THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON

CHAPTER I

Francesca Bassington sat in the drawing-room of her house in BlueStreet, W. , regaling herself and her estimable brother Henry withChina tea and small cress sandwiches. The meal was of that elegantproportion which, while ministering sympathetically to the desiresof the moment, is happily reminiscent of a satisfactory luncheonand blessedly expectant of an elaborate dinner to come. 

In her younger days Francesca had been known as the beautiful MissGreech; at forty, although much of the original beauty remained, she was just dear Francesca Bassington. No one would have dreamedof calling her sweet, but a good many people who scarcely knew herwere punctilious about putting in the "dear. "

Her enemies, in their honester moments, would have admitted thatshe was svelte and knew how to dress, but they would have agreedwith her friends in asserting that she had no soul. When one'sfriends and enemies agree on any particular point they are usuallywrong. Francesca herself, if pressed in an unguarded moment todescribe her soul, would probably have described her drawing-room. Not that she would have considered that the one had stamped theimpress of its character on the other, so that close scrutiny mightreveal its outstanding features, and even suggest its hiddenplaces, but because she might have dimly recognised that herdrawing-room was her soul. 

Francesca was one of those women towards whom Fate appears to havethe best intentions and never to carry them into practice. Withthe advantages put at her disposal she might have been expected tocommand a more than average share of feminine happiness. So manyof the things that make for fretfulness, disappointment anddiscouragement in a woman's life were removed from her path thatshe might well have been considered the fortunate Miss Greech, orlater, lucky Francesca Bassington. And she was not of the perverseband of those who make a rock-garden of their souls by dragginginto them all the stoney griefs and unclaimed troubles they canfind lying around them. Francesca loved the smooth ways andpleasant places of life; she liked not merely to look on the brightside of things but to live there and stay there. And the fact thatthings had, at one time and another, gone badly with her andcheated her of some of her early illusions made her cling thecloser to such good fortune as remained to her now that she seemedto have reached a calmer period of her life. To undiscriminatingfriends she appeared in the guise of a rather selfish woman, but itwas merely the selfishness of one who had seen the happy andunhappy sides of life and wished to enjoy to the utmost what wasleft to her of the former. The vicissitudes of fortune had notsoured her, but they had perhaps narrowed her in the sense ofmaking her concentrate much of her sympathies on things thatimmediately pleased and amused her, or that recalled andperpetuated the pleasing and successful incidents of other days. And it was her drawing-room in particular that enshrined thememorials or tokens of past and present happiness. 

Into that comfortable quaint-shaped room of angles and bays andalcoves had sailed, as into a harbour, those precious personalpossessions and trophies that had survived the buffetings andstorms of a not very tranquil married life. Wherever her eyesmight turn she saw the embodied results of her successes, economies, good luck, good management or good taste. The battlehad more than once gone against her, but she had somehow alwayscontrived to save her baggage train, and her complacent gaze couldroam over object after object that represented the spoils ofvictory or the salvage of honourable defeat. The delicious bronzeFremiet on the mantelpiece had been the outcome of a Grand Prixsweepstake of many years ago; a group of Dresden figures of someconsiderable value had been bequeathed to her by a discreetadmirer, who had added death to his other kindnesses; another grouphad been a self-bestowed present, purchased in blessed and unfadingmemory of a wonderful nine-days' bridge winnings at a country-houseparty. There were old Persian and Bokharan rugs and Worcester tea-services of glowing colour, and little treasures of antique silverthat each enshrined a history or a memory in addition to its ownintrinsic value. It amused her at times to think of the bygonecraftsmen and artificers who had hammered and wrought and woven infar distant countries and ages, to produce the wonderful andbeautiful things that had come, one way and another, into herpossession. Workers in the studios of medieval Italian towns andof later Paris, in the bazaars of Baghdad and of Central Asia, inold-time English workshops and German factories, in all manner ofqueer hidden corners where craft secrets were jealously guarded, nameless unremembered men and men whose names were world-renownedand deathless. 

And above all her other treasures, dominating in her estimationevery other object that the room contained, was the great Van derMeulen that had come from her father's home as part of her weddingdowry. It fitted exactly into the central wall panel above thenarrow buhl cabinet, and filled exactly its right space in thecomposition and balance of the room. From wherever you sat itseemed to confront you as the dominating feature of itssurroundings. There was a pleasing serenity about the greatpompous battle scene with its solemn courtly warriors bestridingtheir heavily prancing steeds, grey or skewbald or dun, all gravelyin earnest, and yet somehow conveying the impression that theircampaigns were but vast serious picnics arranged in the grandmanner. Francesca could not imagine the drawing-room without thecrowning complement of the stately well-hung picture, just as shecould not imagine herself in any other setting than this house inBlue Street with its crowded Pantheon of cherished household gods. 

And herein sprouted one of the thorns that obtruded through therose-leaf damask of what might otherwise have been Francesca'speace of mind. One's happiness always lies in the future ratherthan in the past. With due deference to an esteemed lyricalauthority one may safely say that a sorrow's crown of sorrow isanticipating unhappier things. The house in Blue Street had beenleft to her by her old friend Sophie Chetrof, but only until suchtime as her niece Emmeline Chetrof should marry, when it was topass to her as a wedding present. Emmeline was now seventeen andpassably good-looking, and four or five years were all that couldbe safely allotted to the span of her continued spinsterhood. Beyond that period lay chaos, the wrenching asunder of Francescafrom the sheltering habitation that had grown to be her soul. Itis true that in imagination she had built herself a bridge acrossthe chasm, a bridge of a single span. The bridge in question washer schoolboy son Comus, now being educated somewhere in thesouthern counties, or rather one should say the bridge consisted ofthe possibility of his eventual marriage with Emmeline, in whichcase Francesca saw herself still reigning, a trifle squeezed andincommoded perhaps, but still reigning in the house in Blue Street. The Van der Meulen would still catch its requisite afternoon lightin its place of honour, the Fremiet and the Dresden and OldWorcester would continue undisturbed in their accustomed niches. Emmeline could have the Japanese snuggery, where Francescasometimes drank her after-dinner coffee, as a separate drawing-room, where she could put her own things. The details of thebridge structure had all been carefully thought out. Only--it wasan unfortunate circumstance that Comus should have been the span onwhich everything balanced. 

Francesca's husband had insisted on giving the boy that strangePagan name, and had not lived long enough to judge as to theappropriateness, or otherwise, of its significance. In seventeenyears and some odd months Francesca had had ample opportunity forforming an opinion concerning her son's characteristics. Thespirit of mirthfulness which one associates with the name certainlyran riot in the boy, but it was a twisted wayward sort of mirth ofwhich Francesca herself could seldom see the humorous side. In herbrother Henry, who sat eating small cress sandwiches as solemnly asthough they had been ordained in some immemorial Book ofObservances, fate had been undisguisedly kind to her. He might soeasily have married some pretty helpless little woman, and lived atNotting Hill Gate, and been the father of a long string of pale, clever useless children, who would have had birthdays and the sortof illnesses that one is expected to send grapes to, and who wouldhave painted fatuous objects in a South Kensington manner asChristmas offerings to an aunt whose cubic space for lumber waslimited. Instead of committing these unbrotherly actions, whichare so frequent in family life that they might almost be calledbrotherly, Henry had married a woman who had both money and a senseof repose, and their one child had the brilliant virtue of neversaying anything which even its parents could consider worthrepeating. Then he had gone into Parliament, possibly with theidea of making his home life seem less dull; at any rate itredeemed his career from insignificance, for no man whose death canproduce the item "another by-election" on the news posters can bewholly a nonentity. Henry, in short, who might have been anembarrassment and a handicap, had chosen rather to be a friend andcounsellor, at times even an emergency bank balance; Francesca onher part, with the partiality which a clever and lazily-inclinedwoman often feels for a reliable fool, not only sought his counselbut frequently followed it. When convenient, moreover, she repaidhis loans. 

Against this good service on the part of Fate in providing her withHenry for a brother, Francesca could well set the plaguy malice ofthe destiny that had given her Comus for a son. The boy was one ofthose untameable young lords of misrule that frolic and chafethemselves through nursery and preparatory and public-school dayswith the utmost allowance of storm and dust and dislocation and theleast possible amount of collar-work, and come somehow with a laughthrough a series of catastrophes that has reduced everyone elseconcerned to tears or Cassandra-like forebodings. Sometimes theysober down in after-life and become uninteresting, forgetting thatthey were ever lords of anything; sometimes Fate plays royally intotheir hands, and they do great things in a spacious manner, and arethanked by Parliaments and the Press and acclaimed by gala-daycrowds. But in most cases their tragedy begins when they leaveschool and turn themselves loose in a world that has grown toocivilised and too crowded and too empty to have any place for them. And they are very many. 

Henry Greech had made an end of biting small sandwiches, andsettled down like a dust-storm refreshed, to discuss one of thefashionably prevalent topics of the moment, the prevention ofdestitution. 

"It is a question that is only being nibbled at, smelt at, onemight say, at the present moment, " he observed, "but it is one thatwill have to engage our serious attention and consideration beforelong. The first thing that we shall have to do is to get out ofthe dilettante and academic way of approaching it. We must collectand assimilate hard facts. It is a subject that ought to appeal toall thinking minds, and yet, you know, I find it surprisinglydifficult to interest people in it. "

Francesca made some monosyllabic response, a sort of sympatheticgrunt which was meant to indicate that she was, to a certainextent, listening and appreciating. In reality she was reflectingthat Henry possibly found it difficult to interest people in anytopic that he enlarged on. His talents lay so thoroughly in thedirection of being uninteresting, that even as an eye-witness ofthe massacre of St. Bartholomew he would probably have infused aflavour of boredom into his descriptions of the event. 

"I was speaking down in Leicestershire the other day on thissubject, " continued Henry, "and I pointed out at some length athing that few people ever stop to consider--"

Francesca went over immediately but decorously to the majority thatwill not stop to consider. 

"Did you come across any of the Barnets when you were down there?"she interrupted; "Eliza Barnet is rather taken up with all thosesubjects. "

In the propagandist movements of Sociology, as in other arenas oflife and struggle, the fiercest competition and rivalry isfrequently to be found between closely allied types and species. Eliza Barnet shared many of Henry Greech's political and socialviews, but she also shared his fondness for pointing things out atsome length; there had been occasions when she had extensivelyoccupied the strictly limited span allotted to the platform oratoryof a group of speakers of whom Henry Greech had been an impatientunit. He might see eye to eye with her on the leading questions ofthe day, but he persistently wore mental blinkers as far as herestimable qualities were concerned, and the mention of her name wasa skilful lure drawn across the trail of his discourse; ifFrancesca had to listen to his eloquence on any subject she muchpreferred that it should be a disparagement of Eliza Barnet ratherthan the prevention of destitution. 

"I've no doubt she means well, " said Henry, "but it would be a goodthing if she could be induced to keep her own personality a littlemore in the background, and not to imagine that she is thenecessary mouthpiece of all the progressive thought in thecountryside. I fancy Canon Besomley must have had her in his mindwhen he said that some people came into the world to shake empiresand others to move amendments. "

Francesca laughed with genuine amusement. 

"I suppose she is really wonderfully well up in all the subjectsshe talks about, " was her provocative comment. 

Henry grew possibly conscious of the fact that he was being drawnout on the subject of Eliza Barnet, and he presently turned on to amore personal topic. 

"From the general air of tranquillity about the house I presumeComus has gone back to Thaleby, " he observed. 

"Yes, " said Francesca, "he went back yesterday. Of course, I'mvery fond of him, but I bear the separation well. When he's hereit's rather like having a live volcano in the house, a volcano thatin its quietest moments asks incessant questions and uses strongscent. "

"It is only a temporary respite, " said Henry; "in a year or two hewill be leaving school, and then what?"

Francesca closed her eyes with the air of one who seeks to shut outa distressing vision. She was not fond of looking intimately atthe future in the presence of another person, especially when thefuture was draped in doubtfully auspicious colours. 

"And then what?" persisted Henry. 

"Then I suppose he will be upon my hands. "

"Exactly. "

"Don't sit there looking judicial. I'm quite ready to listen tosuggestions if you've any to make. "

"In the case of any ordinary boy, " said Henry, "I might make lotsof suggestions as to the finding of suitable employment. From whatwe know of Comus it would be rather a waste of time for either ofus to look for jobs which he wouldn't look at when we'd got themfor him. "

"He must do something, " said Francesca. 

"I know he must; but he never will. At least, he'll never stick toanything. The most hopeful thing to do with him will be to marryhim to an heiress. That would solve the financial side of hisproblem. If he had unlimited money at his disposal, he might gointo the wilds somewhere and shoot big game. I never know what thebig game have done to deserve it, but they do help to deflect thedestructive energies of some of our social misfits. "

Henry, who never killed anything larger or fiercer than a trout, was scornfully superior on the subject of big game shooting. 

Francesca brightened at the matrimonial suggestion. "I don't knowabout an heiress, " she said reflectively. "There's EmmelineChetrof of course. One could hardly call her an heiress, but she'sgot a comfortable little income of her own and I suppose somethingmore will come to her from her grandmother. Then, of course, youknow this house goes to her when she marries. "

"That would be very convenient, " said Henry, probably following aline of thought that his sister had trodden many hundreds of timesbefore him. "Do she and Comus hit it off at all well together?"

"Oh, well enough in boy and girl fashion, " said Francesca. "I mustarrange for them to see more of each other in future. By the way, that little brother of hers that she dotes on, Lancelot, goes toThaleby this term. I'll write and tell Comus to be specially kindto him; that will be a sure way to Emmeline's heart. Comus hasbeen made a prefect, you know. Heaven knows why. "

"It can only be for prominence in games, " sniffed Henry; "I thinkwe may safely leave work and conduct out of the question. "

Comus was not a favourite with his uncle. 

Francesca had turned to her writing cabinet and was hastilyscribbling a letter to her son in which the delicate health, timiddisposition and other inevitable attributes of the new boy werebrought to his notice, and commanded to his care. When she hadsealed and stamped the envelope Henry uttered a belated caution. 

"Perhaps on the whole it would be wiser to say nothing about theboy to Comus. He doesn't always respond to directions you know. "

Francesca did know, and already was more than half of her brother'sopinion; but the woman who can sacrifice a clean unspoiled pennystamp is probably yet unborn. 

CHAPTER II

Lancelot Chetrof stood at the end of a long bare passage, restlessly consulting his watch and fervently wishing himself halfan hour older with a certain painful experience already registeredin the past; unfortunately it still belonged to the future, andwhat was still more horrible, to the immediate future. Like manyboys new to a school he had cultivated an unhealthy passion forobeying rules and requirements, and his zeal in this direction hadproved his undoing. In his hurry to be doing two or threeestimable things at once he had omitted to study the notice-boardin more than a perfunctory fashion and had thereby missed afootball practice specially ordained for newly-joined boys. Hisfellow juniors of a term's longer standing had graphicallyenlightened him as to the inevitable consequences of his lapse; thedread which attaches to the unknown was, at any rate, deleted fromhis approaching doom, though at the moment he felt scarcelygrateful for the knowledge placed at his disposal with such lavishsolicitude. 

"You'll get six of the very best, over the back of a chair, " saidone. 

"They'll draw a chalk line across you, of course you know, " saidanother. 

"A chalk line?"

"Rather. So that every cut can be aimed exactly at the same spot. It hurts much more that way. "

Lancelot tried to nourish a wan hope that there might be an elementof exaggeration in this uncomfortably realistic description. 

Meanwhile in the prefects' room at the other end of the passage, Comus Bassington and a fellow prefect sat also waiting on time, butin a mood of far more pleasurable expectancy. Comus was one of themost junior of the prefect caste, but by no means the least well-known, and outside the masters' common-room he enjoyed a certainfitful popularity, or at any rate admiration. At football he wastoo erratic to be a really brilliant player, but he tackled as ifthe act of bringing his man headlong to the ground was in itself asensuous pleasure, and his weird swear-words whenever he got hurtwere eagerly treasured by those who were fortunate enough to hearthem. At athletics in general he was a showy performer, andalthough new to the functions of a prefect he had alreadyestablished a reputation as an effective and artistic caner. Inappearance he exactly fitted his fanciful Pagan name. His largegreen-grey eyes seemed for ever asparkle with goblin mischief andthe joy of revelry, and the curved lips might have been those ofsome wickedly-laughing faun; one almost expected to see embryohorns fretting the smoothness of his sleek dark hair. The chin wasfirm, but one looked in vain for a redeeming touch of ill-temper inthe handsome, half-mocking, half-petulant face. With a strain ofsourness in him Comus might have been leavened into somethingcreative and masterful; fate had fashioned him with a certainwhimsical charm, and left him all unequipped for the greaterpurposes of life. Perhaps no one would have called him a lovablecharacter, but in many respects he was adorable; in all respects hewas certainly damned. 

Rutley, his companion of the moment, sat watching him andwondering, from the depths of a very ordinary brain, whether heliked or hated him; it was easy to do either. 

"It's not really your turn to cane, " he said. 

"I know it's not, " said Comus, fingering a very serviceable-lookingcane as lovingly as a pious violinist might handle his Strad. "Igave Greyson some mint-chocolate to let me toss whether I caned orhim, and I won. He was rather decent over it and let me have halfthe chocolate back. "

The droll lightheartedness which won Comus Bassington such measureof popularity as he enjoyed among his fellows did not materiallyhelp to endear him to the succession of masters with whom he camein contact during the course of his schooldays. He amused andinterested such of them as had the saving grace of humour at theirdisposal, but if they sighed when he passed from their immediateresponsibility it was a sigh of relief rather than of regret. Themore enlightened and experienced of them realised that he wassomething outside the scope of the things that they were calledupon to deal with. A man who has been trained to cope with storms, to foresee their coming, and to minimise their consequences, may bepardoned if he feels a certain reluctance to measure himselfagainst a tornado. 

Men of more limited outlook and with a correspondingly largerbelief in their own powers were ready to tackle the tornado hadtime permitted. 

"I think I could tame young Bassington if I had youropportunities, " a form-master once remarked to a colleague whoseHouse had the embarrassing distinction of numbering Comus among itsinmates. 

"Heaven forbid that I should try, " replied the housemaster. 

"But why?" asked the reformer. 

"Because Nature hates any interference with her own arrangements, and if you start in to tame the obviously untameable you are takinga fearful responsibility on yourself. "

"Nonsense; boys are Nature's raw material. "

"Millions of boys are. There are just a few, and Bassington is oneof them, who are Nature's highly finished product when they are inthe schoolboy stage, and we, who are supposed to be moulding rawmaterial, are quite helpless when we come in contact with them. "

"But what happens to them when they grow up?"

"They never do grow up, " said the housemaster; "that is theirtragedy. Bassington will certainly never grow out of his presentstage. "

"Now you are talking in the language of Peter Pan, " said the form-master. 

"I am not thinking in the manner of Peter Pan, " said the other. "With all reverence for the author of that masterpiece I should sayhe had a wonderful and tender insight into the child mind and knewnothing whatever about boys. To make only one criticism on thatparticular work, can you imagine a lot of British boys, or boys ofany country that one knows of, who would stay contentedly playingchildren's games in an underground cave when there were wolves andpirates and Red Indians to be had for the asking on the other sideof the trap door?"

The form-master laughed. "You evidently think that the 'Boy whowould not grow up' must have been written by a 'grown-up who couldnever have been a boy. ' Perhaps that is the meaning of the 'Never-never Land. ' I daresay you're right in your criticism, but I don'tagree with you about Bassington. He's a handful to deal with, asanyone knows who has come in contact with him, but if one's handsweren't full with a thousand and one other things I hold to myopinion that he could be tamed. "

And he went his way, having maintained a form-master's inalienableprivilege of being in the right. 

* * * * *

In the prefects' room, Comus busied himself with the exact positionof a chair planted out in the middle of the floor. 

"I think everything's ready, " he said. 

Rutley glanced at the clock with the air of a Roman elegant in theCircus, languidly awaiting the introduction of an expectedChristian to an expectant tiger. 

"The kid is due in two minutes, " he said. 

"He'd jolly well better not be late, " said Comus. 

Comus had gone through the mill of many scorching castigations inhis earlier school days, and was able to appreciate to the lastounce the panic that must be now possessing his foredoomed victim, probably at this moment hovering miserably outside the door. Afterall, that was part of the fun of the thing, and most things havetheir amusing side if one knows where to look for it. 

There was a knock at the door, and Lancelot entered in response toa hearty friendly summons to "come in. "

"I've come to be caned, " he said breathlessly; adding by way ofidentification, "my name's Chetrof. "

"That's quite bad enough in itself, " said Comus, "but there isprobably worse to follow. You are evidently keeping something backfrom us. "

"I missed a footer practice, " said Lancelot

"Six, " said Comus briefly, picking up his cane. 

"I didn't see the notice on the board, " hazarded Lancelot as aforlorn hope. 

"We are always pleased to listen to excuses, and our charge is twoextra cuts. That will be eight. Get over. "

And Comus indicated the chair that stood in sinister isolation inthe middle of the room. Never had an article of furniture seemedmore hateful in Lancelot's eyes. Comus could well remember thetime when a chair stuck in the middle of a room had seemed to himthe most horrible of manufactured things. 

"Lend me a piece of chalk, " he said to his brother prefect. 

Lancelot ruefully recognised the truth of the chalk-line story. 

Comus drew the desired line with an anxious exactitude which hewould have scorned to apply to a diagram of Euclid or a map of theRusso-Persian frontier. 

"Bend a little more forward, " he said to the victim, "and muchtighter. Don't trouble to look pleasant, because I can't see yourface anyway. It may sound unorthodox to say so, but this is goingto hurt you much more than it will hurt me. "

There was a carefully measured pause, and then Lancelot was madevividly aware of what a good cane can be made to do in reallyefficient hands. At the second cut he projected himself hurriedlyoff the chair. 

"Now I've lost count, " said Comus; "we shall have to begin all overagain. Kindly get back into the same position. If you get downagain before I've finished Rutley will hold you over and you'll geta dozen. "

Lancelot got back on to the chair, and was re-arranged to the tasteof his executioner. He stayed there somehow or other while Comusmade eight accurate and agonisingly effective shots at the chalkline. 

"By the way, " he said to his gasping and gulping victim when theinfliction was over, "you said Chetrof, didn't you? I believe I'vebeen asked to be kind to you. As a beginning you can clean out mystudy this afternoon. Be awfully careful how you dust the oldchina. If you break any don't come and tell me but just go anddrown yourself somewhere; it will save you from a worse fate. "

"I don't know where your study is, " said Lancelot between hischokes. 

"You'd better find it or I shall have to beat you, really hard thistime. Here, you'd better keep this chalk in your pocket, it's sureto come in handy later on. Don't stop to thank me for all I'vedone, it only embarrasses me. "

As Comus hadn't got a study Lancelot spent a feverish half-hour inlooking for it, incidentally missing another footer practice. 

"Everything is very jolly here, " wrote Lancelot to his sisterEmmeline. "The prefects can give you an awful hot time if theylike, but most of them are rather decent. Some are Beasts. Bassington is a prefect though only a junior one. He is the Limitas Beasts go. At least I think so. "

Schoolboy reticence went no further, but Emmeline filled in thegaps for herself with the lavish splendour of feminine imagination. Francesca's bridge went crashing into the abyss. 

CHAPTER III

On the evening of a certain November day, two years after theevents heretofore chronicled, Francesca Bassington steered her waythrough the crowd that filled the rooms of her friend SerenaGolackly, bestowing nods of vague recognition as she went, but witheyes that were obviously intent on focussing one particular figure. Parliament had pulled its energies together for an Autumn Session, and both political Parties were fairly well represented in thethrong. Serena had a harmless way of inviting a number of more orless public men and women to her house, and hoping that if you leftthem together long enough they would constitute a salon. Inpursuance of the same instinct she planted the flower borders ather week-end cottage retreat in Surrey with a large mixture ofbulbs, and called the result a Dutch garden. Unfortunately, thoughyou may bring brilliant talkers into your home, you cannot alwaysmake them talk brilliantly, or even talk at all; what is worse youcannot restrict the output of those starling-voiced dullards whoseem to have, on all subjects, so much to say that was well worthleaving unsaid. One group that Francesca passed was discussing aSpanish painter, who was forty-three, and had painted thousands ofsquare yards of canvas in his time, but of whom no one in Londonhad heard till a few months ago; now the starling-voices seemeddetermined that one should hear of very little else. Three womenknew how his name was pronounced, another always felt that she mustgo into a forest and pray whenever she saw his pictures, anotherhad noticed that there were always pomegranates in his latercompositions, and a man with an indefensible collar knew what thepomegranates "meant. " "What I think so splendid about him, " said astout lady in a loud challenging voice, "is the way he defies allthe conventions of art while retaining all that the conventionsstand for. " "Ah, but have you noticed--" put in the man with theatrocious collar, and Francesca pushed desperately on, wonderingdimly as she went, what people found so unsupportable in theaffliction of deafness. Her progress was impeded for a moment by acouple engaged in earnest and voluble discussion of somesmouldering question of the day; a thin spectacled young man withthe receding forehead that so often denotes advanced opinions, wastalking to a spectacled young woman with a similar type offorehead, and exceedingly untidy hair. It was her ambition in lifeto be taken for a Russian girl-student, and she had spent weeks ofpatient research in trying to find out exactly where you put thetea-leaves in a samovar. She had once been introduced to a youngJewess from Odessa, who had died of pneumonia the following week;the experience, slight as it was, constituted the spectacled younglady an authority on all things Russian in the eyes of herimmediate set. 

"Talk is helpful, talk is needful, " the young man was saying, "butwhat we have got to do is to lift the subject out of the furrow ofindisciplined talk and place it on the threshing-floor of practicaldiscussion. "

The young woman took advantage of the rhetorical full-stop to dashin with the remark which was already marshalled on the tip of hertongue. 

"In emancipating the serfs of poverty we must be careful to avoidthe mistakes which Russian bureaucracy stumbled into whenliberating the serfs of the soil. "

She paused in her turn for the sake of declamatory effect, butrecovered her breath quickly enough to start afresh on level termswith the young man, who had jumped into the stride of his nextsentence. 

"They got off to a good start that time, " said Francesca toherself; "I suppose it's the Prevention of Destitution they'rehammering at. What on earth would become of these dear good peopleif anyone started a crusade for the prevention of mediocrity?"

Midway through one of the smaller rooms, still questing for anelusive presence, she caught sight of someone that she knew, andthe shadow of a frown passed across her face. The object of herfaintly signalled displeasure was Courtenay Youghal, a politicalspur-winner who seemed absurdly youthful to a generation that hadnever heard of Pitt. It was Youghal's ambition--or perhaps hishobby--to infuse into the greyness of modern political life some ofthe colour of Disraelian dandyism, tempered with the correctness ofAnglo-Saxon taste, and supplemented by the flashes of wit that wereinherent from the Celtic strain in him. His success was only ahalf-measure. The public missed in him that touch of blatancywhich it looks for in its rising public men; the decorativesmoothness of his chestnut-golden hair, and the lively sparkle ofhis epigrams were counted to him for good, but the restrainedsumptuousness of his waistcoats and cravats were as wasted efforts. If he had habitually smoked cigarettes in a pink coral mouthpiece, or worn spats of Mackenzie tartan, the great heart of the voting-man, and the gush of the paragraph-makers might have beenunreservedly his. The art of public life consists to a greatextent of knowing exactly where to stop and going a bit further. 

It was not Youghal's lack of political sagacity that had broughtthe momentary look of disapproval into Francesca's face. The factwas that Comus, who had left off being a schoolboy and was now asocial problem, had lately enrolled himself among the youngpolitician's associates and admirers, and as the boy knew and carednothing about politics, and merely copied Youghal's waistcoats, and, less successfully, his conversation, Francesca felt herselfjustified in deploring the intimacy. To a woman who dressed wellon comparatively nothing a year it was an anxious experience tohave a son who dressed sumptuously on absolutely nothing. 

The cloud that had passed over her face when she caught sight ofthe offending Youghal was presently succeeded by a smile ofgratified achievement, as she encountered a bow of recognition andwelcome from a portly middle-aged gentleman, who seemed genuinelyanxious to include her in the rather meagre group that he hadgathered about him. 

"We were just talking about my new charge, " he observed genially, including in the "we" his somewhat depressed-looking listeners, whoin all human probability had done none of the talking. "I was justtelling them, and you may be interested to hear this--"

Francesca, with Spartan stoicism, continued to wear an ingratiatingsmile, though the character of the deaf adder that stoppeth her earand will not hearken, seemed to her at that moment a beautiful one. 

Sir Julian Jull had been a member of a House of Commonsdistinguished for its high standard of well-informed mediocrity, and had harmonised so thoroughly with his surroundings that themost attentive observer of Parliamentary proceedings could scarcelyhave told even on which side of the House he sat. A baronetcybestowed on him by the Party in power had at least removed thatdoubt; some weeks later he had been made Governor of some WestIndian dependency, whether as a reward for having accepted thebaronetcy, or as an application of a theory that West Indianislands get the Governors they deserve, it would have been hard tosay. To Sir Julian the appointment was, doubtless, one of someimportance; during the span of his Governorship the island mightpossibly be visited by a member of the Royal Family, or at theleast by an earthquake, and in either case his name would get intothe papers. To the public the matter was one of absoluteindifference; "who is he and where is it?" would have correctlyepitomised the sum total of general information on the personal andgeographical aspects of the case. 

Francesca, however, from the moment she had heard of the likelihoodof the appointment, had taken a deep and lively interest in SirJulian. As a Member of Parliament he had not filled any verypressing social want in her life, and on the rare occasions whenshe took tea on the Terrace of the House she was wont to lapse intorapt contemplation of St. Thomas's Hospital whenever she saw himwithin bowing distance. But as Governor of an island he would, ofcourse, want a private secretary, and as a friend and colleague ofHenry Greech, to whom he was indebted for many little acts ofpolitical support (they had once jointly drafted an amendment whichhad been ruled out of order), what was more natural and proper thanthat he should let his choice fall on Henry's nephew Comus? Whileprivately doubting whether the boy would make the sort of secretarythat any public man would esteem as a treasure, Henry wasthoroughly in agreement with Francesca as to the excellence anddesirability of an arrangement which would transplant thattroublesome' young animal from the too restricted and conspicuousarea that centres in the parish of St. James's to some misty cornerof the British dominion overseas. Brother and sister had conspiredto give an elaborate and at the same time cosy little luncheon toSir Julian on the very day that his appointment was officiallyannounced, and the question of the secretaryship had been mootedand sedulously fostered as occasion permitted, until all that wasnow needed to clinch the matter was a formal interview between HisExcellency and Comus. The boy had from the first shewn very littlegratification at the prospect of his deportation. To live on aremote shark-girt island, as he expressed it, with the Jull familyas his chief social mainstay, and Sir Julian's conversation as adaily item of his existence, did not inspire him with the samedegree of enthusiasm as was displayed by his mother and uncle, who, after all, were not making the experiment. Even the necessity foran entirely new outfit did not appeal to his imagination with theforce that might have been expected. But, however lukewarm hisadhesion to the project might be, Francesca and her brother wereclearly determined that no lack of deft persistence on their partshould endanger its success. It was for the purpose of remindingSir Julian of his promise to meet Comus at lunch on the followingday, and definitely settle the matter of the secretaryship thatFrancesca was now enduring the ordeal of a long harangue on thevalue of the West Indian group as an Imperial asset. Otherlisteners dexterously detached themselves one by one, butFrancesca's patience outlasted even Sir Julian's flow ofcommonplaces, and her devotion was duly rewarded by a renewedacknowledgment of the lunch engagement and its purpose. She pushedher way back through the throng of starling-voiced chatterersfortified by a sense of well-earned victory. Dear Serena's absurdsalons served some good purpose after all. 

Francesca was not an early riser and her breakfast was only justbeginning to mobilise on the breakfast-table next morning when acopy of The Times, sent by special messenger from her brother'shouse, was brought up to her room. A heavy margin of bluepencilling drew her attention to a prominently-printed letter whichbore the ironical heading: "Julian Jull, Proconsul. " The matterof the letter was a cruel dis-interment of some fatuous andforgotten speeches made by Sir Julian to his constituents not manyyears ago, in which the value of some of our Colonial possessions, particularly certain West Indian islands, was decried in a medleyof pomposity, ignorance and amazingly cheap humour. The extractsgiven sounded weak and foolish enough, taken by themselves, but thewriter of the letter had interlarded them with comments of his own, which sparkled with an ironical brilliance that was Cervantes-likein its polished cruelty. Remembering her ordeal of the previousevening Francesca permitted herself a certain feeling of amusementas she read the merciless stabs inflicted on the newly-appointedGovernor; then she came to the signature at the foot of the letter, and the laughter died out of her eyes. "Comus Bassington" staredat her from above a thick layer of blue pencil lines marked byHenry Greech's shaking hand. 

Comus could no more have devised such a letter than he could havewritten an Episcopal charge to the clergy of any given diocese. Itwas obviously the work of Courtenay Youghal, and Comus, for apalpable purpose of his own, had wheedled him into foregoing foronce the pride of authorship in a clever piece of politicalraillery, and letting his young friend stand sponsor instead. Itwas a daring stroke, and there could be no question as to itssuccess; the secretaryship and the distant shark-girt island fadedaway into the horizon of impossible things. Francesca, forgettingthe golden rule of strategy which enjoins a careful choosing ofground and opportunity before entering on hostilities, madestraight for the bathroom door, behind which a lively din ofsplashing betokened that Comus had at least begun his toilet. 

"You wicked boy, what have you done?" she cried, reproachfully. 

"Me washee, " came a cheerful shout; "me washee from the neck allthe way down to the merrythought, and now washee down from themerrythought to--"

"You have ruined your future. The Times has printed that miserableletter with your signature. "

A loud squeal of joy came from the bath. "Oh, Mummy! Let me see!"

There were sounds as of a sprawling dripping body clamberinghastily out of the bath. Francesca fled. One cannot effectivelyscold a moist nineteen-year old boy clad only in a bath-towel and acloud of steam. 

Another messenger arrived before Francesca's breakfast was over. This one brought a letter from Sir Julian Jull, excusing himselffrom fulfilment of the luncheon engagement. 

CHAPTER IV

Francesca prided herself on being able to see things from otherpeople's points of view, which meant, as it usually does, that shecould see her own point of view from various aspects. As regardsComus, whose doings and non-doings bulked largely in her thoughtsat the present moment, she had mapped out in her mind so clearlywhat his outlook in life ought to be, that she was peculiarlyunfitted to understand the drift of his feelings or the impulsesthat governed them. Fate had endowed her with a son; in limitingthe endowment to a solitary offspring Fate had certainly shown amoderation which Francesca was perfectly willing to acknowledge andbe thankful for; but then, as she pointed out to a certaincomplacent friend of hers who cheerfully sustained an endowment ofhalf-a-dozen male offsprings and a girl or two, her one child wasComus. Moderation in numbers was more than counterbalanced in hiscase by extravagance in characteristics. 

Francesca mentally compared her son with hundreds of other youngmen whom she saw around her, steadily, and no doubt happily, engaged in the process of transforming themselves from nice boysinto useful citizens. Most of them had occupations, or wereindustriously engaged in qualifying for such; in their leisuremoments they smoked reasonably-priced cigarettes, went to thecheaper seats at music-halls, watched an occasional cricket matchat Lord's with apparent interest, saw most of the world'sspectacular events through the medium of the cinematograph, andwere wont to exchange at parting seemingly superfluous injunctionsto "be good. " The whole of Bond Street and many of the tributarythoroughfares of Piccadilly might have been swept off the face ofmodern London without in any way interfering with the supply oftheir daily wants. They were doubtless dull as acquaintances, butas sons they would have been eminently restful. With a growingsense of irritation Francesca compared these deserving young menwith her own intractable offspring, and wondered why Fate shouldhave singled her out to be the parent of such a vexatious variantfrom a comfortable and desirable type. As far as remunerativeachievement was concerned, Comus copied the insouciance of thefield lily with a dangerous fidelity. Like his mother he lookedround with wistful irritation at the example afforded bycontemporary youth, but he concentrated his attention exclusivelyon the richer circles of his acquaintance, young men who boughtcars and polo ponies as unconcernedly as he might purchase acarnation for his buttonhole, and went for trips to Cairo or theTigris valley with less difficulty and finance-stretching than heencountered in contriving a week-end at Brighton. 

Gaiety and good-looks had carried Comus successfully and, on thewhole, pleasantly, through schooldays and a recurring succession ofholidays; the same desirable assets were still at his service toadvance him along his road, but it was a disconcerting experienceto find that they could not be relied on to go all distances at alltimes. In an animal world, and a fiercely competitive animal worldat that, something more was needed than the decorative ABANDON ofthe field lily, and it was just that something more which Comusseemed unable or unwilling to provide on his own account; it wasjust the lack of that something more which left him sulking withFate over the numerous breakdowns and stumbling-blocks that heldhim up on what he expected to be a triumphal or, at any rate, unimpeded progress. 

Francesca was, in her own way, fonder of Comus than of anyone elsein the world, and if he had been browning his skin somewhere eastof Suez she would probably have kissed his photograph with genuinefervour every night before going to bed; the appearance of acholera scare or rumour of native rising in the columns of herdaily news-sheet would have caused her a flutter of anxiety, andshe would have mentally likened herself to a Spartan mothersacrificing her best-beloved on the altar of State necessities. But with the best-beloved installed under her roof, occupying anunreasonable amount of cubic space, and demanding daily sacrificesinstead of providing the raw material for one, her feelings weretinged with irritation rather than affection. She might haveforgiven Comus generously for misdeeds of some gravity committed inanother continent, but she could never overlook the fact that outof a dish of five plovers' eggs he was certain to take three. Theabsent may be always wrong, but they are seldom in a position to beinconsiderate. 

Thus a wall of ice had grown up gradually between mother and son, abarrier across which they could hold converse, but which gave awintry chill even to the sparkle of their lightest words. The boyhad the gift of being irresistibly amusing when he chose to exerthimself in that direction, and after a long series of moody orjangling meal-sittings he would break forth into a torrential flowof small talk, scandal and malicious anecdote, true or moregenerally invented, to which Francesca listened with a relish andappreciation, that was all the more flattering from being sounwillingly bestowed. 

"If you chose your friends from a rather more reputable set youwould be doubtless less amusing, but there would be compensatingadvantages. "

Francesca snapped the remark out at lunch one day when she had beenbetrayed into a broader smile than she considered the circumstancesof her attitude towards Comus warranted. 

"I'm going to move in quite decent society to-night, " replied Comuswith a pleased chuckle; "I'm going to meet you and Uncle Henry andheaps of nice dull God-fearing people at dinner. "

Francesca gave a little gasp of surprise and annoyance. 

"You don't mean to say Caroline has asked you to dinner to-night?"she said; "and of course without telling me. How exceedingly likeher!"

Lady Caroline Benaresq had reached that age when you can say and dowhat you like in defiance of people's most sensitive feelings andmost cherished antipathies. Not that she had waited to attain herpresent age before pursuing that line of conduct; she came of afamily whose individual members went through life, from the nurseryto the grave, with as much tact and consideration as a cactus-hedgemight show in going through a crowded bathing tent. It was acompensating mercy that they disagreed rather more among themselvesthan they did with the outside world; every known variety and shadeof religion and politics had been pressed into the family serviceto avoid the possibility of any agreement on the larger essentialsof life, and such unlooked-for happenings as the Home Rule schism, the Tariff-Reform upheaval and the Suffragette crusade werethankfully seized on as furnishing occasion for further differencesand sub-divisions. Lady Caroline's favourite scheme ofentertaining was to bring jarring and antagonistic elements intoclose contact and play them remorselessly one against the other. "One gets much better results under those circumstances" she usedto observe, "than by asking people who wish to meet each other. Few people talk as brilliantly to impress a friend as they do todepress an enemy. "

She admitted that her theory broke down rather badly if you appliedit to Parliamentary debates. At her own dinner table its successwas usually triumphantly vindicated. 

"Who else is to be there?" Francesca asked, with some pardonablemisgiving. 

"Courtenay Youghal. He'll probably sit next to you, so you'dbetter think out a lot of annihilating remarks in readiness. AndElaine de Frey. "

"I don't think I've heard of her. Who is she?"

"Nobody in particular, but rather nice-looking in a solemn sort ofway, and almost indecently rich. "

"Marry her" was the advice which sprang to Francesca's lips, butshe choked it back with a salted almond, having a rare perceptionof the fact that words are sometimes given to us to defeat ourpurposes. 

"Caroline has probably marked her down for Toby or one of thegrand-nephews, " she said, carelessly; "a little money would berather useful in that quarter, I imagine. "

Comus tucked in his underlip with just the shade of pugnacity thatshe wanted to see. 

An advantageous marriage was so obviously the most sensible coursefor him to embark on that she scarcely dared to hope that he wouldseriously entertain it; yet there was just a chance that if he gotas far as the flirtation stage with an attractive (and attracted)girl who was also an heiress, the sheer perversity of his naturemight carry him on to more definite courtship, if only from thedesire to thrust other more genuinely enamoured suitors into thebackground. It was a forlorn hope; so forlorn that the idea evencrossed her mind of throwing herself on the mercy of her betenoire, Courtenay Youghal, and trying to enlist the influence whichhe seemed to possess over Comus for the purpose of furthering herhurriedly conceived project. Anyhow, the dinner promised to bemore interesting than she had originally anticipated. 

Lady Caroline was a professed Socialist in politics, chiefly, itwas believed, because she was thus enabled to disagree with most ofthe Liberals and Conservatives, and all the Socialists of the day. She did not permit her Socialism, however, to penetrate belowstairs; her cook and butler had every encouragement to beIndividualists. Francesca, who was a keen and intelligent foodcritic, harboured no misgivings as to her hostess's kitchen andcellar departments; some of the human side-dishes at the feast gaveher more ground for uneasiness. Courtenay Youghal, for instance, would probably be brilliantly silent; her brother Henry wouldalmost certainly be the reverse. 

The dinner party was a large one and Francesca arrived late withlittle time to take preliminary stock of the guests; a card withthe name, "Miss de Frey, " immediately opposite her own place at theother side of the table, indicated, however, the whereabouts of theheiress. It was characteristic of Francesca that she firstcarefully read the menu from end to end, and then indulged in anequally careful though less open scrutiny of the girl who satopposite her, the girl who was nobody in particular, but whoseincome was everything that could be desired. She was pretty in arestrained nut-brown fashion, and had a look of grave reflectivecalm that probably masked a speculative unsettled temperament. Herpose, if one wished to be critical, was just a little tooelaborately careless. She wore some excellently set rubies withthat indefinable air of having more at home that is so difficult toimprovise. Francesca was distinctly pleased with her survey. 

"You seem interested in your vis-a-vis, " said Courtenay Youghal. 

"I almost think I've seen her before, " said Francesca; "her faceseems familiar to me. "

"The narrow gallery at the Louvre; attributed to Leonardo daVinci, " said Youghal. 

"Of course, " said Francesca, her feelings divided betweensatisfaction at capturing an elusive impression and annoyance thatYoughal should have been her helper. A stronger tinge of annoyancepossessed her when she heard the voice of Henry Greech raised inpainful prominence at Lady Caroline's end of the table. 

"I called on the Trudhams yesterday, " he announced; "it was theirSilver Wedding, you know, at least the day before was. Such lotsof silver presents, quite a show. Of course there were a greatmany duplicates, but still, very nice to have. I think they werevery pleased to get so many. "

"We must not grudge them their show of presents after their twenty-five years of married life, " said Lady Caroline, gently; "it is thesilver lining to their cloud. "

A third of the guests present were related to the Trudhams. 

"Lady Caroline is beginning well, " murmured Courtenay Youghal. 

"I should hardly call twenty-five years of married life a cloud, "said Henry Greech, lamely. 

"Don't let's talk about married life, " said a tall handsome woman, who looked like some modern painter's conception of the goddessBellona; "it's my misfortune to write eternally about husbands andwives and their variants. My public expects it of me. I do soenvy journalists who can write about plagues and strikes andAnarchist plots, and other pleasing things, instead of being tieddown to one stale old topic. "

"Who is that woman and what has she written?" Francesca askedYoughal; she dimly remembered having seen her at one of SerenaGolackly's gatherings, surrounded by a little Court of admirers. 

"I forget her name; she has a villa at San Remo or Mentone, orsomewhere where one does have villas, and plays an extraordinarygood game of bridge. Also she has the reputation, rather rare inyour sex, of being a wonderfully sound judge of wine. "

"But what has she written?"

"Oh, several novels of the thinnish ice order. Her last one, 'TheWoman who wished it was Wednesday, ' has been banned at all thelibraries. I expect you've read it. "

"I don't see why you should think so, " said Francesca, coldly. 

"Only because Comus lent me your copy yesterday, " said Youghal. Hethrew back his handsome head and gave her a sidelong glance ofquizzical amusement. He knew that she hated his intimacy withComus, and he was secretly rather proud of his influence over theboy, shallow and negative though he knew it to be. It had been, onhis part, an unsought intimacy, and it would probably fall topieces the moment he tried seriously to take up the role of mentor. The fact that Comus's mother openly disapproved of the friendshipgave it perhaps its chief interest in the young politician's eyes. 

Francesca turned her attention to her brother's end of the table. Henry Greech had willingly availed himself of the invitation toleave the subject of married life, and had launched forthwith intothe equally well-worn theme of current politics. He was not aperson who was in much demand for public meetings, and the Houseshowed no great impatience to hear his views on the topics of themoment; its impatience, indeed, was manifested rather in theopposite direction. Hence he was prone to unburden himself ofaccumulated political wisdom as occasion presented itself--sometimes, indeed, to assume an occasion that was hardly visible tothe naked intelligence. 

"Our opponents are engaged in a hopelessly uphill struggle, andthey know it, " he chirruped, defiantly; "they've become possessed, like the Gadarene swine, with a whole legion of--"

"Surely the Gadarene swine went downhill, " put in Lady Caroline ina gently enquiring voice. 

Henry Greech hastily abandoned simile and fell back on platitudeand the safer kinds of fact. 

Francesca did not regard her brother's views on statecraft eitherin the light of gospel or revelation; as Comus once remarked, theymore usually suggested exodus. In the present instance she founddistraction in a renewed scrutiny of the girl opposite her, whoseemed to be only moderately interested in the conversationalefforts of the diners on either side of her. Comus who was lookingand talking his best, was sitting at the further end of the table, and Francesca was quick to notice in which direction the girl'sglances were continually straying. Once or twice the eyes of theyoung people met and a swift flush of pleasure and a half-smilethat spoke of good understanding came to the heiress's face. Itdid not need the gift of the traditional intuition of her sex toenable Francesca to guess that the girl with the desirable bankingaccount was already considerably attracted by the lively youngPagan who had, when he cared to practise it, such an art of winningadmiration. For the first time for many, many months Francesca sawher son's prospects in a rose-coloured setting, and she began, unconsciously, to wonder exactly how much wealth was summed up inthe expressive label "almost indecently rich. " A wife with areally large fortune and a correspondingly big dower of characterand ambition, might, perhaps, succeed in turning Comus's latentenergies into a groove which would provide him, if not with acareer, at least with an occupation, and the young serious faceopposite looked as if its owner lacked neither character orambition. Francesca's speculations took a more personal turn. Outof the well-filled coffers with which her imagination was toying, an inconsiderable sum might eventually be devoted to the leasing, or even perhaps the purchase of, the house in Blue Street when thepresent convenient arrangement should have come to an end, andFrancesca and the Van der Meulen would not be obliged to seek freshquarters. 

A woman's voice, talking in a discreet undertone on the other sideof Courtenay Youghal, broke in on her bridge-building. 

"Tons of money and really very presentable. Just the wife for arising young politician. Go in and win her before she's snapped upby some fortune hunter. "

Youghal and his instructress in worldly wisdom were lookingstraight across the table at the Leonardo da Vinci girl with thegrave reflective eyes and the over-emphasised air of repose. Francesca felt a quick throb of anger against her match-makingneighbour; why, she asked herself, must some women, with no end orpurpose of their own to serve, except the sheer love of meddling inthe affairs of others, plunge their hands into plots and schemingsof this sort, in which the happiness of more than one person wasconcerned? And more clearly than ever she realised how thoroughlyshe detested Courtenay Youghal. She had disliked him as an evilinfluence, setting before her son an example of showy ambition thathe was not in the least likely to follow, and providing him with amodel of extravagant dandyism that he was only too certain to copy. In her heart she knew that Comus would have embarked just as surelyon his present course of idle self-indulgence if he had never knownof the existence of Youghal, but she chose to regard that young manas her son's evil genius, and now he seemed likely to justify morethan ever the character she had fastened on to him. For once inhis life Comus appeared to have an idea of behaving sensibly andmaking some use of his opportunities, and almost at the same momentCourtenay Youghal arrived on the scene as a possible and verydangerous rival. Against the good looks and fitful powers offascination that Comus could bring into the field, the youngpolitician could match half-a-dozen dazzling qualities which wouldgo far to recommend him in the eyes of a woman of the world, stillmore in those of a young girl in search of an ideal. Good-lookingin his own way, if not on such showy lines as Comus, always wellturned-out, witty, self-confident without being bumptious, with aconspicuous Parliamentary career alongside him, and heaven knewwhat else in front of him, Courtenay Youghal certainly was not arival whose chances could be held very lightly. Francesca laughedbitterly to herself as she remembered that a few hours ago she hadentertained the idea of begging for his good offices in helping onComus's wooing. One consolation, at least, she found for herself:if Youghal really meant to step in and try and cut out his youngfriend, the latter at any rate had snatched a useful start. Comushad mentioned Miss de Frey at luncheon that day, casually anddispassionately; if the subject of the dinner guests had not comeup he would probably not have mentioned her at all. But they wereobviously already very good friends. It was part and parcel of thestate of domestic tension at Blue Street that Francesca should onlyhave come to know of this highly interesting heiress by anaccidental sorting of guests at a dinner party. 

Lady Caroline's voice broke in on her reflections; it was a gentlepurring voice, that possessed an uncanny quality of being able tomake itself heard down the longest dinner table. 

"The dear Archdeacon is getting so absent-minded. He read a listof box-holders for the opera as the First Lesson the other Sunday, instead of the families and lots of the tribes of Israel thatentered Canaan. Fortunately no one noticed the mistake. "

CHAPTER V

On a conveniently secluded bench facing the Northern Pheasantry inthe Zoological Society's Gardens, Regent's Park, Courtenay Youghalsat immersed in mature flirtation with a lady, who, thoughcertainly young in fact and appearance, was some four or five yearshis senior. When he was a schoolboy of sixteen, Molly McQuade hadpersonally conducted him to the Zoo and stood him dinner afterwardsat Kettner's, and whenever the two of them happened to be in townon the anniversary of that bygone festivity they religiouslyrepeated the programme in its entirety. Even the menu of thedinner was adhered to as nearly as possible; the original selectionof food and wine that schoolboy exuberance, tempered by schoolboyshyness, had pitched on those many years ago, confronted Youghal onthose occasions, as a drowning man's past life is said to rise upand parade itself in his last moments of consciousness. 

The flirtation which was thus perennially restored to its old-timefooting owed its longevity more to the enterprising solicitude ofMiss McQuade than to any conscious sentimental effort on the partof Youghal himself. Molly McQuade was known to her neighbours in aminor hunting shire as a hard-riding conventionally unconventionaltype of young woman, who came naturally into the classification, "agood sort. " She was just sufficiently good-looking, sufficientlyreticent about her own illnesses, when she had any, andsufficiently appreciative of her neighbours' gardens, children andhunters to be generally popular. Most men liked her, and thepercentage of women who disliked her was not inconveniently high. One of these days, it was assumed, she would marry a brewer or aMaster of Otter Hounds, and, after a brief interval, be known tothe world as the mother of a boy or two at Malvern or some similarseat of learning. The romantic side of her nature was altogetherunguessed by the countryside. 

Her romances were mostly in serial form and suffered perhaps infervour from their disconnected course what they gained in lengthof days. Her affectionate interest in the several young men whofigured in her affairs of the heart was perfectly honest, and shecertainly made no attempt either to conceal their separateexistences, or to play them off one against the other. Neithercould it be said that she was a husband hunter; she had made up hermind what sort of man she was likely to marry, and her forecast didnot differ very widely from that formed by her local acquaintances. If her married life were eventually to turn out a failure, at leastshe looked forward to it with very moderate expectations. Her loveaffairs she put on a very different footing and apparently theywere the all-absorbing element in her life. She possessed thehappily constituted temperament which enables a man or woman to bea "pluralist, " and to observe the sage precaution of not puttingall one's eggs into one basket. Her demands were not exacting; sherequired of her affinity that he should be young, good-looking, andat least, moderately amusing; she would have preferred him to beinvariably faithful, but, with her own example before her, she wasprepared for the probability, bordering on certainty, that he wouldbe nothing of the sort. The philosophy of the "Garden of Kama" wasthe compass by which she steered her barque and thus far, if shehad encountered some storms and buffeting, she had at least escapedbeing either shipwrecked or becalmed. 

Courtenay Youghal had not been designed by Nature to fulfil therole of an ardent or devoted lover, and he scrupulously respectedthe limits which Nature had laid down. For Molly, however, he hada certain responsive affection. She had always obviously admiredhim, and at the same time she never beset him with crude flattery;the principal reason why the flirtation had stood the test of somany years was the fact that it only flared into active existenceat convenient intervals. In an age when the telephone hasundermined almost every fastness of human privacy, and the sanctityof one's seclusion depends often on the ability for tactfulfalsehood shown by a club pageboy, Youghal was duly appreciative ofthe circumstance that his lady fair spent a large part of the yearpursuing foxes, in lieu of pursuing him. Also the honestlyadmitted fact that, in her human hunting, she rode after more thanone quarry, made the inevitable break-up of the affair a matter towhich both could look forward without a sense of comingembarrassment and recrimination. When the time for gathering yerosebuds should be over, neither of them could accuse the other ofhaving wrecked his or her entire life. At the most they would onlyhave disorganised a week-end. 

On this particular afternoon, when old reminiscences had been gonethrough, and the intervening gossip of past months duly recounted, a lull in the conversation made itself rather obstinately felt. Molly had already guessed that matters were about to slip into anew phase; the affair had reached maturity long ago, and a newphase must be in the nature of a wane. 

"You're a clever brute, " she said, suddenly, with an air ofaffectionate regret; "I always knew you'd get on in the House, butI hardly expected you to come to the front so soon. "

"I'm coming to the front, " admitted Youghal, judicially; "theproblem is, shall I be able to stay there. Unless somethinghappens in the financial line before long, I don't see how I'm tostay in Parliament at all. Economy is out of the question. Itwould open people's eyes, I fancy, if they knew how little I existon as it is. And I'm living so far beyond my income that we mayalmost be said to be living apart. "

"It will have to be a rich wife, I suppose, " said Molly, slowly;"that's the worst of success, it imposes so many conditions. Irather knew, from something in your manner, that you were driftingthat way. "

Youghal said nothing in the way of contradiction; he gazedsteadfastly at the aviary in front of him as though exoticpheasants were for the moment the most absorbing study in theworld. As a matter of fact, his mind was centred on the image ofElaine de Frey, with her clear untroubled eyes and her Leonardo daVinci air. He was wondering whether he was likely to fall into aframe of mind concerning her which would be in the least likefalling in love. 

"I shall mind horribly, " continued Molly, after a pause, "but, ofcourse, I have always known that something of the sort would haveto happen one of these days. When a man goes into politics hecan't call his soul his own, and I suppose his heart becomes animpersonal possession in the same way. "

"Most people who know me would tell you that I haven't got aheart, " said Youghal. 

"I've often felt inclined to agree with them, " said Molly; "andthen, now and again, I think you have a heart tucked awaysomewhere. "

"I hope I have, " said Youghal, "because I'm trying to break to youthe fact that I think I'm falling in love with somebody. "

Molly McQuade turned sharply to look at her companion, who stillfixed his gaze on the pheasant run in front of him. 

"Don't tell me you're losing your head over somebody useless, someone without money, " she said; "I don't think I could standthat. "

For the moment she feared that Courtenay's selfishness might havetaken an unexpected turn, in which ambition had given way to thefancy of the hour; he might be going to sacrifice his Parliamentarycareer for a life of stupid lounging in momentarily attractivecompany. He quickly undeceived her. 

"She's got heaps of money. "

Molly gave a grunt of relief. Her affection for Courtenay hadproduced the anxiety which underlay her first question; a naturaljealousy prompted the next one. 

"Is she young and pretty and all that sort of thing, or is she justa good sort with a sympathetic manner and nice eyes? As a rulethat's the kind that goes with a lot of money. "

"Young and quite good-looking in her way, and a distinct style ofher own. Some people would call her beautiful. As a politicalhostess I should think she'd be splendid. I imagine I'm rather inlove with her. "

"And is she in love with you?"

Youghal threw back his head with the slight assertive movement thatMolly knew and liked. 

"She's a girl who I fancy would let judgment influence her a lot. And without being stupidly conceited, I think I may say she mightdo worse than throw herself away on me. I'm young and quite good-looking, and I'm making a name for myself in the House; she'll beable to read all sorts of nice and horrid things about me in thepapers at breakfast-time. I can be brilliantly amusing at times, and I understand the value of silence; there is no fear that Ishall ever degenerate into that fearsome thing--a cheerfultalkative husband. For a girl with money and social ambitions Ishould think I was rather a good thing. "

"You are certainly in love, Courtenay, " said Molly, "but it's theold love and not a new one. I'm rather glad. I should have hatedto have you head-over-heels in love with a pretty woman, even for ashort time. You'll be much happier as it is. And I'm going to putall my feelings in the background, and tell you to go in and win. You've got to marry a rich woman, and if she's nice and will make agood hostess, so much the better for everybody. You'll be happierin your married life than I shall be in mine, when it comes; you'llhave other interests to absorb you. I shall just have the gardenand dairy and nursery and lending library, as like as two peas toall the gardens and dairies and nurseries for hundreds of milesround. You won't care for your wife enough to be worried everytime she has a finger-ache, and you'll like her well enough to bepleased to meet her sometimes at your own house. I shouldn'twonder if you were quite happy. She will probably be miserable, but any woman who married you would be. "

There was a short pause; they were both staring at the pheasantcages. Then Molly spoke again, with the swift nervous tone of ageneral who is hurriedly altering the disposition of his forces fora strategic retreat. 

"When you are safely married and honey-mooned and all that sort ofthing, and have put your wife through her paces as a politicalhostess, some time, when the House isn't sitting, you must comedown by yourself, and do a little hunting with us. Will you? Itwon't be quite the same as old times, but it will be something tolook forward to when I'm reading the endless paragraphs about yourfashionable political wedding. "

"You're looking forward pretty far, " laughed Youghal; "the lady maytake your view as to the probable unhappiness of a future sharedwith me, and I may have to content myself with penurious politicalbachelorhood. Anyhow, the present is still with us. We dine atKettner's to-night, don't we?"

"Rather, " said Molly, "though it will be more or less a throat-lumpy feast as far as I am concerned. We shall have to drink tothe health of the future Mrs. Youghal. By the way, it's rathercharacteristic of you that you haven't told me who she is, and ofme that I haven't asked. And now, like a dear boy, trot away andleave me. I haven't got to say good-bye to you yet, but I'm goingto take a quiet farewell of the Pheasantry. We've had some jollygood talks, you and I, sitting on this seat, haven't we? And Iknow, as well as I know anything, that this is the last of them. Eight o'clock to-night, as punctually as possible. "

She watched his retreating figure with eyes that grew slowly misty;he had been such a jolly comely boy-friend, and they had had suchgood times together. The mist deepened on her lashes as she lookedround at the familiar rendezvous where they had so often kept trystsince the day when they had first come there together, he aschoolboy and she but lately out of her teens. For the moment shefelt herself in the thrall of a very real sorrow. 

Then, with the admirable energy of one who is only in town for afleeting fortnight, she raced away to have tea with a world-faringnaval admirer at his club. Pluralism is a merciful narcotic. 

CHAPTER VI

Elaine de Frey sat at ease--at bodily ease--at any rate--in a lowwicker chair placed under the shade of a group of cedars in theheart of a stately spacious garden that had almost made up its mindto be a park. The shallow stone basin of an old fountain, on whosewide ledge a leaden-moulded otter for ever preyed on a leadensalmon, filled a conspicuous place in the immediate foreground. Around its rim ran an inscription in Latin, warning mortal man thattime flows as swiftly as water and exhorting him to make the mostof his hours; after which piece of Jacobean moralising it setitself shamelessly to beguile all who might pass that way into anabandonment of contemplative repose. On all sides of it a stretchof smooth turf spread away, broken up here and there by groups ofdwarfish chestnut and mulberry trees, whose leaves and branchescast a laced pattern of shade beneath them. On one side the lawnsloped gently down to a small lake, whereon floated a quartette ofswans, their movements suggestive of a certain mournfullistlessness, as though a weary dignity of caste held them backfrom the joyous bustling life of the lesser waterfowl. Elaineliked to imagine that they re-embodied the souls of unhappy boyswho had been forced by family interests to become highecclesiastical dignitaries and had grown prematurely RightReverend. A low stone balustrade fenced part of the shore of thelake, making a miniature terrace above its level, and here rosesgrew in a rich multitude. Other rose bushes, carefully pruned andtended, formed little oases of colour and perfume amid the restfulgreen of the sward, and in the distance the eye caught thevariegated blaze of a many-hued hedge of rhododendron. With thesefavoured exceptions flowers were hard to find in this well-orderedgarden; the misguided tyranny of staring geranium beds andbeflowered archways leading to nowhere, so dear to the suburbangardener, found no expression here. Magnificent Amherst pheasants, whose plumage challenged and almost shamed the peacock on his ownground, stepped to and fro over the emerald turf with the assuredself-conscious pride of reigning sultans. It was a garden wheresummer seemed a part-proprietor rather than a hurried visitor. 

By the side of Elaine's chair under the shadow of the cedars awicker table was set out with the paraphernalia of afternoon tea. On some cushions at her feet reclined Courtenay Youghal, smoothlypreened and youthfully elegant, the personification of decorativerepose; equally decorative, but with the showy restlessness of adragonfly, Comus disported his flannelled person over aconsiderable span of the available foreground. 

The intimacy existing between the two young men had suffered noimmediate dislocation from the circumstance that they were tacitlypaying court to the same lady. It was an intimacy founded not inthe least on friendship or community of tastes and ideas, but owedits existence to the fact that each was amused and interested bythe other. Youghal found Comus, for the time being at any rate, just as amusing and interesting as a rival for Elaine's favour ashe had been in the role of scapegrace boy-about-Town; Comus for hispart did not wish to lose touch with Youghal, who among otherattractions possessed the recommendation of being under the ban ofComus's mother. She disapproved, it is true, of a great many ofher son's friends and associates, but this particular one was aspecial and persistent source of irritation to her from the factthat he figured prominently and more or less successfully in thepublic life of the day. There was something peculiarlyexasperating in reading a brilliant and incisive attack on theGovernment's rash handling of public expenditure delivered by ayoung man who encouraged her son in every imaginable extravagance. The actual extent of Youghal's influence over the boy was of theslightest; Comus was quite capable of deriving encouragement torash outlay and frivolous conversation from an anchorite or anEast-end parson if he had been thrown into close companionship withsuch an individual. Francesca, however, exercised a mother'sprivilege in assuming her son's bachelor associates to beindustrious in labouring to achieve his undoing. Therefore theyoung politician was a source of unconcealed annoyance to her, andin the same degree as she expressed her disapproval of him Comuswas careful to maintain and parade the intimacy. Its existence, orrather its continued existence, was one of the things that faintlypuzzled the young lady whose sought-for favour might have beenexpected to furnish an occasion for its rapid dissolution. 

With two suitors, one of whom at least she found markedlyattractive, courting her at the same moment, Elaine should have hadreasonable cause for being on good terms with the world, and withherself in particular. Happiness was not, however, at thisauspicious moment, her dominant mood. The grave calm of her facemasked as usual a certain degree of grave perturbation. Asuccession of well-meaning governesses and a plentiful supply ofmoralising aunts on both sides of her family, had impressed on heryoung mind the theoretical fact that wealth is a greatresponsibility. The consciousness of her responsibility set hercontinually wondering, not as to her own fitness to discharge her"stewardship, " but as to the motives and merits of people with whomshe came in contact. The knowledge that there was so much in theworld that she could buy, invited speculation as to how much therewas that was worth buying. Gradually she had come to regard hermind as a sort of appeal court before whose secret sittings wereexamined and judged the motives and actions, the motivesespecially, of the world in general. In her schoolroom days shehad sat in conscientious judgment on the motives that guided ormisguided Charles and Cromwell and Monck, Wallenstein andSavonarola. In her present stage she was equally occupied inexamining the political sincerity of the Secretary for ForeignAffairs, the good-faith of a honey-tongued but possibly loyal-hearted waiting-maid, and the disinterestedness of a whole circleof indulgent and flattering acquaintances. Even more absorbing, and in her eyes, more urgently necessary, was the task ofdissecting and appraising the characters of the two young men whowere favouring her with their attentions. And herein lay cause formuch thinking and some perturbation. Youghal, for example, mighthave baffled a more experienced observer of human nature. Elainewas too clever to confound his dandyism with foppishness or self-advertisement. He admired his own toilet effect in a mirror from agenuine sense of pleasure in a thing good to look upon, just as hewould feel a sensuous appreciation of the sight of a well-bred, well-matched, well-turned-out pair of horses. Behind his carefulpolitical flippancy and cynicism one might also detect a certaincareless sincerity, which would probably in the long run save himfrom moderate success, and turn him into one of the brilliantfailures of his day. Beyond this it was difficult to form an exactappreciation of Courtenay Youghal, and Elaine, who liked to haveher impressions distinctly labelled and pigeon-holed, wasperpetually scrutinising the outer surface of his characteristicsand utterances, like a baffled art critic vainly searching beneaththe varnish and scratches of a doubtfully assigned picture for anenlightening signature. The young man added to her perplexities byhis deliberate policy of never trying to show himself in afavourable light even when most anxious to impart a favourableimpression. He preferred that people should hunt for his goodqualities, and merely took very good care that as far as possiblethey should never draw blank; even in the matter of selfishness, which was the anchor-sheet of his existence, he contrived to benoted, and justly noted, for doing remarkably unselfish things. Asa ruler he would have been reasonably popular; as a husband hewould probably be unendurable. 

Comus was to a certain extent as great a mystification as Youghal, but here Elaine was herself responsible for some of the perplexitywhich enshrouded his character in her eyes. She had taken morethan a passing fancy for the boy--for the boy as he might be, thatwas to say--and she was desperately unwilling to see him andappraise him as he really was. Thus the mental court of appeal wasconstantly engaged in examining witnesses as to character, most ofwhom signally failed to give any testimony which would support thefavourable judgment which the tribunal was so anxious to arrive at. A woman with wider experience of the world's ways and shortcomingswould probably have contented herself with an endeavour to find outwhether her liking for the boy outweighed her dislike of hischaracteristics; Elaine took her judgments too seriously toapproach the matter from such a simple and convenient standpoint. The fact that she was much more than half in love with Comus madeit dreadfully important that she should discover him to have alovable soul, and Comus, it must be confessed, did little to helpforward the discovery. 

"At any rate he is honest, " she would observe to herself, aftersome outspoken admission of unprincipled conduct on his part, andthen she would ruefully recall certain episodes in which he hadfigured, from which honesty had been conspicuously absent. Whatshe tried to label honesty in his candour was probably only acynical defiance of the laws of right and wrong. 

"You look more than usually thoughtful this afternoon, " said Comusto her, "as if you had invented this summer day and were trying tothink out improvements. "

"If I had the power to create improvements anywhere I think Ishould begin with you, " retorted Elaine. 

"I'm sure it's much better to leave me as I am, " protested Comus;"you're like a relative of mine up in Argyllshire, who spends histime producing improved breeds of sheep and pigs and chickens. Sopatronising and irritating to the Almighty I should think, to goabout putting superior finishing touches to Creation. "

Elaine frowned, and then laughed, and finally gave a little sigh. 

"It's not easy to talk sense to you, " she said. 

"Whatever else you take in hand, " said Youghal, "you must neverimprove this garden. It's what our idea of Heaven might be like ifthe Jews hadn't invented one for us on totally different lines. It's dreadful that we should accept them as the impresarios of ourreligious dreamland instead of the Greeks. "

"You are not very fond of the Jews, " said Elaine. 

"I've travelled and lived a good deal in Eastern Europe, " saidYoughal. 

"It seems largely a question of geography, " said Elaine; "inEngland no one really is anti-Semitic. "

Youghal shook his head. "I know a great many Jews who are. "

Servants had quietly, almost reverently, placed tea and itsaccessories on the wicker table, and quietly receded from thelandscape. Elaine sat like a grave young goddess about to dispensesome mysterious potion to her devotees. Her mind was still sittingin judgment on the Jewish question. 

Comus scrambled to his feet. 

"It's too hot for tea, " he said; "I shall go and feed the swans. "

And he walked off with a little silver basket-dish containing brownbread-and-butter. 

Elaine laughed quietly. 

"It's so like Comus, " she said, "to go off with our one dish ofbread-and-butter. "

Youghal chuckled responsively. It was an undoubted opportunity forhim to put in some disparaging criticism of Comus, and Elaine satalert in readiness to judge the critic and reserve judgment on thecriticised. 

"His selfishness is splendid but absolutely futile, " said Youghal;"now my selfishness is commonplace, but always thoroughly practicaland calculated. He will have great difficulty in getting the swansto accept his offering, and he incurs the odium of reducing us to abread-and-butterless condition. Incidentally he will get veryhot. "

Elaine again had the sense of being thoroughly baffled. If Youghalhad said anything unkind it was about himself. 

"If my cousin Suzette had been here, " she observed, with the shadowof a malicious smile on her lips, "I believe she would have goneinto a flood of tears at the loss of her bread-and-butter, andComus would have figured ever after in her mind as something blackand destroying and hateful. In fact I don't really know why wetook our loss so unprotestingly. "

"For two reasons, " said Youghal; "you are rather fond of Comus. And I--am not very fond of bread-and-butter. "

The jesting remark brought a throb of pleasure to Elaine's heart. She had known full well that she cared for Comus, but now thatCourtenay Youghal had openly proclaimed the fact as somethingunchallenged and understood matters seemed placed at once on a moreadvanced footing. The warm sunlit garden grew suddenly into aHeaven that held the secret of eternal happiness. Youth andcomeliness would always walk here, under the low-boughed mulberrytrees, as unchanging as the leaden otter that for ever preyed onthe leaden salmon on the edge of the old fountain, and somehow thelovers would always wear the aspect of herself and the boy who wastalking to the four white swans by the water steps. Youghal wasright; this was the real Heaven of one's dreams and longings, immeasurably removed from that Rue de la Paix Paradise about whichone professed utterly insincere hankerings in places of publicworship. Elaine drank her tea in a happy silence; besides being abrilliant talker Youghal understood the rarer art of being a non-talker on occasion. 

Comus came back across the grass swinging the empty basket-dish inhis hand. 

"Swans were very pleased, " he cried, gaily, "and said they hoped Iwould keep the bread-and-butter dish as a souvenir of a happy tea-party. I may really have it, mayn't I?" he continued in an anxiousvoice; "it will do to keep studs and things in. You don't wantit. "

"It's got the family crest on it, " said Elaine. Some of thehappiness had died out of her eyes. 

"I'll have that scratched off and my own put on, " said Comus. 

"It's been in the family for generations, " protested Elaine, whodid not share Comus's view that because you were rich your lesserpossessions could have no value in your eyes. 

"I want it dreadfully, " said Comus, sulkily, "and you've heaps ofother things to put bread-and-butter in. "

For the moment he was possessed by an overmastering desire to keepthe dish at all costs; a look of greedy determination dominated hisface, and he had not for an instant relaxed his grip of the covetedobject. 

Elaine was genuinely angry by this time, and was busily tellingherself that it was absurd to be put out over such a trifle; at thesame moment a sense of justice was telling her that Comus wasdisplaying a good deal of rather shabby selfishness. And somehowher chief anxiety at the moment was to keep Courtenay Youghal fromseeing that she was angry. 

"I know you don't really want it, so I'm going to keep it, "persisted Comus. 

"It's too hot to argue, " said Elaine. 

"Happy mistress of your destinies, " laughed Youghal; "you can suityour disputations to the desired time and temperature. I have togo and argue, or what is worse, listen to other people's arguments, in a hot and doctored atmosphere suitable to an invalid lizard. "

"You haven't got to argue about a bread-and-butter dish, " saidElaine. 

"Chiefly about bread-and-butter, " said Youghal; "our greatpreoccupation is other people's bread-and-butter. They earn orproduce the material, but we busy ourselves with making rules howit shall be cut up, and the size of the slices, and how much buttershall go on how much bread. That is what is called legislation. If we could only make rules as to how the bread-and-butter shouldbe digested we should be quite happy. "

Elaine had been brought up to regard Parliaments as something to betreated with cheerful solemnity, like illness or family re-unions. Youghal's flippant disparagement of the career in which he wasinvolved did not, however, jar on her susceptibilities. She knewhim to be not only a lively and effective debater but anindustrious worker on committees. If he made light of his labours, at least he afforded no one else a loophole for doing so. Andcertainly, the Parliamentary atmosphere was not inviting on thishot afternoon. 

"When must you go?" she asked, sympathetically. 

Youghal looked ruefully at his watch. Before he could answer, acheerful hoot came through the air, as of an owl joyouslychallenging the sunlight with a foreboding of the coming night. Hesprang laughing to his feet. 

"Listen! My summons back to my galley, " he cried. "The Gods havegiven me an hour in this enchanted garden, so I must not complain. "

Then in a lower voice he almost whispered, "It's the Persian debateto-night, "

It was the one hint he had given in the midst of his talking andlaughing that he was really keenly enthralled in the work that laybefore him. It was the one little intimate touch that gave Elainethe knowledge that he cared for her opinion of his work. 

Comus, who had emptied his cigarette-case, became suddenlyclamorous at the prospect of being temporarily stranded without asmoke. Youghal took the last remaining cigarette from his own caseand gravely bisected it. 

"Friendship could go no further, " he observed, as he gave one-halfto the doubtfully appeased Comus, and lit the other himself. 

"There are heaps more in the hall, " said Elaine. 

"It was only done for the Saint Martin of Tours effect, " saidYoughal; "I hate smoking when I'm rushing through the air. Good-bye. "

The departing galley-slave stepped forth into the sunlight, radiantand confident. A few minutes later Elaine could see glimpses ofhis white car as it rushed past the rhododendron bushes. He woosbest who leaves first, particularly if he goes forth to battle orthe semblance of battle. 

Somehow Elaine's garden of Eternal Youth had already become cloudedin its imagery. The girl-figure who walked in it was stilldistinctly and unchangingly herself, but her companion was moreblurred and undefined, as a picture that has been superimposed onanother. 

Youghal sped townward well satisfied with himself. To-morrow, hereflected, Elaine would read his speech in her morning paper, andhe knew in advance that it was not going to be one of his worstefforts. He knew almost exactly where the punctuations of laughterand applause would burst in, he knew that nimble fingers in thePress Gallery would be taking down each gibe and argument as heflung it at the impassive Minister confronting him, and that thefair lady of his desire would be able to judge what manner of youngman this was who spent his afternoon in her garden, lazily chaffinghimself and his world. 

And he further reflected, with an amused chuckle, that she would bevividly reminded of Comus for days to come, when she took herafternoon tea, and saw the bread-and-butter reposing in anunaccustomed dish. 

CHAPTER VII

Towards four o'clock on a hot afternoon Francesca stepped out froma shop entrance near the Piccadilly end of Bond Street and ranalmost into the arms of Merla Blathlington. The afternoon seemedto get instantly hotter. Merla was one of those human flies thatbuzz; in crowded streets, at bazaars and in warm weather, sheattained to the proportions of a human bluebottle. Lady CarolineBenaresq had openly predicted that a special fly-paper was beingreserved for her accommodation in another world; others, however, held the opinion that she would be miraculously multiplied in afuture state, and that four or more Merla Blathlingtons, accordingto deserts, would be in perpetual and unremitting attendance oneach lost soul. 

"Here we are, " she cried, with a glad eager buzz, "popping in andout of shops like rabbits; not that rabbits do pop in and out ofshops very extensively. "

It was evidently one of her bluebottle days. 

"Don't you love Bond Street?" she gabbled on. "There's somethingso unusual and distinctive about it; no other street anywhere elseis quite like it. Don't you know those ikons and images and thingsscattered up and down Europe, that are supposed to have beenpainted or carved, as the case may be, by St. Luke or Zaccheus, orsomebody of that sort; I always like to think that some notableperson of those times designed Bond Street. St. Paul, perhaps. Hetravelled about a lot. "

"Not in Middlesex, though, " said Francesca. 

"One can't be sure, " persisted Merla; "when one wanders about asmuch as he did one gets mixed up and forgets where one HAS been. Ican never remember whether I've been to the Tyrol twice and St. Moritz once, or the other way about; I always have to ask my maid. And there's something about the name Bond that suggests St. Paul;didn't he write a lot about the bond and the free?"

"I fancy he wrote in Hebrew or Greek, " objected Francesca; "theword wouldn't have the least resemblance. "

"So dreadfully non-committal to go about pamphleteering in thosebizarre languages, " complained Merla; "that's what makes all thosepeople so elusive. As soon as you try to pin them down to adefinite statement about anything you're told that some vitallyimportant word has fifteen other meanings in the original. Iwonder our Cabinet Ministers and politicians don't adopt a sort ofdog-Latin or Esperanto jargon to deliver their speeches in; what alot of subsequent explaining away would be saved. But to go backto Bond Street--not that we've left it--"

"I'm afraid I must leave it now, " said Francesca, preparing to turnup Grafton Street; "Good-bye. "

"Must you be going? Come and have tea somewhere. I know of a cosylittle place where one can talk undisturbed. "

Francesca repressed a shudder and pleaded an urgent engagement. 

"I know where you're going, " said Merla, with the resentful buzz ofa bluebottle that finds itself thwarted by the cold unreasoningresistance of a windowpane. "You're going to play bridge at SerenaGolackly's. She never asks me to her bridge parties. "

Francesca shuddered openly this time; the prospect of having toplay bridge anywhere in the near neighbourhood of Merla's voice wasnot one that could be contemplated with ordinary calmness. 

"Good-bye, " she said again firmly, and passed out of earshot; itwas rather like leaving the machinery section of an exhibition. Merla's diagnosis of her destination had been a correct one;Francesca made her way slowly through the hot streets in thedirection of Serena Golackly's house on the far side of BerkeleySquare. To the blessed certainty of finding a game of bridge, shehopefully added the possibility of hearing some fragments of newswhich might prove interesting and enlightening. And ofenlightenment on a particular subject, in which she was acutely andpersonally interested, she stood in some need. Comus of late hadbeen provokingly reticent as to his movements and doings; partly, perhaps, because it was his nature to be provoking, partly becausethe daily bickerings over money matters were gradually chokingother forms of conversation. Francesca had seen him once or twicein the Park in the desirable company of Elaine de Frey, and fromtime to time she heard of the young people as having dancedtogether at various houses; on the other hand, she had seen andheard quite as much evidence to connect the heiress's name withthat of Courtenay Youghal. Beyond this meagre and conflicting andaltogether tantalising information, her knowledge of the presentposition of affairs did not go. If either of the young men wasseriously "making the running, " it was probable that she would hearsome sly hint or open comment about it from one of Serena's gossip-laden friends, without having to go out of her way to introduce thesubject and unduly disclose her own state of ignorance. And a gameof bridge, played for moderately high points, gave ample excuse forconvenient lapses into reticence; if questions took anembarrassingly inquisitive turn, one could always find refuge in adefensive spade. 

The afternoon was too warm to make bridge a generally populardiversion, and Serena's party was a comparatively small one. Onlyone table was incomplete when Francesca made her appearance on thescene; at it was seated Serena herself, confronted by AdaSpelvexit, whom everyone was wont to explain as "one of theCheshire Spelvexits, " as though any other variety would have beenintolerable. Ada Spelvexit was one of those naturally stagnantsouls who take infinite pleasure in what are called "movements. ""Most of the really great lessons I have learned have been taughtme by the Poor, " was one of her favourite statements. The onegreat lesson that the Poor in general would have liked to havetaught her, that their kitchens and sickrooms were not unreservedlyat her disposal as private lecture halls, she had never been ableto assimilate. She was ready to give them unlimited advice as tohow they should keep the wolf from their doors, but in return sheclaimed and enforced for herself the penetrating powers of an eastwind or a dust storm. Her visits among her wealthier acquaintanceswere equally extensive and enterprising, and hardly more welcome;in country-house parties, while partaking to the fullest extent ofthe hospitality offered her, she made a practice of unburdeningherself of homilies on the evils of leisure and luxury, which didnot particularly endear her to her fellow guests. Hostessesregarded her philosophically as a form of social measles whicheveryone had to have once. 

The third prospective player, Francesca noted without any specialenthusiasm, was Lady Caroline Benaresq. Lady Caroline was far frombeing a remarkably good bridge player, but she always managed todomineer mercilessly over any table that was favoured with herpresence, and generally managed to win. A domineering playerusually inflicts the chief damage and demoralisation on hispartner; Lady Caroline's special achievement was to harass anddemoralise partner and opponents alike. 

"Weak and weak, " she announced in her gentle voice, as she cut herhostess for a partner; "I suppose we had better play only fiveshillings a hundred. "

Francesca wondered at the old woman's moderate assessment of thestake, knowing her fondness for highish play and her usual goodluck in card holding. 

"I don't mind what we play, " said Ada Spelvexit, with an incautiousparade of elegant indifference; as a matter of fact she wasinwardly relieved and rejoicing at the reasonable figure proposedby Lady Caroline, and she would certainly have demurred if a higherstake had been suggested. She was not as a rule a successfulplayer, and money lost at cards was always a poignant bereavementto her. 

"Then as you don't mind we'll make it ten shillings a hundred, "said Lady Caroline, with the pleased chuckle of one who has spreada net in the sight of a bird and disproved the vanity of theproceeding. 

It proved a tiresome ding-dong rubber, with the strength of thecards slightly on Francesca's side, and the luck of the table goingmostly the other way. She was too keen a player not to feel acertain absorption in the game once it had started, but she wasconscious to-day of a distracting interest that competed with themomentary importance of leads and discards and declarations. Thelittle accumulations of talk that were unpent during the dealing ofthe hands became as noteworthy to her alert attention as the playof the hands themselves. 

"Yes, quite a small party this afternoon, " said Serena, in reply toa seemingly casual remark on Francesca's part; "and two or threenon-players, which is unusual on a Wednesday. Canon Besomley washere just before you came; you know, the big preaching man. "

"I've been to hear him scold the human race once or twice, " saidFrancesca. 

"A strong man with a wonderfully strong message, " said AdaSpelvexit, in an impressive and assertive tone. 

"The sort of popular pulpiteer who spanks the vices of his age andlunches with them afterwards, " said Lady Caroline. 

"Hardly a fair summary of the man and his work, " protested Ada. "I've been to hear him many times when I've been depressed ordiscouraged, and I simply can't tell you the impression his wordsleave--"

"At least you can tell us what you intend to make trumps, " broke inLady Caroline, gently. 

"Diamonds, " pronounced Ada, after a rather flurried survey of herhand. 

"Doubled, " said Lady Caroline, with increased gentleness, and a fewminutes later she was pencilling an addition of twenty-four to herscore. 

"I stayed with his people down in Herefordshire last May, " saidAda, returning to the unfinished theme of the Canon; "such anexquisite rural retreat, and so restful and healing to the nerves. Real country scenery; apple blossom everywhere. "

"Surely only on the apple trees, " said Lady Caroline. 

Ada Spelvexit gave up the attempt to reproduce the decorativesetting of the Canon's homelife, and fell back on the small butpractical consolation of scoring the odd trick in her opponent'sdeclaration of hearts. 

"If you had led your highest club to start with, instead of thenine, we should have saved the trick, " remarked Lady Caroline toher partner in a tone of coldly, gentle reproof; "it's no use, mydear, " she continued, as Serena flustered out a halting apology, "no earthly use to attempt to play bridge at one table and try tosee and hear what's going on at two or three other tables. "

"I can generally manage to attend to more than one thing at atime, " said Serena, rashly; "I think I must have a sort of doublebrain. "

"Much better to economise and have one really good one, " observedLady Caroline. 

"La belle dame sans merci scoring a verbal trick or two as usual, "said a player at another table in a discreet undertone. 

"Did I tell you Sir Edward Roan is coming to my next big evening, "said Serena, hurriedly, by way, perhaps, of restoring herself alittle in her own esteem. 

"Poor dear, good Sir Edward. What have you made trumps?" askedLady Caroline, in one breath. 

"Clubs, " said Francesca; "and pray, why these adjectives ofcommiseration?"

Francesca was a Ministerialist by family interest and allegiance, and was inclined to take up the cudgels at the suggesteddisparagement aimed at the Foreign Secretary. 

"He amuses me so much, " purred Lady Caroline. Her amusement wasusually of the sort that a sporting cat derives from watching theSwedish exercises of a well-spent and carefully thought-out mouse. 

"Really? He has been rather a brilliant success at the ForeignOffice, you know, " said Francesca. 

"He reminds one so of a circus elephant--infinitely moreintelligent than the people who direct him, but quite content to goon putting his foot down or taking it up as may be required, quiteunconcerned whether he steps on a meringue or a hornet's nest inthe process of going where he's expected to go. "

"How can you say such things?" protested Francesca. 

"I can't, " said Lady Caroline; "Courtenay Youghal said it in theHouse last night. Didn't you read the debate? He was reallyrather in form. I disagree entirely with his point of view, ofcourse, but some of the things he says have just enough truthbehind them to redeem them from being merely smart; for instance, his summing up of the Government's attitude towards ourembarrassing Colonial Empire in the wistful phrase 'happy is thecountry that has no geography. '"

"What an absurdly unjust thing to say, " put in Francesca; "Idaresay some of our Party at some time have taken up that attitude, but every one knows that Sir Edward is a sound Imperialist atheart. "

"Most politicians are something or other at heart, but no one wouldbe rash enough to insure a politician against heart failure. Particularly when he happens to be in office. "

"Anyhow, I don't see that the Opposition leaders would have actedany differently in the present case, " said Francesca. 

"One should always speak guardedly of the Opposition leaders, " saidLady Caroline, in her gentlest voice; "one never knows what a turnin the situation may do for them. "

"You mean they may one day be at the head of affairs?" askedSerena, briskly. 

"I mean they may one day lead the Opposition. One never knows. "

Lady Caroline had just remembered that her hostess was on theOpposition side in politics. 

Francesca and her partner scored four tricks in clubs; the gamestood irresolutely at twenty-four all. 

"If you had followed the excellent lyrical advice given to the Maidof Athens and returned my heart we should have made two more tricksand gone game, " said Lady Caroline to her partner. 

"Mr. Youghal seems pushing himself to the fore of late, " remarkedFrancesca, as Serena took up the cards to deal. Since the youngpolitician's name had been introduced into their conversation theopportunity for turning the talk more directly on him and hisaffairs was too good to be missed. 

"I think he's got a career before him, " said Serena; "the Housealways fills when he's speaking, and that's a good sign. And thenhe's young and got rather an attractive personality, which isalways something in the political world. "

"His lack of money will handicap him, unless he can find himself arich wife or persuade someone to die and leave him a fat legacy, "said Francesca; "since M. P. 's have become the recipients of asalary rather more is expected and demanded of them in theexpenditure line than before. "

"Yes, the House of Commons still remains rather at the oppositepole to the Kingdom of Heaven as regards entrance qualifications, "observed Lady Caroline. 

"There ought to be no difficulty about Youghal picking up a girlwith money, " said Serena; "with his prospects he would make anexcellent husband for any woman with social ambitions. "

And she half sighed, as though she almost regretted that a previousmatrimonial arrangement precluded her from entering into thecompetition on her own account. 

Francesca, under an assumption of languid interest, was watchingLady Caroline narrowly for some hint of suppressed knowledge ofYoughal's courtship of Miss de Frey. 

"Whom are you marrying and giving in marriage?"

The question came from George St. Michael, who had strayed overfrom a neighbouring table, attracted by the fragments of small-talkthat had reached his ears. 

St. Michael was one of those dapper bird-like illusorily-activemen, who seem to have been in a certain stage of middle-age for aslong as human memory can recall them. A close-cut peaked beardlent a certain dignity to his appearance--a loan which the rest ofhis features and mannerisms were continually and successfullyrepudiating. His profession, if he had one, was submerged in hishobby, which consisted of being an advance-agent for smallhappenings or possible happenings that were or seemed imminent inthe social world around him; he found a perpetual and unflaggingsatisfaction in acquiring and retailing any stray items of gossipor information, particularly of a matrimonial nature, that chancedto come his way. Given the bare outline of an officially announcedengagement he would immediately fill it in with all manner ofdetails, true or, at any rate, probable, drawn from his ownimagination or from some equally exclusive source. The MorningPost might content itself with the mere statement of thearrangement which would shortly take place, but it was St. Michael's breathless little voice that proclaimed how thecontracting parties had originally met over a salmon-fishingincident, why the Guards' Chapel would not be used, why her AuntMary had at first opposed the match, how the question of thechildren's religious upbringing had been compromised, etc. , etc. , to all whom it might interest and to many whom it might not. Beyond his industriously-earned pre-eminence in this special branchof intelligence, he was chiefly noteworthy for having a wifereputed to be the tallest and thinnest woman in the Home Counties. The two were sometimes seen together in Society, where they passedunder the collective name of St. Michael and All Angles. 

"We are trying to find a rich wife for Courtenay Youghal, " saidSerena, in answer to St. Michael's question. 

"Ah, there I'm afraid you're a little late, " he observed, glowingwith the importance of pending revelation; "I'm afraid you're alittle late, " he repeated, watching the effect of his words as agardener might watch the development of a bed of carefully tendedasparagus. "I think the young gentleman has been before you andalready found himself a rich mate in prospect. "

He lowered his voice as he spoke, not with a view to impartingimpressive mystery to his statement, but because there were othertable groups within hearing to whom he hoped presently to have theprivilege of re-disclosing his revelation. 

"Do you mean--?" began Serena. 

"Miss de Frey, " broke in St. Michael, hurriedly, fearful lest hisrevelation should be forestalled, even in guesswork; "quite anideal choice, the very wife for a man who means to make his mark inpolitics. Twenty-four thousand a year, with prospects of more tocome, and a charming place of her own not too far from town. Quitethe type of girl, too, who will make a good political hostess, brains without being brainy, you know. Just the right thing. Ofcourse, it would be premature to make any definite announcement atpresent--"

"It would hardly be premature for my partner to announce what shemeans to make trumps, " interrupted Lady Caroline, in a voice ofsuch sinister gentleness that St. Michael fled headlong back to hisown table. 

"Oh, is it me? I beg your pardon. I leave it, " said Serena. 

"Thank you. No trumps, " declared Lady Caroline. The hand wassuccessful, and the rubber ultimately fell to her with acomfortable margin of honours. The same partners cut togetheragain, and this time the cards went distinctly against Francescaand Ada Spelvexit, and a heavily piled-up score confronted them atthe close of the rubber. Francesca was conscious that a certainamount of rather erratic play on her part had at least contributedto the result. St. Michael's incursion into the conversation hadproved rather a powerful distraction to her ordinarily soundbridge-craft. 

Ada Spelvexit emptied her purse of several gold pieces and infuseda corresponding degree of superiority into her manner. 

"I must be going now, " she announced; "I'm dining early. I have togive an address to some charwomen afterwards. "

"Why?" asked Lady Caroline, with a disconcerting directness thatwas one of her most formidable characteristics. 

"Oh, well, I have some things to say to them that I daresay theywill like to hear, " said Ada, with a thin laugh. 

Her statement was received with a silence that betokened profoundunbelief in any such probability. 

"I go about a good deal among working-class women, " she added. 

"No one has ever said it, " observed Lady Caroline, "but howpainfully true it is that the poor have us always with them. "

Ada Spelvexit hastened her departure; the marred impressiveness ofher retreat came as a culminating discomfiture on the top of herill-fortune at the card-table. Possibly, however, themultiplication of her own annoyances enabled her to surveycharwomen's troubles with increased cheerfulness. None of them, atany rate, had spent an afternoon with Lady Caroline. 

Francesca cut in at another table and with better fortune attendingon her, succeeded in winning back most of her losses. A sense ofsatisfaction was distinctly dominant as she took leave of herhostess. St. Michael's gossip, or rather the manner in which ithad been received, had given her a clue to the real state ofaffairs, which, however slender and conjectural, at least pointedin the desired direction. At first she had been horribly afraidlest she should be listening to a definite announcement which wouldhave been the death-blow to her hopes, but as the recitation wenton without any of those assured little minor details which St. Michael so loved to supply, she had come to the conclusion that itwas merely a piece of intelligent guesswork. And if Lady Carolinehad really believed in the story of Elaine de Frey's virtualengagement to Courtenay Youghal she would have taken a maliciouspleasure in encouraging St. Michael in his confidences, and inwatching Francesca's discomfiture under the recital. The irritatedmanner in which she had cut short the discussion betrayed the fact, that, as far as the old woman's information went, it was Comus andnot Courtenay Youghal who held the field. And in this particularcase Lady Caroline's information was likely to be nearer the truththan St. Michael's confident gossip. 

Francesca always gave a penny to the first crossing-sweeper ormatch-seller she chanced across after a successful sitting atbridge. This afternoon she had come out of the fray some fifteenshillings to the bad, but she gave two pennies to a crossing-sweeper at the north-west corner of Berkeley Square as a sort ofthank-offering to the Gods. 

CHAPTER VIII

It was a fresh rain-repentant afternoon, following a morning thathad been sultry and torrentially wet by turns; the sort ofafternoon that impels people to talk graciously of the rain ashaving done a lot of good, its chief merit in their eyes probablyhaving been its recognition of the art of moderation. Also it wasan afternoon that invited bodily activity after the convalescentlanguor of the earlier part of the day. Elaine had instinctivelyfound her way into her riding-habit and sent an order down to thestables--a blessed oasis that still smelt sweetly of horse and hayand cleanliness in a world that reeked of petrol, and now she sether mare at a smart pace through a succession of long-stretchingcountry lanes. She was due some time that afternoon at a garden-party, but she rode with determination in an opposite direction. In the first place neither Comus or Courtenay would be at theparty, which fact seemed to remove any valid reason that could bethought of for inviting her attendance thereat; in the second placeabout a hundred human beings would be gathered there, and humangatherings were not her most crying need at the present moment. Since her last encounter with her wooers, under the cedars in herown garden, Elaine realised that she was either very happy orcruelly unhappy, she could not quite determine which. She seemedto have what she most wanted in the world lying at her feet, andshe was dreadfully uncertain in her more reflective moments whethershe really wanted to stretch out her hand and take it. It was allvery like some situation in an Arabian Nights tale or a story ofPagan Hellas, and consequently the more puzzling and disconcertingto a girl brought up on the methodical lines of VictorianChristianity. Her appeal court was in permanent session these lastfew days, but it gave no decisions, at least none that she wouldlisten to. And the ride on her fast light-stepping little mare, alone and unattended, through the fresh-smelling leafy lanes intounexplored country, seemed just what she wanted at the moment. Themare made some small delicate pretence of being roadshy, not thestaring dolt-like kind of nervousness that shows itself in anirritating hanging-back as each conspicuous wayside object presentsitself, but the nerve-flutter of an imaginative animal that merelyresults in a quick whisk of the head and a swifter bound forward. She might have paraphrased the mental attitude of the immortalisedPeter Bell into

A basket underneath a treeA yellow tiger is to me, If it is nothing more. 

The more really alarming episodes of the road, the hoot and whir ofa passing motor-car or the loud vibrating hum of a waysidethreshing-machine, were treated with indifference. 

On turning a corner out of a narrow coppice-bordered lane into awider road that sloped steadily upward in a long stretch of hillElaine saw, coming toward her at no great distance, a string ofyellow-painted vans, drawn for the most part by skewbald orspeckled horses. A certain rakish air about these oncoming road-craft proclaimed them as belonging to a travelling wild-beast show, decked out in the rich primitive colouring that one's taste inchildhood would have insisted on before it had been schooled in theartistic value of dulness. It was an unlooked-for and distinctlyunwelcome encounter. The mare had already commenced a sixfoldscrutiny with nostrils, eyes and daintily-pricked ears; one earmade hurried little backward movements to hear what Elaine wassaying about the eminent niceness and respectability of theapproaching caravan, but even Elaine felt that she would be unablesatisfactorily to explain the elephants and camels that wouldcertainly form part of the procession. To turn back would seemrather craven, and the mare might take fright at the manoeuvre andtry to bolt; a gate standing ajar at the entrance to a farmyardlane provided a convenient way out of the difficulty. 

As Elaine pushed her way through she became aware of a man standingjust inside the lane, who made a movement forward to open the gatefor her. 

"Thank you. I'm just getting out of the way of a wild-beast show, "she explained; "my mare is tolerant of motors and traction-engines, but I expect camels--hullo, " she broke off, recognising the man asan old acquaintance, "I heard you had taken rooms in a farmhousesomewhere. Fancy meeting you in this way. "

In the not very distant days of her little-girlhood, Tom Keriwayhad been a man to be looked upon with a certain awe and envy;indeed the glamour of his roving career would have fired theimagination, and wistful desire to do likewise, of many youngEnglishmen. It seemed to be the grown-up realisation of the gamesplayed in dark rooms in winter fire-lit evenings, and the dreamsdreamed over favourite books of adventure. Making Vienna hisheadquarters, almost his home, he had rambled where he listedthrough the lands of the Near and Middle East as leisurely andthoroughly as tamer souls might explore Paris. He had wanderedthrough Hungarian horse-fairs, hunted shy crafty beasts on lonelyBalkan hillsides, dropped himself pebble-wise into the stagnanthuman pool of some Bulgarian monastery, threaded his way throughthe strange racial mosaic of Salonika, listened with amusedpoliteness to the shallow ultra-modern opinions of a voluble editoror lawyer in some wayside Russian town, or learned wisdom from achance tavern companion, one of the atoms of the busy ant-stream ofmen and merchandise that moves untiringly round the shores of theBlack Sea. And far and wide as he might roam he always managed toturn up at frequent intervals, at ball and supper and theatre, inthe gay Hauptstadt of the Habsburgs, haunting his favourite cafesand wine-vaults, skimming through his favourite news-sheets, greeting old acquaintances and friends, from ambassadors down tocobblers in the social scale. He seldom talked of his travels, butit might be said that his travels talked of him; there was an airabout him that a German diplomat once summed up in a phrase: "aman that wolves have sniffed at. "

And then two things happened, which he had not mapped out in hisroute; a severe illness shook half the life and all the energy outof him, and a heavy money loss brought him almost to the door ofdestitution. With something, perhaps, of the impulse which drivesa stricken animal away from its kind, Tom Keriway left the hauntswhere he had known so much happiness, and withdrew into the shelterof a secluded farmhouse lodging; more than ever he became to Elainea hearsay personality. And now the chance meeting with the caravanhad flung her across the threshold of his retreat. 

"What a charming little nook you've got hold of, " she exclaimedwith instinctive politeness, and then looked searchingly round, anddiscovered that she had spoken the truth; it really was charming. The farmhouse had that intensely English look that one seldom seesout of Normandy. Over the whole scene of rickyard, garden, outbuildings, horsepond and orchard, brooded that air which seemsrightfully to belong to out-of-the-way farmyards, an air of wakefuldreaminess which suggests that here, man and beast and bird havegot up so early that the rest of the world has never caught them upand never will. 

Elaine dismounted, and Keriway led the mare round to a littlepaddock by the side of a great grey barn. At the end of the lanethey could see the show go past, a string of lumbering vans andgreat striding beasts that seemed to link the vast silences of thedesert with the noises and sights and smells, the naphtha-flaresand advertisement hoardings and trampled orange-peel, of an endlesssuccession of towns. 

"You had better let the caravan pass well on its way before you geton the road again, " said Keriway; "the smell of the beasts may makeyour mare nervous and restive going home. "

Then he called to a boy who was busy with a hoe among somedefiantly prosperous weeds, to fetch the lady a glass of milk and apiece of currant loaf. 

"I don't know when I've seen anything so utterly charming andpeaceful, " said Elaine, propping herself on a seat that a pear-treehad obligingly designed in the fantastic curve of its trunk. 

"Charming, certainly, " said Keriway, "but too full of the stress ofits own little life struggle to be peaceful. Since I have livedhere I've learnt, what I've always suspected, that a countryfarmhouse, set away in a world of its own, is one of the mostwonderful studies of interwoven happenings and tragedies that canbe imagined. It is like the old chronicles of medieval Europe inthe days when there was a sort of ordered anarchy between feudallords and overlords, and burg-grafs, and mitred abbots, and prince-bishops, robber barons and merchant guilds, and Electors and soforth, all striving and contending and counter-plotting, andinterfering with each other under some vague code of loosely-applied rules. Here one sees it reproduced under one's eyes, likea musty page of black-letter come to life. Look at one littlesection of it, the poultry-life on the farm. Villa poultry, dullegg-machines, with records kept of how many ounces of food theyeat, and how many pennyworths of eggs they lay, give you no idea ofthe wonder-life of these farm-birds; their feuds and jealousies, and carefully maintained prerogatives, their unsparing tyranniesand persecutions, their calculated courage and bravado orsedulously hidden cowardice, it might all be some human chapterfrom the annals of the old Rhineland or medieval Italy. And then, outside their own bickering wars and hates, the grim enemies thatcome up against them from the woodlands; the hawk that dashes amongthe coops like a moss-trooper raiding the border, knowing well thata charge of shot may tear him to bits at any moment. And thestoat, a creeping slip of brown fur a few inches long, intently andunstayably out for blood. And the hunger-taught master of craft, the red fox, who has waited perhaps half the afternoon for hischance while the fowls were dusting themselves under the hedge, andjust as they were turning supper-ward to the yard one has stopped amoment to give her feathers a final shake and found death springingupon her. Do you know, " he continued, as Elaine fed herself andthe mare with morsels of currant-loaf, "I don't think any tragedyin literature that I have ever come across impressed me so much asthe first one, that I spelled out slowly for myself in words ofthree letters: the bad fox has got the red hen. There wassomething so dramatically complete about it; the badness of thefox, added to all the traditional guile of his race, seemed toheighten the horror of the hen's fate, and there was such asuggestion of masterful malice about the word 'got. ' One felt thata countryside in arms would not get that hen away from the bad fox. They used to think me a slow dull reader for not getting on with mylesson, but I used to sit and picture to myself the red hen, withits wings beating helplessly, screeching in terrified protest, orperhaps, if he had got it by the neck, with beak wide agape andsilent, and eyes staring, as it left the farmyard for ever. I haveseen blood-spillings and down-crushings and abject defeat here andthere in my time, but the red hen has remained in my mind as thetype of helpless tragedy. " He was silent for a moment as if hewere again musing over the three-letter drama that had so dwelt inhis childhood's imagination. "Tell me some of the things you haveseen in your time, " was the request that was nearly on Elaine'slips, but she hastily checked herself and substituted another. 

"Tell me more about the farm, please. "

And he told her of a whole world, or rather of several intermingledworlds, set apart in this sleepy hollow in the hills, of beast loreand wood lore and farm craft, at times touching almost the borderof witchcraft--passing lightly here, not with the probing eagernessof those who know nothing, but with the averted glance of those whofear to see too much. He told her of those things that slept andthose that prowled when the dusk fell, of strange hunting cats, ofthe yard swine and the stalled cattle, of the farm folk themselves, as curious and remote in their way, in their ideas and fears andwants and tragedies, as the brutes and feathered stock that theytended. It seemed to Elaine as if a musty store of old-worldchildren's books had been fetched down from some cobwebbed lumber-room and brought to life. Sitting there in the little paddock, grown thickly with tall weeds and rank grasses, and shadowed by theweather-beaten old grey barn, listening to this chronicle ofwonderful things, half fanciful, half very real, she could scarcelybelieve that a few miles away there was a garden-party in fullswing, with smart frocks and smart conversation, fashionablerefreshments and fashionable music, and a fevered undercurrent ofsocial strivings and snubbings. Did Vienna and the BalkanMountains and the Black Sea seem as remote and hard to believe in, she wondered, to the man sitting by her side, who had discovered orinvented this wonderful fairyland? Was it a true and mercifularrangement of fate and life that the things of the moment thrustout the after-taste of the things that had been? Here was one whohad held much that was priceless in the hollow of his hand and lostit all, and he was happy and absorbed and well-content with thelittle wayside corner of the world into which he had crept. AndElaine, who held so many desirable things in the hollow of herhand, could not make up her mind to be even moderately happy. Shedid not even know whether to take this hero of her childhood downfrom his pedestal, or to place him on a higher one; on the wholeshe was inclined to resent rather than approve the idea that ill-health and misfortune could so completely subdue and tame anerstwhile bold and roving spirit. 

The mare was showing signs of delicately-hinted impatience; thepaddock, with its teasing insects and very indifferent grazing, hadnot thrust out the image of her own comfortable well-fodderedloose-box. Elaine divested her habit of some remaining crumbs ofbun-loaf and jumped lightly on to her saddle. As she rode slowlydown the lane, with Keriway escorting her as far as its gate, shelooked round at what had seemed to her, a short while ago, just apicturesque old farmstead, a place of bee-hives and hollyhocks andgabled cart-sheds; now it was in her eyes a magic city, with anundercurrent of reality beneath its magic. 

"You are a person to be envied, " she said to Keriway; "you havecreated a fairyland, and you are living in it yourself. "

"Envied?"

He shot the question out with sudden bitterness. She looked downand saw the wistful misery that had come into his face. 

"Once, " he said to her, "in a German paper I read a short storyabout a tame crippled crane that lived in the park of some smalltown. I forget what happened in the story, but there was one linethat I shall always remember: 'it was lame, that is why it wastame. '"

He had created a fairyland, but assuredly he was not living in it. 

CHAPTER IX

In the warmth of a late June morning the long shaded stretch ofraked earth, gravel-walk and rhododendron bush that is knownaffectionately as the Row was alive with the monotonous movementand alert stagnation appropriate to the time and place. Theseekers after health, the seekers after notoriety and recognition, and the lovers of good exercise were all well represented on thegalloping ground; the gravel-walk and chairs and long seats held apopulation whose varied instincts and motives would have baffled asocial catalogue-maker. The children, handled or in perambulators, might be excused from instinct or motive; they were brought. 

Pleasingly conspicuous among a bunch of indifferent riders pacingalong by the rails where the onlookers were thickest was CourtenayYoughal, on his handsome plum-roan gelding Anne de Joyeuse. Thatdelicately stepping animal had taken a prize at Islington andnearly taken the life of a stable-boy of whom he disapproved, buthis strongest claims to distinction were his good looks and hishigh opinion of himself. Youghal evidently believed in thoroughaccord between horse and rider. 

"Please stop and talk to me, " said a quiet beckoning voice from theother side of the rails, and Youghal drew rein and greeted LadyVeula Croot. Lady Veula had married into a family of commercialsolidity and enterprising political nonentity. She had a devotedhusband, some blonde teachable children, and a look of unutterableweariness in her eyes. To see her standing at the top of anexpensively horticultured staircase receiving her husband's guestswas rather like watching an animal performing on a music-hallstage. 

One always tells oneself that the animal likes it, and one alwaysknows that it doesn't. 

"Lady Veula is an ardent Free Trader, isn't she?" someone onceremarked to Lady Caroline. 

"I wonder, " said Lady Caroline, in her gently questioning voice; "awoman whose dresses are made in Paris and whose marriage has beenmade in Heaven might be equally biassed for and against freeimports. "

Lady Veula looked at Youghal and his mount with slow criticalappraisement, and there was a note of blended raillery andwistfulness in her voice. 

"You two dear things, I should love to stroke you both, but I'm notsure how Joyeuse would take it. So I'll stroke you down verballyinstead. I admired your attack on Sir Edward immensely, though ofcourse I don't agree with a word of it. Your description of himbuilding a hedge round the German cuckoo and hoping he wasisolating it was rather sweet. Seriously though, I regard him asone of the pillars of the Administration. "

"So do I, " said Youghal; "the misfortune is that he is merelypropping up a canvas roof. It's just his regrettable solidity andintegrity that makes him so expensively dangerous. The averageBriton arrives at the same judgment about Roan's handling offoreign affairs as Omar does of the Supreme Being in his dealingswith the world: He's a good fellow and 'twill all be well. '"

Lady Veula laughed lightly. "My Party is in power so I mayexercise the privilege of being optimistic. Who is that who bowedto you?" she continued, as a dark young man with an inclination tostoutness passed by them on foot; "I've seen him about a good deallately. He's been to one or two of my dances. "

"Andrei Drakoloff, " said Youghal; "he's just produced a play thathas had a big success in Moscow and is certain to be extremelypopular all over Russia. In the first three acts the heroine issupposed to be dying of consumption; in the last act they find sheis really dying of cancer. "

"Are the Russians really such a gloomy people?"

"Gloom-loving but not in the least gloomy. They merely take theirsadness pleasurably, just as we are accused of taking our pleasuressadly. Have you noticed that dreadful Klopstock youth has beenpounding past us at shortening intervals. He'll come up and talkif he half catches your eye. "

"I only just know him. Isn't he at an agricultural college orsomething of the sort?"

"Yes, studying to be a gentleman farmer, he told me. I didn't askif both subjects were compulsory. "

"You're really rather dreadful, " said Lady Veula, trying to look asif she thought so; "remember, we are all equal in the sight ofHeaven. "

For a preacher of wholesome truths her voice rather lackedconviction. 

"If I and Ernest Klopstock are really equal in the sight ofHeaven, " said Youghal, with intense complacency, "I shouldrecommend Heaven to consult an eye specialist. "

There was a heavy spattering of loose earth, and a squelching ofsaddle-leather, as the Klopstock youth lumbered up to the rails anddelivered himself of loud, cheerful greetings. Joyeuse laid hisears well back as the ungainly bay cob and his appropriatelymatched rider drew up beside him; his verdict was reflected andendorsed by the cold stare of Youghal's eyes. 

"I've been having a nailing fine time, " recounted the newcomer withclamorous enthusiasm; "I was over in Paris last month and had lotsof strawberries there, then I had a lot more in London, and nowI've been having a late crop of them in Herefordshire, so I've hadquite a lot this year. " And he laughed as one who had deservedwell and received well of Fate. 

"The charm of that story, " said Youghal, "is that it can be told inany drawing-room. " And with a sweep of his wide-brimmed hat toLady Veula he turned the impatient Joyeuse into the moving streamof horse and horsemen. 

"That woman reminds me of some verse I've read and liked, " thoughtYoughal, as Joyeuse sprang into a light showy canter that gave fullrecognition to the existence of observant human beings along theside walk. "Ah, I have it. "

And he quoted almost aloud, as one does in the exhilaration of acanter:

"How much I loved that way you hadOf smiling most, when very sad, A smile which carried tender hintsOf sun and spring, And yet, more than all other thing, Of weariness beyond all words. "

And having satisfactorily fitted Lady Veula on to a quotation hedismissed her from his mind. With the constancy of her sex shethought about him, his good looks and his youth and his railingtongue, till late in the afternoon. 

While Youghal was putting Joyeuse through his paces under the elmtrees of the Row a little drama in which he was directly interestedwas being played out not many hundred yards away. Elaine and Comuswere indulging themselves in two pennyworths of Park chair, drawnaside just a little from the serried rows of sitters who were setout like bedded plants over an acre or so of turf. Comus was, forthe moment, in a mood of pugnacious gaiety, disbursing a fund ofpointed criticism and unsparing anecdote concerning those of thepromenaders or loungers whom he knew personally or by sight. Elaine was rather quieter than usual, and the grave serenity of theLeonardo da Vinci portrait seemed intensified in her face thismorning. In his leisurely courtship Comus had relied almostexclusively on his physical attraction and the fitful drollery ofhis wit and high spirits, and these graces had gone far to make himseem a very desirable and rather lovable thing in Elaine's eyes. But he had left out of account the disfavour which he constantlyrisked and sometimes incurred from his frank and undisguisedindifference to other people's interests and wishes, including, attimes, Elaine's. And the more that she felt that she liked him themore she was irritated by his lack of consideration for her. Without expecting that her every wish should become a law to himshe would at least have liked it to reach the formality of a SecondReading. Another important factor he had also left out of hisreckoning, namely the presence on the scene of another suitor, whoalso had youth and wit to recommend him, and who certainly did notlack physical attractions. Comus, marching carelessly throughunknown country to effect what seemed already an assured victory, made the mistake of disregarding the existence of an unbeaten armyon his flank. 

To-day Elaine felt that, without having actually quarrelled, sheand Comus had drifted a little bit out of sympathy with oneanother. The fault she knew was scarcely hers, in fact from themost good-natured point of view it could hardly be denied that itwas almost entirely his. The incident of the silver dish hadlacked even the attraction of novelty; it had been one of a series, all bearing a strong connecting likeness. There had been smallunrepaid loans which Elaine would not have grudged in themselves, though the application for them brought a certain qualm ofdistaste; with the perversity which seemed inseparable from hisdoings, Comus had always flung away a portion of his borrowings insome ostentatious piece of glaring and utterly profitlessextravagance, which outraged all the canons of her upbringingwithout bringing him an atom of understandable satisfaction. Underthese repeated discouragements it was not surprising that somesmall part of her affection should have slipped away, but she hadcome to the Park that morning with an unconfessed expectation ofbeing gently wooed back to the mood of gracious forgetfulness thatshe was only too eager to assume. It was almost worth while beingangry with Comus for the sake of experiencing the pleasure of beingcoaxed into friendliness again with the charm which he knew so wellhow to exert. It was delicious here under the trees on thisperfect June morning, and Elaine had the blessed assurance thatmost of the women within range were envying her the companionshipof the handsome merry-hearted youth who sat by her side. Withspecial complacence she contemplated her cousin Suzette, who wasself-consciously but not very elatedly basking in the attentions ofher fiance, an earnest-looking young man who was superintendent ofa People's something-or-other on the south side of the river, andwhose clothes Comus had described as having been made in Southwarkrather than in anger. 

Most of the pleasures in life must be paid for, and the chair-ticket vendor in due time made his appearance in quest of pennies. 

Comus paid him from out of a varied assortment of coins and thenbalanced the remainder in the palm of his hand. Elaine felt asudden foreknowledge of something disagreeable about to happen anda red spot deepened in her cheeks. 

"Four shillings and fivepence and a half-penny, " said Comus, reflectively. "It's a ridiculous sum to last me for the next threedays, and I owe a card debt of over two pounds. "

"Yes?" commented Elaine dryly and with an apparent lack of interestin his exchequer statement. Surely, she was thinking hurriedly toherself, he could not be foolish enough to broach the matter ofanother loan. 

"The card debt is rather a nuisance, " pursued Comus, withfatalistic persistency. 

"You won seven pounds last week, didn't you?" asked Elaine; "don'tyou put by any of your winnings to balance losses?"

"The four shillings and the fivepence and the half-penny representthe rearguard of the seven pounds, " said Comus; "the rest havefallen by the way. If I can pay the two pounds to-day I daresay Ishall win something more to go on with; I'm holding rather goodcards just now. But if I can't pay it of course I shan't show upat the club. So you see the fix I am in. "

Elaine took no notice of this indirect application. The AppealCourt was assembling in haste to consider new evidence, and thistime there was the rapidity of sudden determination about itsmovement. 

The conversation strayed away from the fateful topic for a fewmoments and then Comus brought it deliberately back to the dangerzone. 

"It would be awfully nice if you would let me have a fiver for afew days, Elaine, " he said quickly; "if you don't I really don'tknow what I shall do. "

"If you are really bothered about your card debt I will send youthe two pounds by messenger boy early this afternoon. " She spokequietly and with great decision. "And I shall not be at theConnor's dance to-night, " she continued; "it's too hot for dancing. I'm going home now; please don't bother to accompany me, Iparticularly wish to go alone. "

Comus saw that he had overstepped the mark of her good nature. Wisely he made no immediate attempt to force himself back into hergood graces. He would wait till her indignation had cooled. 

His tactics would have been excellent if he had not forgotten thatunbeaten army on his flank. 

Elaine de Frey had known very clearly what qualities she had wantedin Comus, and she had known, against all efforts at self-deception, that he fell far short of those qualities. She had been willing tolower her standard of moral requirements in proportion as she wasfond of the boy, but there was a point beyond which she would notgo. He had hurt her pride besides alarming her sense of caution. 

Suzette, on whom she felt a thoroughly justified tendency to lookdown, had at any rate an attentive and considerate lover. Elainewalked towards the Park gates feeling that in one essential Suzettepossessed something that had been denied to her, and at the gatesshe met Joyeuse and his spruce young rider preparing to turnhomeward. 

"Get rid of Joyeuse and come and take me out to lunch somewhere, "demanded Elaine. 

"How jolly, " said Youghal. "Let's go to the Corridor Restaurant. The head waiter there is an old Viennese friend of mine and looksafter me beautifully. I've never been there with a lady before, and he's sure to ask me afterwards, in his fatherly way, if we'reengaged. "

The lunch was a success in every way. There was just enoughorchestral effort to immerse the conversation without drowning it, and Youghal was an attentive and inspired host. Through an opendoorway Elaine could see the cafe reading-room, with its imposingarray of Neue Freie Presse, Berliner Tageblatt, and other exoticnewspapers hanging on the wall. She looked across at the young manseated opposite her, who gave one the impression of having centredthe most serious efforts of his brain on his toilet and his food, and recalled some of the flattering remarks that the press hadbestowed on his recent speeches. 

"Doesn't it make you conceited, Courtenay, " she asked, "to look atall those foreign newspapers hanging there and know that most ofthem have got paragraphs and articles about your Persian speech?"

Youghal laughed. 

"There's always a chastening corrective in the thought that some ofthem may have printed your portrait. When once you've seen yourfeatures hurriedly reproduced in the Matin, for instance, you feelyou would like to be a veiled Turkish woman for the rest of yourlife. "

And Youghal gazed long and lovingly at his reflection in thenearest mirror, as an antidote against possible incitements tohumility in the portrait gallery of fame. 

Elaine felt a certain soothed satisfaction in the fact that thisyoung man, whose knowledge of the Middle East was an embarrassmentto Ministers at question time and in debate, was showing himselfequally well-informed on the subject of her culinary likes anddislikes. If Suzette could have been forced to attend as a witnessat a neighbouring table she would have felt even happier. 

"Did the head waiter ask if we were engaged?" asked Elaine, whenCourtenay had settled the bill, and she had finished collecting hersunshade and gloves and other impedimenta from the hands ofobsequious attendants. 

"Yes, " said Youghal, "and he seemed quite crestfallen when I had tosay 'no. '"

"It would be horrid to disappoint him when he's looked after us socharmingly, " said Elaine; "tell him that we are. "

CHAPTER X

The Rutland Galleries were crowded, especially in the neighbourhoodof the tea-buffet, by a fashionable throng of art-patrons which hadgathered to inspect Mervyn Quentock's collection of Societyportraits. Quentock was a young artist whose abilities were justreceiving due recognition from the critics; that the recognitionwas not overdue he owed largely to his perception of the fact thatif one hides one's talent under a bushel one must be careful topoint out to everyone the exact bushel under which it is hidden. There are two manners of receiving recognition: one is to bediscovered so long after one's death that one's grandchildren haveto write to the papers to establish their relationship; the otheris to be discovered, like the infant Moses, at the very outset ofone's career. Mervyn Quentock had chosen the latter and happiermanner. In an age when many aspiring young men strive to advertisetheir wares by imparting to them a freakish imbecility, Quentockturned out work that was characterised by a pleasing delicaterestraint, but he contrived to herald his output with a certainfanfare of personal eccentricity, thereby compelling an attentionwhich might otherwise have strayed past his studio. In appearancehe was the ordinary cleanly young Englishman, except, perhaps, thathis eyes rather suggested a library edition of the Arabian Nights;his clothes matched his appearance and showed no taint of thesartorial disorder by which the bourgeois of the garden-city andthe Latin Quarter anxiously seeks to proclaim his kinship with artand thought. His eccentricity took the form of flying in the faceof some of the prevailing social currents of the day, but as areactionary, never as a reformer. He produced a gasp of admiringastonishment in fashionable circles by refusing to paint actresses--except, of course, those who had left the legitimate drama toappear between the boards of Debrett. He absolutely declined toexecute portraits of Americans unless they hailed from certainfavoured States. His "water-colour-line, " as a New York paperphrased it, earned for him a crop of angry criticisms and a shoalof Transatlantic commissions, and criticism and commissions werethe things that Quentock most wanted. 

"Of course he is perfectly right, " said Lady Caroline Benaresq, calmly rescuing a piled-up plate of caviare sandwiches from theneighbourhood of a trio of young ladies who had establishedthemselves hopefully within easy reach of it. "Art, " shecontinued, addressing herself to the Rev. Poltimore Vardon, "hasalways been geographically exclusive. London may be more importantfrom most points of view than Venice, but the art of portraitpainting, which would never concern itself with a Lord Mayor, simply grovels at the feet of the Doges. As a Socialist I'm boundto recognise the right of Ealing to compare itself with Avignon, but one cannot expect the Muses to put the two on a level. "

"Exclusiveness, " said the Reverend Poltimore, "has been thesalvation of Art, just as the lack of it is proving the downfall ofreligion. My colleagues of the cloth go about zealouslyproclaiming the fact that Christianity, in some form or other, isattracting shoals of converts among all sorts of races and tribes, that one had scarcely ever heard of, except in reviews of books oftravel that one never read. That sort of thing was all very wellwhen the world was more sparsely populated, but nowadays, when itsimply teems with human beings, no one is particularly impressed bythe fact that a few million, more or less, of converts, of a lowstage of mental development, have accepted the teachings of someparticular religion. It not only chills one's enthusiasm, itpositively shakes one's convictions when one hears that the thingsone has been brought up to believe as true are being veryfavourably spoken of by Buriats and Samoyeds and Kanakas. "

The Rev. Poltimore Vardon had once seen a resemblance in himself toVoltaire, and had lived alongside the comparison ever since. 

"No modern cult or fashion, " he continued, "would be favourablyinfluenced by considerations based on statistics; fancy adopting acertain style of hat or cut of coat, because it was being largelyworn in Lancashire and the Midlands; fancy favouring a certainbrand of champagne because it was being extensively patronised inGerman summer resorts. No wonder that religion is falling intodisuse in this country under such ill-directed methods. "

"You can't prevent the heathen being converted if they choose tobe, " said Lady Caroline; "this is an age of toleration. "

"You could always deny it, " said the Rev. Poltimore, "like theBelgians do with regrettable occurrences in the Congo. But I wouldgo further than that. I would stimulate the waning enthusiasm forChristianity in this country by labelling it as the exclusivepossession of a privileged few. If one could induce the Duchess ofPelm, for instance, to assert that the Kingdom of Heaven, as far asthe British Isles are concerned, is strictly limited to herself, two of the under-gardeners at Pelmby, and, possibly, but notcertainly, the Dean of Dunster, there would be an instant reshapingof the popular attitude towards religious convictions andobservances. Once let the idea get about that the Christian Churchis rather more exclusive than the Lawn at Ascot, and you would havea quickening of religious life such as this generation has neverwitnessed. But as long as the clergy and the religiousorganisations advertise their creed on the lines of 'Everybodyought to believe in us: millions do, ' one can expect nothing butindifference and waning faith. "

"Time is just as exclusive in its way as Art, " said Lady Caroline. 

"In what way?" said the Reverend Poltimore. 

"Your pleasantries about religion would have sounded quite cleverand advanced in the early 'nineties. To-day they have a dreadfullywarmed-up flavour. That is the great delusion of you would-beadvanced satirists; you imagine you can sit down comfortably for acouple of decades saying daring and startling things about the ageyou live in, which, whatever other defects it may have, iscertainly not standing still. The whole of the Sherard Blaw schoolof discursive drama suggests, to my mind, Early Victorian furniturein a travelling circus. However, you will always have relays ofpeople from the suburbs to listen to the Mocking Bird of yesterday, and sincerely imagine it is the harbinger of something new andrevolutionising. "

"WOULD you mind passing that plate of sandwiches, " asked one of thetrio of young ladies, emboldened by famine. 

"With pleasure, " said Lady Caroline, deftly passing her a nearlyempty plate of bread-and-butter. 

"I meant the place of caviare sandwiches. So sorry to troubleyou, " persisted the young lady

Her sorrow was misapplied; Lady Caroline had turned her attentionto a newcomer. 

"A very interesting exhibition, " Ada Spelvexit was saying;"faultless technique, as far as I am a judge of technique, andquite a master-touch in the way of poses. But have you noticed howvery animal his art is? He seems to shut out the soul from hisportraits. I nearly cried when I saw dear Winifred depicted simplyas a good-looking healthy blonde. "

"I wish you had, " said Lady Caroline; "the spectacle of a strong, brave woman weeping at a private view in the Rutland Gallerieswould have been so sensational. It would certainly have beenreproduced in the next Drury Lane drama. And I'm so unlucky; Inever see these sensational events. I was ill with appendicitis, you know, when Lulu Braminguard dramatically forgave her husband, after seventeen years of estrangement, during a State luncheonparty at Windsor. The old queen was furious about it. She said itwas so disrespectful to the cook to be thinking of such a thing atsuch a time. "

Lady Caroline's recollections of things that hadn't happened at theCourt of Queen Victoria were notoriously vivid; it was the verywidespread fear that she might one day write a book ofreminiscences that made her so universally respected. 

"As for his full-length picture of Lady Brickfield, " continued Ada, ignoring Lady Caroline's commentary as far as possible, "all theexpression seems to have been deliberately concentrated in thefeet; beautiful feet, no doubt, but still, hardly the mostdistinctive part of a human being. "

"To paint the right people at the wrong end may be an eccentricity, but it is scarcely an indiscretion, " pronounced Lady Caroline. 

One of the portraits which attracted more than a passing flutter ofattention was a costume study of Francesca Bassington. Francescahad secured some highly desirable patronage for the young artist, and in return he had enriched her pantheon of personal possessionswith a clever piece of work into which he had thrown an unusualamount of imaginative detail. He had painted her in a costume ofthe great Louis's brightest period, seated in front of a tapestrythat was so prominent in the composition that it could scarcely besaid to form part of the background. Flowers and fruit, in exoticprofusion, were its dominant note; quinces, pomegranates, passion-flowers, giant convolvulus, great mauve-pink roses, and grapes thatwere already being pressed by gleeful cupids in a riotous Arcadianvintage, stood out on its woven texture. The same note was struckin the beflowered satin of the lady's kirtle, and in thepomegranate pattern of the brocade that draped the couch on whichshe was seated. The artist had called his picture "Recolte. " Andafter one had taken in all the details of fruit and flower andfoliage that earned the composition its name, one noted thelandscape that showed through a broad casement in the left-handcorner. It was a landscape clutched in the grip of winter, naked, bleak, black-frozen; a winter in which things died and knew norewakening. If the picture typified harvest, it was a harvest ofartificial growth. 

"It leaves a great deal to the imagination, doesn't it?" said AdaSpelvexit, who had edged away from the range of Lady Caroline'stongue. 

"At any rate one can tell who it's meant for, " said SerenaGolackly. 

"Oh, yes, it's a good likeness of dear Francesca, " admitted Ada;"of course, it flatters her. "

"That, too, is a fault on the right side in portrait painting, "said Serena; "after all, if posterity is going to stare at one forcenturies it's only kind and reasonable to be looking just a littlebetter than one's best. "

"What a curiously unequal style the artist has, " continued Ada, almost as if she felt a personal grievance against him; "I was justnoticing what a lack of soul there was in most of his portraits. Dear Winifred, you know, who speaks so beautifully and feelingly atmy gatherings for old women, he's made her look just an ordinarydairy-maidish blonde; and Francesca, who is quite the most soullesswoman I've ever met, well, he's given her quite--"

"Hush, " said Serena, "the Bassington boy is just behind you. "

Comus stood looking at the portrait of his mother with the feelingof one who comes suddenly across a once-familiar half-forgottenacquaintance in unfamiliar surroundings. The likeness wasundoubtedly a good one, but the artist had caught an expression inFrancesca's eyes which few people had ever seen there. It was theexpression of a woman who had forgotten for one short moment to beabsorbed in the small cares and excitements of her life, the moneyworries and little social plannings, and had found time to send alook of half-wistful friendliness to some sympathetic companion. Comus could recall that look, fitful and fleeting, in his mother'seyes when she had been a few years younger, before her world hadgrown to be such a committee-room of ways and means. Almost as are-discovery he remembered that she had once figured in his boyishmind as a "rather good sort, " more ready to see the laughable sideof a piece of mischief than to labour forth a reproof. That thebygone feeling of good fellowship had been stamped out was, heknew, probably in great part his own doing, and it was possiblethat the old friendliness was still there under the surface ofthings, ready to show itself again if he willed it, and friendswere becoming scarcer with him than enemies in these days. Lookingat the picture with its wistful hint of a long ago comradeship, Comus made up his mind that he very much wanted things to be backon their earlier footing, and to see again on his mother's face thelook that the artist had caught and perpetuated in its momentaryflitting. If the projected Elaine-marriage came off, and in spiteof recent maladroit behaviour on his part he still counted it anassured thing, much of the immediate cause for estrangement betweenhimself and his mother would be removed, or at any rate, easilyremovable. With the influence of Elaine's money behind him hepromised himself that he would find some occupation that wouldremove from himself the reproach of being a waster and idler. There were lots of careers, he told himself, that were open to aman with solid financial backing and good connections. There mightyet be jolly times ahead, in which his mother would have her shareof the good things that were going, and carking thin-lipped HenryGreech and other of Comus's detractors could take their sour looksand words out of sight and hearing. Thus, staring at the pictureas though he were studying its every detail, and seeing really onlythat wistful friendly smile, Comus made his plans and dispositionsfor a battle that was already fought and lost. 

The crowd grew thicker in the galleries, cheerfully enduring anamount of overcrowding that would have been fiercely resented in arailway carriage. Near the entrance Mervyn Quentock was talking toa Serene Highness, a lady who led a life of obtrusive usefulness, largely imposed on her by a good-natured inability to say "No. ""That woman creates a positive draught with the number of bazaarsshe opens, " a frivolously-spoken ex-Cabinet Minister had onceremarked. At the present moment she was being whimsicallyapologetic. 

"When I think of the legions of well-meaning young men and women towhom I've given away prizes for proficiency in art-schoolcurriculum, I feel that I ought not to show my face inside apicture gallery. I always imagine that my punishment in anotherworld will be perpetually sharpening pencils and cleaning palettesfor unending relays of misguided young people whom I deliberatelyencouraged in their artistic delusions. "

"Do you suppose we shall all get appropriate punishments in anotherworld for our sins in this?" asked Quentock. 

"Not so much for our sins as for our indiscretions; they are thethings which do the most harm and cause the greatest trouble. Ifeel certain that Christopher Columbus will undergo the endlesstorment of being discovered by parties of American tourists. Yousee I am quite old fashioned in my ideas about the terrors andinconveniences of the next world. And now I must be running away;I've got to open a Free Library somewhere. You know the sort ofthing that happens--one unveils a bust of Carlyle and makes aspeech about Ruskin, and then people come in their thousands andread 'Rabid Ralph, or Should he have Bitten Her?' Don't forget, please, I'm going to have the medallion with the fat cupid sittingon a sundial. And just one thing more--perhaps I ought not to askyou, but you have such nice kind eyes, you embolden one to makedaring requests, would you send me the recipe for those lovelychestnut-and-chicken-liver sandwiches? I know the ingredients ofcourse, but it's the proportions that make such a difference--justhow much liver to how much chestnut, and what amount of red pepperand other things. Thank you so much. I really am going now. "

Staring round with a vague half-smile at everybody within noddingdistance, Her Serene Highness made one of her characteristic exits, which Lady Caroline declared always reminded her of a scrambled eggslipping off a piece of toast. At the entrance she stopped for amoment to exchange a word or two with a young man who had justarrived. From a corner where he was momentarily hemmed in by agroup of tea-consuming dowagers, Comus recognised the newcomer asCourtenay Youghal, and began slowly to labour his way towards him. Youghal was not at the moment the person whose society he mostcraved for in the world, but there was at least the possibilitythat he might provide an opportunity for a game of bridge, whichwas the dominant desire of the moment. The young politician wasalready surrounded by a group of friends and acquaintances, and wasevidently being made the recipient of a salvo of congratulation--presumably on his recent performances in the Foreign Office debate, Comus concluded. But Youghal himself seemed to be announcing theevent with which the congratulations were connected. Had somedramatic catastrophe overtaken the Government, Comus wondered. Andthen, as he pressed nearer, a chance word, the coupling of twonames, told him the news. 

CHAPTER XI

After the momentous lunch at the Corridor Restaurant Elaine hadreturned to Manchester Square (where she was staying with one ofher numerous aunts) in a frame of mind that embraced a tangle ofcompeting emotions. In the first place she was conscious of adominant feeling of relief; in a moment of impetuosity, not whollyuninfluenced by pique, she had settled the problem which hours ofhard thinking and serious heart-searching had brought no nearer tosolution, and, although she felt just a little inclined to bescared at the headlong manner of her final decision, she had nowvery little doubt in her own mind that the decision had been theright one. In fact the wonder seemed rather that she should havebeen so long in doubt as to which of her wooers really enjoyed herhonest approval. She had been in love, these many weeks past withan imaginary Comus, but now that she had definitely walked out ofher dreamland she saw that nearly all the qualities that hadappealed to her on his behalf had been absent from, or onlyfitfully present in, the character of the real Comus. And now thatshe had installed Youghal in the first place of her affections hehad rapidly acquired in her eyes some of the qualities which rankedhighest in her estimation. Like the proverbial buyer she had thehappy feminine tendency of magnifying the worth of her possessionas soon as she had acquired it. And Courtenay Youghal gave Elainesome justification for her sense of having chosen wisely. Aboveall other things, selfish and cynical though he might appear attimes, he was unfailingly courteous and considerate towards her. That was a circumstance which would always have carried weight withher in judging any man; in this case its value was enormouslyheightened by contrast with the behaviour of her other wooer. AndYoughal had in her eyes the advantage which the glamour of combat, even the combat of words and wire-pulling, throws over the fighter. He stood well in the forefront of a battle which however carefullystage-managed, however honeycombed with personal insincerities andoverlaid with calculated mock-heroics, really meant something, really counted for good or wrong in the nation's development andthe world's history. Shrewd parliamentary observers might havewarned her that Youghal would never stand much higher in thepolitical world than he did at present, as a brilliant Oppositionfreelance, leading lively and rather meaningless forays against thedull and rather purposeless foreign policy of a Government that wasscarcely either to be blamed for or congratulated on its handlingof foreign affairs. The young politician had not the strength ofcharacter or convictions that keeps a man naturally in theforefront of affairs and gives his counsels a sterling value, andon the other hand his insincerity was not deep enough to allow himto pose artificially and successfully as a leader of men and shaperof movements. For the moment, however, his place in public lifewas sufficiently marked out to give him a secure footing in thatworld where people are counted individually and not in herds. Thewoman whom he would make his wife would have the chance, too, ifshe had the will and the skill, to become an individual whocounted. 

There was balm to Elaine in this reflection, yet it did not whollysuffice to drive out the feeling of pique which Comus had calledinto being by his slighting view of her as a convenient cash supplyin moments of emergency. She found a certain satisfaction inscrupulously observing her promise, made earlier on that eventfulday, and sent off a messenger with the stipulated loan. Then areaction of compunction set in, and she reminded herself that infairness she ought to write and tell her news in as friendly afashion as possible to her dismissed suitor before it burst uponhim from some other quarter. They had parted on more or lessquarrelling terms it was true, but neither of them had foreseen thefinality of the parting nor the permanence of the breach betweenthem; Comus might even now be thinking himself half-forgiven, andthe awakening would be rather cruel. The letter, however, did notprove an easy one to write; not only did it present difficulties ofits own but it suffered from the competing urgency of a desire tobe doing something far pleasanter than writing explanatory andvaledictory phrases. Elaine was possessed with an unusual butquite overmastering hankering to visit her cousin Suzette Brankley. They met but rarely at each other's houses and very seldom anywhereelse, and Elaine for her part was never conscious of feeling thattheir opportunities for intercourse lacked anything in the way ofadequacy. Suzette accorded her just that touch of patronage whicha moderately well-off and immoderately dull girl will usually tryto mete out to an acquaintance who is known to be wealthy andsuspected of possessing brains. In return Elaine armed herselfwith that particular brand of mock humility which can be soterribly disconcerting if properly wielded. No quarrel of anydescription stood between them and one could not legitimately havedescribed them as enemies, but they never disarmed in one another'spresence. A misfortune of any magnitude falling on one of themwould have been sincerely regretted by the other, but any minordiscomfiture would have produced a feeling very much akin tosatisfaction. Human nature knows millions of these inconsequentlittle feuds, springing up and flourishing apart from any basis ofracial, political, religious or economic causes, as a hint perhapsto crass unseeing altruists that enmity has its place and purposein the world as well as benevolence. 

Elaine had not personally congratulated Suzette since the formalannouncement of her engagement to the young man with thedissentient tailoring effects. The impulse to go and do so now, overmastered her sense of what was due to Comus in the way ofexplanation. The letter was still in its blank unwritten stage, anunmarshalled sequence of sentences forming in her brain, when sheordered her car and made a hurried but well-thought-out change intoher most sumptuously sober afternoon toilette. Suzette, she felttolerably sure, would still be in the costume that she had worn inthe Park that morning, a costume that aimed at elaboration ofdetail, and was damned with overmuch success. 

Suzette's mother welcomed her unexpected visitor with obvioussatisfaction. Her daughter's engagement, she explained, was not sobrilliant from the social point of view as a girl of Suzette'sattractions and advantages might have legitimately aspired to, butEgbert was a thoroughly commendable and dependable young man, whowould very probably win his way before long to membership of theCounty Council. 

"From there, of course, the road would be open to him to higherthings. "

"Yes, " said Elaine, "he might become an alderman. "

"Have you seen their photographs, taken together?" asked Mrs. Brankley, abandoning the subject of Egbert's prospective career. 

"No, do show me, " said Elaine, with a flattering show of interest;"I've never seen that sort of thing before. It used to be thefashion once for engaged couples to be photographed together, didn't it?"

"It's VERY much the fashion now, " said Mrs. Brankley assertively, but some of the complacency had filtered out of her voice. Suzettecame into the room, wearing the dress that she had worn in the Parkthat morning. 

"Of course, you've been hearing all about THE engagement frommother, " she cried, and then set to work conscientiously to coverthe same ground. 

"We met at Grindelwald, you know. He always calls me his IceMaiden because we first got to know each other on the skating rink. Quite romantic, wasn't it? Then we asked him to tea one day, andwe got to be quite friendly. Then he proposed. "

"He wasn't the only one who was smitten with Suzette, " Mrs. Brankley hastened to put in, fearful lest Elaine might suppose thatEgbert had had things all his own way. "There was an Americanmillionaire who was quite taken with her, and a Polish count of avery old family. I assure you I felt quite nervous at some of ourtea-parties. "

Mrs. Brankley had given Grindelwald a sinister but rather alluringreputation among a large circle of untravelled friends as a placewhere the insolence of birth and wealth was held in precariouscheck from breaking forth into scenes of savage violence. 

"My marriage with Egbert will, of course, enlarge the sphere of mylife enormously, " pursued Suzette. 

"Yes, " said Elaine; her eyes were rather remorselessly taking inthe details of her cousin's toilette. It is said that nothing issadder than victory except defeat. Suzette began to feel that thetragedy of both was concentrated in the creation which had givenher such unalloyed gratification, till Elaine had come on thescene. 

"A woman can be so immensely helpful in the social way to a man whois making a career for himself. And I'm so glad to find that we'vea great many ideas in common. We each made out a list of our ideaof the hundred best books, and quite a number of them were thesame. "

"He looks bookish, " said Elaine, with a critical glance at thephotograph. 

"Oh, he's not at all a bookworm, " said Suzette quickly, "thoughhe's tremendously well-read. He's quite the man of action. "

"Does he hunt?" asked Elaine. 

"No, he doesn't get much time or opportunity for riding. "

"What a pity, " commented Elaine; "I don't think I could marry a manwho wasn't fond of riding. "

"Of course that's a matter of taste, " said Suzette, stiffly;"horsey men are not usually gifted with overmuch brains, are they?"

"There is as much difference between a horseman and a horsey man asthere is between a well-dressed man and a dressy one, " said Elaine, judicially; "and you may have noticed how seldom a dressy womanreally knows how to dress. As an old lady of my acquaintanceobserved the other day, some people are born with a sense of how toclothe themselves, others acquire it, others look as if theirclothes had been thrust upon them. "

She gave Lady Caroline her due quotation marks, but the suddentactfulness with which she looked away from her cousin's frock wasentirely her own idea. 

A young man entering the room at this moment caused a diversionthat was rather welcome to Suzette. 

"Here comes Egbert, " she announced, with an air of subdued triumph;it was at least a satisfaction to be able to produce the captive ofher charms, alive and in good condition, on the scene. Elainemight be as critical as she pleased, but a live lover outweighedany number of well-dressed straight-riding cavaliers who existedonly as a distant vision of the delectable husband. 

Egbert was one of those men who have no small talk, but possess aninexhaustible supply of the larger variety. In whatever society hehappened to be, and particularly in the immediate neighbourhood ofan afternoon-tea table, with a limited audience of womenfolk, hegave the impression of someone who was addressing a public meeting, and would be happy to answer questions afterwards. A suggestion ofgas-lit mission-halls, wet umbrellas, and discreet applause seemedto accompany him everywhere. He was an exponent, among otherthings, of what he called New Thought, which seemed to lend itselfconveniently to the employment of a good deal of rather stalephraseology. Probably in the course of some thirty odd years ofexistence he had never been of any notable use to man, woman, childor animal, but it was his firmly-announced intention to leave theworld a better, happier, purer place than he had found it; againstthe danger of any relapse to earlier conditions after hisdisappearance from the scene, he was, of course, powerless toguard. 'Tis not in mortals to insure succession, and Egbert wasadmittedly mortal. 

Elaine found him immensely entertaining, and would certainly haveexerted herself to draw him out if such a proceeding had been atall necessary. She listened to his conversation with thecomplacent appreciation that one bestows on a stage tragedy, fromwhose calamities one can escape at any moment by the simple processof leaving one's seat. When at last he checked the flow of hisopinions by a hurried reference to his watch, and declared that hemust be moving on elsewhere, Elaine almost expected a vote ofthanks to be accorded him, or to be asked to signify herself infavour of some resolution by holding up her hand. 

When the young man had bidden the company a rapid business-likefarewell, tempered in Suzette's case by the exact degree of tenderintimacy that it would have been considered improper to omit oroverstep, Elaine turned to her expectant cousin with an air ofcordial congratulation. 

"He is exactly the husband I should have chosen for you, Suzette. "

For the second time that afternoon Suzette felt a sense of waningenthusiasm for one of her possessions. 

Mrs. Brankley detected the note of ironical congratulation in hervisitor's verdict. 

"I suppose she means he's not her idea of a husband, but, he's goodenough for Suzette, " she observed to herself, with a snort thatexpressed itself somewhere in the nostrils of the brain. Then witha smiling air of heavy patronage she delivered herself of her oneidea of a damaging counter-stroke. 

"And when are we to hear of your engagement, my dear?"

"Now, " said Elaine quietly, but with electrical effect; "I came toannounce it to you but I wanted to hear all about Suzette first. It will be formally announced in the papers in a day or two. "

"But who is it? Is it the young man who was with you in the Parkthis morning?" asked Suzette. 

"Let me see, who was I with in the Park this morning? A very good-looking dark boy? Oh no, not Comus Bassington. Someone you knowby name, anyway, and I expect you've seen his portrait in thepapers. "

"A flying-man?" asked Mrs. Brankley. 

"Courtenay Youghal, " said Elaine. 

Mrs. Brankley and Suzette had often rehearsed in the privacy oftheir minds the occasion when Elaine should come to pay herpersonal congratulations to her engaged cousin. It had never beenin the least like this. 

On her return from her enjoyable afternoon visit Elaine found anexpress messenger letter waiting for her. It was from Comus, thanking her for her loan--and returning it. 

"I suppose I ought never to have asked you for it, " he wrote, "butyou are always so deliciously solemn about money matters that Icouldn't resist. Just heard the news of your engagement toCourtenay. Congrats. To you both. I'm far too stoney broke to buyyou a wedding present so I'm going to give you back the bread-and-butter dish. Luckily it still has your crest on it. I shall loveto think of you and Courtenay eating bread-and-butter out of it forthe rest of your lives. "

That was all he had to say on the matter about which Elaine hadbeen preparing to write a long and kindly-expressed letter, closinga rather momentous chapter in her life and his. There was not atrace of regret or upbraiding in his note; he had walked out oftheir mutual fairyland as abruptly as she had, and to allappearances far more unconcernedly. Reading the letter again andagain Elaine could come to no decision as to whether this wasmerely a courageous gibe at defeat, or whether it represented thereal value that Comus set on the thing that he had lost. 

And she would never know. If Comus possessed one useless gift toperfection it was the gift of laughing at Fate even when it hadstruck him hardest. One day, perhaps, the laughter and mockerywould be silent on his lips, and Fate would have the advantage oflaughing last. 

CHAPTER XII

A door closed and Francesca Bassington sat alone in her well-beloved drawing-room. The visitor who had been enjoying thehospitality of her afternoon-tea table had just taken hisdeparture. The tete-a-tete had not been a pleasant one, at anyrate as far as Francesca was concerned, but at least it had broughther the information for which she had been seeking. Her role oflooker-on from a tactful distance had necessarily left her much inthe dark concerning the progress of the all-important wooing, butduring the last few hours she had, on slender though significantevidence, exchanged her complacent expectancy for a conviction thatsomething had gone wrong. She had spent the previous evening ather brother's house, and had naturally seen nothing of Comus inthat uncongenial quarter; neither had he put in an appearance atthe breakfast table the following morning. She had met him in thehall at eleven o'clock, and he had hurried past her, merelyimparting the information that he would not be in till dinner thatevening. He spoke in his sulkiest tone, and his face wore a lookof defeat, thinly masked by an air of defiance; it was not thedefiance of a man who is losing, but of one who has already lost. 

Francesca's conviction that things had gone wrong between Comus andElaine de Frey grew in strength as the day wore on. She lunched ata friend's house, but it was not a quarter where special socialinformation of any importance was likely to come early to hand. Instead of the news she was hankering for, she had to listen totrivial gossip and speculation on the flirtations and "cases" and"affairs" of a string of acquaintances whose matrimonial projectsinterested her about as much as the nesting arrangements of thewildfowl in St. James's Park. 

"Of course, " said her hostess, with the duly impressive emphasis ofa privileged chronicler, "we've always regarded Claire as themarrying one of the family, so when Emily came to us and said, 'I've got some news for you, ' we all said, 'Claire's engaged!''Oh, no, ' said Emily, 'it's not Claire this time, it's me. ' Sothen we had to guess who the lucky man was. 'It can't be CaptainParminter, ' we all said, 'because he's always been sweet on Joan. 'And then Emily said--"

The recording voice reeled off the catalogue of inane remarks witha comfortable purring complacency that held out no hope of an earlyabandoning of the topic. Francesca sat and wondered why theinnocent acceptance of a cutlet and a glass of indifferent claretshould lay one open to such unsparing punishment. 

A stroll homeward through the Park after lunch brought no furtherenlightenment on the subject that was uppermost in her mind; whatwas worse, it brought her, without possibility of escape, withinhailing distance of Merla Blathington, who fastened on to her withthe enthusiasm of a lonely tsetse fly encountering an outpost ofcivilisation. 

"Just think, " she buzzed inconsequently, "my sister inCambridgeshire has hatched out thirty-three White Orpingtonchickens in her incubator!"

"What eggs did she put in it?" asked Francesca. 

"Oh, some very special strain of White Orpington. "

"Then I don't see anything remarkable in the result. If she hadput in crocodile's eggs and hatched out White Orpingtons, theremight have been something to write to Country Life about. "

"What funny fascinating things these little green park-chairs are, "said Merla, starting off on a fresh topic; "they always look soquaint and knowing when they're stuck away in pairs by themselvesunder the trees, as if they were having a heart-to-heart talk ordiscussing a piece of very private scandal. If they could onlyspeak, what tragedies and comedies they could tell us of, whatflirtations and proposals. "

"Let us be devoutly thankful that they can't, " said Francesca, witha shuddering recollection of the luncheon-table conversation. 

"Of course, it would make one very careful what one said beforethem--or above them rather, " Merla rattled on, and then, toFrancesca's infinite relief, she espied another acquaintancesitting in unprotected solitude, who promised to supply a moredurable audience than her present rapidly moving companion. Francesca was free to return to her drawing-room in Blue Street toawait with such patience as she could command the coming of somevisitor who might be able to throw light on the subject that waspuzzling and disquieting her. The arrival of George St. Michaelboded bad news, but at any rate news, and she gave him an almostcordial welcome. 

"Well, you see I wasn't far wrong about Miss de Frey and CourtenayYoughal, was I?" he chirruped, almost before he had seated himself. Francesca was to be spared any further spinning-out of her periodof uncertainty. "Yes, it's officially given out, " he went on, "andit's to appear in the Morning Post to-morrow. I heard it fromColonel Deel this morning, and he had it direct from Youghalhimself. Yes, please, one lump; I'm not fashionable, you see. " Hehad made the same remark about the sugar in his tea with unfailingregularity for at least thirty years. Fashions in sugar areapparently stationary. "They say, " he continued, hurriedly, "thathe proposed to her on the Terrace of the House, and a division bellrang, and he had to hurry off before she had time to give heranswer, and when he got back she simply said, 'the Ayes have it. '"St. Michael paused in his narrative to give an appreciative giggle. 

"Just the sort of inanity that would go the rounds, " remarkedFrancesca, with the satisfaction of knowing that she was making thecriticism direct to the author and begetter of the inanity inquestion. Now that the blow had fallen and she knew the fullextent of its weight, her feeling towards the bringer of bad news, who sat complacently nibbling at her tea-cakes and scatteringcrumbs of tiresome small-talk at her feet, was one of wholehearteddislike. She could sympathise with, or at any rate understand, thetendency of oriental despots to inflict death or ignominiouschastisement on messengers bearing tidings of misfortune anddefeat, and St. Michael, she perfectly well knew, was thoroughlyaware of the fact that her hopes and wishes had been centred on thepossibility of having Elaine for a daughter-in-law; every purringremark that his mean little soul prompted him to contribute to theconversation had an easily recognizable undercurrent of malice. Fortunately for her powers of polite endurance, which had been putto such searching and repeated tests that day, St. Michael hadplanned out for himself a busy little time-table of afternoonvisits, at each of which his self-appointed task of forestallingand embellishing the newspaper announcements of the Youghal-de Freyengagement would be hurriedly but thoroughly performed. 

"They'll be quite one of the best-looking and most interestingcouples of the Season, won't they?" he cried, by way of farewell. The door closed and Francesca Bassington sat alone in her drawing-room. 

Before she could give way to the bitter luxury of reflection on thedownfall of her hopes, it was prudent to take precautionarymeasures against unwelcome intrusion. Summoning the maid who hadjust speeded the departing St. Michael, she gave the order: "I amnot at home this afternoon to Lady Caroline Benaresq. " On secondthoughts she extended the taboo to all possible callers, and sent atelephone message to catch Comus at his club, asking him to comeand see her as soon as he could manage before it was time to dressfor dinner. Then she sat down to think, and her thinking wasbeyond the relief of tears. 

She had built herself a castle of hopes, and it had not been acastle in Spain, but a structure well on the probable side of thePyrenees. There had been a solid foundation on which to build. Miss de Frey's fortune was an assured and unhampered one, herliking for Comus had been an obvious fact; his courtship of her aserious reality. The young people had been much together inpublic, and their names had naturally been coupled in the match-making gossip of the day. The only serious shadow cast over thescene had been the persistent presence, in foreground orbackground, of Courtenay Youghal. And now the shadow suddenlystood forth as the reality, and the castle of hopes was a ruin, ahideous mortification of dust and debris, with the skeletonoutlines of its chambers still standing to make mockery of itsdiscomfited architect. The daily anxiety about Comus and hisextravagant ways and intractable disposition had been graduallylulled by the prospect of his making an advantageous marriage, which would have transformed him from a ne'er-do-well andadventurer into a wealthy idler. He might even have been moulded, by the resourceful influence of an ambitious wife, into a man withsome definite purpose in life. The prospect had vanished withcruel suddenness, and the anxieties were crowding back again, moreinsistent than ever. The boy had had his one good chance in thematrimonial market and missed it; if he were to transfer hisattentions to some other well-dowered girl he would be marked downat once as a fortune-hunter, and that would constitute a heavyhandicap to the most plausible of wooers. His liking for Elainehad evidently been genuine in its way, though perhaps it would havebeen rash to read any deeper sentiment into it, but even with thespur of his own inclination to assist him he had failed to win theprize that had seemed so temptingly within his reach. And in thedashing of his prospects, Francesca saw the threatening of her own. The old anxiety as to her precarious tenure of her present quartersput on again all its familiar terrors. One day, she foresaw, inthe horribly near future, George St. Michael would come patteringup her stairs with the breathless intelligence that EmmelineChetrof was going to marry somebody or other in the Guards or theRecord Office as the case might be, and then there would be anuprooting of her life from its home and haven in Blue Street and awandering forth to some cheap unhappy far-off dwelling, where thestately Van der Meulen and its companion host of beautiful anddesirable things would be stuffed and stowed away in soullesssurroundings, like courtly emigres fallen on evil days. It wasunthinkable, but the trouble was that it had to be thought about. And if Comus had played his cards well and transformed himself froman encumbrance into a son with wealth at his command, the tragedywhich she saw looming in front of her might have been avoided or atthe worst whittled down to easily bearable proportions. With moneybehind one, the problem of where to live approaches more nearly tothe simple question of where do you wish to live, and a richdaughter-in-law would have surely seen to it that she did not haveto leave her square mile of Mecca and go out into the wilderness ofbricks and mortar. If the house in Blue Street could not have beencompounded for there were other desirable residences which wouldhave been capable of consoling Francesca for her lost Eden. Andnow the detested Courtenay Youghal, with his mocking eyes and airof youthful cynicism, had stepped in and overthrown those goldenhopes and plans whose non-fulfilment would make such a world ofchange in her future. Assuredly she had reason to feel bitteragainst that young man, and she was not disposed to take a verylenient view of Comus's own mismanagement of the affair; hergreeting when he at last arrived, was not couched in a sympatheticstrain. 

"So you have lost your chance with the heiress, " she remarkedabruptly. 

"Yes, " said Comus, coolly; "Courtenay Youghal has added her to hisother successes. "

"And you have added her to your other failures, " pursued Francesca, relentlessly; her temper had been tried that day beyond ordinarylimits. 

"I thought you seemed getting along so well with her, " shecontinued, as Comus remained uncommunicative. 

"We hit it off rather well together, " said Comus, and added withdeliberate bluntness, "I suppose she got rather sick at myborrowing money from her. She thought it was all I was after. "

"You borrowed money from her!" said Francesca; "you were foolenough to borrow money from a girl who was favourably disposedtowards you, and with Courtenay Youghal in the background waitingto step in and oust you!"

Francesca's voice trembled with misery and rage. This great strokeof good luck that had seemed about to fall into their laps had beenthrust aside by an act or series of acts of wanton paltry folly. The good ship had been lost for the sake of the traditionalha'porth of tar. Comus had paid some pressing tailor's ortobacconist's bill with a loan unwillingly put at his disposal bythe girl he was courting, and had flung away his chances ofsecuring a wealthy and in every way desirable bride. Elaine deFrey and her fortune might have been the making of Comus, but hehad hurried in as usual to effect his own undoing. Calmness didnot in this case come with reflection; the more Francesca thoughtabout the matter, the more exasperated she grew. Comus threwhimself down in a low chair and watched her without a trace ofembarrassment or concern at her mortification. He had come to herfeeling rather sorry for himself, and bitterly conscious of hisdefeat, and she had met him with a taunt and without the least hintof sympathy; he determined that she should be tantalised with theknowledge of how small and stupid a thing had stood between therealisation and ruin of her hopes for him. 

"And to think she should be captured by Courtenay Youghal, " saidFrancesca, bitterly; "I've always deplored your intimacy with thatyoung man. "

"It's hardly my intimacy with him that's made Elaine accept him, "said Comus. 

Francesca realised the futility of further upbraiding. Through thetears of vexation that stood in her eyes, she looked across at thehandsome boy who sat opposite her, mocking at his own misfortune, perversely indifferent to his folly, seemingly almost indifferentto its consequences. 

"Comus, " she said quietly and wearily, "you are an exact reversalof the legend of Pandora's Box. You have all the charm andadvantages that a boy could want to help him on in the world, andbehind it all there is the fatal damning gift of utterhopelessness. "

"I think, " said Comus, "that is the best description that anyonehas ever given of me. "

For the moment there was a flush of sympathy and something likeoutspoken affection between mother and son. They seemed very muchalone in the world just now, and in the general overturn of hopesand plans, there flickered a chance that each might stretch out ahand to the other, and summon back to their lives an old dead lovethat was the best and strongest feeling either of them had known. But the sting of disappointment was too keen, and the flood ofresentment mounted too high on either side to allow the chance morethan a moment in which to flicker away into nothingness. The oldfatal topic of estrangement came to the fore, the question ofimmediate ways and means, and mother and son faced themselves againas antagonists on a well-disputed field. 

"What is done is done, " said Francesca, with a movement of tragicimpatience that belied the philosophy of her words; "there isnothing to be gained by crying over spilt milk. There is thepresent and the future to be thought about, though. One can't goon indefinitely as a tenant-for-life in a fools' paradise. " Thenshe pulled herself together and proceeded to deliver an ultimatumwhich the force of circumstances no longer permitted her to hold inreserve. 

"It's not much use talking to you about money, as I know from longexperience, but I can only tell you this, that in the middle of theSeason I'm already obliged to be thinking of leaving Town. Andyou, I'm afraid, will have to be thinking of leaving England atequally short notice. Henry told me the other day that he can getyou something out in West Africa. You've had your chance of doingsomething better for yourself from the financial point of view, andyou've thrown it away for the sake of borrowing a little readymoney for your luxuries, so now you must take what you can get. The pay won't be very good at first, but living is not dear outthere. "

"West Africa, " said Comus, reflectively; "it's a sort of modernsubstitute for the old-fashioned oubliette, a convenient depositoryfor tiresome people. Dear Uncle Henry may talk lugubriously aboutthe burden of Empire, but he evidently recognises its uses as arefuse consumer. "

"My dear Comus, you are talking of the West Africa of yesterday. While you have been wasting your time at school, and worse thanwasting your time in the West End, other people have been grapplingwith the study of tropical diseases, and the West African coastcountry is being rapidly transformed from a lethal chamber into asanatorium. "

Comus laughed mockingly. 

"What a beautiful bit of persuasive prose; it reminds one of thePsalms and even more of a company prospectus. If you were honestyou'd confess that you lifted it straight out of a rubber orrailway promotion scheme. Seriously, mother, if I must grub aboutfor a living, why can't I do it in England? I could go into abrewery for instance. "

Francesca shook her head decisively; she could foresee the sort ofsteady work Comus was likely to accomplish, with the lodestone ofTown and the minor attractions of race-meetings and similarfestivities always beckoning to him from a conveniently attainabledistance, but apart from that aspect of the case there was afinancial obstacle in the way of his obtaining any employment athome. 

"Breweries and all those sort of things necessitate money to startwith; one has to pay premiums or invest capital in the undertaking, and so forth. And as we have no money available, and can scarcelypay our debts as it is, it's no use thinking about it. "

"Can't we sell something?" asked Comus. 

He made no actual suggestion as to what should be sacrificed, buthe was looking straight at the Van der Meulen. 

For a moment Francesca felt a stifling sensation of weakness, asthough her heart was going to stop beating. Then she sat forwardin her chair and spoke with energy, almost fierceness. 

"When I am dead my things can be sold and dispersed. As long as Iam alive I prefer to keep them by me. "

In her holy place, with all her treasured possessions around her, this dreadful suggestion had been made. Some of her cherishedhousehold gods, souvenirs and keepsakes from past days, would, perhaps, not have fetched a very considerable sum in the auction-room, others had a distinct value of their own, but to her theywere all precious. And the Van der Meulen, at which Comus hadlooked with impious appraising eyes, was the most sacred of themall. When Francesca had been away from her Town residence or hadbeen confined to her bedroom through illness, the great picturewith its stately solemn representation of a long-ago battle-scene, painted to flatter the flattery-loving soul of a warrior-king whowas dignified even in his campaigns--this was the first thing shevisited on her return to Town or convalescence. If an alarm offire had been raised it would have been the first thing for whosesafety she would have troubled. And Comus had almost suggestedthat it should be parted with, as one sold railway shares and othersoulless things. 

Scolding, she had long ago realised, was a useless waste of timeand energy where Comus was concerned, but this evening she unloosedher tongue for the mere relief that it gave to her surchargedfeelings. He sat listening without comment, though she purposelylet fall remarks that she hoped might sting him into self-defenceor protest. It was an unsparing indictment, the more damaging inthat it was so irrefutably true, the more tragic in that it camefrom perhaps the one person in the world whose opinion he had evercared for. And he sat through it as silent and seemingly unmovedas though she had been rehearsing a speech for some drawing-roomcomedy. When she had had her say his method of retort was not thesoft answer that turneth away wrath but the inconsequent one thatshelves it. 

"Let's go and dress for dinner. "

The meal, like so many that Francesca and Comus had eaten in eachother's company of late, was a silent one. Now that the fullbearings of the disaster had been discussed in all its aspectsthere was nothing more to be said. Any attempt at ignoring thesituation, and passing on to less controversial topics would havebeen a mockery and pretence which neither of them would havetroubled to sustain. So the meal went forward with its dragged-outdreary intimacy of two people who were separated by a gulf ofbitterness, and whose hearts were hard with resentment against oneanother. 

Francesca felt a sense of relief when she was able to give the maidthe order to serve her coffee upstairs. Comus had a sullen scowlon his face, but he looked up as she rose to leave the room, andgave his half-mocking little laugh. 

"You needn't look so tragic, " he said, "You're going to have yourown way. I'll go out to that West African hole. "

CHAPTER XIII

Comus found his way to his seat in the stalls of the Straw ExchangeTheatre and turned to watch the stream of distinguished anddistinguishable people who made their appearance as a matter ofcourse at a First Night in the height of the Season. Pit andgallery were already packed with a throng, tense, expectant andalert, that waited for the rise of the curtain with the eagerpatience of a terrier watching a dilatory human prepare for outdoorexercises. Stalls and boxes filled slowly and hesitatingly with acrowd whose component units seemed for the most part to recognisethe probability that they were quite as interesting as any playthey were likely to see. Those who bore no particular face-valuethemselves derived a certain amount of social dignity from the nearneighbourhood of obvious notabilities; if one could not obtainrecognition oneself there was some vague pleasure in being able torecognise notoriety at intimately close quarters. 

"Who is that woman with the auburn hair and a rather effectivebelligerent gleam in her eyes?" asked a man sitting just behindComus; "she looks as if she might have created the world in sixdays and destroyed it on the seventh. "

"I forget her name, " said his neighbour; "she writes. She's theauthor of that book, 'The Woman who wished it was Wednesday, ' youknow. It used to be the convention that women writers should beplain and dowdy; now we have gone to the other extreme and buildthem on extravagantly decorative lines. "

A buzz of recognition came from the front rows of the pit, togetherwith a craning of necks on the part of those in less favouredseats. It heralded the arrival of Sherard Blaw, the dramatist whohad discovered himself, and who had given so ungrudgingly of hisdiscovery to the world. Lady Caroline, who was already directinglittle conversational onslaughts from her box, gazed gently for amoment at the new arrival, and then turned to the silver-hairedArchdeacon sitting beside her. 

"They say the poor man is haunted by the fear that he will dieduring a general election, and that his obituary notices will beseriously curtailed by the space taken up by the election results. The curse of our party system, from his point of view, is that ittakes up so much room in the press. "

The Archdeacon smiled indulgently. As a man he was so exquisitelyworldly that he fully merited the name of the Heavenly Worldlingbestowed on him by an admiring duchess, and withal his texture wasshot with a pattern of such genuine saintliness that one felt thatwhoever else might hold the keys of Paradise he, at least, possessed a private latchkey to that abode. 

"Is it not significant of the altered grouping of things, " heobserved, "that the Church, as represented by me, sympathises withthe message of Sherard Blaw, while neither the man nor his messagefind acceptance with unbelievers like you, Lady Caroline. "

Lady Caroline blinked her eyes. "My dear Archdeacon, " she said, "no one can be an unbeliever nowadays. The Christian Apologistshave left one nothing to disbelieve. "

The Archdeacon rose with a delighted chuckle. "I must go and tellthat to De la Poulett, " he said, indicating a clerical figuresitting in the third row of the stalls; "he spends his lifeexplaining from his pulpit that the glory of Christianity consistsin the fact that though it is not true it has been found necessaryto invent it. "

The door of the box opened and Courtenay Youghal entered, bringingwith him subtle suggestion of chaminade and an atmosphere ofpolitical tension. The Government had fallen out of the goodgraces of a section of its supporters, and those who were not inthe know were busy predicting a serious crisis over a forthcomingdivision in the Committee stage of an important Bill. This wasSaturday night, and unless some successful cajolery were effectedbetween now and Monday afternoon, Ministers would be, seemingly, indanger of defeat. 

"Ah, here is Youghal, " said the Archdeacon; "he will be able totell us what is going to happen in the next forty-eight hours. Ihear the Prime Minister says it is a matter of conscience, and theywill stand or fall by it. "

His hopes and sympathies were notoriously on the Ministerial side. 

Youghal greeted Lady Caroline and subsided gracefully into a chairwell in the front of the box. A buzz of recognition rippled slowlyacross the house. 

"For the Government to fall on a matter of conscience, " he said, "would be like a man cutting himself with a safety razor. "

Lady Caroline purred a gentle approval. 

"I'm afraid it's true, Archdeacon, " she said. 

No one can effectively defend a Government when it's been in officeseveral years. The Archdeacon took refuge in light skirmishing. 

"I believe Lady Caroline sees the makings of a great Socialiststatesman in you, Youghal, " he observed. 

"Great Socialist statesmen aren't made, they're stillborn, " repliedYoughal. 

"What is the play about to-night?" asked a pale young woman who hadtaken no part in the talk. 

"I don't know, " said Lady Caroline, "but I hope it's dull. Ifthere is any brilliant conversation in it I shall burst intotears. "

In the front row of the upper circle a woman with a restlessstarling-voice was discussing the work of a temporarily fashionablecomposer, chiefly in relation to her own emotions, which she seemedto think might prove generally interesting to those around her. 

"Whenever I hear his music I feel that I want to go up into amountain and pray. Can you understand that feeling?"

The girl to whom she was unburdening herself shook her head. 

"You see, I've heard his music chiefly in Switzerland, and we wereup among the mountains all the time, so it wouldn't have made anydifference. "

"In that case, " said the woman, who seemed to have emergencyemotions to suit all geographical conditions, "I should have wantedto be in a great silent plain by the side of a rushing river. "

"What I think is so splendid about his music--" commenced anotherstarling-voice on the further side of the girl. Like sheep thatfeed greedily before the coming of a storm the starling-voicesseemed impelled to extra effort by the knowledge of four imminentintervals of acting during which they would be hushed intoconstrained silence. 

In the back row of the dress circle a late-comer, after a cursoryglance at the programme, had settled down into a comfortablenarrative, which was evidently the resumed thread of an unfinishedtaxi-drive monologue. 

"We all said 'it can't be Captain Parminter, because he's alwaysbeen sweet on Joan, ' and then Emily said--"

The curtain went up, and Emily's contribution to the discussion hadto be held over till the entr'acte. 

The play promised to be a success. The author, avoiding thepitfall of brilliancy, had aimed at being interesting and as far aspossible, bearing in mind that his play was a comedy, he hadstriven to be amusing. Above all he had remembered that in thelaws of stage proportions it is permissible and generally desirablethat the part should be greater than the whole; hence he had beencareful to give the leading lady such a clear and commanding leadover the other characters of the play that it was impossible forany of them ever to get on level terms with her. The action of thepiece was now and then delayed thereby, but the duration of its runwould be materially prolonged. 

The curtain came down on the first act amid an encouraginginstalment of applause, and the audience turned its back on thestage and began to take a renewed interest in itself. Theauthoress of "The Woman who wished it was Wednesday" had swept likea convalescent whirlwind, subdued but potentially tempestuous, intoLady Caroline's box. 

"I've just trodden with all my weight on the foot of an eminentpublisher as I was leaving my seat, " she cried, with a peal ofdelighted laughter. "He was such a dear about it; I said I hoped Ihadn't hurt him, and he said, 'I suppose you think, who drives hardbargains should himself be hard. ' Wasn't it pet-lamb of him?"

"I've never trodden on a pet lamb, " said Lady Caroline, "so I've noidea what its behaviour would be under the circumstances. "

"Tell me, " said the authoress, coming to the front of the box, thebetter to survey the house, and perhaps also with a charitabledesire to make things easy for those who might pardonably wish tosurvey her, "tell me, please, where is the girl sitting whomCourtenay Youghal is engaged to?"

Elaine was pointed out to her, sitting in the fourth row of thestalls, on the opposite side of the house to where Comus had hisseat. Once during the interval she had turned to give him afriendly nod of recognition as he stood in one of the sidegangways, but he was absorbed at the moment in looking at himselfin the glass panel. The grave brown eyes and the mocking green-grey ones had looked their last into each other's depths. 

For Comus this first-night performance, with its brilliantgathering of spectators, its groups and coteries of lively talkers, even its counterfoil of dull chatterers, its pervading atmosphereof stage and social movement, and its intruding undercurrent ofpolitical flutter, all this composed a tragedy in which he was thechief character. It was the life he knew and loved and basked in, and it was the life he was leaving. It would go on reproducingitself again and again, with its stage interest and social interestand intruding outside interests, with the same lively chatteringcrowd, the people who had done things being pointed out by peoplewho recognised them to people who didn't--it would all go on withunflagging animation and sparkle and enjoyment, and for him itwould have stopped utterly. He would be in some unheard-of sun-blistered wilderness, where natives and pariah dogs and raucous-throated crows fringed round mockingly on one's loneliness, whereone rode for sweltering miles for the chance of meeting a collectoror police officer, with whom most likely on closer acquaintance onehad hardly two ideas in common, where female society wasrepresented at long intervals by some climate-withered womanmissionary or official's wife, where food and sickness andveterinary lore became at last the three outstanding subjects onwhich the mind settled or rather sank. That was the life heforesaw and dreaded, and that was the life he was going to. For aboy who went out to it from the dulness of some country rectory, from a neighbourhood where a flower show and a cricket match formedthe social landmarks of the year, the feeling of exile might not bevery crushing, might indeed be lost in the sense of change andadventure. But Comus had lived too thoroughly in the centre ofthings to regard life in a backwater as anything else thanstagnation, and stagnation while one is young he justly regarded asan offence against nature and reason, in keeping with the pervertedmockery that sends decrepit invalids touring painfully about theworld and shuts panthers up in narrow cages. He was being putaside, as a wine is put aside, but to deteriorate instead ofgaining in the process, to lose the best time of his youth andhealth and good looks in a world where youth and health and goodlooks count for much and where time never returns lost possessions. And thus, as the curtain swept down on the close of each act, Comusfelt a sense of depression and deprivation sweep down on himself;bitterly he watched his last evening of social gaiety slipping awayto its end. In less than an hour it would be over; in a fewmonths' time it would be an unreal memory. 

In the third interval, as he gazed round at the chattering house, someone touched him on the arm. It was Lady Veula Croot. 

"I suppose in a week's time you'll be on the high seas, " she said. "I'm coming to your farewell dinner, you know; your mother has justasked me. I'm not going to talk the usual rot to you about howmuch you will like it and so on. I sometimes think that one of theadvantages of Hell will be that no one will have the impertinenceto point out to you that you're really better off than you would beanywhere else. What do you think of the play? Of course one canforesee the end; she will come to her husband with the announcementthat their longed-for child is going to be born, and that willsmooth over everything. So conveniently effective, to wind up acomedy with the commencement of someone else's tragedy. And everyone will go away saying 'I'm glad it had a happy ending. '"

Lady Veula moved back to her seat, with her pleasant smile on herlips and the look of infinite weariness in her eyes. 

The interval, the last interval, was drawing to a close and thehouse began to turn with fidgetty attention towards the stage forthe unfolding of the final phase of the play. Francesca sat inSerena Golackly's box listening to Colonel Springfield's story ofwhat happened to a pigeon-cote in his compound at Poona. Everyonewho knew the Colonel had to listen to that story a good many times, but Lady Caroline had mitigated the boredom of the infliction, andin fact invested it with a certain sporting interest, by offering aprize to the person who heard it oftenest in the course of theSeason, the competitors being under an honourable understanding notto lead up to the subject. Ada Spelvexit and a boy in the ForeignOffice were at present at the top of the list with five recitalseach to their score, but the former was suspected of doubtfuladherence to the rules and spirit of the competition. 

"And there, dear lady, " concluded the Colonel, "were the elevendead pigeons. What had become of the bandicoot no one ever knew. "

Francesca thanked him for his story, and complacently inscribed thefigure 4 on the margin of her theatre programme. Almost at thesame moment she heard George St. Michael's voice pattering out abreathless piece of intelligence for the edification of SerenaGolackly and anyone else who might care to listen. Francescagalvanised into sudden attention. 

"Emmeline Chetrof to a fellow in the Indian Forest Department. He's got nothing but his pay and they can't be married for four orfive years; an absurdly long engagement, don't you think so? Allvery well to wait seven years for a wife in patriarchal times, whenyou probably had others to go on with, and you lived long enough tocelebrate your own tercentenary, but under modern conditions itseems a foolish arrangement. "

St. Michael spoke almost with a sense of grievance. A marriageproject that tied up all the small pleasant nuptial gossip-itemsabout bridesmaids and honeymoon and recalcitrant aunts and soforth, for an indefinite number of years seemed scarcely decent inhis eyes, and there was little satisfaction or importance to bederived from early and special knowledge of an event which loomedas far distant as a Presidential Election or a change of Viceroy. But to Francesca, who had listened with startled apprehension atthe mention of Emmeline Chetrof's name, the news came in a flood ofrelief and thankfulness. Short of entering a nunnery and takingcelibate vows, Emmeline could hardly have behaved more convenientlythan in tying herself up to a lover whose circumstances made itnecessary to relegate marriage to the distant future. For four orfive years Francesca was assured of undisturbed possession of thehouse in Blue Street, and after that period who knew what mighthappen? The engagement might stretch on indefinitely, it mighteven come to nothing under the weight of its accumulated years, assometimes happened with these protracted affairs. Emmeline mightlose her fancy for her absentee lover, and might never replace himwith another. A golden possibility of perpetual tenancy of herpresent home began to float once more through Francesca's mind. Aslong as Emmeline had been unbespoken in the marriage market therehad always been the haunting likelihood of seeing the dreadedannouncement, "a marriage has been arranged and will shortly takeplace, " in connection with her name. And now a marriage had beenarranged and would not shortly take place, might indeed never takeplace. St. Michael's information was likely to be correct in thisinstance; he would never have invented a piece of matrimonialintelligence which gave such little scope for supplementary detailof the kind he loved to supply. As Francesca turned to watch thefourth act of the play, her mind was singing a paean ofthankfulness and exultation. It was as though some artificer sentby the Gods had reinforced with a substantial cord the horsehairthread that held up the sword of Damocles over her head. Her lovefor her home, for her treasured household possessions, and herpleasant social life was able to expand once more in presentsecurity, and feed on future hope. She was still young enough tocount four or five years as a long time, and to-night she wasoptimistic enough to prophesy smooth things of the future that laybeyond that span. Of the fourth act, with its carefully held backbut obviously imminent reconciliation between the leadingcharacters, she took in but little, except that she vaguelyunderstood it to have a happy ending. As the lights went up shelooked round on the dispersing audience with a feeling offriendliness uppermost in her mind; even the sight of Elaine deFrey and Courtenay Youghal leaving the theatre together did notinspire her with a tenth part of the annoyance that their entrancehad caused her. Serena's invitation to go on to the Savoy forsupper fitted in exactly with her mood of exhilaration. It wouldbe a fit and appropriate wind-up to an auspicious evening. Thecold chicken and modest brand of Chablis waiting for her at homeshould give way to a banquet of more festive nature. 

In the crush of the vestibule, friends and enemies, personal andpolitical, were jostled and locked together in the general effortto rejoin temporarily estranged garments and secure the attendanceof elusive vehicles. Lady Caroline found herself at close quarterswith the estimable Henry Greech, and experienced some of the joywhich comes to the homeward wending sportsman when a chance shotpresents itself on which he may expend his remaining cartridges. 

"So the Government is going to climb down, after all, " she said, with a provocative assumption of private information on thesubject. 

"I assure you the Government will do nothing of the kind, " repliedthe Member of Parliament with befitting dignity; "the PrimeMinister told me last night that under no circumstances--"

"My dear Mr. Greech, " said Lady Caroline, "we all know that PrimeMinisters are wedded to the truth, but like other wedded couplesthey sometimes live apart. "

For her, at any rate, the comedy had had a happy ending. 

Comus made his way slowly and lingeringly from the stalls, soslowly that the lights were already being turned down and greatshroud-like dust-cloths were being swaythed over the ornamentalgilt-work. The laughing, chattering, yawning throng had filteredout of the vestibule, and was melting away in final groups from thesteps of the theatre. An impatient attendant gave him his coat andlocked up the cloak room. Comus stepped out under the portico; helooked at the posters announcing the play, and in anticipation hecould see other posters announcing its 200th performance. Twohundred performances; by that time the Straw Exchange Theatre wouldbe to him something so remote and unreal that it would hardly seemto exist or to have ever existed except in his fancy. And to thelaughing chattering throng that would pass in under that portico tothe 200th performance, he would be, to those that had known him, something equally remote and non-existent. "The good-lookingBassington boy? Oh, dead, or rubber-growing or sheep-farming orsomething of that sort. "

CHAPTER XIV

The farewell dinner which Francesca had hurriedly organised inhonour of her son's departure threatened from the outset to be adoubtfully successful function. In the first place, as he observedprivately, there was very little of Comus and a good deal offarewell in it. His own particular friends were unrepresented. Courtenay Youghal was out of the question; and though Francescawould have stretched a point and welcomed some of his other maleassociates of whom she scarcely approved, he himself had beenopposed to including any of them in the invitations. On the otherhand, as Henry Greech had provided Comus with this job that he wasgoing out to, and was, moreover, finding part of the money for thenecessary outfit, Francesca had felt it her duty to ask him and hiswife to the dinner; the obtuseness that seems to cling to somepeople like a garment throughout their life had caused Mr. Greechto accept the invitation. When Comus heard of the circumstance helaughed long and boisterously; his spirits, Francesca noted, seemedto be rising fast as the hour for departure drew near. 

The other guests included Serena Golackly and Lady Veula, thelatter having been asked on the inspiration of the moment at thetheatrical first-night. In the height of the Season it was noteasy to get together a goodly selection of guests at short notice, and Francesca had gladly fallen in with Serena's suggestion ofbringing with her Stephen Thorle, who was alleged, in loosefeminine phrasing, to "know all about" tropical Africa. Histravels and experiences in those regions probably did not covermuch ground or stretch over any great length of time, but he wasone of those individuals who can describe a continent on thestrength of a few days' stay in a coast town as intimately anddogmatically as a paleontologist will reconstruct an extinct mammalfrom the evidence of a stray shin bone. He had the loudpenetrating voice and the prominent penetrating eyes of a man whocan do no listening in the ordinary way and whose eyes have toperform the function of listening for him. His vanity did notnecessarily make him unbearable, unless one had to spend much timein his society, and his need for a wide field of audience andadmiration was mercifully calculated to spread his operations overa considerable human area. Moreover, his craving for attentivelisteners forced him to interest himself in a wonderful variety ofsubjects on which he was able to discourse fluently and with acertain semblance of special knowledge. Politics he avoided; theground was too well known, and there was a definite no to everydefinite yes that could be put forward. Moreover, argument was notcongenial to his disposition, which preferred an unchallenged flowof dissertation modified by occasional helpful questions whichformed the starting point for new offshoots of word-spinning. Thepromotion of cottage industries, the prevention of juvenile streettrading, the extension of the Borstal prison system, thefurtherance of vague talkative religious movements the fostering ofinter-racial ententes, all found in him a tireless exponent, afluent and entertaining, though perhaps not very convincing, advocate. With the real motive power behind these various causeshe was not very closely identified; to the spade-workers whocarried on the actual labours of each particular movement he borethe relation of a trowel-worker, delving superficially at thesurface, but able to devote a proportionately far greater amount oftime to the advertisement of his progress and achievements. Suchwas Stephen Thorle, a governess in the nursery of Chelsea-bredreligions, a skilled window-dresser in the emporium of his ownpersonality, and needless to say, evanescently popular amid a widebut shifting circle of acquaintances. He improved on the record ofa socially much-travelled individual whose experience has becomeclassical, and went to most of the best houses--twice. 

His inclusion as a guest at this particular dinner-party was not avery happy inspiration. He was inclined to patronise Comus, aswell as the African continent, and on even slighter acquaintance. With the exception of Henry Greech, whose feelings towards hisnephew had been soured by many years of overt antagonism, there wasan uncomfortable feeling among those present that the topic of theblack-sheep export trade, as Comus would have himself expressed it, was being given undue prominence in what should have been a festivefarewell banquet. And Comus, in whose honour the feast was given, did not contribute much towards its success; though his spiritsseemed strung up to a high pitch his merriment was more themerriment of a cynical and amused onlooker than of one who respondsto the gaiety of his companions. Sometimes he laughed quietly tohimself at some chance remark of a scarcely mirth-provoking nature, and Lady Veula, watching him narrowly, came to the conclusion thatan element of fear was blended with his seemingly buoyant spirits. Once or twice he caught her eye across the table, and a certainsympathy seemed to grow up between them, as though they were bothconsciously watching some lugubrious comedy that was being playedout before them. 

An untoward little incident had marked the commencement of themeal. A small still-life picture that hung over the sideboard hadsnapped its cord and slid down with an alarming clatter on to thecrowded board beneath it. The picture itself was scarcely damaged, but its fall had been accompanied by a tinkle of broken glass, andit was found that a liqueur glass, one out of a set of seven thatwould be impossible to match, had been shivered into fragments. Francesca's almost motherly love for her possessions made herpeculiarly sensible to a feeling of annoyance and depression at theaccident, but she turned politely to listen to Mrs. Greech'saccount of a misfortune in which four soup-plates were involved. Mrs. Henry was not a brilliant conversationalist, and her flank wasspeedily turned by Stephen Thorle, who recounted a slum experiencein which two entire families did all their feeding out of onedamaged soup-plate. 

"The gratitude of those poor creatures when I presented them with aset of table crockery apiece, the tears in their eyes and in theirvoices when they thanked me, would be impossible to describe. "

"Thank you all the same for describing it, " said Comus. 

The listening eyes went swiftly round the table to gather evidenceas to how this rather disconcerting remark had been received, butThorle's voice continued uninterruptedly to retail stories of East-end gratitude, never failing to mention the particular deeds ofdisinterested charity on his part which had evoked and justifiedthe gratitude. Mrs. Greech had to suppress the interesting sequelto her broken-crockery narrative, to wit, how she subsequentlymatched the shattered soup-plates at Harrod's. Like an importedplant species that sometimes flourishes exceedingly, and makesitself at home to the dwarfing and overshadowing of all nativespecies, Thorle dominated the dinner-party and thrust its originalpurport somewhat into the background. Serena began to lookhelplessly apologetic. It was altogether rather a relief when thefilling of champagne glasses gave Francesca an excuse for bringingmatters back to their intended footing. 

"We must all drink a health, " she said; "Comus, my own dear boy, asafe and happy voyage to you, much prosperity in the life you aregoing out to, and in due time a safe and happy return--"

Her hand gave an involuntary jerk in the act of raising the glass, and the wine went streaming across the tablecloth in a froth ofyellow bubbles. It certainly was not turning out a comfortable orauspicious dinner party. 

"My dear mother, " cried Comus, "you must have been drinking healthsall the afternoon to make your hand so unsteady. "

He laughed gaily and with apparent carelessness, but again LadyVeula caught the frightened note in his laughter. Mrs. Henry, withpractical sympathy, was telling Francesca two good ways for gettingwine stains out of tablecloths. The smaller economies of life werean unnecessary branch of learning for Mrs. Greech, but she studiedthem as carefully and conscientiously as a stay-at-home plain-dwelling English child commits to memory the measurements andaltitudes of the world's principal mountain peaks. Some women ofher temperament and mentality know by heart the favourite colours, flowers and hymn-tunes of all the members of the Royal Family; Mrs. Greech would possibly have failed in an examination of that nature, but she knew what to do with carrots that have been over-long instorage. 

Francesca did not renew her speech-making; a chill seemed to havefallen over all efforts at festivity, and she contented herselfwith refilling her glass and simply drinking to her boy's goodhealth. The others followed her example, and Comus drained hisglass with a brief "thank you all very much. " The sense ofconstraint which hung over the company was not, however, marked byany uncomfortable pause in the conversation. Henry Greech was afluent thinker, of the kind that prefer to do their thinking aloud;the silence that descended on him as a mantle in the House ofCommons was an official livery of which he divested himself asthoroughly as possible in private life. He did not propose to sitthrough dinner as a mere listener to Mr. Thorle's personalnarrative of philanthropic movements and experiences, and took thefirst opportunity of launching himself into a flow of satiricalobservations on current political affairs. Lady Veula was inuredto this sort of thing in her own home circle, and sat listeningwith the stoical indifference with which an Esquimau might acceptthe occurrence of one snowstorm the more, in the course of anArctic winter. Serena Golackly felt a certain relief at the factthat her imported guest was not, after all, monopolising theconversation. But the latter was too determined a personality toallow himself to be thrust aside for many minutes by the talkativeM. P. Henry Greech paused for an instant to chuckle at one of hisown shafts of satire, and immediately Thorle's penetrating voiceswept across the table. 

"Oh, you politicians!" he exclaimed, with pleasant superiority;"you are always fighting about how things should be done, and theconsequence is you are never able to do anything. Would you likeme to tell you what a Unitarian horsedealer said to me at Brindisiabout politicians?"

A Unitarian horsedealer at Brindisi had all the allurement of theunexpected. Henry Greech's witticisms at the expense of the FrontOpposition bench were destined to remain as unfinished as hiswife's history of the broken soup-plates. Thorle was primed withan ample succession of stories and themes, chiefly concerningpoverty, thriftlessness, reclamation, reformed characters, and soforth, which carried him in an almost uninterrupted sequencethrough the remainder of the dinner. 

"What I want to do is to make people think, " he said, turning hisprominent eyes on to his hostess; "it's so hard to make peoplethink. "

"At any rate you give them the opportunity, " said Comus, cryptically. 

As the ladies rose to leave the table Comus crossed over to pick upone of Lady Veula's gloves that had fallen to the floor. 

"I did not know you kept a dog, " said Lady Veula. 

"We don't, " said Comus, "there isn't one in the house. "

"I could have sworn I saw one follow you across the hall thisevening, " she said. 

"A small black dog, something like a schipperke?" asked Comus in alow voice. 

"Yes, that was it. "

"I saw it myself to-night; it ran from behind my chair just as Iwas sitting down. Don't say anything to the others about it; itwould frighten my mother. "

"Have you ever seen it before?" Lady Veula asked quickly. 

"Once, when I was six years old. It followed my fatherdownstairs. "

Lady Veula said nothing. She knew that Comus had lost his fatherat the age of six. 

In the drawing-room Serena made nervous excuses for her talkativefriend. 

"Really, rather an interesting man, you know, and up to the eyes inall sorts of movements. Just the sort of person to turn loose at adrawing-room meeting, or to send down to a mission-hall in someunheard-of neighbourhood. Given a sounding-board and a harmonium, and a titled woman of some sort in the chair, and he'll beperfectly happy; I must say I hadn't realised how overpowering hemight be at a small dinner-party. "

"I should say he was a very good man, " said Mrs. Greech; she hadforgiven the mutilation of her soup-plate story. 

The party broke up early as most of the guests had otherengagements to keep. With a belated recognition of the farewellnature of the occasion they made pleasant little good-bye remarksto Comus, with the usual predictions of prosperity andanticipations of an ultimate auspicious return. Even Henry Greechsank his personal dislike of the boy for the moment, and madehearty jocular allusions to a home-coming, which, in the elderman's eyes, seemed possibly pleasantly remote. Lady Veula alonemade no reference to the future; she simply said, "Good-bye, Comus, " but her voice was the kindest of all and he responded witha look of gratitude. The weariness in her eyes was more markedthan ever as she lay back against the cushions of her carriage. 

"What a tragedy life is, " she said, aloud to herself. 

Serena and Stephen Thorle were the last to leave, and Francescastood alone for a moment at the head of the stairway watching Comuslaughing and chatting as he escorted the departing guests to thedoor. The ice-wall was melting under the influence of comingseparation, and never had he looked more adorably handsome in hereyes, never had his merry laugh and mischief-loving gaiety seemedmore infectious than on this night of his farewell banquet. Shewas glad enough that he was going away from a life of idleness andextravagance and temptation, but she began to suspect that shewould miss, for a little while at any rate, the high-spirited boywho could be so attractive in his better moods. Her impulse, afterthe guests had gone, was to call him to her and hold him once morein her arms, and repeat her wishes for his happiness and good-luckin the land he was going to, and her promise of his welcome back, some not too distant day, to the land he was leaving. She wantedto forget, and to make him forget, the months of irritable janglingand sharp discussions, the months of cold aloofness andindifference and to remember only that he was her own dear Comus asin the days of yore, before he had grown from an unmanageablepickle into a weariful problem. But she feared lest she shouldbreak down, and she did not wish to cloud his light-hearted gaietyon the very eve of his departure. She watched him for a moment ashe stood in the hall, settling his tie before a mirror, and thenwent quietly back to her drawing-room. It had not been a verysuccessful dinner party, and the general effect it had left on herwas one of depression. 

Comus, with a lively musical-comedy air on his lips, and a look ofwretchedness in his eyes, went out to visit the haunts that he wasleaving so soon. 

CHAPTER XV

Elaine Youghal sat at lunch in the Speise Saal of one of Vienna'scostlier hotels. The double-headed eagle, with its "K. U. K. "legend, everywhere met the eye and announced the imperial favour inwhich the establishment basked. Some several square yards ofyellow bunting, charged with the image of another double-headedeagle, floating from the highest flag-staff above the building, betrayed to the initiated the fact that a Russian Grand Duke wasconcealed somewhere on the premises. Unannounced by heraldicsymbolism but unconcealable by reason of nature's own blazonry, were several citizens and citizenesses of the great republic of theWestern world. One or two Cobdenite members of the BritishParliament engaged in the useful task of proving that the cost ofliving in Vienna was on an exorbitant scale, flitted withrestrained importance through a land whose fatness they had come tospy out; every fancied over-charge in their bills was welcome asproviding another nail in the coffin of their fiscal opponents. Itis the glory of democracies that they may be misled but neverdriven. Here and there, like brave deeds in a dust-patternedworld, flashed and glittered the sumptuous uniforms ofrepresentatives of the Austrian military caste. Also in evidence, at discreet intervals, were stray units of the Semetic tribe thatnineteen centuries of European neglect had been unable to mislay. 

Elaine sitting with Courtenay at an elaborately appointed luncheontable, gay with high goblets of Bohemian glassware, was mistress ofthree discoveries. First, to her disappointment, that if youfrequent the more expensive hotels of Europe you must be preparedto find, in whatever country you may chance to be staying, adepressing international likeness between them all. Secondly, toher relief, that one is not expected to be sentimentally amorousduring a modern honeymoon. Thirdly, rather to her dismay, thatCourtenay Youghal did not necessarily expect her to be markedlyaffectionate in private. Someone had described him, after theirmarriage, as one of Nature's bachelors, and she began to see howaptly the description fitted him. 

"Will those Germans on our left never stop talking?" she asked, asan undying flow of Teutonic small talk rattled and jangled acrossthe intervening stretch of carpet. "Not one of those three womenhas ceased talking for an instant since we've been sitting here. "

"They will presently, if only for a moment, " said Courtenay; "whenthe dish you have ordered comes in there will be a deathly silenceat the next table. No German can see a plat brought in for someoneelse without being possessed with a great fear that it represents amore toothsome morsel or a better money's worth than what he hasordered for himself. "

The exuberant Teutonic chatter was balanced on the other side ofthe room by an even more penetrating conversation unflagginglymaintained by a party of Americans, who were sitting in judgment onthe cuisine of the country they were passing through, and findingfew extenuating circumstances. 

"What Mr. Lonkins wants is a real DEEP cherry pie, " announced alady in a tone of dramatic and honest conviction. 

"Why, yes, that is so, " corroborated a gentleman who was apparentlythe Mr. Lonkins in question; "a real DEEP cherry pie. "

"We had the same trouble way back in Paris, " proclaimed anotherlady; "little Jerome and the girls don't want to eat any more cremerenversee. I'd give anything if they could get some real cherrypie. "

"Real DEEP cherry pie, " assented Mr. Lonkins. 

"Way down in Ohio we used to have peach pie that was real good, "said Mrs. Lonkins, turning on a tap of reminiscence that presentlyflowed to a cascade. The subject of pies seemed to lend itself toindefinite expansion. 

"Do those people think of nothing but their food?" asked Elaine, asthe virtues of roasted mutton suddenly came to the fore andreceived emphatic recognition, even the absent and youthful Jeromebeing quoted in its favour. 

"On the contrary, " said Courtenay, "they are a widely-travelledset, and the man has had a notably interesting career. It is aform of home-sickness with them to discuss and lament the cookeryand foods that they've never had the leisure to stay at home anddigest. The Wandering Jew probably babbled unremittingly aboutsome breakfast dish that took so long to prepare that he had nevertime to eat it. "

A waiter deposited a dish of Wiener Nierenbraten in front ofElaine. At the same moment a magic hush fell upon the three Germanladies at the adjoining table, and the flicker of a great fearpassed across their eyes. Then they burst forth again intotumultuous chatter. Courtenay had proved a reliable prophet. 

Almost at the same moment as the luncheon-dish appeared on thescene, two ladies arrived at a neighbouring table, and bowed withdignified cordiality to Elaine and Courtenay. They were two of themore worldly and travelled of Elaine's extensive stock of aunts, and they happened to be making a short stay at the same hotel asthe young couple. They were far too correct and rationally mindedto intrude themselves on their niece, but it was significant ofElaine's altered view as to the sanctity of honeymoon life that shesecretly rather welcomed the presence of her two relatives in thehotel, and had found time and occasion to give them more of hersociety than she would have considered necessary or desirable a fewweeks ago. The younger of the two she rather liked, in arestrained fashion, as one likes an unpretentious watering-place ora restaurant that does not try to give one a musical education inaddition to one's dinner. One felt instinctively about her thatshe would never wear rather more valuable diamonds than any otherwoman in the room, and would never be the only person to be savedin a steamboat disaster or hotel fire. As a child she might havebeen perfectly well able to recite "On Linden when the sun waslow, " but one felt certain that nothing ever induced her to do so. The elder aunt, Mrs. Goldbrook, did not share her sister'scharacter as a human rest-cure; most people found her ratherdisturbing, chiefly, perhaps, from her habit of asking unimportantquestions with enormous solemnity. Her manner of enquiring after atrifling ailment gave one the impression that she was moreconcerned with the fortunes of the malady than with oneself, andwhen one got rid of a cold one felt that she almost expected to begiven its postal address. Probably her manner was merely thedefensive outwork of an innate shyness, but she was not a woman whocommanded confidences. 

"A telephone call for Courtenay, " commented the younger of the twowomen as Youghal hurriedly flashed through the room; "the telephonesystem seems to enter very largely into that young man's life. "

"The telephone has robbed matrimony of most of its sting, " said theelder; "so much more discreet than pen and ink communications whichget read by the wrong people. "

Elaine's aunts were conscientiously worldly; they were the naturaloutcome of a stock that had been conscientiously straight-laced formany generations. 

Elaine had progressed to the pancake stage before Courtenayreturned. 

"Sorry to be away so long, " he said, "but I've arranged somethingrather nice for to-night. There's rather a jolly masquerade ballon. I've 'phoned about getting a costume for you and it's alright. It will suit you beautifully, and I've got my harlequin dress withme. Madame Kelnicort, excellent soul, is going to chaperone you, and she'll take you back any time you like; I'm quite unreliablewhen I get into fancy dress. I shall probably keep going till someunearthly hour of the morning. "

A masquerade ball in a strange city hardly represented Elaine'sidea of enjoyment. Carefully to disguise one's identity in aneighbourhood where one was entirely unknown seemed to her rathermeaningless. With Courtenay, of course, it was different; heseemed to have friends and acquaintances everywhere. However, thematter had progressed to a point which would have made a refusal togo seem rather ungracious. Elaine finished her pancake and beganto take a polite interest in her costume. 

"What is your character?" asked Madame Kelnicort that evening, asthey uncloaked, preparatory to entering the already crowded ball-room. 

"I believe I'm supposed to represent Marjolaine de Montfort, whoever she may have been, " said Elaine. "Courtenay declares heonly wanted to marry me because I'm his ideal of her. "

"But what a mistake to go as a character you know nothing about. To enjoy a masquerade ball you ought to throw away your own selfand be the character you represent. Now Courtenay has beenHarlequin since half-way through dinner; I could see it dancing inhis eyes. At about six o'clock to-morrow morning he will fallasleep and wake up a member of the British House of Parliament onhis honeymoon, but to-night he is unrestrainedly Harlequin. "

Elaine stood in the ball-room surrounded by a laughing jostlingthrong of pierrots, jockeys, Dresden-china shepherdesses, Roumanianpeasant-girls and all the lively make-believe creatures that formthe ingredients of a fancy-dress ball. As she stood watching themshe experienced a growing feeling of annoyance, chiefly withherself. She was assisting, as the French say, at one of thegayest scenes of Europe's gayest capital, and she was conscious ofbeing absolutely unaffected by the gaiety around her. The costumeswere certainly interesting to look at, and the music good to listento, and to that extent she was amused, but the ABANDON of the scenemade no appeal to her. It was like watching a game of which youdid not know the rules, and in the issue of which you were notinterested. Elaine began to wonder what was the earliest moment atwhich she could drag Madame Kelnicort away from the revel withoutbeing guilty of sheer cruelty. Then Courtenay wriggled out of thecrush and came towards her, a joyous laughing Courtenay, lookingyounger and handsomer than she had ever seen him. She couldscarcely recognise in him to-night the rising young debater whomade embarrassing onslaughts on the Government's foreign policybefore a crowded House of Commons. He claimed her for the dancethat was just starting, and steered her dexterously into the heartof the waltzing crowd. 

"You look more like Marjolaine than I should have thought a mortalwoman of these days could look, " he declared, "only Marjolaine didsmile sometimes. You have rather the air of wondering if you'dleft out enough tea for the servants' breakfast. Don't mind myteasing; I love you to look like that, and besides, it makes asplendid foil to my Harlequin--my selfishness coming to the foreagain, you see. But you really are to go home the moment you'rebored; the excellent Kelnicort gets heaps of dances throughout thewinter, so don't mind sacrificing her. "

A little later in the evening Elaine found herself standing out adance with a grave young gentleman from the Russian Embassy. 

"Monsieur Courtenay enjoys himself, doesn't he?" he observed, asthe youthful-looking harlequin flashed past them, looking like somerestless gorgeous-hued dragonfly; "why is it that the good God hasgiven your countrymen the boon of eternal youth? Some of yourcountrywomen, too, but all of the men. "

Elaine could think of many of her countrymen who were not and nevercould have been youthful, but as far as Courtenay was concerned sherecognised the fitness of the remark. And the recognition carriedwith it a sense of depression. Would he always remain youthful andkeen on gaiety and revelling while she grew staid and retiring?She had thrust the lively intractable Comus out of her mind, as byhis perverseness he had thrust himself out of her heart, and shehad chosen the brilliant young man of affairs as her husband. Hehad honestly let her see the selfish side of his character while hewas courting her, but she had been prepared to make due sacrificesto the selfishness of a public man who had his career to considerabove all other things. Would she also have to make sacrifices tothe harlequin spirit which was now revealing itself as anundercurrent in his nature? When one has inured oneself to theidea of a particular form of victimisation it is disconcerting tobe confronted with another. Many a man who would patiently undergomartyrdom for religion's sake would be furiously unwilling to be amartyr to neuralgia. 

"I think that is why you English love animals so much, " pursued theyoung diplomat; "you are such splendid animals yourselves. You arelively because you want to be lively, not because people arelooking on at you. Monsieur Courtenay is certainly an animal. Imean it as a high compliment. "

"Am I an animal?" asked Elaine. 

"I was going to say you are an angel, " said the Russian, in someembarrassment, "but I do not think that would do; angels andanimals would never get on together. To get on with animals youmust have a sense of humour, and I don't suppose angels have anysense of humour; you see it would be no use to them as they neverhear any jokes. "

"Perhaps, " said Elaine, with a tinge of bitterness in her voice, "perhaps I am a vegetable. "

"I think you most remind me of a picture, " said the Russian. 

It was not the first time Elaine had heard the simile. 

"I know, " she said, "the Narrow Gallery at the Louvre; attributedto Leonardo da Vinci. "

Evidently the impression she made on people was solely one ofexternals. 

Was that how Courtenay regarded her? Was that to be her functionand place in life, a painted background, a decorative setting toother people's triumphs and tragedies? Somehow to-night she hadthe feeling that a general might have who brought imposing forcesinto the field and could do nothing with them. She possessed youthand good looks, considerable wealth, and had just made what wouldbe thought by most people a very satisfactory marriage. Andalready she seemed to be standing aside as an onlooker where shehad expected herself to be taking a leading part. 

"Does this sort of thing appeal to you?" she asked the youngRussian, nodding towards the gay scrimmage of masqueraders andrather prepared to hear an amused negative. "

"But yes, of course, " he answered; "costume balls, fancy fairs, cafe chantant, casino, anything that is not real life appeals to usRussians. Real life with us is the sort of thing that Maxim Gorkideals in. It interests us immensely, but we like to get away fromit sometimes. "

Madame Kelnicort came up with another prospective partner, andElaine delivered her ukase: one more dance and then back to thehotel. Without any special regret she made her retreat from therevel which Courtenay was enjoying under the impression that it waslife and the young Russian under the firm conviction that it wasnot. 

Elaine breakfasted at her aunts' table the next morning at much herusual hour. Courtenay was sleeping the sleep of a happy tiredanimal. He had given instructions to be called at eleven o'clock, from which time onward the Neue Freie Presse, the Zeit, and histoilet would occupy his attention till he appeared at the luncheontable. There were not many people breakfasting when Elaine arrivedon the scene, but the room seemed to be fuller than it really wasby reason of a penetrating voice that was engaged in recounting howfar the standard of Viennese breakfast fare fell below theexpectations and desires of little Jerome and the girls. 

"If ever little Jerome becomes President of the United States, "said Elaine, "I shall be able to contribute quite an informingarticle on his gastronomic likes and dislikes to the papers. "

The aunts were discreetly inquisitive as to the previous evening'sentertainment. 

"If Elaine would flirt mildly with somebody it would be such a goodthing, " said Mrs. Goldbrook; "it would remind Courtenay that he'snot the only attractive young man in the world. "

Elaine, however, did not gratify their hopes; she referred to theball with the detachment she would have shown in describing adrawing-room show of cottage industries. It was not difficult todiscern in her description of the affair the confession that shehad been slightly bored. From Courtenay, later in the day, theaunts received a much livelier impression of the festivities, fromwhich it was abundantly clear that he at any rate had managed toamuse himself. Neither did it appear that his good opinion of hisown attractions had suffered any serious shock. He was distinctlyin a very good temper. 

"The secret of enjoying a honeymoon, " said Mrs. Goldbrookafterwards to her sister, "is not to attempt too much. "

"You mean--?"

"Courtenay is content to try and keep one person amused and happy, and he thoroughly succeeds. "

"I certainly don't think Elaine is going to be very happy, " saidher sister, "but at least Courtenay saved her from making thegreatest mistake she could have made--marrying that youngBassington. "

"He has also, " said Mrs. Goldbrook, "helped her to make the nextbiggest mistake of her life--marrying Courtenay Youghal. 

CHAPTER XVI

It was late afternoon by the banks of a swiftly rushing river, ariver that gave back a haze of heat from its waters as though itwere some stagnant steaming lagoon, and yet seemed to be whirlingonward with the determination of a living thing, perpetually eagerand remorseless, leaping savagely at any obstacle that attempted tostay its course; an unfriendly river, to whose waters you committedyourself at your peril. Under the hot breathless shade of thetrees on its shore arose that acrid all-pervading smell that seemsto hang everywhere about the tropics, a smell as of some monstrousmusty still-room where herbs and spices have been crushed anddistilled and stored for hundreds of years, and where the windowshave seldom been opened. In the dazzling heat that still heldundisputed sway over the scene, insects and birds seemedpreposterously alive and active, flitting their gay colours throughthe sunbeams, and crawling over the baked dust in the full swingand pursuit of their several businesses; the flies engaged inHeaven knows what, and the fly-catchers busy with the flies. Beasts and humans showed no such indifference to the temperature;the sun would have to slant yet further downward before the earthwould become a fit arena for their revived activities. In thesheltered basement of a wayside rest-house a gang of nativehammock-bearers slept or chattered drowsily through the last hoursof the long mid-day halt; wide awake, yet almost motionless in thethrall of a heavy lassitude, their European master sat alone in anupper chamber, staring out through a narrow window-opening at thenative village, spreading away in thick clusters of huts girtaround with cultivated vegetation. It seemed a vast human ant-hill, which would presently be astir with its teeming human life, as though the Sun God in his last departing stride had roused itwith a careless kick. Even as Comus watched he could see thebeginnings of the evening's awakening. Women, squatting in frontof their huts, began to pound away at the rice or maize that wouldform the evening meal, girls were collecting their water potspreparatory to a walk down to the river, and enterprising goatsmade tentative forays through gaps in the ill-kept fences ofneighbouring garden plots; their hurried retreats showed that hereat least someone was keeping alert and wakeful vigil. Behind a hutperched on a steep hillside, just opposite to the rest-house, twoboys were splitting wood with a certain languid industry; furtherdown the road a group of dogs were leisurely working themselves upto quarrelling pitch. Here and there, bands of evil-looking pigsroamed about, busy with foraging excursions that came unpleasantlyathwart the border-line of scavenging. And from the trees thatbounded and intersected the village rose the horrible, tireless, spiteful-sounding squawking of the iron-throated crows. 

Comus sat and watched it all with a sense of growing achingdepression. It was so utterly trivial to his eyes, so devoid ofinterest, and yet it was so real, so serious, so implacable in itscontinuity. The brain grew tired with the thought of its unceasingreproduction. It had all gone on, as it was going on now, by theside of the great rushing swirling river, this tilling and plantingand harvesting, marketing and store-keeping, feast-making andfetish-worship and love-making, burying and giving in marriage, child-bearing and child-rearing, all this had been going on, in theshimmering, blistering heat and the warm nights, while he had beena youngster at school, dimly recognising Africa as a division ofthe earth's surface that it was advisable to have a certain noddingacquaintance with. 

It had been going on in all its trifling detail, all its seriousintensity, when his father and his grandfather in their day hadbeen little boys at school, it would go on just as intently as everlong after Comus and his generation had passed away, just as theshadows would lengthen and fade under the mulberry trees in thatfar away English garden, round the old stone fountain where aleaden otter for ever preyed on a leaden salmon. 

Comus rose impatiently from his seat, and walked wearily across thehut to another window-opening which commanded a broad view of theriver. There was something which fascinated and then depressed onein its ceaseless hurrying onward sweep, its tons of water rushingon for all time, as long as the face of the earth should remainunchanged. On its further shore could be seen spread out atintervals other teeming villages, with their cultivated plots andpasture clearings, their moving dots which meant cattle and goatsand dogs and children. And far up its course, lost in the forestgrowth that fringed its banks, were hidden away yet more villages, human herding-grounds where men dwelt and worked and bartered, squabbled and worshipped, sickened and perished, while the riverwent by with its endless swirl and rush of gleaming waters. Onecould well understand primitive early races making propitiatorysacrifices to the spirit of a great river on whose shores theydwelt. Time and the river were the two great forces that seemed tomatter here. 

It was almost a relief to turn back to that other outlook and watchthe village life that was now beginning to wake in earnest. Theprocession of water-fetchers had formed itself in a long chatteringline that stretched river-wards. Comus wondered how many tens ofthousands of times that procession had been formed since first thevillage came into existence. They had been doing it while he wasplaying in the cricket-fields at school, while he was spendingChristmas holidays in Paris, while he was going his careless roundof theatres, dances, suppers and card-parties, just as they weredoing it now; they would be doing it when there was no one alivewho remembered Comus Bassington. This thought recurred again andagain with painful persistence, a morbid growth arising in partfrom his loneliness. 

Staring dumbly out at the toiling sweltering human ant-hill Comusmarvelled how missionary enthusiasts could labour hopefully at thework of transplanting their religion, with its homegrown accretionsof fatherly parochial benevolence, in this heat-blistered, fever-scourged wilderness, where men lived like groundbait and died likeflies. Demons one might believe in, if one did not hold one'simagination in healthy check, but a kindly all-managing God, never. Somewhere in the west country of England Comus had an uncle wholived in a rose-smothered rectory and taught a wholesome gentle-hearted creed that expressed itself in the spirit of "Little lamb, who made thee?" and faithfully reflected the beautiful homelyChrist-child sentiment of Saxon Europe. What a far away, unrealfairy story it all seemed here in this West African land, where thebodies of men were of as little account as the bubbles that floatedon the oily froth of the great flowing river, and where it requireda stretch of wild profitless imagination to credit them withundying souls. In the life he had come from Comus had beenaccustomed to think of individuals as definite masterfulpersonalities, making their several marks on the circumstances thatrevolved around them; they did well or ill, or in most casesindifferently, and were criticised, praised, blamed, thwarted ortolerated, or given way to. In any case, humdrum or outstanding, they had their spheres of importance, little or big. Theydominated a breakfast table or harassed a Government, according totheir capabilities or opportunities, or perhaps they merely hadirritating mannerisms. At any rate it seemed highly probable thatthey had souls. Here a man simply made a unit in an unnumberedpopulation, an inconsequent dot in a loosely-compiled deathroll. Even his own position as a white man exalted conspicuously above ahorde of black natives did not save Comus from the depressing senseof nothingness which his first experience of fever had thrown overhim. He was a lost, soulless body in this great uncaring land; ifhe died another would take his place, his few effects would beinventoried and sent down to the coast, someone else would finishoff any tea or whisky that he left behind--that would be all. 

It was nearly time to be starting towards the next halting placewhere he would dine or at any rate eat something. But thelassitude which the fever had bequeathed him made the tedium oftravelling through interminable forest-tracks a weariness to bedeferred as long as possible. The bearers were nothing loth to letanother half-hour or so slip by, and Comus dragged a batteredpaper-covered novel from the pocket of his coat. It was a storydealing with the elaborately tangled love affairs of a surpassinglyuninteresting couple, and even in his almost bookless state Comushad not been able to plough his way through more than two-thirds ofits dull length; bound up with the cover, however, were some pagesof advertisement, and these the exile scanned with a hungryintentness that the romance itself could never have commanded. Thename of a shop, of a street, the address of a restaurant, came tohim as a bitter reminder of the world he had lost, a world that ateand drank and flirted, gambled and made merry, a world that debatedand intrigued and wire-pulled, fought or compromised politicalbattles--and recked nothing of its outcasts wandering throughforest paths and steamy swamps or lying in the grip of fever. Comus read and re-read those few lines of advertisement, just as hetreasured a much-crumpled programme of a first-night performance atthe Straw Exchange Theatre; they seemed to make a little more realthe past that was already so shadowy and so utterly remote. For amoment he could almost capture the sensation of being once again inthose haunts that he loved; then he looked round and pushed thebook wearily from him. The steaming heat, the forest, the rushingriver hemmed him in on all sides. 

The two boys who had been splitting wood ceased from their laboursand straightened their backs; suddenly the smaller of the two gavethe other a resounding whack with a split lath that he still heldin his hand, and flew up the hillside with a scream of laughter andsimulated terror, the bigger lad following in hot pursuit. Up anddown the steep bush-grown slope they raced and twisted and dodged, coming sometimes to close quarters in a hurricane of squeals andsmacks, rolling over and over like fighting kittens, and breakingaway again to start fresh provocation and fresh pursuit. Now andagain they would lie for a time panting in what seemed the laststage of exhaustion, and then they would be off in another wildscamper, their dusky bodies flitting through the bushes, disappearing and reappearing with equal suddenness. Presently twogirls of their own age, who had returned from the water-fetching, sprang out on them from ambush, and the four joined in one joyousgambol that lit up the hillside with shrill echoes and glimpses offlying limbs. Comus sat and watched, at first with an amusedinterest, then with a returning flood of depression and heart-ache. Those wild young human kittens represented the joy of life, he wasthe outsider, the lonely alien, watching something in which hecould not join, a happiness in which he had no part or lot. Hewould pass presently out of the village and his bearers' feet wouldleave their indentations in the dust; that would be his mostpermanent memorial in this little oasis of teeming life. And thatother life, in which he once moved with such confident sense of hisown necessary participation in it, how completely he had passed outof it. Amid all its laughing throngs, its card parties and race-meetings and country-house gatherings, he was just a mere name, remembered or forgotten, Comus Bassington, the boy who went away. He had loved himself very well and never troubled greatly whetheranyone else really loved him, and now he realised what he had madeof his life. And at the same time he knew that if his chance wereto come again he would throw it away just as surely, just asperversely. Fate played with him with loaded dice; he would losealways. 

One person in the whole world had cared for him, for longer than hecould remember, cared for him perhaps more than he knew, cared forhim perhaps now. But a wall of ice had mounted up between him andher, and across it there blew that cold-breath that chills or killsaffection. 

The words of a well-known old song, the wistful cry of a lostcause, rang with insistent mockery through his brain:

"Better loved you canna be, Will ye ne'er come back again?"

If it was love that was to bring him back he must be an exile forever. His epitaph in the mouths of those that remembered him wouldbe, Comus Bassington, the boy who never came back. 

And in his unutterable loneliness he bowed his head on his arms, that he might not see the joyous scrambling frolic on yonderhillside. 

CHAPTER XVII

The bleak rawness of a grey December day held sway over St. James'sPark, that sanctuary of lawn and tree and pool, into which thebourgeois innovator has rushed ambitiously time and again, to findthat he must take the patent leather from off his feet, for theground on which he stands is hallowed ground. 

In the lonely hour of early afternoon, when the workers had goneback to their work, and the loiterers were scarcely yet gatheredagain, Francesca Bassington made her way restlessly along thestretches of gravelled walk that bordered the ornamental water. The overmastering unhappiness that filled her heart and stifled herthinking powers found answering echo in her surroundings. There isa sorrow that lingers in old parks and gardens that the busystreets have no leisure to keep by them; the dead must bury theirdead in Whitehall or the Place de la Concorde, but there arequieter spots where they may still keep tryst with the living andintrude the memory of their bygone selves on generations that havealmost forgotten them. Even in tourist-trampled Versailles thedesolation of a tragedy that cannot die haunts the terraces andfountains like a bloodstain that will not wash out; in the SaxonGarden at Warsaw there broods the memory of long-dead things, coeval with the stately trees that shade its walks, and with thecarp that swim to-day in its ponds as they doubtless swam therewhen "Lieber Augustin" was a living person and not as yet animmortal couplet. And St. James's Park, with its lawns and walksand waterfowl, harbours still its associations with a bygone orderof men and women, whose happiness and sadness are woven into itshistory, dim and grey as they were once bright and glowing, likethe faded pattern worked into the fabric of an old tapestry. Itwas here that Francesca had made her way when the intolerableinaction of waiting had driven her forth from her home. She waswaiting for that worst news of all, the news which does not killhope, because there has been none to kill, but merely endssuspense. An early message had said that Comus was ill, whichmight have meant much or little; then there had come that morning acablegram which only meant one thing; in a few hours she would geta final message, of which this was the preparatory forerunner. Shealready knew as much as that awaited message would tell her. Sheknew that she would never see Comus again, and she knew now thatshe loved him beyond all things that the world could hold for her. It was no sudden rush of pity or compunction that clouded herjudgment or gilded her recollection of him; she saw him as he was, the beautiful, wayward, laughing boy, with his naughtiness, hisexasperating selfishness, his insurmountable folly andperverseness, his cruelty that spared not even himself, and as hewas, as he always had been, she knew that he was the one thing thatthe Fates had willed that she should love. She did not stop toaccuse or excuse herself for having sent him forth to what was toprove his death. It was, doubtless, right and reasonable that heshould have gone out there, as hundreds of other men went out, inpursuit of careers; the terrible thing was that he would never comeback. The old cruel hopelessness that had always chequered herpride and pleasure in his good looks and high spirits and fitfullycharming ways had dealt her a last crushing blow; he was dyingsomewhere thousands of miles away without hope of recovery, withouta word of love to comfort him, and without hope or shred ofconsolation she was waiting to hear of the end. The end; that lastdreadful piece of news which would write "nevermore" across hislife and hers. 

The lively bustle in the streets had been a torture that she couldnot bear. It wanted but two days to Christmas and the gaiety ofthe season, forced or genuine, rang out everywhere. Christmasshopping, with its anxious solicitude or self-centred absorption, overspread the West End and made the pavements scarcely passable atcertain favoured points. Proud parents, parcel-laden andsurrounded by escorts of their young people, compared notes withone another on the looks and qualities of their offspring andexchanged loud hurried confidences on the difficulty or successwhich each had experienced in getting the right presents for oneand all. Shouted directions where to find this or that article atits best mingled with salvos of Christmas good wishes. ToFrancesca, making her way frantically through the carnival ofhappiness with that lonely deathbed in her eyes, it had seemed acallous mockery of her pain; could not people remember that therewere crucifixions as well as joyous birthdays in the world? Everymother that she passed happy in the company of a fresh-lookingclean-limbed schoolboy son sent a fresh stab at her heart, and thevery shops had their bitter memories. There was the tea-shop wherehe and she had often taken tea together, or, in the days of theirestrangement, sat with their separate friends at separate tables. There were other shops where extravagantly-incurred bills hadfurnished material for those frequently recurring scenes ofrecrimination, and the Colonial outfitters, where, as he hadphrased it in whimsical mockery, he had bought grave-clothes forhis burying-alive. The "oubliette!" She remembered the bitterpetulant name he had flung at his destined exile. There at leasthe had been harder on himself than the Fates were pleased to will;never, as long as Francesca lived and had a brain that served her, would she be able to forget. That narcotic would never be given toher. Unrelenting, unsparing memory would be with her always toremind her of those last days of tragedy. Already her mind wasdwelling on the details of that ghastly farewell dinner-party andrecalling one by one the incidents of ill-omen that had marked it;how they had sat down seven to table and how one liqueur glass inthe set of seven had been shivered into fragments; how her glasshad slipped from her hand as she raised it to her lips to wishComus a safe return; and the strange, quiet hopelessness of LadyVeula's "good-bye"; she remembered now how it had chilled andfrightened her at the moment. 

The park was filling again with its floating population ofloiterers, and Francesca's footsteps began to take a homewarddirection. Something seemed to tell her that the message for whichshe waited had arrived and was lying there on the hall table. Herbrother, who had announced his intention of visiting her early inthe afternoon would have gone by now; he knew nothing of thismorning's bad news--the instinct of a wounded animal to creep awayby itself had prompted her to keep her sorrow from him as long aspossible. His visit did not necessitate her presence; he wasbringing an Austrian friend, who was compiling a work on theFranco-Flemish school of painting, to inspect the Van der Meulen, which Henry Greech hoped might perhaps figure as an illustration inthe book. They were due to arrive shortly after lunch, andFrancesca had left a note of apology, pleading an urgent engagementelsewhere. As she turned to make her way across the Mall into theGreen Park a gentle voice hailed her from a carriage that was justdrawing up by the sidewalk. Lady Caroline Benaresq had beenfavouring the Victoria Memorial with a long unfriendly stare. 

"In primitive days, " she remarked, "I believe it was the fashionfor great chiefs and rulers to have large numbers of theirrelatives and dependents killed and buried with them; in these moreenlightened times we have invented quite another way of making agreat Sovereign universally regretted. My dear Francesca, " shebroke off suddenly, catching the misery that had settled in theother's eyes, "what is the matter? Have you had bad news from outthere?"

"I am waiting for very bad news, " said Francesca, and Lady Carolineknew what had happened. 

"I wish I could say something; I can't. " Lady Caroline spoke in aharsh, grunting voice that few people had ever heard her use. 

Francesca crossed the Mall and the carriage drove on. 

"Heaven help that poor woman, " said Lady Caroline; which was, forher, startlingly like a prayer. 

As Francesca entered the hall she gave a quick look at the table;several packages, evidently an early batch of Christmas presents, were there, and two or three letters. On a salver by itself wasthe cablegram for which she had waited. A maid, who had evidentlybeen on the lookout for her, brought her the salver. The servantswere well aware of the dreadful thing that was happening, and therewas pity on the girl's face and in her voice. 

"This came for you ten minutes ago, ma'am, and Mr. Greech has beenhere, ma'am, with another gentleman, and was sorry you weren't athome. Mr. Greech said he would call again in about half-an-hour. "

Francesca carried the cablegram unopened into the drawing-room andsat down for a moment to think. There was no need to read it yet, for she knew what she would find written there. For a few pitifulmoments Comus would seem less hopelessly lost to her if she put offthe reading of that last terrible message. She rose and crossedover to the windows and pulled down the blinds, shutting out thewaning December day, and then reseated herself. Perhaps in theshadowy half-light her boy would come and sit with her again forawhile and let her look her last upon his loved face; she couldnever touch him again or hear his laughing, petulant voice, butsurely she might look on her dead. And her starving eyes saw onlythe hateful soulless things of bronze and silver and porcelain thatshe had set up and worshipped as gods; look where she would theywere there around her, the cold ruling deities of the home thatheld no place for her dead boy. He had moved in and out amongthem, the warm, living, breathing thing that had been hers to love, and she had turned her eyes from that youthful comely figure toadore a few feet of painted canvas, a musty relic of a longdeparted craftsman. And now he was gone from her sight, from hertouch, from her hearing for ever, without even a thought to flashbetween them for all the dreary years that she should live, andthese things of canvas and pigment and wrought metal would staywith her. They were her soul. And what shall it profit a man ifhe save his soul and slay his heart in torment?

On a small table by her side was Mervyn Quentock's portrait of her--the prophetic symbol of her tragedy; the rich dead harvest ofunreal things that had never known life, and the bleak thrall ofblack unending Winter, a Winter in which things died and knew nore-awakening. 

Francesca turned to the small envelope lying in her lap; veryslowly she opened it and read the short message. Then she sat numband silent for a long, long time, or perhaps only for minutes. Thevoice of Henry Greech in the hall, enquiring for her, called her toherself. Hurriedly she crushed the piece of paper out of sight; hewould have to be told, of course, but just yet her pain seemed toodreadful to be laid bare. "Comus is dead" was a sentence beyondher power to speak. 

"I have bad news for you, Francesca, I'm sorry to say, " Henryannounced. Had he heard, too?

"Henneberg has been here and looked at the picture, " he continued, seating himself by her side, "and though he admired it immensely asa work of art he gave me a disagreeable surprise by assuring methat it's not a genuine Van der Meulen. It's a splendid copy, butstill, unfortunately, only a copy. "

Henry paused and glanced at his sister to see how she had taken theunwelcome announcement. Even in the dim light he caught some ofthe anguish in her eyes. 

"My dear Francesca, " he said soothingly, laying his handaffectionately on her arm, "I know that this must be a greatdisappointment to you, you've always set such store by thispicture, but you mustn't take it too much to heart. Thesedisagreeable discoveries come at times to most picture fanciers andowners. Why, about twenty per cent. Of the alleged Old Masters inthe Louvre are supposed to be wrongly attributed. And there areheaps of similar cases in this country. Lady Dovecourt was tellingme the other day that they simply daren't have an expert in toexamine the Van Dykes at Columbey for fear of unwelcomedisclosures. And besides, your picture is such an excellent copythat it's by no means without a value of its own. You must getover the disappointment you naturally feel, and take aphilosophical view of the matter. . . "

Francesca sat in stricken silence, crushing the folded morsel ofpaper tightly in her hand and wondering if the thin, cheerful voicewith its pitiless, ghastly mockery of consolation would never stop.