand men. "

"Do you understand Veronica?"

"Of course I don't. I said men. Veronica's a girl. Besides, I'mVeronica's mother. "

"Nicky, " said Anthony, "is not much more than nine. "

"You keep on thinking of him as a child--a child--nothing but a child. Wait till Nicky has children of his own. Then you'll know. "

"They would be rather darlings, Nicky's children, " Frances said. 

"So would Veronica's. "

"Ver-onica?"

You needn't be frightened. Nicky's affection for Ronny is purelypaternal. "

"I'm not frightened, " said Frances. But she left the room. She did notcare for the turn the talk had taken. Besides, she wanted Vera to seethat she was not afraid to leave her alone with Anthony. 

"I'm glad Frances has gone, " said Vera, "because I want to talk to you. You'd never have known each other if it hadn't been for me. She couldn'thave married you. It was I who saw you both through. "

He assented. 

"And you said if there was ever anything you could do for me--Youhaven't by any chance forgotten?"

"I have not. "

"Well, if anything should happen to me--"

"But, my dear girl, what _should_ happen to you?"

"Things _do_ happen, Anthony. "

"Yes, but how about Bartie?"

"That's it. Supposing we separated. "

"Good Heavens, you're not contemplating _that_, are you?"

"I'm not contemplating anything. But Bartie isn't very easy to livewith, is he?"

"No, he's not. He never was. All the same--"

Bartie was impossible. Between the diseases he had and thought he hadn'tand the diseases he hadn't and thought he had, he made life miserablefor himself and other people. He was a jealous egoist; he had the morbidcoldness of the neurotic, and Vera was passionate. She ought never tohave married him. All the same--"

"All the same I shall stick to Bartie as long as it's possible. And aslong as it's possible Bartie'll stick to me. But, if anything happens Iwant you to promise that you'll take Ronny. "

"You must get Frances to promise. "

"She'll do anything you ask her to, Anthony. "

When Frances came into the room again Vera was crying. 

And so Frances promised. 

 "'London Bridge is broken down (_Ride over My Lady Leigh_!)

 * * * * *

 "'Build it up with stones so strong--

 * * * * *

 "'Build it up with gold so fine'"--

It was twenty to eight and Ronny had not so much as begun to say Goodnight. She was singing her sons to spin out the time. 

 "'London Bridge--'"

"That'll do, Ronny, it's time you were in bed. "

There was no need for her to linger and draw out her caresses, no needto be afraid of going to bed alone. Frances, at Vera's request, had hadher cot moved up into the night nursery. 

VIII

Anthony had begun to wonder where on earth he should send Morrie out tothis time, when the Boer War came and solved his problem. 

Maurice, joyous and adventurous again, sent himself to South Africa, toenlist in the Imperial Light Horse. 

Ferdie Cameron went out also with the Second Gordon Highlanders, solving, perhaps, another problem. 

"It's no use trying to be sorry, Mummy, " Dorothy said. 

Frances knew what Anthony was thinking, and Anthony knew it was whatFrances thought herself: Supposing this time Morrie didn't come back?Then that problem would be solved for ever. Frances hated problems whenthey worried Anthony. Anthony detested problems when theybothered Frances. 

And the children knew what they were thinking. Dorothy went on. 

"It's all rot pretending that we want him to come back. "

"It was jolly decent of him to enlist, " said Nicky. 

Dorothy admitted that it was jolly decent. "But, " she said, "what elsecould he do? His only chance was to go away and do something so jollyplucky that _we_'re ashamed of ourselves, and never to come back againto spoil it. You don't want him to spoil it, Mummy ducky, do you?"

Anthony and Frances tried, conscientiously and patriotically, torealize the Boer War. They said it was terrible to have it hanging overthem, morning, noon and night. But it didn't really hang over them. Ithung over a country that, except once when it had conveniently swallowedup Morrie, they had never thought about and could not care for, alandscape that they could not see. The war was not even part of thatlandscape; it refused to move over it in any traceable course. It simplyhung, or lay as one photographic film might lie upon another. It was nottheir fault. They tried to see it. They bought the special editions ofthe evening papers; they read the military dispatches and the stories ofthe war correspondents from beginning to end; they stared blankly at theprinted columns that recorded the disasters of Nicholson's Nek, andColenso and Spion Kop. But the forms were grey and insubstantial; it wasall fiat and grey like the pictures in the illustrated papers; the veryblood of it ran grey. 

It wasn't real. For Frances the brown walls of the house, the open wingsof its white shutters, the green garden and tree of Heaven were real; sowere Jack Straw's Castle and Harrow on the Hill; morning and noon andnight were real, and getting up and dressing and going to bed; most realof all the sight and sound and touch of her husband and her children. 

Only now and then the vision grew solid and stood firm. Frances carriedabout with her distinct images of Maurice, to which she could attach therest. Thus she had an image of Long Tom, an immense slender muzzle, tilted up over a high ridge, nosing out Maurice. 

Maurice was shut up in Ladysmith. 

"Don't worry, Mummy. That'll keep him out of mischief. Daddy said heought to be shut up somewhere. "

"He's starving, Dorothy. He won't have anything to eat. "

"Or drink, ducky. "

"Oh, you're cruel! Don't be cruel!"

"I'm not cruel. If I didn't care so awfully for you, Mummy, I shouldn'tmind whether he came back or didn't. _You_'re cruel. You ought to thinkof Grannie and Auntie Louie and Auntie Emmy and Auntie Edie. "

"At the moment, " said Frances, "I am thinking of Uncle Morrie. "

She was thinking of him, not as he actually was, but as he had been, asa big boy like Michael, as a little boy like John, two years youngerthan she; a little boy by turns spoiled and thwarted, who contrived, nevertheless, to get most things that he happened to want by crying forthem, though everybody else went without. And in the grown-up Morrie'splace, under the shells of Ladysmith, she saw Nicky. 

For Nicky had declared his intention of going into the Army. 

"And I'm thinking of Morrie, " Dorothy said. "I don't want him to missit. "

Frances and Anthony had hung out flags for Mafeking; Dorothy and Nicky, mounted on bicycles, had been careering through the High Street withflags flying from their handlebars. Michael was a Pro-Boer and flew noflags. All these things irritated Maurice. 

He had come back again. He had missed it, as he had missed all thechances that were ever given him. A slight wound kept him in hospitalthroughout the greater part of the siege, and he had missed the sortieof his squadron and the taking of the guns for which Ferdie Cameron gothis promotion and his D. S. O. He had come back in the middle of the warwith nothing but a bullet wound in his left leg to prove that he hadtaken part in it. 

The part he had taken had not sobered Maurice. It had only depressedhim. And depression after prolonged, brutal abstinence broke down thesheer strength by which sometimes he stretched a period of sobrietybeyond its natural limits. 

For there were two kinds of drinking: great drinking that came seldomand was the only thing that counted, and ordinary drinking that, thoughit went on most of the time, brought no satisfaction and didn't count atall. And there were two states of drunkenness to correspond: one intenseand vivid, without memory, transcending all other states; and one thatwas no more remarkable than any other. Before the war Morrie's greatdrinking came seldom, by fits and bursts and splendid unlastinguprushes; after the war the two states tended to approach till theymerged in one continual sickly soaking. And while other important andoutstanding things, and things that he really wanted to remember, disappeared in the poisonous flood let loose in Morrie's memory, henever for one moment lost sight of the fact that it was he and notAnthony, his brother-in-law, who had enlisted and was wounded. 

He was furious with his mother and sisters for not realizing the war. Hewas furious with Frances and Anthony. Not realizing the war meant notrealizing what he had been through. He swore by some queer God of histhat he would make them realize it. The least they could do for him wasto listen to what he had to say. 

"You people here don't know what war is. You think it's all glory andpluck, and dashing out and blowing up the enemy's guns, and the Britishflag flying, and wounded pipers piping all the time and not caring adamn. Nobody caring a damn. 

"And it isn't. It's dirt and funk and stinks and more funk all the time. It's lying out all night on the beastly veldt, and going to sleep andgetting frozen, and waking up and finding you've got warm again becauseyour neighbour's inside's been fired out on the top of you. You getwounded when the stretcher-bearers aren't anywhere about, and you crawlover to the next poor devil and lie back to back with him to keep warm. And just when you've dropped off to sleep you wake up shivering, becausehe's died of a wound he didn't know he'd got. 

"You'll find a chap lying on his back all nice and comfy, and when youstart to pick him up you can't lift him because his head's glued to theground. You try a bit, gently, and the flesh gives way like rottenfruit, and the bone like a cup you've broken and stuck together withoutany seccotine, and you heave up a body with half a head on it. And allthe brains are in the other half, the one that's glued down. That's war. 

"Huh!" He threw out his breath with a jerk of contempt. It seemed to himthat neither Frances nor Anthony was listening to him. They were notlooking at him. They didn't want to listen; they didn't want to look athim. He couldn't touch them; he couldn't evoke one single clear image intheir minds; there was no horror he could name that would sting them tovision, to realization. They had not been there. 

Dorothy and Michael and Nicky were listening. The three kids hadimagination; they could take it in. They stared as if he had broughtthose horrors into the room. But even they missed the reality of it. They saw everything he meant them to see, except him. It was as if theywere in the conspiracy to keep him out of it. 

He glared at Frances and Anthony. What was the good of telling them, oftrying to make them realize it? If they'd only given some sign, madesome noise or some gesture, or looked at him, he might have spared them. But the stiff, averted faces of Frances and Anthony annoyed him. 

"And if you're a poor wretched Tommy like me, you'll have to sweat in abrutal sun, hauling up cases of fizz from the railway up country toHeadquarters, with a thirst on you that frizzles your throat. You seethe stuff shining and spluttering, and you go mad. You could kill theman if you were to see him drink it, when you know there's nothing for_you_ but a bucket of green water with typhoid germs swimming about init. That's war. 

"You think you're lucky if you're wounded and get bumped down in abullock wagon thirty miles to the base hospital. But the best thing youcan do then is to pop off. For if you get better they make you hospitalorderly. And the hospital orderly has to clean up all the muck of thebutcher's shop from morning to night. When you're so sick you can'tstand you get your supper, dry bread and bully beef. The bully beefreminds you of things, and the bread--well, the bread's all nice andwhite on the top. But when you turn it over on the other side--it's red. That's war. "

Frances looked at him. He thought: "At last she's turned; at last I'vetouched her; she can realize that. "

"Morrie dear, it must have been awful, " she said. "It's _too_ awful. Idon't mind your telling me and Anthony about it; but I'd rather you didit when the children aren't in the room. "

"Is that all you think about? The children? The children. You don't carea tinker's cuss about the war. You don't care a damn what happens to meor anybody else. What does it matter who's wounded or who's killed, aslong as it isn't one of your own kids?

"I'm simply trying to tell you what war _is_. It's dirt and stink andfunk. That's all it is. And there's precious little glory in it, Nicky. "

"If the Boers won there would be glory, " Michael said. 

"Not even if the Boers won, " said Maurice. 

"Certainly not if the Boers won, " said Anthony. 

"You'll say next there'd be no glory if there was war between Englandand Ireland and the Irish won. And yet there would be glory. "

"Would there? Go and read history and don't talk rot. "

"I have read it, " said Michael. 

Frances thought: "He doesn't know what he's talking about. Why shouldhe? He's barely thirteen. I can't think where he gets these ideas from. But he'll grow out of them. "

It was not Maurice that she saw in Maurice's war-pictures. But he hadmade them realize what war was; and they vowed that as long as theylived not one of their sons should have anything to do with it. 

 * * * * *

In the spring of nineteen-one Anthony sent Maurice out to California. The Boer War was ended. 

Another year, and the vision of war passed from Frances as if it hadnever been. 

IX

Michael was unhappy. 

The almond trees flowered in front of the white houses in the strangewhite streets. 

White squares, white terraces, white crescents; at the turn of the roadsthe startling beauty of the trees covered with pink blossoms, hotagainst the hot white walls. 

After the pink blossoms, green leaves and a strange white heateverywhere. You went, from pavements burning white, down long avenuesgrey-white under the shadows of the limes. 

A great Promenade going down like a long green tunnel, from the bigwhite Hotel at the top to the High Street at the bottom of the basinwhere the very dregs of the heat sank and thickened. 

Promenade forbidden for no earthly reason that Michael could see, exceptthat it was beautiful. Hotel where his father gave him dinner on hislast day of blessed life, telling him to choose what he liked best, asthe condemned criminal chooses his last meal on the day they hang him. 

Cleeve Hill and Battledown and Birdlip, and the long rampart ofLeckhampton, a thin, curling bristle of small trees on the edge of it;forms that made an everlasting pattern on his mind; forms that hauntedhim at night and tempted and tormented him all day. Memory which itwould have been better for him if he had not had, of the raking opencountry over the top, of broad white light and luminous blue shadows, ofwhite roads switchbacking through the sheep pastures; fields of brightyellow mustard in flower on the lower hills; then, rectangular firplantations and copses of slender beech trees in the hollows. Somewhere, far-off, the Severn, faint and still, like a river in a dream. 

Memory of the round white town in the round pit of the valley, shining, smoking through the thick air and the white orchard blossoms; memorysaturated by a smell that is like no other smell on earth, the delicatesmell of the Midland limestone country, the smell of clean white dust, and of grass drying in the sun and of mustard flowers. 

Michael was in Cheltenham. 

It was a matter of many unhappinesses, not one unhappiness. A suddenintolerable unhappiness, the flash and stab of the beauty of thealmond-flowers, seen in passing and never seized, beauty which it wouldhave been better for him if he had not seen; the knowledge, which heought never to have had, that this beauty had to die, was killed becausehe had not seized it, when, if he could but have held it for one minute, it would have been immortal. A vague, light unhappiness that camesometimes, could not for the life of him think why, from the sight ofhis own body stripped, and from the feeling of his own muscles. Therewas sadness for him in his very strength. A long, aching unhappinessthat came with his memory of the open country over the tops of thehills, which, in their incredible stupidity and cruelty, they had lethim see. A quick, lacerating unhappiness when he thought of his mother, and of the garden on the Heath, and the high ridge of the Spaniards'Road, and London below it, immense and beautiful. 

The unhappiness of never being by himself. 

He was afraid of the herd. It was with him night and day. He was afraidof the thoughts, the emotions that seized it, swaying, moving themultitude of undeveloped souls as if they had been one monstrous, dominating soul. He was afraid of their voices, when they chanted, sangand shouted together. He loathed their slang even when he used it. Hedisliked the collective, male odour of the herd, the brushing againsthim of bodies inflamed with running, the steam of their speed risingthrough their hot sweaters; and the smell of dust and ink andindia-rubber and resinous wood in the warm class-rooms. 

Michael was at school. 

The thing he had dreaded, that had hung over him, threatening him foryears before it happened, had happened. Nothing could have prevented it;their names had been down for Cheltenham long ago; first his, thenNicky's. Cheltenham, because Bartie and Vera lived there, and because ithad a college for girls, and Dorothy, who wanted to go to Roedean, hadbeen sent to Cheltenham, because of Bartie and Vera and for no otherreason. First Dorothy; then, he, Michael; then, the next term, Nicky. And Nicky had been sent (a whole year before his time) because ofMichael, in the hope that Michael would settle down better if he had hisbrother with him. It didn't seem reasonable. 

Not that either Dorothy or Nicky minded when they got there. All thatNicky minded was not being at Hampstead. Being at Cheltenham he did notmind at all. He rather liked it, since Major Cameron had come to stayjust outside it--on purpose to annoy Bartie--and took them out riding. Even Michael did not mind Cheltenham more than any other place hispeople might have chosen. He was not unreasonable. All he asked was tobe let alone, and to have room to breathe and get ahead in. As it was, he had either to go with the school mass, or waste energy in resistingits poisonous impact. 

He had chosen resistance. 

 TUDOR HOUSE. CHELTENHAM, _Sunday_. 

DEAREST MOTHER:

I've put Sunday on this letter, though it's really Friday, because I'msupposed to be writing it on Sunday when the other fellows are writing. That's the beastly thing about this place, you're expected to doeverything when the other fellows are doing it, whether you want to ornot, as if the very fact that they're doing it too didn't make youhate it. 

I'm writing now because I simply must. If I waited till Sunday Imightn't want to, and anyhow I shouldn't remember a single thing I meantto say. Even now Johnson minor's digging his skinny elbows into one sideof me, and Hartley major's biting the feathers off his pen and spittingthem out again on the other. But they're only supposed to be doing Latinverse, so it doesn't matter so much. What I mean is it's as if theirbeastly minds kept on leaking into yours till you're all mixed up withthem. That's why I asked Daddy to take me away next term. You see--it'smore serious than he thinks--it is, really. You've no idea what it'slike. You've got to swot every blessed thing the other fellows swoteven if you can't do it, and whether it's going to be any good to you ornot. Why, you're expected to sleep when they're sleeping, even if thechap next you snores. Daddy _might_ remember that it's Nicky who likesmathematics, not me. It's all very well for Nicky when he wants to gointo the Army all the time. There are things _I_ want to do. I want towrite and I'm going to write. Daddy can't keep me off it. And I don'tbelieve he'd want to if he understood. There's nothing else in the worldI'll ever be any good at. 

And there are things I want to know. I want to know Greek and Latin andFrench and German and Italian and Spanish, and Old French and Russianand Chinese and Japanese, oh, and Provençal, and every blessed languagethat has or has had a literature. I can learn languages quite fast. Doyou suppose I've got a chance of knowing one of them--reallyknowing--even if I had the time? Not much. And that's where being here'sso rotten. They waste your time as if it was theirs, not yours. They'vesimply no notion of the value of it. They seem to think time doesn'tmatter because you're young. Fancy taking three months over a Greek playyou can read in three hours. That'll give you some idea. 

It all comes of being in a beastly form and having to go with the otherfellows. Say they're thirty fellows in your form, and twenty-nine stick;you've got to stick with them, if it's terms and terms. They can't do itany other way. It's _because_ I'm young, Mummy, that I mind so awfully. Supposing I died in ten years' time, or even fifteen? It simply makes mehate everybody. 

Love to Daddy and Don. 

 Your loving MICK. 

P. S. -I don't mean that Hartley major isn't good at Latin verse. He is. He can lick me into fits when he's bitten _all_ the feathers off. 

 TUDOR HOUSE. CHELTENHAM, _Tuesday_. 

DARLING MUMMY:

Daddy _doesn't_ understand. You only think he does because you like him. It's all rot what he says about esprit de corps, the putridest rot, though I know he doesn't mean it. 

And he's wrong about gym, and drill and games and all that. I don't mindgym, and I don't mind drill, and I like games. I'm fairly good at mostof them--except footer. All the fellows say I'm fairly good--otherwise Idon't suppose they'd stick me for a minute. I don't even mind Chapel. You see, when it's only your body doing what the other chaps do, itdoesn't seem to matter. If esprit de corps _was_ esprit de corps itwould be all right. But it's esprit d'esprit. And it's absolutelysickening the things they can do to your mind. I can't stand anotherterm of it. 

 Always your loving MICK. P. S. -How do you know I shan't be dead in ten orfifteen years' time? It's enough to make me. 

P. P. S. -It's all very well for Daddy to talk--_he_ doesn't want to learnChinese. 

 TUDOR HOUSE. CHELTENHAM, _Thursday_. 

DEAR FATHER:

All right. Have it your own way. Only I shall kill myself. You needn'ttell Mother that--though it won't matter so much as she'll very likelythink. And perhaps then you won't try and stop Nicky going into the Armyas you've stopped me. 

I don't care a "ram", as Nicky would say, whether you bury me or cremateme; only you might give my Theocritus to old Parsons, and my revolverto Nicky if it doesn't burst. He'd like it. 

 MICHAEL. 

P. S. --If Parsons would rather have my _Æschylus_ he can, or both. 

 TUDOR HOUSE. CHELTENHAM, _Sunday_. 

DARLING MUMMY:

It's your turn for a letter. Do you think Daddy'd let me turn thehen-house into a workshop next holidays, as there aren't any hens? Andwould he give me a proper lathe for turning steel and brass and stufffor my next birthday I'm afraid it'll cost an awful lot; but he couldtake it out of my other birthdays, I don't mind how many so long as Ican have the lathe this one. 

This place isn't half bad once you get used to it. I like the fellows, and all the masters are really jolly decent, though I wish we had oldParsons here instead of the one we have to do Greek for. He's an awfulchap to make you swot. 

I don't know what you mean about Mick being seedy. He's as fit as fit. You should see him when he's stripped. But he hates the place likepoison half the time. He can't stand being with a lot of fellows. He's arum chap because they all like him no end, the masters and the fellows, though they think he's funny, all except Hartley major, but he's such ameasly little blighter that he doesn't count. 

We had a ripping time last Saturday. Bartie went up to town, and MajorCameron took Dorothy and Ronny and Vera and me and Mick to Birdlip inhis dog-cart, only Mick and me had to bike because there wasn't roomenough. However we grabbed the chains behind and the dog-cart pulled usup the hills like anything, and we could talk to Dorothy and Ronnywithout having to yell at each other. He did us jolly well at teaafterwards. 

Dorothy rode my bike stridelegs coming back, so that I could sit in thedog-cart. She said she'd get a jolly wigging if she was seen. We shan'tknow till Monday. 

You know, Mummy, that kid Ronny's having a rotten time, what with Bartiebeing such a beast and Vera chumming up with Ferdie and going off tocountry houses where he is. I really think she'd better come to us forthe holidays. Then I could teach her to ride. Bartie won't let her learnhere, though Ferdie'd gone and bought a pony for her. That was to spiteFerdie. He's worse than ever, if you can imagine that, and he's gotthree more things the matter with him. 

I must stop now. 

Love to Dad and Don and Nanna. Next year I'm to go into physics andstinks--that's chemistry. 

Your loving NICKY. 

 THE LEAS. PARABOLA ROAD. CHELTENHAM, _Sunday_. 

DEAREST MUMMY:

I'm awfully sorry you don't like my last term's school report. I know itwasn't what it ought to have been. I have to hold myself in so as tokeep in the same class with Rosalind when we're moved up afterMidsummer. But as she's promised me faithfully she'll let herself ripnext term, you'll see it'll be all right at Xmas. We'll both be in I Athe Midsummer after, and we can go in for our matic, together. I wishyou'd arrange with Mrs. Jervis for both of us to be at Newnham at thesame time. Tell her Rosalind's an awful slacker if I'm not there to keepher up to the mark. No--don't tell her that. Tell her _I'm_ a slacker ifshe isn't there. 

I was amused by your saying it was decent of Bartie to have us so often. He only does it because things are getting so tight between him andVera that he's glad of anything that relaxes the strain a bit. Even us. He's snappier than ever with Ronny. I can't think how the poor kidstands it. 

You know that ripping white serge coat and skirt you sent me? Well, theskirt's not nearly long enough. It doesn't matter a bit though, becauseI can keep it for hockey. It's nice having a mother who _can_ chooseclothes. You should see the last blouse Mrs. Jervis got for Rosalind. She's burst out of _all_ the seams already. You could have heardher doing it. 

Much love to you and Daddy and Don-Don. I can't send any to Mr. Parsonsnow my hair's up. But you might tell him I'm going in strong forSociology and Economics. --

 Your loving DOROTHY. 

P. S. --Vera asked me if I thought you'd take her and Ronny in atMidsummer. I said of course you would--like a shot. 

 LANSDOWN LODGE. CHELTENHAM, _Friday. _

MY DEAREST FRANCES:

I hope you got my two wires in time. You needn't come down, either ofyou. And you needn't worry about Mick. Ferdie went round and talked tohim like a fa--I mean a big brother, and the revolver (bless his heart!)is at present reposing at the bottom of my glove-box. 

All the same we both think you'd better take him away at Midsummer. Hesays he can stick it till then, but not a day longer. Poor Mick! He hasthe most mysterious troubles. 

I daresay it's the Cheltenham climate as much as anything. It doesn'tsuit me or Bonny either, and it's simply killing Ferdie by inches. Isuppose that's why Bartie makes us stay here--in the hope--

Oh! my dear, I'm worried out of my life about him. He's never got overthat fever he had in South Africa. He's looking ghastly. 

And the awful thing is that I can't do a thing for him. Not a thing. Unless--

You haven't forgotten the promise you made me two years ago, have you?

Dorothy seemed to think you could put Bonny and me up--again!--atMidsummer. Can you? And if poor Ferdie wants to come and see us, youwon't turn him off your door-mat, will you?

 Your lovingest "VERA. "

Frances said, "Poor Vera! She even makes poor Mick an excuse for seeingFerdie. "

X

Three more years passed and Frances had fulfilled her promise. She hadtaken Veronica. 

The situation had become definite. Bartie had delivered his ultimatum. Either Vera must give up Major Cameron, signing a written pledge in thepresence of three witnesses, Frances, Anthony and Bartie's solicitor, that she would neither see him nor write to him, nor hold any sort ormanner of communication with him, direct or indirect, or he would obtaina judicial separation. It was to be clearly understood by both of themthat he would not, in any circumstances, divorce her. Bartie knew that adivorce was what they wanted, what they had been playing for, and he wasnot going to make things easy for them; he was going to make things hardand bitter and shameful He had based his ultimatum on the calculationthat Vera would not have the courage of her emotions; that even herpassion would surrender when she found that it had no longer theprotection of her husband's house and name. Besides Vera was expensive, and Cameron was a spendthrift on an insufficient income; he could notpossibly afford her. If Bartie's suspicions were correct, the thing hadbeen going on for the last twelve years, and if in twelve years' timethey had not forced his hand that was because they had counted the cost, and decided that, as Frances had put it, the "game was not worth thescandal. "

For when suspicion became unendurable he had consulted Anthony whoassured him that Frances, who ought to know, was convinced that therewas nothing in it except incompatibility, for which Bartie wassuperlatively responsible. 

Anthony's manner did not encourage confidence, and he gathered that hisown more sinister interpretation would be dismissed with contemptuousincredulity. Anthony was under his wife's thumb and Frances had beencompletely bamboozled by her dearest friend. Still, when once their eyeswere opened, he reckoned on the support of Anthony and Frances. It wasinconceivable, that, faced with a public scandal, his brother and hissister-in-law would side with Vera. 

It was a game where Bartie apparently held all the cards. And his trumpcard was Veronica. 

He was not going to keep Veronica without Vera. That had been tacitlyunderstood between them long ago. If Vera went to Cameron she could nottake Veronica with her without openly confirming Bartie's worstsuspicion. 

And yet all these things, so inconceivable to Bartie, happened. When itcame to the stabbing point the courage of Vera's emotions was such thatshe defied her husband and his ultimatum, and went to Cameron. By thattime Ferdie was so ill that she would have been ashamed of herself ifshe had not gone. And though Anthony's house was not open to the unhappylovers, Frances and Anthony had taken Veronica. 

Grannie and Auntie Louie and Auntie Emmeline and Auntie Edie came overto West End House when they heard that it had been decided. It wastime, they said, that somebody should protest, that somebody shouldadvise Frances for her own good and for the good of her children. 

They had always detested and distrusted Vera Harrison; they had alwaysknown what would happen. The wonder was it had not happened before. Butwhy Frances should make it easy for her, why Frances should shoulderVera Harrison's responsibilities, and burden herself with that child, and why Anthony should give his consent to such a proceeding, was morethan they could imagine. 

Once Frances had stood up for the three Aunties, against Grannie; nowGrannie and the three Aunties were united against Frances. 

"Frances, you're a foolish woman. "

"My folly is my own affair and Anthony's. "

"You'll have to pay for it some day. "

"You might have thought of your own children first. "

"I did. I thought, How would I like _them_ to be forsaken like poorRonny?"

"You should have thought of the boys. Michael's growing up; so isNicky. "

"Nicky is fifteen; Ronny is eleven, if you call that growing up. "

"That's all very well, but when Nicky is twenty-one and Ronny isseventeen what are you going to do?"

"I'm not going to turn Ronny out of doors for fear Nicky should fall inlove with her, if that's what you mean. "

"It _is_ what I mean, now you've mentioned it. "

"He's less likely to fall in love with her if I bring them up asbrother and sister. "

"You might think of Anthony. Bartholomew's wife leaves him for anotherman, and you aid and abet her by taking her child, relieving her of herone responsibility. "

"Bartie's wife leaves him, and we help Bartie by taking care of hischild--who is _our niece_, not yours. "

"My dear Frances, that attitude isn't going to deceive anybody. If youdon't think of Anthony and your children, you might think of us. Wedon't want to be mixed up in this perfectly horrible affair. "

"How are you mixed up in it?"

"Well, after all, Frances, we are the family. We are your sisters andyour mother and your children's grand-mother and aunts. "

"Then, " said Frances with decision, "you must try to bear it. You musttake the rough with the smooth, as Anthony and I do. "

And as soon as she had said it she was sorry. It struck her for thefirst time that her sisters were getting old. It was no use for AuntieLouie, more red and more rigid than ever, to defy the imminence of herforty-ninth birthday. Auntie Emmy's gestures, her mouthings andexcitement, only drew attention to the fact that she was forty-seven. And Edie, why, even poor little Auntie Edie was forty-five. Grannie, dryand wiry, hardly looked older than Auntie Edie. 

They left her, going stiffly, in offence. And again the unbearablepathos of them smote her. The poor Aunties. She was a brute to hurtthem. She still thought of them as Auntie Louie, Auntie Emmy, AuntieEdie. It seemed kinder; for thus she bestowed upon them a colour andvitality that, but for her and for her children, they would not havehad. They were helpless, tiresome, utterly inefficient. In all theirlives they had never done anything vigorous or memorable. They weredoomed to go out before her children; when they were gone they would begone altogether. Neither Auntie Louie, nor Auntie Emmy, nor Auntie Ediewould leave any mark or sign of herself. But her children gave themtitles by which they would be remembered after they were gone. It was asif she had bestowed on them a little of her own enduring life. 

It was absurd and pathetic that they should think that they were theFamily. 

But however sorry she was for them she could not allow them to dictateto her in matters that concerned her and Anthony alone. If they were soworried, about the scandal, why hadn't they the sense to see that theonly way to meet it was to give it the lie by taking Ronny, by behavingas if Ronny were unquestionably Bartie's daughter and their niece? Theywere bound to do it, if not for Vera's sake, for the dear little girl'ssake. And that was what Vera had been thinking of; that was why she hadtrusted them. 

But her three sisters had always disliked Vera. They disliked herbecause, while they went unmarried, Vera, not content with the one manwho was her just and legal portion, had taken another man whom she hadno right to. And Auntie Emmeline had been in love with Ferdie. 

Still, there was a certain dreadful truth in their reproaches; and itstung. Frances said to herselv that she had not been wise. She had donea risky thing in taking Ronny. It was not fair to her children, toMichael and Nicholas and John. She was afraid. She had been afraid whenVera had talked to her about Nicky and Veronica; and when she had seenVeronica and Nicky playing together in the apple-tree house; and whenshe had heard Ronny's voice outside the schoolroom door crying, "Where'sNicky? I want him. Will he be very long?"

Supposing Veronica should go on wanting Nicky, and supposing Nicky--

Frances was so worried that, when Dorothy came striding across the lawnto ask her what the matter was, and what on earth Grannie and theAunties had been gassing about all that time, she told her. 

Dorothy was nineteen. And Dorothy at nineteen, tall and upright, wasAnthony's daughter. Her face and her whole body had changed; they wereAnthony's face and body made feminine. Her little straight nose had nowa short high bridge; her brown eyes were keen and alert; she had hishawk's look. She put her arm in Frances's, protecting her, and theywalked up and down the terrace path, discussing it. In the distanceGrannie and the Aunties could be seen climbing the slope of the Heath toJudges' Walk. They were not, Dorothy protested, pathetic; they weresimply beastly. She hated them for worrying her mother. 

"They think I oughtn't to have taken Ronny. They think Nicky'll want tomarry her. "

"But Ronny's a kid--"

"When she's not a kid. "

"He won't, Mummy ducky, he won't. She'll be a kid for ages. Nicky'llhave married somebody else before she's got her hair up. "

"Then Ronny'll fall in love with _him_, and get her little heartbroken. "

"She won't, Mummy, she won't. They only talk like that because theythink Ferdie's Ronny's father. "

"Dorothy!"

Frances, in horror, released herself from that protecting arm. Thehorror came, not from the fact, but from her daughter's knowledge of it. 

"Poor Mummy, didn't you know? That's why Bartie hates her. "

"It isn't true. "

"What's the good of that as long as Bartie thinks it is?" said Dorothy. 

 "London Bridge is broken down (_Ride over my Lady Leigh_!)"

Veronica was in the drawing-room, singing "London Bridge. "

Michael, in all the beauty of his adolescence, lay stretched out on thesofa, watching her. Her small, exquisite, childish face between theplaits of honey-coloured hair, her small, childish face thrilled himwith a singular delight and sadness. She was so young and so small, andat the same time so perfect that Michael could think of her as lookinglike that for ever, not growing up into a tiresome, bouncing, fluffyflapper like Rosalind Jervis. 

Aunt Louie and Aunt Emmeline said that Rosalind was in love with him. Michael thought that was beastly of them and he hoped it wasn't true. 

 "'Build it up with gold so fine'"--

Veronica was happy; for she knew herself to be a cause of happiness. Like Frances once, she was profoundly aware of her own happiness, andfor the same reason. It was, if you came to think of it, incredible. Ithad been given to her, suddenly, when she was not looking for it, aftershe had got used to unhappiness. 

As long as she could remember Veronica had been aware of herself. Awareof herself, chiefly, not as a cause of happiness, but as a cause ofembarrassment and uncertainty and trouble to three people, her father, her mother and Ferdie, just as they were causes of embarrassment andtrouble and uncertainty to her. They lived in a sort of violent mysterythat she, incomprehensibly, was mixed up with. As long as she couldremember, her delicate, childish soul had quivered with the vibration oftheir incomprehensible and tiresome passions. You could never tell whatany of them really wanted, though among them they managed to create anatmosphere of most devastating want. Only one thing she knewdefinitely--that they didn't want _her_. 

She was altogether out of it except as a meaningless counter in theirincomprehensible, grown-up game. Her father didn't want her; her motherdidn't want her very much; and though now and then Ferdie (who wasn'tany relation at all) behaved as if he wanted her, _his_ wanting onlymade the other two want her less than ever. 

There had been no peace or quietness or security in her little life ofeleven years. Their places (and they had had so many of them!) had neverhad any proper place for her. She seemed to have spent most of her timein being turned out of one room because her father had come into it, andout of another because her mother wanted to be alone in it with Ferdie. And nobody, except Ferdie sometimes, when they let him, ever wanted tobe alone in any room with her. She was so tired of the rooms where shewas obliged to be always alone with herself or with the servants, thoughthe servants were always kind. 

Now, in Uncle Anthony's house, there was always peace and quietness andan immense security. She knew that, having taken her, they wouldn'tgive her up. 

She was utterly happy. 

And the house, with its long, wainscoted rooms, its whiteness anddarkness, with its gay, clean, shining chintzes, the delicate, fadedrose stuffs, the deep blue and purple and green stuffs, and the blue andwhite of the old china, and its furniture of curious woods, the golden, the golden-brown, the black and the wine-coloured, bought by Anthony inmany countries, the round concave mirrors, the pictures and the oldbronzes, all the things that he had gathered together and laid up astreasure for his Sons; and the garden on the promontory, with itsbuttressed walls and its green lawn, its flower borders, and its tree ofHeaven, saturated with memories, became for her, as they had become forFrances, the sanctuary, crowded with visible and tangible symbols, ofthe Happiness she adored. 

"Sing it again, Ronny. "

She sang it again. 

 "'London Bridge is broken down'"--

It was funny of Michael to like the silly, childish song; but if hewanted it he should have it. Veronica would have given any of themanything they wanted. There was nothing that she had ever wanted thatthey had not given to her. 

She had wanted to be strong, to be able to run and ride, to play tennisand cricket and hockey, and Nicky had shown her how. She had wantedbooks of her own, and Auntie Frances, and Uncle Anthony and Dorothy andMichael had given her books, and Nicky had made her a bookcase. Her room(it was all her own) was full of treasures. She had wanted to learn tosing and play properly, and Uncle Anthony had given her masters. She hadwanted people to love her music, and they loved it. She had wanted abig, grown-up sister like Dorothy, and they had given her Dorothy; andshe had wanted a little brother of her own age, and they had given herJohn. John had a look of Nicky. His golden white hair was light brownnow; his fine, wide mouth had Nicky's impudence, even when, likeFrances, he kept it shut to smile her unwilling, twitching, mockingsmile. She had wanted a father and mother like Frances and Anthony; andthey had given her themselves. 

And she had wanted to live in the same house with Nicky always. 

So if Michael wanted her to sing "London Bridge" to him twenty timesover, she would sing it, provided Nicky didn't ask her to do anythingelse at the same time. For she wanted to do most for Nicky, always. 

And yet she was aware of something else that was not happiness. It wasnot a thing you could name or understand, or seize, or see; you weresimply aware of it, as you were aware of ghosts in your room at night. Like the ghosts, it was not always there; but when it was thereyou knew. 

It felt sometimes as if Auntie Frances was afraid of her; as if she, Veronica, was a ghost. 

And Veronica said to herself, "She is afraid I am not good. She thinksI'll worry her. But I shan't. "

That was before the holidays. Now that they had come and Nicky was back, "it" seemed to her something to do with Nicky; and Veronica said toherself, "She is afraid I'll get in his way and worry him, because he'solder. But I shan't. "

As if she had not been taught and trained not to get in older people'sways and worry them. And as if she wasn't growing older everyminute herself!

 "'Build it up with gold so fine-- (_Ride over my Lady Leigh_!)

 * * * * *

 "'Build it up with stones so strong'"--

She had her back to the door and to the mirror that reflected it, yetshe knew that Nicky had come in. 

"That's the song you used to sing at bed-time when you were frightened, "he said. 

She was sitting now in the old hen-house that was Nicky's workshop, watching him as he turned square bars of brass into round bars with hislathe. She had plates of steel to polish, and pieces of wood to rubsmooth with glass-paper. There were sheets of brass and copper, and barsand lumps of steel, and great poles and planks of timber reared up roundthe walls of the workshop. The metal filings fell from Nicky's latheinto sawdust that smelt deliciously. 

The workshop was nicer than the old apple-tree house, because there werealways lots of things to do in it for Nicky. 

"Nicky, " she said suddenly, "do you believe in ghosts?"

"Well--" Nicky caught his bar as it fell from the lathe and examined itcritically. 

"You remember when I was afraid of ghosts, and you used to come and sitwith me till I went to sleep?"

"Rather. "

"Well--there _are_ ghosts. I saw one last night. It came into the roomjust after I got into bed. "

"You _can_ see them, " Nicky said. "Ferdie's seen heaps. It runs in hisfamily. He told me. "

"He never told _me_. "

"Rather not. He was afraid you'd be frightened. "

"Well, I wasn't frightened. Not the least little bit. "

"I shall tell him that. He wanted most awfully to know whether you sawthem too. "

"_Me_? But Nicky--it was Ferdie I saw. He stood by the door and lookedat me. Like he does, you know. "

The next morning Frances had a letter of two lines from Veronica'smother:

 "Ferdie died last evening at half past eight. 

 "He wants you to keep Ronny. 

 "VERA. "

It was not till years later that Veronica knew that "He wanted mostawfully to know whether you saw them too" meant "He wanted most awfullyto know whether you really were his daughter. "

PART II

THE VORTEX

XI

Three years passed. It was the autumn of nineteen-ten. Anthony's housewas empty for the time being of all its children except Dorothea. 

Michael was in the beginning of his last year at Cambridge. Nicholas wasin his second year. He had taken up mathematics and theoreticalmechanics. In the long vacation, when the others went into the country, he stayed behind to work in the engineering sheds of the Morss MotorCompany. John was at Cheltenham. Veronica was in Dresden. 

Dorothea had left Newnham a year ago, having taken a first-class inEconomics. 

As Anthony came home early one evening in October, he found a group ofsix strange women in the lane, waiting outside his garden door inattitudes of conspiracy. 

Four of them, older women, stood together in a close ring. The twoothers, young girls, hung about near, but a little apart from the ring, as if they desired not to identify themselves with any state of mindoutside their own. By their low sibilant voices, the daring sidelongsortie of their bright eyes, their gestures, furtive and irrepressible, you gathered that there was unanimity on one point. All six consideredthemselves to have been discovered. 

At Anthony's approach they moved away, with slow, casual steps, passedthrough the posts at the bottom of the lane and plunged down the steeppath, as if under the impression that the nature of the ground coveredtheir retreat. They bobbed up again, one after the other, when the lanewas clear. 

The first to appear was a tall, handsome, bad-tempered-looking girl. Shespoke first. 

"It's a damned shame of them to keep us waiting like this. "

She propped herself up against Anthony's wall and smouldered there inher dark, sullen beauty. 

"We were here at six sharp. "

"When they know we were told not to let on where we meet. "

"We're led into a trap, " said a grey-haired woman. 

"I say, who is Dorothea Harrison?"

"She's the girl who roped Rosalind in. She's all right. "

"Yes, but are her people all right?"

"Rosalind knows them. "

The grey-haired woman spoke again. 

"Well, if you think this lane is a good place for a secret meeting, Idon't. Are you aware that the yard of `Jack Straw's Castle' is behindthat wall? What's to prevent them bringing up five or six coppers andplanting them there? Why, they've only got to post one 'tee at the topof the lane, and another at the bottom, and we're done. Trapped. I callit rotten. "

"It's all right. Here they are. "

Dorothea Harrison and Rosalind Jervis came down the lane at a leisuredstride, their long coats buttoned up to their chins and their hands intheir pockets. Their I gestures were devoid of secrecy or any guile. Each had a joyous air of being in command, of being able to hold up thewhole adventure at her will, or let it rip. 

Rosalind Jervis was no longer a bouncing, fluffy flapper. In three yearsshe had shot up into the stature of command. She slouched, stooping alittle from the shoulders, and carried her pink face thrust forward, asif leaning from a platform to address an audience. From this salienceher small chin retreated delicately into her pink throat. 

"Is Miss Maud Blackadder here?" she said, marshalling her six. 

The handsome girl detached herself slowly from Anthony's wall. 

"What's the point, " she said, "of keeping us hanging about like this--"

"Till _all_ our faces are known to the police--"

"There's a johnnie gone in there who can swear to _me_. Why didn't youtwo turn up before?" said the handsome girl. 

"Because, " said Dorothea, "that johnnie was my father. He was poundingon in front of us all up East Heath Road. If we'd got here sooner Ishould have had to introduce you. "

She looked at the six benevolently, indulgently. They might have beenchildren whose behaviour amused her. It was as if she had said, "Iavoided that introduction, not because it would have been dangerous andindiscreet, but because it would have spoiled your fun for you. "

She led the way into the garden and the house and through the hall intothe schoolroom. There they found eleven young girls who had come muchtoo soon, and mistaking the arrangements, had rung the bell and allowedthemselves to be shown in. 

The schoolroom had been transformed into a sort of meeting hall. The bigoblong table had been drawn across one end of it. Behind it were chairsfor the speakers, before it were three rows of chairs where the elevenyoung girls sat scattered, expectant. 

The six stood in the free space in front of the table and looked atRosalind with significance. 

"This, " said Rosalind, "is our hostess, Miss Dorothea Harrison. Dorothy, I think you've met Mrs. Eden, our Treasurer. This is our secretary, MissValentina Gilchrist; Miss Ethel Farmer; Miss Winifred Burstall--"

Dorothy greeted in turn Mrs. Eden, a pretty, gentle woman with a face ofdreaming tragedy (it was she who had defended Rosalind outside thegate); Miss Valentina Gilchrist, a middle-aged woman who displayed alarge grey pompadour above a rosy face with turned-back features which, when she was not excited, had an incredulous quizzical expression (MissGilchrist was the one who had said they had been led into a trap); MissEthel Farmer, fair, attenuated, scholastic, wearing pince-nez with anair of not seeing you; and Miss Winifred Burstall, weather-beaten, youngat fifty, wearing pince-nez with an air of seeing straight through youto the other side. 

Rosalind went on. "Miss Maud Blackadder--"

Miss Blackadder's curt bow accused Rosalind of wasting time inmeaningless formalities. 

"Miss--" Rosalind was at a loss. 

The other girl, the youngest of the eight, came forward, holding out aslender, sallow-white hand. She was the one who had hung with MissBlackadder in the background. 

"Desmond, " she said. "Phyllis Desmond. "

She shrugged her pretty shoulders and smiled slightly, as much as tosay, "She forgets what she ought to remember, but it doesn't matter. "

Phyllis Desmond was beautiful. But for the moment her beauty was asleep, stilled into hardness. Dorothy saw a long, slender, sallow-white face, between sleek bands of black hair; black eyes, dulled as if by a subtlefilm, like breath on a black looking-glass; a beautiful slender mouth, pressed tight, holding back the secret of its sensual charm. 

Dorothy thought she had seen her before, but she couldn't rememberwhere. 

Rosalind Jervis looked at her watch with a businesslike air; paper andpencils were produced; coats were thrown on the little school-desks andbenches in the corner where Dorothy and her brothers had sat at theirlessons with Mr. Parsons some twelve years ago; and the eight gatheredabout the big table, Rosalind taking the presidential chair (which hadonce been Mr. Parsons' chair) in the centre between Miss Gilchrist andMiss Blackadder. 

Miss Burstall and Miss Farmer looked at each other and Miss Burstallspoke. 

"We understood that this was to be an informal meeting. Before we beginbusiness I should like to ask one question. I should like to know whatwe are and what we are here for?"

"We, Mrs. Eden, Miss Valentina Gilchrist, Miss Maud Blackadder andmyself, " said Rosalind in the tone of one dealing reasonably with anunreasonable person, "are the Committee of the North Hampstead Branch ofthe Women's Franchise Union. Miss Gilchrist is our secretary, I am thePresident and Miss Blackadder is--er--the Committee. "

"By whom elected? This, " said Miss Burstall, "is most irregular. "

Rosalind went on: "We are here to appoint a vice-president, to electmembers of the Committee and enlist subscribers to the Union. Thesethings will take time. "

"_We_ were punctual, " said Miss Farmer. 

Rosalind did not even look at her. The moment had come to address themeeting. 

"I take it that we are all agreed as to the main issue, that we have notcome here to convert each other, that we all want Women's Franchise, that we all mean to have it, that we are all prepared to work for it, and, if necessary, to fight for it, to oppose the Government thatwithholds it by every means in our power--"

"By every constitutional means, " Miss Burstall amended, and was told byMiss Gilchrist that, if she desired proceedings to be regular, she mustnot interrupt the Chairwoman. 

"--To oppose the Government that refuses us the vote, whateverGovernment it may be, regardless of party, by _every means inour power_. "

Rosalind's sentences were punctuated by a rhythmic sound of tapping. Miss Maud Blackadder, twisted sideways on the chair she had pushedfarther and farther back from the table, so as to bring herselfcompletely out of line with the other seven, from time to time, rhythmically, twitching with impatience, struck her own leg with her ownwalking-stick. 

Rosalind perorated. "If we differ, we differ, not as to our end, butsolely as to the means we, personally and individually, are prepared toemploy. " She looked round. "Agreed. "

"Not agreed, " said Dorothy and Miss Burstall and Miss Farmer all atonce. 

"I will now call on Miss Maud Blackadder to speak. She will explain tothose of you who are strangers" (she glanced comprehensively at theeleven young girls) "the present program of the Union. "

"I protest, " said Miss Burstall. "There has been confusion. "

"There really _has_, Rosalind, " said Dorothy. "You _must_ get itstraight. You can't start all at sixes and sevens. I protest too. "

"We all three protest, " said Miss Farmer, frowning and blinking in anagony of protest. 

"Silence, if you please, for the Chairwoman, " said Miss Gilchrist. 

"May we not say one word?"

"You may, " said Rosalind, "in your turn. I now call on Miss Blackadderto speak. "

At the sound of her own name Miss Blackadder jumped to her feet. Thewalking-stick fell to the floor with a light clatter and crash, preluding her storm. She jerked out her words at a headlong pace, as ifto make up for the time the others had wasted in futilities. 

"I am not going to say much, I am not going to take up your time. Toomuch time has been lost already. I am not a speaker, I am not a writer, I am not an intellectual woman, and if you ask me what I am and what Iam here for, and what I am doing in the Union, and what the Union isdoing with me, and what possible use I, an untrained girl, can be to youclever women" (she looked tempestuously at Miss Burstall and Miss Farmerwho did not flinch), "I will tell you. I am a fighter. I am here toenlist volunteers. I am the recruiting sergeant for this district. Thatis the use my leaders, who should be _your_ leaders, are makingof _me_. "

Her head was thrown back, her body swayed, rocked from side to side withthe violent rhythm of her speech. 

"If you ask me why they have chosen _me_ I will tell you. It's because Iknow what I want and because I know how to get what I want. 

"I know what I want. Oh, yes, you think that's nothing; you all thinkyou know what you want. But do you? _Do_ you?"

"Of course we do!"

"We want the vote!"

"Nothing but the vote!"

"_Nothing but?_ Are you quite sure of that? Can you even say you want ittill you know whether there are things you want more?"

"What are you driving at?"

"You'll soon see what I'm driving at. I drive straight. And I ridestraight. And I don't funk my fences. 

"Well--say you all want the vote. Do you know how much you want it? Doyou know how much you want to pay for it? Do you know what you'reprepared to give up for it? Because, if you don't know _that_, you don'tknow how much you want it. "

"We want it as much as you do, I imagine. "

"You want it as much as I do? Good. _Then_ you're going to pay the pricewhatever the price is. _Then_ you're ready to give up everything else, your homes and your families and your friends and your incomes. Untilyou're enfranchised you are not going to own any _man_ as father, orbrother or husband" (her voice rang with a deeper and strongervibration) "or lover, or friend. And the man who does not agree withyou, the man who refuses you the vote, the man who opposes your effortsto get the vote, the man who, whether he agrees with you or not, _willnot help you to get it_, you count as your enemy. That is wanting thevote. That is wanting it as much as I do. 

"You women--are you prepared to go against your men? To give up yourmen?"

There were cries of "Rather!" from two of the eleven young girls who hadcome too soon. 

Miss Burstall shook her head and murmured, "Hopeless confusion ofthought. If _this_ is what it's going to be like, Heaven help us!"

"You really _are_ getting a bit mixed, " said Dorothy. 

"We protest--"

"Protest then; protest as much as you like. Then we shall know where weare; then we shall get things straight; then we can begin. You all wantthe vote. Some of you don't know how much, but at least you know youwant it. Nobody's confused about that. Do you know how you're going toget it? Tell me that. "

Lest they should spoil it all by telling her Miss Blackadder increasedher vehement pace. "You don't because you can't and _I_ will tell you. You won't get it by talking about it or by writing about it, or bysitting down and thinking about it, you'll get it by coming in with me, coming in with the Women's Franchise Union, and fighting for it. Fighting women, not talkers--not writers--not thinkers are what wewant!" She sat down, heaving a little with the ground-swell of herstorm, amid applause in which only Miss Burstall and Miss Farmer did notjoin. She was now looking extraordinarily handsome. 

Rosalind bent over and whispered something in her ear. She rose to herfeet again, flushed, smiling at them, triumphant. 

"Our Chairwoman has reminded me that I came here to tell you what theprogram of our Union is. And I can tell you in six words. It'sHell-for-leather, and it's Neck-or-nothing!"

"Now, " said Rosalind sweetly, bowing towards Miss Burstall, "it's yourturn. We should like to know what you have to say. "

Miss Burstall did not rise and in the end Dorothea spoke. 

"My friend, Miss Rosalind Jervis, assumed that we were all agreed, notonly as to our aims, but as to our policy. She has not yet discriminatedbetween constitutional and unconstitutional means. When we protested, she quashed our protest. We took exception to the phrase 'every means inour power, ' because that would commit us to all sorts ofunconstitutional things. It is in my power to squirt water into the backof the Prime Minister's neck, or to land a bomb in the small of hisback, or in the centre of the platform at his next public meeting. Wewere left to conclude that the only differences between us would concernour choice of the squirt or the bomb. As some of us here might equallyobject to using the bomb or the squirt, I submit that either our protestshould have been allowed or our agreement should not have been taken forgranted at the start. 

"Again, Miss Maud Blackadder, in her sporting speech, her heroic speech, has not cleared the question. She has appealed to us to come in, withoutcounting the cost; but she has said nothing to convince us that when ouraccount at our bank is overdrawn, and we have declared war on all ourmale friends and relations, and have left our comfortable homes, and areall camping out on the open Heath--I repeat, she has said nothing toconvince us that the price we shall have paid is going to get us thething we want. 

"She says that fighters are wanted, and not talkers and writers andthinkers. Are we not then to fight with our tongues and with our brains?Is she leaving us anything but our bare fists? She has told us that sherides straight and that she doesn't funk her fences; but she has nottold us what sort of country she is going to ride over, nor where thefences are, not what Hell-for-leather and Neck-or-nothing means. 

"We want meaning; we want clearness and precision. We have not beengiven it yet. 

"I would let all this pass if Miss Blackadder were not yourcolour-sergeant. Is it fair to call for volunteers, for raw recruits, and not tell them precisely and clearly what services will be requiredof them? How many" (Dorothy glanced at the eleven) "realize that theleaders of your Union, Mrs. Palmerston-Swete, and Mrs. Blathwaite, andMiss Angela Blathwaite, demand from its members blind, unquestioningobedience?"

Maud Blackadder jumped up. 

"I protest. I, too, have the right to protest. Miss Harrison calls me toorder. She tells me to be clear and precise. Will she be good enough tobe clear and precise herself? Will she say whether she is with us oragainst us? If she is not with us she is against us. Let her explain herposition. "

She sat down; and Rosalind rose. 

"Miss Harrison, " she said, "will explain her position to the Committeelater. This is an open meeting till seven. It is now five minutes to. Will any of you here"--she held the eleven with her eyes--"who were notpresent at the meeting in the Town Hall last Monday, hold up your hands. No hands. Then you must all be aware of the object and the policy andthe rules of the Women's Franchise Union. Its members pledge themselvesto help, as far as they can, the object of the Union; to support thedecisions of their leaders; to abstain from public and private criticismof those decisions and of any words or actions of their leaders; and toobey orders--not blindly or unquestioningly, but within the terms oftheir undertakings. 

"Those of you who wish to join us will please write your names andaddresses on the slips of white paper, stating what kind of work you arewilling to do and the amount of your subscription, if you subscribe, andhand your slips to the Secretary at the door, as you go out. "

Miss Burstall and Miss Farmer went out. Miss Blackaddercounted--"One--two--"

Eight of the eleven young girls signed and handed in the white slips atthe door, and went out. 

"Three--four--"

Miss Blackadder reckoned that Dorothea Harrison's speech had cost herfive recruits. Her own fighting speech had carried the eleven in acompact body to her side: Dorothea's speech had divided and scatteredthem again. 

Miss Blackadder hurled her personality at the heads of audiences in thecertainty that it would hit them hard. That was what she was there for. She knew that the Women's Franchise union relied on her to wring fromherself the utmost spectacular effect. And she did it every time. Shenever once missed fire. And Dorothea Harrison had come down on the topof her triumph and destroyed the effect of all her fire. She hadcorrupted five recruits. And, supposing there was a secret program, shehad betrayed the women of the Union to fourteen outsiders, by giving itaway. Treachery or no treachery, Dorothea Harrison would have to payfor it. 

 * * * * *

Everybody had gone except the members of the Committee and PhyllisDesmond who waited for her friend, Maud Blackadder. 

Dorothy remembered Phyllis Desmond now; she was that art-student girlthat Vera knew. She had seen her at Vera's house. 

They had drawn round the table again. Miss Blackadder and Miss Gilchristconferred in whispers. 

"Before we go, " said Rosalind, "I propose that we ask Miss DorotheaHarrison to be our Vice-President. "

Miss Gilchrist nodded to Miss Blackadder who rose. It was her moment. 

"And _I_ propose, " she said, "that before we invite Miss Harrison to beanything we ask her to define her position--clearly and precisely. "

She made a sign, and the Secretary was on her feet. 

"And first we must ask Miss Harrison to explain _how_ she becamepossessed of the secret policy of the Union which has never beendiscussed at any open meeting and is unknown to members of the GeneralCommittee. "

"Then, " said Dorothy, "there _is_ a secret policy?"

"You seem to know it. We have the right to ask _how_ you know? Unlessyou invented it. "

Dorothy faced them. It was inconceivable that it should have happened, that she should be standing there, in the old schoolroom of her father'shouse, while two strange women worried her. She knew that her back wasto the wall and that the Blackadder girl had been on the watch for thelast half-hour to get her knife into her. (Odd, for she had admired theBlackadder girl and her fighting gestures. ) It was inconceivable thatshe should have to answer to that absurd committee for her honour. Itwas inconceivable that Rosalind, her friend, should not help her. 

Yet it had happened. With all her platform eloquence Rosalind couldn't, for the life of her, get out one heroic, defending word. From the momentwhen the Gilchrist woman had pounced, Rosalind had simply sat andstared, like a rabbit, like a fish, her mouth open for the word thatwould not come. Rosalind was afraid to stand up for her. It wasdreadful, and it was funny to see Rosalind looking like that, and torealize the extent of her weakness and her obstinacy. 

Yet Rosalind had not changed. She was still the school-girl slacker whocould never do a stroke of work until somebody had pushed her into it, who could never leave off working until stopped by the same hand thathad set her going. Her power to go, and to let herself rip, and theweakness that made her depend on Dorothy to start her were the qualitiesthat attracted Dorothy to Rosalind from the beginning. But now she wasthe tool of the fighting Suffrage Women. Or if she wasn't a tool, shewas a machine; her brain was a rapid, docile, mechanical apparatus forturning out bad imitations of Mrs. Palmerston-Swete and the twoBlathwaites. Her air of casual command, half-swagger, half-slouch, herstoop and the thrusting forward of her face, were copied sedulously froman admired model. 

Dorothy found her pitiable. She was hypnotized by the Blathwaites whoworked her and would throw her away when she was of no more use. Shehadn't the strength to resist the pull and the grip and the drive ofother people. She couldn't even hold out against Valentina Gilchrist andMaud Blackadder. Rosalind would always be caught and spun round by anymovement that was strong enough. She was foredoomed to the Vortex. 

That was Dorothy's fault. It was she who had pushed and pulled theslacker, in spite of her almost whining protest, to the edge of theVortex; and it was Rosalind, not Dorothy, who had been caught and suckeddown into the swirl. She whirled in it now, and would go on whirling, under the impression that her movements made it move. 

The Vortex fascinated Dorothy even while she resisted it. She liked thefeeling of her own power to resist, to keep her head, to beat up againstthe rush of the whirlwind, to wheel round and round outside it, andswerve away before the thing got her. 

For Dorothy was afraid of the Feminist Vortex, as her brother Michaelhad been afraid of the little vortex of school. She was afraid of theherded women. She disliked the excited faces, and the high voicesskirling their battle-cries, and the silly business of committees, andthe platform slang. She was sick and shy before the tremor and the surgeof collective feeling; she loathed the gestures and the movements of thecollective soul, the swaying and heaving and rushing forward of the manyas one. She would not be carried away by it; she would keep theclearness and hardness of her soul. It was her soul they wanted, thesewomen of the Union, the Blathwaites and the Palmerston-Swetes, andRosalind, and the Blackadder girl and the Gilchrist woman; they ran outafter her like a hungry pack yelping for her soul; and she was not goingto throw it to them. She would fight for freedom, but not in their wayand not at their bidding. 

She was her brother Michael, refusing to go to the party; refusing torun with the school herd, holding out for his private soul against otherpeople who kept him from remembering. Only Michael did not hold out. Heran away. She would stay, on the edge of the vortex, fascinated by itsdanger, and resisting. 

But as she looked at them, at Rosalind with her open mouth, at theBlackadder girl who was scowling horribly, and at Valentina Gilchrist, sceptical and quizzical, she laughed. The three had been trying to rushher, and because they couldn't rush her they were questioning herhonour. She had asked them plainly for a plain meaning, and their ideaof apt repartee was to pretend to question her honour. 

Perhaps they really did question it. She didn't care. She loathed theirexcited, silly, hurrying suspicion; but she didn't care. It was she whohad drawn them and led them on to this display of incomparable idiocy. Like her brother Nicholas she found that adversity was extremely funny;and she laughed. 

She was no longer Michael, she was Nicky, not caring, delighting in herpower to fool them. 

"You think, " she said, "I'd no business to find out?"

"Your knowledge would certainly have been mysterious, " said theSecretary; "unless at least two confidences had been betrayed. Supposingthere had been any secret policy. "

"Well, you see, I don't know it; and I didn't invent it; and I didn'tfind it out--precisely. Your secret policy is the logical conclusion ofyour present policy. I deduced it; that's all. Anybody could have donethe same. Does that satisfy you? (They won't love me any better formaking them look fools!)"

"Thank you, " said Miss Gilchrist. "We only wanted to be sure. "

The dinner-bell rang as Dorothy was defining her position. 

"I'll work for you; I'll speak for you; I'll write for you; I'll fightfor you. I'll make hay of every Government meeting, if I can get inwithout lying and sneaking for it. I'll go to prison for you, if I canchoose my own crime. But I won't give up my liberty of speech andthought and action. I won't pledge myself to obey your orders. I won'tpledge myself not to criticize policy I disapprove of. I won't come onyour Committee, and I won't join your Union. Is that clear andprecise enough?"

Somebody clapped and somebody said, "Hear, Hear!" And somebody said, "Goit, Dorothy!"

It was Anthony and Frances and Captain Drayton, who paused outside thedoor on their way to the dining-room, and listened, basely. 

 * * * * *

They were all going now. Dorothy stood at the door, holding it open forthem, glad that it was all over. 

Only Phyllis Desmond, the art-student, lingered. Dorothy reminded herthat they had met at her aunt Vera Harrison's house. 

The art-student smiled. "I wondered when you were going to remember. "

"I did, but they all called you Desmond. That's what put me out. "

"Everybody calls me Desmond. You had a brother or something with you, hadn't you?"

"I might have had two. Which? Michael's got green eyes and yellow hair. Nicky's got blue eyes and black hair. "

"It was Nicky--nice name--then. "

Desmond's beauty stirred in its sleep. The film of air was lifted fromher black eyes. 

"I'm dining with Mrs. Harrison to-night, " she said. 

"You'll be late then. "

"It doesn't matter. Lawrence Stephen's never there till after eight. Shewon't dine without him. "

Dorothy stiffened. She did not like that furtive betrayal of Vera andLawrence Stephen. 

"I wish you'd come and see me at my rooms in Chelsea. And bring yourbrother. Not the green and yellow one. The blue and black one. "

Dorothy took the card on which Desmond had scribbled an address. But shedid not mean to go and see her. She wasn't sure that she liked Desmond. 

 * * * * *

Rosalind stayed on to dine with Dorothy's family. She was no longerliving with her own family, for Mrs. Jervis was hostile to Women'sFranchise. She had rooms off the Strand, not far from the headquartersof the Union. 

Frances looked a little careworn. She had been sent for to Grannie'shouse to see what could be done with Aunt Emmeline, and had found, asusual, that nothing could be done with her. In the last three years thesecond Miss Fleming had become less and less enthusiastic, and more andmore emphatic, till she ceased from enthusiasm altogether and carriedemphasis beyond the bounds of sanity. She had become, as Frances put it, extremely tiresome. 

It was not accurate to say, as Mrs. Fleming did, that you never knewwhen Emmeline would start a nervous crisis; for as a matter of fact youcould time her to a minute. It was her habit to wait till her family wasabsorbed in some urgent affair that diverted attention from her case, and then to break out alarmingly. Dorothy was generally sent for tobring her round; but to-day it was Dorothy who had important things onhand. Aunt Emmeline had scented the Suffrage meeting from afar, and hadmade arrangements beforehand for a supreme crisis that would take allthe shine out of Dorothy's affair. 

When Frances said that Aunt Emmy had been tiresome again, Dorothy knewwhat she meant. For Aunt Emmy's idea was that her sisters persecutedher; that Edie was jealous of her and hated her; that Louie had alwaystrampled on her and kept her under; that Frances had used her influencewith Grannie to spoil all her chances one after another. It was allFrances's fault that Vera Harrison had come between her and MajorCameron; Frances had encouraged Vera in her infamous intrigue; andbetween them they had wrecked two lives. And they had killedMajor Cameron. 

Since Ferdie's death Emmeline Fleming had lived most of the time in asort of dream in which it seemed to her that these things hadreally happened. 

This afternoon she had been more than usually tiresome. She had simplyraved. 

"You should have brought her round to the meeting, " said Dorothy, "andlet her rave there. I'd back Aunt Emmeline against Maud Blackadder. Iwish, Rosalind, you'd leave off making faces and kicking my shins. Youneedn't worry any more, Mummy ducky. I'm going to rope them all intothe Suffrage Movement. Aunt Edie can distribute literature, Aunt Louiecan interrupt like anything, and Aunt Emmeline can shout and sing. "

"I think, Dorothy, " said Rosalind with weak bitterness, "that you mighthave stuck by me. "

The two were walking down East Heath Road to the tram-lines where themotor buses started for Charing Cross. 

"It was you who dragged me into it, and the least you could do was tostick. Why didn't you keep quiet instead of forcing our hands?"

"I couldn't keep quiet. I'll go with you straight or I won't go with youat all. "

"You know what's the matter with you? It's your family. You'll never beany good to us, you'll never be any good to yourself till you've chuckedthem and got away. For years--ever since you've been born--you've simplybeen stewing there in the family juice until you're soaked with it. Yououghtn't to be living at home. You ought to be on your own--like me. "

"You're talking rot, Rosalind. If my people were like yours I'd have tochuck them, I suppose; but they're not. They're angels. "

"That's why they're so dangerous. They couldn't influence you if theyweren't angels. "

"They don't influence me the least little bit. I'd like to see them try. They're much too clever. They know I'd be off like a shot if they did. Why, they let me do every mortal thing I please--turn the schoolroominto a meeting hall for your friends to play the devil in. ThatBlackadder girl was yelling the house down, yet they didn't sayanything. And your people aren't as bad as you make out, you know. Youcouldn't live on your own if your father didn't give you an allowance. Ilike Mrs. Jervis. "

"Because she likes you. "

"Well, that's a reason. It isn't the reason why I like my own mother, because she doesn't like me so very much. That's why she lets me do whatI like. She doesn't care enough to stop me. She only really cares forDad and John and Nicky and Michael. "

Rosalind looked fierce and stubborn. 

"That's what's the matter with all of you, " she said. 

"What is?"

"Caring like that. It's all sex. Sex instinct, sex feeling. Maud'sright. It's what we're up against all the time. "

Dorothy said to herself, "That's what's the matter with Rosalind, if sheonly knew it. "

Rosalind loved Michael and Michael detested her, and Nicky didn't likeher very much. She always looked fierce and stubborn when she heardMichael's name. 

Rosalind went on. "When it comes to sex you don't revolt. You sit down. "

"I do revolt. I'm revolting now. I go much farther than you do. I thinkthe marriage laws are rotten; I think divorce ought to be forincompatibility. I think love isn't love and can't last unless it'sfree. I think marriage ought to be abolished--not yet, perhaps, but whenwe've become civilized. It will be. It's bound to be. As it is, I thinkevery woman has a right to have a baby if she wants one. If Emmelinehad had a baby, she wouldn't be devastating us now. "

"That's what you think, but it isn't what you feel. It's all thinkingwith you, Dorothy. The revolt goes on in your brain. You'll never doanything. It isn't that you haven't the courage to go against your men. You haven't the will. You don't want to. "

"Why should I? What do they do? Father and Michael and Nicky don'tinterfere with me any more than Mother does. "

"You know I'm not thinking of them. They don't really matter. "

"Who are you thinking of then? Frank Drayton? You needn't!"

It was mean of Rosalind to hit below the belt like that, when she knewthat _she_ was safe. Michael had never been brought against her andnever would be. It was disgusting of her to imply that Dorothy's stateof mind was palpable, when her own (though sufficiently advertised byher behaviour) had received from Michael's sister the consecration ofsilence as a secret, tragic thing. 

They had reached the tram-lines. 

At the sight of the Charing Cross `bus Rosalind assumed an air ofrollicking, adventurous travel. 

"My hat! What an evening! I shall have a ripping ride down. Don't saythere's no room on the top. Cheer up, Dorothy!"

Which showed that Rosalind Jervis was a free woman, suggested that lifehad richer thrills than marrying Dorothy's brother Michael, and fixedthe detested imputation securely on her friend. 

Dorothy watched her as she swung herself on to the footboard and up thestair of the motor bus. There was room on the top. Rosalind, in fact, had the top all to herself. 

 * * * * *

As Dorothy crossed the Heath again in the twilight she saw somethingwhite on the terrace of her father's house. Her mother was waitingfor her. 

She thought at first that Aunt Emmeline had gone off her head and thatshe had been sent for to keep her quiet. She gloried in their dependenceon her. But no, that wasn't likely. Her mother was just watching for heras she used to watch for her and the boys when they were little and hadbeen sent across the Heath to Grannie's house with a message. 

And at the sight and memory of her mother Dorothy felt a childish, sickdissatisfaction with herself and with her day, and an absurd longing forthe tranquillity and safety of the home whose chief drawback lately hadbeen that it was too tranquil and too safe. She could almost have toldher mother how they had all gone for her, and how Rosalind had turnedout rotten, and how beastly it had all been. Almost, but not quite. Dorothy had grown up, and she was there to protect and not to beprotected. However agreeable it might have been to confide in hermother, it wouldn't have done. 

Frances met her at the garden door. She had been crying. 

"Nicky's come home, " she said. 

"Nicky?"

"He's been sent down. "

"Whatever for?"

"Darling, I can't possibly tell you. "

But in the end she did. 

XII

Up till now Frances had taken a quiet interest in Women's Suffrage. Ithad got itself into the papers and thus become part of the affairs ofthe nation. The names of Mrs. Palmerston-Swete and Mrs. Blathwaite andAngela Blathwaite had got into the papers, where Frances hoped andprayed that the name of Dorothea Harrison might not follow them. Thespectacle of a frantic Government at grips with the Women's FranchiseUnion had not yet received the head-lines accorded to the reports ofdivorce and breach of promise cases and fires in paraffin shops; still, it was beginning to figure, and if Frances's _Times_ ignored it, therewere other papers that Dorothy brought home. 

But for Frances the affairs of the nation sank into insignificancebeside Nicky's Cambridge affair. 

There could be no doubt that Nicky's affair was serious. You could not, Anthony said, get over the letters, the Master's letter and theProfessor's letter and Michael's. They had arrived one hour after Nicky, Nicky so changed from his former candour that he refused to give anyaccount of himself beyond the simple statement that he had been sentdown. They'd know, he had said, soon enough why. 

And soon enough they did know. 

To be sure no details could be disentangled from the discreetambiguities of the Master and the Professor. But Michael's letter wasmore explicit. Nicky had been sent down because old "Booster" had gotit into his head that Nicky had been making love to "Booster's" wifewhen she didn't want to be made love to, and nothing could get it out of"Booster's" head. 

Michael was bound to stand up for his brother, and it was clear toAnthony that so grave a charge could hardly have been brought withoutsome reason. The tone of the letters, especially the Professor's, wasextraordinarily restrained. That was what made the thing stand out inits sheer awfulness. The Professor, although, according to Michael, heconceived himself to be profoundly injured, wrote sorrowfully, inconsideration of Nicky's youth. 

There was one redeeming circumstance, the Master and the Professor bothlaid stress on it: Anthony's son had not attempted to deny it. 

"There must, " Frances said wildly, "be some terrible mistake. "

But Nicky cut the ground from under the theory of the terrible mistakeby continuing in his refusal to deny it. 

"What sort of woman, " said Anthony, "is the Professor's wife?"

"Oh, awfully decent, " said Nicky. 

"You had no encouragement, then, no provocation?"

"She's awfully fascinating, " said Nicky. 

Then Frances had another thought. It seemed to her that Nicky wasevading. 

"Are you sure you're not screening somebody else?"

"Screening somebody else? Do you mean some other fellow?"

"Yes. I'm not asking you to give the name, Nicky. "

"I swear I'm not. Why should I be? I can't think why you're all makingsuch a fuss about it. I don't mean poor old 'Booster. ' He's got somecause, if you like. "

"But what was it you did--really did, Nicky?"

"You've read the letters, Mother. "

Nicky's adolescence seemed to die and pass from him there and then; andshe saw a stubborn, hard virility that frightened and repelled her, forcing her to believe that it might have really happened. 

To Frances the awfulness of it was beyond belief. And the pathos of herbelief in Nicky was unbearable to Anthony. There were the letters. 

"I think, dear, " Anthony said, "you'd better leave us. "

"Mayn't I stay?" It was as if she thought that by staying she couldbring Nicky's youth back to life again. 

"No, " said Anthony. 

She went, and Nicky opened the door for her. His hard, tight man's facelooked at her as if it had been she who had sinned and he who suffered, intolerably, for her sin. The click of the door as he shut itstabbed her. 

"It's a damnable business, father. We'd better not talk about it. "

But Anthony would talk about it. And when he had done talking all thatNicky had to say was: "You know as well as I do that thesethings happen. "

 * * * * *

For Nicky had thought it out very carefully beforehand in the train. What else could he say? He couldn't tell them that "Booster's" poorlittle wife had lost her head and made hysterical love to him, and hadbeen so frightened at what she had done that she had made him promise onhis word of honour that, whatever happened, he wouldn't give her away toanybody, not even to his own people. 

He supposed that either Peggy had given herself away, or that poor old"Booster" had found her out. He supposed that, having found her out, there was no other line that "Booster" could have taken. Anyhow, therewas no other line that _he_ could take; because, in the world wherethese things happened, being found out would be fifty times worse forPeggy than it would be for him. 

He tried to recall the scene in the back drawing-room where she hadasked him so often to have tea with her alone. The most vivid part wasthe end of it, after he had given his promise. Peggy had broken down andput her head on his shoulder and cried like anything. And it was at thatmoment that Nicky thought of "Booster, " and how awful and yet how funnyit would be if he walked into the room and saw him there. He had triedhard not to think what "Booster's" face would look like; he had triedhard not to laugh as long as Peggy's head was on his shoulder, for fearof hurting her feelings; but when she took it off he did give onehalf-strangled snort; for it really was the rummest thing that had everhappened to him. 

He didn't know, and he couldn't possibly have guessed, that as soon asthe door had shut on him Peggy's passion had turned to rage and utterdetestation of Nicky (for she had heard the snort); and that she hadgone straight to her husband's study and put her head on _his_ shoulder, and cried, and told him a lie; and that it was Peggy's lie and not theProfessor's imagination that had caused him to be sent down. And even ifPeggy had not been Lord Somebody's daughter and related to all sorts ofinfluential people she would still have been capable of turning everymale head in the University. For she was a small, gentle woman withenchanting manners and the most beautiful and pathetic eyes, and she hadnot yet been found out. Therefore it was more likely that anundergraduate with a face like Nicky's should lose his head than that awoman with a face like Peggy's should, for no conceivable reason, tell alie. So that, even if Nicky's word of honour had not been previouslypledged to his accuser, it would have had no chance against anystatement that she chose to make. And even if he had known that she hadlied, he couldn't very well have given it against poor pretty Peggy whohad lost her head and got frightened. 

As Nicky packed up his clothes and his books he said, "I don't care if Iam sent down. It would have been fifty times worse for her than itis for me. "

He had no idea how bad it was, nor how much worse it was going to be. For it ended in his going that night from his father's house to thehouse in St. John's Wood where Vera and Mr. Lawrence Stephen lived. 

And it was there that he met Desmond. 

 * * * * *

Nicky congratulated himself on having pulled it off so well. At thesame time he was a little surprised at the ease with which he had takenhis father and mother in. He might have understood it if he had knownthat Vera had been before him, and that she had warned them long agothat this was precisely the sort of thing they would have to look outfor. And as no opinion ever uttered on the subject of their children waslikely to be forgotten by Frances and Anthony, when this particulardisaster came they were more prepared for it than they would havebelieved possible. 

But there were two members of his family whom Nicky had failedaltogether to convince, Michael and Dorothy. Michael luckily, Nicky saidto himself, was not on the spot, and his letter had no weight againstthe letters of the Master and the Professor, and on this also Nicky hadcalculated. He reckoned without Dorothy, judging it hardly likely thatshe would be allowed to know anything about it. Nobody, not evenFrances, was yet aware of Dorothy's importance. 

And Dorothy, because of her importance, blamed herself for all thathappened afterwards. If she had not had that damned Suffrage meeting, Rosalind would not have stayed to dinner; if Rosalind had not stayed todinner she would not have gone with her to the tram-lines; if she hadnot gone with her to the tram-lines she would have been at home to stopNicky from going to St. John's Wood. As it was, Nicky had reached themain road at the top of the lane just as Dorothy was entering it fromthe bottom. 

At first Frances did not want Dorothy to see her father. He was mosthorribly upset and must not be disturbed. But Dorothy insisted. Herfather had the letters, and she must see the letters. 

"I may understand them better than you or Daddy, " she said. "You see, Mummy, I know these Cambridge people. They're awful asses, someof them. "

And though her mother doubted whether attendance at the Professor'slectures would give Dorothy much insight into the affair, she had herway. Anthony was too weak to resist her. He pushed the letters towardsher without a word. He would rather she had been left out of it. And yetsomehow the sight of her, coming in, so robust and undismayed andcompetent, gave him a sort of comfort. 

Dorothy did not agree with Michael. There was more in it than theProfessor's imagination. The Professor, she said, hadn't got anyimagination; you could tell from the way he lectured. But she did notbelieve one word of the charge against her brother. Something hadhappened and Nicky was screening somebody. 

"I'll bet you anything you like, " said Dorothy, "it's 'Booster's' wife. She's made him give his word. "

Dorothy was sure that "Booster's" wife was a bad lot. 

"Nicky said she was awfully decent. "

"He'd _have_ to. He couldn't do it by halves. "

"They couldn't have sent him down, unless they'd sifted the thing to thebottom. "

"I daresay they've sifted all they could, the silly asses. "

She could have killed them for making her father suffer. The sight ofhis drawn face hurt her abominably. She had never seen him like that. She wasn't half so sorry for her mother who was sustained by a secret, ineradicable faith in Nicky. Why couldn't he have faith in Nicky too?Was it because he was a man and knew that these things happened?

"Daddy--being sent down isn't such an awful calamity. It isn't going toblast his career or anything. It's always touch and go. _I_ might havebeen sent down any day. I should have been if they'd known about me halfwhat they don't know about Nicky. Why can't you take it as a rag? Youbet _he_ does. "

Anthony removed himself from her protecting hand. He got up and went tobed. 

But he did not sleep there. Neither he nor Frances slept. And he camedown in the morning looking worse than ever. 

Dorothy thought, "It must be awful to have children if it makes you feellike that. " She thought, "It's a lucky thing they're not likely to cutup the same way about me. " She thought again, "It must be awful to havechildren. " She thought of the old discussions in her room at Newnham, about the woman's right to the child, and free union, and easy divorce, and the abolition of the family. Her own violent and revolutionaryspeeches (for which she liked to think she might have been sent down)sounded faint and far-off and irrelevant. She did not really want toabolish Frances and Anthony. And yet, if they had been abolished, aspart of the deplorable institution of parentage, it would have beenbetter for them; for then they would not be suffering as they did. 

It must be awful to have children. But perhaps they knew that it wasworth it. 

And as her thoughts travelled that way they were overtaken all of asudden by an idea. She did not stop to ask herself what business heridea had in that neighbourhood. She went down first thing afterbreakfast and sent off two wires; one to Captain Drayton at Croft House, Eltham; one to the same person at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. 

"Can I see you? It's about Nicky. 

"DOROTHY HARRISON. "

Wires to show that she was impersonal and businesslike, and that herbusiness was urgent. "Can I see you?" to show that he was not beinginvited to see _her_. "It's about Nicky" to justify the wholeproceeding. "Dorothy Harrison" because "Dorothy" by itself was too much. 

 * * * * *

As soon as she had sent off her wires Dorothy felt a sense of happinessand well-being. She had no grounds for happiness; far otherwise; hergreat friendship with Rosalind Jervis was disintegrating bit by bitowing to Rosalind's behaviour; the fiery Suffrage meeting had turnedinto dust and ashes; her darling Nicky was in a nasty scrape; her fatherand mother were utterly miserable; yet she was happy. 

Half-way home her mind began to ask questions of its own accord. 

"Supposing you had to choose between the Suffrage and Frank Drayton?"

"But I haven't got to. "

"You might have. You know you might any minute. You know he hates it. And supposing--"

But Dorothy refused to give any answer. 

His wire came within the next half hour. 

"Coming three sharp. FRANK. "

Her sense of well-being increased almost to exaltation. 

 * * * * *

He arrived with punctuality at three o'clock. (He was in the gunners andhad a job at Woolwich. ) She found him standing on the hearth-rug in thedrawing-room. He had blown his nose when he heard her coming, andthat meant that he was nervous. She caught him stuffing hispocket-handkerchief (a piece of damning evidence) into hisbreast-pocket. 

With her knowledge of his nervousness her exaltation ceased as if it hadnot been. At the sight of him it was as if the sentence hidden somewherein her mind--"You'll have to choose. You know you'll have to"--escapingthought and language, had expressed itself in one suffocating pang. Unless Nicky's affair staved off the dreadful moment. 

"Were you frightfully busy?"

"No, thank goodness. "

The luck she had had! Of course, if he had been busy he couldn'tpossibly have come. 

She could look at him now without a tightening in her throat. She likedto look at him. He was made all of one piece. She liked his square faceand short fine hair, both the colour of light-brown earth; his eyes, thecolour of light brown earth under clear water; eyes that looked smallbecause they were set so deep. She liked their sudden narrowing andtheir deep wrinkles when he smiled. She liked his jutting chin, and thefine, rather small mouth that jerked his face slightly crooked when helaughed. She liked that slender crookedness that made it a faceremarkable and unique among faces. She liked his brains. She liked allthat she had ever seen or heard of him. 

Vera had told them that once, at an up-country station in India, he hadstopped a mutiny in a native battery by laughing in the men's faces. Somebody that Ferdie knew had been with him and saw it happen. The menbroke into his office where he was sitting, vulnerably, in hisshirt-sleeves. They had brought knives with them, beastly native things, and they had their hands on the handles, ready. They screamed andgesticulated with excitement. And Frank Drayton leaned back in hisoffice chair and looked at them, and burst out laughing, because, hesaid, they made such funny faces. When they got to fingering theirknives, he tilted back his chair and rocked with laughter. His sudden, incredible mirth frightened them and stopped the mutiny. She could seehim, she could see his face jerked crooked with delight. 

That was the sort of thing that Nicky would have done. She loved him forthat. She loved him because he was like Nicky. 

She was not able to recall the process of the states that flowered inthat mysterious sense of well-being and exaltation. A year ago FrankDrayton had been only "that nice man we used to meet at Cheltenham. "First of all he had been Ferdie's and Vera's friend. Then he becameNicky's friend; the only one who took a serious interest in hisinventions and supported him when he wanted to go into the Army andconsoled him when he was frustrated. Then he had become the friend ofthe family. Now he was recognized as more particularly Dorothea'sfriend. 

At Cheltenham he had been home on leave; and it was not until this yearthat he had got his job at Woolwich teaching gunnery, while he waitedfor a bigger job in the Ordnance Department. Ferdie Cameron had alwayssaid that Frank Drayton would be worth watching. He would be part of thebrains of the Army some day. Nicky watched him. His brains and theirfamiliarity with explosives and the machinery of warfare had been hisoriginal attraction for Nicky. But it was Dorothea who watched him most. 

She plunged abruptly into Nicky's affair, giving names and lineage. "Youknow all sorts of people, do you know anything about her?"

He looked at her clearly, without smiling. Then he said "Yes. I know agood bit about her. Is that what's wrong with Nicky?"

"Not exactly. But he's been sent down. "

His wry smile intimated that such things might be. 

Then she told him what the Master had written and what the Professor hadwritten and what Michael had written, and what Nicky had said, and whatshe, Dorothea thought. Drayton smiled over the Master's and theProfessor's letters, but when it came to Michael's letter helaughed aloud. 

"It's all very well for _us_. But Daddy and Mummy are breaking theirhearts. Daddy says he's going down to Cambridge to see what reallydid happen. "

Again that clear look. She gathered that he disapproved of "Booster's"wife. He disapproved of so many things: of Women's Suffrage; ofrevolutions; of women who revolted; of anybody who revolted; of Mrs. Palmerston-Swete and Mrs. Blathwaite and Angela Blathwaite. It wasputting it too mildly to say he disapproved of Rosalind Jervis; hedetested her. He disapproved of Vera and of her going to see Vera; sheremembered that he had even disapproved, long ago, of poor Ferdie, though he liked him. Evidently he disapproved of "Booster's" wife forthe same reason that he disapproved of Vera. That was why he didn'tsay so. 

"I believe you think all the time I'm right, " she said. "Would you godown if you were he?"

"No. I wouldn't. "

"Why not?"

"Because he won't get anything out of them. They can't give her away anymore than Nicky can. Or than _you_ can, Dorothy. "

"You mean I've done it already--to you. I _had_ to, because of Nicky. Ican't help it if you _do_ think it was beastly of me. "

"My dear child--"

He got up vehemently, as if his idea was to take her in his arms andstifle her outbreak that way. But something in her eyes, cold, unready, yet aware of him, repelled him. 

He thought: "It's too soon. She's all rigid. She isn't alive yet. That's not what she wired for. " He thought: "I wish people wouldn't sendtheir children to Newnham. It retards their development by ten years. "

And she thought: "No. I mustn't let him do that. For then he won't beable to go back on me when I tell him my opinions. It would be simplytrapping him. Supposing--supposing--"

She did not know that that instinctive renunciation was her answer tothe question. Her honour would come first. 

"Of course. Of course you had to. "

"What would you do about it if you were Daddy?"

"I should send them all to blazes. "

"No, but _really_ do?"

"I should do nothing. I should leave it. You'll find that before verylong there'll be letters of apology and restitution. "

"Will you come down to the office with me and tell Daddy that?"

"Yes, if you'll come to tea with me somewhere afterwards. "

(He really couldn't be expected to do all this for nothing. )

She sent her mother to him while she put on her hat and coat. When shecame down Frances was happy again. 

"You see, Mummy, I was right, after all. "

"You always were right, darling, all the time. "

For the life of her she couldn't help giving that little flick at herinfallible daughter. 

"She _is_ right--most of the time, " said Drayton. His eyes covered andprotected her. 

Anthony was in his office, sitting before the open doors of the cabinetwhere he kept his samples of rare and valuable woods. The polished slabswere laid before him on the table in rows, as he had arranged them toshow to a customer: wine-coloured mahogany, and golden satinwood; ebonyblack as jet; tulip-wood mottled like fine tortoiseshell; coromandelwood, striped black and white like the coat of a civet cat; ghostlybasswood, shining white on dead white; woods of clouded grain, and woodsof shining grain, grain that showed like the slanting, splintered linesof hewn stone, like moss, like the veins of flowers, the fringes ofbirds' feathers, the striping and dappling of beasts; woods of exquisitegrain where the life of the tree drew its own image in its own heart;woods whose surface was tender to the touch like a fine tissue; andsweet-smelling sandalwood and camphor-wood and cedar. 

Anthony loved his shining, polished slabs of wood. If a man must have abusiness, let it be timber. Timber was a clean and fine and noble thing. He had brought the working of his business to such a pitch of smoothperfection that his two elder sons, Michael and Nicholas, could catch upwith it easily and take it in their stride. 

Now he was like a sick child that has ranged all its toys in front of itand finds no comfort in them. 

And, as he looked at them, the tulip-wood and the scented sandalwood andcamphor-wood gave him an idea. 

The Master and the Professor had both advised him to send his sonNicholas out of England for a little while. "Let him travel for sixmonths and get the whole miserable business out of his head. "

Nicky, when he gave up the Army, had told him flatly that he wouldrather die than spend his life sitting in a beastly office. Nicky hadput it to him that timber meant trees, and trees meant forests; why, lots of the stuff they imported came from the Himalaya and the WestIndies and Ceylon. He had reminded him that he was always saying atimber merchant couldn't know enough about the living tree. Whyshouldn't he go into the places where the living trees grew and learnall about them? Why shouldn't he be a tree-expert? Since they werespecializing in rare and foreign woods, why shouldn't he specialize inrare and foreign trees?

And the slabs of tulip-wood and scented camphor-wood and sandalwood weresaying to Anthony, "Why not?" Neither he nor Frances had wanted Nicky togo off to the West Indies and the Himalaya; but now, since clearly hemust go off somewhere, why not?

Drayton and Dorothy came in just as Anthony (still profoundlydejected) was saying to himself, "Reinstate him. Give himresponsibility--curiosity--healthy interests. Get the whole miserablebusiness out of his head. "

It seemed incredible, after what they had gone through, that Draytonshould be standing there, telling him that there was nothing in it, thatthere never had been any miserable business, that it was all a storm ina hysterical woman's teacup. He blew the whole dirty nightmare tonothing with the laughter that was like Nicky's own laughter. 

Then Anthony and Drayton and Dorothy sat round the table, draftingletters to the Master and the Professor. Anthony, at Drayton'sdictation, informed them that he regretted the step they had seen fit totake; that he knew his own son well enough to be pretty certain thatthere had been some misunderstanding; therefore, unless he receivedwithin three days a written withdrawal of the charge against his sonNicholas, he would be obliged to remove his son Michael from theMaster's College. 

The idea of removing Michael was Anthony's own inspiration. 

Drayton's advice was that he should give Nicky his choice between Oxfordand Germany, the big School of Forestry at Aschaffenburg. If he choseGermany, he would be well grounded; he could specialize and travelafterwards. 

"Now _that's_ all over, " Anthony said, "you two had better come and havetea with me somewhere. "

But there was something in their faces that made him consult his watchand find that "Oh dear me, no! he was afraid he couldn't. " He had anappointment at five. 

When they were well out of sight he locked up his toys in his cabinet, left the appointment at five to Mr. Vereker, and went home to tellFrances about the letters he had written to Cambridge and the plans thathad been made for Nicky's future. 

"He'll choose Germany, " Anthony said. "But that can't be helped. "

Frances agreed that they could hardly have hit upon a better plan. 

So the affair of Nicky and "Booster's" wife was as if it had never been. And for that they thanked the blessed common sense and sanity ofCaptain Drayton. 

And yet Anthony's idea was wrecked by "Booster's" wife. It had come toolate. Anthony had overlooked the fact that his son had seventeen hours'start of him. He was unaware of the existence of Nicky's own idea; andhe had not allowed for the stiff logic of his position. 

When he drove down in his car to St. John's Wood to fetch Nicky, hefound that he had left that afternoon for Chelsea, where, Vera told him, he had taken rooms. 

She gave him the address. It had no significance for Anthony. 

Nicky refused to be fetched back from his rooms in Chelsea. For he hadnot left his father's house in a huff; he had left it in his wisdom, toavoid the embarrassment of an incredible position. His position, as hepointed out to his father, had not changed. He was as big a blackguardto-day as he was yesterday; the only difference was, that to-morrow orthe next day he would be a self-supporting blackguard. 

He wouldn't listen to his father's plan. It was a beautiful plan, but itwould only mean spending more money on him. He'd be pretty good, hethought, at looking after machinery. He was going to try for a job as achauffeur or foreman mechanic. He thought he knew where he could getone; but supposing he couldn't get it, if his father cared to take himon at the works for a bit he'd come like a shot; but he couldn't staythere, because it wouldn't be good enough. 

He was absolutely serious, and absolutely firm in the logic of hisposition. For he argued that, if he allowed himself to be taken back asthough nothing had happened, this, more than anything he could wellthink of, would be giving Peggy away. 

He sent his love to his mother and Dorothy, and promised to come out anddine with them as soon as he had got his job. 

So Anthony drove back without him. But as he drove he smiled. AndFrances smiled, too, when he told her. 

"There he is, the young monkey, and there he'll stay. It's magnificent, but of course he's an ass. "

"If you can't be an ass at twenty, " said Frances, "when can you be?"

They said it was so like Nicky. For all he knew to the contrary hiscareer was ruined; but he didn't care. You couldn't make any impressionon him. They wondered if anybody ever would. 

Dorothy wondered too. 

"What sort of rooms has he got, Anthony?" said Frances. 

"Very nice rooms, at the top of the house, looking over the river. "

"Darling Nicky, I shall go and see him. What are you thinking of, Dorothy?"

Dorothy was thinking that Nicky's address at Chelsea was the addressthat Desmond had given her yesterday. 

XIII

When Frances heard that Nicholas was going about everywhere with thepainter girl they called Desmond, she wrote to Vera to come and see her. She could never bring herself to go to the St. John's Wood house thatwas so much more Mr. Lawrence Stephen's house than it was Vera's. 

The three eldest children went now and then, refusing to go back onVera. Frances did not like it, but she had not interfered with theirliberty so far as to forbid it positively; for she judged thatfrustration might create an appetite for Mr. Stephen's society thatotherwise they might not, after all, acquire. 

Vera understood that her husband's brother and sister-in-law couldhardly be expected to condone her last aberration. Her attachment toFerdie Cameron had been different. It was inevitable, and in a senseforgivable, seeing that it had been brought about by Bartie's sheerimpossibility. Besides, the knowledge of it had dawned on them sogradually and through so many stages of extenuating tragedy, that, evenwhen it became an open certainty, the benefit of the long doubtremained. And there was Veronica. There was still Veronica. Even withoutVeronica Vera would have had to think of something far worse thanLawrence Stephen before Frances would have cast her off. Frances feltthat it was not for her to sit in judgment under the shelter of her treeof Heaven. Supposing she could only have had Anthony as Vera had hadFerdie, could she have lived without him? For Frances nothing in theworld had any use or interest or significance but her husband and herchildren; her children first, and Anthony after them. For Vera nothingin the world counted but her lover. 

"If only I were as sure of Lawrence as you are of Anthony!" she wouldsay. 

Yet she lived the more intensely, if the more dangerously, through thevery risks of her exposed and forbidden love. 

Vera was without fidelity to the unreturning dead; but she made up forit by an incorruptible adoration of the living. And she had been madenotorious chiefly through Stephen's celebrity, which was, you might say, a pure accident. 

Thus Frances made shelter for her friend. Only Vera must be made tounderstand that, though _she_ was accepted Lawrence Stephen was not. Hewas the point at which toleration ceased. 

And Vera did understand. She understood that Frances and Anthonydisapproved of her last adventure considerably more on Ferdie's andVeronica's account than on Bartie's. Even family loyalty could notespouse Bartie's cause with any zest. For Bartie showed himselfimplacable. Over and over again she had implored him to divorce her sothat Lawrence might marry her, and over and over again he had refused. His idea was to assert himself by refusals. In that way he could stillfeel that he had power over her and a sort of possession. It was he whowas scandalous. Even now neither Frances nor Anthony had a word tosay for him. 

So Vera consented to be received surreptitiously, by herself, andwithout receiving Frances and Anthony in her turn. It had hurt her; butStephen's celebrity was a dressing to her wound. He was so distinguishedthat it was unlikely that Frances, or Anthony either, would ever havebeen received by him without Vera. She came, looking half cynical, halfpathetic, her beauty a little blurred, a little beaten after seventeenyears of passion and danger, saying that she wasn't going to force Larrydown their throats if they didn't like him; and she went away sustainedby her sense of his distinction and _his_ repudiations. 

And she found further support in her knowledge that, if Frances andAnthony could resist Lawrence, their children couldn't. Michael andDorothy were acquiring a taste for him and for the people he knew; andhe knew almost everybody who was worth knowing. To be seen at theparties he and Vera gave in St. John's Wood was itself distinction. Verahad never forgotten and never would forget what Anthony and Frances haddone for her and Ferdie when they took Veronica. She wanted to make up, to pay back, to help their children as they had helped her child; togive the best she had, and do what they, poor darlings, couldn'tpossibly have done. Nicholas was all right; but Michael's case waslamentable. In his family and in the dull round of their acquaintancethere was not anybody who was likely to be of the least use to Michael;not anybody that he cared to know. No wonder that he kept up his oldattitude of refusing to go to the party. Lawrence Stephen had promisedher that he would help Michael. 

And Frances was afraid. She saw her children, Michael, Nicholas andDorothy, swept every day a little farther from the firm, well-orderedsanctities, a little nearer to the unclean moral vortex that to her wasthe most redoubtable of all. She hid her fear, because in her wisdom sheknew that to show fear was not the way to keep her children. She hid herstrength because she knew that to show it was not the way. Her strengthwas in their love of her. She had only used it once when she had stoppedNicky from going into the Army. She had said to herself then, "I willnever do that again. " It wasn't fair. It was a sort of sacrilege, atreachery. Love was holy; it should never be used, never be bargainedwith. She tried to hold the balance even between their youth andtheir maturity. 

So Frances fought her fear. 

She had known that Ferdie Cameron was good, as she put it, "in spite ofeverything"; but she had not seen Lawrence Stephen, and she did not knowthat he had sensibilities and prejudices and scruples like her own, andthat he and Vera distinguished very carefully between the people whowould be good for Michael and Nicholas and Dorothy, and the people whowould not. She did not know that they both drew the line at Desmond. 

Vera protested that it was not her fault, it was not Lawrence's faultthat Nicky had met Desmond. She had never asked them to meet each other. She did not deny that it was in her house they _had_ met; but she hadnot introduced them. Desmond had introduced herself, on the grounds thatshe knew Dorothy. Vera suspected that, from the first moment when shehad seen him there--by pure accident--she had marked him down. Verylikely she had wriggled into Dorothy's Suffrage meeting on purpose. Shewas capable of anything. 

Not that Vera thought there was any need for Frances to worry. It wasmost unlikely that Desmond's business with Nicky could be serious. Forone thing she was too young herself to care for anybody as young asNicky. For another she happened to be in the beginning, or the middle, certainly nowhere near the end of a tremendous affair with HeadleyRichards. As she was designing the dresses and the scenery for the newplay he was putting on at the Independent Theatre, Vera argued veryplausibly that the affair had only just started, and that Frances mustallow it a certain time to run. 

"I hope to goodness that the Richards man will marry her. "

"My dear, how can he? He's married already to a nice little woman thathe isn't half tired of yet. Desmond was determined to have him and she'sgot him; but he's only taken her in his stride, as you may say. I don'tsuppose he cares very much one way or another. But with Desmond it's apoint of honour. "

"What's a point of honour?"

"Why, to have him. Not to be left out. Besides, she always said shecould take him from poor little Ginny Richards, and she's done it. Thatwas another point of honour. "

With a calmness that was horrible to Frances Vera weighed her friendDesmond's case. To Frances it was as if she had never known Vera. EitherVera had changed or she had never known her. She had never known women, or men either, who discussed such performances with calmness. Veraherself hadn't made her infidelities a point of honour. 

These were the passions and the thoughts of Lawrence Stephen's and ofDesmond's world; these were the things it took for granted. These peoplelived in a moral vortex; they whirled round and round with each other;they were powerless to resist the swirl. Not one of them had any othercare than to love and to make love after the manner of the Vortex. Thiswas their honour, not to be left out of it, not to be left out of thevortex, but to be carried away, to be sucked in, and whirl round andround with each other and the rest. 

The painter girl Desmond was horrible to Frances. 

And all the time her mind was busy with one question: "Do you thinkNicky knows?"

"I'm perfectly sure he doesn't. "

"Perhaps--if he did--"

"No, my dear, that's no good. If you tell him he won't believe it. You'll have all his chivalry up in arms. And you'll be putting into hishead what may never come into it if he's left alone. And you'll beputting it into Desmond's head. "

 * * * * *

Captain Drayton, whom Anthony consulted, said, "Leave him alone. " Thosepainting and writing johnnies were a rum lot. You couldn't take themseriously. The Desmond girl might be everything that Vera Harrison saidshe was. He didn't think, though, that the idea of making love to herwould enter Nicky's head if they left him alone. Nicky's head had moreimportant ideas in it. 

So they left him alone. 

 * * * * *

And at first Nicholas really was too busy to think much of Desmond. Toobusy with his assistant manager's job at the Morss Motor Works; too busywith one of the little ideas to which he owed the sudden rise in hisposition: the little idea of making the Morss cars go faster; too busywith his big Idea which had nothing whatever to do with the MorssCompany and their cars. 

His big Idea was the idea of the Moving Fortress. The dream of a Frenchengineer, the old, abandoned dream of the _forteresse mobile_, hadbecome Nicky's passion. He claimed no originality for his idea. It was acomposite of the amoured train, the revolving turret, the tractor withcaterpillar wheels and the motor-car. These things had welded themselvestogether gradually in Nicky's mind during his last year at Cambridge. The table in Nicky's sitting-room at the top of the house in Chelsea wasnow covered with the parts of his model of the Moving Fortress. He madethem at the Works, one by one; for the Morss Company were proud of him, and he had leave to use their material and plant now and then for littleideas of his own. The idea of the Moving Fortress was with him all dayin the workshops and offices and showrooms, hovering like a formlessspiritual presence among the wheeled forms. But in the evening it tookshape and sound. It arose and moved, after its fashion, as he hadconceived it, beautiful, monstrous, terrible. At night, beside the imageof the _forteresse mobile_, the image of Desmond was a thin ghost thatstood back, mournful and dumb, in the right-hand corner of the vision. 

But the image of Desmond was there. 

At first it stood for Nicky's predominant anxiety: "I wonder whenDesmond will have finished the drawings. "

The model of the Moving Fortress waited upon Desmond's caprice. 

The plans of the parts and sections had to be finished before thesecould be fitted together and the permanent model of the Moving Fortressset up. The Moving Fortress itself waited upon Desmond. 

For, though Nicky could make and build his engine, he could not draw hisplans properly; and he could not trust anybody who understood engines todraw them. He was haunted, almost insanely, by the fear that somebodyelse would hit upon the idea of the Moving Fortress; it seemed to him soobvious that no gunner and no engineer could miss it. And the drawingsDesmond made for him, the drawings in black and white, the drawings ingrey wash, and the coloured drawings were perfect. Nicky, unskilled ineverything but the inventing and building up of engines, did not knowhow perfect the drawings were, any more than he knew the value of theextraordinary pictures that hung on the walls and stood on the easels inher studio; but he did know that, from the moment when he took Desmondinto his adventure, he and his Idea were dependent on her. 

He didn't care. He liked Desmond. He couldn't help it if Draytondisapproved of her and if Dorothy didn't like her. She was, he said tohimself, a ripping good sort. She might be frightfully clever; Nickyrather thought she was; but she never let you feel it; she never talkedthat revolting rot that Rosalind and Dorothy's other friends talked. Shelet you think. 

It was Desmond who told him that his sister didn't like her and thatFrank Drayton disapproved of her. 

"They wouldn't, " said Nicky, "if they knew you. " And he turned again tothe subject of his Moving Fortress. 

For Desmond's intelligence was perfect, and her sympathy was perfect, and her way of listening was perfect. She sat on the floor, on theorange and blue cushions, in silence and in patience, embracing herknees with her long, slender, sallow-white arms, while Nicky stamped upand down her studio and talked to her, like a monomaniac, about hisMoving Fortress. It didn't bore her to listen, because she didn't haveto answer; she had only to look at him and smile, and nod her head athim now and then as a sign of enthusiasm. She liked looking at him; sheliked his young naïveté and monomania; she liked his face and all hisgestures, and the poise and movement of his young body. 

And as she looked at him the beauty that slept in her dulled eyes and inher sallow-white face and in her thin body awoke and became alive. Itwas not dangerous yet; not ready yet to tell the secret held back in itslong, subtle, serious, and slender lines. Desmond's sensuality was wovenwith so fine a web that you would have said it belonged less to her bodythan to her spirit and her mind. 

 * * * * *

In nineteen-eleven, on fine days in the late spring and early summer, when the Morss Company lent him a car, or when they sent him motoringabout the country on their business, he took Desmond with him andDesmond's painting box and easel. And they rested on the grass bordersof the high roads and on the edges of the woods and moors, and Desmondpainted her extraordinary pictures while Nicky lay on his back besideher with his face turned up to the sky and dreamed of flying machines. 

For he had done with his Moving Fortress. It only waited for Desmond tofinish the last drawing. 

When he had that he would show the plans and the model to Frank Draytonbefore he sent them to the War Office. 

He lived for that moment of completion. 

 * * * * *

And from the autumn of nineteen-ten to the spring of nineteen-elevenDesmond's affair with Headley Richards increased and flowered andripened to its fulfilment. And in the early summer she found that thingshad happened as she had meant that they should happen. 

She had always meant it. She had always said, and she had always thoughtthat women were no good unless they had the courage of their opinions;the only thing to be ashamed of was the cowardice that prevented themfrom getting what they wanted. 

Desmond had no idea that the violence of the Vortex had sucked her in. Being in the movement of her own free will, she thought that by simplyspinning round faster and faster she added her own energy to the whirl. It was not Dorothy's vortex, or the vortex of the fighting Suffragewoman. Desmond didn't care very much about the Suffrage; or about anykind of freedom but her own kind; or about anybody's freedom but herown. Maud Blackadder's idea of freedom struck Desmond as sheer moral andphysical insanity. Yet each, Desmond and Dorothy and Maud Blackadder andMrs. Blathwaite and her daughter and Mrs. Palmerston-Swete, had her ownparticular swirl in the immense Vortex of the young century. If you hadyouth and life in you, you were in revolt. 

Desmond's theories were Dorothy's theories too; only that while Dorothy, as Rosalind had said, thought out her theories in her brain withoutfeeling them, Desmond felt them with her whole being; and with her wholebeing, secret, subtle and absolutely relentless, she was bent oncarrying them out. 

And in the summer, in the new season, Headley Richards decided that hehad no further use for Desmond. The new play had run its course at theIndependent Theatre, a course so brief that Richards had beendisappointed. He put down the failure mainly to the queerness of thedresses and the scenery she had designed for him. Desmond's new art wastoo new; people weren't ready yet for that sort of thing. At the sametime he discovered that he was really very much attached to his own wifeGinny, and when Ginny nobly offered to give him his divorce he hadreplied nobly that he didn't want one. And he left Desmond to facethe music. 

Desmond's misery was acute; but it was not so hopeless as it would havebeen if she could have credited Ginny Richards with any permanent powerof attraction for Headley. She knew he would come back to her. She knewthe power of her own body. She held him by the tie that was never brokenso long as it endured. He would never marry her; yet he would come back. 

But in the interval between these acts there was the music. 

And the first sound of the music, the changed intonations of herlandlady, frightened Desmond; for though she was older than Nicky shewas very young. And there were Desmond's people. You may forget that youhave people and behave as if they weren't there; but, if they are there, sooner or later they will let you know it. An immense volume of soundand some terrifying orchestral effects were contributed by Desmond'speople. So that the music was really very bad to bear. 

Desmond couldn't bear it. And in her fright she thought of Nicky. 

She knew that she hadn't a chance so long as he was absorbed in theMoving Fortress. But the model was finished and set up and she was atwork on the last drawing. And no more ideas for engines were coming intoNicky's head. The Morss Company and Nicky himself were even beginning towonder whether there ever would be any more. 

Then Nicky thought of Desmond. And he showed that he was thinking of herby sitting still and not talking when he was with her. She did not fillthat emptiness and spaciousness of Nicky's head, but he couldn't get herout of it. 

 * * * * *

When Vera noticed the silence of the two she became uneasy, and judgedthat the time had come for discreet intervention. 

"Nicky, " she said, "is it true that Desmond's been doing drawings foryou?"

"Yes, " said Nicky, "she's done any amount. "

"My dear boy, have you any idea of the amount you'll have to pay her?"

"I haven't, " said Nicky, "I wish I had. I hate asking her, and yet Isuppose I'll have to. "

"Of course you'll have to. _She_ won't hate it. She's got to earn herliving as much as you have. "

"Has she? You don't mean to say she's hard up?"

He had never thought of Desmond as earning her own living, still less asbeing hard up. 

"I only wish she were, " said Vera, "for your sake. "

"Why on earth for my sake?"

"Because _then_, my dear Nicky, you wouldn't have to pay so stiff aprice. "

"I don't care, " said Nicky, "how stiff the price is. I shall pay it. "

And Vera replied that Desmond, in her own queer way, really was a ratherdistinguished painter. "Pay her, " she said. "Pay her for goodness sakeand have done with it. And if she wants to give you things don'tlet her. "

"As if, " said Nicky, "I should dream of letting her. "

And he went off to Chelsea to pay Desmond then and there. 

Vera thought that she had been rather clever. Nicky would dash in and dothe thing badly. He would be very proud about it, and he would revoltfrom his dependence on Desmond, and he would show her--Vera hoped thathe would show her--that he did not want to be under any obligation toher. And Desmond would be hurt and lose her temper. The hard look wouldget into her face and destroy its beauty, and she would say detestablethings in a detestable voice, and a dreadful ugliness would come betweenthem, and the impulse of Nicky's yet unborn passion would be checked, and the memory of that abominable half-hour would divide them for ever. 

 * * * * *

But Vera herself had grown hard and clever. She had forgotten Nicky'stenderness, and she knew nothing at all about Desmond's fright. And, asit happened, neither Nicky nor Desmond did any of the things she thoughtthey would do. 

Nicky was not impetuous. He found Desmond in her studio working on thelast drawing of the Moving Fortress, with the finished model before her. That gave him his opening, and he approached shyly and tentatively. 

Desmond put on an air of complete absorption in her drawing; but shesmiled. A pretty smile that lifted the corners of her mouth and made itquiver, and gave Nicky a queer and unexpected desire to kiss her. 

He went on wanting to know what his debt was--not that he could everreally pay it. 

"Oh, you foolish Nicky, " Desmond said. 

He repeated himself over and over again, and each time she had ananswer, and the answers had a cumulative effect. 

"There isn't any debt. You don't pay anything--"

"I didn't do it for _that_, you silly boy. "

"What did I do it for? I did it for fun. You couldn't draw a thing likethat for anything else. Look at it--"

--"Well, if you want to be horrid and calculating about it, think of thelunches and the dinners and the theatre tickets and the flowers you'vegiven _me_. Oh, and the gallons and gallons of petrol. How am I ever topay you back again?"

Thus she mocked him. 

"Can't you see how you're spoiling it all?"

And then, passionately: "Oh, Nicky, please don't say it again. Ithurts. "

She turned on him her big black looking-glass eyes washed bright, eachwith one tear that knew better than to fall just yet. He must see thatshe was holding herself well in hand. It would be no use letting herselfgo until he had forgotten his Moving Fortress. He was looking at thebeastly thing now, instead of looking at her. 

"Are you thinking of another old engine?"

"No, " said Nicky. "I'm not thinking of anything. "

"Then you don't want me to do any more drawings?"

"No. "

"Well then--I wonder whether you'd very much mind going away?"

"Now?"

"No. Not now. But soon. From here. Altogether. "

"Go? Altogether? Me? Why?"

He was utterly astonished. He thought that he had offended Desmond pastall forgiveness. 

"Because I came here to be alone. To work. And I can't work. And I wantto be alone again. "

"Am I--spoiling it?"

"Yes. You're spoiling it damnably. "

"I'm sorry, Desmond. I didn't mean to. I thought--" But he hadn't theheart to say what he had thought. 

She looked at him and knew that the moment was coming. 

It had come. 

She turned away from the table where the Moving Fortress stood, threatening her with its mimic guns, and reminding Nicky of the thingsshe most wanted him to forget. She withdrew to her crouching place atthe other end of the studio, among the cushions. 

He followed her there with slow, thoughtful steps, steps full ofbrooding purpose and of half-unconscious meaning. 

"Nicky, I'm so unhappy. I didn't know it was possible for anybody to beso unhappy in this world. "

She began to cry quietly. 

"Desmond--what is it? What is it? Tell me. Why can't you tell me?"

 * * * * *

She thought, "It will be all right if he kisses me once. If he holds mein his arms once. Then I can tell him. "

For then he would know that he loved her. He was not quite sure now. Sheknew that he was not quite sure. She trusted to the power of her body tomake him sure. 

Her youth neither understood his youth, nor allowed for it, nor pitiedit. 

He had kissed her. He had held her in his arms and kissed her more thanonce while she cried there, hiding her face in the hollow of his arm. She was weak and small. She was like some small, soft, helpless animaland she was hurt. Her sobbing and panting made her ribs feel fragilelike the ribs of some small, soft, helpless animal under the pressure ofhis arms. And she was frightened. 

He couldn't stand the sight of suffering. He had never yet resisted theappeal of small, weak, helpless things in fright and pain. He could feelDesmond's heart going thump, thump, under the blue thing he called herpinafore. Her heart hurt him with its thumping. 

And through all his painful pity he knew that her skin was smooth andsweet like a sallow-white rose-leaf. And Desmond knew that he knew it. His mouth slid with an exquisite slipperiness over the long, polishedbands of her black hair; and he thought that he loved her. Desmond knewthat he thought it. 

And still she waited. She said to herself, "It's no good his thinkingit. I daren't tell him till he says it. Till he asks me to marry him. "

 * * * * *

He had said it at last. And he had asked her to marry him. And then shehad told him. 

And all that he said was, "I don't care. " He said it to Desmond, and hesaid it to himself. 

The funny thing was that he did not care. He was as miserable as it waswell possible to be, but he didn't really care. He was not evensurprised. It was as if the knowledge of it had been hiding in the backof his head behind all the ideas. 

And yet he couldn't have known it all the time. Either it must have goneaway when his ideas went, or he must have been trying not to see it. 

She had slipped from his arms and stood before him, dabbing her mouthand eyes now and then with her pocket-handkerchief, controlling herself, crying quietly. 

She knew, what had not dawned on Nicky yet, that he didn't love her. Ifhe had loved her he would have cared intolerably. He didn't care aboutHeadley Richards because he didn't care about Desmond any more. He wasonly puzzled. 

"Why did you do it?"

"I can't think why. I must have been off my head. I didn't know what itwas like. I didn't know. I thought it would be wonderful and beautiful. I thought he was wonderful and beautiful. "

"Poor little Desmond. "

"Oh, Nicky, do you think me a beast? Does it make you hate me?"

"No. Of course it doesn't. The only awful thing is--"

"What? Tell me. "

"Well--you see--"

"You mean the baby? I know it's awful. You needn't tell me that, Nicky. "

He stared at her. 

"I mean it's so awful for _it_. "

She thought he had been thinking of himself and her. 

"Why should it be?"

"Why? There isn't any why. It just is. I _know_ it is. "

He was thinking of Veronica. 

"You see, " he said simply, "that's why this sort of thing is such arotten game. It's so hard on the kiddy. I suppose you didn't think ofthat. You couldn't have, or else you wouldn't--"

He paused. There was one thing he had to know. He must get it out ofher. 

"It hasn't made you feel that you don't want it?"

"Oh--I don't know what I want--_now_. I don't know what it makes mefeel!"

"Don't let it, Desmond. Don't let it. It'll be all right. You won't feellike that when you've married me. Can't you see that _that's_ thewonderful and beautiful part?"

"_What_ is?" she said in her tired drawl. 

"_It_--the poor kiddy. "

Because he remembered Veronica he was going to marry Desmond. 

 * * * * *

Veronica's mother was the first to hear about it. Desmond told her. 

Veronica's mother was determined to stop it for the sake of everybodyconcerned. 

She wrote to Nicholas and asked him to come and dine with her oneevening when Lawrence Stephen was dining somewhere else. (LawrenceStephen made rather a point of not going to houses where Vera was notreceived; but sometimes, when the occasion was political, or otherwiseimportant, he had to. That was her punishment, as Bartholomew had meantthat it should be. )

Nicky knew what he had been sent for, and to all his aunt's assaults andmanoeuvres he presented an inexpugnable front. 

"You mustn't do it; you simply mustn't. "

He intimated that his marriage was his own affair. 

"It isn't. It's the affair of everybody who cares for you. "

"Their caring isn't my affair, " said Nicky. 

And then Vera began to say things about Desmond. 

"It's absurd of you, " she said, "to treat her as if she was an innocentchild. She isn't a child, and she isn't innocent. She knew perfectlywell what she was about. There's nothing she doesn't know. She meant itto happen, and she made it happen. She said she would. She meant you tomarry her, and she's making you marry her. I daresay she said she would. She's as clever and determined as the devil. Neither you nor HeadleyRichards ever had a chance against her. "

"She hasn't got a dog's chance against all you people yelping at her nowshe's down. I should have thought--"

"You mean _I_'ve no business to? That was different. I didn't take anyother woman's husband, or any other woman's lover, Nicky. "

"If you had, " said Nicky, "I wouldn't have interfered. "

"I wouldn't interfere if I thought you cared _that_ for Desmond. But youdon't. You know you don't. "

"Of course I care for her. "

He said it stoutly, but he coloured all the same, and Vera knew that hewas vulnerable. 

"Oh, Nicky dear, if you'd only waited--"

"What do you mean?"

His young eyes interrogated her austerely; and she flinched. "I don'tknow what I mean. Unless I mean that you're just a little young tomarry anybody. "

"I don't care if I am. I don't _feel_ young, I can tell you. AnyhowDesmond's years younger. "

"Desmond is twenty-three. You're twenty. It's Veronica who's yearsyounger. "

"Veronica?"

"She's sixteen. You don't imagine Desmond is as young as that, do you?Wait till she's twenty-five and you're twenty-two. "

"It wouldn't do poor Desmond much good if I did. I could kill HeadleyRichards. "

"What for?"

"For leaving her. "

Vera smiled. "That shows how much you care. You wouldn't have felt likekilling him if he'd stuck to her. Why should you marry Headley Richards'mistress and take on his child? It's preposterous. "

"It isn't. If the other fellow's a brute it's all the more reason why Ishouldn't be. I want to be some use in this rotten world where peopleare so damnably cruel to each other. And there's that unhappy kiddy. You've forgotten the kiddy. "

"Do you mean to say it's Desmond's child _you_'re thinking of?"

"I can't understand any woman not thinking of it, " said Nicky. 

He looked at her, and she knew that he remembered Veronica. 

Then she gave him back his own with interest, for his good. 

"If you care so much, why don't you choose a better mother for your ownchildren?"

It was as if she said: "If you care so much about Veronica, why don'tyou marry _her_?"

"It's a bit too late to think of that now, " said poor Nicky. 

Because he had cared so much about Veronica he was going to marryDesmond. 

 * * * * *

"I couldn't do anything with him, " Vera said afterwards. "Nothing I saidmade the least impression on him. "

That however (as both Vera and Nicky were aware), was not strictly true. But, in spite of Nicky's terrible capacity for remembering, she stuck toit that Desmond's affair would have made no impression on him if it hadnot been for that other absurd affair of the Professor's wife. And itwould have been better, Lawrence Stephen said, for Nicky to have madelove to all the married women in Cambridge than for him to marryPhyllis Desmond. 

These reflections were forced on them by the ironic coincidence ofNicky's engagement with his rehabilitation at the University. 

Drayton's forecast was correct; Nicky's brother Michael had not beenremoved from Nicky's College eight months before letters of apology andrestitution came. But both apology and restitution came too late. 

For by that time Nicky had married Desmond. 

XIV

After Nicholas, Veronica; and after Veronica, Michael. 

Anthony and Frances sat in the beautiful drawing-room of their house, one on each side of the fireplace. They had it all to themselves, exceptfor the cats, Tito and Timmy, who crouched on the hearthrug at theirfeet. Frances's forehead and her upper lip were marked delicately withshallow, tender lines; Anthony's eyes had crow's-feet at their corners, pointing to grey hairs at his temples. To each other their faces were asthey had been fifteen years ago. The flight of time was measured forthem by the generations of the cats that had succeeded Jane and Jerry. For still in secret they refused to think of their children as grown-up. 

Dorothy was upstairs in her study writing articles for the Women'sFranchise Union. They owed it to her magnanimity that they had one childremaining with them in the house. John was at Cheltenham; Veronica wasin Dresden. Michael was in Germany, too, at that School of Forestry atAschaffenburg which Anthony had meant for Nicky. They couldn't bear tothink where Nicky was. 

When Frances thought about her children now her mind went backwards. Ifonly they hadn't grown-up; if only they could have stayed little forever! In another four years even Don-Don would be grown-up--Don-Don whowas such a long time getting older that at fourteen, only two yearsago, he had been capable of sitting in her lap, a great long-legged, flumbering puppy, while mother and son rocked dangerously together ineach other's arms, like two children, laughing together, mockingeach other. 

She was going to be wiser with Don-Don than she had been with Nicky. Shewould be wiser with Michael when he came back from Germany. She wouldkeep them both out of the Vortex, the horrible Vortex that LawrenceStephen and Vera had let Nicky in for, the Vortex that seized on youthand forced it into a corrupt maturity. After Desmond's affair Anthonyand Frances felt that to them the social circle inhabited by Vera andLawrence Stephen would never be anything but a dirty hell. 

As for Veronica, the longer she stayed in Germany the better. 

Yet Frances knew that they had not sent Veronica to Dresden to preventher mother from getting hold of her. When she remembered the fear shehad had of the apple-tree house, she said to herself that Desmond was ajudgment on her for sending little Veronica away. 

And yet it was the kindest thing they could have done for her. Veronicawas happy in Dresden, living with a German family and studying music andthe language. She had no idea that music and the language were mereblinds, and that she had been sent to the German family to keep her outof Nicky's way. 

They would have them all back again at Christmas. Frances counted thedays. From to-night, the seventh of June, to December the twentieth wasnot much more than six months. 

To-night, the seventh of June, was Nicky's wedding-night. But they didnot know that. Nicky had kept the knowledge from them, in his mercy, tosave them the agony of deciding whether they would recognize themarriage or not. And as neither Frances nor Anthony had ever facedsquarely the prospect of disaster to their children, they had turnedtheir backs on Nicky's marriage and supported each other in the hopethat at the last minute something would happen to prevent it. 

 * * * * *

The ten o'clock post, and two letters from Germany. Not from Michael, not from Veronica. One from Frau Schäfer, the mother of the Germanfamily. It was all in German, and neither Anthony nor Frances could makeout more than a word here and there. "Das süsse, liebe Mädchen" meantVeronica. But certain phrases: "traurige Nachrichten" ... "furchtbareSchwächheit" ... "... Eine entsetzliche Blutleere ... " terrified them, and they sent for Dorothy to translate. 

Dorothy was a good German scholar, but somehow she was not very fluent. She scowled over the letter. 

"What does it mean?" said Frances. "Hæmorhage?"

"No. No. Anæmia. Severe anæmia. Heart and stomach trouble. "

"But 'traurige Nachrichten' is 'bad news. ' They're breaking it to usthat she's dying. "

(It was unbearable to think of Nicky marrying Ronny; but it was moreunbearable to think of Ronny dying. )

"They don't say they're sending _us_ bad news; they say they thinkRonny must have had some. To account for her illness. Because they sayshe's been so happy with them. "

"But what bad news could she have had?"

"Perhaps she knows about Nicky. "

"But nobody's told her, unless Vera has. "

"She hasn't. I know she hasn't. She didn't want her to know. "

"Well, then--"

"Mummy, you don't _have_ to tell Ronny things. She always knows them. "

"How on earth could she know a thing like that?"

"She might. She sort of sees things--like Ferdie. She may have seen himwith Desmond. You can't tell. "

"Do they say what the doctor thinks?"

"Yes. He thinks it's worry and Heimweh--homesickness. They want us tosend for her and take her back. Not let her have another term. "

Though Frances loved Veronica she was afraid of her coming back. For shewas more than ever convinced that something would happen and that Nickywould not marry Desmond. 

 * * * * *

The other letter was even more difficult to translate or to understandwhen translated. 

The authorities at Aschaffenburg requested Herr Harrison to remove hisson Michael from the School of Forestry. Michael after his first fewweeks had done no good at the school. In view of the expense to HerrHarrison involved in his fees and maintenance, they could not honestlyadvise his entering upon another term. It would only be a deplorablethrowing away of money on a useless scheme. His son Michael had nothoroughness, no practical ability, and no grasp whatever of theoreticdetail. From Herr Harrison's point of view this was the more regrettableinasmuch as the young man had colossal decision and persistence andenergy of his own. He was an indefatigable dreamer. Very likely--whenhis dreams had crystallized--a poet. But the idea Herr Harrison had hadthat his son Michael would make a man of business, or an expert inForestry, was altogether fantastic and absurd. And from the desperateinvolutions of the final sentence Dorothy disentangled the clear factthat Michael's personal charm, combined with his hostility todiscipline, his complete indifference to the aims of the authorities, and his utter lack of any sense of responsibility, made him a dangerousinfluence in any school. 

That was the end of Anthony's plans for Michael. 

The next morning Nicky wired from some village in Sussex: "Marriedyesterday. --NICKY. "

After that nothing seemed to matter. With Nicky gone from them they wereglad to have Michael back again. Frances said they might be thankful forone thing--that there wasn't any German Peggy or any German Desmond inMichael's problem. 

And since both Michael and Veronica were to be removed at once, thesimplest arrangement was that he should return to Dresden and bring herback with him. 

Frances had never been afraid for Michael. 

Michael knew that he had made havoc of his father's plans. He couldn'thelp that. His affair was far too desperate. And any other man but hisfather would have foreseen that the havoc was inevitable and would havemade no plans. He knew he had been turned into the tree-travellingscheme that had been meant for Nicky, because, though Nicky had slippedout of it, his father simply couldn't bear to give up his idea. And nowonder, when the dear old thing had so few of them. 

He had been honest with his father about it; every bit as honest asNicky had been. He had wanted to travel if he could go to China andJapan, just as Nicky had wanted to travel if he could go to places likethe West Indies and the Himalaya. And he didn't mind trying to get thetrees in when he was there. He was even prepared to accept Germany andthe School for Forestry if Germany was the only way to China and Japan. But he had told his father not to mind if nothing came of it at the endof all the travelling. And his father had said he would take the risk. He preferred taking the risk to giving up his idea. 

And Michael had been honest with himself. He had told himself that hetoo must take some risks, and the chances were that a year or two inGermany wouldn't really hurt him. Things never did hurt you as much asyou thought they would. He had thought that Cambridge would do all sortsof things to him, and Cambridge had not done anything to him at all. Asfor Oxford, it had given him nearly all the solitude and liberty hewanted, and more companionship than he was ever likely to want. Attwenty-two Michael was no longer afraid of dying before he had finishedhis best work. In spite of both Universities he had done more or lesswhat he had meant to do before he went to Germany. His work had not yetstood the test of time, but to make up for that he himself, in hisuneasy passion for perfection, like Time, destroyed almost as much as hecreated. Still, after some pitiless eliminations, enough of his verseremained for one fine, thin book. 

It would be published if Lawrence Stephen approved of the selection. 

So, Michael argued, even if he died to-morrow there was no reason why heshould not go to Germany to-day. 

He was too young to know that he acquiesced so calmly because his soulwas for a moment appeased by accomplishment. 

He was too young to know that his soul had a delicate, profound andhidden life of its own, and that in secret it approached the crisis oftransition. It was passing over from youth to maturity, like asleep-walker, unconscious, enchanted, seeing its way without seeing it, safe only from the dangers of the passage if nobody touched it, and ifit went alone. 

Michael had no idea of what Germany could and would do to his soul. 

Otherwise he might have listened to what Paris had to say by way ofwarning. 

For his father had given him a fortnight in Paris on his way to Germany, as the reward of acquiescence. That (from Herr Harrison's point of view)was a disastrous blunder. How could the dear old Pater be expected toknow that Paris is, spiritually speaking, no sort of way even to SouthGermany? He should have gone to Brussels, if he was ever, spirituallyspeaking, to get there at all. 

And neither Anthony nor Frances knew that Lawrence Stephen had plans forMichael. 

Michael went to Paris with his unpublished poems in his pocket and aletter of introduction from Stephen to Jules Réveillaud. He left it withrevolution in his soul and the published poems of Réveillaud and hisfollowers in his suit-case, straining and distending it so that it burstopen of its own accord at the frontier. 

Lawrence Stephen had said to him: "Before you write another line readRéveillaud and show him what you've written. "

Jules Réveillaud was ten years older than Michael, and he recognized thesymptoms of the crisis. He could see what was happening and what hadhappened and would happen in Michael's soul. He said: "One third of eachof your poems is good. And there are a few--the three last--which areall good. "

"Those, " said Michael, "are only experiments. "

"Precisely. They are experiments that have succeeded. That is why theyare good. Art is always experiment, or it is nothing. Do not publishthese poems yet. Wait and see what happens. Make more experiments. Andwhatever you do, do not go to Germany. That School of Forestry would bevery bad for you. Why not, " said Réveillaud, "stay where you are?"

Michael would have liked to stay for ever where he was, in Paris withJules Réveillaud, in the Rue Servandoni. And because his consciencekept on telling him that he would be a coward and a blackguard if hestayed in Paris, he wrenched himself away. 

In the train, going into Germany, he read Réveillaud's "Poèmes" and the"Poèmes" of the young men who followed him. He had read in ParisRéveillaud's "Critique de la Poésie Anglaise Contemporaine. " And as heread his poems, he saw that, though he, Michael Harrison, had split with"la poésie anglaise contemporaine, " he was not, as he had supposed, alone. His idea of being by himself of finding new forms, doing newthings by himself to the disgust and annoyance of other people, in aworld where only one person, Lawrence Stephen, understood or cared forwhat he did, it was pure illusion. These young Frenchmen, with JulesRéveillaud at their head, were doing the same thing, making the sameexperiment, believing in the experiment, caring for nothing but theexperiment, and carrying it farther than he had dreamed of carrying it. They were not so far ahead of him in time; Réveillaud himself had onlytwo years' start; but they were all going the same way, and he saw thathe must either go with them or collapse in the soft heap of rottenness, "la poésie anglaise contemporaine. "

He had made his own experiments in what he called "live verse" before heleft England, after he had said he would go to Germany, even after thefinal arrangements had been made. His father had given him a month to"turn round in, " as he put it. And Michael had turned completely round. 

He had not shown his experiments to Stephen. He didn't know what tothink of them himself. But he could see, when once Réveillaud hadpointed it out to him, that they were the stuff that counted. 

In the train going into Germany he thought of certain things thatRéveillaud had said: "Nous avons trempé la poésie dans la peinture et lamusique. Il faut la délivrer par la sculpture. Chaque ligne, chaquevers, chaque poème taillé en bloc, sans couleur, sans decor, sansrime. "... "La sainte pauvresse du style dépouillé. "... "Il faut de ladureté, toujours de la dureté. "

He thought of Réveillaud's criticism, and his sudden startled spurt ofadmiration: "Mais! Vous l'avez trouvée, la beauté de la ligne droite. "

And Réveillaud's question: "Vraiment? Vous n'avez jamais lu un seul versde mes poèmes? Alors, c'est étonnant. " And then: "C'est que la réalitéest plus forte que nous. "

The revolting irony of it! After stumbling and fumbling for years byhimself, like an idiot, trying to get it, the clear hard Reality; tryingnot to collapse into the soft heap of contemporary rottenness; and, suddenly, to get it without knowing that he had got it, so that, but forRéveillaud, he might easily have died in his ignorance; and then, in theincredible moment of realization, to have to let go, to turn his back onParis, where he wanted to live, and on Réveillaud whom he wanted toknow, and to be packed in a damnable train, like a parcel, and sent offto Germany, a country which he did not even wish to see. 

He wondered if he could have done it if he had not loved his father? Hewondered if his father would ever understand that it was the hardestthing he had ever yet done or could do?

But the trees would be beautiful. He would rather like seeing the trees. 

Trees--

He wondered whether he would ever care about a tree again. 

Trees--

He wondered whether he would ever see a tree again, ever smell tree-sap, or hear the wind sounding in the ash-trees like a river and in the firslike a sea. 

Trees--

He wondered whether any tree would ever come to life for him again. 

He looked on at the tree-felling. He saw slaughtered trees, trees thattottered, trees that staggered in each other's branches. He heard thescream and the shriek of wounded boughs, the creaking and crashing ofthe trunk, and the long hiss of branches falling, trailing throughbranches to the ground. He smelt the raw juice of broken leaves and thesharp tree dust in the saw pits. The trees died horrible deaths, in theforests under the axes of the woodmen, and in the schools under thetongues of the Professors, and in Michael's soul. The German Governmentwas determined that he should know all about trees. Its officials, theProfessors and instructors, were sorry if he didn't like it, but theywere ordered by their Government and paid by their Government to impartthis information; they had contracted with Herr Harrison to impart it tohis son Michael for so long as he could endure it, and they imparted itwith all their might. 

Michael rather liked the Germans of Aschaffenburg. Instead of despisinghim because he would never make a timber-merchant or a tree expert, theyadmired and respected him because he was a poet. The family he livedwith, Herr Henschel and Frau Henschel, and his fellow-boarders, Carl andOtto Kraus, and young Ludwig Henschel, and Hedwig and Löttchen admiredand respected him because he was a poet. When he walked with Ludwig inthe great forests Michael chanted his poems, both in English and inGerman, till Ludwig's soul was full of yearning and a delicious sorrow, so that Ludwig actually shed tears in the forest. He said that if he hadnot done so he would have burst. Ludwig's emotions had nothing whateverto do with the forest or with Michael's poems, but he thought they had. 

Michael knew that his only chance of getting out of Germany was to showan unsurpassable incompetence. He showed it. He flourished hisincompetence in the faces of all the officials, until some superofficialwrote a letter to his father that gave him his liberty. 

The Henschels were sorry when he left. The students, Otto and Carl andLudwig, implored him not to forget them. Hedwig and Löttchen cried. 

 * * * * *

Michael was not pleased when he found that he was to go home by Dresdento bring Veronica back. He wanted to be alone on the journey. He wantedto stop in Paris and see Jules Réveillaud. He was afraid that Ronny hadgrown into a tiresome flapper and that he would have to talk to her. 

And he found that Ronny had skipped the tiresome stage and had grown up. Only her school clothes and her girlish door-knocker plait tied up withbroad black ribbon reminded him that she was not yet seventeen. 

Ronny was tired. She did not want to talk. When he had tucked her upwith railway rugs in her corner of the carriage she sat still with herhands in her muff. 

"I shall not disturb your thoughts, Michael, " she said. 

She knew what he had been thinking. Her clear eyes gazed at him out ofher dead white face with an awful look of spiritual maturity. 

"What can have happened to her?" he wondered. 

But she did not disturb his thoughts. 

Up till then Michael's thoughts had not done him any good. They had beenbitter thoughts of the months he had been compelled to waste in Bavariawhen every minute had an incomparable value; worrying, irritatingthoughts of the scenes he would have to have with his father, who mustbe made to understand, once for all, that in future he meant to haveevery minute of his own life for his own work. He wondered how on earthhe was to make his people see that his work justified his giving everyminute to it. He had asked Réveillaud to give him a letter that he couldshow to his father. He was angry with his father beforehand, he was socertain that he wouldn't see. 

He had other thoughts now. Thoughts of an almond tree flowering in awhite town; of pink blossoms, fragile, without leaves, casting a thinshadow on white stones; the smell of almond flowers and the sting ofwhite dust in an east wind; a drift of white dust against the wall. 

Thoughts of pine-trees falling in the forest, glad to fall. He thought:The pine forest makes itself a sea for the land wind, and the young pinetree is mad for the open sea. She gives her slender trunk with passionto the ax; for she thinks that she will be stripped naked, and that shewill be planted in the ship's hold, and that she will carry the greatmain-sail. She thinks that she will rock and strain in the grip of thesea-wind, and that she will be whitened with the salt and the foamof the sea. 

She does not know that she will be sawn into planks and made into acoffin for the wife of the sexton and grave-digger of Aschaffenburg. 

Thoughts of Veronica in her incredible maturity, and of her eyes, shining in her dead white face, far back through deep crystal, and ofthe sense he got of her soul poised, steady and still, with wingsvibrating. 

He wondered where it would come down. 

He thought: "Of course, Veronica's soul will come down like a wildpigeon into the ash-tree in our garden, and she will think that ourash-tree is a tree of Heaven. "

 * * * * *

Presently he roused himself to talk to her. 

"How is your singing getting on, Ronny?"

"My singing voice has gone. "

"It'll come back again. "

"Not unless-"

But he couldn't make her tell him what would bring it back. 

 * * * * *

When Michael came to his father and mother to have it out with them hisface had a hard, stubborn look. He was ready to fight them. He was socertain that he would have to fight. He had shown them JulesRéveillaud's letter. 

He said, "Look here, we've got to get it straight. It isn't any usegoing on like this. I'm afraid I wasn't very honest about Germany. "

"Weren't you?" said Anthony. "Let me see, I think you said you'd take iton your way to China and Japan. "

"Did I? I tried to be straight about it. I thought I was giving it afair chance. But that was before I'd seen Réveillaud. "

"Well, " said Anthony, "now that you have seen him, what is it exactlythat you want to do?"

Michael told him. 

"You can make it easy for me. Or you can make it hard. But you can'tstop me. "

"What makes you think I want to stop you?"

"Well--you want me to go into the business, though I told you years agothere was only one thing I should ever be any good at. And I see yourpoint. I can't earn my living at it. That's where I'm had. Still, Ithink Lawrence Stephen will give me work, and I can rub along somehow. "

"Without my help, you mean?"

"Well, yes. Why _should_ you help me? You've wasted tons of money on meas it is. Nicky's earning his own living, and he's got a wife, too. Why not me?"

"Because you can't do it, Michael. "

"I can. I don't mind roughing it. I could live on a hundred a year--orless, if I don't marry. "

"Well, I don't mean you to try. You needn't bother about what you canlive on and what you can't live on. It was all settled last night. Yourmother and I talked it over. We don't want you to go into the business. We don't want you to take work from Mr. Stephen. We want you to beabsolutely free to do your own work, under the best possible conditions, whether it pays or not. Nothing in the world matters to us but yourhappiness. You're to have a hundred and fifty a year when you're livingat home and two hundred and fifty when you're living abroad. I supposeyou'll want to go abroad sometimes. I can't give you a bigger allowance, because I have to help Nicky--"

Michael covered his face with his hands. 

"Oh--don't, Daddy. You do make me feel a rotten beast. "

"We should feel rottener beasts, " said Frances, "if we stood in yourway. "

"Then, " said Michael (he was still incredulous), "you do care?"

"Of course we care, " said Anthony. 

"I don't mean for me--for _it_?"

"My dear Mick, " said Frances, "we care for It almost as much as we carefor you. We're sorry about Germany though. Germany was one of yourfather's bad jokes. "

"Germany--a joke?"

"Did you take it seriously? Oh, you silly Michael!"

"But, " said Michael, "how about Daddy's idea? He loved it. "

"I loved it, " said Anthony, "but I've given it up. "

They knew that this was defeat, for Michael was top-dog. And it was alsovictory. 

They had lost Nicholas, or thought they had lost Nicholas, by opposinghim. But Michael and Michael's affection they would have always. 

Besides, Anthony hadn't given up his idea. He had only transferredit--to his youngest son, John. 

XV

It was five weeks since Nicholas's wedding-day and Desmond hadquarrelled with him three times. 

First, because he had taken a flat in Aubrey Walk, with a studio insideit, instead of a house in Campden Hill Square with a studio outside itin the garden. 

Then, because he had refused to go into his father's business. 

Last of all, because of Captain Drayton and the Moving Fortress. 

Nicky had said that his father, who was paying his rent, couldn't affordthe house with the studio in the garden; and Desmond said Nicky's fathercould afford it perfectly well if he liked. He said he had refused to gointo his father's business for reasons which didn't concern her. Desmondpointed out that the consequences of his refusal were likely to concernher very much indeed. As for Captain Drayton and the Moving Fortress, nobody but a supreme idiot would have done what Nicky did. 

But Nicky absolutely refused to discuss what he had done. Nobody but acad and a rotter would have done anything else. 

In the matter of the Moving Fortress what had happened was this. 

The last of the drawings was not finished until Desmond had settled downin the flat in Aubrey Walk. You couldn't hurry Desmond. Nicky hadn'teven waited to sign his name in the margins before he had packed theplans in his dispatch box and taken them to the works, and thence, hidden under a pile of Morss estimates, to Eltham. He couldn't rest tillhe had shown them to Frank Drayton. He could hardly wait till they haddined, and till Drayton, who thought he was on the track of a new andhorrible explosive, had told him as much as he could about it. 

Nicky gave his whole mind to Drayton's new explosive in the hope that, when his turn came, Drayton would do as much for him. 

"You know, " he said at last, "the old idea of the _forteresse mobile_?

"Yes. "

He couldn't tell whether Drayton was going to be interested or not. Herather thought he wasn't. 

"It hasn't come to anything, _has_ it?"

Drayton smiled and his eyes glittered. He knew what that excited gleamin Drayton's eyes meant. 

"No, " he said. "Not yet. "

And Nicky had an awful premonition of his doom. 

"Well, " he said, "I believe there's something in it. "

"So do I, Nicky. "

Drayton went on. "I believe there's so much in it that--Look here, Idon't know what put it into your head, and I'm not asking, but thatidea's a dead secret. For God's sake don't talk about it. You mustn'tbreathe it, or it'll get into the air. And if it does my five years'work goes for nothing. Besides we don't want Germany to collar it. "

And then: "Don't look so scared, old chap. I was going to tell youabout it when I'd got the plans drawn. "

He told him about it then and there. 

"Low on the ground like a racing-car--"

"Yes, " said Nicky. 

"Revolving turret for the guns--no higher than _that_--"

"Yes, " said Nicky. 

"Sort of armoured train. Only it mustn't run on rails. It's got to goeverywhere, through anything, over anything, if it goes at all. It mustturn in its own length. It must wade and burrow and climb, Nicky. Itmust have caterpillar wheels--"

"By Jove, of course it must, " said Nicky, as if the idea had struck himfor the first time. 

"What have you got there?" said Drayton finally as Nicky rose and pickedup his dispatch-box. "Anything interesting?

"No, " said Nicky. "Mostly estimates. "

For a long time afterwards he loathed the fields between Eltham andKidbrooke, and the Mid-Kent line, and Charing Cross Station. He felt asa man feels when the woman he loves goes from him to another man. Hisidea had gone from him to Drayton. 

And that, he said to himself, was just like his luck, just like thejolly sells that happened to him when he was a kid. 

To be sure, there was such a thing as sharing. He had only to producehis plans and his finished model, and he and Drayton would go partnersin the Moving Fortress. There was no reason why he shouldn't do it. Drayton had not even drawn his plans yet; he hadn't thought out themechanical details. 

He thought, "I could go back now and tell him. "

But he did not go back. He knew that he would never tell him. If Draytonasked him to help him with the details he would work them out all overagain with him; but he would never show his own finished plans or hisown model. 

He didn't know whether it had been hard or easy for him to give up theMoving Fortress. He did it instinctively. There was--unless he hadchosen to be a blackguard--nothing else for him to do. 

Besides, the Moving Fortress wasn't his idea. Drayton had had it first. Anybody might have had it. He hadn't spoken of it first; but that wasnothing. The point was that he had had it first, and Nicky wasn't goingto take it from him. 

It meant more to Drayton, who was in the Service, than it could possiblymean to him. He hadn't even got a profession. 

As he walked back through the fields to the station, he said to himselfthat he didn't really care. It was only one more jolly sell. He didn'tlike giving up his Moving Fortress; but it wouldn't end him. There wassomething in him that would go on. 

He would make another engine. 

He didn't care. There was something in him that would go on. 

"I can't see, " Desmond had said, "why Captain Drayton should be allowedto walk off with your idea. "

"He's worked five years on it. "

"He hasn't worked it _out_ yet, and you have. Can't you see "--her facewas dark and hard with anger--"there's money in it?"

"If there is, all the more reason why I shouldn't bag it. "

"And where do I come in?"

"Not just here, I'm afraid. It isn't your business. "

"Not my business? When I did the drawings? You couldn't possibly havedone them yourself. "

At that point Nicky refused to discuss the matter farther. 

And still Desmond brooded on her grievance. And still at intervalsDesmond brought it up again. 

"There's stacks of money in your father's business--"

"There's stacks of money in that Moving Fortress--"

"You are a fool, Nicky, to throw it all away. "

He never answered her. He said to himself that Desmond was hystericaland had a morbid fancy. 

 * * * * *

But it didn't end there. 

He had taken the drawings and the box that had the model of the MovingFortress in it and buried them in the locker under the big north windowin Desmond's studio. 

And there, three weeks later, Desmond found them. And she packed themodel of the Moving Fortress and marked it "Urgent with Care, " and sentit to the War Office with a letter. She packed the drawings in aportfolio--having signed her own and Nicky's name on the margins--andsent them to Captain Drayton with a letter. She said she had no doubtshe was doing an immoral thing; but she did it in fairness to CaptainDrayton, for she was sure he would not like Nicky to make so great asacrifice. Nicky, she said, was wrapped up in his Moving Fortress. Itwas his sweetheart, his baby. "He will never forgive me, " she said, "aslong as he lives. But I simply had to let you know. It means so muchto him. "

For she thought, "Because Nicky's a fool, I needn't be one. "

Drayton came over the same evening after he had got the letter. Heshouted with laughter. 

"Nicky, " he said, "you filthy rotter, why on earth didn't you tellme?... It _was_ Nickyish of you.... What if I did think of it first? Ishould have had to come to you for the details. It would have been jollyto have worked it out together.... Not a bit of it! Your wife'sabsolutely right. Good thing, after all, you married her. 

"By the way, she says there's a model. I want to see that model. Haveyou got it here?"

Nicky went up into the studio to look for it. He couldn't find it in thelocker where he'd left it. "Wherever is the damned thing?" he said. 

"The damned thing, " said Desmond, "is where you should have sent itfirst of all--at the War Office. You're clever, Nicky, but you aren'tquite clever enough. "

"I'm afraid, " he said, "_you've_ been a bit too clever, this time. "

Drayton agreed with him. It was, he said, about the worst thing thatcould possibly have happened. 

"She shouldn't have done that, Nicky. What on earth could have made herdo it?"

"Don't ask me, " said Nicky, "what makes her do things. "

"It looks, " Drayton meditated, "as if she didn't trust me. I'm afraidshe's dished us. God knows whether we can ever get it back!"

Desmond had a fit of hysterics when she realized how clever she hadbeen. 

 * * * * *

Desmond's baby was born late in November of that year, and it died whenit was two weeks old. It was as if she had not wanted it enough to giveit life for long outside her body. 

For though Desmond had been determined to have a child, and had declaredthat she had a perfect right to have one if she chose, she did not carefor it when it came. And when it died Nicky was sorrier than Desmond. 

He had not wanted to be a father to Headley Richards' child. And yet itwas the baby and nothing but the baby that had let him in for marryingDesmond. So that, when it died, he felt that somehow things had trickedand sold him. As they had turned out he need not have married Desmondafter all. 

She herself had pointed out the extreme futility of his behaviour, lesthe should miss the peculiar irony of it. For when her fright and thecause of her fright were gone Desmond resented Nicky's having marriedher. She didn't really want anybody to marry her, and nobody but Nickywould have dreamed of doing it. 

She lay weak and pathetic in her bed for about a fortnight; and for alittle while after she was content to lie stretched out among hercushions on the studio floor, while Nicky waited on her. But, when shegot well and came downstairs for good, Nicky saw that Desmond's weaknessand pathos had come with the baby and had gone with it. The real Desmondwas not weak, she was not pathetic. She was strong and hard and cleverwith a brutal cleverness. She didn't care how much he saw. He could seeto the bottom of her nature, if he liked, and feel how hard it was. Shehad no more interest in deceiving him. 

She had no more interest in him at all. 

She was interested in her painting again. She worked in long fits, afterlong intervals of idleness. She worked with a hard, passionlessefficiency. Nicky thought her paintings were hideous and repulsive; buthe did not say so. He was not aware of the extent to which Desmondimitated her master, Alfred Orde-Jones. He knew nothing about paintingand he had got used to the things. He had got used to Desmond, slouchingabout the flat, in her sloping, slovenly grace, dressed in her queersquare jacket and straight short skirt, showing her long delicateankles, and her slender feet in their grey stockings and black slippers. 

He was used to Desmond when she was lazy; when she sat hunched up on hercushions and smoked one cigarette after another without a word, andwatched him sullenly. Her long, slippered feet, thrust out, pointed athim, watching. Her long face watched him between the sleek bands of hairand the big black bosses plaited over her ears. 

The beauty of Desmond's face had gone to sleep again, stilled intohardness by the passing of her passion. A sort of ugliness was awakethere, and it watched him. 

In putting weakness and pathos away from her Desmond had parted withtwo-thirds of her power. Yet the third part still served to hold him, used with knowledge and a cold and competent economy. He resented it, resisted it over and over again; and over and over again it conqueredresentment and resistance. It had something to do with her subtle, sloping lines, with her blackness and her sallow whiteness, with thedelicate scent and the smoothness of her skin under the sliding hand. Hecouldn't touch her without still feeling a sort of pity, a sort ofaffection. 

But she could take and give caresses while she removed her soul from himin stubborn rancour. 

He couldn't understand that. It amazed him every time. He thought ithorrible. For Nicky's memory was faithful. It still kept the impressionof the Desmond he had married, the tender, frightened, helpless Desmondhe had thought he loved. The Desmond he remembered reminded himof Veronica. 

And Desmond said to herself, "He's impossible. You can't make anyimpression on him. I might as well be married to a Moving Fortress. "

 * * * * *

Months passed. The War Office had not yet given up Nicky's model of theMoving Fortress. In the first month it was not aware of any letter or ofany parcel or of any Mr. Nicholas Harrison. In the second monthinquiries would be made and the results communicated to Captain Drayton. In the third month the War Office knew nothing of the matter referred toby Captain Drayton. 

Drayton hadn't a hope. "We can't get it back, Nicky, " he said. 

"I can, " said Nicky, "I can get it back out of my head. "

All through the winter of nineteen-eleven and the spring ofnineteen-twelve they worked at it together. They owned that they werethus getting better results than either of them could have got alone. There were impossibilities about Nicky's model that a gunner would haveseen at once, and there were faults in Drayton's plans that an engineerwould not have made. Nicky couldn't draw the plans and Drayton couldn'tbuild the models. They said it was fifty times better fun to work atit together. 

Nicky was happy. 

 * * * * *

Desmond watched them sombrely. She and Alfred Orde-Jones, the painter, laughed at them behind their backs. She said "How funny they are! Frankwouldn't hurt a fly and Nicky wouldn't say 'Bo!' to a goose if hethought it would frighten the goose, and yet they're only happy whenthey're inventing some horrible machine that'll kill thousands of peoplewho never did them any harm. " He said, "That's because they haven't anyimagination. "

Nicky got up early and went to bed late to work at the Moving Fortress. The time between had to be given to the Works. The Company had paid himfairly well for all his patents in the hope of getting more of hisideas, and when they found that no ideas were forthcoming they took itout of him in labour. He was too busy and too happy to notice whatDesmond was doing. 

One day Vera said to him, "Nicky, do you know that Desmond is goingabout a good deal with Alfred Orde-Jones?"

"Is she? Is there any reason why she shouldn't?"

"Not unless you call Orde-Jones a reason. "

"You mean I've got to stop it? How can I?"

"You can't. Nothing can stop Desmond. "

"What do you think I ought to do about it?"

"Nothing. She goes about with scores of people. It doesn't follow thatthere's anything in it. "

"Oh, Lord, I should hope not! That beastly bounder. What _could_ therebe in it?"

"He's a clever painter, Nicky. So's Desmond. There's that in it. "

"I've hardly a right to object to that, have I? It's not as if I were aclever painter myself. "

But as he walked home between the white-walled gardens of St. John'sWood, and through Regent's Park and Baker Street, and down the northside of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, he worried the thingto shreds. 

There couldn't be anything in it. 

He could see Alfred Orde-Jones--the raking swagger of the tall lean bodyin the loose trousers, the slouch hat and the flowing tie. He could seehis flowing black hair and his haggard, eccentric face with its sevenfantastic accents, the black eyebrows, the black moustache, the high, close-clipped side whiskers, the two forks of the black beard. 

There couldn't be anything in it. 

Orde-Jones's mouth was full of rotten teeth. 

And yet he never came home rather later than usual without saying tohimself, "Supposing I was to find him there with her?"

He left off coming home late so that he shouldn't have to ask himselfthat question. 

He wondered what--if it really did happen--he would do. He wondered whatother men did. It never occurred to him that at twenty-two he was youngto be considering this problem. 

He rehearsed scenes that were only less fantastic than Orde-Jones's faceand figure, or that owed their element of fantasy to Orde-Jones's faceand figure. He saw himself assaulting Orde-Jones with violence, dragginghim out of Desmond's studio, and throwing him downstairs. He wonderedwhat shapes that body and those legs and arms would take when they gotto the bottom. Perhaps they wouldn't get to the bottom all at once. Hewould hang on to the banisters. He saw himself simply opening the doorof the studio and ordering Orde-Jones to walk out of it. Really, therewould be nothing else for him to do but to walk out, and he would lookan awful ass doing it. He saw himself standing in the room and lookingat them, and saying, "I've no intention of interrupting you. " PerhapsDesmond would answer, "You're not interrupting us. We've finished allwe had to say. " And _he_ would walk out and leave them there. Not caring. 

He wondered if _he_ would look an awful ass doing it. 

In the end, when it came, he hadn't to do any of these things. Ithappened very quietly and simply, early on a Sunday evening after he hadgot back from Eltham. He had dined with Drayton and his people onSaturday, and stayed, for once, over-night, risking it. 

Desmond was sitting on a cushion, on the floor, with her thin legs intheir grey stockings slanting out in front of her. She propped her chinon her hands. Her thin, long face, between the great black ear-bosses, looked at him thoughtfully, without rancour. 

"Nicky, " she said, "Alfred Orde-Jones slept with me last night. "

And he said, simply and quietly, "Very well, Desmond; then I shall leaveyou. You can keep the flat, and I or my father will make you anallowance. I shan't divorce you, but I won't live with you. "

"Why won't you divorce me?" she said. 

"Because I don't want to drag you through the dirt. "

She laughed quietly. "Dear Nicky, " she said, "how sweet and like you. But don't let's have any more chivalrous idiocy. I don't want it. Inever did. " (She had forgotten that she had wanted it very badly once. But Nicky did not remind her of that time. No matter. She didn't want itnow). "Let's look at the thing sensibly, without any rotten sentiment. We've had some good times together, and we've had some bad times. I'lladmit that when you married me you saved me from a very bad time. That's no reason why we should go on giving each other worse timesindefinitely. You seem to think I don't want you to divorce me. Whatelse do you imagine Alfred came for last night? Why we've been tryingfor it for the last three months. 

"Of course, if you'll let _me_ divorce _you_ for desertion, it would bevery nice of you. That, " said Desmond, "is what decent people do. "

He went out and telephoned to his father. Then he left her and went backto his father's house. 

Desmond asked the servant to remember particularly that it was thefifteenth of June and that the master was going away and would not comeback again. 

 * * * * *

As Nicky walked up the hill and across the Heath, he wondered why it hadhappened, and why, now that it had happened, he cared so little. Hecould have understood it if he hadn't cared at all for Desmond. But hehad cared in a sort of way. If she had cared at all for him he thoughtthey might have made something of it, something enduring, perhaps, ifthey had had children of their own. 

He still couldn't think why it had happened. But he knew that, even ifhe had loved Desmond with passion, it wouldn't have been the end of him. The part of him that didn't care, that hadn't cared much when he losthis Moving Fortress, was the part that Desmond never would havecared for. 

He didn't know whether it was outside him and beyond him, bigger andstronger than he was, or whether it was deep inside, the most real partof him. Whatever happened or didn't happen it would go on. 

How could he have ended _here_, with poor little Desmond? There wassomething ahead of him, something that he felt to be tremendous andholy. He had always known it waited for him. He was going out to meetit; and because of it he didn't care. 

And after a year of Desmond he was glad to go back to his father'shouse; even though he knew that the thing that waited for him wasnot there. 

Frances and Anthony were happy again. After all, Heaven had manipulatedtheir happiness with exquisite art and wisdom, letting Michael andNicholas go from them for a little while that they might have them againmore completely, and teaching them the art and wisdom that wouldkeep them. 

Some day the children would marry; even Nicky might marry again. Theywould prepare now, by small daily self-denials, for the big renunciationthat must come. 

Yet in secret they thought that Michael would never marry; that Nicky, made prudent by disaster, wasn't really likely to marry again. Johnwould marry; and they would be happy in John's happiness and inJohn's children. 

And Nicky had not been home before he offered to his parents thespectacle of an outrageous gaiety. You would have said that life toNicholas was an amusing game where you might win or lose, but either wayit didn't matter. It was a rag, a sell. Even the preceedings, theinvolved and ridiculous proceedings of his divorce, amused him. 

It was undeniably funny that he should be supposed to have desertedDesmond. 

Frances wondered, again, whether Nicky really had any feelings, andwhether things really made any impression on him. 

XVI

It was a quarter past five on a fine morning, early in July. On thestroke of the quarter Captain Frank Drayton's motor-car, after exceedingthe speed limit along the forlorn highway of the Caledonian Road, drewup outside the main entrance of Holloway Gaol. Captain Frank Drayton wasalone in his motor-car. 

He had the street all to himself till twenty past five, when he wasjoined by another motorist, also conspicuously alone in his car. Draytontried hard to look as if the other man were not there. 

The other man tried even harder to look as if he were not there himself. He was the first to be aware of the absurdity of their competitivepretences. He looked at his watch and spoke. 

"I hope they'll be punctual with those doors. I was up at four o'clock. "

"I, " said Drayton, "was up at three. "

"I'm waiting for my wife, " said the other man. 

"I am _not_, " said Drayton, and felt that he had scored. 

The other man's smile allowed him the point he made. 

"Yes, but my wife happens to be Lady Victoria Threlfall. "

The other man laughed as if he had made by far the better joke. 

Drayton recognized Mr. Augustin Threlfall, that Cabinet Minister madenotorious by his encounters with the Women's Franchise Union. Last yearMiss Maud Blackadder had stalked him in the Green Park and lamed him bya blow from her hunting-crop. This year his wife, Lady VictoriaThrelfall, had headed the June raid on the House of Commons. 

And here he was at twenty minutes past five in the morning waiting totake her out of prison. 

And here was Drayton, waiting for Dorothea, who was not his wife yet. 

"Anyhow, " said the Cabinet Minister, "we've done them out of theirProcession. "

"What Procession?"

All that Drayton knew about it was that, late last night, a friend hehad in the Home Office had telephoned to him that the hour of MissDorothea Harrison's release would be five-thirty, not six-thirty as thepapers had it. 

"The Procession, " said the Cabinet Minister, "that was to have met 'emat six-thirty. A Car of Victory for Mrs. Blathwaite, and a bodyguard ofthirteen young women on thirteen white horses. The girl who smashed myknee-cap is to be Joan of Arc and ride at the head of 'em. In armour. Fact. There's to be a banquet for 'em at the Imperial at nine. We can'tstop _that_. And they'll process down the Embankment and down Pall Malland Piccadilly at eleven; but they won't process here. We've let 'em outan hour too soon. "

A policeman came from the prison-yard. He blew a whistle. Four taxi-cabscrept round the corner furtively, driven by visibly hilariouschauffeurs. 

"The triumphant procession from Holloway, " said the Cabinet Minister, "is you and me, sir, and those taxi-cabs. "

On the other side of the gates a woman laughed. The released prisonerswere coming down the prison-yard. 

The Cabinet Minister cranked up his engine with an unctuous glee. He wasboyishly happy because he and the Home Secretary had done them out ofthe Car of Victory and the thirteen white horses. 

The prison-gates opened. The Cabinet Minister and Drayton raised theircaps. 

The leaders, Mrs. Blathwaite and Angela Blathwaite and Mrs. Palmerston-Swete came first. Then Lady Victoria Threlfall. ThenDorothea. Then sixteen other women. 

Drayton did not look at them. He did not see what happened when theCabinet Minister met his wife. He did not see the sixteen other women. He saw nothing but Dorothea walking by herself. 

She had no hat on. Her clothes were as the great raid had left them, amonth ago. Her serge coat was torn at the breast pocket, thethree-cornered flap hung, showing the white lining. Anotherthree-cornered flap hung from her right knee. She carried her small, hawk-like head alert and high. Her face had the incomparable bloom ofyouth. Her eyes shone. They and her face showed no memory of theprison-cell, the plank-bed, and the prison walls; they showed no senseof Drayton's decency in coming to meet her, no sense of anything at allbut of the queerness, the greatness and the glory of the world--of him, perhaps, as a part of it. She stepped into the car as if they had met byappointment for a run into the country. "I shan't hurt your car. I'mquite clean, though you mightn't think it. The cells were all rightthis time. "

He disapproved of her, yet he adored her. 

"Dorothy, " he said, "do you want to go to that banquet?"

"No, but I've got to. I must go through with it. I swore I'd do thething completely or not at all. "

"It isn't till nine. We've three whole hours before we need start. "

"What are you going to do with me?"

"I'm going to take you home first. Then I suppose I shall have to driveyou down to that beastly banquet. "

"That won't take three and a half hours. It's a heavenly morning. Can'twe do something with it?"

"What would you like to do?"

"I'd like to stop at the nearest coffee-stall. I'm hungry. Then--Are youfrightfully sleepy?"

"Me? Oh, Lord, no. "

"Then let's go off somewhere into the country. " They went. 

 * * * * *

They pulled up in a green lane near Totteridge to finish the buns theyhad brought with them from the coffee-stall. 

"Did you ever smell anything like this lane? Did you ever eat anythinglike these buns? Did you ever drink anything like that divine coffee? Ifepicures had any imagination they'd go out and obstruct policemen andget put in prison for the sake of the sensations they'd haveafterwards. "

"That reminds me, " he said, "that I want to talk to you. No--butseriously. "

"I don't mind how seriously you talk if I may go on eating. "

"That's what I brought the buns for. So that I mayn't be interrupted. First of all I want to tell you that you haven't taken me in. Otherpeople may be impressed with this Holloway business, but not me. I'm notmoved, or touched, or even interested. "

"Still, " she murmured, "you did get up at three o'clock in the morning. "

"If you think I got up at three o'clock in the morning to show mysympathy, you're mistaken. "

"Sympathy? I don't need your sympathy. It was worth it, Frank. Thereisn't anything on earth like coming out of prison. Unless it isgoing in. "

"That won't work, Dorothy, when I know why you went in. It wasn't toprove your principles. Your principles were against that sort of thing. It wasn't to get votes for women. You know as well as I do that you'llnever get them that way. It wasn't to annoy Mr. Asquith. You knew Mr. Asquith wouldn't care a hang. It was to annoy me. "

"I wonder, " she said dreamily, "if I shall _ever_ be able to stopeating. "

"You can't take me in. I know too much about it. You said you were goingto keep out of rows. You weren't going on that deputation because itmeant a row. You went because I asked you not to go. "

"I did; and I should go again tomorrow for the same reason. "

"But it isn't a reason. It's not as if I'd asked you to go against yourconscience. Your conscience hadn't anything to do with it. "

"Oh, hadn't it! I went because you'd no right to ask me not to. "

"If I'd had the right you'd have gone just the same. "

"What do you mean by the right?"

"You know perfectly well what I mean. "

"Of course I do. You mean, and you meant that if I'd married you you'dhave had the right, not just to ask me not to, but to prevent me. Thatwas what I was out against. I'd be out against it tomorrow and the nextday, and for as long as you keep up that attitude. "

"And yet--you said you loved me. "

"So I did. So I do. But I'm out against that too. "

"Good Lord, against what?"

"Against your exploiting my love for your purposes. "

"My poor dear child, what do you suppose I wanted?"

She had reached the uttermost limit of absurdity, and in that moment shebecame to him helpless and pathetic. 

"I knew there was going to be the most infernal row and I wanted to keepyou out of it. Look here, you'd have thought me a rotter if I hadn't, wouldn't you?

"Of course you would. And there's another thing. You weren't straightabout it. You never told me you were going. "

"I never told you I wasn't. "

"I don't care, Dorothy; you weren't straight. You ought to have toldme. "

"How could I tell you when I knew you'd only go trying to stop me andgetting yourself arrested. "

"Not me. They wouldn't have touched me. "

"How was I to know that? If they had I should have dished you. And I'dhave stayed away rather than do that. I didn't tell Michael or Nicky orFather for the same reason. "

"You'd have stayed at home rather than have dished me? Do you reallymean that?"

"Of course I mean it. And I meant it. It's you, " she said, "who don'tcare. "

"How do you make that out?"

He really wanted to know. He really wanted, if it were possible, tounderstand her. 

"I make it out this way. Here have I been through the adventure and theexperience of my life. I was in the thick of the big raid; I was fourweeks shut up in a prison cell; and you don't care; you're notinterested. You never said to yourself, 'Dorothy was in the big raid, Iwonder what happened to her?' or 'Dorothy's in prison, I wonder howshe's feeling?' You didn't care; you weren't interested. 

"If it had happened to you, I couldn't have thought of anything else, Icouldn't have got it out of my head. I should have been wondering allthe time what you were feeling; I couldn't have rested till I knew. Itwould have been as if I was in prison myself. And now, when I've comeout, all you think of is how you can rag and score off me. "

She was sitting beside him on the green bank of the lane. Her hands wereclasped round her knees. One knickerbockered knee protruded through thethree-cornered rent in her skirt; she stared across the road, a long, straight stare that took no heed of what she saw, the grey road, andthe green bank on the other side, topped by its hedge of trees. 

Her voice sounded quiet in the quiet lane; it had no accent of self-pityor reproach. It was as if she were making statements that had noemotional significance whatever. 

She did not mean to hurt him, yet every word cut where he was sorest. 

"I wanted to tell you about it. I counted the days, the minutes till Icould tell you; but you wouldn't listen. You don't want to hear. "

"I won't listen if it's about women's suffrage. And I don't want to hearif it's anything awful about you. "

"It is about me, but it isn't awful. 

"That's what I want to tell you. 

"But, first of all--about the raid. I didn't mean to be in it at all, asit happens. I meant to go with the deputation because you told me notto. You're right about that. But I meant to turn back as soon as thepolice stopped us, because I hate rows with the police, and because Idon't believe in them, and because I told Angela Blathwaite I wasn'tgoing in with her crowd any way. You see, she called me a coward beforea lot of people and said I funked it. So I did. But I should have been abigger coward if I'd gone against my own will, just because of what shesaid. That's how she collars heaps of women. They adore her and they'reafraid of her. Sometimes they lie and tell her they're going in whentheir moment comes, knowing perfectly well that they're not going in atall. I don't adore her, and I'm not afraid of her, and I didn't lie. 

"So I went at the tail of the deputation where I could slip out when therow began. I swear I didn't mean to be in it. I funked it far too much. I didn't mind the police and I didn't mind the crowd. But I funked beingwith the women. When I saw their faces. You world have funked it. 

"And anyhow I don't like doing things in a beastly body. Ugh!

"And then they began moving. 

"The police tried to stop them. And the crowd tried. The crowd beganjeering at them. And still they moved. And the mounted police horses gotexcited, and danced about and reared a bit, and the crowd was in a funkthen and barged into the women. That was rather awful. 

"I could have got away then if I'd chosen. There was a man close to meall the time who kept making spaces for me and telling me to slipthrough. I was just going to when a woman fell. Somewhere in the frontof the deputation where the police were getting nasty. 

"Then I had to stay. I had to go on with them. I swear I wasn't excitedor carried away in the least. Two women near me were yelling at thepolice. I hated them. But I felt I'd be an utter brute if I left themand got off safe. You see, it was an ugly crowd, and things werebeginning to be jolly dangerous, and I'd funked it badly. Only the firstminute. It went--the funk I mean--when I saw the woman go down. She fellsort of slanting through the crowd, and it was horrible. I couldn't haveleft them then any more than I could have left children in aburning house. 

"I thought of you. "

"You thought of me?"

"Yes. I thought of you--how you'd have hated it. But I didn't care. Iwas sort of boosted up above caring. The funk had all gone and I wasabsolutely happy. Not insanely happy like some of the other women, butquietly, comfily happy. 

"After all, I didn't do anything you _need_ have minded. "

"What _did_ you do?" he said. 

"I just went on and stood still and refused to go back. I stuck my handsin my pockets so that I shouldn't let out at a policeman or anything (Iknew you wouldn't like _that_). I may have pushed a bit now and thenwith my shoulders and my elbows; I can't remember. But I didn't make onesound. I was perfectly lady-like and perfectly dignified. "

"I suppose you _know_ you haven't got a hat on?"

"It didn't _come_ off. I _took_ it off and threw it to the crowd whenthe row began. It doesn't matter about your hair coming down if youhaven't got a hat on, but if your hair's down and your hat's bashed inand all crooked you look a perfect idiot. 

"It wasn't a bad fight, you know, twenty-one women to I don't know howmany policemen, and the front ones got right into the doorway of St. Stephen's. That was where they copped me. 

"But that, isn't the end of it. 

"The fight was only the first part of the adventure. The wonderful thingwas what happened afterwards. In prison. 

"I didn't think I'd really _like_ prison. That was another thing Ifunked. I'd heard such awful things about it, about the dirt, you know. And there wasn't any dirt in my cell, anyhow. And after the crowds ofwomen, after the meetings and the speeches, the endless talking and theboredom, that cell was like heaven. 

"Thank God, it's always solitary confinement. The Government doesn'tknow that if they want to make prison a deterrent they'll shut us uptogether. You won't give the Home Secretary the tip, will you?

"But that isn't what I wanted to tell you about. 

"It was something bigger, something tremendous. You'll not believe thispart of it, but I was absolutely happy in that cell. It was a sort ofdeep-down unexcited happiness. I'm not a bit religious, but I _know_ howthe nuns feel in their cells when they've given up everything and shutthemselves up with God. The cell was like a convent cell, you know, asnarrow as that bit of shadow there is, and it had nice white-washedwalls, and a planked-bed in the corner, and a window high, high up. There ought to have been a crucifix on the wall above the plank-bed, butthere wasn't a crucifix. There was only a shiny black Bible onthe chair. 

"Really Frank, if you're to be shut up for a month with just one book, it had better be the Bible. Isaiah's ripping. I can remember heaps ofit: 'in the habitation of jackals, where they lay, shall be grass withreeds and rushes. And an highway shall be there ... The redeemed shallwalk there: and the ransomed of the Lord shall return with singing intoZion' ... 'They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; theyshall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary;they shall walk, and not faint. ' I used to read like anything; and Ithought of things. They sort of came to me. 

"That's what I wanted to tell you about. The things that came to me wereso much bigger than the thing I went in for. I could see all along weweren't going to get it that way. And I knew we _were_ going to get itsome other way. I don't in the least know how, but it'll be some big, tremendous way that'll make all this fighting and fussing seem therottenest game. That was one of the things I used to think about. "

"Then, " he said, "you've given it up? You're corning out of it?"

She looked at him keenly. "Are those still your conditions?"

He hesitated one second before he answered firmly. "Yes, those are stillmy conditions. You still won't agree to them?"

"I still won't agree. It's no use talking about it. You don't believe infreedom. We're incompatible. We don't stand for the same ideals. "

"Oh, Lord, what _does_ that matter?"

"It matters most awfully. "

"I should have thought, " said Drayton, "it would have mattered more ifI'd had revolting manners or an impediment in my speech or something. "

"It wouldn't, _really_. "

"Well, you seem to have thought about a lot of things. Did you ever oncethink about me, Dorothy?"

"Yes, I did. Have you ever read the Psalms? There's a jolly one thatbegins: 'Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands towar and my fingers to fight. ' I used to think of you when I read that. Ithought of you a lot. 

"That's what I was coming to. It was the queerest thing of all. Everything seemed ended when I went to prison. I knew you wouldn't carefor me after what I'd done--you must really listen to this, Frank--Iknew you couldn't and wouldn't marry me; and it somehow didn't matter. What I'd got hold of was bigger than that. I knew that all this Women'sSuffrage business was only a part of it, a small, ridiculous part. 

"I sort of saw the redeemed of the Lord. They were men, as well aswomen, Frank. And they were all free. They were all free because theywere redeemed. And the funny thing was that you were part of it. Youwere mixed up in the whole queer, tremendous business. Everything wasended. And everything was begun; so that I knew you understood even whenyou didn't understand. It was really as if I'd got you tight, somehow;and I knew you couldn't go, even when you'd gone. "

"And yet you don't see that it's a crime to force me to go. "

"I see that it would be a worse crime to force you to stay if you meangoing. 

"What time is it?"

"A quarter to eight. "

"And I've got to go home and have a bath. Whatever you do, don't make melate for that infernal banquet. You _are_ going to drive me there?"

"I'm going to drive you there, but I'm not going in with you. "

"Poor darling! Did I ask you to go in?"

He drove her back to her father's house. She came out of it burnishedand beautiful, dressed in clean white linen, with the broad red, whiteand blue tricolour of the Women's Franchise Union slanting acrossher breast. 

He drove her to the Banquet of the Prisoners, to the Imperial Hotel, Kingsway. They went in silence; for their hearts ached too much forspeaking. But in Dorothy's heart, above the aching, there was that queerexaltation that had sustained her in prison. 

He left her at the entrance of the hotel, where Michael and Nicholaswaited to receive her. 

Michael and Nicholas went in with her to the Banquet. They hated it, butthey went in. 

Veronica was with them. She too wore a white frock, with red, white andblue ribbons. 

"Drayton's a bit of a rotter, " Michael said, "not to see you through. "

"How can he when he feels like that about it?"

"As if we didn't feel!"

 * * * * *

Three hundred and thirty women and twenty men waited in the Banquet Hallto receive the prisoners. 

The high galleries were festooned with the red, white and blue of theWomen's Franchise Union, and hung with flags and blazoned banners. Thesilk standards and the emblems of the Women's Suffrage Leagues andSocieties, supported by their tall poles, stood ranged along threewalls. They covered the sham porphyry with gorgeous and heroic colours, purple and blue, sky-blue and sapphire blue and royal blue, black, whiteand gold, vivid green, pure gold, pure white, dead-black, orange andscarlet and magenta. 

From the high table under the windows streamed seven dependent tablesdecorated with nosegays of red, white and blue flowers. In the centre ofthe high table three arm-chairs, draped with the tricolour, were setlike three thrones for the three leaders. They were flanked by nineother chairs on the right and nine on the left for the eighteen otherprisoners. 

There was a slight rustling sound at the side door leading to the hightable. It was followed by a thicker and more prolonged sound of rustlingas the three hundred and fifty turned in their places. 

The twenty-one prisoners came in. 

A great surge of white, spotted with red and blue, heaved itself up inthe hall to meet them as the three hundred and fifty rose to their feet. 

And from the three hundred and fifty there went up a strange, a savageand a piercing collective sound, where a clear tinkling as of glass orthin metal, and a tearing as of silk, and a crying as of children and ofsmall, slender-throated animals were held together by ringing, vibrating, overtopping tones as of violins playing in the treble. Andnow a woman's voice started off on its own note and tore the delicatetissue of this sound with a solitary scream; and now a man's voicefilled up a pause in the shrill hurrahing with a solitary boom. 

To Dorothea, in her triumphal seat at Angela Blathwaite's right hand, toMichael and Nicholas and Veronica in their places among the crowd, thatcollective sound was frightful. 

From her high place Dorothea could see Michael and Nicholas, one on eachside of Veronica, just below her. At the same table, facing them, shesaw her three aunts, Louie, Emmeline and Edith. 

It was from Emmeline that those lacerating screams arose. 

 * * * * *

The breakfast and the speeches of the prisoners were over. The crowd wason its feet again, and the prisoners had risen in their high places. 

Out of the three hundred and seventy-one, two hundred and seventy-ninewomen and seven men were singing the Marching Song of theMilitant Women. 

 Shoulder to shoulder, breast to breast, Our army moves from east to west. Follow on! Follow on!

 With flag and sword from south and north, The sounding, shining hosts go forth. Follow on! Follow on!

 Do you not bear our marching feet, From door to door, from street to street? Follow on! Follow on!

Dorothea was fascinated and horrified by the singing, swaying, excitedcrowd. 

Her three aunts fascinated her. They were all singing at the top oftheir voices. Aunt Louie stood up straight and rigid. She sang from theback of her throat, through a mouth not quite sufficiently open; shesang with a grim, heroic determination to sing, whatever it might costher and other people. 

Aunt Edie sang inaudibly, her thin shallow voice, doing its utmost, wasoverpowered by the collective song. Aunt Emmeline sang shrill and loud;her body rocked slightly to the rhythm of a fantastic march. With onelarge, long hand raised she beat the measure of the music. Her head wasthrown back; and on her face there was a look of ecstasy, of a holyrapture, exalted, half savage, not quite sane. 

Dorothea was fascinated and horrified by Aunt Emmeline. 

The singing had threatened her when it began; so that she felt again herold terror of the collective soul. Its massed emotion threatened her. She longed for her white-washed prison-cell, for its hardness, itsnakedness, its quiet, its visionary peace. She tried to remember. Hersoul, in its danger, tried to get back there. But the soul of the crowdin the hail below her swelled and heaved itself towards her, drawn bythe Vortex. She felt the rushing of the whirlwind; it sucked at herbreath: the Vortex was drawing her, too; the powerful, abominable thingalmost got her. The sight of Emmeline saved her. 

She might have been singing and swaying too, carried away in the sameawful ecstasy, if she had not seen Emmeline. By looking at Emmeline shesaved her soul; it stood firm again; she was clear and hard and sane. 

She could look away from Emmeline now. She saw her brothers, Michael andNicholas. Michael's soul was the prey of its terror of the herd-soul. The shrill voices, fine as whipcord and sharp as needles, tortured him. Michael looked beautiful in his martyrdom. His fair, handsome face wasset clear and hard. His yellow hair, with its hard edges, fitted hishead like a cap of solid, polished metal. Weariness and disgust made asort of cloud over his light green eyes. When Nicky looked at himNicky's face twitched and twinkled. But he hated it almost as much asMichael hated it. 

She thought of Michael and Nicholas. They hated it, and yet they stuckit out. They wouldn't go back on her. She and Lady Victoria Threlfallwere to march on foot before the Car of Victory from Blackfriars Bridgealong the Embankment, through Trafalgar Square and Pall Mall andPiccadilly to Hyde Park Corner. And Michael and Nicholas would marchbeside them to hold up the poles of the standard which, after all, theywere not strong enough to carry. 

She thought of Drayton who had not stuck it out. And at the same timeshe thought of the things that had come to her in her prison cell. Shehad told him the most real thing that had ever happened to her, and hehad not listened. He had not cared. Michael would have listened. Michaelwould have cared intensely. 

She thought, "'I am not come to bring peace, but a sword. '" The swordwas between her and her lover. 

She had given him up. She had chosen, not between him and the Vortex, but between him and her vision which was more than either of them orthan all this. 

She looked at Rosalind and Maud Blackadder who sang violently in thehall below her. She had chosen freedom. She had given up her lover. Shewondered whether Rosalind or the Blackadder girl could have done asmuch, supposing they had had a choice?

Then she looked at Veronica. 

Veronica was standing between Michael and Nicholas. She was slender andbeautiful and pure, like some sacrificial virgin. Presently she would bemarching in the Procession. She would carry a thin, tall pole, with around olive wreath on the top of it, and a white dove sitting in thering of the olive wreath. And she would look as if she was not in theProcession but in another place. 

When Dorothea looked at her she was lifted up above the insane ecstasyand the tumult of the herd-soul. Her soul and the soul of Veronica wentalone in utter freedom. 

 Follow on! Follow on!

 For Faith's our spear and Hope's our sword, And Love's our mighty battle-lord. Follow on! Follow on!

 And Justice is our flag unfurled, The flaming flag that sweeps the world. Follow on! Follow on!

 And "Freedom!" is our battle-cry; For Freedom we will fight and die. Follow on! Follow on!

The Procession was over a mile long. 

It stretched all along the Embankment from Blackfriar's Bridge toWestminster. The Car of Victory, covered with the tricolour, and theBodyguard on thirteen white horses were drawn up beside Cleopatra'sNeedle and the Sphinxes. 

Before the Car of Victory, from the western Sphinx to NorthumberlandAvenue, were the long regiments of the Unions and Societies and Leagues, of the trades and the professions and the arts, carrying their banners, the purple and the blue, the black, white and gold, the green, theorange and the scarlet and magenta. 

Behind the Car of Victory came the eighteen prisoners with Lady VictoriaThrelfall and Dorothea at their head, under the immense tricolourstandard that Michael and Nicholas carried for them. Behind theprisoners, closing the Procession, was a double line of young girlsdressed in white with tricolour ribbons, each carrying a pole with theolive wreath and dove, symbolizing, with the obviousness of extremeinnocence, the peace that follows victory. They were led by Veronica. 

She did not know that she had been chosen to lead them because of heryouth and her processional, hieratic beauty; she thought that the Unionhad bestowed this honour on her because she belonged to Dorothea. 

From her place at the head of the Procession she could see the big red, white and blue standard held high above Dorothea and Lady VictoriaThrelfall. She knew how they would look; Lady Victoria, white and tense, would go like a saint and a martyr, in exaltation, hardly knowing whereshe was, or what she did; and Dorothea would go in pride, and in disdainfor the proceedings in which her honour forced her to take part; shewould have an awful knowledge of what she was doing and of where shewas; she would drink every drop of the dreadful cup she had poured outfor herself, hating it. 

Last night Veronica had thought that she too would hate it; she thoughtthat she would rather die than march in the Procession. But she did nothate it or her part in it. The thing was too beautiful and too big tohate, and her part in it was too little. 

She was not afraid of the Procession or of the soul of the Procession. She was not afraid of the thick crowd on the pavements, pressing closerand closer, pushed back continually by the police. Her soul was byitself. Like Dorothea's soul it went apart from the soul of the crowdand the soul of the Procession; only it was not proud; it wassimply happy. 

The band had not yet begun to play; but already she heard the musicsounding in her brain; her feet felt the rhythm of the march. 

Somewhere on in front the policemen made gestures of release, and thewhole Procession began to move. It marched to an unheard music, to therhythm that was in Veronica's brain. 

They went through what were once streets between walls of houses, andwere now broad lanes between thick walls of people. The visible aspectof things was slightly changed, slightly distorted. The houses stoodfarther back behind the walls of people; they were hung with people; aswarm of people clung like bees to the house walls. 

All these people were fixed where they stood or hung. In a still andstationary world the Procession was the only thing that moved. 

She had a vague, far-off perception that the crowd was friendly. 

A mounted policeman rode at her side. When they halted at thecross-streets he looked down at Veronica with an amused and benignexpression. She had a vague, far-off perception that the policeman wasfriendly. Everything seemed to her vague and far off. 

Only now and then it struck her as odd that a revolutionary Processionshould be allowed to fill the streets of a great capital, and that abody of the same police that arrested the insurgents should go with itto protect them, to clear their triumphal way before them, holding upthe entire traffic of great thoroughfares that their bands and theirbanners and their regiments should go through. She said to herself "Whata country! It couldn't happen in Germany; it couldn't happen in France, or anywhere in Europe or America. It could only happen in England. "

Now they were going up St. James's Street towards Piccadilly. The bandwas playing the Marseillaise. 

And with the first beat of the drum Veronica's soul came down from itsplace, and took part in the Procession. As long as they played theMarseillaise she felt that she could march with the Procession to theends of the world; she could march into battle to the Marseillaise; shecould fight to that music and die. 

The women behind her were singing under their breath. They sang thewords of the Women's Marseillaise. 

And Veronica, marching in front of them by herself, sang another song. She sang the Marseillaise of Heine and of Schumann. 

 "'Daun reitet mein Kaiser wohl über mein Grab, Viel' Schwerter klirren und blitzen; Dann steig' ich gewaffnet hervor aus mein Grab, -- Den Kaiser, den Kaiser zu schützen!'"

The front of the Procession lifted as it went up Tyburn Hill. 

Veronica could not see Michael and Nicholas, but she knew that they werethere. She knew it by the unusual steadiness of the standard that theycarried. Far away westwards, in the middle and front of the Procession, the purple and the blue, the gold and white, the green, the scarlet andorange and magenta standards rocked and staggered; they bent forwards;they were flung backwards as the west wind took them. But the red, whiteand blue standard that Michael and Nicholas carried went before her, steady and straight and high. 

And Veronica followed, carrying her thin, tall pole with the olivewreath on the top of it, and the white dove sitting in the ring of thewreath. She went with the music of Schumann and Heine sounding inher soul. 

XVII

Another year passed. 

Frances was afraid for Michael now. Michael was being drawn in. Becauseof his strange thoughts he was the one of all her children who had mosthidden himself from her; who would perhaps hide himself from her tothe very end. 

Nicholas had settled down. He had left the Morss Company and gone intohis father's business for a while, to see whether he could stand it. John was going into the business too when he left Oxford. John was evenlooking forward to his partnership in what he called "the Pater's oldtree-game. " He said, "You wait till I get my hand well in. Won't wemake it rip!"

John was safe. You could depend on him to keep out of trouble. He had nogenius for adventure. He would never strike out for himself any strangeor dangerous line. He had settled down at Cheltenham; he had settleddown at Oxford. 

And Dorothea had settled down. 

The Women's Franchise Union was now in the full whirl of its revolution. Under the inspiring leadership of the Blathwaites it ran riot up anddown the country. It smashed windows; it hurled stone ginger-beerbottles into the motor cars of Cabinet Ministers; it poured treacle intopillar-boxes; it invaded the House of Commons by the water-way, inbarges, from which women, armed with megaphones, demanded the vote frominfamous legislators drinking tea on the Terrace; it went up in balloonsand showered down propaganda on the City; now and then, just to showwhat violence it could accomplish if it liked, it burned down a house ortwo in a pure and consecrated ecstasy of Feminism. It was bringing toperfection its last great tactical manoeuvre, the massed raid followedby the hunger-strike in prison. And it was considering seriously thevery painful but possible necessity of interfering with Britishsport--say the Eton and Harrow Match at Lord's--in some drastic andterrifying way that would bring the men of England to their senses. 

And Dorothea's soul had swung away from the sweep of the whirlwind. Itwould never suck her in. She worked now in the office of the SocialReform Union, and wrote reconstructive articles for _The NewCommonwealth_ on Economics and the Marriage Laws. 

Frances was not afraid for her daughter. She knew that the revolutionwas all in Dorothea's brain. 

When she said that Michael was being drawn in she meant that he wasbeing drawn into the vortex of revolutionary Art. And since Francesconfused this movement with the movements of Phyllis Desmond she judgedit to be terrible. She understood from Michael that it was _the_ Vortex, the only one that really mattered, and the only one that would everdo anything. 

And Michael was not only in it, he was in it with Lawrence Stephen. 

Though Frances knew now that Lawrence Stephen had plans for Michael, shedid not realize that they depended much more on Michael himself than onhim. Stephen had said that if Michael was good enough he meant to helphim. If his poems amounted to anything he would publish them in his_Review_. If any book of Michael's poems amounted to anything he wouldgive a whole article to that book in his _Review_. If Michael's proseshould ever amount to anything he would give him regular work onthe _Review_. 

In nineteen-thirteen Michael Harrison was the most promising of therevolutionary young men who surrounded Lawrence Stephen, and his poemswere beginning to appear, one after another, in the _Green Review_. Hehad brought out a volume of his experiments in the spring of that year;they were better than those that Réveillaud had approved of two yearsago; and Lawrence Stephen had praised them in the _Green Review_. 

Lawrence Stephen was the only editor "out of Ireland, " as he said, whowould have had the courage either to publish them or to praise them. 

And when Frances realized Michael's dependence on Lawrence Stephen shewas afraid. 

"You wouldn't be, my dear, if you knew Larry, " Vera said. 

For Frances still refused to recognize the man who had taken FerdinandCameron's place. 

Lawrence Stephen was one of those Nationalist Irishmen who love Irelandwith a passion that satisfies neither the lover nor the beloved. It wasa pure and holy passion, a passion so entirely of the spirit as to becompatible with permanent bodily absence from its object. Stephen'sbody had lived at ease in England (a country that he declared his spirithated) ever since he had been old enough to choose a habitationfor himself. 

He justified his predilection on three grounds: Ireland had been takenfrom him; Ireland had been so ruined and raped by the Scotch and theEnglish that nothing but the soul of Ireland was left for Irishmen tolove. He could work and fight for Ireland better in London than inDublin. And again, the Irishman in England can make havoc in his turn;he can harry the English, he can spite, and irritate and triumph and gethis own back in a thousand ways. Living in England he would be a thornin England's side. 

And all this meant that there was no place in Ireland for a man of histalents and his temperament. His enemies called him an opportunist: buthe was a opportunist gone wrong, abandoned to an obstinate idealism, oneof those damned and solitary souls that only the north of Irelandproduces in perfection. For the Protestantism of Ulster breeds rebelslike no other rebels on earth, rebels as strong and obstinate and cannyas itself. Before he was twenty-one Stephen had revolted against thematerial comfort and the spiritual tyranny of his father's house. 

He was the great-grandson of an immigrant Lancashire cotton spinnersettled in Belfast. His western Irish blood was steeled with thismixture, and braced and embittered with the Scottish blood of Antrimwhere his people married. 

Therefore, if he had chosen one career and stuck to it he would havebeen formidable. But one career alone did not suffice for hisinexhaustible energies. As a fisher of opportunities he drew with toowide a net and in too many waters. He had tried parliamentary politicsand failed because no party trusted him, least of all his own. And yetfew men were more trustworthy. He turned his back on the House ofCommons and took to journalism. As a journalistic politician he ranNationalism for Ireland and Socialism for England. Neither Nationalistsnor Socialists believed in him; yet few men were more worthy of belief. In literature he had distinguished himself as a poet, a playwright, anovelist and an essayist. He did everything so well that he was supposednot to do anything quite well enough. Because of his politics other menof letters suspected his artistic sincerity; yet few artists were moresincere. His very distinction was unsatisfying. Without any of thequalities that make even a minor statesman, he was so far contaminatedby politics as to be spoiled for the highest purposes of art; yet therewas no sense in which he had achieved popularity. 

Everywhere he went he was an alien and suspected. Do what he would, hefell between two countries and two courses. Ireland had cast him out andEngland would none of him. He hated Catholicism and Protestantism alike, and Protestants and Catholics alike disowned him. To every Church andevery sect he was a free thinker, destitute of all religion. Yet few menwere more religious. His enemies called him a turner and a twister; yeton any one of his lines no man ever steered a straighter course. 

A capacity for turning and twisting might have saved him. It would atany rate have made him more intelligible. As it was, he presented to twocountries the disconcerting spectacle of a many-sided object moving withviolence in a dead straight line. He moved so fast that to a stationaryon-looker he was gone before one angle of him had been apprehended. Itwas for other people to turn and twist if any one of them was to get acomplete all-round view of the amazing man. 

But taken all round he passed for a man of hard wit and suspiciousbrilliance. 

And he belonged to no generation. In nineteen-thirteen he was not yetforty, too old to count among the young men, and yet too young for menof his own age. So that in all Ireland and all England you could nothave found a lonelier man. 

The same queer doom pursued him in the most private and sacred relationsof his life. To all intents and purposes he was married to Vera Harrisonand yet he was not married. He was neither bound nor free. 

All this had made him sorrowful and bitter. 

And to add to his sorrowfulness and bitterness he had something of theCelt's spiritual abhorrence of the flesh; and though he loved Vera, after his manner, there were moments when Vera's capacity foreverlasting passion left him tired and bored and cold. 

All his life _his_ passions had been at the service of ideas. All hislife he had looked for some great experience, some great satisfactionand consummation; and he had not found it. 

In nineteen-thirteen, with half his life behind him, the opportunist wasstill waiting for his supreme opportunity. 

Meanwhile his enemies said of him that he snatched. 

But he did not snatch. The eyes of his idealism were fixed too steadilyon a visionary future. He merely tried, with a bored and weary gesture, to waylay the passing moment while he waited. He had put his politicalfailure behind him and said, "I will be judged as an artist or not atall. " They judged him accordingly and their judgment was wrong. 

There was not the least resemblance between Lawrence Stephen as he wasin himself and Lawrence Stephen as he appeared to the generation justbehind him. To conservatives he passed for the leader of the revolutionin contemporary art, and yet the revolution in contemporary art washappening without him. He was not the primal energy in the movement ofthe Vortex. In nineteen-thirteen his primal energies were spent, and hewas trusting to the movement of the Vortex to carry him a little fartherthan he could have gone by his own impetus. He was attracted to theyoung men of the Vortex because they were not of the generation that hadrejected him, and because he hoped thus to prolong indefinitely his ownyouth. They were attracted to him because of his solitary distinction, his comparative poverty, and his unpopularity. A prosperous, well-established Stephen would have revolted them. He gave therevolutionaries the shelter of his _Review_, the support of his name, and the benefit of his bored and wearied criticism. They brought him inreturn a certain homage founded on his admirable appreciation of theirmerits and tempered by their sense of his dealings with the past theyabominated. 

"Stephen is a bigot, " said young Morton Ellis; "he believes inSwinburne. "

Stephen smiled at him in bored and weary tolerance. 

He believed in too many things for his peace of mind. He knew that theyoung men distrusted him because of his beliefs, and because of hisdealings with the past; because he refused to destroy the old gods whenhe made place for the new. 

 * * * * *

Young Morton Ellis lay stretched out at his ease on the couch inStephen's study. 

He blinked and twitched as he looked up at his host with half irritated, half affable affection. 

The young men came and went at their ease in and out of that house inSt. John's Wood which Lawrence Stephen shared with Vera Harrison. Theywere at home there. Their books stood in his bookcase; they laid theirmanuscripts on his writing table and left them there; they claimed hisempty spaces for the hanging of their pictures yet unsold. 

Every Friday evening they met together in the long, low room at the topof the house, and they talked. 

Every Friday evening Michael left his father's house to meet them there, and to listen and to talk. 

To-night, round and about Morton Ellis, the young poet, were AustenMitchell, the young painter, and Paul Monier-Owen, the young sculptor, and George Wadham, the last and youngest of Morton Ellis's disciples. 

Lawrence Stephen stood among them like an austere guest in somerendezvous of violent youth, or like the priest of some romanticreligion that he has blasphemed yet not quite abjured. He was lean anddark and shaven; his black hair hung forward in two masses, smooth andstraight and square; he had sorrowful, bitter eyes, and a bitter, sorrowful mouth, the long Irish upper lip fine and hard drawn, while thelower lip quivered incongruously, pouted and protested and recanted, wassceptical and sensitive and tender. His short, high nose had wide yetfastidious nostrils. 

It was at this figure that Morton Ellis continued to gaze withaffability and irritation. It was this figure that Vera's eyes followedwith anxious, restless passion, as if she felt that at any moment hemight escape her, might be off, God knew where. 

Lawrence Stephen was ill at ease in that house and in the presence ofhis mistress and his friends. 

"I believe in the past, " he said, "because I believe in the future. Iwant continuity. Therefore I believe in Swinburne; and I believe inBrowning and in Tennyson and Wordsworth; I believe in Keats and Shelleyand in Milton. But I do not believe, any more than you do, in theirimitators. I believe in destroying their imitators. I do not believe indestroying them. "

"You can't destroy their imitators unless you destroy them. They breedthe disgusting parasites. Their memories harbour them like a stinkingsuit of old clothes. They must be scrapped and burned if we're to getrid of the stink. Art has got to be made young and new and clean. Thereisn't any disinfectant that'll do the trick. So long as old masters arekow-towed to as masters people will go on imitating them. When a poetceases to be a poet and becomes a centre of corruption, he must go. "

Michael said, "How about _us_ when people imitate us? Have we got togo?"

Morton Ellis looked at him and blinked. "No, " he said. "No. We haven'tgot to go. "

"I don't see how you get out of it. "

"I get out of it by doing things that can't be imitated. "

There was a silence in which everybody thought of Mr. George Wadham. Itmade Mr. Wadham so uncomfortable that he had to break it. 

"I say, how about Shakespeare?" he said. 

"Nobody, so far, _has_ imitated Shakespeare, any more than they have_succeeded_ in imitating me. "

There was another silence while everybody thought of Morton Ellis as theimitator of every poetic form under the sun except the forms adopted byhis contemporaries. 

"That's all very well, Ellis, " said Stephen, "but you aren't the HolyGhost coming down out of heaven. We can trace your sources. "

"My dear Stephen, I never said I was the Holy Ghost. Nobody ever doescome down out of heaven. You _can_ trace my sources, thank God, becausethey're clean. I haven't gone into every stream that swinelike--and--and--and--and--" (he named five contemporary distinctions)"have made filthy with their paddling. "

He went on. "The very damnable question that you've raised, Harrison, isabsurd. You believe in the revolution. Well then, supposing therevolution's coming--you needn't suppose it, because it's come. We_are_ the revolution--the revolution means that we've made a clean sweepof the past. In the future no artist will want to imitate anybody. Noartist will be allowed to exist unless he's prepared to be buried aliveor burned alive rather than corrupt the younger generation with theprocesses and the products of his own beastly dissolution. 

"That's why violence is right. 

 "'O Violenza, sorgi, balena in questo cielo Sanguigno, stupra le albe, irrompi come incendio nei vesperi, fa di tutto il sereno una tempesta, fa di tutta la vita una bataglia, fa con tutte le anime un odio solo!'

"There's no special holiness in violence. Violence is right because it'snecessary. "

"You mean it's necessary because it's right. "

Austen Mitchell spoke. He was a sallow youth with a broad, flat-featured, British face, but he had achieved an appearance of greatstrangeness and distinction by letting his hay-coloured hair grow longand cultivating two beards instead of one. 

"Violence, " he continued, "is not a means; it's an end! Energy must begot for its own sake, if you want to generate more energy instead ofstanding still. The difference between Pastism and Futurism is thedifference between statics and dynamics. Futurist art is simply art thathas gone on, that, has left off being static and become dynamic. Itexpresses movement. Owen will tell you better than I can why itexpresses movement. "

A light darted from the corner of the room where Paul Monier-Owen hadcurled himself up. His eyes flashed like the eyes of a young wild animalroused in its lair. 

Paul Monier-Owen was dark and soft and supple. At a little distance hehad the clumsy grace and velvet innocence of a black panther, half cub, half grown. The tips of his ears, the corners of his prominent eyes, hiseyebrows and his long nostrils tilted slightly upwards and backwards. Under his slender, mournful nose his restless smile showed the whiteteeth of a young animal. 

Above this primitive, savage base of features that responded incessantlyto any childish provocation, the intelligence of Monier-Owen watched inhis calm and beautiful forehead and in his eyes. 

He said, "It expresses movement, because it presents objects directly ascutting across many planes. To do this you have to break up objects intothe lines and masses that compose them, and project those lines andmasses into space on any curve, at any angle, according to the planesyou mean them to cross, otherwise the movements you mean them toexpress. The more planes intersected the more movement you get. Bydecomposing figures you compose movements. By decomposing groups offigures you compose groups of movement. Nothing but a cinema canrepresent objects as intact and as at the same time moving; and even thecinema only does this by a series of decompositions so minute as toescape the eye. 

"You want to draw a battle-piece or the traffic at Hyde Park Corner. Itcan't be done unless you break up your objects as Mitchell breaks themup. You want to carve figures in the round, wrestling or dancing. Itcan't be done unless you dislocate their lines and masses as I dislocatethem, so as to throw them all at once into those planes that the intactbody could only have traversed one after another in a given time. 

"By taking time into account as well as space we produce rhythm. 

"I know what you're going to say, Stephen. The Dancing Faun and theFrieze of the Parthenon express movements. But they do nothing of thesort. They express movements arrested at a certain point. They aresupposed to represent nature, but they do not even do that, becausearrested motion is a contradiction in terms, and because the point ofarrest is an artificial and arbitrary thing. 

"Your medium limits you. You have to choose between the intact bodywhich is stationary and the broken and projected bodies which are inmovement. That is why we destroy or suppress symmetry in the figure andin design. Because symmetry is perfect balance which is immobility. If Iwanted to present perfect rest I should do it by an absolute symmetry. "

"And there's more in it than that, " said Austen Mitchell. "We're outagainst the damnable affectations of naturalism and humanism. If I drawa perfect likeness of a fat, pink woman I've got a fat, pink woman andnothing else but a fat pink woman. And a fat, pink woman is a work ofNature, not a work of art. And I'm lying. I'm presenting as a realitywhat is only an appearance. The better the likeness the bigger the lie. But movement and rhythm are realities, not appearances. When I presentrhythm and movement I've done something. I've made reality appear. "

He went on to unfold a scheme for restoring vigour to the exhaustedlanguage by destroying its articulations. These he declared to be purelyarbitrary, therefore fatal to the development of a spontaneous andindividual style. By breaking up the rigid ties of syntax, you do morethan create new forms of prose moving in perfect freedom, you deliverthe creative spirit itself from the abominable contact with dead ideas. Association, fixed and eternalized by the structure of the language, isthe tyranny that keeps down the live idea. 

"We've got to restore the innocence of memory, as Gauguin restored theinnocence of the eye. "

 * * * * *

Michael noticed that the talk was not always sustained at thisconstructive level. And to-night, towards twelve o'clock, it dropped andbroke in a welter of vituperation. It was, first, a frenzied assault onthe Old Masters, a storming of immortal strongholds, a tearing andscattering of the wing feathers of archangels; then, from this highadventure it sank to a perfunctory skirmishing among living eminencesover forty, judged, by reason of their age, to be too contemptible foran attack in force. It rallied again to a bombing and blasting of minuteineptitudes, the slaughter of "swine like ---- and ---- and ---- and---- and ----"; and ended in a furious pursuit of a volatile young poet, Edward Rivers, who had escaped by sheer levity from the tug of theVortex, and was setting up a small swirl of his own. 

Michael was with the revolutionaries heart and soul; he believed inMorton Ellis and Austen Mitchell and Monier-Owen even more than hebelieved in Lawrence Stephen, and almost as much as he believed in JulesRéveillaud. They stood for all the realities and all the ideas and allthe accomplishments to which he himself was devoted. He had no sort ofqualms about the wholesale slaughter of the inefficient. 

But to-night, as he listened to these voices, he felt again his oldhorror of the collective soul. The voices spoke with a terribleunanimity. The vortex--_the_ Vortex--was like the little vortex ofschool. The young men, Ellis and Mitchell and Monier-Owen belonged to aherd like the school-herd, hunting together, crying together, saying thesame thing. Their very revolt against the Old Masters was a collectiveand not an individual revolt. Their chase was hottest when their quarrywas one of the pack who had broken through and got away. They hated thefugitive, solitary private soul. 

And yet it was only as private souls that Ellis and Mitchell andMonier-Owen counted. Each by himself did good things; each, if he hadthe courage to break loose and go by himself, might do a great thingsome day. Even George Wadham might do something if he could get awayfrom Ellis and the rest. Edward Rivers had had courage. 

Michael thought: "It's Rivers now. It'll be my turn next" But he had agreat longing to break loose and get away. 

He thought: "I don't know where they're all going to end. They thinkthey're beginning something tremendous; but I can't see what's to comeof it. And I don't see how they can go on like that for ever. I can'tsee what's coming. Yet something must come. _They_ can't be the end. "

He thought: "Their movement is only a small swirl in an immense Vortex. It may suck them all down. But it will clear the air. They will havehelped to clear it. "

He thought of himself going on, free from the whirl of the Vortex, andof his work as enduring; standing clear and hard in the clean air. 

PART III

VICTORY

XVIII

It was July, nineteen-fourteen, a month remarkable in the British Islesbecause of the fine weather and the disturbances in the politicalatmosphere due to the fine weather. 

Every other evening in that July Anthony Harrison reminded his familythat fine weather is favourable to open-air politics, and that the mereoff-chance of sunstroke is enough to bring out the striker. And whenMichael asked him contentiously what the weather had to do with HomeRule, he answered that it had everything to do with it by increasingparliamentary blood-pressure. 

"Wait, " he said, "till we get a good thunderstorm You'll see how longthe strike'll last, and what Sir Edward Carson has to say to Mr. Redmond then. "

Anthony kept his head. He had seen strikes before, and he knew that HomeRule had never been a part of practical politics and never would be. 

And Michael and Dorothea laughed at him. They had their own views aboutthe Home Rule question and the Labor question, and they could have toldAnthony what the answers were going to be; only they said it wasn't anygood talking to Father; when he got an idea into his dear old head itstuck there. 

Now, on Mother, if you talked to her long enough, you could make someimpression; you could get ideas into her head and you could getthem out. 

Frances, no longer preoccupied with the care of young children, had timefor the affairs of the nation. She was a more intelligent woman than theMrs. Anthony Harrison who, nineteen years ago, informed herself of theaffairs of the nation from a rapid skimming of the _Times_. In the lastfour years the affairs of the nation had thrust themselves violentlyupon her attention. She had even realized the Woman's Suffrage movementas a vivid and vital affair, since Dorothy had taken part in thefighting and had gone to prison. 

Frances, sitting out this July under her tree of Heaven with the_Times_, had a sense of things about to happen if other things didn'thappen to prevent them. At any rate she had no longer any reason tocomplain that nothing happened. 

It was the Home Rule crisis now. The fact that England and Ireland wereon the edge of civil war was brought home to her, not so much by thehead-lines in the papers as by the publication of her son Michael'sinsurgent poem, "Ireland, " in the Green Review. 

For Michael had not grown out of his queer idea. He was hardly thirteenwhen he had said that civil war between England and Ireland would beglorious if the Irish won, and he was saying it still. His poem was thegreen flag that he flew in the face of his family and of his country. Neither Frances nor Anthony would have been likely to forget theimminence of civil war (only that they didn't really believe in it), when from morning till night Michael talked and wrote of nothing else. In this Michael was not carried away by collective feeling; his dream ofIreland's freedom was a secret and solitary dream. Nobody he knewshared it but Lawrence Stephen. The passion he brought to it made himhot and restless and intense. Frances expressed her opinion of the Irishcrisis when she said, "I wish that Carson man would mind his ownbusiness. This excitement is very bad for Michael. "

And she thanked Heaven that Ireland was not England, and that none ofthem lived there. If there was civil war in Ireland for a week or two, Anthony and the boys would be out of it. 

Frances was also alive to the war between Capital and Labour. There was, indeed, something very intimate and personal to Frances in thisparticular affair of the nation; for Anthony's business was beingdisagreeably affected by the strike in the building trade. 

So much so that Anthony had dismissed his chauffeur and given up hisidea of turning the stable loft into a billiard-room. He had eventhought of trying to let the shooting-box and the cottage on theYorkshire moors which he had bought, unforeseeingly, in the spring oflast year; but Michael and Nicholas had persuaded him that this extrememeasure was unnecessary. 

And Frances, even with the strike hanging over her, was happy. For thechildren, at their first sight of possible adversity, were showing whatwas in them. Their behaviour made her more arrogant than ever. Michaeland Dorothea had given up their allowances and declared their completeability to support themselves. (They earned about fifty pounds a yeareach on an average. ) She had expected this from Dorothy, but not fromMichael. Nicholas was doing the chauffeur's work in his absence; andJohn showed eagerness to offer up his last year at Oxford; he pressed iton his father as his contribution to the family economies. 

Veronica brought her minute dividends (paid to her every quarter throughFerdinand Cameron's solicitors), and laid them at Frances's andAnthony's feet. ("As if, " Anthony said, "I could have taken her poorlittle money!") Veronica thought she could go out as a music teacher. 

There were moments when Frances positively enjoyed the strike. Her mindrefused to grasp the danger of the situation. She suspected Anthony ofexaggerating his losses in order to draw out Dorothy and Michael andNicholas and John, and wallow in their moral beauty. He, too, wasarrogant. He was convinced that, though there might be girls likeDorothea, there were no boys like his three Sons. As for the strike inthe building trade, strikes, as Anthony insisted, had happened before, and none of them had threatened for very long either Frances's peace ofmind or Anthony's prosperity. 

The present strike was not interfering in the least with Mrs. AnthonyHarrison's Day, the last of the season. It fell this year, on thetwenty-fifth of July. 

Long afterwards she remembered it by what happened at the end of it. 

Frances's Day--the fourth Saturday in the month--was one of those slightchanges that are profoundly significant. It stood for regeneration and achange of heart. It marked the close of an epoch. Frances's life ofexclusive motherhood had ended; she had become, or was at any ratetrying to become, a social creature. Her Day had bored her terribly atfirst, when it didn't frighten her; she was only just beginning to getused to it; and still, at times, she had the air of not taking itseriously. It had been forced on her. Dorothea had decided that she musthave a Day, like other people. 

She had had it since Michael's first volume of Poems had come out in thespring of the year before, when the young men who met every Fridayevening in Lawrence Stephen's study began to meet at Michael'sfather's house. 

Anthony liked to think that his house was the centre of all thispalpitating, radiant life; of young men doing all sorts of wonderful, energetic, important, interesting things. They stirred the air about himand kept it clean; he liked the sound of their feet and of their voices, and of their laughter. And when the house was quiet and Anthony hadFrances to himself he liked that, too. 

But Frances thought: "If only they wouldn't come quite so often--if onlyI could have my children sometimes to myself!"

It was the last rebellion of her flesh that had borne and suckled them. 

There was this to be said for Frances's Day that it attracted anddiverted, and confined to one time and one place a whole crowd oftiresome people, who, without it, would have spread themselves over thewhole month; also that it gave a great deal of innocent happiness to the"Poor dears. " Frances meant old Mrs. Fleming, and Louie and Emmeline andEdith Fleming, who figured as essential parts of the social event. Shemeant Mr. And Mrs. Jervis, who, in the inconceivability of their absenceon Frances's Bay, wondered more than ever why their daughter Rosalindfound them so impossible. She meant Mr. Vereker and Mr. Norris from theoffice, and their wives and children, and Anthony's secretary, MissLathom. If Miss Lathom were not engaged to young George Vereker, shesoon would be, to judge by the behaviour of their indiscreet andguileless faces. 

Frances also meant her brother-in-law, Bartholomew, home from India forgood, and cherishing a new disease, more secret and more dangerous thanhis cancer; she meant her brother Maurice, who was genuinely invalided, who had come back from California for the last time and would never besent out anywhere again. 

Dorothea had said: "Let's kill them all off in one awful day. " Franceshad said: "Yes, but we must do it decently. We must be kind to them, poor dears!"

Above all they must be decent to Grannie and the Aunties, and to UncleMorrie and Uncle Bartie. That was the only burden she had laid on herchildren. It was a case of noblesse oblige; their youth constrainedthem. They had received so much, and they had been let off so much; notone of them had inherited the taint that made Maurice and EmmelineFleming and Bartie Harrison creatures diseased and irresponsible. Theycould afford to be pitiful and merciful. 

And now that the children were grown up Frances could afford to bepitiful and merciful herself. She could even afford to be grateful tothe poor dears. She looked on Maurice and Emmeline and Bartie asscapegoats, bearers of the hereditary taint, whose affliction left herchildren clean. She thought of them more and more in this sacred andsacrificial character. At fifty-two Frances could be gentle over thethings that had worried and irritated her at thirty-three. Like Anthonyshe was still young and strong through the youth and strength ofher children. 

And the poor dears were getting weak and old. Grannie was seventy-nine, and Maurice, the youngest of that generation, was forty-nine, and helooked sixty. Every year Frances was more acutely aware of their pathos, their futility, their mortality. They would be broken and gone so soonand so utterly, leaving no name, no sign or memorial of themselves; onlyliving in the memories of her children who would remain. 

And, with an awful sense of mortality surrounding them, her children hadlearned that they must be kind because the old people would be gonewhile they endured and remained. 

This Saturday being the last of the season, they had all come; not onlythe Flemings, but the Jervises and Verekers and Norrises, and UncleBartie. The fine weather alone would have brought them. 

Bartie, more morose and irritable than ever, sat under the tree ofHeaven and watched the triumphal progress of the Day. He scowled darklyand sourly at each group in turn; at the young men in white flannelsplaying tennis; at Mr. And Mr. Jervis and the Verekers and Norrises; atthe Flemings, old Mrs. Fleming, and Louie and Emmeline and Edith, andthe disgraceful Maurice, all five of them useless pensioners on hisbrother's bounty; Maurice a thing of battered, sodden flesh hangingloose on brittle bone, a rickety prop for the irreproachable summersuit bought with Anthony's money. He scowled at the tables covered withfine white linen, and at the costly silver and old china, at thesandwiches and cakes and ices, and the piled-up fruits and the claretcup and champagne cup glowing and shining in the tall glass jugs, and atthe pretty maidservants going to and fro in their accomplished service. 

Bartie wondered how on earth Anthony managed it. His wonder was a savagejoy to Bartie. 

Mr. Jervis, a heavy, pessimistic man, wondered how they managed it, andMr. Jervis's wonder had its own voluptuous quality. Mr. Vereker and Mr. Norris, who held that a strike was a downright serious matter, alsowondered. But they were sustained by their immense belief in Mr. Anthony. Mr. Anthony knew what he was doing; he always had known. Astrike might be serious while it lasted, but it didn't last. And Mr. Nicholas was in the business now, and Mr. John was coming into it nextyear, and Mr. Nicholas might be married again by that time; and thechances were that the firm of Harrison and Harrison would last longenough to provide for a young Vereker and a still younger Norris. 

In spite of the strike, Mr. And Mrs. Vereker and Mr. And Mrs. Norris, like Frances and Anthony, were extraordinarily cheerful that afternoon. 

So were young George Vereker and Miss Lathom. 

"I can't think why I feel so happy, " said Mrs. Vereker to Mrs. Norris. She was looking at her son George. 

"Nor I, either, " said Miss Lathom, who was trying suddenly to look atnothing in particular. 

Miss Lathom lied and Mrs. Vereker lied; they knew perfectly well whythey were happy. Each knew that the other lied; each knew that the otherknew she knew; and neither of them could have said why she found it sonecessary to lie. 

And to Frances this happiness of Mrs. Vereker, and of young Vereker andMiss Lathom was significant and delightful, as if she had beenpersonally responsible for it. 

 * * * * *

A day flashed out of her memory on a trail of blue larkspurs and ofsomething that she had forgotten, something that was mixed up with Mr. And Mrs. Jervis and Rosalind. She stared at the larkspurs as if theyheld the clue--Nicky's face appeared among the tall blue spires, Nicky'sdarling face tied up in a scarf, brown stripes and yellowstripes--something to do with a White Cake--it must have been somebody'sbirthday. Now she had it--Mr. Jervis's cricket scarf. It was the day ofNicky's worst earache, the day when Mr. Vereker climbed the tree ofHeaven--was it possible that Mr. Vereker had ever climbed thattree?--the day when Michael wouldn't go to the party--Rosalind'sbirthday. 

Eight candles burning for Rosalind. Why, it was nineteen years ago. Don-Don was a baby then, and Michael and Nicky were only little boys. And look at them now!

She fed her arrogance by gazing on the tall, firmly knit, slender bodiesof her sons, in white flannels, playing furiously and well. 

"Dorothy is looking very handsome, " Mrs. Jervis said. Yes, certainlyDorothy was looking handsome; but Frances loved before all things themale beauty of her sons. In Michael and Nicholas it had reachedperfection, the clean, hard perfection that would last, as Anthony'shad lasted. 

She thought of their beauty that had passed from her, dying many deaths, each death hurting her; the tender mortal beauty of babyhood, ofchildhood, of boyhood; but this invulnerable beauty of their youngmanhood would be with her for a long time. John would have it. John wasonly a fairer Nicholas; but as yet his beauty had not hardened; hisboyhood lingered in the fine tissues of his mouth, and in his eyelidsand the soft corners of his eyes; so that in John she could still seewhat Nicky had been. 

She had adored Anthony's body, as if she had foreseen that it would giveher such sons as these; and in her children she had adored the smallbodies through whose clean, firm beauty she foresaw the beauty of theirmanhood. These were the same bodies, the same faces that she had lovedin them as children; nothing was blurred or twisted or overlaid. 

Michael at six-and-twenty was beautiful and serious as she had foreseenhim. Frances knew that Michael had genius, and at other moments she wasproud of his genius; but at this particular moment, sitting beside herfriend and conscious of her jealousy, she was chiefly aware of his body. 

Michael's body was quiescent; its beauty gave her a proud, but austereand tranquil satisfaction. It was when she looked at her second son thatsomething caught at her breath and held it. She saw him as the loverand bridegroom of Veronica. Her sense of his virility was terrible toher and delightful. 

Perhaps they were engaged already. 

And Frances was sorry for Mrs. Jervis, who had borne no sons, who hadonly borne one unattractive and unsatisfactory daughter. She used to besorry for her because Rosalind was pink and fat and fluffy; she wassorry for her now because Rosalind was unsatisfactory. She was sorry forMrs. Norris because her boy could never grow up like Michael or Nicholasor John. She was sorry for Mrs. Vereker because George, though he lookedall right when he was by himself, became clumsy and common at oncebeside Michael and Nicholas and John. George was also in white flannels;he played furiously and well; he played too furiously and tooconsciously well; he was too damp and too excited; his hair became dampand excited as he played; his cries had a Cockney tang. 

Her arrogance nourished itself on these contrasts. 

Mrs. Jervis looked wistfully at the young men as they played. She lookedstill more wistfully at Dorothy. 

"What do you do, " she said, "to keep your children with you?"

"I do nothing, " Frances said. "I don't try to keep them. I've neverappealed to their feelings for my own purposes, or taken advantage oftheir affection, that's all. 

"They know that if they want to walk out of the house to-morrow, andstay out, they can. Nobody'll stop them. "

There was a challenging, reminiscent glint in Mr. Jervis's eyes, and hiswife was significantly silent. Frances knew what they were thinking. 

"Nicky, " she said, "walked out; but he came back again as soon as hewas in trouble. Michael walks out and goes abroad every year; but hecomes back again. Dorothy walks out, but she's never dreamed of notcoming back again. "

"Of course, if you aren't afraid of taking risks, " said Mr. Jervis. 

"I am afraid. But I've never shown it. "

"It's very strange that Dorothy hasn't married. " Mrs. Jervis spoke. Shederived comfort from the thought that Dorothy was eight-and-twenty andnot married. 

"Dorothy, " said Frances, "could marry to-morrow if she wanted to; butshe doesn't want. "

She was sorry for her friend, but she really could not allow her thatconsolation. 

"Veronica is growing up very good-looking, " said Mrs. Jervis then. 

But it was no use. Frances was aware that Veronica was grown up, andthat she was good-looking, and that Nicky loved her; but Mrs. Jervis'sshafts fell wide of all her vulnerable places. Frances was nolonger afraid. 

"Veronica, " she said, "is growing up very good. " It was not the word shewould have chosen, yet it was the only one she could think of as likelyto convey to Mrs. Jervis what she wanted her to know, though it left herobtuseness without any sense of Veronica's mysterious quality. 

She herself had never tried to think of a word for it before; she wasonly driven to it now because she detected in her friend's tone achallenge and a warning. It was as if Rosalind's mother had said, extensively and with pointed reference to the facts: "Veronica isdangerous. Her mother has had adventures. She is grown-up and she isgood-looking, and Nicky is susceptible to that sort of thing. If youdon't look out he will be caught again. The only difference betweenPhyllis Desmond and Veronica is in their skins. "

So when Frances said Veronica was good, she meant that Mrs. Jervisshould understand, once for all, that she was not in the least like hermother or like Phyllis Desmond. 

That was enough for Mrs. Jervis. But it was not enough for Frances, whofound her mind wandering off from Rosalind's mother and looking for theword of words that would express her own meaning to her ownsatisfaction. 

Her thoughts went on deep down under the stream of conversation thatflowed through her from Mrs. Jervis on her right hand to Mrs. Verekerand Mrs. Norris on her left. 

Veronica was good. But she was not wrapped up in other people's lives asFrances was wrapped up. She was wrapped up, not in herself, but in somelife of her own that, as Frances made it out, had nothing in the worldto do with anybody else's. 

And yet Veronica knew what you were feeling and what you were thinking, and what you were going to do, and what was happening to you. (She hadreally known, in Dresden, what was happening to Nicky when Desmond madehim marry her. ) It was as if in her the walls that divide every soulfrom every other soul were made of some thin and porous stuff that letthings through. And in this life of yours, for the moments that sheshared it, she lived intensely, with uncanny delight and pain that wereher own and not her own. 

And Frances wanted some hard, tight theory that would reconcile theseextremes of penetration and detachment. 

She remembered that Ferdinand Cameron had been like that. He saw things. He was a creature of queer, sudden sympathies and insights. She supposedit was the Highland blood in both of them. 

Mrs. Vereker on her right expressed the hope that Mr. Bartholomew wasbetter. Frances said he never would be better till chemists wereforbidden to advertise and the _British Medical Journal_ and _TheLancet_ were suppressed. Bartie would read them; and they supplied himwith all sorts of extraordinary diseases. 

She thought: Seeing things had not made poor Ferdie happy; and Veronicain her innermost life was happy. She had been happy when she came backfrom Germany, before she could have known that Nicky cared for her, before Nicky knew it himself. 

Supposing she had known it all the time? But that, Frances said toherself, was nonsense. If she had known as much as all that, why shouldshe have suffered so horribly that she had nearly died of it?Unless--supposing--it had been his suffering that she had nearlydied of?

Mrs. Norris on her left was saying that she was sorry to see Mr. Mauricelooking so sadly; and Frances heard herself replying that Morrie hadn'tbeen fit for anything since he was in South Africa. 

Between two pop-gun batteries of conversation the serious themesustained itself. She thought: Then, Nicky had suffered. And Veronicawas the only one who knew. She knew more about Nicky than Nicky'smother. This thought was disagreeable to Frances. 

It was all nonsense. She didn't really believe that these thingshappened. Yet, why not? Michael said they happened. Even Dorothy, whodidn't believe in God and immortality or anything, believed that. 

She gave it up; it was beyond her; it bothered her. 

"Yes. Seventy-nine her last birthday. "

Mrs. Norris had said that Mrs. Fleming was wonderful. 

Frances thought: "It's wonderful what Veronica does to them. "

 * * * * *

The sets had changed. Nicholas and a girl friend of Veronica's playedagainst George Vereker and Miss Lathom; John, with Mr. Jervis for hishandicap, played against Anthony and Mr. Norris. The very young Norrisfielded. All afternoon he had hoped to distinguish himself by catchingsome ball in full flight as it went "out. " It was a pure and highambition, for he knew he was so young and unimportant that only the eyesof God and of his mother watched him. 

Michael had dropped out of it. He sat beside Dorothy under the tree ofHeaven and watched Veronica. 

"Veronica's wonderful, " he said. "Did you see that?"

Dorothy had seen. 

Veronica had kept Aunt Emmeline quiet all afternoon. She bad made Bartieeat an ice under the impression that it would be good for him. And nowshe had gone with Morrie to the table where the drinks were, and hadtaken his third glass of champagne cup from him and made him drinklemonade instead. 

"How does she do it?" said Michael. 

"I don't know. She doesn't know herself. I used to think I could managepeople, but I'm not in it with Ronny. She ought to be a wardress in alunatic asylum. "

"Now look at that!"

Veronica had returned to the group formed by Grannie and the Aunties andsome strangers. The eyes of the four Fleming women had looked after heras she went from them; they looked towards her now as if some greatneed, some great longing were appeased by her return. 

Grannie made a place by her side for the young girl; she took her arm, the young white arm, bare from the elbow in its short sleeve, and madeit lie across her knees. From time to time Grannie's yellow, witheredhand stroked the smooth, warm white arm, or held it. Emmeline and Edithsquatted on the grass at Veronica's feet; their worn faces and the wornface of Louie looked at her. They hung on her, fascinated, curiouslytranquillized, as if they drank from her youth. 

"It's funny, " Dorothy said, "when you think how they used to hate her. "

"It's horrible, " said Michael. 

He got up and took Veronica away. 

He was lying at her feet now on the grass in the far corner of the lawnunder the terrace. 

"Why do you go to them?" he said. 

"Because they want me. "

"You mustn't go when they want you. You mustn't let them get hold ofyou. "

"They don't get hold of me--nothing gets hold of me. I want to helpthem. They say it does them good to have me with them. "

"I should think it did do them good! They feed on you, Ronny. I can seeit by the way they look at you. You'll die of them if you don't giveit up. "

"Give what up?"

"Your game of keeping them going. That is your game, isn't it?Everybody's saying how wonderful Grannie is. They mean she ought to havebeen dead years ago. 

"They were all old, horribly old and done for, ages ago. I can rememberthem. But they know that if they can get a young virgin sacrificed tothem they'll go on. You're the young virgin. You're making them go on. "

"If I could--it wouldn't hurt me. Nothing hurts you, Michael, whenyou're happy. It's awful to think how they've lived without being happy, without loving. 

"They used to hate me because I'm Vera's daughter. They don't hate menow. "

"You don't hate what you feed on. You love it. They're vampires. They'llsuck your life out of you. I wonder you're not afraid of them. 

"I'm afraid of them. I always was afraid of them; when I was a kid andMother used to send me with messages to that beastly spooky house theylive in. I used to think it was poor old Grandpapa's ghost I funked. ButI know now it wasn't. It was those four terrible women. They're ghosts. I thought you were afraid of ghosts. "

"I'm much more afraid of you, when you're cruel. Can't you see how awfulit must be for them to be ghosts? Ghosts among living people. Everybodyafraid of them--not wanting them. "

"Michael--it would be better to be dead!"

 * * * * *

Towards the end of the afternoon Frances's Day changed its appearanceand its character. In the tennis courts Michael's friends played singleswith an incomparable fury, frankly rejecting the partners offered themand disdaining inferior antagonists; they played, Ellis against Mitchelland Monier-Owen against Nicholas. 

They had arrived late with Vera and Lawrence Stephen. 

It had come to that. Anthony and Frances found that they could not go onfor ever refusing the acquaintance of the man who had done so much forMichael. Stephen's enthusiastic eulogy of Michael's Poems had made anend of that old animosity a year ago. Practically, they had had tochoose between Bartie and Lawrence Stephen as the turning point ofhonour. Michael had made them see that it was possible to overvalueBartie; also that it was possible to pay too high a price for aconsecrated moral attitude. In all his life the wretched Bartie hadnever done a thing for any of them, whereas he, Michael, owed his ratherextraordinary success absolutely to Lawrence Stephen. If the strike madehis father bankrupt he would owe his very means of livelihood toLawrence Stephen. 

Besides, he liked Stephen, and it complicated things most frightfully togo on living in the same house with people who disliked him. 

If, Michael said, they chose to dissociate themselves altogether fromtheir eldest son and his career, very well. They could go on ignoringand tacitly insulting Mr. Stephen. He could understand their taking aconsistently wrong-headed line like that; but so long as they had anyregard, either for him or his career, he didn't see how they could verywell keep it up any longer. He was sorry, of course, that his career hadlet them in for Stephen if they didn't like him; but there it was. 

And beyond a doubt it was there. 

"You might vindicate Bartie gloriously, " Michael said, "by turning meout of the house and disinheriting me. But would it be worth while? I'mnot asking you to condone Stephen's conduct--if you can't condone it;I'm asking you either to acknowledge _or_ repudiate your son's debts. 

"After all, if _he_ can condone your beastly treatment of him--Iwouldn't like him if he was the swine you think him. "

And Anthony had appealed to Michael's mother. 

To his "Well, Frances, what do you think? Ought we or oughtn't we?" shehad replied: "I think we ought to stand solid behind Michael. "

It was Michael's life that counted, for it was going on into a greatfuture. Bartie would pass and Michael would remain. 

Their nervous advances had ended in a complete surrender to Stephen'scharm. 

Vera and Stephen seemed to think that the way to show the sincerity andsweetness of their reconciliation was to turn up as often as possible onFrances's Day. They arrived always at the same hour, a little late; theycame by the road and the front door, so that when Bartie saw themcoming he could retreat through the garden door and the lane. TheFlemings and the Jervises retreated with him; and presently, when it hadhad a good look at the celebrities, the rest of the party followed. 

This Saturday Frances's Day dwindled and melted away and closed, afterits manner; only Vera and Stephen lingered. They stayed on talking toMichael long after everybody else had gone. 

Stephen said he had come to say good-bye to Michael's people and to makea proposal to Michael himself. He was going to Ireland. 

Vera interrupted him with passion. 

"He isn't. He hasn't any proposal to make. He hasn't come to saygood-bye. "

Her restless, unhappy eyes turned to him incessantly, as if, more thanever, she was afraid that he would escape her, that he would go off Godknew where. 

God knew where he was going, but Vera did not believe that he was goingto Ireland. He had talked about going to Ireland for years, and he hadnever gone. 

Stephen looked as if he did not see her; as if he did not even seeMichael very distinctly. 

"I'm going, " he said, "to Ireland on Monday week, the third of August. Imayn't come back for long enough. I may not come back at all. "

"That's the sort of thing he keeps on saying. "

"I may not come back _at all_. So I want you to take over the _Review_for me. Ellis and my secretary will show you how it stands. You'll knowwhat to do. I can trust you not to let it down. "

"He doesn't mean what he says, Michael. He's only saying it to frightenme. He's been holding it over me for years. 

"_Say_ you'll have nothing to do with it. _Say_ you won't touch his old_Review_. "

"Could I go to Ireland for you?"

"You couldn't. "

"Why not? What do you think you're going to do there?"

"I'm going to pull the Nationalists together, so that if there's civilwar in Ireland, the Irish will have a chance to win. Thank God forCarson! He's given us the opportunity we wanted. "

"Tell him he's not to go, Michael. He won't listen to me, but he'll mindwhat you say. "

"I want to go instead of him. "

"You can't go instead of me. Nobody can go instead of me. "

"I can go with you. "

"You can't. "

"Larry, if you take Michael to Ireland, Anthony and Frances will neverforgive you. _I_'ll never forgive you. "

"I'm not taking Michael to Ireland, I'm telling you. There's no reasonwhy Michael should go to Ireland at all. It isn't _his_ country. "

"You needn't rub _that_ in, " said Michael. 

"It isn't _yours_, " said Vera. "Ireland doesn't want you. TheNationalists don't want you. You said yourself they've turned you out ofIreland. When you've lived in England all these years why should you goback to a place that doesn't want you?"

"Because if Carson gets a free hand I see some chance of Ireland being afree country. "

Vera wailed and entreated. She said it showed how much he cared for her. It showed that he was tired of her. Why couldn't he say so and havedone with it?

"It's not, " she said, "as if you could really do anything. You're adreamer. Ireland has had enough of dreamers. " And Stephen's eyes lookedover her head, into the high branches of the tree of Heaven, as if hesaw his dream shining clear through them like a moon. 

The opportunist could see nothing but his sublime opportunity. 

Michael went back with him to dine and talk it over. There was to becivil war in Ireland then?

He thought: If only Lawrence would let him go with him. He wanted to goto Ireland. To join the Nationalists and fight for Ireland, fight forthe freedom he was always dreaming about--_that_ would be a fine thing. It would be a finer thing than writing poems about Ireland. 

Lawrence Stephen went soberly and steadily through the affair of the_Review_, explaining things to Michael. He wanted this done, and this. And over and over again Michael's voice broke through his instructions. Why couldn't he go to Ireland instead of Lawrence? Or, if Lawrencewouldn't let him go instead of him, he might at least take him with him. He didn't want to stay at home editing the _Review_. Ellis or Mitchellor Monier-Owen would edit it better than he could. Even the wretchedWadham would edit it just as well. He wanted to go to Ireland and fight. 

But Lawrence wouldn't let him go. He wasn't going to have the boy'sblood on his hands. His genius and his youth were too precious. 

Besides, Ireland was not his country. 

 * * * * *

It was past ten o'clock. Frances was alone in the drawing-room. She satby the open window and waited and watched. 

The quiet garden lay open to her sight. Only the inner end of thefarther terrace, under the orchard wall, was hidden by a high screenof privet. 

It seemed hours to Frances since she had seen Nicky and Veronica go downthe lawn on to the terrace. 

And then Anthony had gone out too. She was vexed with Anthony. She couldsee him sitting under his ash-tree, her tree of heaven; his whiteshirt-front gave out an oblong gleam like phosphorous in the darknessunder the tree. She was watching to see that he didn't get up and go onto the terrace. Anthony had no business in the garden at all. He wascatching cold in it. He had sneezed twice. She wanted Nicholas andVeronica to have the garden to themselves to-night, and the perfectstillness of the twilight to themselves, every tree and every littleleaf and flower keeping quiet for them; and there was Anthony sneezing. 

She was restless and impatient, as if she carried the burden of theirpassion in her own heart. 

Presently she could bear it no longer. She got up and called to Anthonyto come in. He came obediently. "What are you thinking of, " she said, "planting yourself out there and sneezing? I could see your shirt-fronta mile off. It's indecent of you. "

"Why indecent?"

"Because Nicky and Veronica are out there. "

"I don't see them. "

"Do you suppose they want you to see them?"

She turned the electric light on full, to make darkness of theirtwilight out there. 

 * * * * *

Nicky and Veronica talked together in the twilight, sitting on the seatunder the orchard well behind the privet screen. They did not seeAnthony sitting under the ash-tree, they did not hear him, they did nothear Frances calling to him to come in. They were utterly unaware ofFrances and Anthony. 

"Ronny, " he said, "did Michael say anything to you?"

"When?"

"This afternoon, when he made you come with him here?"

"How do you mean, 'say anything'?"

"You know what I mean. "

"_Mick_?"

"Yes. Did he ask you to marry him?"

"No. He said a lot of funny things, but he didn't say that. Hewouldn't. "

"Why wouldn't he?"

"Because--he just wouldn't. "

"Well, he says he understands you. "

"Then, " said Veronica conclusively, "of course he wouldn't. "

"Yes; but he says _I_ don't. "

"Dear Nicky, you understand me when nobody else does. You always did. "

"Yes, when we were kids. But supposing _now_ I ever didn't, would itmatter? You see, I'm stupid, and caring--caring awfully--might make mestupider. _Have_ people got to understand each other?"

To that she replied astonishingly, "Are you quite sure you understandabout Ferdie?"

"Ferdie?"

"Yes. " She turned her face full to him. "I don't know whether you knowabout it. _I_ didn't till Mother told me the other day. I'mFerdie's daughter. 

"Did you know?"

"Oh, Lord, yes. I've known it for--oh, simply ever so long. "

"Who told you?"

"Dorothy, I think. But I guessed it because of something he said onceabout seeing ghosts. "

"I wonder if you know how I feel about it? I want you to understandthat. I'm not a bit ashamed of it. I'm proud. I'm _glad_ I'm Ferdie'sdaughter, not Bartie's.... I'd take his name, so that everybody shouldknow I was his daughter, only that I like Uncle Anthony's name best. I'mglad Mother loved him. "

"So am I, Ronny. I know I shouldn't have liked Bartie's daughter. Bartie's daughter wouldn't have been you. "

He took her in his arms and held her face against his face. And it wasas if Desmond had never been. 

A little while ago he had hated Desmond because she had come beforeVeronica; she had taken what belonged to Veronica, the first tremor ofhis passion, the irrecoverable delight and surprise. And now he knewthat, because he had not loved her, she had taken nothing. 

 * * * * *

"Do you love me?"

"Do you love _me_?"

"You know I love you. "

"You know. You know. "

What they said was new and wonderful to them as if nobody before themhad ever thought of it. 

Yet that night, all over the Heath, in hollows under the birch-trees, and on beds of trampled grass, young lovers lay in each other's arms andsaid the same thing in the same words: "Do you love me?" "You know Ilove you!" over and over, in voices drowsy and thick with love. 

 * * * * *

"There's one thing I haven't thought of, " said Nicky. "And that's thatdamned strike. If it hits Daddy badly we may have to wait goodness knowshow long. Ages we may have to. "

"I'd wait all my life if I could have you in the last five seconds ofit. And if I couldn't, I'd still wait. "

And presently Veronica remembered Michael. 

"Why did you ask me whether Mick had said anything?"

"Because I thought you ought to know about it before you--Besides, if he_had_, we should have had to wait a bit before we told him. "

It seemed that there was nothing to prevent them marrying to-morrow ifthey liked. The strike, Anthony said, couldn't hit him as badly asall that. 

He and Frances sat up till long past midnight, talking about theirplans, and the children's plans. It was all settled. The first week inAugust they would go down to Morfe for the shooting. They would staythere till the first week in September. Nicky and Veronica would bemarried the first week in October. And they would go to France andBelgium and Germany for their honeymoon. 

XIX

They did not go down to Morfe the first week in August for the shooting. 

Neither did Lawrence Stephen go to Ireland on Monday, the third. At themoment when he should have been receiving the congratulations of theDublin Nationalists after his impassioned appeal for militantconsolidation, Mr. Redmond and Sir Edward Carson were shaking handsdramatically in the House of Commons. Stephen's sublime opportunity, thecivil war, had been snatched from him by the unforeseen. 

And there was no chance of Nicky and Veronica going to Belgium andFrance and Germany for their honeymoon. 

For within nine days of Frances's Day Germany had declared war on Franceand Russia, and was marching over the Belgian frontier on her wayto Paris. 

Frances, aroused at last to realization of the affairs of nations, asked, like several million women, "What does it mean?"

And Anthony, like several million men, answered, "It means Armageddon. "Like several million people, they both thought he was saying somethingas original as it was impressive, something clear and final anddescriptive. "Armageddon!" Stolid, unimaginative people went aboutsaying it to each other. The sound of the word thrilled them, intoxicated them, gave them an awful feeling that was at the same time, in some odd way, agreeable; it stirred them with a solemn and sombrepassion. They said "Armageddon. It means Armageddon. " Yet nobody knewand nobody asked or thought of asking what Armageddon meant. 

"Shall We come into it?" said Frances. She was thinking of the RoyalNavy turning out to the last destroyer to save England from invasion; ofthe British Army most superfluously prepared to defend England from theinvader, who, after all, could not invade; of Indian troops pouring intoEngland if the worst came to the worst. She had the healthy British mindthat refuses and always has refused to acknowledge the possibility ofdisaster. Yet she asked continually, "Would England be drawn in?" Shewas thankful that none of her sons had gone into the Army or the Navy. Whoever else was in, they would be out of it. 

At first Anthony said, "No. Of course England wouldn't be drawn in. "

Then, on the morning of England's ultimatum, the closing of the StockExchange and the Banks made him thoughtful, and he admitted that itlooked as if England might be drawn in after all. The long day, withoutany business for him and Nicholas, disturbed him. There was a nasty, hovering smell of ruin in the air. But there was no panic. The closingof the Banks was only a wise precaution against panic. And by evening, as the tremendous significance of the ultimatum sank into him, he saiddefinitively that England would not be drawn in. 

Then Drayton, whom they had not seen for months (since he had had hispromotion) telephoned to Dorothy to come and dine with him at his clubin Dover Street. Anthony missed altogether the significance of _that_. 

He had actually made for himself an after-dinner peace in which coffeecould be drunk and cigarettes smoked as if nothing were happeningto Europe. 

"England, " he said, "will not be drawn in, because her ultimatum willstop the War. There won't be any Armageddon. "

"Oh, won't there!" said Michael. "And I can tell you there won't be muchleft of us after it's over. "

He had been in Germany and he knew. He carried himself with a sort ofstern haughtiness, as one who knew better than any of them. And yet hiswords conveyed no picture to his brain, no definite image of anythingat all. 

But in Nicholas's brain images gathered fast, one after another; theythickened; clear, vivid images with hard outlines. They came slowly butwith order and precision. While the others talked he had been silent andvery grave. 

"_Some_ of us'll be left, " he said. "But it'll take us all our time. "

Anthony looked thoughtfully at Nicholas. A sudden wave of realizationbeat up against his consciousness and receded. 

"Well, " he said, "we shall know at midnight. "

 * * * * *

An immense restlessness came over them. 

At a quarter-past eight Dorothy telephoned from her club in Graftonstreet. Frank had had to leave her suddenly. Somebody had sent for him. And if they wanted to see the sight of their lives they were to comeinto town at once. St. James's was packed with people from Whitehall toBuckingham Palace. It was like nothing on earth, and they mustn't missit. She'd wait for them in Grafton Street till a quarter to nine, butnot a minute later. 

Nicky got out his big four-seater Morss car. They packed themselves intoit, all six of them somehow, and he drove them into London. They had asense of doing something strange and memorable and historic. Dorothy, picked up at her club, showed nothing but a pleasurable excitement. Shegave no further information about Frank. He had had to go off and seesomebody. What did he think? He thought what he had always thought; onlyhe wouldn't talk about it. 

Dorothy was not inclined to talk about it either. The Morss was caughtin a line blocked at the bottom of Albemarle Street by two streams ofcars, mixed with two streams of foot passengers, that poured steadilyfrom Piccadilly into St. James's Street. 

Michael and Dorothy got out and walked. Nicholas gave up his place toAnthony and followed with Veronica. 

Their restlessness had been a part of the immense restlessness of thecrowd. They were drawn, as the crowd was drawn; they went as the crowdwent, up and down, restlessly, from Trafalgar Square and Whitehall toBuckingham Palace; from Buckingham Palace to Whitehall and TrafalgarSquare. They drifted down Parliament Street to Westminster and backagain. An hour ago the drifting, nebulous crowd had split, torn asunderbetween two attractions; its two masses had wheeled away, one to theeast and the other to the west; they had gathered themselves together, one at each pole of the space it now traversed. The great meeting inTrafalgar Square balanced the multitude that had gravitated towardsBuckingham Palace, to see the King and Queen come out on their balconyand show themselves to their people. 

And as the edges of the two masses gave way, each broke and scattered, and was mixed again with the other. Like a flood, confined and shaken, it surged and was driven back and surged again from Whitehall toBuckingham Palace, from Buckingham Palace to Whitehall. It looked for anoutlet in the narrow channels of the side-streets, or spread itself overthe flats of the Green Park, only to return restlessly upon itself, sucked back by the main current in the Mall. 

It was as if half London had met there for Bank Holiday. Part of thiscrowd was drunk; it was orgiastic; it made strange, fierce noises, likethe noises of one enormous, mystically excited beast; here and there, men and women, with inflamed and drunken faces, reeled in each other'sarms; they wore pink paper feathers in their hats. Some, only halfintoxicated, flicked at each other with long streamers of pink and whitepaper, carried like scourges on small sticks. These were the inspired. 

But the great body of the crowd was sober. It went decorously in a longprocession, young men with their sweethearts, friends, brothers andsisters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers with their children;none, or very few, went alone that night. 

It was an endless procession of faces; grave and thoughtful faces;uninterested, respectable faces; faces of unmoved integrity; excitedfaces; dreaming, wondering, bewildered faces; faces merely curious, orcuriously exalted, slightly ecstatic, open-mouthed, fascinated by eachother and by the movements and the lights; laughing, frivolous faces, and faces utterly vacant and unseeing. 

On every other breast there was a small Union Jack pinned; every otherhand held and waggled a Union Jack. The Union Jack flew from the engineof every other automobile. In twelve hours, out of nowhere, thousandsand thousands of flags sprang magically into being; as if for yearsLondon had been preparing for this day. 

And in and out of this crowd the train of automobiles with their flagsdashed up and down the Mall for hours, appearing and disappearing. Intoxicated youths with inflamed faces, in full evening dress, squattedon the roofs of taxi-cabs or rode astride on the engines of their cars, waving flags. 

All this movement, drunken, orgiastic, somnambulistic, mysteriouslyrestless, streamed up and down between two solemn and processional linesof lights, two solemn and processional lines of trees, lines thatstretched straight from Whitehall to Buckingham Palace in a recurrentpattern of trees and lamps, dark trees, twilit trees, a lamp and a treeshining with a metallic unnatural green; and, at the end of the avenue, gilded gates and a golden-white façade. 

The crowd was drifting now towards the Palace. Michael and Dorothea, Nicholas and Veronica, went with it. In this eternal perambulation theymet people that they knew; Stephen and Vera; Mitchell, Monier-Owen;Uncle Morrie and his sisters. Anthony, looking rather solemn, drovepast them in his car. It was like impossible, grotesque encounters ina dream. 

Outside the Palace the crowd moved up and down without rest; it driftedand returned; it circled round and round the fountain. In the openspaces the intoxicated motor-cars and taxi-cabs darted and tore with thefolly of moths and the fury of destroyers. They stung the air with theirhooting. Flags, intoxicated flags, still hung from their engines. Theycame flying drunkenly out of the dark, like a trumpeting swarm ofenormous insects, irresistibly, incessantly drawn to the lights of thePalace, hypnotized by the golden-white façade. 

Suddenly, Michael's soul revolted. 

"If this demented herd of swine is a great people going into a greatwar, God help us! Beasts--it's not as if _their_ bloated skins werelikely to be punctured. "

He called back over his shoulders to the others. 

"Let's get out of this. If we don't I shall be sick. "

He took Dorothy by her arm and shouldered his way out. 

The water had ceased playing in the fountain. 

Nicholas and Veronica stood by the fountain. The water in the basin wasgreen like foul sea-water. The jetsam of the crowd floated there. Asmall child leaned over the edge of the basin and fished for Union Jacksin the filthy pool. Its young mother held it safe by the tilted edge ofits petticoats. She looked up at them and smiled. They smiled back againand turned away. 

It was quiet on the south side by the Barracks. Small, sober groups oftwos and threes strolled there, or stood with their faces pressed closeagainst the railings, peering into the barrack yard. Motionless, earnest and attentive, they stared at the men in khaki moving about onthe other side of the railings. They were silent, fascinated by the menin khaki. Standing safe behind the railing, they stared at them with anawful, sombre curiosity. And the men in khaki stared back, proud, self-conscious, as men who know that the hour is great and that it istheir hour. 

"Nicky, " Veronica said, "I wish Michael wouldn't say things like that. "

"He's dead right, Ronny. That isn't the way to take it, getting drunkand excited, and rushing about making silly asses of themselves. They_are_ rather swine, you know. "

"Yes; but they're pathetic. Can't you see how pathetic they are? Nicky, I believe I love the swine--even the poor drunken ones with the pinkpaper feathers--just because they're English; because awful things aregoing to happen to them, and they don't know it. They're English. "

"You think God's made us all like that? He _hasn't_. "

They found Anthony in the Mall, driving up and down, looking for them. He had picked up Dorothy and Aunt Emmeline and Uncle Morrie. 

"We're going down to the Mansion House, " he said, "to hear theProclamation. Will you come?"

But Veronica and Nicholas were tired of crowds, even of historic crowds. Anthony drove off with his car-load, and they went home. 

"I never saw Daddy so excited, " Nicky said. 

But Anthony was not excited. He had never felt calmer or cooler in hislife. 

He returned some time after midnight. By that time it had sunk into him. Germany _had_ defied the ultimatum and England _had_ declared waron Germany. 

He said it was only what was to be foreseen. He had known all the timethat it would happen--really. 

The tension of the day of the ultimatum had this peculiar psychologicaleffect that all over England people who had declared up to the lastminute that there would be no War were saying the same thing as Anthonyand believing it. 

Michael was disgusted with the event that had put an end to the IrishRevolution. It was in this form that he conceived his first grudgeagainst the War. 

This emotion of his was like some empty space of horror opened upbetween him and Nicholas; Nicky being the only one of his family who wasas yet aware of its existence. 

For the next three days, Nicholas, very serious and earnest, shuthimself up in his workshop at the bottom of the orchard and labouredthere, putting the last touches to the final, perfect, authoritativeform of the Moving Fortress, the joint creation of his brain andDrayton's, the only experiment that had survived the repeated onslaughtsof the Major's criticism. The new model was three times the size of thelost original; it was less like a battleship and more like a racing-carand a destroyer. It was his and Drayton's last word on the subject ofarmaments. 

It was going to the War Office, this time, addressed to the rightperson, and accompanied by all sorts of protective introductions, andDrayton blasting its way before it with his new explosive. 

In those three days Nick found an immense distraction in his MovingFortress. It also served to blind his family to his real intentions. Heknew that his real intentions could not be kept from them very long. Meanwhile the idea that he was working on something made them happy. When Frances saw him in his overalls she smiled and said: "Nicky's got_his_ job, anyhow. " John came and looked at him through the window ofthe workshop and laughed. 

"Good old Nicky, " he said. "Doing his bit!"

In those three days John went about with an air of agreeable excitement. Or you came upon him sitting in solitary places like the dining-room, lost in happy thought. Michael said of him that he was unctuous. Heexuded a secret joy and satisfaction. John had acquired a suddenremarkable maturity. He shone on each member of his family withbenevolence and affection, as if he were its protector and consoler, andabout to confer on it some tremendous benefit. 

"Look at Don-Don, " Michael said. "The bloodthirsty little brute. He'spositively enjoying the War. "

"You might leave me alone, " said Don-Don. "I shan't have it to enjoy forlong. "

He was one of those who believed that the War would be over in fourmonths. 

Michael, pledged to secrecy, came and looked at the Moving Fortress. Hewas interested and intelligent; he admired that efficiency of Nicky'sthat was so unlike his own. 

Yet, he wondered, after all, was it so unlike? He, too, was aiming at anart as clean and hard and powerful as Nicky's, as naked of all blazonryand decoration, an art which would attain its objective by the simplest, most perfect adjustment of means to ends. 

And Anthony was proud of that hidden wonder locked behind the door ofthe workshop in the orchard. He realized that his son Nicholas had takenpart in a great and important thing. He was prouder of Nicholas than hehad been of Michael. 

And Michael knew it. 

Nicky's brains could be used for the service of his country. 

But Michael's? Anthony said to himself that there wasn't any sense--anysense that he could endure to contemplate--in which Michael's brainscould be of any use to his country. When Anthony thought of themobilization of his family for national service, Michael and Michael'sbrains were a problem that he put behind him for the present and refusedto contemplate. There would be time enough for Michael later. 

Anthony was perfectly well aware of his own one talent, the talent whichhad made "Harrison and Harrison" the biggest timber-importing firm inEngland. If there was one thing he understood it was organization. Ifthere was one thing he could not tolerate it was waste of good material, the folly of forcing men and women into places they were not fit for. Hehad let his eldest son slip out of the business without a pang, or withhardly any pang. He had only taken Nicholas into it as an experiment. It was on John that he relied to inherit it and carry it farther. 

As a man of business he approved of the advertised formula: "Business asUsual. " He understood it to mean that the duty which England expectedevery man to do was to stay in the place he was most fitted for and togo where he was most wanted. Nothing but muddle and disaster couldfollow any departure from this rule. 

It was fitting that Frances and Veronica should do Red Cross work. Itwas fitting that Dorothy should help to organize the relief of theBelgium refugees. It was fitting that John should stay at home and carryon the business, and that he, Anthony, should enlist when he had settledJohn into his place. It was, above all, fitting that Nicky should devotehimself to the invention and manufacture of armaments. He could notconceive anything more wantonly and scandalously wasteful than a systemthat could make any other use of Nicky's brains. He thanked goodnessthat, with a European War upon us, such a system, if it existed, wouldnot be allowed to live a day. 

As for Michael, it might be fitting later--very much later--perhaps. IfMichael wanted to volunteer for the Army then, and if it were necessary, he would have no right to stop him. But it would not be necessary. England was going to win this War on the sea and not on land. Michaelwas practically safe. 

And behind Frances's smile, and John's laughter, and Michael'sadmiration, and Anthony's pride there was the thought: "Whateverhappens, Nicky will he safe. "

And the model of the Moving Fortress was packed up--Veronica and Nickypacked it--and it was sent under high protection to the War Office. AndNicky unlocked the door of his workshop and rested restlessly fromhis labour. 

And there was a call for recruits, and for still more recruits. 

Westminster Bridge became a highway for regiments marching to battle. The streets were parade-grounds for squad after squad of volunteers incivilian clothes, self-conscious and abashed under the eyes of themen in khaki. 

And Michael said: "This is the end of all the arts. Artists will not beallowed to exist except as agents for the recruiting sergeant. We're dished. "

That was the second grudge he had against the War. It killed the arts inthe very hour of their renaissance. "Eccentricities" by Morton Ellis, with illustrations by Austin Mitchell, and the "New Poems" of MichaelHarrison, with illustrations by Austin Mitchell, were to have come outin September. But it was not conceivable that they should come out. 

At the first rumour of the ultimatum Michael and Ellis had giventhemselves up for lost. 

Liége fell and Namur was falling. 

And the call went on for recruits, and for still more recruits. AndNicky in five seconds had destroyed his mother's illusions and the wholefabric of his father's plans. 

It was one evening when they were in the drawing-room, sitting up afterVeronica had gone to bed. 

"I hope you won't mind, Father, " he said; "but I'm going to enlistto-morrow. "

He did not look at his father's face. He looked at his mother's. She wassitting opposite him on the couch beside Dorothy. John balanced himselfon the head of the couch with his arm round his mother's shoulder. Everynow and then he stooped down and rubbed his cheek thoughtfullyagainst her hair. 

A slight tremor shook her sensitive, betraying upper lip; then shelooked back at Nicholas and smiled. 

Dorothy set her mouth hard, unsmiling. 

Anthony had said nothing. He stared before him at Michael's foot, thrustout and tilted by the crossing of his knees. Michael's foot, with itslong, arched instep, fascinated Anthony. He seemed to be thinking: "If Ilook at it long enough I may forget what Nicky has said. "

"I hope you won't mind, Father; but I'm enlisting too. "

John's voice was a light, high echo of Nicky's. 

With a great effort Anthony roused himself from his contemplation ofMichael's foot. 

"I--can't--see--that my minding--or not minding--has anything--todo--with it. "

He brought his words out slowly and with separate efforts, as if theyweighed heavily on his tongue. "We've got to consider what's best forthe country all round, and I doubt if either of you is called uponto go. "

"Some of us have got to go, " said Nicky. 

"Quite so. But I don't think it ought to be you, Nicky; or John, either. "

"I suppose, " said Michael, "you mean it ought to be me. "

"I don't mean anything of the sort. One out of four's enough. "

"One out of four? Well then--"

"That only leaves me to fight, " said Dorothy. 

"I wasn't thinking of you, Michael. Or of Dorothy. "

They all looked at him where he sat, upright and noble, in his chair, and most absurdly young. 

Dorothy said under her breath: "Oh, you darling Daddy. "

"_You_ won't be allowed to go, anyhow, " said John to his father. "Youneedn't think it. "

"Why not?"

"Well--. " He hadn't the heart to say: "Because you're too old. "

"Nicky's brains will be more use to the country than my old carcass. "

Nicky thought: "You're the very last of us that can be spared. " But hecouldn't say it. The thing was so obvious. All he said was: "It's out ofthe question, your going. "

"Old Nicky's out of the question, if you like, " said John. "He's goingto be married. He ought to be thinking of his wife and children. "

"Of course he ought, " said Anthony. "Whoever goes first, it isn'tNicky. "

"You ought to think of Mummy, Daddy ducky; and you ought to think of_us_, " said Dorothy. 

"I, " said John, "haven't got anybody to think of. I'm not going to bemarried, and I haven't any children. "

"I haven't got a wife and children yet, " said Nicky. 

"You've got Veronica. You ought to think of her. "

"I am thinking of her. You don't suppose Veronica'd stop me if I wantedto go? Why, she wouldn't look at me if I didn't want to go. "

Suddenly he remembered Michael. 

"I mean, " he said, "after my _saying_ that I was going. "

Their eyes met. Michael's flickered. He knew that Nicky was thinking ofhim. 

"Then Ronny knows?" said Frances. 

"Of course she knows. _You_ aren't going to try to stop me, Mother?"

"No, " she said. "I'm not going to try to stop you--this time. "

She thought: "If I hadn't stopped him seven years ago, he would be safenow, with the Army in India. "

One by one they got up and said "Good night" to each other. 

But Nicholas came to Michael in his room. 

He said to him: "I say, Mick, don't you worry about not enlisting. Atany rate, _not yet_. Don't worry about Don and Daddy. They won't takeDon because he's got a mitral murmur in his heart that he doesn't knowabout. He's going to be jolly well sold, poor chap. And they won't takethe guv'nor because he's too old; though the dear old thing thinks hecan bluff them into it because he doesn't look it. 

"And look here--don't worry about me. As far as I'm concerned, the War'sa blessing in disguise. I always wanted to go into the Army. You knowhow I loathed it when they went and stopped me. Now I'm going in andnobody--not even mother--really wants to keep me out. Soon they'll allbe as pleased as Punch about it. 

"And I sort of know how you feel about the War. You don't want to stickbayonets into German tummies, just _because_ they're so large and oodgy. You'd think of that first and all the time and afterwards. And I shan'tthink of it at all. 

"Besides, you disapprove of the War for all sorts of reasons that Ican't get hold of. But it's like this--you couldn't respect yourself ifyou went into it; and I couldn't respect myself if I stayed out. "

"I wonder, " Michael said, "if you really see it. "

"Of course I see it. That's the worst of you clever writing chaps. Youseem to think nobody can ever see anything except yourselves. "

When he had left him Michael thought: "I wonder if he really does see?Or if he made it all up?"

They had not said to each other all that they had really meant. OfNicky's many words there were only two that he remembered vividly, "Not yet. "

Again he felt the horror of the great empty space opened up between himand Nicky, deep and still and soundless, but for the two words:"Not yet. "

XX

It was as Nicholas had said. Anthony and John were rejected; Anthony onaccount of his age, John because of the mitral murmur that he didn'tknow about. 

The guv'nor had lied, John said, like a good 'un; swore he was underthirty-five and stuck to it. He might have had a chance if he'd left itat that, because he looked a jolly sight better than most of 'em when hewas stripped. But they'd given him so good an innings that the poor oldthing got above himself, and spun them a yarn about his hair having gonegrey from a recent shock. That dished him. They said they knew that sortof hair; they'd been seeing a lot of it lately. 

Anthony was depressed. He said bitter things about "red tape, " anddeclared that if that was the way things were going to be managed it wasa bad look-out for the country. John was furious. He said the man whoexamined him was a blasted idiot who didn't know his own rottenbusiness. He'd actually had the beastly cheek to tell him they didn'twant him dropping down dead when he went into action, or fainting fromsheer excitement after they'd been to the trouble and expense oftraining him. As if he'd be likely to do a damn silly thing like that. He'd never been excited in his life. It was enough to _give_ himheart-disease. 

So John and Anthony followed the example of their women, and joined theambulance classes of the Red Cross. And presently they learned to theirdisgust that, though they might possibly be accepted as volunteers forHome Service, their disabilities would keep them forever from the Front. 

At this point Anthony's attention was diverted to his business by asudden Government demand for timber. As he believed that the War wouldbe over in four months he did not, at first, realize the personalsignificance of this. Still, there could be no doubt that its immediatemessage for him was that business must be attended to. He had notattended to it many days before he saw that his work for his country laythere under his hand, in his offices and his stackyards and factories. He sighed and sat down to it, and turned his back resolutely on theglamour of the Front. The particular business in hand had great issuesand a fascination of its own. 

And his son John sat down to it beside him, with a devoted body and abrain alive to the great issues, but with an ungovernable andabstracted soul. 

And Nicky, a recruit in Kitchener's Army, went rapidly through the firstcourses of his training; sleeping under canvas; marching in sun and windand rain; digging trenches, ankle-deep, waist high, breast high inearth, till his clear skin grew clearer, and his young, hard body harderevery day. 

And every day the empty spiritual space between him and Michael widened. 

With the exception of Michael and old Mrs. Fleming, Anthony's entirefamily had offered itself to its country; it was mobilized from Francesand Anthony down to the very Aunties. In those days there were few RedCross volunteers who were not sure that sooner or later they would besent to the Front. Their only fear was that they might not be trainedand ready when the moment of the summons came. Strong young girlshustled for the best places at the ambulance classes. Fragile, elderlywomen, twitching with nervous anxiety, contended with these remorselessones and were pushed to the rear. Yet they went on contending, sustainedby their extraordinary illusion. 

Aunt Louie, displaying an unexpected and premature dexterity withbandages, was convinced that she would be sent to the Front if nobodyelse was. Aunt Emmeline and Aunt Edith, in states of cerebralexcitement, while still struggling to find each other's arteries, declared that they were going to the Front. They saw no earthly reasonwhy they should not go there. Uncle Maurice haunted the Emergencyclass-rooms at the Polytechnic, wearing an Esmarch triangular bandageround his neck, and volunteered as an instructor. He got mixed up withhis bandages, and finally consented to the use of his person as alay-figure for practical demonstrations while he waited for his ordersto go to the Front. 

They forebore to comment on the palpable absurdity of each other'shopes. 

For, with the first outbreak of the War, the three Miss Flemings hadceased from mutual recrimination. They were shocked into a curiousgentleness to each other. Every evening the old schoolroom (Michael'sstudy) was turned into a Red Cross demonstration hall, and there thequeer sight was to be seen of Louie, placable and tender, showing Edithover and over again how to adjust a scalp bandage on Emmeline's head, and of Emmeline motionless for hours under Edie's little, clumsy, pinching fingers. It was thus, with small vibrations of tenderness andcharity, that they responded to the vast rhythm of the War. 

And Grannie, immutable in her aged wisdom and malevolence, pushed outher lower lip at them. 

"If you three would leave off that folly and sit down and knit, youmight be some use, " said Grannie. "Kitchener says that if every woman inEngland knitted from morning till night he wouldn't have enough socksfor his Army. "

Grannie knitted from morning till night. She knitted conspicuously, as aprotest against bandage practice; giving to her soft and gentle actionan air of energy inimical to her three unmarried daughters. And not evenLouie had the heart to tell her that all her knitting had to beunravelled overnight, to save the wool. 

"A set of silly women, getting in Kitchener's way, and wasting khaki!"

Grannie behaved as if the War were her private and personal affair, asif Kitchener were her right-hand man, and all the other women wereinterfering with them. 

Yet it looked as if all the women would be mobilized before all the men. The gates of Holloway were opened, and Mrs. Blathwaite and her followersreceived a free pardon on their pledge to abstain from violence duringthe period of the War. And instantly, in the first week of war, theSuffrage Unions and Leagues and Societies (already organized anddisciplined by seven years' methodical resistance) presented their lateenemy, the Government, with an instrument of national service made toits hand and none the worse because originally devised for its tortureand embarassment. 

The little vortex of the Woman's Movement was swept without a sound intothe immense vortex of the War. The women rose up all over England andwent into uniform. 

And Dorothea appeared one day wearing the khaki tunic, breeches andputtees of the Women's Service Corps. She had joined a motor-ambulanceas chauffeur, driving the big Morss car that Anthony had given to it. Dorothea really had a chance of being sent to Belgium before the end ofthe month. Meanwhile she convoyed Belgian refugees from CannonStreet Station. 

She saw nothing before her as yet. Her mind was like Cannon StreetStation--a dreadful twilit terminus into which all the horror and miseryof Belgium poured and was congested. 

Cannon Street Station. Presently it was as if she were spending all ofher life that counted there; as if for years she had been familiar withthe scene. 

Arch upon iron arch, and girder after iron girder holding up the blurredtransparency of the roof. Iron rails running under the long roof, thatwas like the roof of a tunnel open at one end. By day a greyish light, filtered through smoke and grit and steam. Lamps, opaque white globes, hanging in the thick air like dead moons. By night a bluish light, andlarge, white globes grown opalescent like moons, lit again to aghastly, ruinous life. 

The iron breasts of engines, huge and triumphant, advancing under theimmense fanlight of the open arch. Long trains of carriages packed tightwith packages, with, enormous bundles; human heads appearing, here andthere, above the swollen curves of the bundles; human bodies emerging inthe struggle to bring forth the bundles through the narrow doors. 

For the first few weeks the War meant to Dorothea, not bleeding woundsand death, but just these train-loads of refugees--just this oneincredible spectacle of Belgium pouring itself into Cannon StreetStation. Her clear hard mind tried and failed to grasp the sequences ofwhich the final act was the daily unloading of tons of men, women andchildren on Cannon Street platform. Yesterday they were staggering underthose bundles along their straight, flat roads between the everlastingrows of poplars; their towns and villages flamed and smoked behind them;some of them, goaded like tired cattle, had felt German bayonets attheir backs--yesterday. And this morning they were here, brave and gay, smiling at Dorothea as she carried their sick on her stretcher and theirsmall children in her arms. 

And they were still proud of themselves. 

A little girl tripped along the platform, carrying in one hand a largepasteboard box covered with black oilcloth, and in the other a cage witha goldfinch in it. She looked back at Dorothea and smiled, proud ofherself because she had saved her goldfinch. A Belgium boy carried aparalyzed old man on his shoulders. He grinned at Dorothea, proud ofhimself because he had saved his grandfather. A young Flemish peasantwoman pushed back the shawl that covered her baby's face to show her howpretty he was; she laughed because she had borne him and saved him. 

And there were terrible things significant of yesterday. Women and girlsidiotic with outrage and grief. A young man lamed in trying to throwhimself into a moving train because he thought his lost mother was init. The ring screening the agony of a woman giving birth to her child onthe platform. A death in the train; stiff, upturned feet at the end of astretcher that the police-ambulance carried away. 

And as Dorothea drove her car-loads of refugees day after day in perfectsafety, she sickened with impatience and disgust. Safety was hard andbitter to her. Her hidden self was unsatisfied; it had a monstrouslonging. It wanted to go where the guns sounded and the shells burst, and the villages flamed and smoked; to go along the straight, flat roadsbetween the poplars where the refugees had gone, so that her nerves andflesh should know and feel their suffering and their danger. She was notfeeling anything now except the shame of her immunity. 

She thought: "I can't look at a Belgian woman without wishing I weredead. I shall have no peace till I've gone. "

Her surface self was purely practical. She thought: "If I were inBelgium I could get them out of it quicker than they could walk. "

Dorothea could bring all her mind to bear on her Belgians, because itwas at ease about her own people. They, at any rate, were safe. Herfather and poor Don were out of it. Michael was not in it--yet; thoughof course he would be in it some time. She tried not to think too muchabout Michael. Nicky was safe for the next six months. And Frank wassafe. Frank was training recruits. He had told her he might be keptindefinitely at that infernal job. But for that he would be fightingnow. He wanted her to be sorry for him; and she was sorry for him. Andshe was glad too. 

One afternoon, late in August, she had come home, to sleep tilldinner-time between her day's work and her night's work, when she foundhim upstairs in her study. He had been there an hour waiting for her byhimself. The others were all at bandage practice in the schoolroom. 

"I hope you don't mind, " he said. "Your mother told me to wait up here. "

She had come in straight from the garage; there was a light fur of duston her boots and on the shoulders of her tunic, and on her face andhair. Her hands were black with oil and dirt from her car. 

He looked at her, taking it all in: the khaki uniform (it was the firsttime he had seen her in it), the tunic, breeches and puttees, the loosefelt hat turned up at one side, its funny, boyish chin-strap, the dustand dirt of her; and he smiled. His smile had none of the cynicalderision which had once greeted her appearances as a militantsuffragist. 

"And yet, " she thought, "if he's consistent, he ought to loathe me now. "

"Dorothea. Going to the War, " he said. 

"Not _yet_--worse luck. "

"Are you going as part of the Canadian contingent from overseas, orwhat?"

"I wish I was. Do you think they'd take me if I cut my hair off?"

"They might. They might do anything. This is a most extraordinary war. "

"It's a war that makes it detestable to be a woman. "

"I thought--" For a moment his old ungovernable devil rose in him. 

"What did you think?"

"No matter. That's all ancient history. I say, you look like business. Do you really mean it? Are you really going to Flanders?"

"Do you suppose any woman would go and get herself up like this if shewasn't going _some_where?"

He said (surprisingly), "I don't see what's wrong with it. " And then:"It makes you look about eighteen. "

"That's because you can't see my face for the dirt. "

"For the chin-strap, you mean. Dorothy--do you realize that you're noteighteen? You're eight and twenty. "

"I do, " she said. "But I rather hoped you didn't; or that if you did, you wouldn't say so. "

"I realize that I'm thirty-eight, and that between us we've made apretty mess of each other's lives. "

"Have I made a mess of _your_ life?'

"A beastly mess. "

"I'm sorry. I wouldn't have done it for the world if I'd known. You knowI wouldn't. 

"But one doesn't know things. "

"One doesn't if one's Dorothea. One knows some things awfully well; butnot the things that matter. "

"Well--but what could I do?" she said. 

"You could have done what you can do now. You could have married me. Andwe would have had three years of each other. "

"You mean three centuries. There was a reason why we couldn't manageit. "

"There wasn't a reason. There isn't any reason now. 

"Look here--to-day's Wednesday. Will you marry me on Friday if I getleave and a licence and fix it up tomorrow? We shall have three days. "

"Three days. " She seemed to be saying to herself that for threedays--No, it wasn't worth while. 

"Well, three months perhaps. Perhaps six, if my rotten luck doesn'tchange. Because, I'm doing my level best to make it change. So, you see, it's got to be one thing or another. "

And still she seemed to be considering: Was it or was it not worthwhile?

"For God's sake don't say you're going to make conditions. There reallyisn't time for it. You can think what you like and say what you like anddo what you like, and wear anything--wear a busby--I shan't care ifyou'll only marry me. "

"Yes. That's the way you go on. And yet you don't, say you love me. Younever have said it. You--you're leaving me to do all that. "

"Why--what else have I been doing for seven years? Nine years--tenyears?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all. You just seem to think that I can go off andget married to a man without knowing whether he cares for me or not. 

"And now it's too late. My hands are all dirty. So's myface--filthy--you mustn't--"

"I don't care. They're your hands. It's your face. I don't care. "

The chin-strap, the absurd chin-strap, fretted his mouth. He laughed. Hesaid, "She takes her hat off when she goes into a scrimmage, and shekeeps it on _now_!"

She loosened the strap, laughing, and threw her hat, the hat of aCanadian trooper, on to the floor. His mouth moved over her face, overher hair, pressing hard into their softness; his arms clasped hershoulders; they slipped to her waist; he strained her slender body fastto him, straight against his own straightness, till the passion and theyouth she had denied and destroyed shook her. 

He said to himself, "She _shall_ come alive. She _shall_ feel. She_shall want_ me. I'll make her. I should have thought of this tenyears ago. "

Her face was smooth; it smiled under the touch of his mouth and hands. And fear came with her passion. She thought, "Supposing somethinghappens before Friday. If I could only give myself to himnow--to-night. "

Then, very gently and very tenderly, he released her, as if he knew whatshe was thinking. He was sorry for her and afraid. Poor Dorothy, who hadmade such a beastly mess of it, who had come alive so late. 

She thought, "But--he wouldn't take me that way. He'd loathe me if heknew. "

Yet surely there was the same fear in his eyes as he looked at her?

 * * * * *

They were sitting beside each other now, talking quietly. Her face andhands were washed clean; as clean, she said, as they ever would be. 

"When I think, " he said, "of the years we've wasted. I wonder if therewas anything that could have prevented it. "

"Only your saying what you've said now. That it didn't matter--that itmade no difference to you what I did. But, you see, it made all thedifference. And there we were. "

"It didn't--really. "

She shook her head. "We thought it did. "

"No. Do you remember that morning I fetched you from Holloway?

"Yes. " And she said as he had said then, "I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it--except that it was dear of you. "

"And yet it was from that morning--from five-thirty a. M. --that we seemedto go wrong. 

"There's something I wanted most awfully to say, if you could standgoing back to it for just one second. Do you remember saying that Ididn't care? That I never thought of you when you were in prison orwondered what you were feeling? _That's_ what put me off. It hurt soatrociously that I couldn't say anything. 

"It wasn't true that I didn't think about you. I thought about nothingelse when I wasn't working; I nearly went off my head with thinking. 

"And you said I didn't listen to what you told me. That wasn't true. Iwas listening like anything. "

"Darling--what did I tell you?"

"Oh--about the thing you called your experience, or your adventure, orsomething. "

"My adventure?"

"That's what you called it. A sort of dream you had in prison. Icouldn't say anything because I was stupid. It was beyond me. It'sbeyond me now. "

"Never mind my adventure. What does it matter?"

"It matters awfully. Because I could see that it meant something big andimportant that I couldn't get the hang of. It used to bother me. I kepton trying to get it, and not getting it. "

"You poor dear! And I've forgotten it. It did feel frightfully big andimportant and real at the time. And now it's as if it had happened tosomebody else--to Veronica or somebody--not me. "

"It was much more like Veronica. I do understand the rest of thatbusiness. Now, I mean. I own I didn't at the time. "

"It's all over, Frank, and forgotten. Swallowed up in the War. "

"You're not swallowed up. "

"Perhaps I shall be. "

"Well, if you are--if I am--all the more reason why I want you to knowthat I understand what you were driving at. It was this way, wasn't it?You'd got to fight, just as I've got to fight. You couldn't keep out ofit any more than I can keep out of this War. "

"You couldn't stay out just for me any more than I can stay out for justyou. "

"And in a sort of way I'm in it for you. And in a sort of way you werein it--in that damnable suffrage business--for me. "

"How clever of you, " she said, "to see it!"

"I didn't see it then, " he said simply, "because there wasn't a war on. We've both had to pay for my stupidity. "

"And mine. And my cowardice. I ought to have trusted you to see, orrisked it. We should have had three--no, two--years. "

"Well, anyhow, we've got this evening. "

"We haven't. I've got to drive Belgians from nine till past midnight. "

"We've got Friday. Suppose they'll give me leave to get married in. Isay--how about to-morrow evening?"

"I can't. Yes, I can. At least, I shall. There's a girl I know who'lldrive for me. They'll have to give me leave to get married in, too. "

She thought: "I can't go to Flanders now, unless he's sent out. If heis, nothing shall stop me but his coming back again. "

It seemed to her only fair and fitting that they should snatch at theirhappiness and secure it, before their hour came. 

She tried to turn her mind from the fact that at Mons the British linewas being pressed back and back. It would recover. Of course it wouldrecover. We always began like that. We went back to go forwards faster, when we got into our stride. 

 * * * * *

The next evening, Thursday, the girl she knew drove for Dorothea. 

When Frances was dressing for dinner her daughter came to her with twofrocks over her arm. 

"Mummy ducky, " she said, "I think my head's going. I can't tell whetherto wear the white thing or the blue thing. And I feel as if it matteredmore than anything. More than anything on earth. "

Frances considered it--Dorothea in her uniform, and the white frock andthe blue frock. 

"It doesn't matter a little bit, " she said. "If he could propose to youin that get-up--"

"Can't you see that I want to make up for _that_ and for all the thingshe's missed, the things I haven't given him. If only I was as beautifulas you, Mummy, it wouldn't matter. "

"My dear--my dear--"

Dorothy had never been a pathetic child--not half so pathetic as Nickywith his recklessness and his earache--but this grown-up Dorothy inkhaki breeches, with her talk about white frocks and blue frocks, madeFrances want to cry. 

 * * * * *

Frank was late. And just before dinner he telephoned to Dorothy that hecouldn't be with her before nine and that he would only have one hourto give her. 

Frances and Anthony looked at each other. But Dorothy looked atVeronica. 

"What's the matter, Ronny? You look simply awful. "

"Do I? My head's splitting. I think I'll go and lie down. "

"You'd better. "

"Go straight to bed, " said Frances. "and let Nanna bring you some hotsoup. "

But Veronica did not want Nanna and hot soup. She only wanted to takeherself and her awful look away out of Dorothy's sight. 

"Well, " said Anthony, "if she's going to worry herself sick about Nickynow--"

Frances knew that she was not worrying about Nicky. 

It was nine o'clock. 

At any minute now Frank might be there. Dorothy thought: "Supposing hehasn't got leave?" But she knew that was not likely. If he hadn't gotleave he would have said so when he telephoned. 

The hour that was coming had the colour of yesterday. He would hold herin his arms again till she trembled, and then he would be afraid, andshe would be afraid, and he would let her go. 

The bell rang, the garden gate swung open; his feet were loud and quickon the flagged path of the terrace. He came into the room to them, holding himself rather stiffly and very upright. His eyes shone withexcitement. He laughed the laugh she loved, that narrowed his eyes andjerked his mouth slightly crooked. 

They all spoke at once. "You've got leave?" "_He's_ got it all right. ""What kept you?" "You _have_ got leave?"

His eyes still shone; his mouth still jerked, laughing. 

"Well, no, " he said. "That's what I haven't got. In fact, I'm lucky tobe here at all. "

Nanna came in with the coffee. He took his cup from her and sat down onthe sofa beside Frances, stirring his coffee with his spoon, and smilingas if at something pleasant that he knew, something that he would tellthem presently when Nanna left the room. 

The door closed softly behind her. He seemed to be listening intentlyfor the click of the latch. 

"Funny chaps, " he said meditatively. "They keep putting you off till youcome and tell them you want to get married to-morrow. Then they saythey're sorry, but your marching orders are fixed for that day. 

"Twelve hours isn't much notice to give a fellow. "

He had not looked at Dorothy. He had not spoken to her. He was speakingto Anthony and John and Frances who were asking questions about trainsand boats and his kit and his people. He looked as if he were notconscious of Dorothy's eyes fixed on him as he sat, slowly stirring hiscoffee without drinking it. The vibration of her nerves made his answerssound muffled and far-off. 

She knew that her hour was dwindling slowly, wasting, passing from herminute by minute as they talked. She had an intolerable longing to bealone with him, to be taken in his arms; to feel what she had feltyesterday. It was as if her soul stood still there, in yesterday, andrefused to move on into to-day. 

Yet she was glad of their talking. It put off the end. When they stoppedtalking and got up and left her alone with him, that would be the end. 

Suddenly he looked straight at her. His hands trembled. The cup he hadnot drunk from rattled in its saucer. It seemed to Dorothea that for amoment the whole room was hushed to listen to that small sound. She sawher mother take the cup from him and set it on the table. 

One by one they got up, and slunk out of the room, as if they wereguilty, and left her alone with him. 

It was not like yesterday. He did not take her in his arms. He satthere, looking at her rather anxiously, keeping his distance. He seemedto be wondering how she was going to take it. 

He thought: "I've made a mess of it again. It wasn't fair to make herwant me--when I might have known. I ought to have left it. "

And suddenly her soul swung round, released from yesterday. 

She knew what he had wanted yesterday: that her senses should be readyto follow where her heart led. But that was not the readiness herequired from her to-day; rather it was what his anxious eyes imploredher to put away from her. 

There was something more. 

He wasn't going to say the obvious things, the "Well, this is hard luckon both of us. You must be brave. Don't make it too hard for me. " (Shecould have made it intolerable. ) It wasn't that. He knew she was brave;he knew she wouldn't make it hard for him; he knew he hadn't got to saythe obvious things. 

There was something more; something tremendous. It came to her with thepower and sweetness of first passion; but without its fear. She nolonger wanted him to take her in his arms and hold her as he had heldher yesterday. Her swinging soul was steady; it vibrated to anintenser rhythm. 

She knew nothing now but that what she saw was real, and that they wereseeing it together. It was Reality itself. It was more than they. Whenrealization passed it would endure. 

Never as long as they lived would they be able to speak of it, to say toeach other what it was they felt and saw. 

 * * * * *

He said, "I shall have to go soon. "

And she said, "I know. Is there anything I can do?"

"I wish you'd go and see my mother some time. She'd like it. "

"I should love to go and see her. What else?"

"Well--I've no business to ask you, but I wish you'd give it up. "

"I'll give anything up. But what?"

"That ambulance of yours that's going to get into the firing line. "

"Oh--"

"I know why you want to get there. You want to tackle the hardest andmost dangerous job. Naturally. But it won't make it easier for us to winthe War. You can't expect us to fight so comfy, and to be killed socomfy, if we know our womenkind are being pounded to bits in the groundwe've just cleared. If I thought _you_ were knocking aboutanywhere there--"

"It would make it too hard?"

"It would make me jumpy. The chances are I shouldn't have much time tothink about it, but when I did--"

"You'd think 'She might have spared me _that_. '"

"Yes. And you might think of your people. It's bad enough for them, Nicky going. "

"It isn't only that I'd have liked to be where you'll be, and wherehe'll be. That was natural. "

"It's also natural that we should like to find you here when we comeback. "

"I was thinking of those Belgian women, and the babies--and England; sosafe, Frank; so disgustingly safe. "

"I know. Leaving the children in the burning house?"

(She had said that once and he had remembered. )

"You can do more for them by staying in England--I'm asking you to takethe hardest job, really. "

"It isn't; if it's what you want most. "

He had risen. He was going. His hands were on her shoulders, and theywere still discussing it as if it were the most momentous thing. 

"Of course, " she said, "I won't go if you feel like that about it. Iwant you to fight comfy. You mustn't worry about me. "

"Nor you about me. I shall be all right. Remember--it's _your_ War, too--it's the biggest fight for freedom--"

"I know, " she said. 

And then: "Have you got all your things?"

"Somebody's got 'em. "

"I haven't given you anything. You must have my wrist-watch. "

She unstrapped the leather band and put it on him. 

"My wrist's a whopper. "

"So's mine. It'll just meet--at the last hole. It's phosphorous, " shesaid. "You can see the time by it in the dark. "

"I've nothing for _you_. Except--" he fumbled in his pockets--"Isay--here's the wedding-ring. "

They laughed. 

"What more could you want?" she said. 

He put it on her finger; she raised her face to him and he stooped andkissed her. He held her for a minute in his arms. But it was not likeyesterday. 

Suddenly his face stiffened. "Tell them, " he said, "that I'm going. "

The British were retreating from Mons. 

The German attack was not like the advance of an Army but like thetravelling of an earthquake, the bursting of a sea-wall. There was noend to the grey battalions, no end to the German Army, no end to theGerman people. And there was no news of British reinforcements, orrumour of reinforcements. 

"They come on like waves. Like waves, " said Dorothea, reading from thepapers. 

"I wouldn't read about it if I were you, darling, " said Frances. 

"Why not? It isn't going to last long. We'll rally. See if we don't. "

Dorothea's clear, hard mind had gone under for the time, given waybefore that inconceivable advance. She didn't believe in the retreatfrom Mons. It couldn't go on. Reinforcements had been sent. 

Of course they had been sent. If Frank was ordered off at twelve hours'notice that meant reinforcements, or there wouldn't be any sense in it. They would stop the retreat. We were sitting here, safe; and the leastwe could do for _them_ was to trust them, and not believe any tales oftheir retreating. 

And all the time she wondered how news of him would come. By wire? Byletter? By telephone? She was glad that she hadn't got to wait at home, listening for the clanging of the garden gate, the knock, the ringingof the bell. 

She waited five days. And on the evening of the sixth day the messagecame from his mother to her mother: "Tell your dear child for me that myson was killed five days ago, in the retreat from Mons. And ask her tocome and see me; but not just yet. "

She had enclosed copies of the official telegram; and the letter fromhis Colonel. 

 * * * * *

After Mons, the siege of Antwerp. The refugees poured into Cannon StreetStation. 

Dorothea tried hard to drown her grief in the grief of Belgium. But shecould not drown it. She could only poison it with thoughts that turnedit into something more terrible than grief. They came to her regularly, beginning after midnight, when she lay in bed and should have slept, worn out with her hard day's driving. 

She thought: "I could bear it if I hadn't wasted the time we might havehad together. All those years--like a fool--over that silly suffrage. 

"I could bear it if I hadn't been cruel to him. I talked to him like abrute and an idiot. I told him he didn't care for freedom. And he's diedfor it. He remembered that. It was one of the last things he remembered. He said 'It's _your_ War--it's the biggest fight for freedom. ' And he'skilled in it. 

"I could bear it if I'd given myself to him that night--even for onenight. 

"How do you know he'd have loathed it? I ought to have risked it. I wasa coward. He got nothing. "

His persistent image in her memory tortured her. It was an illusion thatprolonged her sense of his material presence, urging it towards acontact that was never reached. Death had no power over this illusion. She could not see Drayton's face, dead among the dead. 

Obsessed by her illusion she had lost her hold on the reality that theyhad seen and felt together. All sense of it was gone, as if she haddreamed it or made it up. 

Presently she would not have her work to keep her from thinking. TheAmbulance Corps was going out to Flanders at the end of September, andit would take her car with it and a new driver. 

Frances's heart ached when she looked at her. 

"If I could only help you. "

"You can't, Mummy ducky, " she would say. And she would get up and leavethe room where Frances was. Sometimes she would go to Veronica; but moreoften she hid away somewhere by herself. 

Frances thought: "She is out of my reach. I can't get at her. She'll goto anybody rather than to me. It used to be Rosalind. Now it'sVeronica. "

But Dorothy could not speak about Drayton to her mother. Only toVeronica, trying to comfort her, she said, "I could bear it if he'd beenkilled in an attack. But to go straight, like that, into the retreat. Hecouldn't have had five hours' fighting. 

"And to be killed--Retreating. 

"He got nothing out of it but agony. "

Veronica said, "How do you know he got nothing out of it? You don't knowwhat he may have got in the last minute of it. "

"Ronny, I don't believe I should mind so much if I were going out toFlanders--if there was the least little chance of a bullet getting me. But I gave him my word I wouldn't go. 

"Do you think I'm bound by that--now?"

"Now? You're more bound than ever, because he's more near you, morealive. "

"You wouldn't say that if you loved him. "

 * * * * *

One day a package came to her from Eltham. Two notes were enclosed withit, one from Drayton's mother and one from Drayton:

"Frank said I was to send you this if he was killed. I think he musthave known that he would not come back. "

 * * * * *

"My Dear Dorothy, --You will think this is a very singular bequest. But Iwant you to see that my memory is fairly good. "

 * * * * *

The very singular bequest was a Bible, with three cigarette-lighters formarkers, and a date on the fly-leaf: "July 5th, 1912. "

The cigarette-lighters referred her to Psalm cxliv. , and Isaiah xxxv. And xl. , and pencil marks to the verses:

"Blessed be the Lord my strength which teacheth my hands to war and myfingers to fight. "... 

"And an highway shall be there ... The redeemed shall walk there, andthe ransomed of the Lord shall return" ... 

... "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shallmount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; theyshall walk and not faint. "

And their last hour came back to her with its mysterious, sweet andpowerful passion that had no fear in it; and she laid hold again on theReality they had seen and felt together. 

The moment passed. She wanted it to come back, for as long as it lastedshe was at peace. 

But it did not come back. Nothing came back but her anguish of remorsefor all that she had wasted. 

XXI

After Drayton's death Frances and Anthony were sobered and had ceased tofeed on illusions. The Battle of the Marne was fought in vain for them. They did not believe that it had saved Paris. 

Then came the fall of Antwerp and the Great Retreat. There was no moreBelgium. The fall of Paris and the taking of Calais were only a questionof time, of perhaps a very little time. Then there would be no moreFrance. They were face to face with the further possibility of therebeing no more England. 

In those months of September and October Anthony and Frances werechanged utterly to themselves and to each other. If, before the War, Frances had been asked whether she loved England, she would, aftercareful consideration, have replied truthfully, "I like England. But Idislike the English people. They are narrow and hypocritical andconceited. They are snobbish; and I hate snobs. " At the time of the BoerWar, beyond thinking that the British ought to win, and that they wouldwin, and feeling a little spurt as of personal satisfaction when theydid win, she had had no consciousness of her country whatsoever. As forloving it, she loved her children and her husband, and she had a sort ofmild, cat-like affection for her garden and her tree of Heaven and herhouse; but the idea of loving England was absurd; you might just as welltalk of loving the Archbishopric of Canterbury. She who once sat inpeace under the tree of Heaven with her _Times_ newspaper, and flickedthe affairs of the nation from her as less important than the stitchingon her baby's frock, now talked and thought and dreamed of nothing else. She was sad, not because her son Nicholas's time of safety was dwindlingweek by week, but because England was in danger; she was worried, notbecause Lord Kitchener was practically asking her to give up her sonMichael, but because she had found that the race was to the swift andthe battle to the strong, and that she was classed with her incompetentsisters as too old to wait on wounded soldiers. Every morning she lefther household to old Nanna's care and went down to the City withAnthony, and worked till evening in a room behind his office, receiving, packing, and sending off great cases of food and clothing to theBelgian soldiers. 

Anthony was sad and worried, not because he had three sons, all wellunder twenty-seven, but simply and solely because the Governmentpersisted in buying the wrong kind of timber--timber that swelled andshrank again--for rifles and gun-carriages, and because officialswouldn't listen to him when he tried to tell them what he knew abouttimber, and because the head of a department had talked to _him_ aboutprivate firms and profiteering. As if any man with three sons undertwenty-seven would want to make a profit out of the War; and as if theycouldn't cut down everybody's profits if they took the trouble. Theymight cut his to the last cent so long as we had gun-carriages thatwould carry guns and rifles that would shoot. He knew what he wastalking about and they didn't. 

And Frances said he was right. He always had been right. She who hadonce been impatient over his invariable, irritating rightness, loved itnow. She thought and said that if there were a few men like Anthony atthe head of departments we should win the War. We were losing it forwant of precisely that specialized knowledge and that power oforganization in which Anthony excelled. She was proud of him, notbecause he was her husband and the father of her children, but becausehe was a man who could help England. They were both proud of Michael andNicholas and John, not because they were their sons, but because theywere men who could fight for England. 

They found that they loved England with a secret, religious, instinctivelove. Two feet of English earth, the ground that a man might stand andfight for, became, mysteriously and magically, dearer to them than theirhome. They loved England more than their own life or the lives of theirchildren. Long ago they had realized that fathers do not beget childrennor mothers bear them merely to gratify themselves. Now, in Septemberand October, they were realizing that children are not begotten and bornfor their own profit and pleasure either. 

When they sat together after the day's work they found themselves sayingthe most amazing things to each other. 

Anthony said, "Downham thinks John's heart is decidedly better. Ishouldn't wonder if he'd have to go. " Almost as if the idea had beenpleasant to him. 

And Frances: "Well, I suppose if we had thirteen sons instead of three, we ought to send them all. "

"Positively, " said Anthony. "I believe I'd let Dorothy go out now if sheinsisted. "

"Oh, no, I think we might be allowed to keep Dorothy. "

She pondered. "I suppose one will get used to it in time. I grudgedgiving Nicky at first. I don't grudge him now. I believe if he went outto-morrow, and was killed, I should only feel how splendid it wasof him. "

"I wish poor Dorothy could feel that way about Drayton. "

"She does--really. But that's different. Frank had to go. It was hisprofession. Nicky's gone in of his own free will. "

He did not remind her that Frank's free will had counted in his choiceof a profession. 

"Once, " said Frances, "volunteers didn't count. Now they count more thanthe whole Army put together. "

They were silent, each thinking the same thing; each knowing that sooneror later they must speak of it. 

Frances was the braver of the two. She spoke first. 

"There's Michael. I don't know what to make of him. He doesn't seem towant to go. "

That was the vulnerable place; there they had ached unbearably insecret. It was no use trying to hide it any longer. Something must bedone about Michael. 

"I wish you'd say something to him, Anthony. "

"I would if I were going myself. But how can I?"

"When he knows that you'd have gone before any of them if you were youngenough. "

"I can't say anything. You'll have to. "

"No, Anthony. I can't ask him to go any more than you can. Nicky is theonly one of us who has any right to. "

"Or Dorothy. Dorothy'd be in the trenches now if she had her way. "

"I can't think how he can bear to look at Dorothy. "

But in the end she did say something. 

She went to him in his room upstairs where he worked now, hiding himselfaway every evening out of their sight. "Almost, " she thought, "as if hewere ashamed of himself. "

Her heart ached as she looked at him; at the fair, serious beauty of hisyoung face; at the thick masses of his hair that would not stay as theywere brushed back, but fell over his forehead; it was still yellow, andshining as it shone when he was a little boy. 

He was writing. She could see the short, irregular lines of verse on thewhite paper. He covered them with his hand as she came in lest sheshould see them. That hurt her. 

"Michael, " she said, "I wonder if you _ever_ realize that we are atwar. "

"The War isn't a positive obsession to me, if that's what you mean. "

"It isn't what I mean. Only--that when other people are doing so much--

"George Vereker enlisted yesterday. "

"I don't care what other people are doing. I never did. If GeorgeVereker chooses to enlist it is no reason why I should. "

"My darling Mick, I'm not so sure. Isn't it all the more reason, when somuch more has been done for you than was ever done for him?"

"It's no use trying to get at me. "

"England's fighting for her life, " said Frances. 

"So's Germany. 

"You see, I can't feel it like other people. George Vereker hatesGermany; I don't. I've lived there. I don't want to make dear old FrauHenschel a widow, and stick a bayonet into Ludwig and Carl, and makeHedwig and Löttchen cry. "

"I see. You'd rather Carl and Ludwig stuck bayonets into George andNicky, and that Ronny and Dorothy and Alice Lathom cried. "

"Bayonetting isn't my business. "

"Your own safety is. How can you bear to let other men fight for you?"

"They're not fighting for _me_, Mother. You ask them if they are, andsee what they'll say to you. They're fighting for God knows what; butthey're no more fighting for me than they're fighting for AuntEmmeline. "

"They _are_ fighting for Aunt Emmeline. They're fighting for everythingthat's weak and defenceless. "

"Well, then, they're not fighting for me. I'm not weak and defenceless, "said Michael. 

"All the more shame for you, then. "

He smiled, acknowledging her score. 

"You don't mean that, really, Mummy. You couldn't resist the opening fora repartee. It was quite a nice one. "

"If, " she said, "you were only _doing_ something. But you go on withyour own things as though nothing had happened. "

"I _am_ doing something. I'm keeping sane. And I'm keeping sanity alivein other people. "

"Much you care for other people, " said Frances as she left the room. 

But when she had shut the door on him her heart turned to him again. Shewent down to Anthony where he waited for her in his room. 

"_Well?_" he said. 

"It's no use. He won't go. "

And Frances, quite suddenly and to her own surprise, burst into tears. 

He drew her to him, and she clung to him, sobbing softly. 

"My dear--my dear. You mustn't take it to heart like this. He's asobstinate as the devil; but he'll come round. "

He pressed her tighter to him. He loved her in her unfamiliar weakness, crying and clinging to him. 

"It's not that, " she said, recovering herself with dignity. "I'm glad hedidn't give in. If he went out, and anything happened to him, I couldn'tbear to be the one who made him go. "

After all, she didn't love England more than Michael. 

They were silent. 

"We must leave it to his own feeling, " she said presently. 

But Anthony's heart was hard against Michael. 

"He must know that _public_ feeling's pretty strong against him. To saynothing of _my_ feeling and _your_ feeling. "

 * * * * *

He did know it. He knew that they were all against him; his father andhis mother, and John and Dorothy. Because he couldn't bear to look atDorothy, and couldn't bear Dorothy to look at him, he kept out of herway as much as possible. 

As for public opinion, it had always been against him, and he againstit. 

But Anthony was mistaken when he thought that the pressure of theseantagonisms would move Michael an inch from the way he meant to go. Rather, it drew out that resistance which Michael's mind had alwaysoffered to the loathsome violences of the collective soul. From his veryfirst encounters with the collective soul and its emotions they hadseemed to Michael as dangerous as they were loathsome. Collectiveemotion might be on the side of the archangels or on the side of devilsand of swine; its mass was what made it dangerous, a thing thatchallenged the resistance of the private soul But in his worst dreams ofwhat it could do to him Michael had never imagined anything moreappalling than the collective patriotism of the British and theirAllies, this rushing together of the souls of four countries to make onemonstrous soul. 

And neither Anthony nor Frances realized that Michael, at this moment, was afraid, not of the War so much as of the emotions of the War, theawful, terrifying flood that carried him away from his real self andfrom everything it cared for most. Patriotism was, no doubt, a fineemotion; but the finer the thing was, the more it got you; it got youand you were done for. He was determined that it shouldn't get him. Theycouldn't see--and that was Michael's grievance--that his resistance washis strength and not his weakness. 

Even Frances, who believed that people never changed, did not realizethat the grown-up Michael who didn't want to enlist was the same entityas the little Michael who hadn't wanted to go to the party, who hadwanted to go on playing with himself, afraid of nothing so much as offorgetting "pieces of himself that he wanted to remember. " He wasMichael who refused to stay at school another term, and who talked aboutshooting himself because he had to go with his class and do what theother fellows were doing. He objected to being suddenly required to feelpatriotic because other people were feeling patriotic, to think thatGermany was in the wrong because other people thought that Germany wasin the wrong, to fight because other people were fighting. 

Why should he? He saw no earthly reason why. 

He said to himself that it was the blasted cheek of the assumption thathe resented. There was a peculiarly British hypocrisy and unfairness andtyranny about it all. 

It wasn't--as they all seemed to think--that he was afraid to fight. Hehad wanted to go and fight for Ireland. He would fight any day in acleaner cause. By a cleaner cause Michael meant a cause that had notbeen messed about so much by other people. Other people had not putpressure on him to fight for Ireland; in fact they had tried to stophim. Michael was also aware that in the matter of Ireland his emotions, though shared by considerable numbers of the Irish people, were notshared by his family or by many people whom he knew; to all intents andpurposes he had them to himself. 

It was no use trying to explain all this to his father and mother, forthey wouldn't understand it. The more he explained the more he wouldseem to them to be a shirker. 

He could see what they thought of him. He saw it in their stiff, reticent faces, in his mother's strained smile, in his sister's silencewhen he asked her what she had been doing all day. Their eyes--hismother's and his sister's eyes--pursued him with the unspoken question:"Why don't you go and get killed--for England--like other people?"

Still, he could bear these things, for they were visible, palpable; heknew where he was with them. What he could not stand was that emptyspiritual space between him and Nicky. That hurt him where he was mostvulnerable--in his imagination. 

 * * * * *

And again, his imagination healed the wound it made. 

It was all very well, but if you happened to have a religion, and yourreligion was what mattered to you most; if you adored Beauty as thesupreme form of Life; if you cared for nothing else; if you lived, impersonally, to make Beauty and to keep it alive; and for no other end, how could you consent to take part in this bloody business? That wouldbe the last betrayal, the most cowardly surrender. 

And you were all the more bound to faithfulness if you were one of theleaders of a forlorn hope, of the forlorn hope of all the world, of allthe ages, the forlorn hope of God himself. 

 * * * * *

For Michael, even more than Ellis, had given himself up as lost. 

And yet somehow they all felt curiously braced by the prospect. When theyoung men met in Lawrence Stephen's house they discussed it with a calm, high heroism. This was the supreme test: To go on, without pay, withoutpraise, without any sort of recognition. Any fool could fight; but, ifyou were an artist, your honour bound you to ignore the materialcontest, to refuse, even to your country, the surrender of the highestthat you knew. They believed with the utmost fervour and sincerity thatthey defied Germany more effectually, because more spiritually, by goingon and producing fine things with imperturbability than if they went outagainst the German Armies with bayonets and machine-guns. Moreover theywere restoring Beauty as fast as Germany destroyed it. 

They told each other these things very seriously and earnestly, onFriday evenings as they lay about more or less at their ease (but ratherless than more) in Stephen's study. 

They had asked each other: "Are _you_ going to fight for your country?"

And Ellis had said he was damned if he'd fight for his country; andMitchell had said he hadn't got a country, so there was no point in hisfighting, anyhow; and Monier-Owen that if you could show him a countrythat cared for the arts before anything he'd fight for it; but thatEngland was very far from being that country. 

And Michael had sat silent, thinking the same thoughts. 

And Stephen had sat silent, thinking other thoughts, not listening towhat was said. 

And now people were whining about Louvain and Rheims Cathedral. Michaelsaid to himself that he could stand these massed war emotions if theywere sincere; but people whined about Louvain and Rheims Cathedral whohad never cared a damn about either before the War. 

Anthony looked up over the edge of his morning paper, inquired whetherMichael could defend the destruction of Louvain and Rheims Cathedral?

Michael shrugged his shoulders. "Why bother, " he said, "about RheimsCathedral and Louvain? From your point of view it's all right. IfLouvain and Rheims Cathedral get in the way of the enemy's artillerythey've got to go. They didn't happen to be in the way of ours, that's all. "

Michael's mind was showing certain symptoms, significant of its malady. He was inclined to disparage the military achievements of the Allies andto justify the acts of Germany. 

"It's up to the French to defend Paris. And what have we got to do withAlsace-Lorraine? As if every inteligent Frenchman didn't know thatAlsace-Lorraine is a sentimental stunt. No. I'm not pro-German. I simplysee things as they are. "

"I think, " Frances would say placably, "we'd better not talk about theWar. "

He would remind them that it was not his subject. 

And John laughed at him. "Poor old Nick hates the War because it'sdished him. He knows his poems can't come out till it's over. "

As it happened, his poems came out that autumn. 

After all, the Germans had been held back from Paris. As Stephen pointedout to him, the Battle of the Marne had saved Michael. In magnificentdefiance of the enemy, the "New Poems" of Michael Harrison, withillustrations by Austin Mitchell, were announced as forthcoming inOctober; and Morton Ellis's "Eccentricities, " with illustrations byAustin Mitchell, were to appear the same month. Even Wadham's poemswould come out some time, perhaps next spring. 

Stephen said the advertisements should be offered to the War Office asposters, to strike terror into Germany and sustain the morale of theAllied Armies. "If England could afford to publish Michael--"

Michael's family made no comment on the appearance of his poems. Thebook lay about in the same place on the drawing-room table for weeks. When Nanna dusted she replaced it with religious care; none of hispeople had so much as taken it up to glance inside it, or hold it intheir hands. It seemed to Michael that they were conscious of it all thetime, and that they turned their faces away from it pointedly. Theyhated it. They hated him for having written it. 

He remembered that it had been different when his first book had comeout two years ago. They had read that; they had snatched at all thereviews of it and read it again, trying to see what it was that theyhad missed. 

They had taken each other aside, and it had been:

"Anthony, do you understand Michael's poems?"

"Dorothy, do you understand Michael's poems?"

"Nicky, do you understand Michael's poems?"

He remembered his mother's apology for not understanding them: "Darling, I _do_ see that they're very beautiful. " He remembered how he had wishedthat they would give up the struggle and leave his poems alone. Theywere not written for them. He had been amused and irritated when he hadseen his father holding the book doggedly in front of him, his poor oldhands twitching with embarrassment whenever he thought Michael waslooking at him. 

And now he, who had been so indifferent and so contemptuous, wassensitive to the least quiver of his mother's upper lip. 

Veronica's were the only eyes that were kind to him; that did not hunthim down with implacable suggestion and reminder. 

Veronica had been rejected too. She was not strong enough to nurse inthe hospitals. She was only strong enough to work from morning to night, packing and carrying large, heavy parcels for the Belgian soldiers. Shewanted Michael to be sorry for her because she couldn't be a nurse. Rosalind Jervis was a nurse. But he was not sorry. He said he would verymuch rather she didn't do anything that Rosalind did. 

"So would Nicky, " he said. 

And then: "Veronica, do _you_ think I ought to enlist?"

The thought was beginning to obsess him. 

"No, " she said; "you're different. 

"I know how you feel about it. Nicky's heart and soul are in the War. Ifhe's killed it can only kill his body. _Your_ soul isn't in it. It wouldkill your soul. "

"It's killing it now, killing everything I care for. "

"Killing everything we all care for, except the things it can't kill. "

That was one Sunday evening in October. They were standing together onthe long terrace under the house wall. Before them, a little to theright, on the edge of the lawn, the great ash-tree rose over the garden. The curved and dipping branches swayed and swung in a low wind thatmoved like quiet water. 

"Michael, " she said, "do look what's happening to that tree. "

"I see, " he said. 

It made him sad to look at the tree; it made him sad to look atVeronica--because both the tree and Veronica were beautiful. 

"When I was a little girl I used to sit and look and look at that treetill it changed and got all thin and queer and began to move towards me. 

"I never knew whether it had really happened or not; I don't knownow--or whether it was the tree or me. It was as if by looking andlooking you could make the tree more real and more alive. "

Michael remembered something. 

"Dorothy says you saw Ferdie the night he died. "

"So I did. But that's not the same thing. I didn't have to look andlook. I just saw him. I _sort_ of saw Frank that last night--when thecall came--only sort of--but I knew he was going to be killed. 

"I didn't see him nearly so distinctly as I saw Nicky-"

"Nicky? You didn't see him--as you saw Ferdie?"

"No, no, no! it was ages ago--in Germany--before he married. I saw himwith Desmond. "

"Have you ever seen me?"

"Not yet. That's because you don't want me as they did. "

"Don't I! Don't I!"

And she said again: "Not yet. "

Nicky had had leave for Christmas. He had come and gone. 

Frances and Anthony were depressed; they were beginning to befrightened. 

For Nicky had finished his training. He might be sent out any day. 

Nicky had had some moments of depression. Nothing had been heard of theMoving Fortress. Again, the War Office had given no sign of havingreceived it. It was hard luck, he said, on Drayton. 

And John was depressed after he had gone. 

"They'd much better have taken me, " he said. 

"What's the good of sending the best brains in the Army to get pounded?There's Drayton. He ought to have been in the Ordnance. He's killed. 

"And here's Nicky. Nicky ought to be in the engineers or the gunners orthe Royal Flying Corps; but he's got to stand in the trenches andbe pounded. 

"Lot they care about anybody's brains. Drayton could have told Kitchenerthat we can't win this war without high-explosive shells. Socould Nicky. 

"You bet they've stuck all those plans and models in the sanitarydust-bin behind the War Office back door. It's enough to make Nicky blowhis brains out. "

"Nicky doesn't care, really, " Veronica said. "He just leaves things--andgoes on. "

That night, after the others had gone to bed, Michael stayed behind withhis father. 

"It must look to you, " he said, "as if I ought to have gone instead ofNicky. "

"I don't say so, Michael. And I'm sure Nicky wouldn't. "

"No, but you both think it. You see, if I went I shouldn't be any goodat it. Not the same good as Nicky. He wants to go and I don't. Can't yousee it's different?"

"Yes, " said Anthony, "I see. I've seen it for some time. "

And Michael remembered the night in August when his brother came to himin his room. 

 * * * * *

Beauty--the Forlorn Hope of God--if he cared for it supremely, why washe pursued and tormented by the thought of the space between himand Nicky?

XXII

Michael had gone to Stephen's house. 

He was no longer at his ease there. It seemed to him that Lawrence'seyes followed him too; not with hatred, but with a curiousmeditative wonder. 

To-night Stephen said to him, "Did you know that Réveillaud's killed?"

"Killed? Killed? I didn't even know he was fighting. "

Lawrence laughed. "What did you suppose he was doing?"

"No--but how?"

"Out with the patrol and shot down. There you are--"

He shoved the _Times_ to him, pointing to the extract from _Le Matin_:"It is with regret that we record the death of M. Jules Réveillaud, thebrilliant young poet and critic--"

Michael stared at the first three lines; something in his mind preventedhim from going on to the rest, as if he did not care to read aboutRéveillaud and know how he died. 

"It is with regret that we record the death. It is with regret that werecord--with regret--"

Then he read on, slowly and carefully, to the end. It was a longparagraph. 

"To think, " he said at last, "that this revolting thing should havehappened to him. "

"His death?"

"No--_this_. The _Matin_ never mentioned Réveillaud before. None of thebig papers, none of the big reviews noticed his existence except tosneer at him. He goes out and gets killed like any little bourgeois, andthe swine plaster him all over with their filthy praise. He'd ratherthey'd spat on him. "

He meditated fiercely. "Well--he couldn't help it. He was conscripted. "

"You think he wouldn't have gone of his own accord?"

"I'm certain he wouldn't. "

"And I'm certain he would. "

"I wish to God we'd got conscription here. I'd rather the Governmentcommandeered my body than stand this everlasting interference withmy soul. "

"Then, " said Lawrence, "you'll not be surprised at my enlisting. "

"You're not--"

"I am. I'd have been in the first week if I'd known what to do aboutVera. "

"But--it's--it's not sane. "

"Perhaps not. But it's Irish. "

"Irish? I can understand ordinary Irishmen rushing into a European rowfor the row's sake, just because they haven't got a civil war to messabout in. But you--of all Irishmen--why on earth should _you_ be in it?"

"Because I want to be in it. "

"I thought, " said Michael, "you were to have been a thorn in England'sside?"

"So I was. So I am. But not at this minute. My grandmother was a hardUlster woman and I hated her. But I wouldn't be a thorn in mygrandmother's side if the old lady was assaulted by a brutal voluptuary, and I saw her down and fighting for her honour. 

"I've been a thorn in England's side all my life. But it's nothing tothe thorn I'll be if I'm killed fighting for her. "

"Why--why--if you want to fight in the civil war afterwards?"

"Why? Because I'm one of the few Irishmen who can reason straight. I wasgoing into the civil war last year because it was a fight for freedom. I'm going into this War this year because it's a bigger fight for abigger freedom. 

"You can't have a free Ireland without a free England, any more than youcan have religious liberty without political liberty. If the Orangemenunderstood anything at all about it they'd see it was the Nationalistsand the Sinn Feiners that'll help them to put down Catholicismin Ireland. "

"You think it matters to Ireland whether Germany licks us or we lickGermany?"

"I think it matters to the whole world. "

"What's changed you?" said Michael. 

He was angry with Lawrence. He thought: "He hasn't any excuse forfailing us. He hasn't been conscripted. "

"Nothing's changed me. But supposing it didn't matter to the wholeworld, or even to Europe, and supposing the Allies were beaten in theend, you and I shouldn't be beaten, once we'd stripped ourselves, stripped our souls clean, and gone in. 

"Victory, Michael--victory is a state of mind. "

 * * * * *

The opportunist had seen his supreme opportunity. 

He would have snatched at it in the first week of the War, as he hadsaid, but that Vera had made it hard for him. She was not making it easynow. The dull, dark moth's wings of her eyes hovered about him, fluttering with anxiety. 

When she heard that he was going to enlist she sent for Veronica. 

Veronica said, "You must let him go. "

"I can't let him go. And why should I? He'll do no good. He's over age. He's no more fit than I am. "

"You'll have to, sooner or later. "

"Later, then. Not one minute before I must. If they want him let themcome and take him. "

"It won't hurt so much if you let him go, gently, now. He'll tear at youif you keep him. "

"He has torn at me. He tears at me every day. I don't mind his tearing. I mind his going--going and getting killed, wounded, paralysed, brokento pieces. "

"You'll mind his hating you. You'll mind that awfully. "

"I shan't. He's hated me before. He went away and left me once. But hecame back. He can't really do without me. "

"You don't know how he'll hate you if you come between him and what hewants most. "

"_I_ used to be what he wanted most. "

"Well--it's his honour now. "

"That's what they all say, Michael and Anthony, and Dorothy. They're menand they don't know. Dorothy's more a man than a woman. 

"But you're different. I thought you might help me to keep him--they sayyou've got some tremendous secret. And this is the way you go on!"

"I wouldn't help you to keep him if I could. I wouldn't have kept Nickyfor all the world. Aunt Frances wouldn't have kept him. She wantsMichael to go. "

"She doesn't. If she says she does she lies. All the women are lying. Either they don't care--they're just _lumps_, with no hearts and nonerves in them--or they lie. 

"It's this rotten pose of patriotism. They get it from each other, like--like a skin disease. No wonder it makes Michael sick. "

"Men going out--thousands and thousands and thousands--to be cut aboutand blown to bits, and their women safe at home, snuffling andsentimentalizing--

"Lying--lying--lying. "

"Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't tell one big, thumping, sacred lie, if itsends them off happy?"

"But we're not lying. It's the most real thing that ever happened to us. I'm glad Nicky's going. I shall be glad all my life. "

"It comes easy to you. You're a child. You've never grown up. You were amiserable little mummy when you were born. And now you look as if everydrop of blood was drained out of your body in your teens. If that'syour tremendous secret you can keep it yourself. It seems to be allyou've got. "

"If it wasn't for Aunt Frances and Uncle Anthony it _would_ have beenall I've got. "

Vera looked at her daughter and saw her for the first time as she reallywas. The child was not a child any more. She was a woman, astonishinglyand dangerously mature. Veronica's sorrowful, lucid eyes took her in;they neither weighed her nor measured her, but judged her, off-hand withperfect accuracy. 

"Poor little Ronny. I've been a beastly mother to you. Still, you canthank my beastliness for Aunt Frances and Uncle Anthony. "

Veronica thought: "How funny she is about it!" She said, "It's yourbeastliness to poor Larry that I mind. You know what you're keepinghim for. "

 * * * * *

She knew; and Lawrence knew. 

That night he told her that if he hadn't wanted to enlist he'd be drivento it to get away from her. 

And she was frightened and held her tongue. 

Then she got desperate. She did things. She intrigued behind his back tokeep him; and he found her out. 

He came to her, furious. 

"You needn't lie about it, " he said. "I know what you've done. You'vebeen writing letters and getting at people. You've told the truth aboutmy age and you've lied about my health. You've even gone round cadgingfor jobs for me in the Red Cross and the Press Bureau and theIntelligence Department, and God only knows whether I'm supposed to haveput you up to it. "

"I took care of that, Larry. "

"You? You'd no right to interfere with my affairs. "

"Hadn't I? Not after living with you seven years?"

"If you'd lived with me seven centuries you'd have had no right to tryto keep a man back from the Army. "

"I'm trying to keep a man's brain for my country. "

"You lie. It's my body you're trying to keep for yourself. As you didwhen I was going to Ireland. "

"Oh, then--I tried to stop you from being a traitor to England. They'dhave hanged you, my dear, for that. "

"Traitor? It's women like you that are the traitors. My God, if therewas a Government in this country that could govern, you'd be strung upin a row, all of you, and hanged. "

"No wonder you think you're cut out for a soldier. You're cruel enough. "

"_You're_ cruel. I'd rather be hanged than live with you a day longerafter what you've done. A Frenchman shot his _wife_ the other day forless than that. "

"What was 'less than that'?" she said. 

"She crawled after him to the camp, like a bitch. 

"He sent her away and she came again and again. He _had_ to shoot her. "

"Was there nothing to be said for her?"

"There was. She knew it was a big risk and she took it. _You_ knew youwere safe while you slimed my honour. "

"She loved him, and he shot her, and you think that's a fine thing. _How_ she must have loved him!"

"Men don't want to be loved that way. That's the mistake you women willmake. "

"It's the way you've taught us. I should like to know what other way youever want us to love you?"

"The way Veronica loves Nicky, and Dorothy loved Drayton and Francesloves Anthony. "

"Dorothy? She ruined Drayton's life. "

"Men's lives aren't ruined that way. And not all women's. "

"Well, anyhow, if she'd loved him she'd have married him. And Francesloves her children better than Anthony, and Anthony knows it. "

"Veronica, then. "

"Veronica doesn't know what passion is. The poor child's anæmic. "

"Another mistake. Veronica, and 'children' like Veronica have morepassion in one eyelash than you have in your whole body. "

"It's a pity, " she said, "you can't have Veronica and her eyelashesinstead of me. She's young and she's pretty. "

He sighed with pain as her nerves lashed into his. 

"That's what it all amounts to--your wanting to get out to the Front. It's what's the matter with half the men who go there and pose asheroes. They want to get rid of the wives--and mistresses--they're tiredof because the poor things aren't young or pretty any longer. "

She dropped into the mourning voice that made him mad with her. "I'mold--old--old. And the War's making me older every day, and uglier. AndI'm not married to you. Talk of keeping you! How _can_ I keep you whenI'm old and ugly?"

He looked at her and smiled with a hard pity. Compunction always workedin him at the sight of her haggard face, glazed and stained with crying. 

"That's how--by getting older. 

"I've never tired of you. You're more to me now than you were when Ifirst knew you. It's when I see you looking old that I'm sure Ilove you. "

She smiled, too, in her sad sexual wisdom. 

"There may be women who'd believe you, Larry, or who'd say they believeyou; but not me. "

"It's the truth, " he said. "If you were young and if you were married tome I should have enlisted months ago. 

"Can't you see it's not you, it's this life we lead that I'm sick andtired of? I tell you I'd rather be hanged than go on with it. I'd ratherbe a prisoner in Germany than shut up in this house of yours. "

"Poor little house. You used to like it. What's wrong with it now?"

"Everything. Those damned lime-trees all round it. And that damned whitewall round the lime-trees. Shutting me in. 

"And those curtains in your bed-room. Shutting me in. 

"And your mind, trying to shut mine in. 

"I come into this room and I find Phyllis Desmond in it and Orde-Jones, drinking tea and talking. I go upstairs for peace, and Michael and Ellisare sitting there--talking; trying to persuade themselves that funk'sthe divinest thing in God's universe. 

"And over there's the one thing I've been looking for all my life--theone thing I've cared for. And you're keeping me from it. "

They left it. But it began all over again the next day and the next. AndLawrence went on growing his moustache and trying to train it upwards inthe way she hated. 

 * * * * *

One evening, towards dinner-time he turned up in khaki, the moustachestiff on his long upper lip, his lopping hair clipped. He was anotherman, a strange man, and she was not sure whether she hated him or not. 

But she dried her eyes and dressed her hair, and put on her best gown todo honour to his khaki. 

She said, "It'll be like living with another man. "

"You won't have very long to live with him, " said Lawrence. 

And even then, sombrely, under the shadow of his destiny, her passionfor him revived; his very strangeness quickened it to violence, toperversity. 

And in the morning the Army took him from her; it held him out of herreach. He refused to let her go with him to the place where he wasstationed. 

"What would you do, " she said, "if I followed you? Shoot me?"

"I might shoot _myself_. Anyhow, you'd never see me or hear from meagain. "

 * * * * *

He went out to France three weeks before Nicholas. 

She had worn herself out with wondering when he would be sent, tillshe, too, was in a hurry for him to go and end it. Now that he had goneshe felt nothing but a clean and sane relief that was a sort of peace. She told herself that she would rather he were killed soon than that sheshould be tortured any longer with suspense. 

"If I saw his name in the lists this morning I shouldn't mind. Thatwould end it. "

And she sent her servant to the stationer's to stop the papers for fearlest she should see his name in the lists. 

But Lawrence spared her. He was wounded in his first engagement, anddied of his wounds in a hospital at Dunkirk. 

The Red Cross woman who nursed him wrote to Vera an hour before he died. She gave details and a message. 

 * * * * *

"7. 30. I'm writing now from his dictation. He says you're to forgive himand not to be too sorry, because it was what he thought it would be (hemeans the fighting) only much more so--all except this last bit. 

"He wants you to tell Michael and Dicky?--Nicky?--that. He says: 'It'sodd I should be first when he got the start of me. '

"(I think he means you're to forgive him for leaving you to go to theWar. )"

 * * * * *

"8. 30. It is all over. 

"He was too weak to say anything more. But he sent you his love. "

 * * * * *

Vera said to herself: "He didn't. She made that up. "

She hated the Red Cross woman who had been with Lawrence and had seen somuch; who had dared to tell her what he meant and to make up messages. 

XXIII

Nicholas had applied for a commission, and he had got it, and Franceswas glad. 

She had been proud of him because he had chosen the ranks instead of theOfficers' Training Corps; but she persisted in the belief that, when itcame to the trenches, second lieutenants stood a better chance. "Forgoodness' sake, " Nicholas had said, "don't tell her that they're overthe parapet first. "

That was in December. In February he got a week's leave--sudden, unforeseen and special leave. It had to be broken to her this time thatleave as special as that meant war-leave. 

She said, "Well, if it does, I shall have him for six whole days. " Shehad learned how to handle time, how to prolong the present, drawing itout minute by minute; thus her happiness, stretched to the snappingpoint, vibrated. 

She had a sense of its vibration now, as she looked at Nicholas. It wasthe evening of the day he had come home, and they were all in thedrawing-room together. He was standing before her, straight and tall, onthe hearthrug, where he had lifted the Persian cat, Timmy, out of hissleep and was holding him against his breast. Timmy spread himselfthere, softly and heavily, hanging on to Nicky's shoulder by his claws;he butted Nicky's chin with his head, purring. 

"I don't know how I'm to tear myself away from Timmy. I should like towear him alive as a waistcoat. Or hanging on my shoulder like a cape, with his tail curled tight round my neck. He'd look uncommonly _chic_with all his khaki patches. "

"Why don't you take him with you?" Anthony said. 

"'Cos he's Ronny's cat. "

"He isn't. I've given him to you, " Veronica said. 

"When?"

"Now, this minute. To sleep on your feet and keep you warm. "

Frances listened and thought: "What children--what babies they are, after all. " If only this minute could be stretched out farther. 

"I mustn't, " Nicky said. "I should spend hours in dalliance; and if ashell got him it would ruin my morale. "

Timmy, unhooked from Nicky's shoulder, lay limp in his arms. He lay onhis back, in ecstasy, his legs apart, showing the soft, cream-white furof his stomach. Nicky rubbed his face against the soft, cream-white fur. 

"I say, what a heavenly death it would be to die--smothered in Timmies. "

"Nicky, you're a beastly sensualist. That's what's the matter with you, "John said. And they all laughed. 

The minute broke, stretched to its furthest. 

 * * * * *

Frances was making plans now for Nicky's week. There were things theycould do, plays they could see, places they could go to. Anthony wouldlet them have the big car as much as they wanted. For you could stretchtime out by filling it; you could multiply the hours by what they held. 

"Ronny and I are going to get married to-morrow, " Nicky said. "Wesettled it that we would at once, if I got war-leave. It's the bestthing to do. "

"Of course, " Frances said, "it's the best thing to do. "

But she had not allowed for it, nor for the pain it gave her. That painshocked her. It was awful to think that, after all her surrenders, Nicky's happiness could give her pain. It meant that she had never letgo her secret hold. She had been a hypocrite to herself. 

Nicky was talking on about it, excitedly, as he used to talk on abouthis pleasures when he was a child. 

If Dad'll let us have the racing car, we'll go down to Morfe. We can doit in a day. "

"My dear boy, " Anthony said, "don't you know I've lent the house to theRed Cross, and let the shooting?"

"I don't care. There's the little house in the village we can have. AndHarker and his wife can look after us. "

"Harker gone to the War, and his wife's looking after his brother'schildren somewhere. And I've put two Belgian refugees into it. "

"_They_ can look after us, " said Nicky. "We'll stay three days, runback, and have one day at home before I sail. "

Frances gave up her play with time. She was beaten. 

And still she thought: "At least I shall have him one whole day. "

And then she looked across the room to Michael, as if Michael's facehad signalled to her. His clear, sun-burnt skin showed blotches of whitewhere the blood had left it. A light sweat was on his forehead. Whentheir eyes met, he shifted his position to give himself an appearanceof ease. 

Michael had not reckoned on his brother's marriage, either. It was whenhe asked himself: "On what, then, _had_ he been reckoning?" that thesweat broke out on his forehead. 

He had not reckoned on anything. But the sudden realization of what hemight have reckoned on made him sick. He couldn't bear to think of Ronnymarried. And yet again, he couldn't bear to think of Nicky not marryingher. If he had had a hold on her he would have let her go. In this heknew himself to be sincere. He had had no hold on her, and to talk aboutletting her go was idiotic; still, there was a violent pursuit andpossession by the mind--and Michael's mind was innocent of jealousy, that psychic assault and outrage on the woman he loved. His spiritualsurrender of her was so perfect that his very imagination gave her upto Nicky. 

He was glad that they were going to be married tomorrow. Nothing couldtake their three days from them, even when the War had done its worst. 

And then, with his mother's eyes on him, he thought: "Does she think Iwas reckoning on that?"

 * * * * *

Nicholas and Veronica were married the next morning at Hampstead TownHall, before the Registrar. 

They spent the rest of the day in Anthony's racing car, defying andcircumventing time and space and the police, tearing, Nicky said, wholehandfuls out of eternity by sheer speed. At intervals, with a clear runbefore him, he let out the racing car to its top speed on the GreatNorth Road. It snorted and purred and throbbed like some immense, nervous animal, but lightly and purely as if all its weight were purgedfrom it by speed. It flew up and down the hills of Hertfordshire andBuckinghamshire and out on to the flat country round Peterborough andGrantham, a country of silver green and emerald green grass and purplefallow land and bright red houses; and so on to the great plain of York, and past Reyburn up towards the bare hill country netted with greystone walls. 

Nicholas slowed the car down for the winding of the road. 

It went now between long straight ramparts of hills that showed enormousand dark against a sky cleared to twilight by the unrisen moon. Otherhills, round-topped, darker still and more enormous, stood piled up infront of them, blocking the head of Rathdale. 

Then the road went straight, and Nicholas was reckless. It was as if, ultimately, they must charge into the centre of that incredibly high, immense obstruction. They were thrilled, mysteriously, as before theimage of monstrous and omnipotent disaster. Then the dale widened; itmade way for them and saved them. 

The lights of Morfe on its high platform made the pattern of a coronetand pendants on the darkness; the small, scattered lights of the villagebelow, the village they were making for, showed as if dropped out of thepattern on the hill. 

One larger light burned in the room that was their marriage chamber. Jean and Suzanne, the refugees, stood in the white porch to receivethem, holding the lanterns that were their marriage torches. The oldwoman held her light low down, lighting the flagstone of the threshold. The old man lifted his high, showing the lintel of the door. It was solow that Nicholas had to stoop to go in. 

 * * * * *

In the morning they read the date cut in the wall above the porch: 1665. 

The house was old and bent and grey. Its windows were narrow slits inthe stone mullions. It crouched under the dipping boughs of the ash-treethat sheltered it. Inside there was just room for Veronica to stand up. Nicholas had to stoop or knock his head against the beams. It had onlyfour rooms, two for Nicholas and Veronica, and two for Jean and Suzanne. And it was rather dark. 

But it pleased them. They said it was their apple-tree-house grown upbecause they were grown up, and keeping strict proportions. You had tocrawl into it, and you were only really comfortable sitting or lyingdown. So they sat outside it, watching old Suzanne through the window asshe moved about the house place, cooking Belgian food for them, and oldJean as he worked in the garden. 

Veronica loved Jean and Suzanne. She had found out all about them thefirst morning. 

"Only think, Nicky. They're from Termonde, and their house was burntbehind them as they left it. They saw horrors, and their son was killedin the War. 

"Yet they're happy and at peace. Almost as if they'd forgotten. He'llplant flowers in his garden. "

"They're old, Ronny. And perhaps they were tired already when ithappened. "

"Yes, that must be it. They're old and tired. "

 * * * * *

And now it was the last adventure of their last day. They were walkingon the slope of Renton Moor that looks over Rathdale towards GreffingtonEdge. The light from the west poured itself in vivid green down thevalley below them, broke itself into purple on Karva Hill to the northabove Morfe, and was beaten back in subtle blue and violet from thestone rampart of the Edge. 

Nicholas had been developing, in fancy, the strategic resources of thecountry. Guns on Renton Moor, guns along Greffington Edge, on SarrackMoor. The raking lines of the hills were straight as if they had beenmeasured with a ruler and then planed. 

"Ronny, " he said at last, "we've licked 'em in the first round, you andI. The beastly Boche can't do us out of these three days. "

"No. We've been absolutely happy. And we'll never forget it. Never. "

"Perhaps it was a bit rough on Dad and Mummy, our carting ourselves uphere, away from them. But, you see, they don't really mind. They'refeeling about it now just as we feel about it. I knew they would. "

There had been a letter from Frances saying she was glad they'd gone. She was so happy thinking how happy they were. 

"They're angels, Nicky. "

"Aren't they? Simply angels. That's the rotten part of it. I wish--

"I wish I could tell them what I think of them. But you can't, somehow. It sticks in your throat, that sort of thing. "

"You needn't, " she said; "they know all right. "

She thought: "This is what he wants me to tell them about--afterwards. "

"Yes, but--I must have hurt them--hurt them horribly--lots of times. Iwish I hadn't. 

"But" he went on, "they're funny, you know. Dad actually thought itidiotic of us to do this. He said it would only make it harder for uswhen I had to go. They don't see that it's just piling it on--going fromone jolly adventure to another. 

"I'm afraid, though, what he really meant was it was hard on you;because the rest of it's all my show. "

"But it isn't all your show, Nicky darling. It's mine, and it'stheirs--because we haven't grudged you your adventure. "

"That's exactly how I want you to feel about it. "

"And they're assuming that I shan't come back. Which, if you come tothink of it, is pretty big cheek. They talk, and they think, as thoughnobody ever got through. Whereas I've every intention of getting throughand of coming back. I'm the sort of chap who does get through, who doescome back. "

"And even if I wasn't, if they studied statistics they'd see that it's athousand chances to one against the Boches getting me--just me out ofall the other chaps. As if I was so jolly important. 

"No; don't interrupt. Let's get this thing straight while we can. Supposing--just supposing I didn't get through--didn't comeback--supposing I was unlike myself and got killed, I want you to thinkof _that_, not as a clumsy accident, but just another awfullyinteresting thing I'd done. 

"Because, you see, you might be going to have a baby; and if you tookthe thing as a shock instead of--of what it probably really is, and wentand got cut up about it, you might start the little beggar with a sortof fit, and shake its little nerves up, so that it would be jumpyall its life. 

"It ought, " said Nicky, "to sit in its little house all quiet and comfytill it's time for it to come out. "

He was struck with a sudden, poignant realization of what might be, whatprobably would be, what ought to be, what he had wanted more thananything, next to Veronica. 

"It shall, Nicky, it shall be quiet and comfy. "

"If _that_ came off all right, " he said, "it would make it up to Motherno end. "

"It wouldn't make it up to me. "

"You don't know what it would do, " he said. 

She thought: "I don't want it. I don't want anything but you. "

"That's why, " he went on, "I'm giving Don as the next of kin--the onethey'll wire to; because it won't take him that way; it'll only make himmadder to get out and do for them. I'm afraid of you or Mummy or Dad, orMichael being told first. "

"It doesn't matter a bit who's _told_ first. I shall _know_ first, " shesaid. "And you needn't be afraid. It won't kill either me or the baby. If a shock could kill me I should have died long ago. "

"When?"

"When you went to Desmond. Then, when I thought I couldn't bear it anylonger, something happened. "

"What?"

"I don't know. I don't know what it _is_ now; I only know what it does. It always happens--always--when you want it awfully. And when you'requiet and give yourself up to it. "

"It'll happen again. "

He listened, frowning a little, not quite at ease, not quite interested;puzzled, as if he had lost her trail; put off, as if something had comebetween him and her. 

"You can make it happen to other people, " she was saying; "so that whenthings get too awful they can bear them. I wanted it to happen toDorothy when she was in prison, and it did. She said she was absolutelyhappy there; and that all sorts of queer things came to her. And, Nicky, they were the same queer things that came to me. It was like somethinggetting through to her. "

"I say--did you ever do it to me?"

"Only once, when you wanted it awfully. "

"When? When?"

Now he was interested; he was intrigued; he was on her trail. 

"When Desmond did--that awful thing. I wanted you to see that it didn'tmatter, it wasn't the end. "

"But that's just what I did see, what I kept on telling myself. It looksas if it worked, then?"

"It doesn't always. It comes and goes. But I think with _you_ it wouldalways come; because you're more _me_ than other people; I mean I caremore for you. "

She closed and clinched it. "That's why you're not to bother about me, Nicky. If _the_ most awful thing happened, and you didn't come back, Itwould come. "

"I wish I knew what It was, " he said. 

"I don't know what it is. But it's so real that I think it's God. "

"That's why _they're_ so magnificently brave--Dorothy and Aunt Francesand all of them. They don't believe in it; they don't know it's there;even Michael doesn't know it's there--yet; and still they go on bearingand bearing; and they were glad to give you up. "

"I know, " he said; "lots of people _say_ they're glad, but they really_are_ glad. "

He meditated. 

"There's one thing. I can't think what you do, unless it's praying orsomething; and if you're going to turn it on to me, Ronny, I wish you'dbe careful; because it seems to me that if there's anything in it atall, there might be hitches. I mean to say, you might work it justenough to keep me from being killed but not enough to keep my legs frombeing blown off. Or the Boches might get me fair enough and you mightbring me back, all paralysed and idiotic. 

"That's what I should funk. I should funk it most damnably, if I thoughtabout it. Luckily one doesn't think. "

"But, Nicky, I shouldn't try to keep you back then any more than I triedbefore. "

"You wouldn't? Honour bright?"

"Of course I wouldn't. It wouldn't be playing the game. To begin with, Iwon't believe that you're not going to get through. 

"But if you didn't--if you didn't come back--I still wouldn't believeyou'd gone. I should say, 'He hasn't cared. He's gone on to somethingelse. It doesn't end him. '"

He was silent. The long rampart of the hill, as he stared at it, made apattern on his mind; a pattern that he paid no attention to. 

Veronica followed the direction of his eyes. "Do you mind talking aboutit?" she said. 

"Me? Rather not. It sort of interests me. I don't know whether I believein your thing or not; but I've always had that feeling, that you go on. You don't stop; you can't stop. That's why I don't care. They used tothink I was trying to be funny when I said I didn't care. But I reallydidn't. Things, most things, don't much matter, because there's alwayssomething else. You go on to it. 

"I care for _you_. _You_ matter most awfully; and my people; but most ofall you. You always have mattered to me more than anything, since thefirst time I heard you calling out to me to come and sit on your bedbecause you were frightened. You always will matter. 

"But Desmond didn't a little bit. You need'nt have tried to make me_think_ she didn't. She really didn't. I only married her because shewas going to have a baby. And _that_ was because I remembered you andthe rotten time you'd had. I believe that would have kept me straightwith women if nothing else did. 

"Of course I was an idiot about it. I didn't think of marrying you tillVera told me I ought to have waited. Then it was too late. 

"That's why I want you most awfully to have a baby. "

"Yes, Nicky. 

"I'll tell you what I'm going to do when I know it's coming. The cottagebelongs to Uncle Anthony, doesn't it?"

"Yes. "

"Well, I love it. Do you think he'd let me live in it?"

"I think he'd give it to you if you asked him. "

"For my very own. Like the apple-tree house. Very well, he'll give it tome--I mean to both of us--and I shall come up here where it's all quietand you'd never know there was a war at all--even the Belgians haveforgotten it. And I shall sit out here and look at that hill, becauseit's straight and beautiful. I won't--I simply won't think of anythingthat isn't straight and beautiful. And I shall get strong. Then the babywill be straight and beautiful and strong, too. 

"I shall try--I shall try hard, Nicky--to make him like you. "

 * * * * *

Frances's one Day was not a success. It was taken up with little thingsthat had to be done for Nicky. Always they seemed, he and she, to be onthe edge of something great, something satisfying and revealing. It wasto come in a look or a word; and both would remember it afterwardsfor ever. 

In the evening Grannie, and Auntie Louie, and Auntie Emmeline, andAuntie Edie, and Uncle Morrie, and Uncle Bartie came up to say good-bye. And in the morning Nicholas went off to France, excited and happy, as hehad gone off on his wedding journey. And between Frances and her son thegreat thing remained unsaid. 

Time itself was broken. All her minutes were scattered like fine sand. 

 _February 27th, 1915. _ B. E. F. , FRANCE. 

Dearest Mother and Dad, --I simply don't know how to thank you all forthe fur coat. It's pronounced the rippingest, by a long way, that's beenseen in these trenches. Did Ronny really choose it because it "looked asif it had been made out of Timmy's tummy?" It makes me feel as if I_was_ Timmy. Timmy on his hind legs, rampant, clawing at the Boches. Just think of the effect if he got up over the parapet!

The other things came all right, too, thanks. When you can't think whatelse to send let Nanna make another cake. And those tubes of chutney area good idea. 

No; it's no earthly use worrying about Michael. If there was no Englishand no Allies and no Enthusiasm, and he had this War all to himself, yousimply couldn't keep him out of it. I believe if old Mick could sendhimself out by himself against the whole German Army he'd manage to putin some first rate fancy work in the second or two before they got him. He'd be quite capable of going off and doing grisly things that wouldmake me faint with funk, if he was by himself, with nothing but the eyeof God to look at him. And _then_ he'd rather God wasn't there. Healways _was_ afraid of having a crowd with him. 

The pity is he's wasting time and missing such a lot. If I were you two, I should bank on Don. He's the sensiblest of us, though he isthe youngest. 

And don't worry about me. Do remember that even in the thickest curtainfire there _are_ holes; there are more holes than there is stuff; andthe chances are I shall be where a hole is. 

Another thing, Don's shell, the shell you see making straight for youlike an express train, isn't likely to be the shell that's going to getyou; so that if you're hit you don't feel that pang of personalresentment which must be the worst part of the business. Bits of shellsthat have exploded I rank with bullets which we knew all about beforeand were prepared for. Really, if you're planted out in the open, thepeculiar awfulness of big shell-fire--what is it more than the peculiarawfulness of being run over by express trains let loose about the sky?Tell Don that when shrapnel empties itself over your head like an oldtin pail, you might feel injured, but the big shell has a most disarmingair of not being able to help itself, of not looking for anybody inparticular. It's so innocent of personal malice that I'd rather have itany day than fat German fingers squeezing my windpipe. 

That's an answer to his question. 

And Dorothy wanted to know what it feels like going into action. Well--there's a lot of it that perhaps she wouldn't believe in if I toldher--it's the sort of thing she never has believed; but Stephen wasabsolutely right. You aren't sold. It's more than anything you couldhave imagined. I'm not speaking only for myself. 

There's just one beastly sensation when you're half way between yourparapet and theirs--other fellows say they've felt it too--when you'reafraid it (the feeling) should fizzle out before you get there. But itdoesn't. It grows more and more so, simply swinging you on to them, andthat swing makes up for all the rotten times put together. You needn'tbe sorry for us. It's waste of pity. 

I know Don and Dorothy and Dad and Ronny aren't sorry for us. But I'mnot so sure of Michael and Mother. --Always your loving, NICKY. 

 May, 1915. B. E. F. , FRANCE

My Dear Mick, --It's awfully decent of you to write so often when youloathe writing, especially about things that bore you. But you needn'tdo that. We get the news from the other fronts in the papers more orless; and I honestly don't care a damn what Asquith is saying or whatLloyd George is doing or what Northcliffe's motives are. Personally, Ishould say he was simply trying, like most of us, to save his country. Looks like it. But you can tell him from me, if he gets them to send usenough shells out _in time_ we shan't worry about his motives. Anyhowthat sort of thing isn't in your line, old man, and Dad can do it muchbetter than you, if you don't mind my saying so. 

What I want to know is what Don and Dorothy are doing, and the lastsweet thing Dad said to Mother--I'd give a day's rest in my billet forone of his _worst_ jokes. And I like to hear about Morrie going on thebust again, too--it sounds so peaceful. Only if it really is anxietyabout me that makes him do it, I wish he'd leave off thinking about me, poor old thing. 

More than anything I want to know how Ronny is; how she's looking andwhat she's feeling; you'll be able to make out a lot, and she may tellyou things she won't tell the others. That's why I'm glad you're thereand not here. 

And as for that--why go on worrying? I do know how you feel about it. Ithink I always did, in a way. I never thought you were a "putridPacifist. " Your mind's all right. You say the War takes me likereligion; perhaps it does; I don't know enough about religion to say, but it seems near enough for a first shot. And when you say it doesn'ttake you that way, that you haven't "got" it, I can see that thatexpresses a fairly understandable state of mind. Of course, I know itisn't funk. If you'd happened to think of the Ultimatum first, insteadof the Government, you'd have been in at the start, before me. 

Well--there's such a thing as conversion, isn't there? You never cantell what may happen to you, and the War isn't over yet. Those of us whoare in it now aren't going to see the best of it by a long way. There'sno doubt the very finest fighting'll be at the finish; so that thepatriotic beggars who were in such a hurry to join up will be jolly wellsold, poor devils. Take me, for instance. If I'd got what I wanted andbeen out in Flanders in 1914, ten to one I should have been in theretreat from Mons, like Frank, and never anywhere else. Then I'd havegiven my head to have gone to Gallipoli; but _now_, well, I'm just asglad I'm not mixed up in that affair. 

Still, that's not the way to look at it, calculating the fun you can getout of it for yourself. And it's certainly not the way to win the War. At that rate one might go on saving oneself up for the Rhine, while allthe other fellows were getting pounded to a splash on the way there. Soif you're going to be converted let's hope you'll be converted quick. 

If you are, my advice is, try to get your commission straight away. There are things you won't be able to stand if you're a Tommy. Forinstance, having to pig it on the floor with all your brother Tommies. Islept for three months next to a beastly blighter who used to come indrunk and tread on my face and be ill all over me. 

Even now, when I look back on it, that seems worse than anything that'shappened out here. But that's because at home your mind isn't adjustedto horrors. That chap came as a shock and a surprise to me every time. I _couldn't_ get used to him. Whereas out here everything's shifted inthe queerest way. Your mind shifts. You funk your first and your secondsight, say, of a bad stretcher case; but when it comes to the third andthe fourth you don't funk at all; you're not shocked, you're not a bitsurprised. It's all in the picture, and you're in the picture too. There's a sort of horrible harmony. It's like a certain kind of beastlydream which doesn't frighten you because you're part of it, part of thebeastliness. 

No, the thing that got me, so far, more than anything was--what d'youthink? A little dog, no bigger than a kitten, that was run over theother day in the street by a motor-cyclist--and a civilian at that. There were two or three women round it, crying and gesticulating. Itlooked as if they'd just lifted it out of a bath of blood. That made mesick. You see, the little dog wasn't in the picture. I hadn'tbargained for him. 

Yet the things Morrie saw in South Africa--do you remember how he_would_ tell us about them?--weren't in it with the things that happenedhere. Pounding apart, the things that corpses can do, apparently ontheir own, are simply unbelievable--what the war correspondents call"fantastic postures. " But I haven't got to the point when I can slap mythighs, and roar with laughter--if they happen to be Germans. 

In between, the boredom is so awful that I've heard some of our men saythey'd rather have things happening. And, of course, we're all hopingthat when those shells come along there won't be quite so much"between. "

Love to Ronny and Mother and all of them. --Your very affectionate, NICHOLAS. 

 June 1st, 1915. B. E. F. , FRANCE. 

My Darling Ronny, --Yes, I think all your letters must have come, becauseyou've answered everything. You always tell me just what I want to know. When I see the fat envelopes coming I know they're going to bechock-full of the things I've happened to be thinking about. Don't let'sever forget to put the dates, because I make out that I've alwaysdreamed about you, too, the nights you've written. 

And so the Aunties are working in the War Hospital Supply Depôt? It'sfrightfully funny what Dorothy says about their enjoying the War andfeeling so important. Don't let her grudge it them, though; it's all theenjoyment, or importance, they're ever had in their lives, poor dears. But I shall know, if a swab bursts in my inside, that it's AuntieEdie's. As for Auntie Emmeline's, I can't even imagine what they'd belike--monstrosities--or little babies injured at birth. Aunt Louie'swould be well-shaped and firm, but erring a little on the hard side, don't you think?

That reminds me, I suppose I may tell you now since it's been in thepapers, that we've actually got Moving Fortresses out here. I haven'tseen them yet, but a fellow who has thinks they must be uncommonly likeDrayton's and my thing. I suspect, from what he says, they're a bitbetter, though. We hadn't got the rocking-horse idea. 

It's odd--this time last year I should have gone off my head with agonyat the mere thought of anybody getting in before us; and now I don'tcare a bit. I do mind rather for Drayton's sake, though I don't supposehe cares, either. The great thing is that it's been done, and donebetter. Anyway we've been lucky. Supposing the Germans had got on tothem, and trotted them out first, and one of our own guns had potted himor me, _that_ would have been a jolly sell. 

What makes you ask after Timmy? I hardly like to tell you the awfulthing that's happened to him. He had to travel down to the base hospitalon a poor chap who was shivering with shell-shock, and--_he never cameback again_. It doesn't matter, because the weather's so warm now that Idon't want him. But I'm sorry because you all gave him to me and itlooks as if I hadn't cared for him. But I did.... 

 June 10th. 

Sorry I couldn't finish this last week. Things developed rathersuddenly. I wish I could tell you _what_, but we mustn't let on whathappens, not even now, when it's done happening. Still, there are allthe other things I couldn't say anything about at the time. 

If you _must_ know, I've been up "over the top" three times now since Icame out in February. So, you see, one gets through all right. 

Well--I tried ages ago to tell Dorothy what it was like. It's been likethat every time (except that I've got over the queer funky feelinghalf-way through). It'll be like that again next time, I know. Becausenow I've tested it. And, Ronny--I couldn't tell Dorothy this, becauseshe'd think it was all rot--but when you're up first out of the trenchand stand alone on the parapet, it's absolute happiness. And the chargeis--well, it's simply heaven. It's as if you'd never really lived tillthen; I certainly hadn't, not up to the top-notch, barring those threedays we had together. 

That's why--this part's mostly for Michael--there's something rottenabout that poem he sent me that somebody wrote, making out that thisgorgeous fight-feeling (which is what I suppose he's trying for) isnothing but a form of sex-madness. If he thinks that's all there is init, he doesn't know much about war, or love either. Though I'm bound tosay there's a clever chap in my battalion who thinks the same thing. Hesays he feels the ecstasy, or whatever it is, all right, just the sameas I do; but that it's simply submerged savagery bobbing up to thetop--a hidden lust for killing, and the hidden memory of having killed, he called it. He's always ashamed of it the next day, as if he hadbeen drunk. 

And my Sergeant-Major, bless him, says there's nothing in it but "aration of rum. " Can't be that in my case because I always give mine to afunny chap who _knows_ he's going to have collywobbles as soon as hegets out into the open. 

But that isn't a bit what I mean. They're all wrong about it, becausethey make it turn on killing, and not on your chance of being killed. _That_--when you realize it--well, it's like the thing you told me aboutthat you said you thought must be God because it's so real. I didn'tunderstand it then, but I do now. You're bang up against reality--you'regoing clean into it--and the sense of it's exquisite. Of course, whileone half of you is feeling like that, the other half is fighting to killand doing its best to keep on _this_ side reality. But I've been nearenough to the other side to know. And I wish Michael's friend would comeout and see what it's like for himself. Or, better still, Mick. _He_'dwrite a poem about it that would make you sit up. It's a sin that Ishould be getting all this splendid stuff when I can't do anythingwith it. 

Love to all of them and to your darling self. --Always your loving, NICKY. 

P. S. -I wish you'd try to get some notion of it into Dad and Dorothy andMother. It would save them half the misery they're probablygoing through. 

 * * * * *

The gardener had gone to the War, and Veronica was in the garden, weeding the delphinium border. 

It was Sunday afternoon and she was alone there. Anthony was digging inthe kitchen garden, and Frances was with him, gathering green peas andfruit for the hospital. Every now and then she came through the opendoor on to the flagged path of the upper terrace with the piled upbaskets in her arms, and she smiled and nodded to Veronica. 

It was quiet in the garden, so that, when her moment came, Veronicacould time it by the striking of the clock heard through the opendoorway of the house: four strokes; and the half-hour; and then, almoston the stroke, her rush of pure, mysterious happiness. 

Up till then she had been only tranquil; and her tranquillity made eachsmall act exquisite and delightful, as her fingers tugged at the weeds, and shook the earth from their weak roots, and the palms of her handsmoothed over the places where they had been. She thought of old Jeanand Suzanne, planting flowers in the garden at Renton, and of thattranquillity of theirs that was the saddest thing she had ever seen. 

And her happiness had come, almost on the stroke of the half-hour, notout of herself or out of her thoughts, but mysteriously and fromsomewhere a long way off. 

 * * * * *

She turned to nod and smile at Frances who was coming through the doorwith her basket, and it was then that she saw Nicholas. 

He stood on something that looked like a low wall, raised between herand the ash-tree; he stood motionless, as if arrested in the act oflooking back to see if she were following him. His eyes shone, vivid andblue, as they always shone when he was happy. He smiled at her, butwith no movement of his mouth. He shouted to her, but with no sound. 

Everything was still; her body and her soul were still; her heart wasstill; it beat steadily. 

She had started forwards to go to him when the tree thrust itselfbetween them, and he was gone. 

And Frances was still coming through the door as Veronica had seen herwhen she turned. She was calling to her to come in out of the sun. 

XXIV

The young men had gone--Morton Ellis, who had said he was damned if he'dfight for his country; and Austin Mitchell who had said he hadn't got acountry; and Monier-Owen, who had said that England was not a countryyou could fight for. George Wadham had gone long ago. That, Michaelsaid, was to be expected. Even a weak gust could sweep young Wadham offhis feet--and he had been fairly carried away. He could no more resistthe vortex of the War than he could resist the vortex of the arts. 

Michael had two pitiful memories of the boy: one of young Wadhamswaggering into Stephen's room in uniform (the first time he had it on), flushed and pleased with himself and talking excitedly about the "GreatGame"; and one of young Wadham returned from the Front, mature and hard, not talking about the "Great Game" at all, and wincing palpably whenother people talked; a young Wadham who, they said, ought to be arrestedunder the Defence of the Realm Act as a quencher of war-enthusiasms. 

The others had gone later, one by one, each with his own gesture:Mitchell and Monier-Owen when Stephen went; Ellis the day afterStephen's death. It had taken Stephen's death to draw him. 

Only Michael remained. 

He told them they were mistaken if they thought their going wouldinspire him to follow them. It, and Stephen's death, merely intensifiedthe bitterness he felt towards the War. He was more than ever determinedto keep himself pure from it, consecrated to his Forlorn Hope. If theyfell back, all the more reason why be should go on. 

And, while he waited for the moment of vision, he continued Stephen'swork on the _Green Review_. Stephen had left it to him when he went out. Michael tried to be faithful to the tradition he thus inherited; butgradually Stephen's spirit disappeared from the _Review_ and its placewas taken by the clear, hard, unbreakable thing that was Michael's mind. 

And Michael knew that he was beginning to make himself felt. 

But Stephen's staff, such as it was, and nearly all his contributors hadgone to the War, one after another, and Michael found himself taking alltheir places. He began to feel a strain, which he took to be the strainof overwork, and he went down to Renton to recover. 

That was on the Tuesday that followed Veronica's Sunday. 

He thought that down there he would get away from everything that didhim harm: from his father's and mother's eyes; from his sister's proud, cold face; and from his young brother's smile; and from Veronica'sbeauty that saddened him; and from the sense of Nicky's danger thatbrooded as a secret obsession over the house. He would fill up the awfulempty space. He thought: "For a whole fortnight I shall get away fromthis infernal War. "

But he did not get away from it. On every stage of the journey down heencountered soldiers going to the Front. He walked in the Park atDarlington between his trains, and wounded soldiers waited for him onevery seat, shuffled towards him round every turning, hobbled after himon their crutches down every path. Their eyes looked at him with ashrewd hostility. He saw the young Yorkshire recruits drinking in theopen spaces. Sergeants' eyes caught and measured him, appraising hisphysique. Behind and among them he saw Drayton's, and Réveillaud's, andStephen's eyes; and young Wadham's eyes, strange and secretive and hard. 

 * * * * *

At Reyburn Michael's train was switched off to a side platform in theopen. Before he left Darlington, a thin, light rain had begun to fallfrom a shred of blown cloud; and at Reyburn the burst mass was comingdown. The place was full of the noise of rain. The drops tapped on theopen platform and hissed as the wind drove them in a running stream. They drummed loudly on the station roof. But these sounds went outsuddenly, covered by the trampling of feet. 

A band of Highlanders with their bagpipes marched into the station. Theylined up solemnly along the open platform with their backs to Michael'strain and their faces to the naked rails on the other side. Higher upMichael could see the breast of an engine; it was backing, backing, towards the troop-train that waited under the cover of the roof. Hecould hear the clank of the coupling and the recoil. At that sound theband had their mouths to their bagpipes and their fingers ready on thestops. Two or three officers hurried down from the station doors andstood ready. 

The train came on slowly, packed with men; men who thrust their headsand shoulders through the carriage windows, and knelt on the seats, andstood straining over each other's backs to look out; men whose faceswere scarlet with excitement; men with open mouths shouting for joy. 

The officers saluted as it passed. It halted at the open platform, andsuddenly the pipers began to play. 

Michael got out of his train and watched. 

Solemnly, in the grey evening of the rain, with their faces set in asort of stern esctasy, the Highlanders played to their comrades. Michaeldid not know whether their tune was sad or gay. It poured itself intoone mournful, savage, sacred cry of salutation and valediction. When itstopped the men shouted; there were voices that barked hoarsely andbroke; voices that roared; young voices that screamed, strung up by theskirling of the bagpipes. The pipers played to them again. 

And suddenly Michael was overcome. Pity shook him and grief and anintolerable yearning, and shame. For one instant his soul rose up abovethe music, and was made splendid and holy, the next he cowered under it, stripped and beaten. He clenched his fists, hating this emotion thatstung him to tears and tore at his heart and at the hardness ofhis mind. 

As the troop-train moved slowly out of the station the pipers, pipingmore and more shrilly, swung round and marched beside it to the end ofthe platform. The band ceased abruptly, and the men answered with shoutafter shout of violent joy; they reared up through the windows, straining for the last look--and were gone. 

Michael turned to the porter who lifted his luggage from the rack. "Whatregiment are they?" he said. 

"Camerons, sir. Going to the Front. "

The clear, uncanny eyes of Veronica's father pursued him now. 

 * * * * *

At last he had got away from it. 

In Rathdale, at any rate, there was peace. The hills and their pastures, and the flat river fields were at peace. And in the villages of Morfeand Renton there was peace; for as yet only a few men had gone fromthem. The rest were tied to the land, and they were more absorbed in thehay-harvest than in the War. Even the old Belgians in Veronica's cottagewere at peace. They had forgotten. 

For three days Michael himself had peace. 

He went up to Veronica's hill and sat on it; and thought how forhundreds of miles, north, south, east and west of him, there was not asoul whom he knew. In all his life he had never been more by himself. 

This solitude of his had a singular effect on Michael's mind. So farfrom having got away from the War he had never been more conscious of itthan he was now. What he had got away from was other people'sconsciousness. From the beginning the thing that threatened him hadbeen, not the War but this collective war-spirit, clamouring for hisprivate soul. 

For the first time since August, nineteen-fourteen, he found himselfthinking, in perfect freedom and with perfect lucidity, about the War. He had really known, half the time, that it was the greatest War ofIndependence that had ever been. As for his old hatred of the BritishEmpire, he had seen long ago that there was no such thing, in thecontinental sense of Empire; there was a unique thing, the rule, moregood than bad, of an imperial people. He had seen that the strength ofthe Allies was in exact proportion to the strength and the enlightenmentof their democracies. Reckoning by decades, there could be no deadlockin the struggle; the deadlock meant a ten years' armistice and anotherwar. He could not help seeing these things. His objection to occupyinghis mind with them had been that they were too easy. 

Now that he could look at it by himself he saw how the War might takehold of you like a religion. It was the Great War of Redemption. Andredemption meant simply thousands and millions of men in troop-ships andtroop-trains coming from the ends of the world to buy the freedom of theworld with their bodies. It meant that the very fields he was lookingover, and this beauty of the hills, those unused ramparts where nobatteries were hid, and the small, silent villages, Morfe and Renton, were bought now with their bodies. 

He wondered how at this moment any sane man could be a Pacifist. And, wondering, he felt a reminiscent sting of grief and yearning. But herefused, resolutely, to feel any shame. 

His religion also was good; and, anyhow, you didn't choose yourreligion; it chose you. 

And on Saturday the letters came: John's letter enclosing the wire fromthe War Office, and the letter that Nicky's Colonel had writtento Anthony. 

Nicky was killed. 

Michael took in the fact, and the date (it was last Sunday). There weresome official regrets, but they made no impression on him. John's lettermade no impression on him. Last Sunday Nicky was killed. 

He had not even unfolded the Colonel's letter yet. The close black linesshowed through the thin paper. Their closeness repelled him. He did notwant to know how his brother had died; at least not yet. He was afraidof the Colonel's letter. He felt that by simply not reading it he couldput off the unbearable turn of the screw. 

He was shivering with cold. He drew up his chair to the wide, openhearth-place where there was no fire; he held out his hands over it. Thewind swept down the chimney and made him colder; and he felt sick. 

He had been sitting there about an hour when Suzanne came in and askedhim if he would like a little fire. He heard himself saying, "No, thankyou, " in a hard voice. The idea of warmth and comfort was disagreeableto him. Suzanne asked him then if he had had bad news? And he heardhimself saying: "Yes, " and Suzanne trying, trying very gently, topersuade him that it was perhaps only that Monsieur Nicky was wounded?

"No? _Then_, " said the old woman, "he is killed. " And she began to cry. 

Michael couldn't stand that. He got up and opened the door into theouter room, and she passed through before him, sobbing and whimpering. Her voice came to him through the closed door in a sharp cry tellingJean that Monsieur Nicky was dead, and Jean's voice came, hushing her. 

Then he heard the feet of the old man shuffling across the kitchenfloor, and the outer door opening and shutting softly; and through thewindows at the back of the room, he saw, without heeding, as theBelgians passed and went up into the fields together, weeping, leavinghim alone. 

They had remembered. 

It was then that Michael read the Colonel's letter, and learned themanner of his brother's death: "... About a quarter past four o'clock inthe afternoon his battalion was being pressed back, when he rallied hismen and led them in as gallant an attack as was ever made by so small anumber in this War. He was standing on the enemy's parapet when he wasshot through the heart and fell. By a quarter to five the trench wasstormed and taken, owing to his personal daring and impetus and to theaffection and confidence he inspired.... We hear it continually said ofour officers and men that 'they're all the same, ' and I daresay as faras pluck goes they are. But, if I may say so, we all felt that your sonhad something that we haven't got.... "

 * * * * *

Michael lay awake in the bed that had been his brother's marriage bed. The low white ceiling sagged and bulged above him. For three nights theroom had been as if Nicky and Veronica had never gone from it. They hadcompelled him to think of them. They had lain where he lay, fallingasleep in each other's arms. 

The odd thing had been that his acute and vivid sense of them had in noway troubled him. It had been simply there like some exquisiteatmosphere, intensifying his peace. He had had the same feeling healways had when Veronica was with him. He had liked to lie with his headon their pillow, to touch what they had touched, to look at the samethings in the same room, to go in and out through the same doors overthe same floors, remembering their hands and feet and eyes, and sayingto himself: "They did this and this"; or, "That must have pleased them. "

It ought to have been torture to him; and he could not imagine why itwas not. 

And now, on this fourth night, he had no longer that sense of Nicky andVeronica together. The room had emptied itself of its own memory andsignificance. He was aware of nothing but the bare, spiritual spacebetween him and Nicky. He lay contemplating it steadily and withoutany horror. 

He thought: "This ends it. Of course I shall go out now. I might haveknown that this would end it. _He_ knew. "

He remembered how Nicky had come to him in his room that night inAugust. He could see himself sitting on the side of his bed, half-dressed, and Nicky standing over him, talking. 

Nicky had taken it for granted even then that he would go out some time. He remembered how he had said, "Not yet. "

He thought: "Of course; this must have been what he meant. "

And presently he fell asleep, exhausted and at the same time appeased. 

 * * * * *

It was morning. 

Michael's sleep dragged him down; it drowned and choked him as hestruggled to wake. 

Something had happened. He would know what it was when he came clear outof this drowning. 

Now he remembered. Nicky was killed. Last Sunday. He knew that. But thatwasn't all of it. There was something else that followed on--

Suddenly his mind leaped on it. He was going out. He would be killedtoo. And because he was going out, and because he would be killed, hewas not feeling Nicky's death so acutely as he should have thought hewould have felt it. He had been let off that. 

He lay still a moment, looking at the thing he was going to do, feelinga certain pleasure in its fitness. Drayton and Réveillaud and Lawrencehad gone out, and they had been killed. Ellis and Mitchell andMonier-Owen were going out and they would certainly be killed. Wadhamhad gone out and young Vereker, and they also would be killed. 

Last Sunday it was Nicky. Now it must be he. 

His mind acknowledged the rightness of the sequence without concern. Itwas aware that his going depended on his own will. But never in all hislife had he brought so little imagination to the act of willing. 

He got up, bathed in the river, dressed, and ate his breakfast. Heaccepted each moment as it arrived, without imagination or concern. 

Then his mother's letter came. Frances wrote, among other things: "Iknow how terribly you will be feeling it, because I know how you caredfor him. I wish I could comfort you. We could not bear it, Michael, ifwe were not so proud of him. "

He answered this letter at once. He wrote: "I couldn't bear it either, if I were not going out. But of course I'm going now. "

As he signed himself, "Your loving Michael, " he thought: "That settlesit. " Yet, if he had considered what he meant by settling it he wouldhave told himself that he meant nothing; that last night had settled it;that his resolution had been absolutely self-determined and absolutelyirrevocable then, and that his signature gave it no more sanctity orfinality than it had already. If he was conscript, he was conscript tohis own will. 

He went out at once with his letter, though he knew that the post didnot leave Renton for another five hours. 

It was the sliding of this light thing and its fall into the letter-boxthat shook him into realization of what he had done and of what wasbefore him. He knew now why he was in such a hurry to write that letterand to post it. By those two slight acts, not dreadful nor difficult inthemselves, he had put it out of his power to withdraw from the onesupremely difficult and dreadful act. A second ago, while the letter wasstill in his hands, he could have backed out, because he had not givenany pledge. Now he would have to go through with it. And he saw clearlyfor the first time what it was that he would have to go through. 

He left the village and went up to Renton Moor and walked along the topfor miles, without knowing or caring where he went, and seeing nothingbefore him but his own act and what must come afterwards. By to-morrow, or the next day at the latest, he would have enlisted; by six months, atthe latest, three months if he had what they called "luck, " he would bein the trenches, fighting and killing, not because he chose, but becausehe would be told to fight and kill. By the simple act of sending thatletter to his mother he was committed to the whole ghastly business. 

And he funked it. There was no use lying to himself and saying that hedidn't funk it. 

Even more than the actual fighting and killing, he funked looking on atfighting and killing; as for being killed, he didn't think he wouldreally mind that so much. It would come--it must come--as a relief fromthe horrors he would have to see before it came. Nicky had said thatthey were unbelievable; he had seemed to think you couldn't imagine themif you hadn't seen them. But Michael could. He had only to think of themto see them now. He could make war-pictures for himself, in fiveminutes, every bit as terrifying as the things they said happened underfire. Any fool, if he chose to think about it, could see what musthappen. Only people didn't think. They rushed into it without seeinganything; and then, if they were honest, they owned that they funked it, before and during and afterwards and all the time. 

Nicky didn't. But that was only because Nicky had something that theothers hadn't got; that he, Michael, hadn't. It was all very well tosay, as he had said last night: "This ends it"; or, as their phrase was, "Everything goes in now. " It was indeed, as far as he was concerned, the end of beauty and of the making of beauty, and of everything worthcaring for; but it was also the beginning of a life that Michael dreadedmore than fighting and killing and being killed: a life of boredom, ofobscene ugliness, of revolting contacts, of intolerable subjection. Forof course he was going into the ranks as Nicky had gone. And already hecould feel the heat and pressure and vibration of male bodies packedbeside and around him on the floor; he could hear their breathing; hecould smell their fetid bedding, their dried sweat. 

Of course he was going through with it; only--this was the thought hismind turned round and round on in horror at itself--he funked it. Hefunked it so badly that he would really rather die than go through withit. When he was actually killed that would be his second death; monthsbefore it could happen he would have known all about it; he would havebeen dead and buried and alive again in hell. 

What shocked Michael was his discovering, not that he funked it now, which was natural, almost permissible, but that he had funked it all thetime. He could see now that, since the War began, he had been strugglingto keep out of it. His mind had fought every suggestion that he shouldgo in. It had run to cover, like a mad, frightened animal before thethoughts that hunted it down. Funk, pure funk, had been at the bottom ofall he had said and thought and done since August, nineteen-fourteen;his attitude to the War, his opinion of the Allies, and of theGovernment and of its conduct of the War, all his wretched criticismsand disparagements--what had they been but the very subterfugesof funk?

His mother had known it; his father had known it; and Dorothy and John. It was not conceivable that Nicky did not know it. 

That was what had made the horror of the empty space that separatedthem. 

Lawrence Stephen had certainly known it. 

He could not understand his not knowing it himself, not seeing that hestruggled. Yet he must have seen that Nicky's death would end it. Anyhow, it _was_ ended; if not last night, then this morning when heposted the letter. 

But he was no longer appeased by this certainty of his. He was going outall right. But merely going out was not enough. What counted was thestate of mind in which you went. Lawrence had said, "Victory--Victory isa state of mind. "

Well--it was a state that came naturally to Nicky, and did not comenaturally to him. It was all very well for Nicky: he had wanted to go. He had gone out victorious before victory. Michael would go beatenbefore defeat. 

He thought: "If this is volunteering, give me compulsion. " All the samehe was going. 

All morning and afternoon, as he walked and walked, his thoughts wentthe same round. And in the evening they began again, but on a new track. He thought: "It's all very well to say I'm going; but how _can_ I go?"He had Lawrence Stephen's work to do; Lawrence's Life and Letters werein his hands. How could he possibly go and leave Lawrence dead andforgotten? This view seemed to him to be sanity and common sense. 

As his mind darted up this turning it was driven back. He saw LawrenceStephen smiling at him as he had smiled at him when Réveillaud died. Lawrence would have wanted him to go more than anything. He would havechosen to be dead and forgotten rather than keep him. 

At night these thoughts left him. He began to think of Nicky and of hispeople. His father and mother would never be happy again. Nicky had beenmore to them than he was, or even John. He had been more to Dorothy. Itwas hard on Dorothy to lose Nicky and Drayton too. 

He thought of Nicky and Veronica. Poor little Ronny, what would she dowithout Nicky? He thought of Veronica, sitting silent in the train, andlooking at him with her startling look of spiritual maturity. He thoughtof Veronica singing to him over and over again:

 "London Bridge is broken down--

 * * * * *

 "Build it up with gold so fine--

 * * * * *

 "Build it up with stones so strong--"

He thought of Veronica running about the house and crying, "Where'sNicky? I want him. "

Monday was like Sunday, except that he walked up Karva Hill in themorning and up Greffington Edge in the afternoon, instead of RentonMoor. Whichever way he went his thoughts went the same way as yesterday. The images were, if anything, more crowded and more horrible; but theyhad lost their hold. He was tired of looking at them. 

About five o'clock he turned abruptly and went back to the village thesame way by which he came. 

And as he swung down the hill road in sight of Renton, suddenly therewas a great clearance in his soul. 

When he went into the cottage he found Veronica there waiting for him. She sat with her hands lying in her lap, and she had the same look hehad seen when she was in the train. 

"Ronny--"

She stood up to greet him, as if it had been she who was staying thereand he who had incredibly arrived. 

"They told me you wouldn't be long, " she said. 

"I? You haven't come because you were ill or anything?"

She smiled and shook her head. "No. Not for anything like that. "

"I didn't write, Ronny. I couldn't. "

"I know. " Their eyes met, measuring each other's grief. "That's why Icame. I couldn't bear to leave you to it. "

 * * * * *

"I'd have come before, Michael, if you'd wanted me. "

They were sitting together now, on the settle by the hearth-place. 

"I can't understand your being able to think of me, " he said. 

"Because of Nicky? If I haven't got Nicky it's all the more reason why Ishould think of his people. "

He looked up. "I say--how are they? Mother and Father?"

"They're very brave. 

"It's worse for them than it is for me, " she said. "What they can't bearis your going. "

"Mother got my letter, then?"

"Yes. This morning. "

"What did she say?"

"She said: 'Oh, no. _Not_ Michael. '

"It was a good thing you wrote, though. Your letter made her cry. Itmade even Dorothy cry. They hadn't been able to, before. "

"I should have thought if they could stand Nicky's going--"

"That was different. They know it was different. "

"Do you suppose _I_ don't know how different it was? They mean I funkedit and Nicky didn't. "

"They mean that Nicky got what he wanted when he went, and that therewas nothing else he could have done so well, except flying, orengineering. "

"It comes to the same thing, Nicky simply wasn't afraid. "

"Yes, Michael, he _was_ afraid. "

"What _of_?"

"He was most awfully afraid of seeing suffering. "

"Well, so am I. And I'm afraid of suffering myself too. I'm afraid ofthe whole blessed thing from beginning to end. "

"That's because you keep on seeing the whole blessed thing frombeginning to end. Nicky only saw little bits of it. The bits he liked. Machine-guns working beautifully, and shells dropping in the rightplaces, and trenches being taken. 

"And then, remember--Nicky hadn't so much to give up. "

"He had you. "

"Oh, no. He knew that was the way to keep me. "

"Ronny--if Nicky had been like me could he have kept you?"

She considered it. 

"Yes--if he could have been himself too. "

"He couldn't, you see. He never could have felt like that. "

"I don't say He could. "

"Well--the awful thing is 'feeling like that. '"

"And the magnificent thing is 'feeling like that, ' and going all thesame. Everybody knows that but you, Michael. "

"Yes, " he said. "I'm _going_. But I'm not going to lie about it and sayI don't funk it. Because I do. "

"You don't _really_. "

"I own I didn't the first night--the night I knew Nicky was killed. Because I couldn't think of anything else _but_ Nicky. 

"It was after I'd written to Mother that it came on. Because I knew thenI couldn't back out of it. That's what I can't get over--my having to dothat--to clinch it--because I was afraid. "

"My dear, my dear, thousands of men do that every day for the samereason, only they don't find themselves out; and if they did theywouldn't care. You're finding yourself out all the time, and killingyourself with caring. "

"Of course I care. Can't you see it proves that I never meant to go atall?"

"It proves that you knew you'd have to go through hell first and youwere determined that even hell shouldn't keep you back. "

"Ronny--that's what it _has_ been. Simply hell. It's been inconceivable. Nothing--absolutely nothing out there could be as bad. It went on allyesterday and to-day--till you came. "

"I know, Michael. That's why I came. "

"To get me out of it?"

"To get you out of it. 

"It's all over, " she said. 

"It may come back--out there. "

"It won't. Out there you'll be happy. I saw Nicky on Sunday--the minutebefore he was killed, Michael. And he was happy. "

"He would be. " He was silent for a long time. 

"Ronny. Did Nicky know I funked it?"

"Never! He knew you wouldn't keep out. All he minded was your missingany of it. "

She got up and put on her hat. "I must go. It's getting late. Will youwalk up to Morfe with me? I'm sleeping there. In the hotel. "

"No, I say--I'm not going to let you turn out for me. _I_'ll sleep atthe hotel. "

She smiled at him with a sort of wonder, as if she thought: "Has heforgotten, so soon?" And he remembered. 

"I can't stop here, " she said. "That would be more than even _I_ canbear. "

He thought: "She's gone through hell herself, to get me out of it. "

 May, 1916. B. E. F. , FRANCE. 

DEAREST MOTHER AND FATHER, --Yes, "Captain, " please. (I can hardlybelieve it myself, but it is so. ) It was thundering good luck gettinginto dear old Nicky's regiment. The whole thing's incredible. Butpromotion's nothing. Everybody's getting it like lightning now. You'reno sooner striped than you're starred. 

I'm glad I resisted the Adjutant and worked up from the ranks. I own itwas a bit beastly at the time--quite as beastly as Nicky said it wouldbe; but it was worth while going through with it, especially living inthe trenches as a Tommy. There's nothing like it for making you knowyour men. You can tell exactly what's going to bother them, and whatisn't. You've got your finger on the pulse of their morale--not thatit's jumpier than yours; it isn't--and their knowing that they haven'tgot to stand anything that you haven't stood gives you no end of a pull. Honestly, I don't believe I could have faced them if it wasn't for that. So that _your_ morale's the better for it as well as theirs. You know, if you're shot down this minute it won't matter. The weediest Tommy inyour Company can "carry on. "

_We_'re a funny crowd in my billet all risen from the ranks except mySenior. John would love us. There's a chap who writes short stories andgoes out very earnestly among the corpses to find copy; and there'sanother who was in the publishing business and harks back to it, now andthen, in a dreamy nostalgic way, and rather as if he wanted to rub itinto us writing chaps what he _could_ do for us, only he wouldn't; andthere's a tailor who swears he could tell a mile off where my tunic camefrom; and a lawyer's clerk who sticks his cigarette behind his ear. (Weused to wonder what he'd do with his revolver till we saw what he didwith it. ) They all love thinking of what they've been and telling youabout it. I almost wish I'd gone into Daddy's business. Then perhaps I'dknow what it feels like to go straight out of a shop or an office intothe most glorious Army in history. 

I forgot the Jew pawnbroker at least we _think_ he's a pawnbroker--who'salways inventing things; stupendous and impossible things. His last ideawas machine-howitzers fourteen feet high, that take in shells exactly asa machine-gun takes in bullets. He says "You'll see them in the nextWar. " When you ask him how he's going to transport and emplace and hidehis machine-howitzers, he looks dejected, and says "I never thought of_that_, " and has another idea at once, even more impossible. 

That reminds me. I've seen the "Tanks" (Nicky's Moving Fortresses) inaction. I'd give my promotion if only he could have seen them too. Wemustn't call them Fortresses any more--they're most violently forattack. As far as I can make out Nicky's and Drayton's thing wassomething between these and the French ones; otherwise one might havewondered whether their plans and models really did go where John saysthey did! I wish I could believe that Nicky and Drayton really _had_ hada hand in it. 

I'm most awfully grieved to hear that young Vereker's reported missing. Do you remember how excited he used to be dashing about the lawn attennis, and how Alice Lathom used to sit and look at him, and jump ifyou brought her her tea too suddenly? Let's hope we'll have finished upthis damned War before they get little Norris. 

Love to Dorothy and Don and Ronny. --Your loving, MICK. 

When Frances read that letter she said, "I wonder if he really is allright. He says very little about himself. "

And Anthony said, "Then you may be sure he is. "

 May 31st, 1916. B. E. F. , FRANCE. 

MY DEAR RONNY, --I'm glad Mummy and Father have got all my letters. Theywon't mind my writing to you this time. It really _is_ your turn now. Thanks for Wadham's "Poems" (I wish they'd been Ellis's). It's a shameto laugh at Waddy--but--he _has_ spread himself over Flanders, hasn'the? Like the inundations round Ypres. 

I'm most awfully touched at Dad and Mummy wanting to publish mine. Herethey all are--just as I wrote them, in our billet, at night or in theearly morning, when the others were sleeping and I wasn't. I don't knowwhether they're bad or good; I haven't had time to think about them. Itall seems so incredibly far away. Even last week seems far away. You goon so fast here. 

I'd like Ellis and Monier-Owen to see them and to weed out the bad ones. But you mustn't ask them to do anything. They haven't time, either. Ithink you and Dorothy and Dad will manage it all right among you. If youdon't I shan't much care. 

Of course I'm glad that they've taken you on at the Hampstead Hospital, if it makes you happier to nurse. And I'm glad Dad put his foot down onyour going to Vera. She gave you up to my people and she can't take youback now. I'm sorry for her though; so is he. 

Have I had any adventures "by myself"? Only two. (I've given up whatMother calls my "not wanting to go to the party. ") One came off in "NoMan's Land" the other night. I went out with a "party" and came back bymyself--unless you count a damaged Tommy hanging on to me. It began inpleasurable excitement and ended in some perturbation, for I had to gethim in under cover somehow, and my responsibility weighed on me--so didhe. The other was ages ago in a German trench. I was by myself, becauseI'd gone in too quick, and the "party" behind me took the wrong turning. I did manage to squeeze a chilly excitement out of going on alone. ThenI bumped up against a fat German officer and his revolver. That reallywas an exquisite moment, and I was beast enough to be glad I had it allto myself. It meant a bag of fifteen prisoners--all my own. But that wasnothing; they'd have surrendered to a mouse. There was no reason whythey shouldn't, because I'd fired first and there was no more officer toplay up to. 

But the things you don't do by yourself are a long way the best. Nothing--not even poetry--can beat an infantry charge when you'releading it. That's because of your men. It feels as if you were drawingthem all up after you. Of course you aren't. They're coming on theirown, and you're simply nothing, only a little unimportant part ofthem--even when you're feeling as if you were God Almighty. 

I'm afraid it _does_ look awfully as if young Vereker were killed. Theymay hear, you know, in some roundabout way--through the Red Cross, orsome of his men. I've written to them. 

Love to everybody. Certainly you may kiss Nanna for me, if she'd likeit. I wish I liked Waddy more--when you've given him to me. --Always youraffectionate, MICHAEL. 

P. S. --I don't sound pleased about the publication; but I am. I can't getover their wanting to do it. I thought they didn't care. 

Ronny--I've been such a beast to them--when Father tried to read mystuff--bless him!--and couldn't, I used to wish to God he'd leave italone. And now I'd give anything to see his dear old paws hanging on toit and twitching with fright, and his eyes slewing round to see if I'mlooking at him. 

 June 14th, 1916. B. E. F. , FRANCE. 

MY DEAR RONNY, --I'm glad you like them, and I'm glad Father thinks he"understands Michael's poems" this time, and I'm glad they've madeMother and Dorothy feel happier about me--BUT--they must get it out oftheir heads that they're my "message, " or any putrescent thing of thatsort. The bare idea of writing a message, or of being supposed to writea message, makes me sick. I know it's beastly of me, but, really I'drather they weren't published at all, if there's the smallest chance oftheir being taken that way. 

But if Ellis is doing the introduction there isn't the smallest chance. Thank God for Ellis. 

There--I've let off all my beastliness. 

And now I'll try to answer your letter. Yes; the "ecstasy" in the lasttwo poems _is_ Nicky's ecstasy. And as Ellis says it strikes him asabsolutely real, I take it that some of Nicky's "reality" has gotthrough. It's hard on Ellis that he has to take _his_ ecstasy from me, instead of coming out and getting it for himself. 

But you and Nicky and Lawrence are right. It _is_ absolutely real. Imean it has to do with absolute reality. With God. It hasn't anything todo with having courage, or not having courage; it's another state ofmind altogether. It isn't what Nicky's man said it was--you're notashamed of it the next day. It isn't excitement; you're not excited. Itisn't a tingling of your nerves; they don't tingle. It's all curiouslyquiet and steady. You remember when you saw Nicky--how everything stoodstill? And how two times were going on, and you and Nicky were in onetime, and Mother was in the other? Well--it's like that. Your body andits nerves aren't in it at all. Your body may be moving violently, withother bodies moving violently round it; but _you_'re still. 

But suppose it is your nerves. Why should they tingle at just thatparticular moment, the moment that makes _animals_ afraid? Why shouldyou be so extraordinarily happy? Why should the moment of extreme dangerbe always the "exquisite" moment? Why not the moment of safety?

Doesn't it look as if danger were the point of contact with reality, anddeath the closest point? You're through. Actually you lay hold oneternal life, and you know it. 

Another thing--it always comes with that little shock of recognition. It's happened before, and when you get near to it again you know what itis. You keep on wanting to get near it, wanting it to happen again. Youmay lose it the next minute, but you know. Lawrence knew what it was. Nicky knew. 

 * * * * *

 June 19th. 

I'm coming back to it--after that interruption--because I want to getthe thing clear. I have to put it down as I feel it; there's no otherway. But they mustn't think it's something that only Lawrence and Nickyand I feel. The men feel it too, even when they don't know what it is. And some of them _do_ know. 

Of course we shall be accused of glorifying War and telling lies aboutit. Well--there's a Frenchman who has told the truth, piling up all thehorrors, faithfully, remorselessly, magnificently. But he seems to thinkpeople oughtn't to write about this War at all unless they show up theinfamy of it, as a deterrent, so that no Government can ever startanother one. It's a sort of literary "frightfulness. " But who is hetrying to frighten? Does he imagine that France, or England, or Russiaor Belgium, or Serbia, will want to start another war when this is over?And does he suppose that Germany--if we don't beat her--will be deterredby his frightfulness? Germany's arrogance will be satisfied when sheknows she's made a Frenchman feel like that about it. 

He's got his truth all right. As Morrie would say: "That's War. " But apeaceful earthquake can do much the same thing. And if _our_ truth--what_we_'ve seen--isn't War, at any rate it's what we've got out of it, it'sour "glory, " our spiritual compensation for the physical torture, andthere would be a sort of infamy in trying to take it from us. It isn'tthe French Government, or the British that's fighting Germany; it'swe--all of us. To insist on the world remembering nothing but thesehorrors is as if men up to their knees in the filth they're clearingaway should complain of each other for standing in it and splashingit about. 

The filth of War--and the physical torture--Good God! As if the worldwas likely to forget it. Any more than we're likely to forget what_we_ know. 

You remember because you've known it before and it all hangs together. It's not as if danger were the only point of contact with reality. Youget the same ecstasy, the same shock of recognition, and the same uttersatisfaction when you see a beautiful thing. At least to me it's likethat. You know what Nicky thought it was like. You know what it was likewhen you used to sit looking and looking at Mother's "tree of Heaven. "

It's odd, Ronny, to have gone all your life trying to get reality, trying to get new beauty, trying to get utter satisfaction; to havefunked coming out here because you thought it was all obscene uglinessand waste and frustration, and then to come out, and to find whatyou wanted. 

 * * * * *

 June 25th. 

I wrote all that, while I could, because I want to make them see it. It's horrible that Dorothy should think that Drayton's dead and thatMother should think that Nicky's dead, when they wouldn't, if theyreally knew. If they don't believe Lawrence or me, can't they believeNicky? I'm only saying what he said. But I can't write to them about itbecause they make me shy, and I'm afraid they'll think I'm only gassing, or "making poetry"--as if poetry wasn't the most real thing there is!

If anybody can make them see it, you can. --Always your affectionate, MICHAEL. 

XXV

Anthony was going into the house to take back the key of the workshop. 

He had locked the door of the workshop a year ago, after Nicky's death, and had not opened it again until to-day. This afternoon in the orchardhe had seen that the props of the old apple-tree were broken and he hadthought that he would like to make new ones, and the wood was inthe workshop. 

Everything in there was as it had been when Nicky finished with hisMoving Fortress. The brass and steel filings lay in a heap under thelathe, the handle was tilted at the point where he had left it; pits inthe saw-dust showed where his feet had stood. His overalls hung over thebench where he had slipped them off. 

Anthony had sat down on the bench and had looked at these things withremembrance and foreboding. He thought of Nicky and of Nicky's pleasureand excitement over the unpacking of his first lathe--the one he hadbegged for for his birthday--and of his own pleasure and excitement ashe watched his boy handling it and showing him so cleverly how itworked. It stood there still in the corner. Nicky had given it toVeronica. He had taught her how to use it. And Anthony thought ofVeronica when she was little; he saw Nicky taking care of her, teachingher to run and ride and play games. And he remembered what Veronica'smother had said to him and Frances: "Wait till Nicky has children ofhis own. "

He thought of John. John had volunteered three times and had been threetimes rejected. And now conscription had got him. He had to appearbefore the Board of Examiners that afternoon. He might be rejectedagain. But the standard was not so exacting as it had been--Johnmight be taken. 

He thought of his business--John's business and his, and Bartie's. Thosebig Government contracts had more than saved them. They were making tonsof money out of the War. Even when the Government cut down theirprofits; even when they had given more than half they made to the Warfunds, the fact remained that they were living on the War. Bartie, without a wife or children, was appallingly rich. 

If John were taken. If John were killed--

If Michael died--

Michael had been reported seriously wounded. 

He had thought then of Michael. And he had not been able to bearthinking any more. He had got up and left the workshop, locking the doorbehind him, forgetting what he had gone in for; and he had taken the keyback to the house. He kept it in what his children used to call thesecret drawer of his bureau. It lay there with Nicky's last letter ofJune, 1915, and a slab of coromandel wood. 

It was when he was going into the house with the key that John met him. 

"Have they taken you?"

"Yes. "

John's face was hard and white. They went together into Anthony's room. 

"It's what you wanted, " Anthony said. 

"Of course it's what I wanted. I want it more than ever now. 

"The wire's come, Father. Mother opened it. "

 * * * * *

It was five days now since they had heard that Michael had died of hiswounds. Frances was in Michael's room. She was waiting for Dorothea andVeronica to help her to find his papers. It was eight o'clock in theevening, and they had to be sorted and laid out ready for Morton Ellisto look over them to-morrow. To-morrow Morton Ellis would come, and hewould take them away. 

The doors of Michael's and of Nicky's rooms were always kept shut;Frances knew that, if she were to open the door on the other side of thecorridor and look in, every thing in Nicky's room would welcome her withtenderness even while it inflicted its unique and separate wound. ButMichael's room was bare and silent. He had cleared everything away outof her sight last year before he went. The very books on the shelvesrepudiated her; reminded her that she had never understood him, that hehad always escaped her. His room kept his secret, and she felt afraidand abashed in it, knowing herself an intruder. Presently all that wasmost precious in it would be taken from her and given over to a strangerwhom he had never liked. 

Her mind turned and fastened on one object--the stiff, naked woodenchair standing in its place before the oak table by the window. Sheremembered how she had come to Michael there and found him writing athis table, and how she had talked to him as though he had been a shirkerand a coward. 

She had borne Nicky's death. But she could not bear Michael's. She stoodthere in his room, staring, hypnotized by her memory. She heard Dorotheacome in and go out again. And then Veronica came in. 

She turned to Veronica to help her. 

She clung to Veronica and was jealous of her. Veronica had not comebetween her and Nicky as long as he was alive, but now that he was deadshe came between them. She came between her and Michael too. Michael'smind had always been beyond her; she could only reach it throughVeronica and through Veronica's secret. Her mind clutched at Veronica'ssecret, and flung it away as useless, and returned, clutching atit again. 

It was as if Veronica held the souls of Michael and Nicholas in herhands. She offered her the souls of her dead sons. She was the mediatorbetween her and their souls. 

"I could bear it, Veronica, if I hadn't made him go. I came to him, here, in this room, and bullied him till he went. I said horrible thingsto him--that he must have remembered. 

"He wasn't like Nicky--it was infinitely worse for him. And I was cruelto him. I had no pity. I drove him out--to be killed. 

"And I simply cannot bear it. "

"But--he didn't go then. He waited till--till he was free. If anybodycould have made him, Nicky could. But it wasn't even Nicky. It washimself. "

"If he'd been killed as Nicky was--but to die like that, in thehospital--of those horrible wounds. "

"He was leading a charge, just as Nicky was. And you know he was happy, just as Nicky was. Every line he's written shows that he was happy. "

"It only shows that they were both full of life, that they loved theirlife and wanted to live. 

"It's no use, Ronny, you're saying you know they're there. I don't. I'dgive anything to believe it. And yet it wouldn't be a bit of good if Idid. I don't _want_ them all changed into something spiritual that Ishouldn't know if it was there. I want their bodies with me just as theyused to be. I want to hear them and touch them, and see them come in intheir old clothes. 

"To see Nicky standing on the hearthrug with Timmy in his arms. I wantthings like that, Ronny. Even if you're right, it's all clean gone. "

Her lips tightened. 

"I'm talking as if I was, the only one. But I know it's worse for you, Ronny. I _had_ them all those years. And I've got Anthony. You've hadnothing but your poor three days. "

Veronica thought: "How can I tell her that I've got more than shethinks? It's awful that I should have what she hasn't. " She was ashamedand beaten before this irreparable, mortal grief. 

"And it's worse, " Frances said, "for the wretched mothers whose sonshaven't fought. "

For her pride rose in her again--the pride that uplifted hersupernaturally when Nicky died. 

"You mustn't think I grudge them. I don't. I don't even grudge John. "

The silence of Michael's room sank into them, it weighed on their heartsand they were afraid of each other's voices. Frances was glad whenDorothy came and they could begin their work there. 

But Michael had not left them much to do. They found his papers all inone drawer of his writing-table, sorted and packed and labelled, readyfor Morton Ellis to take away. One sealed envelope lay in a place byitself. Frances thought: "He didn't want any of us to touch his things. "

Then she saw Veronica's name on the sealed envelope. She was glad whenVeronica left them and went to her hospital. 

And when she was gone she wanted her back again. 

"I wish I hadn't spoken that way to Veronica, " she said. 

"She won't mind. She knows you couldn't help it. "

"I could, Dorothy, if I wasn't jealous of her. I mean I'm jealous of hercertainty. If I had it, too, I shouldn't be jealous. "

"She wants you to have it. She's trying to give it you. 

"Mother--how do we know she isn't right? Nicky said she was. And Michaelsaid Nicky was right. 

"If it had been only Nicky--_he_ might have got it from Veronica. ButMichael never got things from anybody. And you _do_ know things in queerways. Even I do. At least I did once--when I was in prison. I knewsomething tremendous was going to happen. I saw it, or felt it, orsomething. I won't swear I knew it was the War. I don't suppose I did. But I knew Frank was all mixed up with it. And it was the most awfullyreal thing. You couldn't go back on it, or get behind it. It was as ifI'd seen that he and Lawrence and Nicky and Michael and all of themwould die in it to save the whole world. Like Christ, only that theyreally _did_ die and the whole world _was_ saved. There was nothingfutile about it. "

"Well--?"

"Well, _they_ might see their real thing the same way--in a flash. Aren't they a thousand times more likely to know than we are? What righthave we--sitting here safe--to say it isn't when they say it is?"

"But--if there's anything in it--why can't I see it as well as you andVeronica? After all, I'm their mother. "

"Perhaps that's why it takes you longer, Mummy. You think of theirbodies more than we do, because they were part of your body. Theirsouls, or whatever it is, aren't as real to you just at first. "

"I see, " said Frances, bitterly. "You've only got to be a mother, andgive your children your flesh and blood, to be sure of their souls goingfrom you and somebody else getting them. "

"That's the price you pay for being mothers. "

"Was Frank's soul ever more real to _you_, Dorothy?"

"Yes. It was once--for just one minute. The night he went away. That'sanother queer thing that happened. "

"It didn't satisfy you, darling, did it?"

"Of course it didn't satisfy me. I want more and more of it. Not justflashes. "

"You say it's the price we pay for being mothers. Yet if Veronica hadhad a child--"

"You needn't be so sorry for Veronica. "

"I'm not. It's you I'm sorriest for. You've had nothing. From beginningto end you had nothing. 

"I might at least have seen that you had it in the beginning. "

"_You_, Mummy?"

"Yes. Me. You _shall_ have it now. Unless you want to leave me. "

"I wouldn't leave you for the world, Mummy ducky. Only you must let mework always and all the time. "

"Let you? I'll let you do what you like, my dear. "

"You always have let me, haven't you?"

"It was the least I could do. "

"Poor Mummy, did you think you had to make up because you cared for themmore than me?"

"I wonder, " said Frances, thoughtfully, "if I did. "

"Of course. Of course you did. Who wouldn't?"

"I never meant you to know it, Dorothy. "

"Of course I knew it. I must have known it ever since Michael was born. I knew you couldn't help it. You had to. Even when I was a tiresome kidI knew you had to. It was natural. "

"Natural or unnatural, many girls have hated their mothers for less. You've been very big and generous. 

"Perhaps--if you'd been little and weak--but you were always such anindependent thing. I used to think you didn't want me. "

"I wanted you a lot more than you thought. But, you see, I've learned todo without. "

She thought: "It's better she should have it straight. "

"If you'd think less about me, Mother, " she said, "and more aboutFather--"

"Father?"

"Yes. Father isn't independent--though he looks it. He wants youawfully. He always has wanted you. And he hasn't learned to do without. "

"Where is he?"

"He's sitting out there in the garden, all by himself, in the dark, under the tree. "

Frances went to him there. 

"I wondered whether you would come to me, " he said. 

"I was doing something for Michael. "

"Is it done?"

"Yes. It's done. "

 * * * * *

Five months passed. It was November now. 

In the lane by the side door, Anthony was waiting in his car. Rain wasfalling, hanging from the trees and falling. Every now and then helooked at his watch. 

He had still a quarter of an hour before he need start. But he was notgoing back into the house. They were all in there saying good-bye toJohn: old Mrs. Fleming, and Louie and Emmeline and Edith. And Maurice. And his brother Bartie. 

The door in the garden wall opened and they came out: the four women inblack--the black they still wore for Michael--and the two men. 

They all walked slowly up the lane. Anthony could see Bartie's shouldershunched irritably against the rain. He could see Morrie carrying hissodden, quivering body with care and an exaggerated sobriety. He sawGrannie, going slowly, under the umbrella, very upright and conscious ofherself as wonderful and outlasting. 

He got down and cranked up his engine. 

Then he sat sternly in his car and waited, with his hands on thesteering-wheel, ready. 

The engine throbbed, impatient for the start. 

John came out very quickly and took his seat beside his father. And thecar went slowly towards the high road. 

Uncle Morrie stood waiting for it by the gate at the top of the lane. Asit passed through he straightened himself and put up his hand in acrapulous salute. 

The young man smiled at him, saluted, and was gone