The island Pharisees ...

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The island Pharisees

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The Island Pharisees

The

Island Pharisees

By

John Galsworthy

(John Sinjohn)
Author of "A Man of Devon,' 'Villa Rubein,' etc.

' But this is worshipful society '

King John

New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons

London : William Heinemann

1904

PI

CONTENTS

PART I

THE TOWN

PACE

I. SOCIETY - 3

II. ANTONIA 14

HI. A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN 2 2

IV. THE PLAY 31

V. THE GOOD CITIZEN 42

VI. MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT - 50

VII. THE CLUB 60

VIII. THE WEDDING 70

IX. THE DINNER 76

X. AN ALIEN 82

XI. THE VISION 90

XII. ROTTEN ROW lOO

XIII. AN 'AT home' 106

XIV. THE NIGHT CLUB I16
XV. POLE TO POLE 125

PART II

THE COUNTRY

XVI. THE INDIAN CIVILIAN 1 39

XVII. A PARSON 148

XVIII. ACADEMIC 1 60

V

XXIX. ON THE WINO
XXX. THE LADY FROM CEYOND

XXXn. WILDERNESS
XXXIH. THE END

171

vi CONTENTS

XIX. AN INCIDENT

XX. HOLM OAKS I 84

XXI. ENGLISH - 196

XXII. THE COUNTRY HOUSE 204

XXIII. THE STAINED-GLASS MAN

XXIV. PARADISE
XXV. THE RIDE

XXVI. THE BIRD OF PASSAGE
XXVII. SUB ROSA

215
223

229

- 247
XXVIII. THE RIVER 260

265

27s
XXXI. THE STORM 284

291

PART I

THE TOWN

CHAPTER I

SOCIETY

A QUIET, well-dressed man named Shelton, with a
brown face and a short, fair beard, stood by the book-
stall at Dover Station. He was about to journey up to
London, and had placed his bag on a corner seat of a
third-class carriage.

After his long travel, the flat-vowelled voice of the
bookstall clerk offering the latest novel sounded de-
lightful — delightful the independent answers of a tre-
mendous guard, the stolid farewells of a man and his
wife. The loose-jointed porters trundling their barrows,
the grayness of the station, and the sulky good-humour
that clung about the people, the air, the voices, all gave
him a sensation of positive comfort. Meanwhile he
vacillated between the purchase of ' Market Harborough,'
which he had read, and thought he was certain to enjoy
a second time, and Carlyle's ' French Revolution,'
which he had not read, and was doubtful of enjoying ;
he felt that he ought to buy the latter, but did not like
giving up the former. While he hesitated thus, with
his hands in his pockets, and on his face a look of com-
posure conferred rather by education than by nature,
his carriage was filling ; so, hurriedly buying both books,
he took up a position from which he could defend his

3 I — 2

4 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

rights. ' Nothing,' he thought, watching his bag, ' shows
people up like travelling.'

The carriage was very full, and placing his bag in
the rack, he unfolded his paper. At the moment of
starting, however, yet another passenger, a girl with a
pale face, entered.

' I was a fool to go third,' thought Shelton, taking
stock of his neighbours from behind the journal.

They were seven in number. A grizzled rustic sat
in the far corner ; his empty pipe, bowl downwards,
seemed to jut like a handle out of his visage all-bleared
with the smear of nothingness that grows over the
faces of those who pass their lives in the full current of
hard facts. Next to him, a red-faced man with broad
shoulders and a gray-haired, hatchet-faced person were
discussing the state of their gardens ; and Shelton
watched their eyes till it occurred to him how curious
the look in them was — a watchful friendliness, a species
of allied distrust, and their voices, cheerful, even jovial,
seemed to carry with them an echo of caution. His
glance strayed off to the seat opposite, and almost re-
bounded from the semi-Roman, slightly cross, and
wholly satisfied countenance of a stout lady in a thunder-
and-lightning dress, who was reading the Strand Maga-
zine, while her sleek, plump hand, freed from a black
glove, and adorned with a thick gold watch-bracelet,
reposed upon her thigh in a capable curve. A younger,
bright-cheeked, self-conscious female was sitting next
her, the expression in whose eyes drew Shelton 's atten-
tion to the pale girl who had just got in.

' There's something about that girl,' he thought,
' that they don't like.' Her brown eyes certainly looked
frightened, and her clothes had a foreign cut. He

SOCIETY 5

withdrew his gaze, and suddenly met the glance of a
pair of eyes opposite ; prominent and blue, they stared
earnestly for a second with refined roguery from above
a thin, lopsided nose, and were subtly averted. They
gave him the impression that he was being at once
judged, mocked, enticed, and initiated. His own gaze
did not so easily fall ; this sanguine face, with its two
days' growth of i"eddish beard, long nose, and full,
ironical lips, puzzled him. ' What a cynical face !' he
thought, and then, ' What a sensitive face !' and again,
' What a cynical face !'

The young man to whom it belonged sat with his
legs parted at the knees, his dusty trouser-ends and
boots slanting back under the seat, his yellow finger-
tips crisped as if rolling a cigarette. A peculiar air of
detachment encircled his youthful, shabby figure, and
not a vestige of luggage decorated the rack above his
head.

The frightened girl was seated next this pagan per-
sonality ; it was possibly the lack of ' respectability ' in
his appearance which caused her to select him for her
confidant.

' Monsieur,' she asked, 'do you speak French ?'

' Perfectly.'

' Then perhaps you can tell me where they collect
tickets ?'

The young man shook his head.

' No,' said he, in good French, ' I'm a foreigner.'

The girl sighed. Shelton could not help listening.

' But what is the matter, mademoiselle ?' asked the
young foreigner.

The girl did not reply, twisting her hands on an old
brown bag in her lap. A momentary uneasiness had

6 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

stolen over the carriage, such as steals upon animals
at the first scent of danger, and all eyes were turned
towards the figures of the two foreigners.

' Yes,' broke out the voice of the red-faced man
assertively, 'he was a bit squiffy that evening — old
Tom.'

' Ah !' replied his neighbour, ' he would be.'

Something seemed suddenly to have united their eyes
and annihilated that mutual look of friendly distrust.
The plump, sleek hand upon the thigh of the Roman-
faced lady curved convulsively, and the movement cor-
responded to a sensation in Shelton's heart. It was
almost as if hand and heart feared to be asked for
something.

' Monsieur,' said the girl, with a tremble in her voice,
' I am very unhappy ; can you tell me what to do ? I
had no money for a ticket.'

A flicker passed over the young foreigner's face.

' Yes ?' he said ; ' that might happen to anybody.'

' I don't know what they will do to me,' murmured
the girl.

' Don't lose courage,' said the young man, sliding his
prominent eyes from left to right, and finally resting
them on Shelton, ' although I don't as yet see 3'our
way out.'

' Oh, monsieur!' sighed the girl, and though it was
obvious that no one but Shelton understood their
conversation, a shiver of withdrawal ran round the
carriage.

' I wish I could assist you,' said the young foreigner,

' but unfortunately- ' He shrugged his shoulders, and

again his eyes rested on Shelton.

The latter involuntarily put his hand in his pocket.

SOCIETY 7

' Can I be of any use ?' he asked.

' Certainly, sir ; you could render this young lady the
greatest possible service by lending her the money for
a ticket.'

Shelton abstracted a half-sovereign, which the young
foreigner took. Passing it over to the girl, he said :

' A thousand thanks — voild uue belle action !'

The misgivings which follow the bestowal of casual
charity crowded up in Shelton's mind ; he was ashamed
of having them, and again ashamed of not having them,
and stole covert looks at the young foreigner, who had
fallen into conversation with the girl in a language that
might have been Flemish. In spite of its essential
vagabondism, the fellow's face showed a subtle spirit,
an ironical fortitude strange to the normal civilized
countenance, and in turning from it to the other in-
mates of the carriage, Shelton was conscious of a sense
of revolt — a contempt for, and questioning of, something
he could not define. Leaning back with half-closed
eyes, he tried to diagnose this new sensation. He
found it disconcerting that the behaviour of his neigh-
bours lacked anything he could lay hold of and secretly
abuse. They continued their conversation upon their
own affairs with admirable and slightly self-conscious
phlegm, yet he knew as well as if each one had taken
him into confidence that the shady incident at his
end of the carriage had shaken them privately. Some-
thing unsettling to their notions of propriety — something
dangerous and destructive of their complacency had
occurred, than which nothing is less forgiveable. Each
had a different way, humorous, philosophical, con-
temptuous, sour, or sly, of expressing this resentment,
and it was only one of those rare flashes of insight

8 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

vouchsafed to men when they brave the perils of intro-
spection which caused Shelton to see that at the
bottom of all their minds, even of his own mind, the
feehng was the same. Precisely because he shared
their resentment was he angry with them and angry
with himself, and, as though fascinated, his eyes be-
came glued to that plump, sleek, ringed hand resting
on the thigh. The insulation and complacency of its
pale skin, the passive self-righteousness of its curve, and
the prim separation from the others of the fat little
iinger, acquired a wholly unaccountable importance.
It embodied the attitude of his fellow-passengers, the
attitude of Society, for he knew that, however repulsive
the notion to his aristocratic mind, every assemblage of
six or eight persons, even in a third-class carriage, con-
tained the kernel of Society.

But being in love, and recently engaged to be married,
Shelton had a right to be immune from dissatisfaction
of any kind, and he returned to the memory of the cool,
fair face, the quick movements, and brilliant smile that
now in his probationary exile haunted his imagination ;
he took out his fiancee's last letter, but the voice of the
young foreigner addressing him in his rapid French
caused him abruptly to put it back.

' From what she tells me, sir,' he said, bending
forward to be out of hearing of the girl, ' hers is a very
unhappy case. I should have been only too glad to help
her myself, but, as you see ' — and he made a gesture by
which Shelton observed that he had parted from his
waistcoat — ' I'm not Rothschild. She's been aban-
doned by the man who brought her over to Dover under
promise of marriage. You see ' — by a subtle flicker of
his eyes he indicated the two ladies who had edged

SOCIETY 9

away from their neighbour — ' they take good care not
to let their garments touch her. They are virtuous
women. How fine it is to have virtue, monsieur ! and
finer to know you have it, especially when you're never
likely to be tempted.'

Shelton was unable to repress a smile ; and when he
smiled his face grew soft.

' Haven't you observed, sir,' went on the young
foreigner, ' that those who by temperament and circum-
stance are worst fitted to pass judgment are always
the first to condemn ? The judgments of Society are
always childish, seeing that it's composed for the most
part of individuals who've never smelt the fire. And
look at this : those who have money run too great a risk
of having to part with it if they don't accuse the penni-
less of being rogues and imbeciles.'

Shelton was startled, not only by an expression of
philosophy from an utter stranger in poor clothes, but
at this singular wording of his own thoughts ; stifling
his sense of the unusual for the sake of the queer attrac-
tion the young man inspired, he remarked :

' I suppose you're a stranger over here ?'

' I've been in England some months, but not yet in
London,' replied the other. ' I count on doing some
good there — it's about time !' An ironical smile,
pathetic and bitter, appeared for a second on his lips.
' It won't be my fault if I fail. You are English,
sir?'

Shelton nodded.

' Forgive my asking ; your voice lacks something I've
nearly always remarked in the English : a kind of —
comment cela s'appelle — cocksureness, which comes from
your great national quality.'

10 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' And what is that ?' asked Shelton, with some
curiosity.

' Complacency,' repHed the young foreigner.

' Complacency !' repeated Shelton ; ' do you call that
a great quality ?'

' I should rather say, monsieur, a great defect in what
is always a great people. You are certainly the most
highly-civilized nation on the earth, and you suffer a
little from the fact. If I were an English preacher my
one desire would be to prick the heart of your com-
placency.'

Shelton thrust his hands into his coat-pockets, and
pressed them against his sides as if to force himself to
consider this impertinent suggestion.

'Hum!' he said at last, 'you'd be unpopular; be-
sides, I don't know that we're any worse than other
nations.'

The young foreigner made a gesture as if he deferred
to the opinion.

' In effect,' said he, ' it's a sufficiently widespread
disease. Look at these people here' — and with a rapid
glance he indicated the inmates of the carriage, who
were very average persons — 'what have they done to
warrant their making a virtuous nose at those who don't
walk as they do ? That old rustic, perhaps, is different
— he never thinks at all — but look at those two who are
always occupied \\'ith stupidities like the price of
potatoes, the prospects of hops, what George is doing,
a thousand things of that sort — you've only to look at
their faces ; I come of the bourgeoisie myself — have they
ever shown proof of a single quality that gives them the
right to be pleased with themselves ? No fear ! Out-
side their potatoes they understand nothing, and what

SOCIETY II

they don't understand they dread and despise — there
are milHons of that breed. Voila la Societe ! The sole
quahty these people have shown proof of possessing is
cowardice. I was educated by the Jesuits,' he con-
cluded ; ' it's given me a habit of thinking.'

Under ordinary circumstances, perhaps, Shelton
would have murmured in a well-bred way : ' Ah ! quite
so,' and taken refuge behind the columns of the Daily
Telegraph. In place of this, for some reason that he
himself did not understand, he looked at the young
foreigner, and asked :

' Why do you say all this to me ?'
The tramp — for by his boots he could hardly have
been better — hesitated.

' When you've travelled like me,' he said apologeti-
cally, as if resolved to speak the truth, ' you acquire an
instinct in choosing to whom and how you may speak.
Necessity makes the law ; if you want to live you must
learn all that sort of thing to make face against life.'

Shelton, who himself possessed a certain subtlety,
could not choose but observe the delicate compliment
implied in these words. It was like saying: 'I'm not
afraid of you misunderstanding me, and thinking me a
rascal just because I confess to a professional study of
human nature.'

' Is there nothing to be done for that poor girl ?' he
asked, reverting with good practical sense to the subject
that had started their conversation.

His new acquaintance shrugged his shoulders.
' A broken jug,' said he ; 'you can't mend her. She's
going to a cousin in London to see if she can get help ;
you've given her the means of getting there — it's all you
can do. One knows very well what '11 become of her.'

12 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

Shelton looked grave.

'Oh!' he said warmly, 'that's horrible! Couldn't
she be induced to go back to her family ? I should be
glad to '

The foreigner shook his head.

' Mon cher monsieur,' he said bitterly, ' you evidently
have not yet had occasion to know what the " family "
is like. "The family" does not like damaged goods ;
it will have nothing to say to sons whose hands have
been in the till or unmarriageable daughters. What
the devil would they do with her ? Better to put a
stone round her neck and drown her at once. All the
world is Christian, but Christian and good Samaritan
are not quite the same thing.'

Shelton looked at the girl, who had remained motion-
less, with her hands crossed on her bag, and a burning
sense of the unfairness of life rose within him.

' Yes,' said the young foreigner, as if reading these
thoughts, ' what's called virtue is pretty nearly all luck,
isn't it ?' and the eyes which he rolled round the
carriage expressed some such comment as this : ' Con-
ventions ? Ah ! have them — have them by all means
— but don't look like peacocks because you preserve
them ; it's all cowardice and luck, my friends — all
cowardice and luck !'

' Look here,' said Shelton, ' I'll give her my address,
and if she wants to go back to her family she can write
to me.'

' She'll never go back ; she won't have the courage.'

Shelton caught the cringing, inquisitive glance of the
girl's eyes ; in the pathetic droop of her lip there was
something sensuous, and the conviction that the j'oung
man's words were true stole on him.

SOCIETY 13

He hurriedly tore a leaf out of his pocket-book.

' I had better not give them my private address,'
he thought, glancing again at the faces opposite ; and
he vi^rote down the following : ' Richard Paramor Shelton,
c/o Paramor and Herring, 198, Lincoln's Inn Fields.'

' You're very good, sir. My name is Louis Ferrand ;
no address at present. I'll make her understand ; she's
half stupefied just now.'

Shelton returned to the perusal of his paper, too
disturbed to read; the young foreigner's words kept
recurring to him. He raised his eyes. The plump
hand of the Roman-faced lady still rested upon her
thigh, but it had been recased in a black glove with
large white stitching. A frown contracted her brow,
her gaze was fixed upon him suspiciously, as if in some
way he had outraged the proprieties.

' He didn't get anything out of me,' said the voice of
the red -faced man, emerging triumphantly from the
ruck of a conversation on tax-gatherers. The train
whistled loudly, and Shelton glued his eyes once more
to his paper. This time he crossed his legs, firmly
determined to enjoy the account of a murder ; but once
again he found himself looking up at the long-nosed,
mocking face opposite. ' That fellow,' he thought, ' has
seen and felt ten times more than I, though he must be
ten years younger.'

He turned for distraction to the landscape, jumbling
up the April clouds, the trim hedgerows and homely
coverts with all sorts of strange ideas. He was dis-
contented with himself; the conversation he had just
had, the whole personality of the young foreigner, had a
curious effect on him. It was as though he had made a
start in some fresh journey through the fields of thought.

CHAPTER II

ANTONIA

Five years before the journey just described Shelton
had stood one afternoon on the barge of his old college
towards the end of the ' eights.' He had been ' down '
from Oxford for some years, but the May races rarely
failed to attract him.

The boats were passing, and in the usual rush to the
side of the barge his arm came into contact with a soft
young shoulder. He saw close to him a strip of a girl
with fair hair knotted in a ribbon, whose face was eager
with excitement. The pointed chin and long neck, the
fluffy hair on the forehead, the quick gestures, the calm
strenuousness of the gray-blue eyes, made a vivid impres-
sion on him.

' Oh, we must bump them !' he heard her sigh.

' Do you know my people, Shelton ?' said a voice at
his elbow ; and he received in his palm a touch from
the girl's shy, impatient hand; the warmer fingers of
a lady with round, practical, benevolent eyes like a
hare's; the dry, aristocratic grip of a gentleman with
a thin, slightly arched nose, and a quizzical, pale-
brown face.

'Are you the Mr. Shelton who used to play the
" bones " at Eton ?' said the lady. ' Oh, we so often

14

ANTONIA 15

heard of you from Bernard ! He was your fag, wasn't
he ? How distressin' it is to see these poor boys in the
boats !'

' Mother, they like it !' cried the girl.

' Antonia ought to be rowing herself,' said her father,
Mr. Dennant.

Shelton returned with them to the Bishop's Head,
walking beside Antonia through the Christchurch
meadows, and awkwardly telling her uninteresting
details of 'Varsity life. He dined with them that even-
ing, and, when he left, had a feeling in his heart com-
parable to the stimulus from a first glass of champagne.

The Dennants lived at Holm Oaks, within six miles
of Oxford, and he drove over two days later to call
upon them. Amidst the avocations of reading for the
Bar, of cricket, racing, and shooting, it only required
a whiff of some fresh scent — hay, honeysuckle, clover —
to bring before him the face of that girl with its
uncertain colour and its frank, distant eyes. But it
was two years before he saw her again. Then, at an
invitation from Bernard Dennant, he played cricket for
the Manor of Holm Oaks against a neighbouring house-
hold, and in the evening danced on the lawn. The fair
hair was now turned up in an ashy-gold ' bob,' but the
eyes were unchanged. Their steps went together, and
they outlasted every other couple on the slippery grass.
Thence, perhaps, sprang her respect for him ; he was
wiry, a little taller than herself, and seemed to try and
talk about things that interested her. He found out
that she was seventeen, and told her that he himself
was twenty-nine. The following two years Shelton
was at Holm Oaks as often as he was invited ; they
were to him two years of vaguely enchanted games,

i6 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

of cub-hunting, theatricals, and distant sounds of prac-
tised music, during which Antonia's eyes became more
and more friendly, more and more curious, and his own
more and more shy, and schooled, and furtive, and
ardent. Then came his father's death, a voyage round
the world, and that peculiar hour of mixed sensations
when, one March morning, he stepped off the boat
at Marseilles and took the train for Hyeres.

He found her at one of those exclusive establish-
ments amongst the pines where the best English
resort, in common with Americans, Russian princesses,
and Jewish families ; he would not have been shocked
to find her elsewhere, but he would have been surprised.
His sunburnt face and the new beard apologetically
displayed, yet on which he set some undefined value,
were scanned by those gray-blue eyes with rapid
glances, at once more and less friendly. 'Ah!' they
seemed to say, ' here you are ; how glad I am ! But —
what now?'

He was admitted to their sacred table at the table-
d'hote, a small oblong of snowy cloth in an airy alcove,
where the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, Miss Dennant,
and the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, a maiden aunt
with weak lungs, sat twice a day in an atmosphere
of their own. A momentary uneasiness came upon
Shelton the first time he saw them sitting there at
lunch. What was it that gave them their look of
complete detachment ? Certainly nothing affected or
pretentious. Mrs. Dennant was bending over a camera.

' I'm afraid, d'you know, it's under-exposed,' she was
saying.

' What a pity ! The kitten was rather nice !' and the
maiden aunt, placing the knitting of a red silk tie

ANTONIA 17

beside her plate, turned her eyes, with their hungry,
aspiring, and wholly well-bred gaze, on Shelton.

' Look, Auntie,' said Antonia suddenly in her clear,
quick voice, ' there's the funny little man again !'

' Oh,' said the maiden aunt— a smile revealed her
upper teeth, and she negligently looked for the funny
little man (a Frenchman) — ' he's rather nice !'

Shelton did not look for the funny little man ; he
stole a glance that barely reached Antonia's brow,
where the eyebrows took a slight upward slant at the
outer corners, and the hair was still ruffled by her walk
in the wind. From that moment he became her slave.

' Mr. Shelton, do you know anything about these
periscopic binoculars ?' said the voice of Mrs. Dennant ;
' they're splendid for buildin's, but buildin's are so
disappointin'. The thing is to get human interest,
don't you know ;' and her glance wandered absent-
mindedly past Shelton as if in search of human
interest.

' Have you put down what you've taken this morning.
Mother ?'

Mrs. Dennant took from a little leather bag a little
green leather book.

' It's so easy to forget what they're about, don't you
know,' she said, ' and that's so annoyin'.'

Shelton was not again visited by the sense of un-
easiness at their detachment ; he accepted them and
all their works, for there was something sublime about
the way they would leave the dining-room, magnificently
unconscious that they themselves were funny to those
people whom they had negligently found funny during
the meal. And he would follow them out unnecessarily
upright and feeHng like a fool.

2

i8 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

In the ensuing fortnight, chaperoned by the maiden
aunt, for Mrs. Dennant disliked driving, he sat on the
back seat opposite to Antonia throughout a great
number of drives ; he played many sets of tennis with
her ; but it was in the evenings after dinner — those
long evenings on a parquet floor in wicker chairs
dragged as far as possible from the heating apparatus —
that he seemed especially near her. The community
of isolation drew them closer. In place of a friendly
companion he suddenly assumed the proportions of a
living, breathing, necessary being, to whom she could
confide her home-sickness and her aspirations. So
that, even when she sat silent, a slim, long foot
stretched out in front, bending with an air of cool
absorption over one of those pencil sketches which she
would not show him — even then, by her very attitude,
by the sweet freshness that clung about her, by her
quick, offended glances at the strange persons around,
she seemed to acknowledge in some secret way that he
was essential. He was far from realizing anything of
the sort ; his intellectual and observant parts had
been hypnotized, fascinated, even by her defects. The
shght freckling on the bridge of her nose, the slim,
virginal severity of her figure with its narrow hips and
angular elbows, the curve of her long neck — all were
added charms. She had the wind and rain look, a
foretaste of home after his travelling ; and over the
glaring roads, where the palm-tree shadows lay black
and thick enough to be gathered, she seemed to pass
like an English day.

One afternoon he had taken her to play tennis with
some friends at another hotel, and afterwards they
strolled on to look at her favourite view. Down the

ANTONIA ig

Toulon road gardens and hills were bathed in a mist of
apricot light ; evening crispness had stolen into the
air, and the blood, released from the sun's numbing,
ran gladly in the veins. On the right hand of the
road a grotesquely fat Frenchman was playing bowls.
Enormous, unwieldy, busy, pleased, and upright as a
soldier, he delighted Shelton, who found pathos in the
way he nimbly trotted his vast carcass from end to end
of the ground. Antonia threw a single look at the
huge creature, and her face expressed a faint disgust.
Turning to the left, she began running up towards the
ruined tower.

Shelton let her keep in front, watching her leap from
stone to stone and throw back defiant glances when he
pressed behind. She stood at the top with her hand
to her eyes, and he looked up at her. Over the world,
gloriously spread below, she, like a statue, seemed to
rule. The colour was brilliant in her cheeks, her
young bosom heaved, her eyes shone, and the flowing
droop of her long, full sleeves gave to her poised figure
the look of one flying. He pulled himself up and stood
beside her ; his heart choked him, and all the colour
had left his cheeks.

' Antonia,' he said gently, ' I love you.'

She started as if his steadfast whisper had been an
intrusion upon a sacred thought ; but his face must have
had an expression of hunger, for the resentment in her
eyes vanished.

They stood for several minutes without speaking, and
then went home. Shelton's mind remained blank,
painfully revolving the riddle of the fixed colour in
her face. Had he a chance, then ? Was it possible ?
That evening the instinct vouchsafed at times to lovers

2 — 2

20 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

in place of reason caused him to pack his bag and go
to Cannes. On returning, two days later, and approach-
ing the group in the centre of the Winter Garden, the
voice of the maiden aunt reading aloud an extract from
the Morning Post reached him half-way across the
room.

' Don't you think that's rather nice ?' he heard her
ask as he came up.

' Oh, here you are !' said Mrs. Dennant ; ' we were
wonderin' when you were comin' back.'

Shelton slipped into a wicker chair next to Antonia,
who looked up quickly from her sketch-book, put out
a hand, and said nothing.

He watched her bent head, and his eagerness changed
to gloom. With desperate vivacity he sustained five
intolerable minutes of commonplaces ; then once again
the maiden aunt commenced her extracts from the
Morning Post.

A touch on his sleeve startled him. Antonia was
leaning forward, her cheeks crimson above the pallor
of her neck.

' Would you like to see my sketches ?" she asked him.

To Shelton, bending fatuously over the sketches, that

carefully well-bred drawl of the maiden aunt intoning

the carefully well-bred paper became the pleasantest

sound he had ever listened to. . . .

-* * * + *

' My dear Dick,' Mrs. Dennant said to him a fortnight
later, ' we would rather, after you leave here, that you
don't see each other again till July. Of course I know
you count it an engagement and all that, and everybody's
been writin' to congratulate you. But Algie thinks you
ought to give yourselves a chance. Young people don't

ANTONIA 21

always know what they're doin', you know; it's not
long to wait.'

' Three months !' gasped Shelton.

He had to swallow this kindly but practical pill with
the best grace at his command. What else was left for
him ? Antonia had acquiesced in the condition with
what seemed like grave pleasure, as if she expected to
derive benefit.

' It '11 be something to look forward to, Dick,' she
said.

He postponed his departure as long as he decently
could, and it was not until the end of April that he left
for England. She came alone to see him off at the
station. It was drizzling, but her tall, slight figure in
the golf cape looked wonderfully impervious to cold
and rain amongst all the shivering natives. Desperately
he clutched at her hand, which was warm through the
wet glove ; her smile seemed heartless in its brilliancy.
He whispered an agonized ' You will write ?'

' Of course ; don't be so stupid, you old Dick !'

She ran forward a step or two as the train began to
move ; her clear ' Good-bye !' sounded shrill and hard
above the rumble of the wheels. He saw her raise her
hand, the waving of an umbrella, and last of all, vivid
still amongst vanishing shapes, the red splash of her
scarlet tam-o'-shanter.

CHAPTER III

A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN

After his journe}' from Dover, Shelton was still collect-
ing his luggage at Charing Cross Station, when the
unfortunate girl passed him, and in spite of his earnest
desire to say something cheering, he could get nothing
out but a shamefaced smile. Her figure vanished
waveringly into the hurly-burly ; one of his bags had
gone wrong, so all thought of her soon faded from his
mind. His cab, however, overtook the young foreigner
marching along towards Pall Mall with a curious,
lengthy stride — an observant and disillusioned figure.

The first bustle of installation over, time hung heavily
on his hands. July loomed distant, as it were, in some
future century, and Antonia's eyes seemed to beckon
him faintly, hopelessly. She would not even be return-
ing to England for another month.

' - . . I met a young foreigner coming up in the train
from Dover ' (he wrote to her) — ' a curious sort of person
altogether, who seems to have infected me. Everything
here has gone flat and unprofitable ; the only good
things in life are your letters. . . . John Noble dined
with me yesterday ; the poor fellow tried to persuade me
to stand for Parliament. Why on earth should I think
myself fit to legislate for the unhappy wretches one

22

A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN 23

sees about in the streets ? If people's faces are a fair
test of their happiness, I'd rather not feel in any way
responsible. . . .'

The streets, in fact, after his long absence, afforded
him much food for reflection — the curious gray smug-
ness of the passers-by ; the utterly unending bustle ;
the fearful medley of miserable, overworked women
and full-fed men, with leering, bull-beef eyes, whom he
saw everywhere in club windows, on their beats, on box
seats, on the steps of hotels, gossiping or discharging
dilatory duties ; the appalling chaos of hard-eyed,
capable dames with defiant clothes, and white-cheeked,
hunted-looking men ; of splendid creatures in cabs, and
cadging creatures in broken hats — the callous monotony.

One afternoon in May he received the following
letter in the French language :

' 3, Blank Row,

< n/r„ „ .„ c.„ 'Westminster.

' My dear Sir,

' Excuse me for recalling to your memory the

offer of assistance you so kindly made me during the

journey from Dover to London, in which I was so

fortunate as to travel with a man like you. Having

beaten the whole town, ignorant of what wood to

make arrows, nearly at the end of my resources,

my spirit profoundly discouraged, I venture to avail

myself of your permission, knowing that you are a good

heart. Since I saw you I have run through all the

misfortunes of the calendar, and know not what door is

left at which I have not knocked. I presented myself

at the business firm with whose name you supplied me,

but being unfortunately in rags, they refused to give

me your private address. Is not this very much in the

24 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

English character ? They told me to write, and said
they would forward the letter. I put all my hopes
in you.

' Believe me, my dear sir

' (whatever you may decide),
' Your very devoted

' Louis Ferrand.'

Shelton looked at the envelope, and saw that it bore
a date more than a week old. The face of the young
foreigner floated before him, vital, sensitive, mocking ;
the sound of his quick French buzzed in his ears, and
oddly, the whole whiff of him had a searching power of
raising more vividly than ever his memories of Antonia.
It had been at the end of his journey from Hyeres to
London that he had met him, and it gave the fellow a
certain claim — a certain queer, sensuous claim.

He took his hat and hurried to Blank Row. Dis-
missing his cab at the corner of Victoria Street, with
some difficulty he found the house in question. It was
one of those doorless zoological gardens, with stone-
flagged corridors, known as doss-houses. By tapping
on a sort of cage with a sliding window like a ticket-
office, he at last attracted the attention of a blowsy
woman with soap-suds on her arms, who informed him
that the party in question had gone away without
leaving any address.

' But isn't there anybody,' asked Shelton, 'of whom
I can make inquiry ?'

' Yes ; there's a Frenchman.' And opening the door
of an inner room she bellowed : ' Carolan ! ^^^anted !'
and disappeared.

A dried-up, yellow little man, with one of those

A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN 25

wearily cynical faces that look as if a moral steam-
roller had passed over them, answered the call, and
stood, as it were, sniffing at Shelton, upon whom he
made the singular impression of a creature struggling
to get out of a pit.

' He left here ten days ago, in the company of a
mulatto. What do you want with him, if I may ask ?'
said the little man, his yellow cheeks wrinkling with
suspicion.

Shelton produced the letter.

' Oh, I know you now ' — a pale smile broke through
the Frenchman's crow's-feet — 'he spoke of you. " If I
can only find him," he used to say, " I am saved." I
liked that young man ; he had ideas.'

' Is there no way of getting at him through his
Consul ?' asked Shelton.

The Frenchman shook his head.

' You may as well look for a diamond at the bottom
of the sea.'

' Do you think he might come back here ? By that
time I suppose you'll hardly be here yourself?'

A gleam of amusement played about the Frenchman's
teeth :

' I ? Oh yes, sir ! Once upon a time I cherished
the hope of emerging ; I no longer have such illusions.
I shave these specimens for a living, and shall shave
them till the day of judgment. But leave a letter with
me by all means ; I think he'll come back. There's an
overcoat of his here on which he borrowed money — it's
valuable. Oh yes ; he'll come back — a youth of
principle. Leave a letter with me ; I'm always here.'

In some vague part of him Shelton had a sensation
of being exploited and even of causing amusement, but

26 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

these last three words, ' I'm always here,' in their
categorical simplicity touched him. Nothing more
dreadful could have been said.

' Can you find me a sheet of paper ?' he asked ; ' and
please keep the change for the trouble I'm giving you.'

' Thank you,' said the Frenchman simply ; ' he told
me you had a good heart. If you don't mind the
kitchen, you could write at your ease.'

Shelton wrote his letter at the table of the stone-
flagged kitchen in the company of an old gentleman
dried to the consistency of a mummy by drink and the
wind, who was muttering to himself ; and Shelton tried
to avoid attracting his attention, for he shrewdly sus-
pected that he was not sober. Just as he was about to
take his leave the old fellow accosted him :

' Did you ever go to the dentist, mister ?' he said,
working a loose tooth between his shrivelled lips, and,
without waiting for an answer, went on : ' I been to a
dentist once, who professed to stop teeth without any
pain, and the beggar did stop my teeth without any
pain ; but did they stay in, those stoppings ? No, my
boy; they came out before you could say Jack Robinson.
Now, I shimply ask you, d'you call that dentistry ?'
Fixing his eyes on Shelton's collar, which had the
misfortune to be both high and clean, he resumed, with
drunken scorn : ' It's the same all over this pharisaical
country. Talk of high morality and Anglo-Shaxon
civilization ! The world was never at such a low ebb 1
What's all this morality ? It shtinks of the shop.
Look at the condition of Art in this country ! look at
these blanks you see on th' stage ! look at the pictures
and books that sell ! I know what I'm talking about,
though I am a sandwich man. What's the secret of it

A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN 27

all ? Shop, my boy ! It don't pay to go below a
certain depth ! Scratch the skin, but pierce it — oh !
dear, no ! We hate to see the blood fly, eh ?'

Shelton stood disconcerted, not knowing if he were
expected to answer this question ; but the old gentle-
man, pursing his lips, went on :

' Sir, there are no extremes in this fog-smitten land.
D'you think blanks like me ought to exist ? Why don't
they kill us off ? Palliatives — palliatives ' — he worried
the word like a dog with a piece of rag — ' and why ?
Because they object to th' extreme course. And look
at the women : the streets here are a scandal to the
resht of the world. They won't recognise that they
•exist — their noses are so high, dam 'em ! They blink
the. truth in this middle-class country. My boy ' — and
he seemed to take Shelton into his confidence — ' it
pays 'em. Eh ? you say ; why shouldn't they, then ?'
(Shelton had not opened his lips). 'Well, let 'em!
oh, let 'em ! But don't tell me that'sh morality ' — and
he drummed his shrunken fist on the table — ' don't tell
me that'sh civilization ! What can you expect in a
country where the crimson emotions are never allowed
to smell the air ? And what'sh the result ? My boy,
the result is sentiment, a yellow thing with blue spots,
like a fungus or a Stilton cheese. Go to the theatre,
and see one of these things they call plays. Tell me
they're food for men and women ! Why, they're pap
for babes and shop-boys ! I was a blanky actor myself !'

Shelton listened to this lecture with mingled feeHngs
of amusement and dismay, till the old actor, having
finished, resumed his crouching posture at the table.

' You don't get drunk, I suppose ?' he remarked
suddenly — ' too much of 'n Englishman, no doubt.'

28 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' Very seldom,' said Shelton.

' Pity ! Think of the pleasures of oblivion ! I'm
drunk every night.'

' How long will you last at that rate ?'

' There speaks the Englishman ! Why should I give
up my only pleasure to keep my wretched life in ? If
you've anything left worth the keeping shober for, keep
shober by all means ; if not, the sooner you're drunk the
better — that stands to reason.'

In the corridor Shelton asked the Frenchman
whether the old fellow could possibly be English.

' Englishman ! Yes, yes, certainly, from Belfast —
very drunken old man. You are a drunken nation,' —
he made an expressive motion with his hands — ' he no
longer eats — no inside left. It's unfortunate — a man
of spirit. If you have never seen one of these palaces,
monsieur, I shall be happy to show you over it.'

Shelton took out his cigarette .case.

' Yes, yes,' said the Frenchman, making a wry nose
and taking a proffered cigarette ; ' I'm accustomed to it.
But you're wise to fumigate the air ; one isn't in a
harem.'

Shelton felt ashamed of his fastidiousness.

' This,' said the guide, leading him upstairs and
opening a door, ' is a specimen of the apartments
reserved for these princes of the blood.' There were
four empty beds on iron legs, and, with the air of a
showman, the Frenchman lifted the dingy quilt. ' They
go out in the mornings, earn enough to make them
drunk, sleep it off, and begin again. That's their Hfe.
There are people who think they ought to be reformed.
Mon chcr monsieur, one must face reality a little, even in
this country. It would be a hundred times better for

A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN 29

these people to spend their time reforming high Society.
Your high Society makes all these creatures ; there's no
harvest without cutting stalks. Selon moi,' he continued,
throwing back the quilt, and dribbling cigarette smoke
through his nose, ' there's no grand difference between
your high Society and these individuals ; both want
pleasure, both think only of themselves, which is very
natural. One lot have had luck, the other — well, you
see.' He shrugged. 'A common set! I've been robbed
here half a dozen times. If you have new shoes, a
good waistcoat, an overcoat, you want eyes in the back
of your head. And they are populated ! Change your
bed, and you'll run all the dangers of not sleeping alone.
Via ma clientele ! The half of them don't pay me !' He
snapped his yellow sticks of fingers. ' A penny for a
shave, twopence for a cut ! Quelle vie ! Here,' he
continued, standing by one of the beds, ' is a gentleman
with a face like a diseased potato who owes me fivepence.
Here's one who was a soldier ; he's done for ! All
brutalized ; not one with any courage left ! But, believe
me, monsieur,' he went on, opening the door of another
room, ' when you come down to houses like this you
must have a vice ; it's as necessary as breath to the
lungs. No matter what, you must have a vice to give
you a little solace — un peu de soulagement. Ah, yes !
before condemning these swine reflect a little on life.
I've been through it. Believe me, monsieur, it's not
nice never to know where to get your next meal.
Gentlemen who have food in their stomachs, money in
their pockets, and know where to get more, they never
reflect. Why should they— ^as de danger ! All these cages
are the same. Come down, and I'll show you the pantry.'
He took Shelton a second time through the kitchen,

30 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

which seemed to be the only sitting-room of the
estabhshment, and showed him an inner room furnished
with disgustingly dirty cups, saucers, and plates.
Another fire was burning there. ' We always have hot
water,' said the Frenchman, ' and three times a week
they make a fire down there ' — he pointed to a cellar —
' for our clients to boil their vermin. Oh yes, we have
all the luxuries.'

Shelton returned to the kitchen, and directly after
took leave of the little Frenchman, who said, with a
kind of moral button-holing, as if trying to adopt him
as a patron :

' Trust me, monsieur ; if he comes back — that young
man — he shall have your letter without fail.'

CHAPTER IV

THE PLAY

Shelton walked pensively away ; he felt as if he had
been indulging in a nightmare. ' That old actor was
drunk,' thought he, ' and I suppose he was an Irishman ;
still, there may be something in what he said. No
doubt I'm a Pharisee, like all the rest who aren't in the
pit. My respectability is only luck. What should I
have become if I'd been born into his kind of life ?'
and he stared at the stream of people coming out of the
Army and Navy Stores, trying to pierce the mask of
their serious, complacent faces. If these ladies and
gentlemen were put into the pit into which he had just
been looking, would a single one of them ever again
emerge ? Certainly none could ever have imagined
themselves in such a position ; it was too remote — too
ridiculously remote.

He fixed his eyes on a particular couple, a large, fine
man and his wife, who, in the midst of all the dirt and
rumble and hurry, the gloom, ludicrousness, and
desperate joviality of the streets, walked side by side in
a well-bred way, and had evidently bought something
which pleased them. There was nothing offensive
about their manner; on the contrary, they seemed
quite unconcerned at the passing of other people. The

31

32 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

man had the fine solidity of shoulder and waist, the
quiet, glossy self-possession connected with horses,
guns, and dressing-bags. The wife, her chin comfort-
ably settled on her fur, kept her gray eyes fixed upon her
hands, and, when she spoke, her even, unruffled voice
reached SheUon's ears above all the whirring of the
traffic. It was leisurely and precise, as if it had never
been hurried, never exhausted, never passionate, and
never afraid. Their conversation, like that of many
dozens of fine couples who invade London from their
country places, was of where they should dine, what
theatre they should go to, whom they had seen, and
what they should buy. And Shelton had a sudden
conviction that from day's end to day's end, and even
in their bed, these would be the subjects of their
conversation. They were the best-bred people of the
sort he had constantly met in country houses and
accepted as a matter of course, with a vague discomfort
at the bottom of his soul. Antonia's home, for instance,
had been full of them. They were the best-bred people
of the sort who supported good works, knew everybody,
had clear, calm judgment, and an intolerance of all
conduct that seemed to them 'impossible,' all breaches
of morality, such as errors of etiquette, dishonesty,
passion and sympathy (except with a canonized class of
objects— the legitimate sufferings, for instance, of their
own families and class). How healthy they were ! The
memory of the doss-house was working in Shelton's
mind like a poison. He was subconscious that in his
own well-groomed figure, in the undemonstrative
assurance of his own walk, he bore a resemblance to
the couple he was apostrophizing. ' Ah !' he thought
violently, 'how vulgar our refinement is!' But he

THE PLAY 33

hardly believed his own outburst. These people were
so well mannered, so well conducted, so healthy, he
could not really understand what gave him the feeling
of irritation. What was the matter with them ? They
fulfilled their duties, had good appetites, clear con-
sciences, all the furniture of exemplary citizens; they
merely lacked — feelers, a loss that, he had read, was
suffered by plants and animals which no longer had a
necessity for employing them. Some rare national
faculty, perhaps, of seeing only the obvious and
materially advantageous had destroyed their capacity
for catching stray gleams or scents to right or left.

The lady looked up at her husband. The light of
quiet, proprietary affection shone in her calm, gray eyes,
decorously illumining the full statuesque features,
slightly reddened by the wind. The husband looked
down at his wife, calm, practical, protecting. They
were singularly alike. So doubtless he looked when he
presented himself in snowy shirt-sleeves for her to
straighten the bow of his white tie ; so nightly she
would look, standing before the full-length mirror, and
fixing on her bosom his gifts. Calm, proprietary, kind !
He passed them and walked behind a second and less
distinguished couple, who manifested a mutual dislike
as matter-of-fact and free from nonsense as the unruffled
satisfaction of the first ; this dislike was just as healthy,
and produced in Shelton about the same sensation. It
was like knocking at an unopenable door, looking at a
circle — couple after couple all the same. No heads,
toes, angles of their souls stuck out anywhere. In the
sea of their environments they were drowned ; no leg
braved the air, no arm emerged wet and naked to wave
at the skies ; shop-persons, aristocrats, workmen,

3

34 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

officials, they were all respectable. And he himself as
respectable as any of them.

He returned moodily to his rooms, and, with the
impetuosity which distinguished him when about to do
an unwise thing, seized his pen and poured out before
Antonia some of his impressions :

' . . . Mean is the word, darhng ; we are mean,
that's what's the matter with us, dukes and dustmen,
the whole human species — as mean as caterpillars. To
secure our own property and our own comfort, to dole
out our sympathy according to rule just so that it won't
really hurt us, is what we're all after. There's some-
thing about human nature that is awfully repulsive, and
the healthier people are, the more repulsive they seem
to be. . . .'

He paused, biting the end of his untidy pen ; his pens
were by turns hopelessly untidy, or so severely tidy
that it was quite a pleasure to use them. Had he a
single acquaintance who would not have advised him to
see a doctor for writing such rubbish ? How would the
world go round, or Society exist, without common-
sense, practical ability, and the absence of sympathy ?

He looked out of the long French window. Down in
the street a footman was settling the rug over the knees
of a lady in a carriage, and the decorous immovability
of both their faces, which were clearly visible to him
even on the first floor, was like a portion of some well-
oiled rigid machine. He got up and began to walk up
and down. His rooms, in one of those narrow squares
skirting Belgravia, were the same he had inhabited
before the death of his father had made him a man
of property. Selected for their centrality, they were

THE PLAY 35

full of things from his diggings at Oxford, from his
chambers in the Temple, from his room in his father's
house. They were certainly not bare, but a close
inspection revealed an underlying asceticism ; every-
thing was damaged, more or less, and there was
absolutely nothing that seemed to have any interest taken
in it. The things looked like accidents, presents, or the
haphazard acquisitions of a pressing necessity. Nothing,
of course, was frowsy, but everything was more or less
dusty, as if belonging to a man who never had a row
with a servant. Above all, there was nothing that
indicated a hobby. Through these rooms he walked up
and down, smoked a pipe, and looked at Antonia's
photograph.

Three days later he had her answer to his letter :

' . . . I don't ' (she wrote) ' think I understand what
you mean by " the healthier people are, the more repul-
sive they seem to be "; one must be healthy to be
perfect, mustn't one ? I don't like unhealthy people.
I had to play Bach on that wretched piano after reading
your letter; it made me feel so unhappy. I've been
having a splendid lot of tennis lately, and I've got the
back-handed lifting stroke at last — hurrah ! . . . '

By the same post, too, came the following note, in an
authoritative handwriting :

' Dear Bird (Shelton's nickname),

' My wife has gone down to her people, so I'm en
garpn for a few days. If you've nothing better to do,
come and dine to-night at seven, and go to the theatre.

It's ages since I saw you.

' Yours ever,

' B. M. Halidome.'
3—2

36 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

Shelton had nothing better to do, for pleasant was his
remembrance of Halidome's well-appointed dinners. At
seven o'clock, therefore, he presented himself in Chester
Square, where he found his friend in his study, reading
Arnold by the light of an electric lamp with a green
shade. The walls of the room were hung with costly
etchings, arranged with solid and scrupulous taste ;
from the carving of the mantelpiece to the binding of
the book he was reading, from the miraculously-coloured
meerschaums on the side-table to the chased fireirons,
everything displayed a luxury and lack of pretence, an
order and finish significant of a life completely under
control. Everything had been collected. The collector
rose as Shelton entered, a fine figure of a man, clean
shaven, \\ith dark hair, a Roman nose, good eyes, and
the slightly ponderous dignity of attitude (he had no
gestures) which comes from the assurance that one is
in the right.

' Glad to see you, old chap,' he said ; and taking
Shelton by the lapel, he drew him into the radius of the
lamp, where he examined him slowly, smiling a critical
smile. ' I rather like your beard,' he said with genial
brusqueness ; and nothing, perhaps, could better have
summed up his faculty for forming an independent
judgment that Shelton had always found so admirable.
He did not apologize for the dinner, which, consisting
of eight courses and three wines, served by a butler
and only one footman, smacked of the same perfection
as the furniture ; in fact, he had never been known to
apologize for anything, except with a brusque joviality
that was a little worse than the offence. The suave
and reasonable weight of his approvals and disapprovals
stirred Shelton up, as usual, to feel both ironical and

THE PLAY 37

insignificant ; but whether from a sense of the truly
soiid, humane, and healthy quality of Halidome's
egoism, or merely from the fact that their friendship
had been long in bottle, he had never resented the
mixed sensations which his friend's society provoked.

' By the way, I congratulate you, old chap,' said the
latter, as they were driving to the theatre ; there was
no vulgar hurry about his congratulations, no more
than about any other part of him. ' They're awfully
nice people, the Dennants.'

An indefinite sense of having had the seal of eclecti-
cism put on his engagement invaded Shelton.

' Where are you going to live ? You ought to come
down and live near us in the country ; there are some
ripping houses to be had down there ; it's really a
ripping neighbourhood. Have you chucked the Bar ?
You ought to do something, you know ; it'll be fatal for
you to have nothing to do. I tell you what. Bird : you
ought to stand for the County Council.'

But before Shelton could reply they reached the
theatre, and had to devote their energies to sidling into
their stalls. He had time to examine his neighbours
before the play began. Seated next him was a lady with
large healthy shoulders, displayed with splendid liber-
ality; beyond her a husband, red cheeked, with drooping,
yellow-gray moustache and a very bald head ; beyond
him again two men he had known at Eton. One of
them had a clean-shaved face, smooth, dark hair, and a
weathered complexion ; his small mouth with its upper
lip in advance of the lower,his eyelids a little drooped over
alert eyes, gave him a satirically resolute expression.
' I've got hold of your tail, old fellow,' he seemed to be
saying, as if he had spent a Hfetime in catching a fox.

38 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

The other's large, goggling eyes rested on Shelton with
a chaffing smile ; his thick, sleek hair, brushed with
water and parted in the middle, his neat moustache and
admirable waistcoat, suggested a dandyism contemp-
tuous of women. From his recognition of these two
old schoolfellows, Shelton turned back to look at
Halidome, who, having sonorously cleared his throat,
was staring straight before him at the curtain. Antonia's
words kept running in her lover's head : ' I don't like
unhealthy people.' Well, none of these people, anyway,
were unhealthy ; on the contrary, they looked as if they
had formally defied the elements to endow them with
spirituality ; but at that moment the curtain went up.

Slowly and unwillingly, for he was of a trustful disposi-
tion, Shelton recognised that this play was one of those
masterpieces of modern drama where the characters
were all drawn on the principle that men have been
made for morality rather than morality made by men,
and he watched the action unfold itself with a careful
sandwiching of grave and gay.

A married woman anxious to be free of her marriage
tie was the pivot of the story, and a number of
ingeniously contrived situations, with a hundred reasons
why this desire was both wrong and inexpedient, were
presented to Shelton. These reasons issued for the most
part from the mouth of one of the characters, a well-
preserved old gentleman with a moustache and a reputa-
tion as a ' man of the \\'orld,' who seemed to Shelton to
play the part of a sort of Moral Assessor. He could not
help leaning over to Halidome and whispering :

' Can you stand that old woman ?'

His friend turned his fine eyes upon him wonderingly.

' What old woman ?' he asked.

THE PLAY 39

' Why, the old ass with the platitudes !' returned
Shelton, surprised.

Halidome's countenance (he was one of those men
whose faces are best described by the word ' counte-
nance') grew cold and a little shocked, as though in
some way he had been personally insulted.

' Do you mean Pirbright ?' he said. ' I think he's
ripping.'

Shelton turned back to the play rebuffed ; he felt
guilty of a breach of good manners, sitting as he was in
one of Hahdome's stalls, and he naturally set to work
to watch the play more critically than ever. Antonia's
words again recurred to him : ' I don't like unhealthy
people,' and they seemed to throw a sudden light upon
this play. It was healthy !

He was now watching the crisis.

The scene represented a drawing-room, softly lighted
by electric lamps, with a cat (Shelton could not decide
whether she was real or not) asleep on the mat.

The husband, a thick-set, healthy man in evening
dress, was drinking neat whisky. He put down his
tumbler, and deliberately struck a match; then with even
greater deliberation he lit a gold-tipped cigarette. . . .

Shelton was no inexperienced play-goer. He shifted
his elbows on the arms of his stall, for he felt that some-
thing was about to happen ; and when the match de-
scribed a parabola into the fire, he leaned forward in his
seat.

The husband poured out more whisky, tossed it off at
a draught, and walked to the door ; then, turning towards
the audience as if to let them into the confidence of some
momentous decision, he puffed at them a puff of smoke.
He went out, returned, and once more filled his glass.

40 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

A lady now entered, pale of face and dark of eye—
his wife. The husband crossed to the fireplace, and
stood there with his legs astride, in the attitude which
somehow Shelton had felt sure he would assume. His
voice fell on Shelton's ear with a composed twang :

' Come in, please, and shut the door.'

Shelton suddenly perceived that he was face to face
with one of those dumb moments in which two people
declare their inextinguishable hatred — the hatred
underlying the sexual intimacy of two utterly different
creatures, and he was suddenly reminded of a scene he
had once witnessed in a restaurant. He remembered
with extreme minuteness how the woman and the man
had sat facing each other across the narrow patch of
white cloth, emblazoned by an electric candle with a
cheap shade and a thin, blue-green vase with red flowers.
He remembered the curious scornful offensiveness of
their voices, subdued so that only a word here and there
reached him. He remembered the cold loathing in
their eyes. And, above all, he remembered his impres-
sion that this sort of scene happened between them
every other day, and would continue to happen ; and
as he put on his overcoat and paid his bill, he had asked
himself, ' Why in the name of decency do they go on
living together ?' And he suddenly thought to himself,
as he listened to the two players wrangling on the
stage : ' What's the good of all this talk ? There's some-
thing here past words.'

The curtain came down upon the act, and he looked
furtively at the lady next him. She was shrugging her
shoulders at her husband, whose face wore an offended
expression.

' I do dislike these unhealthy women,' he was just

THE PLAY 41

saying, but catching Siielton's eye, he turned square in
his seat, with an ironical sniff.

The face of Shelton's friend beyond, composed and
satirical as ever, was clothed with a mask of contemp-
tuous curiosity, as if he had been listening to something
both startling and a little impertinent. The goggle-
eyed man was yawning. Shelton turned to Halidome :

' Can you -stand this sort of thing ?' said he.

' No ; I call that scene a bit too hot,' replied his
friend.

Shelton wriggled; he had meant to say it was not
hot enough.

' I will bet you anything,' he said, ' I know what's
going to happen now. You'll have that old ass — what's
his name? — lunching off cutlets and champagne to
fortify himself for a lecture to the wife. He'll show her
how unhealthy her feelings are — I know him — and he'll
take her hand and say, " Dear lady, is there anything
in this poor world but the good opinion of Society?"
and he'll pretend to laugh at himself for saying it ; but
you'll see perfectly well that the old woman means it.
And then he'll put her into a set of circumstances that
aren't her own but his version of them, and show her
the only way of salvation is to kiss her husband;' and
Shelton grinned. ' Anyway,' he concluded, ' I'll bet
you anything he takes her hand and says, " Dear lady." '

Halidome turned upon him the cold disapproval of
his fine eyes, and again he said :

' I think Pirbright's ripping !'

But as Shelton had predicted, so it turned out, amidst
great applause.

CHAPTER V

THE GOOD CITIZEN

Leaving the theatre, they paused a moment in the hall
to put on their coats ; a stream of people with spotless
bosoms eddied round the doors, as if in momentary
dread of leaving the hothouse of their emotions, where
all was grown by rule, for the wet, gusty streets, where
human plants thrive and die, human weeds flourish and
fade under fresh, inscrutable skies. The lights revealed
innumerable composed faces, gleamed innumerably on
jewels, on the silk of tall hats, then passed to whiten a
pavement wet with newly-fallen rain, to flare on the
horses, the visages of cab-runners, the stray, queer
objects that do not bear the light.

' Shall we walk ?' asked Halidome, linking his arm in
his friend's.

' Has it ever struck you,' said Shelton reflectively,
' that in a play nowadays there's always a " Chorus of
Scandalmongers " which seems to have acquired the
functions of God ?'

Halidome cleared his throat, and there was some-
thing portentous in the sound.

' You're so d d fastidious,' he said, with amused

toleration.

' Tve a prejudice for keeping the two things separate,'

42

THE GOOD CITIZEN 43

went on Shelton. ' Anyway, that ending makes me
sick.'

' Why ?' replied Halidome. ' I don't see what other
end is possible. You don't want a play to leave you
with a bad taste in your mouth.'

' But this does.'

His friend increased his stride, which was already too
long. In his walk, as in every other phase of him, he
betrayed the necessity for taking the lead.

' How d'you mean ?' he asked urbanely ; ' it's better
than the woman making a fool of herself.'

' I don't know anything about the woman ; I don't
believe there ever was one like that. I'm thinking of
the man.'

' What man ?'

' The husband.'

' What's the matter with him ? He was a bit of a
bounder, certainly.'

' I can't understand any man wanting to live with a
woman who doesn't want him.'

Probably some note of battle in Shelton's voice, rather
than the sentiment itself, caused his friend to reply with
dignity :

' There's a lot of nonsense talked about that sort of
thing. Women don't really care ; it's only what's put
into their heads.'

' By Jove !' said Shelton, ' that's much the same as
saying to a starving man : " You don't really want any-
thing ; it's only what's put into your head !" Anyway,
you're begging the question.'

But nothing was more calculated to annoy his friend
than to tell him he was ' begging the question,' for he
prided himself on being strong in logic.

44 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' Begging the question be d d,' he repHed.

'Not at all, old chap,' pleaded Shelton ; ' here is a
case where a woman really wants to be free, and j'ou
merely answer that she doesn't want to be free.'

' Women like that are impossible ; better leave them
out of court.'

Shelton pondered this a moment and smiled ; he
had recollected an acquaintance of his own, who, when
his wife left him, invented the theory that she was mad,
and this struck him now as funny. The next moment,
however, another view of the incident presented itself.
' Poor devil !' he thought ; ' he was bound to say she was
mad ! If he didn't, it would be as good as confessing
himself thoroughly distasteful to her ; and, however
true, you can't expect a man to consider himself that.'
But he did not say this aloud. A glance at his friend's
autocratic eye warned him that he, too, might think his
wife mad if she left him.

' But surely,' he hazarded, ' even if she's his wife, a
man's bound to behave like a gentleman.'

' Depends on whether she behaves like a lady.'

' Does it ?' said Shelton ; ' I don't see the connection.'

Halidome paused in the act of turning the latch-key
in his door, and looked round at Shelton ; a touch of
brutality burned behind the rather angry smile in his
fine eyes.

' My dear chap,' he said, ' you're too sentimental
altogether.'

' Hang it !' said Shelton, for the word ' sentimental '
nettled him, ' a gentleman either is a gentleman or he
isn't ; what's it got to do with the way other people
behave ?'

Halidome turned the key in the lock and opened the

THE GOOD CITIZEN 45

door into his cosy hall, where the firelight fell on de-
canters of drink and huge chairs drawn towards the blaze.

' No, Bird,' he said, with a full resumption of auto-
cratic urbanity, and gathering his coat-tails in his hands
he gazed down at Shelton's chair ; ' it's all very well to
talk, but wait till you're married. A man must be
master, and show that he's master.'

An idea occurred to Shelton.

' Look here, Hal,' he said : ' what should you do if
your wife got tired of you ?'

The expression on Halidome's face was a sad mixture
of contempt and amusement.

' I don't mean anything personal, of course,' Shelton
hastened to explain ; ' I mean, just apply the situation
to yourself.'

Halidome took out a toothpick, used it brusquely,
and replied :

' I shouldn't stand any humbug — take her travelling ;
shake her mind up. She'd soon come round.'

' But suppose she really loathed you ?'

Halidome cleared his throat angrily ; the idea was
obviously indecent. How could anybody loathe him ?
With great composure, however, and looking at Shelton
as if he were a forward but amusing child, he answered :

' There are a great many things to be taken into con-
sideration !'

'Really !' said Shelton; 'it seems to me a question
of common pride. How can you ask anything of a
woman who doesn't want to give it ?'

His friend's voice became judicial.

' A man ought not to suffer,' he said, poring over his
whisky, ' because a woman gets hysteria. You have to
think of Society, your children, house, money arrange-

46 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

ments, a thousand things. It's all very well to talk.
How do you like this whisky ?'

' The part of the good citizen, in fact,' said Shelton,
sitting forward, with eager eyes — ' self-preservation !'

' Common-sense,' returned his friend ; ' I believe in
justice before sentimentalism.' He drank, and, putting
his foot on the fender, callously blew smoke down at
Shelton. ' Besides, there are any number of people
with religious views about it.'

'Ah!' said Shelton, 'it's always struck me that for
people to assert that marriage gives them the right to
"an eye for an eye " and call themselves Christians is
quaint. Did you ever know anybody stand on their
rights except out of wounded pride or for the sake of
their own comfort ? Let them call their reasons what
they like, you know as well as I do it's cant.'

' I don't know about that,' said Halidome, appearing
more and more superior as Shelton grew warm ; ' when
you stand on your rights, you do it for the sake of
Society just as much as for your own. If you want to
do away with marriage, why don't you say so ?'

'But I don't,' said Shelton warmly; 'is it likely?

Why, I'm going ' He stopped without adding the

words ' to be married myself,' for it suddenly occurred
to him that the reason was not the most lofty and
philosophical in the world. ' All I can say is,' he
went on more soberly, ' that you can't make a horse
drink by driving him. I should have thought gene-
rosity was the surest way of tightening the knot with
people who've got any sense of decency; and as to
the rest, the chief thing is to prevent their breeding.'

Halidome smiled.

' You're a rum chap,' he said.

THE GOOD CITIZEN 47

Shelton jerked his cigarette into the fire.
' I tell you what' — for sometimes late at night a certain
power of vision would come to him — ' it's all humbug to
talk of doing things for the sake of Society ; it's nothing
but the instinct to keep our own heads above water.'
Halidome remained unruffled.

' All right,' said he, ' call it that. I don't see why I
should go to the wall ; it wouldn't do any good.'

' I suppose you'd say, then,' said Shelton, whose
honesty did not suffer him to blink an idea presented
by the other side, ' that morality is the sum total of
everybody's private instinct of self-preservation ?'

Halidome stretched his splendid frame and yawned
comfortably.

' I don't know,' he began, 'that I should quite call it

that '

But at that moment the compelling complacency of
his fine eyes, the dignified posture of his healthy body,
the lofty slope of his narrow forehead, the perfectly
humane look of his cultivated brutality, struck Shelton
as supremely ludicrous.

' Hang it all, Hal !' he cried, jumping out of his chair,
• what an old fraud you are ! I'll just take another
cigarette and be off.'

' No, look here,' said Halidome, the faintest shade of
uneasiness appearing in his smile, as he took Shelton

by the lapel : ' you're quite wrong '

' Very likely,' said Shelton ; ' good-night, old chap !'
and escaped.

He walked home, and let the spring wind into his
lungs. It was Saturday night, and he passed many
silent couples. In every little patch of shadow he
could see two forms standing or sitting close together.

48 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

and in their presence Life the Impostor seemed to hold
its tongue. The wind rustled the buds ; the stars, one
moment bright as diamonds, vanished the next. In the
lower streets a large part of the world was under the
influence of drink, but Shelton was far from being
annoyed. It seemed better than Drama, than dressing-
bagged men, unruffled women, and padded points of
view, better than the immaculate solidity of his friend's
possessions.

' So,' he reflected, ' it's the right thing for every
reason, social, religious, and convenient, to inflict one's
society where it's not desired. There are obviously
advantages about the married state ; it must be charm-
ing to feel thoroughly respectable while you're acting
in a way that in any other walk of life would bring
you into contempt. If old Halidome showed he
was tired of me, and I continued to visit him, he'd
think me a bit of a cad ; but if his wife were to tell him
she couldn't stand him, he'd still consider himself a
perfect gentleman if he persisted in giving her the
burden of his society ; and he has the cheek to bring
religion into it — a religion that says, " Do unto others !" '

But he was unjust to his friend, forgetting for the
moment how impossible it would be for him to really
believe that his wife couldn't stand him. He reached
his rooms, and, the more freely to enjoy the clear lamp-
light, the soft, gusty breeze, and waning turmoil of the
streets, waited a moment before entering.

' I wonder,' thought he, ' if I shall turn out a cad
when I marry, like that chap in the play. It's perfectly
natural. We all want our money's worth, our pound of
flesh ! Pity we use such fine words — " Society, Religion,
Morality." Humbug !'

THE GOOD CITIZEN 49

He went in, and, throwing open his window, remained
there a long time, his figure outlined against the lighted
room for the benefit of the dark square below, his hands
in his pockets, his head down, and a reflective frown
about his eyes. A half-intoxicated old ruffian, a police-
man, and a man in a straw hat had stopped below,
and were holding a palaver.

' Yus,' he heard the old ruffian say, ' I'm a rackety
old blank ; but what I say is, if we was all alike, this
wouldn't be a world !'

They passed on, and before Shelton's eyes rose
Antonia's face, with unruffled brow ; Halidome's, all
health and dignity ; the forehead of the goggle-eyed
man, with its line of hair parted in the centre and
brushed flat and level across. A light seemed to
illumine the plane of their existence, as the electric
lamp with the green shade had illumined the pages of
Hahdome's Arnold ; serene before Shelton's vision lay
that Elysium, untouched by passion or extremes of any
kind, autocratic, complacent, possessive, well-kept as
a Midland landscape. Healthy, wealthy, and wise !
No room for anything but perfection, self-preservation,
and the survival of the fittest ! ' The part of the good
citizen,' he thought : ' no, if we were all alike, this
wouldn't be a world !'

CHAPTER VI

MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT

' My dear Richard ' (wrote Shelton's uncle the follow-
ing day), ' I shall be glad to see you at three o'clock
to-morrow afternoon upon the question of your marriage
settlement. . . .' At that hour accordingly Shelton
made his way to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where in fat
black letters the names ' Paramor and Herring (Com-
missioners for Oaths) ' were written upon the doorway
of a stone entrance. He ascended the solid steps with
the nervousness he always experienced in approaching
a place of business, and by a small red-haired boy was
introduced to a back-room on the first floor. Here,
seated at a table in the very centre, as if he thereby
acquired an added control of his universe, a pug-
featured gentleman, without a vestige of beard, was
writing. He paused as Shelton came in.

' Ow, Mr. Richard!' said he; 'glad to see you, sir.
Won't you take a chair ? Your uncle will be dis-
engaged in a minute ;' and the tone of his allusion to
his employer was the restrained, semi-satirical dis-
approval that comes with long and faithful service.
' He will do everything himself,' he grumbled, taking
Shelton into his confidence by screwing up his greenish
eyes full of sly honesty, ' and,' he added, with the

50

MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT 51

satisfaction of one who delivers a warning, * he's not a
young man.'

Shelton sat down and asked after his health. He
never saw his uncle's head clerk without marvelling at
the gradual deepening of prosperity upon his face. In
place of the look of harassment which most faces begin
to acquire after the age of fifty, his old friend's coun-
tenance, as though in sympathy with the nation, had
expanded — a little greasily, a little genially, a little
coarsely — every time he met it. A contemptuous
tolerance for people who were not getting on was
growing deeper and deeper below the surface ; it left
each time a more satisfactory impression that its owner
could never be in the wrong. Shelton had never seen
him anywhere else but at that table in the centre of the
large room.

' I hope you're well, sir,' he said in turn : ' most
important for you to have your health now you're
going — to ' — and, feeling for the delicate way to put it,
he quite involuntarily winked — ' to become a family
man. We saw it in the paper. My wife said to me
the other morning at breakfast : " Bob, here's a Mr.
Richard Paramor Shelton going to be married. Is
that any relative to your Mr. Shelton ?" " My dear,"
I said to her, " it's the very man !" '

The statement penetrated Shelton like a shock ; it
was disquieting to perceive that his old friend did not
pass the whole of his life at that table in the centre
of that room, taking out figures and tracing round
undeviating characters on office -stamped paper, but
that somewhere (immense vistas of little gray houses
suddenly rose before his eyes) he actually lived another
life where somebody called him ' Bob.' Bob ! And

4—2

52 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

this, too, was a revelation. Bob ! "Why, of course, it
was the only possible name. A bell sounded.

' That's your uncle ;' and again the head clerk's voice
was impregnated with ironical resentment, as if he had
been inexpressibly hurt in some remote part of him.
' Good-bye, sir.'

He seemed to clip off his intercourse as one clips off
the electric light. Shelton left him taking out figures,
and preceded the red-haired boy to an enormous room
in the front where his uncle awaited him.

Edmund Paramor was a medium-sized, upright man
of seventy, with a brown face perfectly clean-shaven,
whose silky-gray hair was brushed in a cock's comb away
from a fine forehead, bald on the left side, to far back
on the skull. He stood in front of the hearth facing
out into the room, and his movements still had the
springy abruptness of men who never grow fat. There
was a certain youthfulness, too, in his eyes, yet they had
an upward, ascetic look, as though he had been through
fire ; and his mouth was incurably inclined to curl up
suddenly at the corners in surprising smiles. The
room was like the man — large, morally large, devoid of
red-tape and almost devoid of furniture ; no tin boxes
of deeds decorated the walls, no papers littered the
table; a single bookcase contained a complete edition
of the law reports, and resting upon the Commercial
Directory was a single red rose in a glass of water. It
looked like the abode of a man with a sober magnifi-
cence of outlook, of a man who went at once to the
heart of affairs, despised haggling, and secured his
rights without it, and before the curious suddenness of
whose smiles the more immediate kinds of humbug
melted away.

MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT 53

' Well, Dick,' said he, ' how's your mother ?'

Shelton replied that his mother was well.

' I wish you'd tell her that I'm going to sell her
Easterns after all, and put into this Brass thing. You
can say it's all right from me.'

Shelton faintly grimaced.

' Mother,' said he, ' always believes things are all
right.'

His uncle looked through him with his keen, half-
suffering glance, and up went the corners of his
mouth.

' She's splendid,' he said.

'Yes,' said Shelton, ' she's splendid.'

The transaction, whatever it was, did not interest him ;
his uncle's judgment in such matters had a breezy
soundness he would never dream of questioning.

' Well, about your settlement ;' and Mr. Paramor,
touching a bell three times, began walking up and
down the room. ' Bring in the draft of Mr. Richard's
marriage settlement.'

The stalwart commissionaire reappeared with a docu-
ment.

' Not that, you idiot !' said Mr. Paramor, kicking a
footstool violently ; ' the clean draft. . . . Now then,
Dick ! She's not bringing anything into settlement, I
understand ; how's that ?'

' I didn't want it,' replied Shelton, unaccountably
ashamed of himself.

Mr. Paramor's lips quivered ; he drew the draft
closer, took up a blue pencil, and, squeezing Shelton's
arm, began to read. The latter dazedly followed his
uncle's rapid exposition of the clauses, and was reheved
when he came to a momentary stop.

54 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' If you die and she marries again,' said Mr.
Paramor, ' she forfeits her life interest — see ?'

' Oh !' said Shelton ; ' wait a minute, Uncle Ted.'

Mr. Paramor waited, biting the end of his pencil ; a
faint gleam flickered on his mouth, and was decorously
subdued. It was Shelton's turn to get up and walk about.

' If she marries again,' he kept repeating to himself
with a sense of discomfort.

Mr. Paramor was a keen fisherman ; he watched his
nephew as he might have watched a fish he had just
landed.

'It's very usual,' he remarked.

Shelton took another turn, and brought up with his
back to the hearth.

' She forfeits,' thought he ; ' exactly.'

When he was dead, he would have no other way of
seeing that she continued to belong to him. Exactly !

Mr. Paramor's haunting eyes were fastened upon his
nephew's face.

'Well, my dear,' they seemed to say, 'what's the
matter ?'

Exactly ! Why should she have his money if she
married again ? She would forfeit it. There was
much comfort in the thought. Shelton left the hearth,
came back to the table, and carefully reread the
clause, as if to put the thing back on a purely business
basis, and thereby disguise the real significance of what
was passing in his mind. The blue pencil judicially
balanced in his uncle's hand made him nervous.

' If I die and she marries again,' he repeated aloud,
' she forfeits.'

What wiser provision for a man passionately in love
could possibly have been devised ? His uncle's eye

MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT 55

travelled beyond him, as if he humanely disliked to see
the last despairing wriggles of his fish.

' I don't want to tie her,' said Shelton suddenly.

The corners of Mr. Paramor's mouth flew up ; his
eyes returned to Shelton.

' You want the forfeiture out ?' he asked.

The blood rushed into Shelton's face ; he felt he had
been detected in a piece of sentiment.

' Ye-es,' he stammered.

' Sure ?'

' Quite !' The answer was a little sulky.

Mr. Paramor's blue pencil descended upon the clause,
his smile writhed up once more, and he resumed the
reading of the draft ; but Shelton could not follow it,
he was too much occupied in considering exactly why
his uncle had been amused, and to do this he was
obliged to keep his eyes upon him. Those features,
just pleasantly rugged ; the springy poise of the figure ;
the hair neither straight nor curly, neither short nor
long ; the haunting look of his eyes and the humorous
look of his mouth ; his clothes neither shabby nor
dandified ; his serviceable, fine hands ; above all, the
equability of the hovering blue pencil, conveyed the
impression of a magnificent balance between heart and
head, sensibility and reason, theory and practice. An
appreciation of this did not annul in Shelton the sense
of having been laughed at.

' " During coverture," ' quoted Mr. Paramor, pausing
again at the end of another clause ; ' you understand,
of course, if you don't get on and separate, she goes
on taking ?'

If they didn't get on ! Shelton smiled. Mr. Paramor
did not smile, and again Shelton had the sense of

56 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

having knocked up against something poised but
immovable — Hke one of the logan-stones of his uncle's
West Country. He remarked irritably :

' If we're not living together, all the more reason for
her having the more.'

This time Mr. Paramor smiled. It was impossible
for Shelton to feel angry at the ironic merriment of
those smiles with their sudden grave endings, they
were too impersonal ; a whole side of human nature,
and not the remark of the moment, seemed to pass
before their author.

' If — hum — it came to the other thing,' said his uncle,
' the settlement's at an end as far as she's concerned.
We're bound to look at every case, you know, Dick.'

The memory of the play and his conversation with
Halidome was still strong in Shelton. He was not one
of those smug little gods of propriety who could not
face the notion of transferred affections — at a safe dis-
tance, that is.

'All right. Uncle Ted,' said he. For one mad
moment he was attacked by the desire to ' throw in '
the case of divorce. Would it not be common chivalry
to make her perfectly independent to do as she liked,
change her affections if she wished, unhampered by
money troubles ? You only needed to take out the
words ' during coverture.'

Almost anxiously he gazed at his uncle's face.
There was no meanness about it, but neither was
there any encouragement in the far-sighted look of
the brow with its wide sweep of hair. ' Quixotism,'

it seemed to say, ' has its merits, of course, but '

The room, too, with its wide horizon and tall win-
dows over the Square, ungarnished with technicalities,

MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT 57

and looking as if it dealt practically with big issues,
was discouraging. Innumerable men of good breeding
and the soundest principles must have bought their
wives there. It was perfumed with the atmosphere of
wisdom and law-calf. The aroma of Precedent was
too strong; Shelton hesitated, swerved his lance, left
the logan-stone untilted, and once more settled down
to complete the purchase of his wife.

' I can't conceive what you're in such a hurry about ;
you're not going to be married till the autumn,' said
Mr. Paramor at last, as he finished. Replacing the
blue pencil in the rack, he took the red rose from the
glass, and, sniffing at it, placed it in the button-hole of
his black cut-away coat. ' Will you walk with me as
far as Pall Mall ?' And with a stretch and yawn he
added: 'I'm going to take an afternoon off; too cold
for Lord's, I suppose ?'

They walked out and down into the Strand.

' Have you seen this new play of Borogrove's ?'
asked Shelton, as they passed the theatre to which he
had been with Halidome.

' I never go to modern plays,' replied Mr. Paramor ;
' they're so d d gloomy.'

Shelton glanced at his uncle ; he wore his hat rather
on the back of his head, his eyes haunted the end of the
street in front, the corners of his mouth had flown up,
and he had convulsively shouldered his umbrella.

'Realism's not in your line. Uncle Ted?' queried
Shelton.

' Is that what they call putting into words things
that can't be put into words ?'

' The French succeed in doing it,' replied Shelton,
' and the Russians ; why shouldn't we ?'

58 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

Mr. Paramor stopped to look in at a fishmonger's.

' What's right for the French and Russians, Dick,'
he said, ' isn't right for us. When we begin to be real,
we only really begin to be false. I should like to
have had the catching of that fellow ; let's send him
to your mother.' He went in and bought a salmon.
' Now, my dear,' he: continued, as they went on, ' do
you mean to say it's decent for men and women on the
stage to writhe' about like eels ? Come, tell me,' and
his lips curled up like a German's moustache, ' isn't
life bad enough already?'

It suddenly struck Shelton that, in spite of that
intensely amused smile, his uncle's face had a kind
of crucified look, as if his feelings had worn their way
to the surface, like the points of nails through the
inner sole of a boot. It was, perhaps, only the stronger
sunlight in the open space of Trafalgar Square.

' I don't know,' he replied, trying to be honest at the
expense of his uncle's good opinion ; ' I think I prefer
the truth on the whole.'

' Bad endings and the rest of it !' said Mr. Paramor,
pausing under one of Nelson's lions and taking Shelton
by a button. ' Truth's the very devil !'

As he stood there, with head very straight, and eyes
haunting his nephew's face, there seemed a queer,
touching muddle in his optimism — a muddle of tender-
heartedness and intolerance, of truth and second-
handedness, as if the cause for it were at once too
deep and not deep enough. Like the lion beneath
which he stood, he seemed with a splendid prudery
to defy life to make him look at her in the nude.

' No, my dear,' he said, handing a sixpence to the
crossing-sweeper ; ' feelings are feelings, not words.

MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT 59

Like snakes, by Jove ! only fit to be kept in bottles
with tight corks. You won't come to my club ? Well,
good-bye, old boy ; my love to your mother when you
see her ;' and turning up the Square, he left Shelton to
go on to his own club, feeling queerly as if he had parted,
not from his uncle, but from the nation of which they
were both members by birth, blood, and education.

CHAPTER VII

THE CLUB

He went into the library of his club, and mechanically
took up Burke's Peerage. The first words which his
uncle had said to him some days ago on hearing of
his engagement had been : ' Dennant ! Are those
the Oxfordshire Dennants ? She was a Penguin.'

No one who knew Mr. Paramor could connect him
with the word ' snob,' but there had been an ' Ah ! that's
all right ; this is due to us ' kind of tone about the
remark.

Shelton looked for the name Baltimore : ' Charles
Penguin, fifth Baron Baltimore. Issue : Alice, b. 184-,
ni. 186- to Algernon Dennant, Esq., of Holm Oaks,
Cross Eaton, Oxfordshire.' Pie put down the Peerage
and took up the Landed Gentry : ' Dennant, Algernon
Cuffe, eldest son of the late Algernon Cuffe Dennant,
Esq., J. P., and Irene, 2nd daur. of the Honble.
Philip and Lady Lillian March Mallow; ed. Eton
and Ch. Ch., Oxford, J. P. for Oxfordshire. Residence,
Holm Oaks, etc., etc' Dropping the Landed Gentry,
he took up a volume of the ' Arabian Nights,' which
some member had left reposing on the book-rest
attached to his chair, but instead of reading he kept

60

THE CLUB 6i

looking round the room. In almost every chair, reading
or snoozing, were gentlemen who, in their own estima-
tion, might have married Penguins. For the first time,
perhaps, it struck him with what majestic leisureliness
they turned the pages of their books, trifled with their
teacups, or snored lightly. Yet not two of them were
alike — a tall man with dark moustache, thick hair, and
red, smooth cheeks ; another completely bald, with
stooping shoulders ; a tremendous old buck, with a
pointed gray beard and a large white waistcoat ; a
clean-shaven dapper man past middle age, with a com-
placent face like a bird's ; a long, sallow, misanthropi-
cal-looking person ; and a sanguine creature asleep.
But asleep or awake, reading or snoring, fat or thin,
hairy or bald, the insulation of those red or pale faces
was complete. They were all persons of good form.
And alternately staring at them and reading the
'Arabian Nights,' Shelton spent the time before dinner.
He had not long been seated in the dining-room before
a distant connection strolled up and took the next
table.

' Ah, Shelton !' said he, ' you're^back, then ? Some-
body told me you were goin' round the world;' and
leisurely unrolling a napkin, -he scrutinized the menu
through his eyeglass. ' Clear soup ! . . . Have you
read Jellaby's speech ? It's amusing to see the way he
squashes those fellows. He's the best man in the
House, you know ; he really is.'

Shelton paused in the act of helping himself to
asparagus ; he, too, had been in the habit of admiring
Jellaby, but now he asked himself. Why? The red,
intensely-shaven face of his neighbour above a broad,
pure surface of shirt front was slightly swollen by good

62 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

humour; his small, very usual, and rather hard eyes
were fixed with an introspective look upon the success-
ful process of his own eating.

' Sii,ccess /' thought Shelton, suddenly enlightened—
' success is what we worship in Jellaby. We all want
success. . . . Yes,' he admitted aloud, ' he's a success-
ful beast.'

' Oh !' said his neighbour, ' I forgot. You're in the
other camp, aren't you ?'

'No,' said Shelton, who of all things hated to be
classified, ' not particularly. How did you get that
idea ?' •

His neighbour looked at him for a negligent second.

' Oh,' said he, ' I somehow thought so ;' and Shelton
knew that he meant : ' There's something not sound
about you.'

' Why do you admire Jellaby ?' he asked.

' Knows his own mind,' replied his neighbour ; ' it's
more than some of 'em do. . . . This whitebait isn't fit
for a cat ;' and wiping his moustache, he stared hard at
the waiter. ' Clever fellow, Jellaby !' he resumed, watch-
ing the glass into which the man was pouring Pommery
and Greno ; ' no nonsense about him ! Have you ever
heard him speak ? It's awfully good sport to watch
him sit on those beggars. What a mess they've made
of it, eh ?' and he laughed, either from appreciation of
Jellaby sitting on a small minority, or from appreciation
of the champagne bubbles. His laugh had an odd
effect on Shelton.

' Minorities are always depressing,' he said dryly.

' Eh ? what ?' queried his neighbour.

' I mean,' said Shelton, persisting in his sarcasm, and
gulping down the sense that he was making a fool of

THE CLUB 63

himself, 'it's irritating to look at people who haven't
a chance of success — fellows who make a mess of
things, fanatics, and all that.'

His neighbour turned his eyes with an inquisitive stare.

' Er — yes, quite,' said he ; ' don't you take mint
sauce ? It's the best part of lamb, I always think.'

The great room with its countless little tables, arranged
so that every man might have the moral support of the
heavy gold walls to his back, began softly to regain its
influence over Shelton. How many times had he not
sat there, carefully recognising all his acquaintances,
happy if he got the table he was used to, a paper with
the latest cricket and racing, and someone to gossip to
who was not a bounder, while the pleasant sensation of
having drunk just enough stole over his being ! Happy !
That is, happy as a horse is happy who is never taken
out of his stable.

' Look at poor little Bing puffin' about,' said his
neighbour with compassionate contempt, indicating a
weazened, hunchy waiter, who had been pitchforked by
an ironical chance into these halls of success. ' His
asthma's awfully bad ; you can hear him wheezin' from
the end of the street.'

He seemed amused.

' There's no such thing as moral asthma, I suppose ?'
observed Shelton, with startling abruptness.

His neighbour dropped his eyeglass impatiently.

' Here, take this away; it's overdone,' said he; and,
looking at Shelton's plate, he added : ' Bring me some
lamb.'

When Shelton had finished, he pushed back his table.

' Good-night ! It's an excellent Stilton,' said he, with
an attempt to cover up his indiscretion.

64 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' Good-night,' nodded his distant connection, raising
his eyebrows and dropping his eyes again upon his
plate.

In the hall Shelton went from force of habit to
the weighing-machine and solemnly took his weight.
' Eleven stone !' he thought ; ' I've gone up !' and, clip-
ping a cigar, he sat down in the smoking-room with one
of the latest novels.

After half an hour he had occasion to put the book
down to relight the cigar, which had gone out. There
seemed something rather fatuous about the story, for
though it had a tremendous plot, and was full of well-
connected people, it had apparently been contrived with
great ingenuity to throw no light on anything whatever.
He looked at the name of its author, [a man with a
wide circulation ; everybody was highly recommending
it. He did not take up the book again, but began
thinking, with his eyes on the fire. . . .

Looking up, he saw Antonia's second brother, a
subaltern in the Rifles, bending over him with his
sunny cheeks and lazy smile ; he was evidently a trifle
elated.

' Congratulate you, old chap !' he was saying. ' I say,
what made you grow that b-b-eastly beard ?'

Shelton grinned, and turned up his eyes.

' " Pillbottle of the Duchess !" ' read young Dennant,
taking up Shelton's rejected tome. ' You've been reading
that ? Rippin', isn't it ?'

' Oh, ripping!' replied Shelton.

' Rippin' plot ! When you get hold of a novel you
don't want any rot about — what d'you call it ? — psycho-
logy, you want to be amused.'

' Rather !' murmured Shelton.

THE CLUB 65

' That's an awfully "good bit where the President

steals her diamonds There's old Benjy ! Hallo,

Benjy !'

'Hallo, Bill, old man!'

A young, clean-shaven creature approached, whose
face and voice and manner were a perfect blend of
urbanity and decision, and whose steely geniality was
the very hall-mark of success. He nodded to Shelton.

In addition to the young man who was so smooth
and hard and cheery, and went by the name of Benjy,
a gray, short-bearded gentleman, with misanthropic eyes
like a monkey's, and an unexpected liking for the com-
pany of younger men, called Stroud, had come up ; and
another man of about Shelton's age, with a moustache
and a bald patch exactly the size of a crown exactly at
the top of his head, who might be seen in the club any
night of the year when there was no racing out of the
reach of London.

' You know,' said young Dennant to Shelton, ' that
this bounder ' — he indicated Benjy by a slap on the
knee — ' is going to be spliced to-morrow. Miss Cas-
serol — you know the Casserols — Muncaster Gardens.'

' By Jove !' said Shelton, delighted to be able to say
something at last.

' Young Champion's the best man, and I'm second
best man. I tell you what, you old beggar,' he pursued
to Shelton : ' you'd better come with me and get your
eye in ; you won't get such another chance of practice.
Benjy '11 give you a card.'

* Delighted !' murmured the affable Benjy.

' Where is it ?' asked Shelton politely.

' St. Briabas ; two-thirty. Come and see how they
do the trick. I'll call for you about one ; we'll have

5

66 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

some lunch and go on together ;' and again he patted
Benjy's knee.

Shelton consented to this arrangement ; there was a
piquancy about the callousness of the affair which made
him shiver, and furtively in the interstices of the conversa-
tion he eyed Benjy, the steely suavity of whose manner
never wavered, and who appeared to have a greater
interest in some approaching race than in his coming
marriage. But Shelton knew from his own sensations
that this could not really be the case ; it was merely
a question of ' good form,' the conceit of superior breed-
ing, the necessity of not giving one's self away. And
when in turn he noted the eyes of old Stroud fixed
on Benjy, amicably malicious under their shaggy eye-
brows, and the curiosity which gleamed greedily in
the face of the racing man, he felt sorry, somehow.

' Who's that fellow with the game leg ; I'm always
seeing him about lately ?' asked the racing man
suddenly.

Shelton's attention was drawn to a sallow individual,
conspicuous for a want of accuracy in the parting of
the hair and a certain restlessness of attitude.

' His name is Bayes,' said old Stroud, whose business
it was to know everyone, and beneath the malevolence
of whose eyes could be detected a perfectly genuine
disapproval ; ' spends half his time among the Chinese
— must have a grudge against them, poor devils ! Now
he's got a game leg, and can't go there any more.'

' Chinese ? Good Gad ! What does he do to them ?'

' Bibles, perhaps, or guns. Don't ask me ! What do
I know about that sort of fellow ? He's an adventurer.'

' Looks a bit of a bounder,' said the racing man.

Shelton gazed at old Stroud's twitching eyebrows ; he

THE CLUB 67

was dimly conscious that it must be annoying for a
gentleman whose ideal is a snug thing in the ' Woods
and Forests,' and plenty of time for ' Bridge ' and
gossip at the club, to see people going about with
untidily arranged lives. A minute later, however, the
man with the ' game leg ' passed close to his chair, and
then Shelton perceived how very intelligible the resent-
ment of his fellow-members was. He had eyes which,
not uncommon in this country, looked like lires behind
steel bars ; he seemed the very kind of man who might
do all sorts of things that were ' bad form,' might even
be guilty of chivalry. He looked straight at Shelton,
and the uncompromising intensity of his glance gave an
impression of rather fierce loneliness ; altogether, an
improper person to belong to a club. Shelton remem-
bered the words of an old friend of his father's : ' Yes,
Dick, all sorts of fellows belong here, and they come
here for all sorts o' reasons, and a lot of 'em come
because they've got nowhere else to go, poor beggars ;'
and as he glanced back from the man with the ' game
leg' to old Stroud, it occurred to him that after all
even he, old Stroud, might be one of these poor
beggars, and again he felt sorry. One never knew !
A look, however, at Benjy, contained and cheery,
restored him. 'Ah, you lucky, unnatural devil!' he
mused : ' You won't have to come here any more !' and
the thought of the last evening he himself would before
long be spending flooded his mind with an eager sweet-
ness that was actual pain. ^

'Benjy, I'll play you a h-h-hundred up!' said Bill
Dennant.

Stroud and the racing man went to watch the game,
and Shelton was left once more in solitary reverie.

5—2

68 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' Good form !' thought he; ' that fellow must be made
of steel. They'll go on somewhere ; stick about half
the night playing poker, or some such foolery.'

He went over to the window. Rain had begun to
fall, and the streets looked wild and draughty. The
cabmen were putting on their coats. Two women
scurried by, huddled under one umbrella, and a thin-
clothed, dogged-looking scarecrow lounged past with a
surly, desperate step. Shelton returned to his chair,
threading his way amongst the groups of his fellow-
members. A procession of old school and college
friends kept filing before his eyes. After all, what had
there been in his own education, or theirs, to give them
any other standard than this ' good form '? What had
there been to teach them a single fact about life ?
Their imbecility was incredible when you came to think
of it. They had all the air of knowing everything,
and really they knew nothing — nothing of Nature, Art,
Philosophy, or the Emotions ; nothing of the bonds
that bound people together. Why, even the words were
' bad form '; everything outside their own little circle was
' bad form.' They had a fixed point of view over life
because they came of certain Schools, Colleges, and
Regiments ! And they were the people in charge of the
State, Laws, Science, Army, Religion. Well, but it was
part of a system — the system not to begin too young, to
form healthy fibre, and let the after-life develop it !

'Successful!' he thought, nearly stumbling over a
pair of patent-leather boots belonging to a moon-faced,
genial -looking member with gold nose-nippers; 'oh
yes, it's successful !'

Somebody came and picked up from the table the
very volume which had originally inspired his train of

THE CLUB 69

thought, and Shelton had the mortification of watching
the solemn pleasure with which he sucked it in. By
leaning forward he could just see the white of his eye ;
there was a torpid, composed abstraction in it. The
reader seemed as pleased as Punch ; there was nothing
to startle his prejudices or make him think, nothing
that worried him by showing what people really felt.

The moon-faced member with the patent boots came
up and began talking of his recent experiences at Monte
Carlo. He had one or two anecdotes to relate of a
scandalous nature, and his broad face beamed, delight-
fully frank, behind the gold nose-nippers ; he was a
large man with such a store of easy, worldly good-
humour that it was impossible not to succumb to his
gossip, he gave so complete an impression of enjoying
life, of doing himself well. He said : ' Well, good-
night ! I've got an engagement ;' and the certainty he
left behind him that that engagement was a soft thing,
something, perhaps, charming and illicit, was quite
pleasant to the soul.

Miraculously serene was the room, and slowly taking
up his glass, Shelton finished his drink, an inexpressible
sense of well-being upon him. The sensation of being
superior to his environment, to all these fellow-members,
was soothing ; he saw through the sham of this club
life, the meanness of this worship of success, the sham
of these kid-gloved novelists, the sham of ' good form,'
and of the terrific decency of our education. It was
soothing to see through these things, soothing to be so
superior ; and from the padded recesses of his chair he
continued to puff smoke and stretch his limbs towards
the fire, which burned back at him with a discreet and
venerable glow.

CHAPTER VIII

THE WEDDING

Punctual to his word, Bill Dennant called for Shelton
at one o'clock.

' I b-bet old Benjy's feeling a bit cheap,' said he, as
they got out of their cab at the church door and passed
between the crowded files of unelect, whose semi-pitiful
eyes devoured them from the pavement.

The ashy face of a woman with a baby in her arms
and two more by her side looked as eager as if she had
never been married herself. Shelton went in inexplicably
uneasy ; the price of his tie was their board and lodging
for a week. He followed his future brother-in-law up
to a well-advanced pew on the bridegroom's side of the
church, for, with intuitive perception of the eternal
warfare of sex, each of the opposing parties to this
contract had its serried battalion, the arrows of whose
mutual suspicion kept glancing across and across the
central passage.

Bill Dennant's eyes had begun to twinkle.

' There's old Benjy !' he whispered ; and Shelton
looked at the hero of the day. A subdued pallor was
traceable under the weathered uniformity of his shaven
face ; but the well-bred, perfectly artificial smile which
he bent upon the guests had lost none of its steely

70

THE WEDDING 71

suavity. His costume, the pose of his neat figure, had
that studied and unconventional ease which Hfts men
out of the ruck of common bridegrooms. There were
no holes in Ms armour through which the impertinent
might pry.

' G-good old Benjy !' whispered young Dennant ; ' I
say, they look a bit short of class, those Casserols.'

Shelton, who had an acquaintanceship with the bride's
family, smiled nervously. The sensuous sanctity all
round had begun to affect him. A confused perfume
of flowers and dresses fought with the natural odour
of the church ; the perpetual rustle of whispers and
skirts struck a note of eager hypocrisy through the
native silence of the aisles. His eyes fixed themselves
on the neck of the lady in front, and without in the
least desiring to make such a speculation, he wondered
whether her face was as charming as the lines of her
back in their dehcate, skin-tight setting of pearl gray ;
his eyes wandered on to the chancel with its stacks of
flowers, to the grave, business-like faces of the presiding
priests; and the organ began rolling out a wedding
march.

'They're off!' whispered young Dennant, jogging
Shelton's elbow.

He turned, conscious of a shiver running through the
audience which reminded him of a bull-fight he had
seen in Spain. The bride came slowly up the aisle.
Shelton set his teeth. ' Antonia will look like that,' he
thought, ' and the church will be filled with people like
this. . . . She'll be a show to them !' The bride was
opposite now, and by an instinct of common chivalry
he actually averted his eyes ; it seemed to him a shame
to look at that head, downcast above the silver mystery

72 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

of her perfect raiment ; the modest head full, doubtless,
of devotion and pure yearnings ; the stately head where
no such thought as, ' How am I looking, this day of all
days, before all London ?' had ever entered ; the proud
head, which no such fear as, ' How am I carrying it
off?' could possibly be besmirching.

A perception of the drama enacted before his eyes
invaded him ; he set his face, as a man might who
suddenly found himself assisting at a sacrifice. The
words, however, fell unrelenting on his ears : ' For
better for worse, for richer for poorer ; in sickness and

in health ' Two perfectly-dressed figures babbling

monumental words to a perfectly-dressed crowd, hang-
ing on their lips for a sign of weakness. ' Its pitiful !'
he thought ; and opening the Prayer Book he turned
to the Marriage Service, which he had not looked at since
he was a schoolboy, and as he read he had some very
curious sensations.

All this would be happening to himself before many
months were over ! He went on kneeling and standing
in a kind of stupor, until aroused by his companion's
whisper, ' No luck !' and while all around rose a resigned
rustling of skirts, he saw a tall figure ascend the puipit
and stand motionless. Massive and high-featured, sunken
of eye, he towered impressive in splendid cambric and
crimson stole above the carved blackness of the pulpit ;
it seemed almost as if he had been chosen for his
aesthetic qualities. Shelton listened attentively, and
was still gazing in a disillusioned manner at the stitch-
ing of his suede gloves, when once again the organ
broke forth into the Wedding March. Everybody was
smiling, and a few were weeping, craning their heads
and bending their bodies towards the bride. ' Carnival

THE WEDDING 73

of second-hand emotions !' thought Shelton ; and smiling
also, he, too, craned his head and began to brush his
hat. Then, smirking at his acquaintances, he made
his way in the tail of the crowd towards the door.

He found himself in the Casserols' house at last,
going round the presents with the eldest Miss Casserol,
a tall girl in pale yellow and violets, who had been the
chief bridesmaid.

' Didn't it go off well, Mr. Shelton ?' she said.

' Awfully,' replied Shelton.

' I always think it's so awkward for the man waiting
up there for the bride to come.'

' Yes,' murmured Shelton.

' Don't you think it's smart, the bridesmaids having
no hats ?'

Shelton had not noticed this improvement, but he
hastened to agree.

' That was my idea ; I think it's very chic. They've
had fifteen tea-sets — so dull, isn't it ?'

' By Jove !' exclaimed Shelton.

' Oh, it's fearfully useful to have a lot of things you
don't want ; of course, you change them for those
you do.'

To Shelton's bewildered eyes it seemed that the
whole of London had disgorged its shops into the
room ; he looked at Miss Casserol's face, and was
greatly struck by the shrewd acquisitiveness of her
small eyes.

' Is that your future brother-in-law ?' she asked,
indicating Bill Dennant by a little movement of her
chin ; ' I think he's such a bright boy. I want you
both to come to dinner to-night, and help to keep
things jolly. It's so deadly after a wedding.'

74 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

Shelton accepted the invitation.

They adjourned to the hall now, to wait for the
bride's departure, and Shelton looked at her face as she
came down the stairs. It was impassive and gay, with
a furtive uneasiness in the eyes, and once more he
experienced the odd sensation of having sinned against
his manhood. Jammed close to him in the crowd was
her old nurse, whose puffy, yellow visage was pouted
with emotion, while tears rolled into her wrinkles. She
was trying to say something, but in the hubbub her
farewell, whatever it was, was perfectly inaudible.
There was a scamper to the carriage, a flurry of rice and
flowers; the shoe was flung against the sharply drawn-
up window. Then Benjy's clean-shaven face was seen
for a moment, steely and bland, the footman folded his
arms, and with a solemn crunch the brougham wheels
started. ' How splendidly it went off !' said a voice on
Shelton's right. ' She looked a little pale,' said a voice
on his left. Shelton put his hand to his forehead, and
behind him the old nurse sniffed.

' Dick,' said young Dennant in his ear, ' this isn't
good enough ; I vote we b-b-bolt !'

Shelton assented, and as they walked in the direc-
tion of Piccadilly he absently listened to his com-
panion's impressions, nor could he have said whether
the slight nausea he experienced was due to after-
noon champagne or to the ceremony that had gone off
so well.

' What's up with you ?' asked young Dennant, as
they reached the Park ; ' you look as glum as any
m-monkey.'

Shelton shrugged his shoulders.

THE WEDDING 75

' Nothing,' said he ; 'I was only thinking what
humbugs we are !'

Bill Dennant stopped in the middle of the crossing
and clapped his future brother-in-law on the shoulder.
'Oh,' said he, ' if you're going to talk shop, I'm off.'

CHAPTER IX

THE DINNER

The dinner at the Casserols' was given to those of the
bride's friends who had been most prominent in the
day's festivity. Shelton found himself between Miss
Casserol and another lady exhibiting very much the
same species of bosom, but a different species of
shoulder-strap. Opposite to him sat a man with a
single diamond stud, white \^'aistcoat, black moustache,
and hawklike face. This was, in fact, one of those
interesting houses occupied by upper middle-class
families who have imbibed a taste for smart society.
Its inhabitants, naturally acquisitive, cautious, econo-
mical, and tenacious, worshipped the word ' smart.'
The result was a kind of heavy-handed frivolousness, an
air of thoroughly respectable vice. In addition to the
domesticated fast, Shelton had met there one or two
of those ladies who, having been divorced, or being in
the potential crucible of divorce, are still anxious to
maintain their position in smart ' society.' Divorced
ladies without such ambitions were never to be found
there, for the Casserols had the highest respect for
marriage. He had also met there an American lady or
so who \\'as ' quite too amusing ' — never, of course,
an American man — one or more Mesopotamians of a

76

THE DINNER ^^

financial or racing type, and several of those gentlemen
who had been, or were about to be, engaged in a trans-
action which might, or again might not, ' come off,' and
in conduct of an order which might, or again might not,
be found out. He knew perfectly well, however, that
the line was always drawn at those in any category who
were actually found out, for the value of these ladies
and gentlemen was not their claim to pity as out-
casts — nothing so sentimental — but their ' smartness,'
clothes, jokes, racing tips, ' biking ' parties, motor-cars.

In sum, he knew the house for one of the backbones
of Metropolitan gaiety, whose fundamental 'respect-
ability ' focussed and cemented detached limbs of an
entirely different species, in themselves too ' smart ' to
keep their heads above water.

He always felt sorry for his host, a gray-headed,
clean-shaven City man, with a long upper lip, curved
back, and bald forehead, who just now was trying to
live up to a lady the pleasant audacity of whose speech
came ringing down the table. He himself had rather
abandoned the attempt with his own neighbours, and
made love to his dinner, which, surviving the in-
coherence of the atmosphere in this house, invariably
emerged as a work of art, and it was with a certain surprise
that he found Miss Casserol again addressing him.

' I always say that the great thing is to be jolly. If
you can't find anything to make you laugh, pretend you
do ; it's so much smarter to be amusin'. Now don't you
agree ?'

The philosophy sounded excellent, and he meekly
assented.

' We can't all be geniuses,' she continued, ' but we
can all look jolly.'

78 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

Shelton, much ashamed, hastened to look jolly.

The young lady resumed : ' I tell the governor,
when he gets glum, that I shall put up the shutters
and leave him. What's the good of mopin' and lookin'
miserable ? Are you going to the Four-in-Hand Meet ?
We're making a party. Such fun ; all the smart
people !'

The splendour of her shoulders, the frizziness of her
hair (which had clearly not been two hours out of the
hands of the hairdresser), might have made him doubt-
ful ; but the frank shrewdness in her eyes, and her
carefully clipped tone of voice, were guarantees that
she was part of the element at the table which was
really quite respectable. He had never realized before
how ' smart ' she was, and with an effort abandoned
himself to a gaiety solid enough to have killed a
Parisian.

He asked after her two younger sisters still in the
schoolroom.

' Oh, those children !' Miss Casserol replied.

Again Shelton felt at a loss ; he could not disentangle
the sober and genuine family affection in her voice from
the off-handed contempt proper to the ' smart ' young
woman.

When the ladies filed out of the room he was left
feeling like a man who has been riding upon an un-
improved motor-car. He reflected over the expression
of Miss Casserol's eyes when they had rested upon a lady
opposite, who was of a true bird-of-prey voluptuousness.
' What is it,' the enviousness of their inquisitive glance
had seemed to say, ' that makes her so really " smart " ?'
And while seeking for the reason of this he noticed his
host pointing out the merits of his port to the hawklike

THE DINNER 79

man, with an expression of deference which was quite
pitiful, for the hawklike man was clearly what is called
a ' bad hat.' What in the name of goodness was this
attraction of vice for the middle classes ? A craving to
be distinguished, a dread of being thought dull, or
merely an effect of overfeeding ? Again he looked at
his host, who had not yet completed the catalogue of
his cellar, and again felt sorry for him.

' So you're goin' to marry Antonia Dennant ?' said a
voice on his right, with the easy coarseness which is a
mark of caste ; ' pretty girl ! They've a nice place, the
Dennants. D'ye know, you're a lucky feller !'

The speaker was a perennially youthful old baronet,
with small eyes, dusky red face, and a peculiar hail-
fellow-well-met expression, at once morose and sly.
He was always hard up, but being a man of enterprise
he knew all the best people, as well as all the worst, so
that he dined out every night.

' You're a lucky feller,' he repeated ; ' he's got some
deuced good shootin', Dennant ! They come too high
for me, though ; never touched a feather the last time I
shot there. She's a pretty girl. You're a lucky feller !'

' I know that,' said Shelton humbly.

' Wish I were in your shoes. Who was that sittin'
the other side of you ? I'm so dashed short-sighted.
Mrs. Carruther ? Oh ay!' An expression which, if he
had not been a baronet, would have been a leer, passed
on to his lips.

Shelton felt that he was referring to the leaf in his
mental pocket-book covered with the anecdotes, figures,
and facts about Mrs. Carruther. ' The old ogre means,'
thought he, ' that I'm lucky because he's got a blank
leaf about Antonia ;' and he actually felt a desire for the

8o THE ISLAND PHARISEES

page to be smudged and torn, that he might show how
he despised this system of entry. He stared at the old
fellow as he leaned forward, with his singular smile and
his air of sardonic good-breeding, to listen to a bit of
scandal on the other side. His host's voice recalled
him :

' Shelton, try that Madeira ; you won't get it every
day.'

Shelton tried it, and it was like a divine oil poured on
the chivalric fire of his sentiments.

The two men to his left were talking.

' What ! You don't collect anything ?' said the one
next him ; ' how's that ? Everybody collects something.
I should be lost without my pictures.'

' No, I don't collect anything. Given it up ; I was
too awf 'lly had over my Walkers.'

Shelton grinned ; he had somehow expected a loftier
reason, and returned to the Madeira in his glass. That
had been ' collected ' by his host, and its price was
steadily going up ! You couldn't get it every day ;
worth two guineas a bottle ! How precious the idea
that other people couldn't get hold of it made it seem !
Liquid delight ; and the price going up ! Soon there
would be none left ; immense ! Absolutely no one
would be able to drink it !

' Wish I had some of this,' said the old baronet,
screwing his purple cheeks round at him ; ' but I've
drunk all mine."

'Poor old chap!' thought Shelton; 'after all, he's
not a bad old boy. I wish I had his pluck. His liver
must be magniiicent.' He drained his glass.

The drawing-room was full of people playing a game
concerned with horses ridden by jockeys with the latest

THE DINNER 8i

seat. With the silent amiability which always seized
on him after dinner, he helped to carry on this pursuit
till an early hour of the morning. At last he left, ex-
hausted by animation.

He thought of the wedding, and all the energy that
had been bestowed on its magnificent insincerity ; he
thought over his dinner and the wine he had drunk.
His mood of satisfaction had fizzled out ; he felt dis-
illusioned and ungrateful. These people suggested to
him an incapacity for passion, even the smartest of
them, even the most respectable ; they seemed to weigh
pleasure in the scales and to get the most they could
for their money.

As he neared home, between the dark, safe houses
stretching for miles and miles of security and comfort,
his thoughts were full of Antonia ; and just as he reached
his rooms he was overtaken by the moment which
comes each morning when the town is born again.
The first new air had stolen down ; the sky was alive,
but not yet with light ; the trees of the Square quivered
faintly ; no living creature stirred, and nothing spoke
except his own heart. Suddenly the city seemed to
breathe, and Shelton perceived that, after all, he was
not alone; an unconsidered trifle with inferior boots
was asleep upon his doorstep.

CHAPTER X

AN ALIEN

The individual on the doorstep had fallen forward over
his knees in watchful slumber. No greater air of pros-
perity clung about him than is conveyed by a rusty
overcoat and wisps of cloth in place of socks. Shelton
endeavoured to pass unseen, but the sleeper awoke at
the sound of the latch-key.

' Ah, it's you, monsieur!' said he, rising. ' I received
your letter this evening, and have lost no time.' He
looked down and tittered, as much as to say : ' What a
state I'm in !'

The young foreigner's condition was indeed more
desperate than on their first meeting, and Shelton in-
vited him upstairs.

' You can well understand,' stammered Ferrand, as
he followed his host into the chambers, ' that I didn't

want to miss you this time. When one is like this '

and a spasm gripped his face.

' I'm very glad you came,' said Shelton, swallowing a
qualm.

His visitor had a week's growth of reddish beard on
his face ; the deep tan of his cheeks gave him a robust
appearance at variance with the fit of trembling which
seized on him as soon as he had entered the room.

82

AN ALIEN 83

' Sit down — sit down,' said Shelton ; * you're feel-
ing ill !'

Ferrand smiled.

' It's nothing,' said he ; ' bad nourishment '

Shelton left his visitor seated on the edge of a chair,
and brought him a whisky-and-soda.

' Clothes,' said Ferrand, when he had drunk it, ' are
what I want. These are really not good enough.'

The statement was uncontrovertible, and Shelton,
placing a collection of garments in the bath-room,
iijvited his visitor to make himself comfortable. While
the latter was completing this process, Shelton enjoyed
the sensations of self-denial, hunting up things he did not
want, and laying them in two canvas portmanteaus.
It was an occasion which enabled him to express his
talent for generosity, and he awaited the return of his
guest in a state of mind not far removed from emotion.
He felt like a prince or a millionaire when parting with
a portion of his superfluity ; a spasm of secret virtue
had attacked him.

The young foreigner at length emerged, still unshaven
and wearing no boots, but having in other respects an
air of the most gratifying affluence.

' This is rather a different thing,' said he, with a
mixture of pride and mockery ; ' I can't get the boots
on, though '; and, puUing down his, or rather Shelton's,
socks, he exhibited sores the size of half a crown.
■ One doesn't sow without reaping some harvest or
other. My stomach has shrunk,' he added simply.
'To see things one must suffer. Voyager, c'est plus
fori que moi !'

Shelton failed to perceive that this was one way of
disguising the human animal's natural dislike of work

6—2

84 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

— there was a biting touch of pathos, a suggestion of
God-knows-what-might-have-been, about this fellow.

' I have eaten my illusions,' said the young foreigner,
as he sat in an armchair smoking a cigarette. ' When
you've starved a few times, your eyes are opened.
Savoir, c'est mon metier ; mais remarquez ceci, monsieur:
It's not always the intellectuals who succeed.'

' But when you get a job,' said Shelton, ' you throw
it away.'

' You accuse me of restlessness,' he replied ; ' shall I
explain what I think about that ? I'm restless because
of ambition ; I want to reconquer an independent
position. I put all my soul into my trials, but as soon
as I see there's no future for me in that line, I give it
up and go elsewhere. Je ne vetix pas etre ' rond de
cuir,' breaking my back to economize sixpence a day,
and save enough after forty years to drag out the re-
mains of an exhausted existence. That's not in my
character.' He pronounced this ingenious paraphrase
of the words ' I soon get tired of things ' with an air
of letting Shelton into a precious secret.

' Yes ; it must be hard,' agreed the latter.

Ferrand shrugged his shoulders.

' It's not all butter,' he replied ; ' one is obliged to
do things that are not too delicate. There's nothing I
pride myself on but frankness.'

Like a good chemist, however, he administered what
Shelton could stand in a very judicious way. ' Yes,
yes,' he seemed to say, 'you'd hke me to think that you
have a perfect knowledge of life : no morality, no preju-
dices, no illusions ; you'd like me to think that you
feel yourself on an equality with me, one human animal
talking to another, without any barriers of position,

AN ALIEN 85

money, clothes, or the rest — ga, c'est un pen trap fort !
You're as good an imitation article as I've come across
in your class, notwithstanding your unfortunate educa-
tion, and I'm really grateful to you, but to tell you
everything as it passes through my mind would damage
my prospects. You can hardly expect that.'

In one of Shelton's old frock-coat suits he was im-
pressive, with his air of natural and almost sensitive
reiinement. The room looked as if it were accustomed
to him, and more amazing still was the sense of famili-
arity which he inspired, as though he embodied a part
of Shelton's own soul. It came as quite a shock to
realize that this young foreign vagabond had taken so
great a place in his thoughts. The pose of his limbs
and head, irregular but not ungraceful ; his disillusioned
lips ; the continual rings of discoloured smoke issuing
from them — all signiiied rebellion, the subversion of
law and order. His long, thin, lop-sided nose, the
rapid glances of his goggling, prominent eyes, were
subtlety itself; the whole figure stood for discontent
with the accepted. He might have posed to an artist
for a statue of the Ideal.

' How do I live when I'm on the tramp ?' said he.
' Well, there are the Consuls. The system is not
delicate, but when it's a question of starving, much is
permissible ; besides, these gentlemen were created for
the purpose. There's a coterie of German Jews in
Paris who live entirely on Consuls.' He hesitated for
the fraction of a second, and resumed : ' Yes, monsieur ;
if you have papers that fit you, you can try six or seven
Consuls in a single town. You must know a language
or two ; most of these gentlemen are not too well up
in the tongues of the country they represent. Obtaining

86 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

money under false pretences ? Well, it is. But what's
the difference at bottom between all this honourable
crowd of directors, fashionable physicians, employers of
labour, jerry-builders, military men, country priests,
and Consuls themselves perhaps, who take money and
give no value for it, and poor devils who do the same at
far greater risk ? Necessity makes the law. If those
gentlemen were in my position, do you think they
would hesitate ?'

Shelton made a wry face.

' You're right,' assented Ferrand instantly ; ' they
would, but from fear, not principle. One must be hard
pressed before committing these indelicacies. Look
deep enough, and you'll see what indelicate things are
done daily by respectable gentlemen for not half such
good reasons as the want of a meal.'

Shelton also took a cigarette — his own income was
derived from property for which he gave no value in
labour.

' I can give you an instance,' said Ferrand, ' of what
can be done by resolution. One day in a German
town, etant dans la misere, I decided to try the French
Consul. As you know, I am not French, but something
had to be done. Well, as he refused to see me, I sat
down to wait. After about two hours, a voice bellowed :

' " Hasn't the brute gone ?" and my Consul appears.
" I've nothing for fellows like you," says he ; "clear out !"

'"Monsieur," I answered, "I'm skin and bone; I
really must have assistance."

' " Clear out," he repHes, " or I'll have you thrown
out by the police !"

' I don't budge. Another hour passes, and back he
comes.

AN ALIEN 87

' " Still here ?" says he. " Fetch a zergeant."

' The sergeant comes in.

' " Zergeant," says the Consul, " durn this creature
out."

' " Sergeant," I say, " this house is France !" Natur-
ally, I had made my calculations on that. In Germany
they're not too fond of those who undertake the affairs
of the French.

' " He is right," says the sergeant ; " I can do
nothing."

' " You refuse ?"

' " Absolutely."

' Well, they showed me in to the Consul at last.

' " What do you think you'll get by staying ?" says he.

' " I have nothing to eat or drink, and nowhere to
sleep," say I.

'" What will you go for ?"

' " Ten marks."

' " Here, then, get out !" I can tell you, monsieur, one
mustn't have a thin skin if one wants to exploit Consuls.'

His yellow fingers slowly rolled the stump of his
cigarette, his ironical lips flickered. Shelton thought of
his own ignorance of life. He could not recollect ever
having wanted a meal.

' I suppose,' he said feebly, ' you've often been with-
out food.' For, having always been so well fed,
starvation had an attraction for him.

Ferrand smiled.

' Four days is the longest,' said he. ' You won't
believe that story, however. ... It was in Paris, and
I had lost all my money on the racecourse. There
was some due from home which didn't come, so
for four days and nights I lived on water. My clothes

88 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

were excellent, I had jewellery ; but I never even
thought of a pawnbroker. I suffered most from the
notion that people might guess my state. You don't
recognise me ?'

' How old were you then ?' said Shelton.
' Seventeen ; it's curious what one's like at that age.'
By a flash of insight Shelton saw the well-dressed
boy, with smooth, sensitive face, always on the move
about the streets of Paris, for fear people should see
the condition of his stomach. The story was a valu-
able commentary.

Ferrand's face suddenly contracted, and water rushed
into his eyes.

' I've suffered too much,' he stammered ; ' what do I
care now what becomes of me ?'

Shelton was disconcerted, he wished to say some-
thing sympathetic, but, being an Englishman, could
only fasten his eyes on the cloth.

' Your turn's coming,' he muttered at last.
' When you've lived my life,' broke out his visitor,
'nothing's any good. My heart's in rags. Find me
anything worth keeping in this menagerie.'

Moved though he was, Shelton resented this outburst.
He wriggled in his chair, a prey to a racial instinct, to
an optimism, an over-tenderness, perhaps, of soul that
forbade him to expose his own emotions, and recoiled
from the revelation of other people's. He could stand
it on the stage, he could stand it in a book, but in real
life he could not stand it. When Ferrand had gone
off with a portmanteau in each hand, he wrote to
Antonia :

' . . . The poor chap broke down and sat crying like
a child ; but instead of making me feel sorry, it turned

AN ALIEN 89

me to stone. The more sympathetic I wanted to be,
the gruffer I grew. Is it fear of ridicule, independence,
or consideration for others that prevents one from
showing one's feelings?'

' I wonder,' he thought, as he wrote this sentence,
' if it's this which gives us English our reputation,
makes us so respected and feared. You can't respect
a man who tells you his feelings.' He went on
to tell her about Ferrand's starving for four days
sooner than face a pawnbroker, and as he read it
over before folding it into its envelope, the faces of the
three ladies round their snowy oblong of cloth rose
before him — Antonia's face, so fair and calm and wind-
fresh ; her mother's face, a little creased by time and
weather ; the maiden aunt's, somewhat too thin — and
they seemed to lean at him, full of decorous interest,
while the words, 'Oh, that's rather nice!' rang in his
ears. He went out to post the letter himself, and
buying a five-shilling order, enclosed it to the little
French barber, Carolan, as a reward for delivering his
note to Ferrarid. He omitted to send his address with
the donation, but he could not have said whether the
omission was due to delicacy or caution. Beyond doubt,
however, on receiving through Ferrand the following
reply, he felt both pleased and ashamed of himself :

' 3, Blank Row,

' Westminster.
' From every well-born soul humanity is owing.
A thousand thanks. I received this morning your
postal order ; your heart henceforth for me will be
placed beyond all praise.

'J. Carolan.'

CHAPTER XI

THE VISION

A FEW days later he received a letter from Antonia
which filled him with excitement :

' . . . Aunt Charlotte is ever so much better, so
mother thinks we can go home — hurrah ! But she
says that you and I must keep to our arrangement not
to see each other till July. There will be something
fine in being so near and having the strength to keep
apart. . . . All the English are gone. I feel it so
empty out here ; these people are so funny— all foreign
and shallow. Oh, Dick ! how splendid to have an idea
to look up to ! Write at once to Brewer's Hotel and
tell me you think the same. . . . We arrive at Charing
Cross on Sunday at half-past seven, stay at Brewer's
for a couple of nights, and go down on Tuesday to
Holm Oaks. . . .

' Always your

' Antonia.'

'To-morrow!' he thought; 'she's actually coming
to-morrow !' and leaving his breakfast untouched, he
started out to walk off his emotion. His own square
ran into one of those slums that still rub shoulders
with the most distinguished situations, and in it he

90

THE VISION 91

came upon a little crowd gathered round a dog-fight.
One of the dogs was in a bad way, but the day was
muddy, and Shelton, like any well-bred Englishman
had a horror of making himself conspicuous even in a
good cause; so he looked for a policeman. One was
standing by, to see fair play, perhaps, and Shelton
appealed to him. The official, however, could only
suggest that he should not have brought out a fighting
dog, and advised him to throw cold water over them.

' It isn't my dog,' said Shelton indignantly.

' Then I should let 'em be,' remarked the policeman,
a little surprised.

Shelton appealed indefinitely to the lower orders.
The lower orders, however, were afraid of being bitten.

' I wouldn't meddle with that there job if I was you,'
said one.

' It's a nasty breed that,' said another.

He was therefore obliged to cast his respectabilit}' to
the winds, and had the satisfaction of hearing his
audience guffaw while he spoiled his trousers, his
gloves, broke an umbrella, dropped his hat in the mud,
and finally separated the dogs. At the conclusion of
the 'job,' the member of the lower orders said to him
in a rather shamefaced manner :

' Well, I never thought you'd have managed that,
sir ;' but, like all men of inaction, Shelton after action
was dangerous.

' D n it !' said he, ' one can't let a dog be killed ;'

and he marched off, towing the injured dog with his
pocket-handkerchief, and looking scornfully at innocent
passers-by. Having satisfied for once the smouldering
fires within him, he felt entitled to hold a low opinion
of the man in the street. ' The brutes,' he thought.

92 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' won't stir a finger to save a poor dumb creature, and

as for policemen ' But as he grew cooler he began

to see that people overweighted by ' honest toil ' could
not afford luxuries like torn trousers or a bitten hand,
and that even the policeman, though he had looked so
like a demi-god, was absolutely made of flesh and
blood. He took the dog home, and, sending for a vet.,
had him sewn up.

He was already tormented by the doubt whether or
no he might venture to meet Antonia at the station,
and after sending his servant with the dog to the
address indicated on its collar, he formed the resolution
to go and see his mother, with some vague notion that
she might help him to decide. She lived in Kensington,
and, crossing the Brompton Road, he was soon amongst
that maze of houses into the fibre of whose structure
architects have so cunningly embodied the principle :
' Keep what you have got — wives, money, a good
address, and all the blessings of civilization !'

Shelton pondered as he passed house after house of
five stories each, and such intense respectability that
even dogs have been known to bark at them. His
blood was still hot, and it is amazing what small
incidents will promote the loftiest philosophy. He
had been reading in his favourite review an article
eulogizing the freedom and expansion which had made
the upper middle class so fine a body of people, and as
his eye wandered from side to side, he nodded his head
ironically. 'H'm!' he thought, 'freedom and expan-
sion ! Freedom and expansion !'

Each house-front was cold and formal, like the shell,
as it were, of an owner with from three to five thousand
a year, and each one was armoured against the opinion

THE VISION 93

of its neighbours by a sort of daring regularity.
' Conscious of my rectitude, and by the strict ob-
servance of exactly what is necessary and no more, I
am enabled to hold up my head in the world. The
person who lives in me has only four thousand two
hundred and fifty-five pounds a year, after allowing for
income tax.' Such seemed the legend of each house.

Shelton passed numbers of ladies in ones and twos
and threes going out shopping, or to classes of drawing,
or cooking, or ambulance. Hardly any men were to be
seen, and they were mostly policemen or crossing-
sweepers ; but a few disillusioned-looking children were
being wheeled by fresh-cheeked nurses towards the
Park, accompanied by a great army of hairy or hair-
less dogs.

There was something of her brother's large liberality
about Mrs. Shelton — a tiny lady with affectionate
eyes, warm cheeks, and cold feet; fond as a cat of a
chair by the fire, and full of the sympathy that has no
insight. She kissed Shelton rapturously, and, as usual,
began at once to talk of Antonia. For the first time a
tremor of doubt ran through her son ; his mother's
view of the engagement grated on him like the sight of
a blue-pink dress; it was too rosy. That splendid,
warm-blooded optimism of hers depressed him ; it had
too little connection with the reasoning powers.

'What right,' he asked himself, 'has she to be so
certain ? It seems to me a kind of blasphemy.'

' The dear !' cooed his mother. ' Is she coming back
to-morrow ? Hurrah ! how I long to see her !'

' But you know, Mother, we've agreed not to meet
again till July.'

Mrs. Shelton rocked her foot, and, holding her head

94 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

on one side like a little bird, looked at her son with
shining eyes.

' Dear old Dick !' she said, ' how happy you must be !'

Half a century of sympathy with marriages of all
kinds — good, bad, or indifferent — beamed from her.

' I suppose,' said Shelton gloomily, ' I ought not to
go and see her at the station.'

'Cheer up!' replied Mrs. Shelton, and Shelton felt
profoundly dejected.

That 'cheer up!' — the panacea which had carried
his mother blind and bright through all evils — was as
devoid of meaning to him as wine without flavour.

' And how's your sciatica ?' he asked.

' Oh, pretty bad,' returned Mrs. Shelton ; ' I expect
it's all right, really. Cheer up !' She stretched her
little figure, and canted her head still more.

' What a wonderful woman ! ' thought Shelton. She
had, in fact, like so many of her fellow-countrymen,
irretrievably mislaid the dark side of things, and, enjoy-
ing the benefits of every species of orthodoxy with a
clear conscience, had kept as young in heart as a girl
of thirty.

Shelton left her house as unable to decide whether he
might meet Antonia as when he entered it. He spent
a most restless afternoon.

The next day — the day of Antonia's arrival — was a
Sunday. He had made Ferrand a promise to go with
him to hear an amateur sermon in the slums, and,
catching at any diversion which might allay his excite-
ment, he fulfilled it. The preacher in question, so
Ferrand told him, had an original method of dis-
tributing the funds he obtained from his sermons, on
the principle that male sheep should have nothing at

THE VISION 95

all, ugly female sheep very little, and pretty female
sheep as much as possible. Ferrand suggested an
inference, but he was a foreigner. The Englishman
preferred to bestow the benefit of the doubt and regard
the preacher as guided by a purely abstract love of
beauty. His eloquence was at any rate beyond ques-
tion, and Shelton came out feeling rather sick.

It was not yet seven o'clock, so entering an Italian
restaurant to kill the remaining half hour before
Antonia's arrival, he ordered a bottle of wine for his
companion, a cup of coffee for himself, and, lighting
a cigarette, compressed his lips to subdue the spasms
of nervousness, the strange, sweet sinking, in his heart.
He was pale, and his eyes rested defiantly on everything
in turn. His companion, ignorant of this emotion,
drank his wine, crumbled his roll, and blew cigarette-
smoke through his nostrils, while he glanced caustically
at the rows of little tables, the cheap mirrors, the hot,
red velvet, the chandeliers. His juicy lips seemed to be
murmuring : ' Ah ! if you only knew the dirt behind
these feathers !' Shelton watched him with a kind of
disgust. Though his clothes were now so nice, his
nails were not quite clean, and the tips of his fingers
seemed yellow to the bone. An anaemic waiter in a
shirt four days old, with grease-spots on his garments
and a crumpled napkin across his arm, stood leaning
an elbow amongst dishes of doubtful fruits, reading an
Italian journal. Resting his tired feet in turn, he
looked like a figure-head of overwork, and when he
moved, each limb accused the sordid smartness of the
walls. In the far corner sat a lady eating an omelette,
and, mirrored opposite, her feathered hat, her short,
round face, with its coat of powder and dark eyes, gave

95 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

Shelton a shiver of disgust. His companion's eyes,
however, rested long and subtly upon her.

' Excuse me a moment, monsieur,' said he at length.
' I think I know that lady ;' and, leaving his host, he
crossed the room, accosted her with a bow, and sat
down. With a delicacy not far removed from
Pharisaism, Shelton refrained from glancing in their
direction. It was some time before Ferrand came
back, and when he did so, the lady rose and left the
restaurant ; she had been crying. The young foreigner
was flushed, his face contorted ; he left the rest of his
wine untouched.

' I was right,' said he unexpectedly, as they walked
away ; ' she's the wife of an old friend. I used to know
her well.'

He was suffering from emotion, but anyone less
absorbed than Shelton might have noticed a kind of
relish about the tone of his voice, as though he were
savouring one of life's dishes, and glad to have some-
thing new and spiced with tragic sauce to set before
his patron.

' You can find her story by the hundred in your
streets, but nothing hinders these paragons of virtue ' —
and he nodded at the stream of carriages — ' from turning
up their eyes when they see ladies of this description.'

And Shelton realized with a shock how far his class
removed him from the right to express sympathy.

' She came to London three years ago. After a year
one of her little boys took fever — the shop was avoided
in consequence — then her husband caught it, and died.
There she was, left with two children and everything
gone to pay the debts. She tried to get work ; no one
helped her. There was no money to pay anyone to stay

THE VISION 97

with the children ; all the work she could get in the
house was not enough to keep them alive. She's not a
strong woman. Well, she put the children out to nurse,
and went to the streets. The first week was frightful,
but now she's accustomed to it — one gets accustomed
to anything.'

' Can nothing be done ?' asked Shelton, startled.

' No,' returned his companion. ' I know that sort ; if
they once take to it it's all over. They get used to
luxury. One doesn't part with luxury after tasting
destitution. She tells me she does very nicely ; the
children are happy ; she's able to pay well and see them
sometimes. She was a girl of good family, too, who
loved her husband, and gave up much for him. What
would you have? Three-quarters of your virtuous ladies
placed in her position would do the same if they had the
necessary looks.'

It was evident that he had not got over the shock,
and Shelton understood for the first time that personal
acquaintance makes a difference, even in a vagabond.

' This is her beat,' said the young foreigner, as they
passed the illuminated crescent, where nightly the
shadows of hypocrites and unfortunates fall ; and
Shelton went from these comments on Christianity to the
platform of Charing Cross Station. There, as he stood
waiting in the shadow with his heart in his mouth, it
struck him as unaccountable and almost revolting that
he should have come to this meeting fresh from
Ferrand's society.

Presently, amongst the stream of travellers, he saw
Antonia. She was close to her mother, to whom a
footman was talking ; behind were a maid carrying a
bandbox and a porter with the travelling bags. Her

7

98 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

figure, with its throat settled in the collar of her cape,
slender, tall, and severe, looked impatient and remote
amongst all the bustle. Her eyes, shadowed by the
journey, glanced eagerly about, as if welcoming all she
saw ; a wisp of fair hair was loose over her ear, her
cheeks glowed rosy and cold. She caught sight of
Shelton, and bending her neck, stag-like, stood looking
at him ; a brilliant smile parted her lips, and Shelton
trembled. Here was the fleeting embodiment of all he
had desired for weeks. He could not tell what was
behind that smile — a passionate aching or only some
ideal, some chaste and glacial intangibility. It seemed
to be shining past him into the gloom of the station.
There was no trembling and uncertainty, no pale rage
of possession in the brilliancy of that smile ; it had the
gleam of fixedness, like the smile of a star. What did
it matter ? She was there, beautiful as a young day, and
smiling at him ; and she was his, only divided from him
by a space of time. He took a step, but her eyes fell at
once with a gleam of discomfiture, her face regained its
aloofness, and he saw her, encircled by mother, maid,
footman, and porter, take her seat in the carriage and
drive away.

He walked out. It was over ; she had seen him and
smiled, but alongside his delight lurked a feeling of
unreahty, and, by a bitter freak, not her face came up
before him, but the face of the lady in the restaurant —
short, round, and powdered, with black-circled eyes.
It gave him a shock. What right had he to despise
them ? Had they mothers and maids, porters and foot-
men ? A second shiver ran through him, but this time
of physical disgust, and with it vanished that powdered
face with dark-fringed eyes, and he entered his club

THE VISION 99

intoxicated by the vision of the fair, remote figure of the
railway-station.

He sat long over dinner, drinking and dreaming ; he
sat long in the smoking-room, inhaling the perfume of
his cigar and dreaming, and when at length he drove
away, wine and thoughts fumed in his brain. The dance
of lamps in St. James's Park, the cream-cheese moon,
the rays of clean wet light on his horse's harness, the
jingling of the cab bell, the whirring wheels, the night
air and the branches, all embodied some white idea,
some emblem of hope and fair attainment. He threw
back the doors of his hansom to feel more thoroughly
the touch of the warm breeze. The sight of the crowds
on the pavement gave him a sense of inexplicable
delight ; they were like shadows in some great illusion,
insignificant, happy shadows, thronging and wheeling
round the single figure that filled his world.

7—2

CHAPTER XII

ROTTEN ROW

With a headache and a sense of restlessness at once
hopeful and unhappy, Shelton mounted his hack next
morning for a gallop in the Park.

In the sky was one of those odd minglings of languor
and violence that come with the spring and linger,
belated, sometimes into the middle of May. The clouds
were of a hue more intense than an Emperor's cloak,
the trees and beds of young flowers wore a look of
awakenment in the gleams of passionate light that
bathed everything, steahng down from behind the
purple of the clouds. The air was clean-washed, and
the passers-by seemed all to wear an air of careless
tranquillity, as if their anxieties were paralyzed by the
irresponsibility of the firmament.

Thronged by riders splashing through the slush of
the late spring showers, the Row was all astir, for the
weather seemed to have breathed the gaiety of gamblers
into the very horses.

Near to Hyde Park Corner a figure by the rails
caught Shelton's eye. Straight and thin, with one
shoulder humped a little, as if its owner were reflecting,
clothed in a frock-coat and surmounted by a brown felt
hat pinched up with a kind of undefinable lawlessness,

100

ROTTEN ROW loi

this figure was so distinctly detached from its surround-
ings that it would have been noticeable anywhere. As
a matter of fact it belonged to Ferrand, obviously
waiting till it was time to breakfast with his patron.
Shelton found pleasure in thus observing him unseen,
and sat quietly on his horse, hidden behind a tree.

It was just at that spot where riders, unable to get
further, are for ever wheeling their horses for another
turn; and there Ferrand, the bird of passage, im-
movable on his two feet, with his head a little to one
side, stood watching them canter, trot, wheel, up and
down, up and down.

Three men walking along the rails had just made out
an acquaintance in one of the horsewomen, and were
snatching off their hats one after the other at exactly
the same angle and with precisely the same air, as
though in the modish performance of this ancient
rite they were satisfying some instinct very dear to
them.

Shelton could not help noting the curl of the young
foreigner's lip as he saw this sight. ' Many thanks,
gentlemen,' it seemed to say ; ' in that charming little
action of yours you have shown me your souls.'

What a singular gift the fellow had of divesting
people and things of their outer garments, of tearing
away the veil of their shams, and their phylacteries !
Shelton turned his back impatiently and rode off;
his thoughts were with Antonia, and he did not want
the glamour stripped away.

He had risen the dip, and was cantering gently under
the trees, glancing at the sky that every moment
threatened to discharge a violent shower of rain, when
suddenly he heard his name called from behind, and

102 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

who should ride up to him on either side but Bill
Dennant and — Antonia herself!

They had been galloping, and she was flushed —
flushed as when she stood on the old tower at Hyeres,
but with a radiance of irresponsibility different from
the calm conquering radiance of that other moment.
To Shelton's delight and amazement she fell into Hne
with him, and all three went galloping along the strip
between the trees and the rails. The look she had
given him seemed to say : ' I don't care if it is for-
bidden !' but she did not speak. She was on his left,
and he could not take his eyes off her. How lovely
she looked, with the resolute curve of her figure, the
glimpse of gold under her hat, that glorious colour in
her cheeks, as if she had been kissed by the day itself !

' It's so splendid to be at home ! Let's go faster !' she
cried out to the space in front of her.

' Take a pull. We shall get r-run in,' grumbled her
brother, with a chuckle.

They reined in round the bend, and jogged more
soberly down the far side ; but still not a word did she
speak to Shelton, and Shelton in his turn spoke only
to Bill Dennant. He was taciturn with happiness, and
he was afraid to speak, for by instinct he knew that
her mind was dwelling on this chance and forbidden
encounter in a way quite different from his own.

They approached Hyde Park Corner, where Ferrand
was still standing against the rails, and Shelton, who had
forgotten his very existence, suffered a shock when his
eyes fell suddenly on that impassive figure. He was
about to raise his hand to his^hat, when he saw that the
young foreigner, noting his instinctive sensation, had at
once adapted himself to it. They again passed without

ROTTEN ROW 103

greeting, unless that swift inquisition, followed by glassy
unconsciousness in Ferrand's eyes, could so be called.
But the feeling of idiotic happiness had left Shelton,
and he grew irritated at this silence. It seemed to
him more and more tantalizing and strange, for Bill
Dennant had lagged behind to speak to a friend ; Shelton
and Antonia were alone, walking their horses, without
a word, and not even looking at each other. At one
moment he thought of galloping ahead and leaving her,
at another of breaking the vow of muteness she seemed
to be imposing on him, and he kept thinking : ' It
ought to be either one thing or the other. I can't
understand this.' He was secretly disturbed by her
calmness ; there was in it a sure and practical know-
ledge of just how far she might go that seemed to come
to her by instinct. It showed a power of judicially,
unsentimentally fixing a limit that was surely cold-
blooded. In her happy young beauty and radiant
calmness she summed up something he was always
encountering, some perfectly sane and consistent
element in nine out of ten of the people he knew. ' I
can't stand this long,' he thought, and all of a sudden
began to speak ; but as soon as he did so, she frowned
and put her horse into a canter. When he came up
with her she was smiling, and holding up her face to
catch the raindrops which had begun to fall. She gave
him a nod, and waved her hand as a sign for him
to go ; and when he would not, she frowned again.
He saw Bill Dennant posting after them, and suddenly
overwhelmed by a sense of the ridiculous, he gave
her the oddest mixture of frown and smile, lifted
his hat, stuck his heels into his horse, and galloped
ahead.

104 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

The rain was coming down in torrents now, and
everyone scurrying for shelter. He looked back at the
bend, and could still make out Antonia riding leisurely,
with her face upturned, as if revelling in the shower.
Why hadn't she either cut him altogether or simply
taken the sweets the gods had sent ? It seemed to him
wicked to have wasted such a chance, and ploughing
back to Hyde Park Corner, he kept turning his head to
see if by any chance she had relented.

His irritation soon vanished, but his longing remained.
Was ever anything so beautiful a's she had looked with
her face turned to the rain ? Odd how she seemed to
like rain. It suited her, too — suited her ever so much
better than the sunshine of the South. Yes, she was
very English ! Puzzling and fretting, he reached his
rooms. Ferrand had not arrived, and, in fact, did not
come at all that day. His non-appearance afforded
Shelton another proof of the queer delicacy that went
hand in hand with his perverse cynicism. In the after-
noon he received a note from Antonia :

' . . . You see, Dick' (he read) ' I ought to have cut
you ; but I felt too crazy this morning — everything
seems so jolly at home, even this stuffy old London.
Of course, I wanted to talk to you badly — there are
heaps of things one can't say by letter — but I should
have been sorry afterwards. I told mother, of course.
She said I was quite right, but I don't think she
took it in. Don't you feel that the only thing that
really matters is to have an idea, and to keep it
so safe that you can always look forward and feel

that 3'ou have been I can't exactly express what

I mean.'

ROTTEN ROW 105

Shelton lit a cigarette and frowned. It seemed to him
queer that she should set more store by an ' idea ' than
by the fact that they had met for the first and only time
in many weeks.

' I suppose she's right,' he thought — ' I suppose she's
right. I ought not to have tried to speak to her, but
how could I help it ?' and, as a matter of fact, he did
not at all feel that she was right.

CHAPTER XIII

AN 'AT home'

On Tuesday morning he wandered off early in the
direction of Paddington, hoping for a chance view of her
on her way down to Holm Oaks ; but the sense of the
ridiculous, on which he had been nurtured, was strong
enough to keep him from actuallyentering the station and
lurking about the booking-office till she came. With a
pang of disappointment he retraced his steps from Praed
Street to the Park, and once there made no further
attempt to waylay her. He paid a round of calls in the
afternoon, mostly upon her relations, and especially
sought out Aunt Charlotte, to whom he dolorously
related his encounter in the Row. But she found it
' rather nice,' and on his pressing her with his view of
the matter almost burst forth with the opinion that
Antonia had acted in ' quite a romantic way, don't you
know.'

' Still, it's very hard,' said poor Shelton ; and he went
away more disconsolate than ever.

As he was dressing for dinner his eye fell on a card in
his looking-glass announcing the ' at home ' of one of
his cousins. Her husband was a composer, and he had
a vague idea that he would find at the house of a
composer some quite unusually free kind of atmosphere.

io5

AN 'AT HOME' 107

After dining at the club, therefore, he set out for
Chelsea. The party was held in a large room on the
ground-floor, which was already crowded with people
when Shelton entered. They stood or sat about in
groups with fixed smiles on their Hps, and the light
from balloon-like lamps fell in patches on their heads
and hands and shoulders. Someone had just finished
rendering on the piano a composition of his own. An
expert could at once have picked out from amongst
the applauding company those who were musicians
by profession, for their eyes scintillated, and a certain
acidity pervaded the deprecating enthusiasm of their
voices. This freemasonry of professional intolerance
flew from one to the other like a breath of unanimity,
and the faint shrugging of shoulders was as harmonious
as though one of the high windows had been opened
suddenly, admitting a draught of the chill May air.

Shelton made his way up to his cousin — a fragile,
gray-haired woman in black velvet and Venetian lace,
whose starry eyes beamed at him, until her duties, after
the custom of social gatherings, obliged her to break off
her conversation just as it became interesting. He
was passed on to another lady who was already talking
to two gentlemen, and their volubility being greater
than his own, he fell back into his usual position of
observer. Instead of the profound questions he had
somehow expected to hear exploited, everybody, with
remarkable fluency, seemed to be detailing musical and
artistic gossip, or seriously searching the heart of such
topics as, where to go for the summer, or how to get
new servants. Trifling with coifee-cups, they dissected
their fellow-artists in the same way as his Society
friends of the other night had dissected the fellow

io8 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' smart '; and the gleam of varnish on floor, and pictures,
and piano was subtly reflected on all the faces round.
Paralyzed by this loquacity, Shelton moved from group
to group disconsolate in accordance with his introduc-
tions, smiling inanely.

A tall, imposing person stood under a Japanese print
holding the palm of one hand outspread, his unwieldy
trunk, thin legs, and benign smiles wobbling slightly in
concert to the ingratiating tone of his voice.

' War,' he was saying, ' is not necessary. War is not
necessary. I hope I make myself clear. War is not
necessary ; it depends on nationality, but nationality is
not necessary.' He inclined his head to one side.
' Why do we have nationality ? Let us do away with
boundaries — let us have the warfare of commerce. If I
saw France looking at Brighton ' — he inclined his head
to the other side, and beamed down at Shelton as if
conferring a blessing — ' what should I do ? Should I
say: "Hands off"? No. I should say: "Take it —
take it !" ' He smiled with a sort of fatal archness :
' But do you think they would ?'

Shelton's ej'es were fascinated by the softness of his
contours.

' The soldier,' resumed the speaker, ' is necessarily on
a lower plane — intellectually — oh, intellectually — than
the philanthropist. His sufferings are less acute ; he
enjoys the compensations of advertisement — you admit
that ?' he breathed persuasively in Shelton's face. ' For
instance — I am quite impersonal — I suffer ; but do I talk
about it ?' There was no alternative left to Shelton
but to gaze again at the well-filled waistcoat, and
possibly this was disconcerting, for its owner formulated
his argument another way. ' I have one acre and one

AN 'AT HOME' log

cow, my brother has one acre and one cow : do I seek
to take them away from him ?'

Shelton hazarded : ' Perhaps you are not the
stronger.'

' Come, come ! Take the case of women : now, I
consider our marriage laws barbarous.'

Shelton began to conceive a respect for them ; he
made a comprehensive gesture, and edged himself into
the conversation of another group, for fear of having all
his prejudices overturned. Here an Irish sculptor,
standing plastically in a curve, was saying furiously :

' Bees are not bhumpkins, d n their sowls !' A

Scotch painter, listening with a curly smile, seemed to
be trying to compromise this proposition, which ap-
peared to have some relation to the middle classes ; and
though fully agreeing with the Irishman, Shelton felt
nervous over his discharge of electricity. Next to them
two American ladies, assembled under the tent of hair
belonging to a writer of songs, were discussing the
emotions aroused in them by one of Wagner's operas.

' It produces a strange condition of affairs in me,'
said the thinner of the two.

' It's just divine,' said the fatter.

' I don't know if you can call the fleshly lusts divine,'
replied the thinner, looking into the eyes of the writer
of songs with a dry twinkle.

Amidst the hum of voices and the fumes of cigarette-
smoke, a sense of hidden formality haunted Shelton.
He had become sandwiched between a Dutchman and
a Prussian poet; he could understand neither of his
neighbours, so, merely assuming an intelligent expres-
sion, he fell to thinking that an assemblage of free
spirits is as much bound by the convention of exchang-

no THE ISLAND PHARISEES

ing ideas, as commonplace people are by the convention
of having none to exchange. He could not help wonder-
ing whether, in the bulk, they were not just as inter-
dependent as the inhabitants of those mansions in
Kensington ; whether, like locomotives, they could run
at all without these opportunities for blowing off steam,
and what would be left when the steam had escaped.
Somebody began to play the violin, and he let his
glance travel over the conscious and unconscious atti-
tudes of the listeners. The violin ceased, and close to
him a group began talking ethics. Faint mockings of
aspirations were in the air all round, like a lot of escaped
ghosts. He had never realized before that, if tongue
be given to them, the flavour vanishes from ideas which
haunt the soul.

Again the violinist played.

' Cock gracious !' said the Prussian poet, falling
suddenly into English as the fiddle ceased : ' Colossal !
A ber, wie er ist grossartig /'

' Have you read that thing of Besom's ?' asked a shrill
voice behind Shelton.

' Oh, my dear fellow ! too horrid for words ; he ought
to be hanged !'

' The man's dreadful,' pursued the shrill voice, now
shriller than ever ; ' nothing but a volcanic eruption
would cure htm.'

Shelton turned in alarm to look at the authors of
these sanguinary statements, but they were merely two
literary men criticising a contemporary.

' C'est un grand naif, vous savez,' said the second
speaker.

' These fellows don't exist,' resumed the first, and
Shelton was struck by the look in his eyes ; they were

AN 'AT HOME' iii

small, and gleamed with a green light, and his whole
face had a look as if he gnawed himself. Though not a
literary man, Shelton could not help recognising from
the sight of those eyes and the sound of that voice
what an intimate joy it had given him to utter the
magic words, 'These fellows don't exist !'

' Poor Besom ! You know what Moulter said. . . .'

Shelton turned away ; he felt a little sick, as if he had
been too close to someone whose hair smelt of can-
tharides. He crossed to the door, and, looking round
the assembly, involuntarily frowned; with the excep-
tion of his cousin he seemed the only person in the
room of English blood. The rest were Americans,
Mesopotamians, Irish, Italians, Germans, Scotch, and
Russians. He was not contemptuous of them for being
foreigners — he was not a stupid man — it was simply
that God and the climate had made him different by a
skin or so.

But at this point his conclusions were falsified (as
usually happens with conclusions) by his introduction
to a full-blooded Englishman — a Major Somebody, who,
with smooth hair, blond moustache, gray eyes, and neat
clothes, seemed a little astonished at himself. Shelton
took a liking to him at first sight, partly from a fellow-
feeling of dumbness, and partly because of the gentle
smile with which he was looking at his own wife.
Almost before he had said ' How do you do ?' however,
he was plunged into a discussion on Imperialism.

It had proceeded for some time, when, squeezing his
hands together and shaking them at the soldier in the
effort to express exactly what he felt, Shelton made the
following curious remark :

' Admitting all that, what I hate is the humbug with

112 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

which we pride ourselves on benefiting the whole world
by our methods and civilization.'

The soldier turned his reasonable eyes on the
speaker.

' But is it humbug, you know ?' said he.

Shelton saw the bottom of his contention dropping
out. Quite so; if we really thought it, was it humbug?
He felt ashamed of using his hands to support his
arguments while his opponent's remained so quietly in
their pockets.

' Why should we,' he replied, ' a small portion of the
world's population, assume that our standards are the
proper ones for every kind of race ? If it's not humbug,
it's sheer stupidity.'

The soldier, without taking his hands out of his
pockets, but by a forward movement of his face, showing
that he was both just and sincere, replied :

' Well, it must be a good sort of stupidity ; it makes
us the nation we are.'

Shelton felt dazed ; he agreed, and did not agree.
The conversation buzzed around him ; he heard the
personage under the Japanese print say something or
other about altruism, and in his voice a something
seemed to murmur : ' Oh, I do so hope I make a good
impression !'

He looked straight at the soldier's clear-cut head
with its open eyes, the tiny crow's-feet at their corners,
and the conventional untwisted moustache ; he envied
the calm certainty of the convictions lying under that
sleek, well-parted hair.

' I would rather we were men first and Englishmen
afterwards,' he muttered ; ' I think it's all a sort of
national illusion, and I can't stand illusions.'

AN 'AT HOME' 113

' If you come to that,' said the soldier, 'the world lives
by illusions. I mean, if you look at history, you'll see
that the creation of illusions has always been her
business, don't you know.'

Shelton was unable to deny this.

' So,' continued the soldier (who was evidently a
highly intelligent man), ' if you admit that movement,
labour, progress, and all that, has been properly given
to building up these illusions, that — er — in fact, they're
what you might call — er — the outcome of the world's
crescendo' — he rushed his voice over this phrase as if
ashamed of it — ' why do you want to destroy them ?'

Shelton thought a moment, then, squeezing his body
with his folded arms, replied :

' The past has made us what we are, of course, and
can't be destroyed ; but how about the future ? It's
surely time to let in a little air. Cathedrals are all
very fine, and everybody likes the smell of incense ; but
when they've been for centuries without ventilation you
know what the atmosphere's like.'

The soldier smiled.

' By your own admission,' he said, ' you'll only be
creating a fresh set of illusions.'

' Yes,' answered Shelton, ' but at all events they'll be
the honest necessities of the present.'

The pupils of the soldier's eyes contracted ; he evi-
dently felt that the conversation was slipping into vague
generalities eminently un-English, and he answered :

' I can't see, you know, how thinking small beer of
ourselves is going to do us any good !'

He had come back to the necessity of doing good
to one's self, and Shelton felt in danger of being thought
unpractical in giving vent to the remark :

8

114 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' One must trust to one's reason ; I never can per-
suade myself that I believe what I don't.'

A minute later, with a cordial handshake, the soldier
took his departure, and Shelton watched his courteous
figure following his wife out of the room.

'Dick, may I introduce you to Mr. Wilfrid Curly?'
said his cousin's voice behind him, and he found his
hand being diffidently shaken by a fresh - cheeked
youth with a dome-like forehead, who was nervously
saying :

' How do you do ? Yes, I am very well, thank
you !'

He now remembered that when he had first come
in he had watched this youth, who had been standing
in a corner indulging in private smiles. He had an
uncommon look, as though he were in love with life —
as though he regarded it as a strange creature to whom
one could put questions up to the very end — interest-
ing, slightly humorous, perfectly earnest questions. He
had an appearance at once of diffident amiability and
of complete independence, and he, too, was English.

' Are you good at argument ?' said Shelton, who did
not know what to say.

The youth smiled, blushed, and, putting back the
hair from his forehead, said :

' Yes — no — I don't know ; I think my brain doesn't
work fast enough for argument. You know how many
motions of the brain-cells go to each remark. It's
awfully interesting ;' and bending from the waist in a
sort of mathematical attitude, he extended the palm of
one hand, and began to explain.

Shelton stared at the youth's hand, at his frowns
and the taps he gave his forehead while he found the

AN 'AT HOME' ii;

exact expression of his meaning ; he was intensely
interested. Suddenly, however, the youth looked a
his watch, and blushed brightly.

' I'm afraid I have to go,' he said ; ' I have to be a
the " Den " at eleven.'

' I must be off, too,' said Shelton ; and making thei
adieux together, they both sought out their hats anc
coats in the hall.

8—2

CHAPTER XIV

THE NIGHT CLUB

' May I ask,' said Shelton, as he and the youth issued
into the chilly street, ' what it is that you call the
"Den?"'

His companion smiled.

' Oh,' he replied, ' the night club. We take it in
turns. Thursday is my night. Would you like to come ?
You see a lot of types. It's just round the corner.'

Shelton digested a momentary hesitation, and said :

' Yes, immensely.'

They reached the corner house in the angle of a
dismal street, through the open door of which two men
had just gone in. Following, they ascended some
wooden, newly-washed stairs, entered a large boarded
room smelling of sawdust, gas, stale ci^ifee, and old
clothes, and furnished with a bagatelle board, two or
three wooden tables, some wooden forms, and a wooden
book-case. Seated on these wooden chairs, or standing
about, were youths, and one or two older men of the
working class, who struck Shelton as looking peculiarly
dejected. One was reading, one against the wall was
drinking coffee with a disillusioned air, two were playing
chess, and a group of four made a ceaseless clatter on
the bagatelle board.

ii6

THE NIGHT CLUB 117

A little man in a dark suit, with a pale face, thin,
compressed lips, and deep-set, black-encircled eyes, who
was evidently in charge, came up to them with an
anaemic smile.

' You're rather late,' he said to Curly, and, looking
ascetically at Shelton, asked, without waiting for an
introduction : ' Do you play chess ? There's young
Smith wanting a game.'

A youth with a wooden face, who was already seated
before a fly-blown chessboard, asked him drearily if he
would have black or white. Shelton took white ; he
was oppressed by the stale odour of the room, a peculiar
virtuous stuffiness.

The little man with the deep eyes came up, and stood
in an uneasy attitude watching the game.

'Your play's improving, young Smith,' he said
presently ; ' I should think you'd be able to give
Bartlett a knight.' His eyes, resting on Shelton, had
a fanatical dreariness; a suffering twang was audible
in the monotonous tones that issued from his thin
lips, which he seemed continually sucking in, as though
determined to subdue all evidences of the flesh. ' You
should come here often,' he said to Shelton, as the
latter received checkmate ; ' you'd get some good
practice. We've several very fair players. You're
not as good as Jones or Bartholomew,' he added to
Shelton's opponent, as though he felt it a duty to put
the latter in his place. 'You ought to come here
often,' he repeated to Shelton ; ' we have a lot of very
good young fellows ;' and, with a touch of complacency,
he glanced round the dismal room. ' There are not so
many here to-night as usual. Where are Toombs and
Body ?' he asked of young Smith.

ii8 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

Shelton, too, looked anxiously round. He could not
help a feeling of sympathy with Toombs and Body.

' They're getting slack, I'm afraid,' said the little
man with the deep eyes : ' our principle is to amuse
everyone. Excuse me a minute; I see Carpenter's
doing nothing.' He crossed over to the man who had
been drinking coffee, but Shelton had barely the time
to glance at his recent opponent and try to think of
a remark, before he was back again. ' Do you know
anything about astronomy ?' he asked of Shelton.
' We have several very interested in astronomy ; if
you could talk to them a little it would help a
great deal.'

Shelton made a motion of alarm.

' Please — no,' said he ; ' I '

' I wish you'd come sometimes on Wednesdays ; we
have most interesting talks, and a service afterwards.
We're always anxious to get new blood;' and his
suffering eyes searched Shelton's brown and rather
amiable face, as though trying to discover of what use
he could be. ' Young Curly says you've been round
the world ; you could describe your travels.'

' May I ask,' said Shelton, ' how your club is
made up ?'

Again a touch of complacency, like some blessed
assuagement, rested upon the little man's countenance.

' Oh,' he said, ' we take anybody, unless there's any-
thing against them, of course. The Day Society sees
to that. Of course, we shouldn't take anyone if they
were to report against them. You ought to come to
our committee meetings ; they're on Mondays at seven.
The women's side, too.'

' Thank you,' said Shelton ; ' you're very kind '

THE NIGHT CLUB 119

' We should be pleased,' said the little man ; and his
face seemed to suffer more than ever. ' They're mostly
young fellows to-night, but we have married men, too.
Of course, we're very careful about that,' he added
hastily, as though he might have injured Shelton's
prejudices — ' that, and drink, and anything criminal,
you know.'

' And do you give pecuniary assistance, too ?' asked
Shelton.

' Oh yes,' replied the little man ; ' if you were to
come to our committee meetings you would see for
yourself Everything is most carefully gone into ; we
endeavour to sift the wheat from the chaff.'

' I suppose,' said Shelton, ' you find a great deal of
chaff?'

The little man smiled a suffering smile. The twang
of his toneless voice was a trifle shriller as he replied :

' I was obliged to refuse a man to-day — a man
and a woman, quite young people, with three small
children. He was ill and out of work ; but on inquiry
we found that they were not man and wife.'

There was a slight pause ; the little man's eyes were
fastened on his nails, and, with an appearance of enjoy-
ment, he began to bite them. Shelton's face had grown

a trifle red.

'And what becomes of the woman in a case hke
that ?' he said slowly. ' I suppose she has to go on the
streets ?'

The little man's gaze seemed to smoulder as he
suddenly turned it up to Shelton.

'We make a point of not encouraging sin,' he
replied. ' Excuse me for a minute ; I see they have
finished bagatelle.'

120 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

He hurried away, and a moment later the wooden
clack of the bagatelle balls began again. He himself
was playing with a sort of cold and spurious energy,
running round after the balls and exhorting the other
three players, upon whom a wooden acquiescence
seemed to have fallen.

Shelton turned his back abruptly on Smith, and,
crossing the room, went up to young Curly. He was
sitting on a bench, smiling to himself those peculiar
private smiles like the smiles of a world apart.

' Shall you be staying much longer ?' asked Shelton.

Young Curly arose with nervous and apologetic
alacrity.

' I'm afraid,' he said, ' there's nobody very interesting
to-night.'

' Oh, not at all !' said Shelton ; ' on the contrary.
Only I've had rather a tiring day, and somehow I don't
feel up to the standard here.'

His new acquaintance smiled.

' Oh, really ! do you think — that is '

But he had not time to finish before the clack of the
bagatelle balls ceased, and the voice of the little deep-
eyed man was heard saying : ' Anybody who wants a
book will please put his name down. There will be
the usual prayer-meeting on Wednesday next. Will
you all go out quietly, please ? I am going to turn the
lights out.'

One gas-jet vanished, and the remaining jet ilared
suddenly. By its harder glare the wooden room looked
harder too, more rigid, more formally disenchanting.
The figures of its occupants began filing through the
door. The little man was left alone standing in the
centre of the room, with his deep eyes smouldering

THE NIGHT CLUB 121

upon the dejected backs of the retreating members, and
his finger and thumb upraised to the turncock of the
metre.

' Do you know this part ?' asked young Curly of
Shelton, with a smile and a wave of his hand as they
emerged once more into the street. ' It's really jolly,
you know; one of the darkest bits in London — it is
really. If you care, I can take you through an awfully
dangerous place where the police never go.' He seemed
so anxious for the honour that Shelton was loath to
disappoint him. ' I come here pretty often,' he went
on, as they ascended some steps into a species of alley
which rambled darkly between a blank wall and a row
of tumbledown houses.

' Why ?' asked Shelton ; ' it doesn't smell nice.'

The young man threw up his nose and sniffed, as if
eager to add any new scent that might be about to his
knowledge of life.

' No, that's one of the reasons, you know,' he said
with flickering seriousness ; ' one must find out about
things. You see, the darkness is jolly, too ; anything
might happen here. Last week there was a murder ;
there's always the chance of one.'

Shelton stared, for the charge of morbidness would
not lie against this fresh-cheeked stripling.

' There's a splendid drain just here,' his guide re-
sumed ; ' the people are dying like flies of typhoid in
those three houses ;' and, under the first hght they met
with, he turned his grave, cherubic face with a smile to
indicate the houses in question, ' If we were in the
East End, I could show you other places quite as good.
There's a coffee-stall keeper in one that knows all
the thieves in London ; he's a splendid type, but,' he

122 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

added, looking a little anxiously at Shelton, whom he
clearly felt to be in his charge, ' it mightn't be safe for
you. With me it's different ; they're beginning to
know me. You see, I've got nothing to take.'

' I'm afraid it can't be to-night,' said Shelton ; ' I
must get back to my rooms.'

' Do you mind if I walk with you ? It's so jolly now
the stars are out.'

His hands again curled in a gesture of apology ; he
gave the impression of being about to promenade all
night.

' I shall be delighted,' said Shelton ; ' but do you
often go to that club, the " Den " ?'

His companion raised his hat, and ran his fingers
through his hair till it stood on end.

' No,' he said ; ' they're rather too high-class for me.
I like to go where you can see people eat — school treats,
or somewhere in the country. It does one good to see
them eat. They don't get enough, you see, as a rule,
to make bone ; it all goes out in the brain and the
muscles. There are some places in the winter where
they give them bread and cocoa ; I like to go to those.'

' I went once,' said Shelton, ' but I felt ashamed for
putting my nose in.'

' Oh, they don't mind ; most of them are half-dead
with cold, you know. You see splendid types; lots
of dipsomaniacs. . . . It's useful to me,' went on his
acquaintance as they passed a police-station, ' to walk
about at night ; one can take so much more notice. I
had a jolly night last week in Hyde Park ; a chance to
study human nature there.'

' And do you find it interesting ?' asked Shelton.

His companion smiled an apology.

THE NIGHT CLUB 123

' Awfully,' he replied ; ' I saw a fellow pick three
pockets.'

' What did you do ?'
' I had a jolly talk with him.'

Shelton smiled, and he could not help thinking of
the little man with the deep eyes, who made a point of
not encouraging sin.

' He was one of the professionals from Notting Hill,
you know ; told me his life. Never had a chance, of
course. The most interesting part was saying I'd seen
him pick three pockets — like creeping into a cave, when
you can't tell what's inside.'
' Well ?'

' He showed me what he'd got — only fivepence-
halfpenny.'

'And what became of your friend ?' asked Shelton.
' Oh, went off; he had a splendidly low forehead.'
By this time they had reached Shelton's rooms.
' Will you come in,' said the latter, ' and have a
drink ?'

The youth smiled, blushed, and shook his head.
' No, thank you,' he said ; ' I have to walk to White-
chapel. I'm Hving on porridge just now ; it's splendid
for making bone. I generally live on porridge for a
week at the end of the month. It's a splendid diet if
you're hard up ;' and once more blushing and smihng,
he was gone.

Shelton went upstairs and sat down on his bed.
The experiences of the day, trivial as they had been,
assumed an unexpected importance in his tired brain ;
the calls he had paid, the ' at home,' the visit to the
night club, all seemed of a piece, as though he had
spent the whole day in watching a single wheel go

124 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

round. He felt a little miserable into the bargain.
Sitting there, slowly pulling out the ends of his white
tie, while a mirror showed him the crease between his
eyes, and the gloss of his shirt-front — sitting there dis-
consolate, he was visited by a vision of Antonia with
her gaze fixed wonderingly upon him. This wonder of
hers came as a revelation — ^just as that morning, when,
looking out of his window into the street, he had seen a
passer-by stop suddenly as an idea struck him ; and it
had come upon him with a flash of intense surprise that
there were really separate thoughts of his own in that
man. He would never know what Antonia really felt
and thought. ' Till I saw her at the station,' he mused,
' I didn't know how much I loved her or how little I
knew her;' and sighing deeply, he got into bed.

CHAPTER XV

POLE TO POLE

The waiting in London for July to come was daily
more unbearable to Shelton, and if it had not been for
the visits of Ferrand, who still came to breakfast, he
would have deserted the Metropolis. On June i the
latter presented himself rather later than usual, and
announced that, through the services of a friend, he
had heard of a position as interpreter to a hotel at
Folkestone.

' If I had money to face the first necessities,' he said,
swiftly turning over a collection of smeared papers with
his yellow fingers, as if searching for his own identity,
' I'd leave to-day. This London blackens my spirit.'

' Are you certain to get this place ?' asked Shelton.

' I think so,' replied the young foreigner ; ' I've got
some good enough recommendations.'

For the hfe of him Shelton could not hide the
dubious character of the glance he cast at the papers in
Ferrand's hand. A hurt look passed on to the latter's
curly lips beneath the slender line of his nascent
moustache.

* You mean that to have false papers is as bad as
theft. No, no ; I shall never be a thief— I've had too
many opportunities,' said he, both proudly and bitterly.

125

126 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' That's not in my character. I never do harm to any-
one. This ' — he fingered the documents — ' is not dehcate,
but it does harm to no one. If you have no money you
must have papers ; they stand between you and starva-
tion. Society has an excellent eye for the helpless, and
it never jumps on the head of people unless they are
really without defence.'

Shelton felt abashed, there was such a mixture
of shame, pride, injury, and of sheer subtlety in
Ferrand's face ; it was callous, and yet not callous,
like a thing with an inexplicable, remote heart to it, an
inexplicable, remote justification. ' You've made me
amongst you,' it seemed to say ; ' now make the best
of me.'

' But there are always the workhouses,' he remarked
at last, with hesitation.

'Workhouses !' returned Ferrand sarcastically; 'cer-
tainly there are the workhouses — regular palaces. I
will tell you one thing : I've never been in places so
utterly discouraging as these workhouses of yours ;
they take your very heart out.'

' I always understood,' said Shelton coldly, ' that our
system was better than that of other countries.'

Ferrand leaned over in his chair, with an elbow on
his knee, a favourite attitude of his when he was
particularly certain of his point.

' Well,' he replied, ' it's always permissible to think
well of your own country. But, frankly, I've come out
of your palaces here with little strength and no heart at
all, and I can tell you why.' His lips lost their bitter-
ness, his eyes became less prominent ; over his whole
demeanour spread the alert expansion peculiar to him
when arriving at psychological deductions from his own

POLE TO POLE 127

experiences. ' You spend your money freely, you have
fine buildings and self-respecting officials, but — you
lack the spirit of hospitality. And, excuse me, the
reason is plain enough : you have such a horror of the
needy. You invite us to come, and when we do come
you treat us justly enough, but as if we were numbers,
criminals, beneath contempt — as if we had inflicted a
personal injury on you ; and when we get out again, we
aie naturally degraded.'
Shelton bit his lips.

' How much money will you want for your ticket
and to make a start ?' he asked.

The nervous gesture which escaped Ferrand at this
abrupt change of subject pathetically betrayed how far
the most independent thinkers are under the harrow
if they have no money in their pockets. He took the
note proffered to him.

' A thousand thanks,' said he ; ' I shall never forget
what you have done for me;' and Shelton could not
help feeling that there was true emotion behind the
titter with which he took his departure.

He stood some time at the window watching Ferrand
adventuring into the world again ; then looked back at
his own comfortable room, with the infinite number of
articles that had accumulated there somehow — the
photographs of countless relations and friends, the
luxurious old armchairs, and the stock of coloured
pipes in the pipe-rack. A thrill of restlessness had
passed into him with the farewell clasp of the young
foreigner's damp hand. To wait about in London was
intolerable.

He took his hat, and, without heeding where he was
going, walked slowly towards the river. It was a

128 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

peculiarly clear, bright day, but with a bleak wind that
brought up driving showers with surprising sudden-
ness. During one of these showers Shelton found
himself opposite the door of No. 3, Little Blank Street.
' I wonder how the little Frenchman is getting on !' he
thought. And though on a fine day he would prob-
ably have passed by on the other side, he now entered
and tapped at the wicket.

No. 3, Little Blank Street had abated no jot
of its stone-flagged dreariness, and the same blowsy
woman answered his inquiry. Yes, Carolan was always
in ; you could never catch him out — seemed afraid
to go into the street ! To her call the little French
barber made his appearance as punctually as if he had
been a conjurer's rabbit. His face was yellow, quite
alarmingly so.

'Ah! it's you, monsieur!' he said, on recognising
Shelton.

' Yes,' said Shelton ; ' and how are you ?'

' It's five days since I came out of hospital,' muttered
the Frenchman, tapping his chest ; ' a crisis of this bad
atmosphere. I live here, shut up in a box ; it does me
harm, being from the South. If there's anything I can
do for you, monsieur, it will give me great pleasure.'

' Nothing,' replied Shelton ; ' I was just passing, and
thought I should like to hear how you were getting
on.

' Come into the kitchen, monsieur ; there is nobody
there. Brrr ! II fait un froid etonnant !'

' What sort of customers have you just now ?' asked
Shelton, as they passed into the kitchen.

' Always the same clientele,' replied the little man ;
' not so numerous, of course, it being summer.'

POLE TO POLE 129

' Couldn't you find anything better than this to
do?'

The barber's crow's-feet were illumined by irony.

' When I first came to London,' said he, ' I secured
an engagement at one of your public institutions. I
thought my fortune made. Imagine, monsieur, in that
sacred place I was obliged to shave at the rate of ten
for a penny ! Here, it's true, they don't pay me half
the time ; but when I am paid, I am paid. In this
climate, and being poitrinaire, one doesn't make experi-
ments. I shall finish my days here. Have you seen
that young man in whom you were interested ? There's
another ! He has spirit, as I had once — il fait de la
philosophie, as I do — and you will see, monsieur, he'll
finish like me. In this world what you want is to
have no spirit. Spirit ruins you.'

Shelton looked sideways at the little man with his
yellow, half-dead, sardonic face, and the incongruity of
the word ' spirit ' in his mouth struck him so sharply
that he smiled one of those smiles that have more pity
in them than tears have.

' Shall we sit down ?' he said, offering the barber his
cigarette-case.

' Merci, monsieur, it is always a pleasure to smoke a
good cigarette. You remember that old actor who
gave you one of his Jeremiads ? Well, he's dead. I was
the only one at his bedside; he died drunk, un vrai
drdle. He was another who had spirit. And you will
see, monsieur, that young man in whom you take an
interest, he'll die in a hospital, or in some hole or other,
or even on the highroad, having closed his eyes once
too often some cold night; and all because he has
something in him which will not accept things as they

9

130 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

are, believing always that they ought to be better. II
n'y a Hen de plus tragique !'

' According to you, then,' said Shelton, and the con-
versation seemed to him all of a sudden to have taken
a very personal turn, ' rebellion of any sort is fatal.'

' Ah !' replied the little man, with the alacrity of one
whose true pleasure in life is to sit under the awning of
a cafe and talk the world upside down, 'you pose me a
great problem. If one makes rebellion, it is always
probable that one will do no good to anyone and harm
to one's self. The law of the majority regulates that.
But I would draw your attention to this ' — and he paused
to emphasize his remark, as if it were a real discovery,
by blowing smoke through his nose — ' if you rebel, it is
in all likelihood because you are forced by your nature
to rebel ; this is one of the most certain things in life.
In any case, it is necessary to avoid falling between
two stools^ which is unpardonable,' he ended, with a
certain complacence.

Shelton thought he had never seen a man who looked
more completely as if he had fallen between two stools,
and he had inspiration enough to feel that the little
barber's intellectual rebellion and the action logically
required by it had no more than a bowing acquaintance.

' By nature,' went on the little Frenchman, ' I am an
optimist ; it is in consequence of this that I now make
my pessimism. I've always had ideals, and now that I
see myself cut off from them for ever, I must complain ;
to complain, monsieur, is very sweet !'

Shelton wondered what his ideals had been, but he
had no answer ready ; so he nodded, and again proffered
the barber his cigarettes, for, like a true Southerner, the
latter had thrown the first away, half smoked.

POLE TO POLE 131

' The greatest pleasure in life,' continued the French-
man, with a poHte bow, ' is to talk a little to a being
who is capable of understanding you. At present we
have no one here now that that old actor is dead. Ah !
there was a man who was rebellion incarnate. He
made rebellion as other men make money, c'etait son
metier ; when he was no longer capable of an active
rebellion, he made it in getting drunk. At the last
this was his only way of protesting against Society.
An interesting personality, je le regvette beaucoup. But,
as you see, he died in the greatest distress, without
a soul to wave him farewell, because, as you can well
understand, monsieur, I don't count myself. He died
drunk. Ah ! c'etait un homme !'

Shelton, who during this speech had continued to
stare kindly at the little man, was about to reply, when
the barber hastily added :

' It's difficult to make an end like that — one has
moments of weakness.'

' Yes,' assented Shelton, with emphasis, * one has
indeed.'

The little barber looked at him with discreet cynicism.

' Oh !' he said, ' it's to those who are destitute that
such matters are of importance. When one has money,
all these things are '

He shrugged his round shoulders ; a smile had lodged
amongst his crow's-feet, and he waved his hand as
though to get rid of the subject.

A poignant sense of having been exposed as a
humbug came over Shelton.

' You think, then,' said he, ' that discontent is con-
fined to the destitute ?

' Monsieur,' replied the little barber, ' a plutocrat

9—2

132 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

knows too well that if he mixes in that gaUre there's not
a dog in the streets more lost than he.'

Shelton rose.

' The rain must be over,' he said. ' I hope you'll
soon be better ; perhaps you'll accept this in memory
of that old actor;' and he slipped a sovereign into the
Frenchman 's hand.

The latter bowed.

' When you are passing, monsieur,' he said eagerly,
' I shall always be delighted to see you.'

Shelton walked moodily away. ' " Not a dog in the
streets more lost," ' thought he ; ' now what did he
mean by that ?'

In truth, something of a ' lost dog ' feeling had
a grip just then of his spirit. He felt as if another
month of waiting in London would kill all the savour of
his anticipation, would even end by kiUing his love for
Antonia. In the over-excitement of his senses and
nerves caused by the strain of waiting, everything
assumed too vivid proportions — in other words, every-
thing was touched with exaggeration, like that which
differentiates Art from Life, and gives to the former the
significance of a truth too strong for everyday use, of a
truth unpopular amongst healthy people. Like the
bones of a worn face, the spirit underlying things was
too near the surface ; the meanness and intolerable
necessity of hard facts were too apparent. Some
craving for help, some instinct, must have driven him
into Kensington, for he found himself before his
mother's house. Providence seemed bent on flinging
him from pole to pole.

Mrs. Shelton was in town, and though it was the first of
June sat warming her feet before a fire ; her face, with its

POLE TO POLE 133

pleasant colour, was crow's-footed like the little barber's,
but from optimism, and not rebellion. She smiled when
she saw Shelton, and the wrinkles round her affectionate
eyes twinkled with vitality.

' Well, my dear boy,' she said, ' it's lovely to see you.
And how is that sweet girl ?'

' Very well, thank you,' replied Shelton.

' She must be such a dear !'

' Mother,' stammered Shelton, ' I must give it up.'

' Give it up ? My dear Dick, give what up ? You
look quite worried. Come and sit down, and let's have
a cosy chat. Cheer up !' and Mrs. Shelton, with her
head a little on one side, gazed at her son with impera-
tive sympathy.

' Mother,' said Shelton, who, confronted by her
optimism, had never since his period of probation
began felt so profoundly dejected, ' I can't go on wait-
ing like this.'

' But, my dear boy, what is the matter ?'

' Everything is all wrong !' burst out Shelton.

' Wrong ?' cried Mrs. Shelton. ' Come, tell me all
about it !'

But Shelton shook his head.

' You surely haven't had a quarrel '

Mrs. Shelton stopped, for the question seemed to her
vulgar.

' No,' said Shehon, and his answer sounded like a
groan.

' You know, my dear old Dick,' murmured his mother
insinuatingly, ' it seems a little mad.'

' I know it seems mad.'

' Come !' said Mrs. Shelton, taking his hand between
her own ; ' you never used to be like this.'

134 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' No,' said Shelton, with a laugh ; ' I never used to be
like this.'

Mrs. Shelton snuggled herself in her fine shawl.

' Oh,' she said, with her readiest sympathy, ' I know
exactly how you feel !'

Shelton rested his head on his hands and stared into
the fire, which played and bubbled like his mother's
face.

' But you're so fond of each other,' she began again, a
humorous grimace marring for a moment the perfection
of her sympathy. ' Such a sweet girl !'

' You don't understand,' muttered Shelton gloomily ;
' it's not her — it's nothing — it's '

Mrs. Shelton again seized his hand, and this time
pressed it to her soft, warm cheek, that had lost the
elasticity of youth.

' Oh !' she cried ; ' I quite understand. I know what
you're feeling.' But Shelton saw from the fixed beam
of her eyes that she had not an inkling. To do him
justice, he was not mad enough to attempt an explana-
tion. Again the humorous grimace appeared on his
mother's face. ' It would be so lovely,' she sighed,
' if you could wake up to-morrow and think differently.
If I were you, my dear boy, I would go and have a
splendid long walk and a Turkish bath ; and then I
would just write her a long letter, and tell her all about
it, and you'll see how beautifully it '11 all come straight ;'
and in the enthusiasm of her advice Mrs. Shelton
actually rose from her sofa, and, with a faint stretch
of her tiny figure, which was still so young, clasped
her hands together, and said : ' Now do, that's a dear
old Dick ! You'll just see how lovely it '11 all be !'
Shelton smiled the ghost of a smile ; he had not

POLE TO POLE 135

the heart to deny this vision. 'And give her my
warmest love,' cried his mother, ' and tell her I'm
longing for the wedding. Come, now, my dear boy,
promise me that's what you'll do.'

' I'll think about it,' said Shelton,

Mrs. Shelton had taken up her stand with one foot
on the fender, in spite of her sciatica.

' Cheer up !' she said suddenly ; and her eyes beamed
as if she were intoxicated by her own sympathy.

Certainly she was a wonderful woman. But the
uncomplicated optimism that carried her through good
and ill had not descended to her son.

From pole to pole he had been thrown that day,
from the French barber, whose intellect accepted
nothing without carping, and whose little fingers
barely stirred to save himself from extinction, to his
own mother, whose intellect accepted anything pre-
sented with sufficient glow, but who, until she died,
would never be under the harrow. Poor Shelton !
there was too much of them both in him. When he
reached his rooms, he took a resolution.

' I can't wait about in London any longer ' (he wrote
to Antonia), ' so I am going down to Bideford to start
on a walking tour. I shall work gradually east towards
Oxford, and stay there till I may come to Holm Oaks.
Of course, I shall send you my address every day, so do
write as usual.'

He collected all the photographs he had of her —
mostly amateur groups, taken by Mrs. Dennant — and
packed them carefully in the breast - pocket of his
shooting-jacket. He was especially fond of one in
which she was leaning against the knees of her little

136 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

brother, who was perched on the top of a wall. In
that photograph of her, with half-closed eyes, round
throat, and softly tilted chin, there was something cool
and watchful, as if she were protecting the ragamuffin
above her head. This he kept apart from the others
to be looked at daily, as a man says his prayers.

PART II

THE COUNTRY

CHAPTER XVI

THE INDIAN CIVILIAN

Shelton fulfilled his intention of leaving London, and
at noon one morning about a week later found himself
looking at the walls of Princetown Prison.

He had often seen this lugubrious stone cage before.
But the fantastic magic of his early morning walk across
Dartmoor in a golden haze that had burned itself slowly
away till the blue of the sky was as clear and fresh
as the water of the streams, the sight of the tors with
their pagan forms, and the notes of the late cuckoos,
had produced in him a delight that received a rude
shock from the utter dreariness of the building. He
left the street, and, entering the fosse path, began
making a circuit, scanning the walls with a kind of
morbid fascination.

This, then, was the system by which human beings
enforced on each other the will of the majority, and it
was suddenly borne in upon him that all the ideas and
maxims which the inhabitants of his Christian country
believed themselves to be daily fulfilling were stultified
in every cell of the social honeycomb. Such teachings
as ' He that is without sin amongst you ' had been
rejected as utterly unpractical by peers, judges, bishops,
statesmen, merchants, and husbands— in fact, by every
truly Christian person in the country.

139

140 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' Yes,' thought Shelton, as if he had made a dis-
covery, ' the more Christian the nation, the less it has
to do with spirit.'

Society was an immense organization for giving
nothing for nothing, very httle for sixpence, and only
fear forced it to give anything at all !

He took a seat on a wall, and began to watch a
warder who was slowly paring a last year's apple with
a long-bladed knife. The expression of his face, the
way he stood with his solid legs apart, his head poked
forward, and the lower jaw thrust out as if threatening
the apple, all seemed to make him a perfect pillar of
Society. He remained undisturbed under Shelton's
scrutiny, coldly watching the rind coil down below the
apple, quivering as the knife moved, until in a spring-
ing spiral it fell on the path and collapsed like a toy
rattlesnake. He then took a bite ; his teeth were
jagged, and he had an immense mouth. It was some-
how obvious that he considered himself superior to the
criminals of whom he was in charge. Shelton frowned,
got slowly down from the wall, and proceeded on
his way.

A very little way further down the hill he stopped
again to watch a group of convicts in a field, engaged
in what looked like a slow and mournful cotillon, while
behind the hedges on every side warders paraded with
guns, as if licensed to commit murder. Just such a
sight, substituting spears, could have been seen in the
days of the Romans.

While he thus stood looking at them, a man coming
rapidly from the direction of Princetown stopped be-
side him, and inquired the distance to Exeter. His
round visage, and long, brown eyes, sliding about under

THE INDIAN CIVILIAN 141

their brows, his cropped hair and short neck, seemed
strangely famiHar to Shelton.

' Why,' he said, ' surely your name is Crocker ?'

' By Jove ! it's the Bird !' cried the traveller, put-
ting out his hand. ' I haven't seen you since I went
down.'

Shelton returned his handgrip. Crocker had occu-
pied the rooms above him at college, and had fre-
quently kept him awake half the night by playing on
the hautboy.

' Where have you sprung from ?' he asked, with a
sudden return of the old spirit of comradeship.

' India. I've got my long leave. I say, are you
going this way ? Let's go together.'

Shelton smiled quietly as his companion kept in-
creasing his stride. It was so characteristic.

' Where on earth are you going to at this pace ?' he
asked.

' London,' answered Crocker.

' Oh ! only as far as London ?'

' I've set myself to do it in a week,' replied the Indian
civilian.

' In a week ! Are you in training ?'

'No.'

' You'll kill yourself.'

Crocker replied to the remark with a chuckle.

A desire to be ironical had sprung up within Shelton.
He had always felt hke that in the presence of Crocker,
with his simple absent-mindedness, his aspirations
chuckles, slyness, his deeds, and secret humour.
' Yes,' he reflected, with an odd admiration, ' he was
always a little mad.' But he also remembered that
irony had always been wasted on him. His com-

142 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

panion had begun unconsciously to walk him down,
and Shelton noticed with alarm the expression of that
sliding eye ; there was something lofty in it, a sort of
stubborn inspiration. ' Tchk, tchk ! He's still an
idealist !' and at this thought he felt vaguely disturbed.
' Well,' he inquired at last, ' what sort of a time have
you had in India ?'

' Oh,' said the Indian civilian absently, ' I've had the
plague.'

' Had the plague ! Good God !'

Crocker smiled, and added in his grave matter-of-
fact way :

' Caught it on famine duty.'

' I see,' said Shelton reflectively ; ' plague and
famine ! I suppose you fellows really think you're
doing good out there ?'

His companion looked at him with surprise, and
modestly answered :

' We get very good screws.'

' That's the great thing,' replied Shelton.

After a moment's silence, however, Crocker, looking
straight in front of him, inquired :

' Don't you think we are doing good ?'

'I'm not an authority; but, as a matter of fact, I
don't.'

Crocker seemed disconcerted ; he slackened his
pace.

' Why ?' he bluntly asked.

Shelton was not anxious to air his views, so he said
nothing.

His friend repeated his question :

' Why don't you think we're doing good in India?'

' \\'ell,' said Shelton gruffly, ' what / should like to

THE INDIAN CIVILIAN 143

know is, how can progress be imposed on nations from
outside ?'

The Indian civilian proceeded some distance, then,
glancing at Shelton in an affectionate, dubious way, he
replied :

' You haven't changed a bit, old chap.'

* No, no,' replied Shelton irritably, for Crocker was
walking faster than ever ; ' you're not going to get out
of it that way. Give me a single example of a nation, or
an individual, for the matter of that, who's ever done
any good without having worked up to it from within.'

Crocker grunted, and muttered something about
' evils.'

' That's it,' ejaculated Shelton, who had suddenly
become loquacious ; ' we take peoples entirely different
from our own, and stop their natural development by
substituting a civilization grown for our own use.
Suppose, looking at a tropical fern in a hothouse, you
were to say : " This heat's unhealthy for me ; therefore
it must be bad for the fern. I'll take it up and plant it
outside in the fresh air." '

' Do you know that means giving up India ?' said the
Indian civilian shrewdly.

' I don't say that ; but to talk about doing good to
India is — h'm !'

Crocker knitted his brows ; there was something
pathetic in his anxiety. Shelton went on elaborating
his argument.

' Come, now ! Should we go on administering India
if it were a dead loss to us ? No. Well, to talk about
administering the country for the purpose of pocketing
money is cynical, and there's generally some tru h in
cynicism ; but to talk about the administration of a

144 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

country by which we profit, as if it were a great and
good thing, is cant. I hit you in the wind for the
benefit of myself — all right : law of Nature ; but to say
it does you good at the same time is beyond me.'

' No, no,' returned Crocker, still grave and anxious ;
' you can't persuade me that we're not doing good.'

' Wait a bit,' said Shelton, on his mettle : ' The thing
is a question of horizons ; you look at it from too close.
Put the horizon further back. You hit India in the
wind, and say it's virtuous. Well, now let's see what
happens. Either the wind never comes back, and
India gasps to an untimely death, or the wind does
come back, and in the pant of reaction your blow —
that's to say your labour— is lost, I mean morally lost —
labour that you might have spent where it wouldn't
have been lost.'

' Aren't you an Imperialist ?' asked Crocker, genuinely
surprised.

' I may be, but I keep my mouth shut about the
benefits we're conferring on other people.'

' Then you can't believe in justice or right ?'

' What on earth have our ideas of justice or right got
to do with India?'

' If I thought as you do,' sighed Crocker, almost
running, ' I should be all adrift.'

' Quite so,' retorted Shelton. ' We always think our
standards of right and wrong best for the whole world.
It's a capital belief for us. Read the speeches of our
public men. Doesn't it strike you as amazing how
sure they are of being in the right ? It's so charming
to benefit yourself and others at the same time, though,
when you come to think of it, one man's meat is usually
another man's poison. Look at Nature. But there it

THE INDIAN CIVILIAN 145

is again ; in England we never look at Nature — there's
no necessity for it. Our National point of view fills our
pockets, which is all that matters.'

' I say, old chap, that's awfully bitter,' remonstrated
Crocker, with a sort of wondering sadness.

' It's enough to make anyone bitter the way we
Pharisees wax fat, and at the same time give ourselves
the airs of a moral balloon. You must stick a pin in
sometimes, for the pleasure of hearing the gas escape.'
Shelton was surprised at his own vehemence, and
for some strange reason thought of Antonia, who was
surely not connected with Pharisaism.

His companion strode on, and Shelton felt sorry for
the signs of disturbance on his visage.

' To fill your pockets,' said Crocker at last, ' isn't the
main thing. One has just got to do things without
thinking of anything else.'

' Do you ever see the other side to any question ?'
asked Shelton. ' I suppose not. You always begin to
act before you stop thinking, don't you ?'

Crocker grinned, and hit him a playful blow in the
side.

' He's a Pharisee, too,' thought Shelton, ' without a
speck of the Pharisee's pride. Queer thing that !'

After walking some distance, as if thinking deeply,
Crocker chuckled out with a sly look :

' You're not consistent ; you ought to be in favour of
giving up India, you know.'

Shelton did not reply for a minute, but smiled uneasily.

' Why shouldn't we fill our pockets ?' he remarked.
' I only object to the humbug we talk.'

The Indian civilian put his hand shyly through

Shelton's arm.

10

146 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' If I thought like you,' he said, ' I couldn't stay
another day in India.'
Shelton made no reply.

The wind had now begun to drop, and something of
the morning's magic was stealing again over the moor.
They were nearing the outskirt fields of cultivation. It
was past five when they dropped from the level of the
tors into the sunny hollow of Monkland.

' They say,' said Crocker, reading a paragraph from
a crimson guide-book he was continually drawing from
his pocket — ' they say this place occupies a position of
unique isolation.'

The two travellers, in tranquil solitude, took their
seats under an old yew-tree on the village green. The
smoke of their pipes, the sleepy air, the warmth from the
baked ground, the constant hum, made Shelton drowsy.
' Do you remember,' his companion asked suddenly,
' those "jaws " you used to have with Busgate and old
Halidome in my rooms on Sunday evenings ? How is
old Halidome ?'

' Married,' replied Shelton.

Crocker sighed. ' And are you ?' he asked, with a
glance at once shrewd and bashful.

' Not yet,' said Shelton grimly ; ' but I'm— engaged.'
Crocker took hold of his arm above the elbow, squeezed
it, and grunted. Shelton had not yet received con-
gratulations that pleased him more ; there was the spice
of envy in them.

' I should Hke to get married while I'm at home,'
said the Indian civilian after a lengthy pause. His
legs were stretched apart, throwing shadows on the
green, his hands deep thrust into his pockets, his head
a little to one side. An absent-minded smile played
around his mouth.

THE INDIAN CIVILIAN 147

The sun sank behind a tor, but the warmth still
sweated out of the village green, and the sweet-briar on
a cottage behind bathed them with its spicy perfume.
From the lane at the bottom figures passed now and
then, lounged across, stared at the strangers on the
bench, and, gossiping amongst themselves, vanished
into the row of cottages that headed the incline. The
church clock struck seven, and round the now shadow-
less yew-tree a cockchafer or some heavy insect com-
menced a series of booming rushes. All was marvel-
lously sane and slumbrous. Everything — the soft air,
the soft drawl, the shapes and murmurs, the rising
smell of wood-smoke from fresh kindled fires — was full
of the spirit of security and of home. The outside
world was barred off. Typical of some island nation
was this nest of refuge — complacency was born and
bred there ; men grew quietly tall, fattened, and with-
out fuss dropped off their perches ; ideals flourished
blandly, as sunflowers flourish in the sun, and, when the
sun goes in, fall asleep.

Crocker's cap slipped off; he was nodding, and
Shelton looked at him. From one of a thousand such
homes he had issued ; to one of a thousand such homes
he would find his way at last, untouched by his struggles
against famines or plagues, uninfected in any essential
jot of his fibre, his prejudices, or his principles, by
strange peoples, new conditions, odd feehngs, or queer
points of view !

The chafer buzzed against the Indian civihan's sleeve
with a sounding smack, gathered way again slowly,
and boomed off. He roused himself, and, turning his
face, shy and amiable, jogged Shelton's arm.

' What are you thinking about. Bird ?' he asked.

10 — 2

CHAPTER XVII

A PARSON

Shelton continued to travel with the Indian civilian,
and on Wednesday night, four days after joining com-
pany, they arrived cold and wet at the village of
Dowdenhame. All day long the road had lain through
pastureland, where the very hedges breathed fertility,
the very trees opulence. Once or twice they had
broken its monotony by a stretch along the towing-
path of a canal, which, choked with water-lily plants
and the green of disuse, brooded sluggishly beside the
meadows. Nature, in one of her ironic moods, had
chosen to cast a gray, iron-hard cloak over all the
country's trimly bland luxuriance. From dawn till the
moment when darkness fell there had been no move-
ment in the remote, steely sky; a cold wind ruffled
across the hedge-tops, and sent shivers through the
early feathering on the stems of the elms. The cattle,
dappled, pied, bay, or white, continued their grazing
with an air of grumbling at their birthright. In a
meadow close to the canal the travellers saw five
magpies, and about five o'clock the rain began, a
steady, coldly-sneering rain, which Crocker, looking at
the sky and rubbing his round chin the wrong way,
declared was going to be over directly. But it was 7iot

148

A PARSON 149

over directly, and as they got more and more drenched,
Shelton became more and more disgusted. He was
tired, and it annoyed him intensely that his companion,
who was tired also, should grow more and more cheer-
ful. His reflections kept harping on Ferrand. ' This,'
thought he, ' must be something like what he described
to me, tramping on and on when you're wet and dead-
beat, until you can cadge up a supper and a bed.'
And he ploughed sullenly through the mud with
sinister glances at Crocker, who had skinned one heel
and was limping horribly. It suddenly came home to
him that life for three-quarters of the world meant
physical exhaustion for every day in the year without
any possibility of escape, and that as soon as, for some
cause beyond their control, they failed to exhaust them-
selves, they became paupers, or starved. ' And then
we, who don't know the meaning of the word ex-
haustion, at once call them " idle scamps," ' he said
aloud.

It was past nine and pitch dark when they reached
Dowdenhame. The street seemed to yield no accom-
modation, and while debating where to look for an inn
they passed the church, with its dim, square tower,
and next to it a house which was manifestly the
parsonage.

' Suppose,' said the Indian civilian, leaning his arms
dreamily on the gate, ' we ask him where to go for the
night;' and without waiting for Shelton 's answer, he
flung open the gate and rang the bell.

The door was opened by the parson himself, a blood-
less, clean-shaven man, whose hollow cheeks and bony
hands suggested a perpetual struggle. Ascetically
benevolent were his gray eyes as he invited them out

150 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

of the rain. A smile, like the ghost of vitality, strayed
in and out of the curves of his thin lips.

' What can I do for you ?' he asked. ' Inn ? Yes,
there's the Blue Chequers, but I'm afraid you'll
find it shut. They're early people, I'm glad to say ;'
and his eyes seemed to muse over the proper fold for
these damp sheep. ' Are you Oxford men, by any
chance ?' he asked, as if that might throw some light
upon the matter. ' Of Mary's ? Really ! I'm of St. Saul's
myself. Ladyman — Billington Ladyman ; you might
remember my youngest brother. I could give you a
room here if you could manage without sheets. My
housekeeper has two days' holiday, and she's foolishly
taken the keys.'

Shelton accepted gladly, feeling that the superior
intonation in the parson's voice was merely that which
is necessary to his calling, and not in the least intended
for patronage.

' You're hungry, I expect, after your tramp. I'm
very much afraid there's — er— nothing in the house, but
I could boil you some water; hot lemonade is better
than nothing.'

Conducting them to the kitchen, he made a fire with
his bony hands, and put on a kettle ; and leaving them
to take off their soaking clothes, he returned shortly
with two ancient, greenish-black coats, some carpet
slippers, and a couple of blankets. Wrapped in these,
and carrying their glasses, the travellers followed him
to the study, where, by the light of a doubtful lamp, he
seemed, from the books scattered about the table, to
have been writing his sermon.

' We're giving you a lot of trouble,' said Shelton ;
' it's awfully good of you.'

A PARSON 151

' Not at all,' responded the parson ; ' I'm only sorry
the house is so empty.'

It was a truly dismal.contrast to the fatness of the
land they had been passing through all day, and what
was really pathetic was the owner's voice issuing, a
wraith of complacency, from bloodless lips that looked
as if they had an insufficiency to eat. Yes ; it was
most peculiar, that voice of his, which seemed to indi-
cate an intimate acquaintanceship with everything fat
and fine, to convey a sovereign contempt for the vulgar
n-eed of money, while all the time his eyes — those
watery, ascetic eyes — as plain as speech they said : ' Oh,
to know what it must be like to have a pound or two
to spare just once in a way !'

Everything in the room had been bought for cheap-
ness ; luxuries there were none, and not enough neces-
saries. It was bleak, it was bare; the ceiling was
cracked and the wall-paper discoloured, and those
books — shining, prim books, with fat backs and arms
stamped upon them — almost glared in the surrounding
barrenness.

' My predecessor,' said the parson, with pathetic
superiority, ' played rather havoc with the house. The
poor fellow had a dreadful struggle, I'm told. You
can, unfortunately, expect nothing else in these days,
when livings have come down so terribly in value ! He
was a married man with a large family !'

Crocker, who had drunk his steaming lemonade at a
draught, was smihng and already nodding in his chair ;
with a greenish-black garment buttoned closely below
his round visage, his long legs rolled in a blanket, and
stretched out towards the feeble flame of the newly-
lighted fire, he presented an appearance frightening in

152 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

its incongruity. Shelton, on the other hand, had ceased
to feel tired ; the strangeness of his surroundings stimu-
lated an unusual activity in his brain ; he kept stealing
glances at the unspeakable scantiness around him, and
the room, the parson, the furniture, the very fire, all
gave him the feeling that is produced by the sight of a
pair of legs that have outgrown their trousers. He did
not know what to say. To express sympathy would
have been sheer bad taste ; besides, there was something
underlying the leanness of his host's figure, something
superior and academic, which defied sympathy. Yet
the parson's glance had the faculty of irritating his
nerves, and it was really pure nervousness which made
him say :

' Ah ! why do they have such large families ?'

A faint red mounted into the parson's cheeks, and its
appearance there was startling. Crocker chuckled, as a
sleepy man chuckles who has not heard a remark, but
feels bound to show that he is awake.

' It's very unfortunate,' murmured the parson, 'cer-
tainly, in many cases.'

In all probability Shelton would have changed the
subject, but at this moment the wretched Crocker
snored. Most men in his condition would have
temporized with their somnolence, but he, being a man
of action, had simply fallen asleep.

' It seems to me,' said Shelton hurriedly, as he saw
the parson's eyebrows rising at the sound, ' almost what
}'ou might call wrong.'

' Dear me !' replied the parson, reverting to Shelton ;
' but how can it be wrong ?'

' Oh, of course, I don't know,' said Shelton, feehng
that he must justify his unfortunate remark somehow.

A PARSON 153

and floundering hopelessly, ' only one knows such a
lot of cases— clergymen's families ; I've got two uncles
myself '

A new expression had gathered on the parson's face ;
his mouth tightened, so that the chin slightly receded.
' Why, he's awfully like a mule !' thought Shelton.
His eyes, too, had grown harder, grayer, more parroty;
his lips were drawn in at the corners. The authority
which looked out of his face had an ill effect on his guest.

The parson smiled.

' Perhaps you and I,' he answered, ' would not under-
stand each other on such matters.'

Shelton felt rather ashamed.

' I should like to ask you a question in turn, how-
ever,' continued the parson, as if desirous of meeting
Shelton on his somewhat low ground : ' How do you
justify marriage if it is not to follow the edicts of
nature ?'

' I can only tell what I feel personally.'

' My dear sir, you forget that a woman's chief delight
is in her motherhood.'

' I should have thought it a pleasure likely to pall
with repetition. Motherhood is motherhood, whether
of one or of a dozen.'

' I'm afraid,' replied the parson, with a certain
impatience, though still keeping on Shelton's low
ground, 'that your theories are not calculated to
populate the world.'

' Have you ever lived in London ?' asked Shelton.
' It always makes me doubt whether we have any right
to have children at all.'

' But surely,' queried the parson with wonderful
restraint, though the joints of his fingers cracked

154 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

with the grip he had upon his chair, 'you're leaving
out the duty towards the country ; the national growth
is paramount !'

' There are two ways of looking at that. It depends
on what you want your country to become.'

' I didn't know,' said the parson — and a certain
fanaticism had crept into his smile — ' that there was
any doubt on such a subject.'

The more Shelton felt that he was being commanded,
the more controversial he became — quite apart from the
merits of the subject, to which he had hardly given a
thought in his life.

' I dare say I'm wrong,' he said, fastening his eyes
on the stripes in the blanket in which his legs were
wrapped ; ' but it seems to me at least an open question
whether it's better for the country to be so well popu-
lated as to be absolutely incapable of supporting itself.'

' Surely,' said the parson, whose face had regained its
pallor, ' you're not a Little Englander ?'

The phrase had a mysterious effect on Shelton, who
felt uneasy and insulted. In spite of a secret impulse
to try and discover what he really was, he hastened to
answer :

' Of course not !'

The parson, with the magnanimity of the victorious,
instantly followed up his triumph, and, shifting the
discussion from Shelton's ground to his own, gravely
said :

' Surely you must see that your theory is founded in
immorality. It is, if I may say so, extravagant, even
wicked.'

But Shelton, suffering from the irritation aroused by
a sense of his own dishonesty, replied with some heat :

A PARSON 155

'Why not say at once "hysterical and unhealthy"?
Any opinion which goes contrary to that of the majority
is always called so, I believe.'

' Well,' repeated the parson, whose eyes and mouth
seemed trying to bind Shelton to his will, ' I must
say your ideas do seem to me both extravagant and
unhealthy. The propagation of children is the chief
object of marriage.'

Shelton bowed, and his host was too excited to smile
at the ludicrous figure he thereby cut.

' We live in very dangerous times,' continued the
parson, ' and it grieves me when a man of your
standing and education subscribes to these notions.'

' Excuse me, I can't help thinking it unreasonable
for people whom the shoe doesn't pinch to make a
rule of morality and thrust it on those whom it
does.'

The irony of his calling the parson ' a man whom the
shoe doesn't pinch ' quite escaped him.

' The rule was never made,' said the parson ; ' it was
given us.'

• Oh !' said Shelton, ' I beg your pardon.' He felt so
intensely annoyed that he was in danger of forgetting
the delicate position he was in. ' He wants to ram his
notions down my throat,' he thought, staring ; and it
seemed to him that the parson's face had grown still
more Hke a mule's, his accent more superior, the glance
of his eyes more compelling. To be right in this
argument seemed now of the greatest importance,
whereas, in truth, it was of no importance at all.
What, however, was of importance was the fact that
neither could possibly have agreed with the other in
anything.

156 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

Crocker suddenly ceased to snore ; his head had
fallen so low on his chest that the very snores were
strangled, and a peculiar whistling took their place.
Both Shelton and the parson looked at him, and
both seemed to become conscious of their heat.

' Your friend seems very tired,' said the parson,
putting his hand to his brow.

Shelton forgot his annoyance, for his host again
seemed to him pathetic, with his baggy garments,
hollow cheeks, and the slightly red nose that some-
times comes from not drinking enough. What a kind
fellow he was !

The kind fellow rose, and putting his hands in his
pockets, placed himself with his back to the fast-
blackening fire. Whole centuries of authority stood
behind him. It was but an accident that the mantel-
piece was chipped and rusty, the fire-irons bent and
worn, his linen frayed at the cuffs.

' I have no wish to be dictatorial,' said he. ' Where
it seems to me that you are wholly in the wrong is,
that your ideas foster in women those lax views of
the family life that are so prevalent in Society now-
adays.'

The image of Antonia with her gray eyes, the touch
of freckling on her pink and white skin, the fair hair
severely gathered back, sprang before Shelton, and the
use of the word ' lax ' seemed ridiculous. And then
there were the women he was accustomed to see
dragging about the streets of London with two or three
children, women staggering under the weight of babies
they were unable to leave, women going to work with
babies still unborn, and aneemic-looking women and
moneyless mothers in his own class, with twelve or

A PARSON 157

fourteen children, in fact, all the victims of the sanctity
of marriage, and again he felt the word ' lax ' to be
ridiculous. But he had, no doubt, a private sympathy
with the word 'lax' — a temperamental objection to
authority.

' We are not put into the world to exercise our '—
Shelton insanely hoped he was going to say ' wits ' —
' wanton wills,' remarked the parson tyrannically.

Shelton came out of his reverie.

' It may have been all right for the last generation ;
the country is more crowded now. I can't see why we
shouldn't decide for ourselves.'

' Such a view of morality,' said the parson, for some
reason looking down at Crocker with a ghostly smile,
* is unintelligible to me.'

The Indian civilian continued to whistle.

' I tell you what I hate,' said Shelton, ' and that's
the way men decide what women are to bear, and then
call them hysterical, immoral, decadent, what you like,
if they don't fall in with their views.'

' Mr. Shelton,' said the parson, ' I think you may
safely leave it in the hands of God.'

Shelton was silent. But his host was unable to
follow his own advice.

' The questions of morality,' he said promptly, ' have
always lain through God in the hands of men, not of
women. We are the more reasonable sex.'

'I don't know about that,' was Shelton's stubborn
reply ; ' we're the greater humbugs, if that's the same
thing.'

' This is too bad,' exclaimed the parson with some
heat.

' I'm sorry, sir ; but how can you expect women nowa-

158 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

days to have the same views as our grandmothers ? We
men, by our commercial enterprise, have brought about
a different state of affairs, and yet, for the sake of our
own comfort, we try to keep women where they were.
It's always those fellows who are most keen about their
own comfort ' — and again in his heat the sarcasm of using
the word ' comfort ' in that room was lost on him —
' who are so ready to accuse women of deserting the
old morality.'

The parson's lips quivered with impatient irony.
' Old morality ! new morality !' he said. ' These are
strange words.'

' Forgive me,' explained Shelton ; ' we're talking of
working morality, I imagine. There's not a man in a
million fit to talk about true morality.'
The eyes of his host contracted.
' I think,' he said — and his voice sounded more
precious, as if he had pinched it in the endeavour to
impress his listener — ' that any well-educated man who
honestly tries to serve his God has the right humbly—
I say humbly — to speak of morality.'

Shelton smiled. He was on the point of saying
something bitter, but checked himself ' Here am I,'
thought he, ' trying to get the last word, like any old
woman.'

At this moment a faint, piteous mewing was heard
through the window, and the parson went towards the
door.

' Excuse me a moment ; I'm afraid that's one of my
cats out in the wet.' He returned a minute later with
a very wet cat in his arms. ' They will get out,' he
said to Shelton, with a vague, soft smile on his thin
face, suffused with the exertion of stooping.

A PARSON 159

Absent-mindedly he stroked the dripping cat the
wrong way, while a drop of wet ran off his nose.
' Poor pussy, poor pussy !' he kept saying. The cut-
and-dried sound of that ' Poor pussy, poor pussy !' hke
nothing human in its cracked superiority, the softness
of that smile, like the smile of humanity itself, haunted
Shelton till he fell asleep.

CHAPTER XVIII

ACADEMIC

The last sunlight was playing on the roofs of the
' High ' when the travellers entered that street, so
grave and holy to Oxford men. The spirit hovering
over the spires was as different from its concretions in
cap and gown on the pavement as the spirit of Christ
from Church dogmas.

' Shall we go into Grinnings' ?' asked Shelton, as they
passed the club.

Each looked down at his clothes, for two elegant
young men in straw hats and ilannel suits were just
coming out.

' You go,' said Crocker, with a smirk.

Shelton shook his head. Never before had he felt
such a love for the old city. It was gone now out
of his life, and everything about it seemed good and
fine ; even its precious air of exclusiveness was not
ignoble. Clothed in the calm of history, the golden
web of glorious tradition, radiant with the alchemy of
memories, it bewitched him like the scent of a mistress's
dress. They stopped to idle at the entrance of a college,
and glance in at the cool gray patch of stone beyond,
and the single scarlet splash of a window flower-box —
a secluded, mysteriously calm glimpse, in narrow per-

i6o

ACADEMIC i6l

spective, of the sacred past. Pale and trencher-capped,
a youth with a pimply face and random nose, grabbing
his torn-off gown to his hip, was gazing at the notice^
board. The college porter, a large man with a fresh
face and small mouth, stood at the door of his lodge
in an attitude deferential and frank ; the image of
confidential routine, he looked like one engaged to
give an air of decorum to multitudes of peccadilloes.
His blue eyes rested inquiringly on the travellers. ' I
don't know you, sirs, but I shall be glad to hear any
observations you may have to make,' they seemed to
say.

Against the wall reposed a bicycle with a tennis-
racquet buckled to its handle. A bull-dog bitch,
straining on a strap, and working her queer snout from
side to side, snuffled continually ; the great iron-studded
door to which she was fastened remained immovable,
a symbol of permanency. Into the mould, through
this narrow mouth, human metal had been poured for
centuries — poured, moulded, and given back.

' Come along,' said Shelton.

They entered the Bishop's Head, and dined in the
room where he had given his celebrated Derby dinner
to four-and-twenty youths of the best breeding ; opposite
him was the picture of a racehorse that the wineglass,
thrown by Toby Fossdyke, had missed when it hit the
waiter ; and there, serving Crocker with anchovy sauce,
was the same waiter. When he had dined, Shelton
experienced something of the old desire to rise from
the table with difficulty; the old necessity to patrol
the streets with his arm hooked in some other arm ;
the old eagerness to do something daring, heroic, and
unlawful; the old sense that he belonged to the best

II

i62 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

set, in the best college, in the best country in the best
world. The streets, mellow and gravely unexpected,
seemed to applaud this after-dinner stroll ; and the
entrance quadrangle of his old college — spaciously
majestic, monastically modern, for years the heart of
his universe, the focus of all that had gone before it in
his life, and casting the shadow of its gray, exclusive
walls over all that had come after — brought him a
sensation of rest from conflict, an intoxicating belief
in his own important security. Even the sight of the
garden-gate, whose lofty spikes he had so often decorated
with empty soda-water bottles, failed to disturb him.
He had but a vague sense of remorse when they passed
a staircase down which he had committed the indelicacy
of flinging a leg of lamb after some other men's tutor,
who had been foolish enough to suppose that two in
the morning was not a time to eat oysters. Perched
up high on the next staircase were the rooms in which
he had crammed for his degree, upon the system by
which the scholar assimilates the dry bones of his
coach's knowledge, boils over at the moment of exami-
nation, and is an extinct volcano for ever afterwards.
The face of that gentleman recurred to him, a man
with thrusting eyes, who reeled off knowledge all the
week like a demoniacal machine, and on Saturday
evening disappeared to London.

They passed their tutor's staircase.

' I wonder if little Turl would remember us ?' said
Crocker ; ' I should like to see him. Shall we go and
look him up ?'

' Little Turl ?' said Shelton dreamily.

He was too happy to dissent, and, mounting, they
knocked on a solid door.

ACADEMIC 163

* Come in,' said a somnolent voice.

A little fat man, with a pink face and very large
ears, was sitting in a magnificent chair, as if he had
been grown there. He got up at once with sleepy
alarm.

' What do you want ?' he asked, blinking,

' Don't you know me, sir ?' said the Indian civilian.

' God bless me ! Crocker, isn't it ? I didn't recognise
you with a beard.'

Crocker, who had not been shaved since starting on
his travels, passed his hand over his chin, and chuckled
feebly.

' You remember Shelton, sir ?' he said.

' Shelton ? Oh yes ! How do you do, Shelton ?
Sit down ; take a cigar ;' and the little gentleman again
took his seat in the large chair, and, crossing his fat
little legs, looked from one to the other with drowsy
interest, as who should say : 'Now, after all, you know,
why the deuce come and wake me up like this ?'

Shelton and Crocker took two other large chairs,
and they, too, looked at each other, as if thinking:
'Yes; why the deuce did we come and wake him up?'
Shelton, who could not answer this question, took
silent refuge in the cigar ; his eyes roamed over the
panelled walls covered with reproductions of the most
celebrated Greek and Roman remains ; the thick, soft
carpet on the floor was grateful to his tired feet ; the
backs of innumerable books gleamed richly in the light
of the oil lamps ; the sleepy culture and perfumed
smoke stole upon his senses ; he but vaguely compre-
hended Crocker's amiable and jerky attempts at con-
versation, but vaguely comprehended the replies of his
host, whose face, in the thickening atmosphere, blinking

II — 2

i64 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

behind the bowl of a huge meerschaum, assumed to
his nodding facuhies some queer likeness to a moon.
He would, indeed, have been asleep in another minute
had not the door opened, and a tall, middle-aged
creature, whose eyes were large and brown, whose face
was pale and ironical, entered with disjointed, manly
strides.

' Oh !' he said, looking round with his chin a little in
the air and a half-unseeing glance, ' am I in the way,
Turl ?'

The little host did not move, but, bhnking more than
ever, murmured :

' Not at all, Berryman — not at all ; take a pew !'

The individual called Berryman sat down on the
arm of a chair, swung one of his long legs, and, smiling,
gazed now at the wall, now at the carpet, with those
fine eyes.

Shelton had a faint recollection of him as one of the
dons in his time, but the sense of detachment conveyed
by wine and good cigars was so strong that he offered
no recognition beyond a bow, and remained within the
fortress of his chair, once more, however, wide awake.

' Is there still balm in Gilead ?' said the new-comer,
with his eyes on the whist table. ' Trimmer and Washer
were coming round;' and almost before the satire which
was too habitual to have any connection with his heart,
but seemed to belong exclusively to his head, had died
off his lips, the door opened to admit the two gentlemen
in question. Of about the same height, but very diiferent
in appearance, they bowed slightly ; their manner was
faintly jocular, faintly supercilious, as if they tolerated
the universe. The one whose name was Trimmer had
patches of red on his large cheek-bones, and below

ACADEMIC 165

them a bluish tint on his cheeks, and rather full lips ;
some quite indescribable resemblance to a spider domi-
nated his face. Washer, who was thin and pale, came
in with a long stride and a jeering smile.

The little fat host moved the hand that held the
meerschaum.

' Crocker, Shelton,' he said, vaguely introducing them
to the last arrivals.

An awkward silence prevailed. Shelton made a
desperate appeal to the more cultured portion of his wits ;
but so strong upon him was the sense that nothing
would be treated seriously that his faculties became
paralyzed, and he remained silent, staring bashfully at
the glowing tip of his cigar. The strange notion
possessed him that it was unfair, actually unfair, to
have intruded his society upon these gentlemen with-
out its having been made quite clear to them before-
hand who and what he was ; and he was on the point
of rising and taking leave, when the silence was broken
by Washer.

'"Madame Bovary!"' he announced quizzically,
reading the title of the book the little fat man had been
reading when Shelton and Crocker disturbed him ; and,
holding it close to his rather boiled-looking eyes, he
repeated, as though it were a bad joke : ' " Madame
Bovary !" '

' Do you mean to say, Turl, that you can stand that
stuff?' said Berryman.

The name of the book seemed to have galvanized him
into hfe, and, getting off his perch on the arm of the
chair, he strolled across to the book-case, took down a
volume at random, opened it, and began to read,
wandering in a desultory way about the room.

i66 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' Ha ! Berryman,' said a conciliatory bass voice be-
hind Shelton — it came from Trimmer, who had assumed
a position with his back to the hearth, and, leaning his
shoulders against the mantel-board, and bending his
head forward, grasped with either hand a fist-full of his
long gown — ' the book's a classic!'

' Classic !' exclaimed Berryman ; and, suddenly stop-
ping, he transfixed Shelton, as if the latter had spoken.
' The fellow ought to have been horsewhipped for writing
such putridity !'

Shelton felt unaccountably nervous, and yet a pecu-
liar sensation of hostility had sprung up in him ; he
looked at his little host, who, however, merely blinked.

' Berryman only means,' explained Washer, a certain
malice in his smile, ' that the author isn't one of his
particular pets.'

' For God's sake, you know, don't get Berryman on
his horse !' growled the little fat man suddenly.

Berryman returned his volume to the shelf and took
down another. There was something almost godhke
in this sarcastic absent-mindedness.

' Imagine a man writing that stuff,' he said, 'if he'd
ever been at Eton ! What do we want to know about
that sort of thing ? Pah ! I hke a writer to be a sports-
man and a gentleman ;' and again he looked down over
his chin at Shelton, as though he expected him to con-
trovert the sentiment.

' Don't you ' began the latter.

But Berryman's attention had wandered again to the
wall.

' I really don't care,' said he, ' to know what a
woman feels when she is going to the dogs ; it doesn't
interest me.'

ACADEMIC 167

The voice of Trimmer boomed ingratiatingly from
the hearth.

' I gather,' he was saying, ' that it's a question of
moral standards.'

He had extended his legs till they looked like a pair
of compasses, and something in that attitude and the
way he grasped the wings of his gown supplied the sug-
gestion of a pair of scales. His lowering smile seemed
to embrace the room and deprecate the use of strong
expressions. ' After all,' he seemed to say, ' we are
men of the world ; we know there's not very much in
anything. This is the modern spirit ; why not give it a
look in ?'

' Do I understand you to say, Berryman, that you
don't enjoy a spicy book ?' asked Washer suddenly,
with his jeering smile ; and at this question the little fat
man sniggered, blinking tempestuously, as if to say :
' Nothing pleasanter, don't you know, before a hot fire
in cold weather.'

Berryman paid no attention to this impertinent in-
quiry ; he continued to dip into his volume and to walk
up and down.

' I've nothing to say,' he remarked, stopping before
Shelton, and looking down at him over his chin as if he
had suddenly become aware of his presence, ' to you
gentlemen who talk of j ustification through Art. I prefer
to call a spade a spade.'

Shelton did not know what to answer ; the awkward
thing was that he could not tell whether Berryman was
addressing him or merely the world at large ; his eyes
had again strayed to his book, a smile curled his lips,
and he went on :

' Do we want to know about the feeUngs of a middle-

i68 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

class woman \vith a taste for vice ? Tell me the point
of it. No man who was in the habit of taking baths
would choose such a subject.'

' Ah ! now you come to the question of — ah — sub-
jects,' the voice of Trimmer buzzed genially — he had
gathered his garments across his back as tightly as
though a fire had been burning in the grate — ' but, my
dear fellow, Art, properly applied, justifies every subject.'
' For Art,' squeaked Berryman, putting back his
second volume and taking down a third, ' you have
Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Ossian ; for garb-
age, a number of unwashed gentlemen.'

There was a general laugh, and Shelton could not
help looking round at all in turn. With the exception
of Crocker, however, who was half asleep and smiling
idiotically, they wore, one and all, an expression as if
by no possible chance could they consider any subject
fit to affect their hearts ; as if, one and all, they were
so profoundly anchored on the sea of life that no waves
could seem anything but impertinent. It may have
been some uncompromising glimmer in this glance of
Shelton's that brought Trimmer once more to the
rescue with a cosmopolitan air.

' The French,' said he, ' have quite a different standard
to ourselves in literature, just as they have a different
standard in regard to honour. All this is purely arti-
ficial.'

What he meant by these words Shelton found it
impossible to divine.

' Ah ! honour,' said Washer, ' Vhonmur, die Elite,
duelling, the unfaithful wife '

He was going to add something, but it was lost ; for
the little fat man, taking the meerschaum with trembling

ACADEMIC 169

fingers, and holding it within two inches of his chin,
murmured :

' You fellows, Berryman's awf'ly strong on honour ;
he's death on duelling.'

Smiling, he blinked twice, and replaced the meer-
schaum between his lips.

Without returning the third volume to its shelf,
Berryman took down a fourth ; his chest was ex-
panded, and he looked like a man about to do dumb-
bells with the books in his hands.

' Quite so,' began Trimmer; 'the change from duel-
ling to law courts is profoundly '

But whether he were going to say ' insignificant ' or
' significant,' in Shelton's private opinion he did not
know himself, and Berryman here broke in :

' Law courts or not, when a man runs away with a
wife of mine, I shall punch his head !'

'Come, come!' said Trimmer, with a spasmodic
grasp of his two wings.

Shelton had a sudden gleam of inspiration. ' If your
wife deceived you,' he thought, looking at Trimmer's
eyes, 'you'd keep it quiet, and hold it over her.'

Washer had passed his hand over his pale chaps, but
his disillusioned smile never wavered ; he looked like
one lost in the composition of an epigram.

The author of the punching theory stretched his
semi-athletic body; holding the books level with the
tops of his shoulders, he might have been preparing to
stone somebody with his point of view. His pale face
grew paler, his fine eyes finer, his lips more ironical.
Almost painful about his tall figure was the combined
look of the ' strong ' man and of the student who was
bound to go to pieces if you hit him a smart blow.

170 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

'As for forgiving unfaithful wives,' he said, 'and all
that sort of thing, I don't believe in latter-day senti-
mentalities.'

The words were so high-pitched and full of sarcastic
conviction that they seemed actually to rebound from
the wall. Shelton looked hastily round. All their faces
were complacent together. He grew red, and suddenly
remarked, in a soft, but clear voice :

' I see !'

He was conscious that he had never before made such
an impression, and that he never would again. The
unanimous, cold hostility flashing out all round was
both singular and enlightening ; it instantly gave way
to the shades of polite or satirical indulgence peculiar
to highly-cultivated organizations. Crocker nervously
arose ; he seemed scared, and was clearly relieved when
Shelton, follo\\'ing his example, grasped the hand of the
little fat man, who bade them good-night in a voice
shaken by the fumes of tobacco.

' Who are your unshaven friends ?' he heard as the
door closed behind them.

CHAPTER XIX

AN INCIDENT

' Eleven o'clock,' said Crocker, as they went out
through the lodge, where the night-porter, penetrating
the disguise of their beards, greeted them with an
inquisitive civility :

' I don't feel a bit sleepy ; shall we take a turn down
the " High ?" '

Shelton assented; he was too busy thinking of his
sudden encounter with the dons to heed the soreness
of his feet. And this, besides, was the last day of his
travels, for he had not altered his intention of waiting
at Oxford till July i.

' We call this place the centre of knowledge,' he said,
as they passed a building presiding, white and silent,
over the darkness ; ' it seems to me as far from being
that as Society is from the centre of gentility.'

Crocker's answer was a grunt ; he was looking up at
the stars, as if calculating in how many days he could
walk to heaven.

'No,' sneered Shelton; 'we've too much common-
sense here to strain our minds. We know when it's
healthy to stop, and play cricket. We pile up news
about Papias and the undistributed middle, but as for
knowledge of life or one's self ! Real seekers after know-

171

172 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

ledge are mad. It's a fight in the dark — no quarter
given ; the trade of lunatics. We don't grow that sort
up here.'

' How jolly the limes smell !' said Crocker.

He had halted opposite a garden, and taken hold of
Shelton by one of the buttons of his coat. His brown
eyes, like a dog's, slid a wistful look at him. It seemed as
though he wished to say something, but was afraid of
giving offence.

' They tell you,' pursued Shelton, ' that we learn to
be gentlemen here. Now, my notion is you learn that
through a single incident that touches your heart better
than you learn it here in three years.'

' Hum !' muttered Crocker, twisting strongly at the
button ; ' those fellows who seemed the best sorts up
here have turned out the best sorts afterwards.'

' I hope not,' said Shelton gloomily ; ' / was a snob
when I was up here. I believed all I was told,
anything that made things pleasant ; my " set " were
nothing but '

Crocker smiled in the darkness ; he had been too
■ mad ' to belong to Shelton's ' set.'

' You never were much like your " set," old chap,' he
broke in.

Shelton turned away, put his face between the high
railings, and sniffed the scent of the limes. Images
were crowding into his mind. The faces of his old
friends strangely mingled with those of people he had
met lately — the girl in the train, Ferrand, the lady with
the short, round, powdered face, the French barber,
and many others, and, floating detached, mysteriously
connected with them all, the face of Antonia. The
scent of the limes for a moment died away, then drifted

AN INCIDENT 173

at him with the full magic of its sweetness. From the
street behind the footsteps of the passers-by sounded
muffled, yet exact, and on the puffs of the breeze came
the strains : ' For he's a jolly good fellow ! For he's a
jolly good fellow ! For he's a jolly good fe-ellow ! And
so say all of us!'

' Ah !' he said, ' they were good chaps.'

'You know, Bird/ murmured Crocker, 'I used to
think some of them had too much side on.'

He had lost his hold of Shelton's button, but still
wore the look of wishing to say something painful.

Shelton laughed.

' The thing sickens me when I think of it,' said he —
' the whole snobbish, selfish business. The place sickens
me, lined with cotton-wool — made so beastly com-
fortable.'

Crocker shook his head.

' It's a splendid old place,' he said sadly ; his eyes
wandered, and fastened at last on Shelton's boots.
' You know, old chap,' he stammered, ' I think you — you
ought to take care !'

' Take care ?' replied Shelton ; ' what of?'

Crocker seized his arm and pressed it convulsively.

' Don't be waxy, old boy,' he said : ' I mean that you
seem somehow — to be — to be losing yourself

'Losing myself!' said Shelton, surprised. 'Ha!
finding myself, you mean I'

Crocker did not reply ; over his face came a look ot
disappointment. What exactly he was thinking cannot
be told. In Shelton's heart there was a sort of bitter
pleasure in the consciousness that his friend was
uncomfortable on his account, a sort of contempt,
and a sort of aching. Crocker broke the silence at last.

174 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' I think I shall do a bit more walking to-night,' he
said ; ' I feel very fit. Don't you really mean to come
any further with me, Bird ?'

There was a touch of anxiety in his voice, as though
Shelton were in danger of missing something good.
The latter grinned ; his feet instantly began to ache
and burn.

' Not exactly,' he replied ; ' you know what I'm
staying for.'

' I know, I know,' replied Crocker humbly ; ' she
lives near here. Well, then, I'll say good-bye. I
should like to do another ten miles to-night.'

' My dear fellow, you're as tired as a rook.'

Crocker chuckled.

' No,' he said, looking foolish ; ' I want to get on. I
shall see you in London. Good-bye!' and with a
painfully strong grip of Shelton's hand, he turned and
limped away.

Shelton called after him : ' Don't be an idiot ! You'll
only knock yourself up.'

But the sole answer was the pale moon of Crocker's
face screwed round for a second in the darkness, and
the waving of his stick.

Shelton strolled slowly on in the same direction,
and, leaning over the bridge, watched the oily gleam of
the lamps on the dark water under the trees. He felt
relieved yet sorry, and withal a little sore at being
deserted. His thoughts were random, curious, half
sweet, half mutinous. That afternoon five years ago,
when he had walked back from the river with Antonia
across the Christchurch meadows, was vividly in his
mind ; the scent of that afternoon had never died
away with him — the aroma of love at first sight. Soon

AN INCIDENT 175

she would be his wife — his wife ! The faces of the ^ur
dons sprang up before him. They had wives, perhaps
— fat, lean, satirical, compromising. What was it that
through all their diversity they had in common — a sort
of cultured intolerance ? Honour ! A queer subject
to discuss. Honour ! The honour that made a fuss,
and stood on its rights ! Shelton smiled. ' As if it were
a man's honour that suffered when he was injured!'
And slowly, still with that smile on his face, he walked
back up the echoing, empty street to his room at the
Bishop's Head. Next morning he received the follow-
ing wire :

' Thirty miles left ; eighteen hours ; heel bad ; going
strong. — Crocker.'

He passed a fortnight at the Bishop's Head, waiting for
the end of his probation, and the end seemed long in
coming. To be so near Antonia, and as far as if he lived
in another world, was not conducive to rest. Every day,
as a forlorn hope, he took a sculling skiff, and pulled
down to the neighbourhood of Holm Oaks, on the
chance of her paying the river a visit ; but the house
was three miles off, and the chance but slender. She
never came. After spending the afternoons like this
he would return, pulling hard against the stream, with
an inexplicable feeling of relief, dine heartily, and fall
a-dreaming over his cigar. Each morning he awoke in
an excited mood, devoured his letter if he had one, and
sat down to write to her in return. These letters of
his were the most amazing portion of that fortnight.
They were chiefly remarkable for failing to express any
single one of his real thoughts, but they were full of
sentiments, which were not in the least what he really

176 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

felt ; and once when he set himself to analyze this, he
passed through such moments of delirium that he was
scared, even shocked, and quite unable to write any-
thing. He made the discovery that no two human
beings ever tell each other what they really feel, except,
perhaps, in situations with which he could not connect
Antonia's calm eyes and brilliant smile. All the world
was too deeply engaged in conspiring decency.

Absorbed by his longings, he but vaguely reahzed the
many-hued turmoil of Commemoration, which had
gathered its hundreds for their annual cure of salmon
mayonnaise and cheap champagne. In preparation for
his visit to Holm Oaks he shaved his beard, and had a
consignment of clothes sent down from London. With
them was forwarded a letter from Ferrand, which ran
as follows :

' Imperial Peacock Hotel,
'Folkestone.

'■June 20.
' My dear Sir,

' Forgive me for not having written to you
before, but I have been so bothered that I have felt no
taste for writing ; when I have the time, I have some
curious stories to tell you. Once again I have encoun-
tered that demon of misfortune which dogs my foot-
steps. Being occupied all day and nearly all night
upon business which brings me a heap of worries and
next to no profit, I have no chance to look after my
things. Thieves have entered my room, stolen every-
thing, and left me an empty box. I am once again
almost without clothes, and know not where to turn to
make that figure necessary for the fulfilment of my
duties. You see, I am not lucky. Since coming to

AN INCIDENT 177

your country, the sole piece of fortune I have had was
to tumble on a man like you. Excuse me for not
writing more at this moment. Hoping that you are
in good health, and in aifectionately pressing your
hand,

' I am,

' Always your devoted,

' Louis Ferrand.'

Upon reading this letter Shelton had once more a
sense of being exploited, of which he was so ashamed
that he sat down immediately and wrote the following
reply :

' Bishop's Head Hotel,
' Oxford.

'June 25.
' My dear Ferrand,

' I am grieved to hear of your misfortunes. I
was much hoping that you had made a good start.
I enclose you Post Office Orders for four pounds.
Always glad to hear from you.

' Yours sincerely,

' Richard Shelton.'

He posted it with the satisfaction that a man feels
who so nobly shakes off his responsibilities.

Three days before the first of July he met with one of
those disturbing incidents which never befall people
who attend quietly to the collection of property and
reputation.

The night was unbearably hot, and, strolling with
his cigar, he had wandered down the Corn Market,
turned off towards the theatre, and was coming back in

12

178 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

the direction of the ' Broad,' when a woman came
sidhng across and spoke to him. He perceived her
to be one of those creatures fashioned by men into
mediums for their own pleasure, to feel sympathy with
whom he knew to be sentimental. Her face was
flushed, her whisper hoarse ; there was nothing attrac-
tive about her but the curves of her tawdry figure.
Shelton was repelled by the proprietary tone of her
voice, repelled by her blowzy face, by the scent of
patchouli. Her touch on his arm startled him, sending
a shiver through his marrow ; he almost leaped aside,
and increased his pace. But her breathing as she
followed sounded laboured, and it suddenly seemed to
him pitiful that a woman should have to pant after him
like that.

' The least I can do,' he thought, ' is to speak to her
decently.' He stopped therefore, and, with an odd
mixture of hardness and compassion, said : ' It's im-
possible.'

In spite of her professional smile, he saw by the
disappointed eyes that she accepted the impossibility.
' I'm sorry,' he said.

She muttered something. Shelton shook his head.
' I'm sorry,' he said once more. ' Good-night !'
The woman bit her lower lip.
' Good-night,' she answered dully.
At the corner of the street he happened to turn his
head. The woman was hurrying uneasily, and a police-
man coming from behind out of the shadow had put a
hand on her shoulder.

His heart began beating. ' Heavens !' he thought,
' what am I to do now?' And his first impulse was to dive
down the lighted Corn Market and forget all about it — to

AN INCIDENT 179

act, in fact, like any ordinary, decent person who did
not care to be mixed up in such an affair.

He retraced his steps, however, and halted half a
dozen paces from the two figures.

' Ask the gentleman ! He spoke to me,' she was
saying in her brassy voice, through the emphasis of
which Shelton could detect all her fear.

' That's all right,' returned the policeman; ' we know
all about that.'

' You police !' cried the woman, with tears in

her voice ; ' I've got to get my living, haven't I, the same
as you ?'

Shelton hesitated again, caught the look in her eyes,
and stepped forward. The policeman turned, and at
the first sight of that heavy, pale face, cut by the cheek-
strap, and the bullying eyes looking down at him, he
felt both hate and fear, as if suddenly brought face to
face with the crystallization of all that he most loathed
and despised, yet strangely dreaded. The cold certainty
of law and order upholding the strong and treading
underfoot the weak, the smug front of an invincible
meanness that only the purest flame may attack, seemed
to be facing him. The odd thing was that the man
was actually doing his duty. Shelton moistened his lips.

' You're not going to charge her ?' he said.

' Aren't I ?' returned the policeman.

' Look here, constable, you're making a mistake.'

The policeman took out his note-book.

' Oh, I'm making a mistake, am I ? I'll take your
name and address, please ; we have to report these
things.' „„

' By all means,' said Shelton, angrily giving it. ' I
spoke to her first.' ^

12 — 2

i8o THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' Perhaps you'll come up to the court to-morrow
morning and repeat that,' replied the pohceman, with
cold incivility.

Shelton looked at him with all the force of which he
was capable.

' You had better be careful, constable,' he said ; but
in the very act of uttering the words he thought how
pitiable they sounded.

' We're not to be trifled with,' returned the pohce-
man in a menacing voice.

Shelton could think of nothing but to repeat those
pitiable words :

' You had better be careful, constable.'
' You're a gentleman,' replied the policeman, ' and
I'm only a policeman. You've got the riches, but I've
got the power.'

Grasping the woman's arm, he began to move her
along. The words had fallen on Shelton's ears like the
trumpet-note of his private distrust.

' That'll do,' said he, and walked away in a rage.
He went to Grinnings' Club, and flung himself into a
chair. Oddly enough, his feeling was not one of pity
for the woman, nor of peculiar anger with the police-
man, but rather of dissatisfaction with himself.

'What ought I to have done?' he thought; 'the
beggar was within his rights.'

He stared gloomily at the Badminton series decorating
a bookcase, and a kind of disgust surged up in him.

' One or other of us,' he reflected, ' makes these women
what they are. And when we've made them, we can't
do without them ; we don't want to, but we give them
no proper homes, so that they're reduced to prowl about
the streets, and then — we run them in. Ha! that's

AN INCIDENT i8i

good — excellent ! And here,' he went on, screwing
his back into the chair so as to get the full benefit of
the cushions, ' we sit and carp. But what do we do ?
Nothing! Our system is the most highly civilized
known. We get the benefit without soiling even the
hem of our reputation, and it's only the women that
suffer. And why shouldn't they — a weak, inferior
animal ?'

He lit a cigarette and ordered the waiter to bring
him a drink.

' I'll go to the court, anyway,' he thought; but sud-
denly it occurred to him that the details would be in
the local papers, and he buried his face in his glass,
unwilling to confess to himself the return of his fears.
The press would never miss so lovely a little bit of
scandal — ' Gentleman v. Policeman !' It would cer-
tainly be in the local papers. And in his mind's eye he
had a vision of Antonia's father, a neighbouring and
conscientious magistrate, solemnly reading it. Some-
one, at all events, was bound to see his name and make
a point of mentioning it ; — too good to be missed ! — and
he suddenly saw with horror that to be of any use to
the woman he would have to repeat his assertion that
he had spoken to her first.

' I must go to the court !' he kept thinking, as if to
assure himself that he was not a coward.

He lay awake half the night worrying over his
dilemma.

' But I didn't speak to her first,' he told himself ;
' and if I go, I shall only be telling a lie, and they'll
make me swear it !'

He tried to persuade himself that this was against
his conscience, but at the bottom of his heart he knew

i82 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

that he would have no hesitation in telling such a lie
if only guaranteed free from the consequences ; on the
contrary, it appeared to him the most obvious piece of
chivalry.

' But why should / suffer ?' he thought ; ' Vve
done nothing. It's neither reasonable nor just.'

He hated the unhappy woman who was causing him
these horrors of indecision. Whenever he had decided
one way or the other, the policeman's face, with its cold,
muddy, tyrannical eyes, rose before him like a night-
mare, and forced him, as it were, to an opposite con-
viction. He fell asleep at last with the full determina-
tion to go and see what happened.

He woke with a dull sense of disturbance. ' I can
do no good by going,' he thought, remembering, and
lying very still ; ' they're certain to believe the police-
man. I shall only blacken myself for nothing ;' and
the combat began again within him, but with far less
fury. It was not what other people would think, not
even the risk of perjury that mattered (all this he made
perfectly clear to himself) — it was Antonia. It was
not right to her to put himself in so false a position ;
in fact, not decent. All the same, he had better go
and see what happened.

He breakfasted. In the room were some Americans,
and the face of one, a young girl, reminded him a little
of Antonia. Fainter and fainter grew the incident of
the woman ; it seemed now in better proportion.

Two hours later he looked at the clock ; it was lunch
time. He had not gone, had not perjured himself; but
he wrote to a daily paper, pointing out the great danger
run by the community from the power which a univer-
sal and proper belief in their infallibility places in the

AN INCIDENT 183

hands of the pohce — how, since they are the sworn
abettors of right and justice, their word is necessarily
taken as gospel ; how one and all they hang together,
from mingled motives of interest and esprit de corps !
And was it not, he said, reasonable to suppose that
amongst thousands of human beings invested with such
opportunities there would be found bullies who would
take advantage of them, and rise to distinction in the
service upon the helplessness of the unfortunate and
the cowardice of people with any reputation to lose ?
He ended by demonstrating that those who have in
their hands the sacred duties of selecting a practically
irresponsible body of men are bound, for the sake of
freedom and common humanity, to exercise those duties
with the utmost care and clear-sightedness. . . .

However true, none of this helped him to think any
better of himself at heart, and he was haunted by the
idea that a stout and honest bit of perjury was worth
more than a letter to a daily paper.

He never saw his letter in print, containing, as it did,
the germs of an unpalatable truth.

He hired a horse, and galloped on Port Meadow.
The strain of his indecision over, he felt like a man
recovering from an illness, and he carefully abstained
from looking at the local papers. There was that
within him, however, which resented the defeat of his
courage.

CHAPTER XX

HOLM OAKS

Holm Oaks stood back but a little way from the road —
an old manor-house, not set upon display, but dwelling
close to its barns, stables, and walled gardens, like a
good mother ; long, flat-roofed, and red, it had Queen
Anne windows, about whose white-framed diamond
panes the sunbeams were flashing brightly.

In front of it a fringe of elms, of all trees the tree of
established principles, bordered the stretch of turf be-
tween the yellow drive and the road ; and these elms
were the homes of rooks — of all birds the bird of con-
vention. A huge aspen — impressionable creature —
shivered and shook on the opposite side, never able to
do enough to apologize for its appearance among its
imperturbable surroundings. It was the haunt of a
cuckoo, who came once a year to hoot at the established
order of things, but seldom stayed long ; for boys threw
stones at it, exasperated, no doubt, by the unsoundness
of its principles.

The village which clustered in the dip of the road
had not yet lost its horror of motor cars. About this
group of flat-faced cottages with gabled roofs the scent
of hay, manure, and roses clung continually ; just now
there was something foreign to its sturd}' servility in

184

HOLM OAKS 185

the troubling odour of the limes. Beyond the dip
again, a square-towered church kept within its gray
walls the record of the village flock, births, deaths, and
marriages — even the births of bastards, even the deaths
of suicides — and seemed to stretch an invisible hand
over the heads of the common people to grasp the hand
of the manor-house. There was something decent and
discreet in the way the two roofs caught the eye to the
exclusion of meaner dwellings, seeming to have entered
into a conspiracy to keep them out of sight.

The first sun of July had been hot on his face all the
way from Oxford, but Shelton was pale when he walked
up the drive and rang the bell.

' Mrs. Dennant at home, Dobson ?' he asked of the
butler, who, old servant that he was, still wore coloured
trousers (for it was not yet twelve o'clock, and he re-
garded coloured trousers up to noon as a sacred distinc-
tion between himself and the footmen).

' Mrs. Dennant,' replied this personage, raising his
round, pale, and hairless face, while upon his mouth
appeared the apologetic pout which comes of living
with the best families — ' Mrs. Dennant has gone into
the village, sir ; but Miss Antonia is in the boudoir.'

Abandoning to the butler his stick and straw hat,
Shelton crossed the oak - panelled, low - roofed hall,
through the far side of which the lawn could be seen,
a vision of serenity. He mounted six wide, shallow
steps, and stopped. From behind the closed door of
the boudoir came the sound of scales, and he stood
there, a prey to his emotions, the notes mingling pell-
mell in his ears with the beating of his heart. He
knocked, and softly turned the handle, a fixed smile
upon his lips.

i86 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

Antonia was bending over the piano, her head bobbing
to the emphasis of her fingers, her white shoes rhyth-
mically pressing the pedals, and on those shoes Shelton's
eyes riveted themselves ; the monotonously moving,
slim feet were fascinating. She had evidently been
playing tennis, for a racquet and tam-o'-shanter were
flung down on the top of the piano, and she was dressed
in a blue skirt and a white blouse, fitting collarless
round the base of her slender throat, like a line of
marble in relief at the base of a column. Her face was
flushed and absorbed, with compressed lips and a slight
frown ; and as her fingers raced over the keys, her
neck swayed, and the silk clung and shivered on her
arms.

Shelton's eyes fastened on the silently-counting lips,
on the fair hair about her forehead, the darker eyebrows
slanting a little down towards the nose, the undimpled
cheeks with the faint finger-marks under the gray-blue
eyes, the softly pointed, undimpled chin, the whole
remote, suntouched, sweet, and glacial face.

She turned her head, and, springing up, cried :

'Dick! What fun!' And she gave him both her
hands, but her smiling face said very plainly, ' Oh,
don't let us be sentimental !'

' Aren't you glad to see me ?' muttered Shelton.

' Glad to see you ! You are funny, Dick ! — as if you
didn't know ! Why, you've shaved your beard ! Mother
and Sybil have gone down to the village to see old
Mrs. Hopkins. Shall we go out ? Thea and the boys
are playing tennis. It's so jolly that you've come!'
She caught up the tam-o'-shanter, and riveted it to
her knot of hair. Almost as tall as Shelton, she looked
taller, with arms raised and loose sleeves quivering like

HOLM OAKS 187

wings to the movements of her quick fingers. ' We
might have a game before lunch ; you can have my
other racquet.'

' I've got no things,' said Shelton blankly.

Her calm glance ran over his figure.

' You can have some of old Bernard's ; he's got any
amount. I'll wait for you.' She swung her racquet,
looked at Shelton, cried, ' Be quick !' and vanished.

Shelton ran upstairs, and dressed in the undecided
way of a man assuming another person's clothes. She
was in the hall when he descended, humming a tune
and prodding at the toe of her shoe ; her smile showed
him all her pearly upper teeth. There seemed to Shelton
a sort of curiosity in her eyes, as if she saw in him an
element unexpected and disturbing ; it suggested even
something unhappy in her thoughts about him. He
caught hold of her sleeve and whispered :

' Antonia !'

The colour rushed into her cheeks ; she looked back
across her shoulder.

'Come along, you old Dick !' she cried; and, flinging
open the glass-door, ran into the garden.

Shelton followed.

The tennis-ground was divided from a paddock by
netting ; a holm-oak shaded one corner, and its foliage,
thick and dark, made an unexpected blurr in the green
smoothness of the picture. On the farther court Bernard
and Thea stopped playing as Antonia and Shelton came
into sight ; his old schoolfellow came forward and
cordially grasped his hand. From the far side of the
net his opponent, a young girl in a shortish skirt, tossed
her straight fair hair back from her eyes, and warding
off the sun with her sleeve, came strolHng towards them.

i88 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

The umpire, a small boy of twelve, was lying on his
stomach, squealing and tickling a collie. Shelton bent
over and prodded him in the back.

' Hallo, Toddles ! you young ruffian !' he said.

One and all they stood round Shelton, and there was
something pitilessly frank and inquiring in their eyes,
in the angle of their noses something chaffing and
distrustful, as though there were about him some subtle
and poignant scent which excited their curiosity and
disapproval.

When the setts were over, and the girls resting in
the double hammock under the holm-oak, Shelton went
with Bernard into the paddock to hunt for lost balls.

' I say, old chap,' said his future brother-in-law with
a dry smile, ' you're in for a bit of a wigging from the
Mater.'

'A wigging?' repeated Shelton.

' I don't know much about it, but from something
she let drop it seems you've been saying some odd
things in your letters to Antonia ;' and again he looked
up at Shelton with his queer, dry smile.

' Odd things ?' said the latter angrily. ' What d'you
mean ?' He stopped his search for the tennis-ball to
look Bernard in the face.

' Oh, don't ask me,' said the latter ; ' the Mater
thinks she's in a bad way — unsettled, or what d'you
call it. You've been telling her that things are not
what they seem. That's bad, you know ;' and still
smiling, he shook his head.

Shelton dropped his eyes.

' Well, they aren't !' he said.

' Oh, that's all right ! But don't bring your philosophy
down here, old chap.'

HOLM OAKS 189

' Philosophy !' said Shelton, puzzled.

' Well, leave us a prejudice or two sacred.'

' Sacred !' said Shelton ; ' nothing's sacred, but '

He did not, however, finish his remark. ' I don't under-
stand,' he concluded.

' Ideals, and that sort of thing. You've been diving
below the line of "practical politics," that's about the
size of it, my boy ;' and, stooping suddenly, Bernard
picked up the last ball. ' There is the Mater !' he said ;
and Shelton saw Mrs. Dennant approaching the lawn
with Sybil, her second daughter.

By the time they reached the holm-oak the three girls
had departed towards the house, walking arm in arm, and
Mrs. Dennant was standing alone, in a gray dress, talking
to an under-gardener. Her hands, cased in tan gauntlets,
held a basket which warded off, as it were, the bearded
gardener in shirt-sleeves from the severe but ample lines
of her useful-looking skirt. The collie, erect on its
haunches, looked up at their faces, pricking his ears
in the endeavour to appreciate the distinction between
these two bipeds.

' Thank you ; that '11 do, Bunyan,' she said. Her
face wore its usual expression of kindly and practical
benevolence. ' Ah, Dick ! It's charmin' to see you at
last !'

In his intercourse with Mrs. Dennant, Shelton never
failed to be impressed by the representative character
of her personality. It always seemed to him that he
had met so many other ladies like her. He felt that
her undoubtable quality had a sort of non-individual
flavour, as if she stood for a class, and would have con-
sidered it a little improper to stand for herself; yet
certainly she was full of character. Tall, with nose

igo THE ISLAND PHARISEES

a trifle beaked, a long, sloping chin, and an assured,
benevolent mouth, showing, perhaps, too much of her
teeth, she was thin, yet not unsubstantial. Her accent
in speaking always left on his mind the impression that
she had a peculiar heritage in the language ; it was a
species of drawl which disregarded the vulgar merits of
tone, leaned on some syllables, and despised the final g —
the peculiar accent, in fact, of the aristocracy, adding its
flat, deliberate joys to a life neither musical nor long.

Shelton knew that she had many interests ; she was
never really idle, from the time (7 a.m.) when her maid
brought her a little earthenware pot of tea with a single
extra-toast biscuit, her pet dog, Tops, and the house-
keeper's book, till eleven o'clock at night, when she
lighted a wax candle in a silver candlestick, and with
this in one hand, and in the other a new novel, or,
better still, one of those charming volumes written by
great people about the still greater people they have
met, she said good-night to her guests and children.
No ! What with photography, the presidency of a
local league, visiting the rich, superintending the poor,
gardening, books, and keeping all her ideas tidy so that
no foreign notions might stray in, she was never idle.
The information she collected from all these sources
was both varied and vast, but he knew that she never
allowed it to flavour her opinions, which lacked sauce,
and were drawn from some sort of dish into which, with
all her class, she dipped her fingers.

He liked her. No one could help liking her. She
was so kind, and of such good quality, with a sugges-
tion about her appearance of thin, excellent, and useful
china ; and she was scented, too — not with verbena,
violets, or those essences in which women delight, but

HOLM OAKS 191

with nothing at all, as if she had taken a stand against
meretricity. In her intercourse with persons not ' quite
the thing' (she excepted the vicar from this category,
though his father had been a haberdasher), her refine-
ment, gently, unobtrusively, and with great practical
good sense, seemed continually to murmur : ' I am,
and you — well, are you, don't you know ?' But there
was not an ounce of self-consciousness about this atti-
tude, for she was really not a common woman. He
supposed that she simply could not help it; all her
people had done it. Their nurses breathed over them
in their cradles something that, being inhaled into their
systems, ever afterwards prevented them from taking
a good, clear breath. And her manner ! Ah ! her
manner — that golden seal of good form which con-
cealed the inner woman so admirably as to leave doubt
of her existence !

Shelton listened to the kindly briskness with which
she complained of the under-gardener.

' Poor Bunyan 1 he lost his wife six months ago, and
was quite cheerful at first, but now he's really too
distressin'. I've done all I can to rouse him ; it's so
melancholy to see him mopin' about. And, my dear
Dick, the way he mangles the new rose-trees! I'm
afraid he's goin' mad; I shall have to send him away,
poor fellow !'

It was clear that she sympathized with the under-
gardener, or, rather, she firmly believed that he was
entitled to a modicum of wholesome grief, the loss of a
wife being one of the canonized and legitimate sources
of sorrow. But excesses 1

' I've told him I'll raise his wages,' she sighed. ' He
used to be such a good gardener ! That reminds me,

192 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

my dear Dick ; I want to have a talk with you. Shall
we go to in lunch ?'

Consulting the memorandum-book in which she had
been noting the case of old Mrs. Hopkins, she slightly
preceded Shelton towards the house.

It was somewhat late that afternoon when Shelton
received his ' wigging '; nor did it seem to him, hypno-
tized by the momentary absence of Antonia, such a very
serious affair.

' Now, Dick,' the Honourable Mrs. Dennant began, in
her decisive drawl, ' I don't think it's right to put ideas
into Antonia's head.'

'Ideas!' murmured Shelton confusedly.

' We all know,' continued his future mother-in-law,
' that things are not always what they ought to be.'

Shelton looked at her ; she was seated at her writing-
table, addressing in her large, free handwriting a dinner
invitation to a reactionary Bishop. There was not the
faintest trace of embarrassment about her, yet Shelton
could not help feeling a slight shock. If she — she — did
not think things were what they ought to be, things
must indeed be in a bad way !

'Things !' he muttered.

Mrs. Dennant looked at him firmly but kindly, with
the eyes that would remind him of a hare's.

' She showed me some of your letters, you know.
Well, it's not a bit of use denyin', my dear Dick, that
you've been thinkin' too much lately.'

Shelton perceived that he had done her an injustice ;
she handled ' things ' as she would handle the under-
gardener— put them away like a sensible being as soon
as they ran to inconvenient extremes.

' I can't help that,' he answered with a sulky smile.

HOLM OAKS 193

' Oh, my dear boy ! you'll never get on that way.
Now, I want you to promise me you won't talk to
Antonia about those sort of things.'

Shelton raised his eyebrows.

' Oh, you know what I mean !'

He saw that to press Mrs. Dennant to go beyond the
word 'things' — to reduce it, for instance, to conventions,
doubts, or ideals — would really hurt her sense of ' good
form '; it would be cruel to force her even as far as
that below the surface !

' Ah !' he said ; ' yes, quite so !'

To his extreme surprise however, flushing the
peculiar and pathetic flush of women past their prime,
she said with an accentuation of her drawl :

' About the poor — and criminals — and marriages —
there was that wedding you went to, you know.'

Shelton bowed his head. He felt sorry, for he saw
that motherhood had suddenly been too strong for her,
and in her maternal flutter she had actually committed
the solecism of touching in so many words on subjects
which were ' impossible.'

' Yet,' he thought, assisting her sympathetically to
light the urn for afternoon tea, ' she doesn't really see
anything funny in one man dining off gold, and another
dining in the gutter ; or in two people living together in
perfect discord to encourage the others ; or in worship-
ping Jesus Christ and standing up for her rights at the
same time ; or in despising foreigners because they are
foreigners; or in war ; or in anything that is funny.'
But he did her a certain amount of justice by recognis-
ing that this was natural, since her whole life had been
passed in trying not to see the fun in these things.

Antonia had come back, and stood smiling in the

13

194 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

doorway. How brilliant and gay she looked, and yet a
little resentful, as if she knew they had been talking
about her ! She sat down on the sofa by Shelton's side,
and, rocking her foot, began asking him about the
3'oung foreigner he had spoken of in his letters. Her
eyes, neither quite shocked nor quite eager, made him
doubt whether she, too, saw the fun that lay in one
human being patronizing another.

' But I suppose he's really good,' she said — ' I mean,
all those things he told you about were only '

' Good !' he returned, fidgeting; ' I don't really know
what the word means.'

Her eyes clouded. ' Dick, how can you ?' they seemed
to say.

Shelton stroked her sleeve.

' Tell us about Mr. Crocker,' she said, taking no
notice of his caress.

And Shelton was beset by a sudden impatience of his
old College friend. He knew she would understand the
practical idealism of his travelling companion too well,
and he was jealous.

'The old lunatic !' said he.

' Lunatic ! Why, in your letters he was so splendid.'

'So he is,' said Shelton, ashamed; 'he's not a bit
mad, really — that is, I only wish I were half as mad.'

' Who's that mad ?' queried Mrs. Dennant from
behind the urn — ' Tom Crocker ? Ah, yes ! I knew his
mother ; she was a Springer.'

' Did he do it in the week ?' said Thea, appearing
suddenly in the window with a kitten.

' I don't know,' Shelton was obliged to answer.

Thea shook back her hair with uncompromising
frankness.

HOLM OAKS 195

' I call it awfully slack of you not to have found out,'
she said.

Antonia frowned.

' You were very sweet to that young foreigner, you
know, Dick,' she murmured with a smile at Shelton.
' I wish we could see him.'

But Shelton shook his head in distress.

' It seems to me,' he muttered, ' that I did about as
little for him as I possibly could.'

Again her face grew thoughtful, as though his words
had chilled her.

' I don't see what more you could have done,' she
answered.

A desire to get close to her, half fear, half ache, a
sense of futility and bafflement, an inner burning, made
him feel as though a flame were licking at his heart.

13—2

CHAPTER XXI

ENGLISH

Just as Shelton was starting to walk back to Oxford
that evening, whence he was to return on the morrow
to stay, he met Mr. Dennant coming in from a ride.
Antonia's father was a spare, medium-sized man, with
a yellowish face, thin, gray moustache, ironical brows,
and a few tiny crow's-feet. In his old, short gray coat,
with little slits up the two back seams, his drab cord
breeches, ancient mahogany leggings, and carefully
blacked boots, he had a dry, threadbare quality not
without distinction.

'Ah, Shelton!' he said, in his quietly festive voice;
' glad to see the pilgrim at last. You're not off already?'
and, laying his hand on Shelton's arm, he proposed to
walk a httle way with him across the fields.

It was the first time they had met since the engage-
ment, and Shelton began nerving himself for the effort
of saying something to express, however badly, his
adoration, his desire to protect and cherish Antonia.
He squared his shoulders, cleared his throat, and looked
askance at Mr. Dennant. That gentleman was walking
stiffly, his cord breeches rubbing one against the other
with faint squeaks. He switched a yellow, jointed cane
constantly against his leggings, and after each blow

196

ENGLISH 197

looked at his legs satirically. He himself was rather
like that yellow cane— pale, and slim, and jointed, with
features arching a little, like the arching of its handle.

' They say it '11 be a bad year for fruit,' said Shelton
at last.

' They ? My dear fellow, you don't know your
farmer, I'm afraid. We ought to hang a farmer or
two — do a world of good. Dear souls ! I've got
magnificent strawberries.'

' I suppose,' chimed in Shelton, only too glad to post-
pone the evil moment, ' that in a climate like this a
man must grumble or die.'

' Quite so,' replied Mr. Dennant : ' look at us poor
slaves of landowners ; if I couldn't abuse the farmers
I should be miserable. Did you ever see anything finer
than this pasture ? And they want me to lower their
rents !'

His glance wavered ironically, rested for a second on
Shelton, and whisked back to the ground, as though he
had seen something alarming. There was a pause.

' Now for it !' thought the younger man.

Mr. Dennant had begun stealthily to gnaw a strand
of his moustache ; he kept his eyes fixed mockingly on
his boots.

' If they'd said,' he remarked with sudden jocosity,
' that the frost had nipped the young partridges, there'd
have been some sense in it ; but what can you expect ?
They've no consideration, dear souls !'

Shelton took a deep breath, and, with averted eyes,
hurriedly began :

' It's awfully hard, sir, to '

Mr. Dennant switched his cane smartly against his
shin.

igS THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' Yes,' he said, ' it's awfully hard to put up with,
but what's a fellow to do ? * One must have farmers.
Why, if it wasn't for the farmers, there'd still be a hare
or two about the place !'

Shelton gave a spasmodic laugh, and again glanced
askance at his future father-in-law. What did the
waggling of his head mean, the deepening of his crow's-
feet, the odd contraction about the mouth ? And his
eye caught Mr. Dennant's eye; its expression was
queer above the fine, dry nose (one of the sort that
easily reddens in a wind).

' I've never had much to do with farmers,' he said.

'Haven't you?' murmured Mr. Dennant; 'lucky
fellow ! The most — yes, quite the most trying portion
of the human species — next to daughters,' he concluded
dubiously.

' Well, sir, you can hardly expect me ' began

Shelton.

' I don't — oh, I don't ! D'you know, I really believe
we're in for a ducking.'

A large black cloud covered the sun, and some heavy
drops were spattering on Mr. Dennant's hard felt hat.

Shelton welcomed the shower ; it appeared to him a
perfect intervention of Providence. He would have to
say something, but not now, later — some other day.

' I'll go on,' he said; ' I don't mind the rain. But
you'd better get back as quick as you can, sir.'

' Dear me ! there's a tenant of mine in this cottage,'
Mr. Dennant said, with his leisurely dryness — ' a capital
poacher. The least we can do is to ask him for shelter ;
what do you think ?' and smiling sarcastically, as though
deprecating his own desire not to get wet, he rapped on
the door of a neat and prosperous-looking cottage.

ENGLISH 195

It was opened by a girl of much the same age and
height as Antonia.

' Ah, Phoebe ! Your father in ?'

' No,' replied the girl, fluttering and blushing ;
' father's out, Mr. Dennant.'

' So sorry ! Will you let us bide a bit out of the
rain ?'

The sweet - looking Phoebe hurriedly dusted them
two chairs in the parlour, and, curtseying, left them
alone.

' What a pretty girl !' said Shelton.

' Yes, she's a pretty girl ; half the young fellows are
after her, but she won't leave her father. Oh ! he's a
charming rascal, that fellow !'

This remark, from beneath Mr. Dennant's drooping
gray moustache, suddenly brought home to Shelton the
conviction that he was further than ever from avoiding
the necessity of speaking. To conceal his embarrass-
ment he walked to the window, beyond which the rain
was coming down with almost tropical fury, though a
golden line at the back of the sky promised the shower's
speedy end. ' For goodness' sake,' he thought, 'let me
say something, however idiotic, and get it over !' But in
spite of this, he did not turn round ; a kind of paralysis
had its grip on him.

'Tremendously heavy rain!' he observed at last;
* coming down like a waterspout !'

It would have been just as easy to say : ' I believe your
daughter to be the most exquisite thing on earth ; I love
her, and, please Heaven, I'm going to make her happy !'
Just as easy, just about the same amount of breath
required ; yet what he did say seemed wholesome and
decent, and what he did not say (though quite as true).

200 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

false, indecent, perfectly damnable. His eyes, glued to
the pane, watched the rain stream and hiss against the
leaves and churn the dust on the parched road with
its insistent torrent ; and he noticed with a stupid
precision all the details of the process going on outside
— how the raindrops darted at the leaves like spears, and
how the leaves shook themselves free a thousand times
in a minute, while little runnels of water, ice-clear,
rolled over their edges, soft, regular, and quick. He
noticed, too, the lugubrious head of a sheltering cow on
the opposite side of the road remonstrating with the
whites of its eyes, and chewing pettishly the leaves of
the hedge.

Mr. Dennant had not replied to his remark about
the rain. And so disconcerting was this half minute
of silence that in pure desperation Shelton turned re-
solutely to offer a libation of his feelings to this spare,
satirical gentleman in mahogany leggings upon the
wooden chair. His future father-in-law was staring
at his well-blacked boots, bending forward over his
parted knees, and prodding at the carpet with the
end of his cane ; a half-glimpse at his face disturbed
Shelton's resolution. It was not forbidding, stern, irri-
tated, or discouraging — not in the least ; it had merely
for the moment ceased to look satirical. And this in
itself was so startling that Shelton lost his chance
of speaking. There actually seemed a heart to Mr.
Dennant's gravity ; it was almost pathetic, as though
he were looking grave because he felt grave. He
glanced up at Shelton, and at once the fine, dry
jocosity reappeared in his face.

' Admirable !' said he. ' What a day for ducks !' atnd
again there were unmistakable signs of alarm in his

ENGLISH 201

eye. Was it possible that he, too, dreaded something
as well as Shelton ?

' I can't express ' began the latter hurriedly.

' Yes, it's beastly to get wet,' said Mr. Dennant ; and,
rising from his seat, he began softly rubbing his hands,
and humming ' The Lincolnshire Poacher ':

' " For we can wrestle and fight, my boys,
And jump out anywhere."

You'll be with us for that dinner-party next week, eh ?
Capital ! There's the Bishop of Blumenthal and old
Sir Jack Buckwell ; I must get Mrs. Dennant to put
you between them —

' " For it's my delight of a starry night."

The Bishop's a great anti-divorce man, and old Buck-
well's been in the court at least twice —

' " In the season of the year !" '

' Will you please to take some tea, gentlemen ?' said
Phoebe, appearing in the doorway.

' No, thank you, Phoebe,' replied Mr. Dennant.
' That girl ought to get married,' he went on, as Phcebe
withdrew. A flush showed queerly on his sallow cheeks.
' It's a shame to keep her tied to her father's apron-
strings — selfish beggar, that fellow !' He looked up
sharply, as if he had said something dangerous, and
resumed his humming :

" 'The keeper he was watching us,
For him we didn't care 1" '

A flash of hght suddenly illumined Shelton's mind :
Antonia's father was as anxious to say something ex-

202 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

pressive of his feelings as he was himself, and as unable
to get it out. What a queer business !

' You know, sir ' he began.

Mr. Dennant's eyebrows rose ever so little ; with a
tremor his crow's-feet twinkled ; all his contained,
satirical personality seemed to shrink together.

' By Jove !' he said briskly, * it's stopped raining !
Now's our chance! Come along, my dear fellow;
delays are dangerous !' and with the bantering courtesy
peculiar to him, he held the door open for Shelton to
pass out. ' I think we'll part here,' he said — ' I almost
think so. Good luck to you !'

He held out his dry, yellow hand. Shelton seized it,
wrung it hard, and muttered the word :

' Grateful !'

Again Mr. Dennant's eyebrows quivered as if they
had been tweaked by an invisible check-string ; he saw
that he had been found out, and he disliked it. The
redness had quite died out of his cheeks ; they were
calm, wrinkled, dead-looking under the flattened, narrow
brim of his black hat ; his gray moustache drooped in a
thin, cynical line; the crow's-feet hardened in pencillings
about his eyes ; his nostrils were distended ; his face
wore the ghost of a smile :

'Gratitude!' he said; 'it's almost a vice, isn't it?
Good-night !'

Shelton's face quivered too ; he raised his hat, and,
turning as abruptly as his senior, proceeded on his way
towards Oxford. He recognised the fact that he had
played a part in a comedy that could only have been
played in England, and smiled as he went. He could
afford to smile at his past discomfort, having no longer
the sense of a duty unfulfilled. Everything had been

ENGLISH 203

said that was right and proper to be said in the way that
was right and proper such things should be said. No
violence had been done to his instincts, and he could
afford to smile — smile at those instincts, smile at Mr.
Dennant, smile at to-morrow (for, once away from
Antonia's presence, all the strange misgivings of the
afternoon had vanished), smile at the sweet, clean
aroma of the earth after rain, the shy, unwilling sweet-
ness that only rain brings forth.

CHAPTER XXII

THE COUNTRY HOUSE

The luncheon hour at Holm Oaks, as in many well-
bred country houses out of the shooting season, was the
hour of its soul. The ferment of the day's occupations
was then at full swing, and the clamour of that per-
petual country-house conversation about the weather,
dogs, horses, neighbours, cricket, and golf, was mingled
with an occasional literary murmur ; for the Dennants
were superior people, and it was not unfrequent to hear
at their table such a query as, ' Have you read that
charmin' thing of Boniface Poser's ?' or, ' Yes, I've got
the new edition of " Bablington "; delightfully bound
— so light.' And it was in July that Holm Oaks, as a
gathering-place of the elect, was seen at its best. For
in July it had become customary to welcome there
many of those poor people from London who arrived
exhausted after the season was over, and than whom no
seamstress in a two-pair back could better have earned
her holiday. The Dennants themselves never went to
London for the season. It was part of their creed not
to. A week or a fortnight at Brewer's Hotel satisfied
them. They had a radical weakness for fresh air, and
Antonia, after her presentation the season before, had
insisted on returning home, stigmatizing London balls
as ' stuffy things.'

204

THE COUNTRY HOUSE 205

When Shelton arrived the stream had only just begun,
but every day brought fresh, or rather jaded, people to
occupy the old, dark, sweet-smelling bedrooms. In-
dividually he liked his fellow-guests very well, but he
found himself observing them. He knew that, if a man
judged people singly, almost all were as good, or better,
than himself; only when judged in the bulk were they
worthy of the sweeping criticisms he sometimes felt
inclined to pass upon them. He knew this just as he
knew that conventions, being invented to restrain people
from following their natural desires, were merely the
disapproving sums of innumerable private approvals,
or just as he recognised that everyone at heart sym-
pathized with the sinner.

It was in the bulk, then, that he found himself ob-
serving his fellow-guests.

With his amiability and dread of seeming conspicuous,
he remained to all appearance a perfectly well-bred,
docile creature, and his independent impressions were
naturally kept to himself. The plethoric state of the
household, which curtailed his opportunities of being
alone with Antonia, annoyed him, and assisted his
captiousness, while the state of emotional excitement
in which he was living rendered him impatient of
that plethoric state of the emotions known as ' good
form.'

In the matter of intellect he made a rough division
of the company into those who accepted things without
a murmur, and those who accepted them with a certain
jocular carping ; in the matter of morals he found that
they all accepted things without the semblance of a
kick. To show any signs of private moral judgment
was to be regarded as a lost soul, and a bit of an out-

2o6 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

sider. This struck him forcibly, but he gathered the
knowledge by intuition rather than from conversation ;
for conversation naturally tabooed such questions, and
was carried on in the cheerful, loud, unashamed tones
peculiar to people of the best breeding. Shelton had
never been able to acquire this tone, and he could not
help feeling that the inability made him more or less
an object of suspicion. The atmosphere of sublime
contentment around struck him as it had never struck
him before, causing him at times to feel a doubt of his
own gentility. Could a man suifer from passion, heart-
searchings, misgivings of any kind, and remain a gentle-
man ? In view of the decisive urbanity which hemet
at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner, it seemed improbable.
One of his fellow-guests, a man called Edgbaston,
small-eyed and semi-bald, with a dark moustache and
an air of distinguished meanness, disconcerted him one
day by a remark about an unknown person. ' He
looked at me,' said this gentleman, ' in the way, don't
you know, that an underbred person looks at one — a
sort of half-fear, don't you know.'

Shelton was visited by a horrid doubt. He glared
darkly at Edgbaston.

Everything seemed ringed off into classes, carefully
docketed and valued. For instance, a Briton was
worth more than a man, a wife than a woman, and so
on. Those things or phases of life with which people
had no personal acquaintance were regarded with a
faint amusement and a certain amount of disapproval.
The principles of the upper classes, in fact, were strictly
observed — those principles which had caused Shelton
himself, when visiting the Earl's Court Exhibition, to
spend half his time in remarking : ' What extraordinary

THE COUNTRY HOUSE 207

people there are here ! So smart ! It's really rather
funny, isn't it ?' and similar flights of irony.

He was in that hypersensitive, nervously repressed
state favourable for recording the phases and character-
istics most foreign to itself. Things he had never noticed
before now had a profound effect, such as the tone
adopted by men in speaking of women — not precisely a
tone of hostility, nor exactly a tone of contempt — best
described, perhaps, as a peculiar, cultured jeering ; never
noticeable, of course, when a man spoke of his own
wife, mother, sisters, or those of his immediate friends,
but merely when he spoke of the rest of women. When
he came to reflect upon this he was surprised that he
had never remarked before that, amongst the upper
classes, each individual gentleman's property was holy,
while the rest of women were created to supply him
with gossip, jests, and spice. Another thing that struck
him was the way in which a war, then in progress, was
made into an affair of class. The view taken was that
it was a baddish business, because poor Jack Blank and
Peter Blank-Blank had lost their lives, and poor Teddy
had now one arm instead of two. Humanity in general
was omitted, but not the upper classes, nor, incidentally,
the country which belonged to them. They were as if
seated in a row, with their eyes fixed on the horizon of
their own lawns.

Late one evening, when billiards and music were
over and the ladies had gone, Shelton, with a flat
candlestick in his hand, returned from changing into
his smoking-suit, and dropped into one of the great
armchairs that even in summer made a respectful
semicircle round the high-fendered fireplace. Fresh
from the emotion of his good-night parting with Antonia,

2o8 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

he sat perhaps ten minutes before he even began to
take in the figures in parti-coloured smoking-jackets,
cross-legged, with glasses in their hands and cigars
between their teeth.

The man in the next chair roused him by putting
down his tumbler with a smart tap, and seating himself
on the cushioned fender. Through the mist of smoke,
with his shoulders hunched, his elbows and knees rigidly
crooked out, his cigar protruding, beak-fashion, below
his nose, and the crimson collar of his smoking-jacket
buttoned close as plumage on his breast, he presented
the appearance of a gorgeous bird.

' Yes, they do you awfully well there,' he said.

A voice from the chair on Shelton's right answered :

' They do you better at Silverado's ;' and the speaker's
ascetic, clean-shaven cheeks resumed their greedy suck-
ing at a pipe.

' What ! The Veau d'Or's the best place ; they give
you Turkish baths for nothing !' drawled a fat man with
a tiny mouth entirely occupied by a cigar.

The deliberate suavity of this pronouncement en-
veloped the company like a blessing. And at once, as
if by magic, in the old padded and oak-panelled room,
where the only noise was the sound of voices pitched
in the same flat key, the world fell naturally into its
proper departments : that where they do you well,
that where they do you better, and that where they
give you Turkish baths for nothing.

' If you want Turkish baths,' said the voice of a tall
youth with a clean red face, who had just come into the
room, and stood filling his pipe, his mouth a little open
and long feet jutting with a sort of sweet helplessness
in front of him — ' if you want Turkish baths you should

THE COUNTRY HOUSE 209

go, don't you know, to Buda Pesth ; they're most
awfully rippin' there.'

Shelton saw a subtle and indescribable appreciation
on every face, as though they had been offered truffles
or something equally delicious.

' Oh yes ; we know all about that, Poodles,' said the
man seated on the fender, ' but a Johnnie I know tells
me they're nothing to Sofia.' And most quaint was the
expression of his countenance ; it had the peculiar
decency, the peculiar gloating safety, of a man who
enjoys vice by proxy.

' Ah !' drawled the small-mouthed man — he laughed
fatly, and his large body stirred — ' there's nothing fit
to hold a candle to Baghda-ad,'

Once again his utterance enveloped the room as with
a blessing, and once again the world fell into its three
proper proportions : that where they do you well, that
where they do you better, and — Baghdad.

Shelton thought to himself : ' Why don't I know a
place that's better than Baghdad ?'

He felt terribly insignificant. It seemed that he
never knew any of these delectable spots ; that he was
no good to his fellow-creatures, though privately he
was convinced that the speakers had no more knowledge
than himself, but found it warming to recall things
of this sort which they had been told, preserving on
the face the while that indescribable mingled look of
decency and relish. No ; he felt with a sense of
shame that he had no memory for those anecdotes
which constitute the prize merit of persons in society,
and acquire them the label of ' good chaps ' and
' sportsmen.'

He looked round.

14

210 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' Have you ever been in Baghdad ?' he asked feebly.

But the fat man did not answer ; he had begun an
anecdote, and in the broad expanse of his face his tiny
mouth vi^rithed hke a caterpillar beneath his short nose.
It was a humorous anecdote. Nobody answered ; all
were too busy recalling anecdotes of their own.

With the exception of Antonia, he saw but little of
the ladies, for, following the well-known peculiarity
of country-house life, men and women avoided each
other carefully. They met at meals, it is true, and
occasionally played tennis and croquet together ; with
these exceptions there seemed a tacit agreement (almost
worthy of Orientals) that they were better apart.

But chancing one day to enter the drawing-room in
search of Antonia, he found himself suddenly in the
middle of a feminine discussion ; he would have beaten
a hasty retreat of course, but it seemed too obvious
that he was merely looking for his fiancee, so, sitting
down, he listened.

The Honourable Charlotte Penguin, still knitting a
red silk tie — the sixth since the one she had begun at
Hyeres — sat on the low window-seat close to a hydrangea
in a blue china receptacle, the petals of one round flower
almost kissing her sanguine cheek. Her eyes were fixed
with the languid aspiration characteristic of them upon
the lady who was speaking, a square woman of medium
height, with gray, scriggly hair brushed off her low
forehead, the expression of whose face was brisk,
energetic, and rather cross. This lady was standing
with a book in her hand, as if delivering a sermon.
Had she been a man she would have been best described
as a bright young man of business ; for though gray, she
could never be old, nor ever lose the power of forming

THE COUNTRY HOUSE 211

quick decisions. Her features were nondescript, her
eyes prompt and slightly hard, tinged with a fanatical
belief in the justice of her own judgments, and she had
the peculiar fussy simplicity of dress which indicates
the right to meddle. Not red, not white, neither yellow
nor blue, her complexion was suffused with a certain
admixture of all these colours, adapted, as it were, to
the climate ; and her smile had a strange, sour sweet-
ness, like nothing but the flavour of an apple on the
turn.

' I don't care what they tell you,' she was saying —
her voice grated, not offensively ; it seemed to imply
that she had not time to waste in mere pleasing — ' in
all my dealings with them I've found it best to treat
them like children.'

A third lady, with the Times newspaper in her hand,
smiled ; the expression of her mouth, and that, indeed,
of her whole handsome, hard-cut face, was wickedly
reminiscent of the expression of those dappled rocking-
horses which used to come from the Soho Bazaar. She
crossed her feet, and some rich and silken stuff rustled.
Her whole personality creaked as, without looking up,
she replied in a harsh voice :

' / find the poor most delightful persons.'

Sybil Dennant, seated on the sofa, suddenly shot a
barking fox-terrier in the direction of Shelton.

'Here's Dick,' she said, with a feathery laugh.
* Well, Dick, wha.t's your opinion ?'

Shelton gave a scared glance around. They — that
is, the two elder ladies who had spoken — were looking
at him, and in their glances he read his utter insignifi-
cance. ' Expect a practical opinion from that young
man 1' they seemed to say. ' Now, come !'

14 — 2

212 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' Opinion,' he stammered, ' of the poor ? Good
g-gracious ! I haven't any.'

The lady on her feet, whose name was Mrs. Mattock,
paid no attention to this remark, but, directing her
pecuHar sweet-sour smile at the distinguished and hard-
featured lady with the Times, said :

' Perhaps you've not had experience of them in
London, Lady Bonington ?'

Lady Bonington rustled the Times.

'Oh, do tell us about the slums, Mrs. Mattock!'
cried Sybil. ' Slumming must be splendid ! It's so
deadly here — nothing but flannel petticoats.'

' The poor, my dear,' began Mrs. Mattock, ' are not
in the least what you think them '

' Oh, d'you know, I think they're rather nice !' broke
in Aunt Charlotte from beside the hydrangea.

'You think so ?' said Mrs. Mattock sharply. ' I find
they do nothing but grumble.'

' They don't grumble at me ; they are delightful
persons ;' and Lady Bonington gave Shelton a grim
smile.

He could not help thinking that to grumble in the
presence of that rich and despotic personality would
require superhuman courage.

' They're the most ungrateful people on the face
of the earth,' resumed Mrs. Mattock. ' Why, then,'
thought Shelton, ' does she try to do anything for
them ?' But he was conscious of the futility of the
question almost before she continued : ' One must do
them good, one must do one's duty, but as to expecting
thanks '

Lady Bonington uttered a sardonic formula :

' Poor things 1 they have a lot to bear ;' and Shelton

THE COUNTRY HOUSE 213

could not determine whether or no she intended a
sarcasm, for Sybil Dennant again threw the fox-terrier
forward, who again barked.

' The little children !' murmured Aunf Charlotte from
beside the hydrangea, her cheek flushing, her eyes
shining ; ' it's rather pathetic'

' The children indeed!' said Mrs. Mattock. ' It puts
me out of all patience to see the way they neglect them.
People are so sentimental about the poor.'

Lady Bonington again rustled the Times. Her
splendid shoulders were firmly wedged into the arm-
chair; her fine hair, gleaming with silver, sprang
commandingly back on either side of her brow ; a ruby
bracelet glowed richly on the powerful wrist that held
the journal ; she rocked her bronze-slippered foot. She
did not appear exactly to lend herself to the charge of
sentimentalism.

' I know they often have a very good time,' com-
mented Mrs. Mattock, as if someone had done her a
severe and unmerited injury. And Shelton saw, not
without pity, how her kind and squashed-up face had
been powdered by Fate with wrinkles ; how each tiny
furrow was eloquent of the best intentions thwarted by
the unpractical and discontented poor. ' Do what you
will,' she continued, ' I defy you to satisfy them ; they
only resent one's trying to help, or else take the help
and give you no thanks.'

'Oh!' murmured Aunt Charlotte, 'that's rather
hard.'

Shelton had been growing momentarily more un-
easy. He rose, and said abruptly :

' I' should do the same if I were in their place.'

Mrs. Mattock's brown eyes at once flew at him with

214 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

that decisive glance which seemed to docket the person
upon whom it rested. Lady Bonington's flat, harsh
voice spoke into the Times, while her ruby bracelet
jingled against a bangle :

' Exactly ; we ought to put ourselves in their place.'

Shelton could not restrain a grin ; the notion of
Lady Bonington in the place of the poor was funny.

'Oh!' exclaimed Mrs. Mattock angrily, 'I do put
myself entirely in their place. I quite understand their
feelings. But ingratitude is a repulsive quality.'

' They seem unable to put themselves in your place,'
murmured Shelton ; and in a fit of desperate courage
he took in the room and its occupants with a sweeping
glance.

That room had a remarkable and almost fatal con-
sistency, an air of perfectly fresh and thoroughly
characteristic second-handness, as if every picture that
hung on the walls, every piece of furniture, every
book, every lady present, had been made from patterns.
They were all different, had appearances widely dis-
similar, yet all (like objects of art one sees in some
exhibitions) had a look of having been turned out after
the designs of some original spirit. The whole room
had that chaste, restrained, derivative look, practical
and essentially comfortable, of an existence which
neither in virtue nor in work, neither in manner,
thought, appearance, nor in theory, could — give itself
away.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE STAINED-GLASS MAN

Continuing his search for Antonia, Shekon went up to
the morning -room. Thea Dennant and a girl friend
were seated in the window, talking. From the look
they gave him he saw that it would have been better
for him never to have been born ; he hastily with-
drew. Descending to the hall again, he surprised
Mr. Dennant crossing to his study, with a satirical
and blighted appearance and a handful of official-
looking papers.

'Ah, Shelton !' said he, 'you look a little lost. Is
the shrine invisible ?'

Shelton grinned spasmodically, said ' Yes,' and con-
tinued his search. But he was not fortunate. In the
dining-room sat Mrs. Dennant, making up her list of
library books.

' Do give me your opinion, Dick,' she said. ' Every-
body's readin' this thing of Katherine Asterick's ; I
believe it's simply because she's got a title.'

' One must read a book for some reason or other,'
replied Shelton.

' Well,' returned Mrs. Dennant, ' I hate doin' things
just because other people do them, and I shan't get it.'

• Good !' said Shelton.

215

2i6 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

Mrs. Dennant failed to perceive the irony in his tone ;
she was marking the catalogue.

' Here's this new book of Linseed's, of course; though
I must say I don't care for him, I suppose we ought to
have that. And there's a thing out by Quality, " The
Splendid Diatribes" ; that's sure to be good, he's always
so refined. But what am I to do about Arthur Baal's
last ? It's the fashion to say he's a charlatan, but
everybody reads him, don't you know;' and over the
top of the catalogue those hare-like eyes gazed up at
Shelton, more hare-like than ever.

The decisive look of her face, with its arched nose
and slightly sloping chin, had vanished, blurred by
the fog of an unpractical subject, as though someone
had appealed to her all of a sudden to trust her own
instincts. It was pathetic. Still, there was always
the book's circulation to go by.

'I think I'd better mark it, don't you?' she said.
' Were you lookin' for Antonia ? If you come across
Bunyan in the garden, Dick, do say that I want to see
him ; he's gettin' a perfect nuisance. I can understand
his feelin's, of course, but he's really carryin' it too far
altogether.'

Primed with this message to the under-gardener,
Shelton retired. Before prosecuting his search out of
doors, he took a despairing look at the billiard-room.
Antonia was not there. But instead a tall, fat-cheeked
gentleman with a neat little moustache, called Mabbey,
was practising the spot-stroke at the lower end of the
table. He paused as Shelton opened the door, and,
pouting like a large baby, asked in a somnolent voice :

' Will you play me a hundred up ?'

Shelton advanced a step irresolutely, shook his head

THE STAINED-GLASS MAN 217

stammered that he was sorry, and was about to
withdraw.

The gentleman called Mabbey, plaintively feeling the
spot where his moustache joined a pink and glossy
cheek, asked with an air of some surprise :

' What's your general game, then ?'

Shelton felt annoyed.

' I really don't know,' he said.

The gentleman called Mabbey chalked his cue, and,
moving his round, knock-kneed legs twice in their tight
trousers to take up position for his stroke, paused
for a second before holing the red.

' I say, what price that ?' he remarked, as he
recovered the perpendicular, and his well-fed eyes
followed Shelton with sleepy curiosity. ' Curious dark
horse, Shelton,' they seemed to say.

Shelton hurried out into the garden, and was about to
run down to the lower lawn, when he was accosted by
another gentleman walking in the sunshine in front of
the house — a slight-built man in a turned-down collar,
with a thin, fair moustache, and a faint bluish tint on
one side of his high forehead, caused by a network of
tiny veins. His face had something of the youthful,
ironically optimistic, stained-glass look peculiar to the
refined English type. He walked buoyantly, yet with
trim precision, as if he had a nice taste in furniture and
churches, and he held in his hand the Spectator.

'Ah, Shelton!' he said in a high-toned, pleasant voice
— and pausing a second, he slightly bent his advanced
leg in such an easy attitude that it was impossible to
interrupt it : ' come out to take the air ?'

Shelton found himself pacing leisurely in his com-
pany. His brown face, nondescript nose, and the

2i8 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

amiable doggedness of his chin contrasted curiously
with the clear features of the stained-glass man.

' I hear from Halidome that you're going to stand
for Parliament,' said the latter.

Shelton was startled, but suddenly recalling Hali-
dome's urbane and autocratic manner of settling other
people's business, he smiled.

' Do I look like it ?' he asked.

The stained-glass man's eyebrows quivered. It had
never occurred to him, perhaps, that to stand for
Parliament a man must look like it ; he really examined
Shelton with curiosity.

'Ah, well,' he said, 'now you mention it, perhaps
not.' The habitual gleam of carefully-trained irony in
his light-blue eyes inspired an idea of profound shallow-
ness, but in spite of their dissimilarity from the eyes of
the gentleman called Mabbey, they, too, seemed to ask
Shelton what sort of a dark horse he was.

' You're still in the Domestic Office ?' said the latter.

The stained-glass man stopped to sniff at a rose-bush.

' Yes,' he replied ; ' it suits me very well. I get lots
of time for my art work.'

' That must be very interesting,' said Shelton, whose
glance was roving for signs of Antonia ; ' I never
managed to have a hobby myself.'

' Never had a hobby !' said the stained-glass man, and
he brushed back his hair (he was walking without a
hat) ; ' why, what the deuce do you do with yourself?'

Shelton couldn't answer this question ; the idea had
never occurred to him.

' I really don't know,' he said, embarrassed ; ' there's
always something going on, as far as I can make out.'

The stained-glass man returned his hands to his

THE STAINED-GLASS MAN 219

pockets, and his bright glance swept inquisitively over
his companion.

'A fellow must have a hobby to give him an interest
in life,' said he.

' An interest in life ?' returned Shelton rather grimly ;
' life itself's good enough for me.'

A cold look passed on to the face of his companion,
as though he disapproved of the practice of regarding
life itself as interesting.

' That's all very well,' he said, ' but you want some-
thing more than that. Why don't you take up wood-
carving ?'

'Wood-carving ?' repeated Shelton.

' The moment I get fagged with office papers and
that sort of thing I take up my wood-carving ; it's as
good as a game of hockey.'

'No, thanks; I haven't the enthusiasm.'

The eyebrows of the stained-glass man arched ; he
twisted his moustache delicately; there was a repre-
hensible mordancy in Shelton's voice.

'You'll find it doesn't pay, not having a hobby,' he
said ; ' you'll get old, and then where '11 you be ?'

Shelton squinted at him ; it came somehow as a sur-
prise that the other should use the words 'it doesn't
pay,' for he had a kind of partially enamelled look, like
one of those pieces of modern jewellery which really
seem so modestly unconscious of their market value.

' You've given up the Bar, haven't you ? Don't you
get awfully bored having nothing to do ?' abruptly
pursued the stained-glass man, stopping before an old
sundial and eyeing it carefully.

Shelton felt a delicacy, as a man naturally would, in
explaining that being in love was in itself a pursuit

220 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

occupying more than all his time. He did not know
what to say. To have nothing to do is unworthy of a
man — he knew that. The odd thing was that he had
never felt as if he had nothing to do. He said nothing.
But his silence in no way disconcerted his acquaintance.

' That's a nice old article of virtue,' he said, pointing
delicately with his chin at the sundial, as if it had
been an elderly maiden lady ; and walking round, he
examined it attentively from the other side. Its gray
profile cast a thin, shortening shadow on the turf;
tongues of moss were licking at its sides ; the daisies
clustered thick round its base, and it had acquired a
look of growing from the soil. ' I should like to get
hold of that,' said the stained-glass man ; ' I don't
know when I've seen a better specimen;' and he
walked round it a second time.

His eyebrows were still arched with their professional
irony, but below them his eyes had a curious look,
almost calculating, and below them, again, his mouth
had opened a little, and the lower lip had taken a curl.
A] person with a keener eye would have said that the
face looked greedy, and even Shelton was faintly
surprised, as though he had read in the Spectator a con-
fession of commercialism.

' You couldn't root a thing like that up,' said he ; 'it
would lose all its charm.'

His companion half turned his eyes with a gleam of
impatient contempt, and his countenance looked all of
a sudden surprisingly genuine.

'Couldn't I ?' he said, stooping down. 'By Jove!
i6go ; I thought so. The best period.' He raised
himself, and ran his finger along the edge of the sun-
dial. ' What a splendid line ! — as clean as the day it

THE STAINED-GLASS MAN 221

was made. You don't seem to care much about that
sort of thing ;' and once again, as though accustomed
to the indifference of Vandals, his face regained its
mask.

They strolled on in the direction of the kitchen
gardens, Shelton still busy sweeping every patch of
shade for Antonia. He had a longing to say ' I can't
stop,' and dash off on his search ; but there was some-
thing about the stained-glass man that, while stinging
and sharpening his feelings, made it peculiarly abhorrent
to him to show them. ' Feelings !' that personality
seemed to say, ' yes ; that's all very well, but you want
something more than that. Why not take up wood-
carving ? . . . Feelings ! I was born in England, and
educated at Cambridge.'

'Are you staying here long?' he asked of Shelton.
' I go on to Halidome's to-morrow ; suppose I shan't
see you there ? What a good chap, old Halidome !
Wonderful collection of etchings !'

' No ; I'm staying on here,' replied Shelton.

'Ah!' said the stained-glass man, 'very charming
people, the Dennants!'

Shelton reddened slowly, turning his head away ; he
picked a gooseberry, and muttered ' Yes.'

' The eldest girl especially ; there's no nonsense
about her. I thought she was a particularly nice girl.'

Shelton heard this praise of Antonia with a most odd
sensation ; it gave him the reverse of pleasure, as
though the words had cast a new light upon her. He
grunted hastily :

' I suppose you know I'm engaged to her ?'

' Really !' said the stained-glass man, and again his
bright, clear, non-committal glance swept inquisitively

222 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

over Shelton — ' really ! I didn't know that. I congratu-
late you !'

It seemed to Shelton as if he were saying : ' H'm !
you're a man of taste ; I should say she would go well
in almost any drawing-room !' His discomfort found
vent in so sardonic a grin that, at sight of it, the other
involuntarily threw up his hand, and brushed the hair
off his forehead.

' Thanks,' said Shelton softly; 'there she is. If you'll
excuse me, I want to speak to her.'

CHAPTER XXIV

PARADISE

Antonia, in a sunny angle of the old brick wall, amid
a forest of pinks and poppies, and cornflowers, was
humming a tune. Before Shelton reached her, he
turned to see that the stained-glass man was no longer
in sight, and, unobserved, he watched her plucking and
smelling at the flowers, caressing her face with each
flower in turn, now and then casting a spoiled blossom
to the ground, and all the time, like the bees around
her, humming.

It seemed so strange that in a couple of months all
barriers between him and this inscrutable young Eve
would be broken down ; that she would be a part of
him, and he a part of her ; that he would know all that
she thought, and she all that he thought ; that together
they would stand in the eyes of all respectable people
as one person ; that all respectable people would call
upon them as one, talk of them as one ; and that all this
would come about by their standing together for half
an hour in a church, by the gift of a ring, and the sign-
ing of their names.

The sun had burnished her hair, for she wore no hat,
flushed her cheeks, sweetened and made sensuous the
play of her limbs ; it had warmed her through and

223

224 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

through, so that, like the flowers and the bees, the sun-
light and the air, she, too, was all motion, and light,
and colour, and perfume.

With her hands full she turned and saw Shelton
standing behind her.

'Oh, it's you, Dick!' she said: 'Lend me your
handkerchief to put these flowers in, there's a good
boy!'

Her fair and candid eyes, blue and unknowable as
the flowers in her hands, were like two little pieces of
clear ice, but in her smile was reflected the delicious
warmth and profusion of that corner ; all the sweetness
that had soaked into her was welling forth again. The
sight of her, with those sun-warmed cheeks, fingers
twining among the flower-stalks, pearly teeth, and hair
all fragrant, stole the reason out of Shelton. He stood
before her, weak about the knees, drunk on the evidence
of his senses.

' I've found you at last,' he said.

Her neck curved back over her shoulder, she cried
' Catch !' and with a sweep of both hands flung her
flowers into Shelton's arms.

His emotions were whipped by the rain of flowers,
all warm and odorous ; but, dropping on his knees, he
put them together, smelling solemnly at the pinks one
by one, and seeking by this mechanical device to hide
the violence of his feelings. Antonia went on picking
flowers, and every time that her hand was full she bent
down to Shelton and dropped them on his hat, or his
shoulder, or across his arms, and went on plucking
more ; and each time that she came near, her smile
gleamed, and in her face danced a little provoking devil
— one would have said she knew what he was suffering.

PARADISE 225

And he began to have the feeling that she did know.
He felt ridiculous kneeling there, so hopelessly in her
power, and only restrained by a vague chivalry from
clasping her waist and holding her a prisoner.

'Are you tired?' she asked; 'there are heaps more
wanted. These are the bedroom flowers — fourteen lots.
I can't think how people can live without flowers, can
you?' and close above Shelton's head she buried her
nose in a bunch of pinks.

Shelton kept his eyes fixed on the growing mass of
the plucked flowers before him on the grass. He was
afraid, and forced himself to answer :

' I think I can hold out.'

' Poor old Dick !' He looked up, but she had stepped
back, and was stooping towards some mignonette. The
sun illumined the clear-cut profile of her cheek, and
shot gold into the curves of her blouse. ' Poor old
Dick ! Awfully hard luck, isn't it ?' Burdened with
mignonette, she came so close to him again that she
actually touched his shoulder, but Shelton did not look
up this time ; breathless, with his heart beating wildly,
he went on sullenly sorting the flowers. The dry seeds of
the mignonette rained down on his neck, and as she
let the blossoms fall, their perfume drifted into his
face. ' You needn't sort them,' she said.

She was enticing him ! He stole a look, and his
eyes, from being angry, grew steadfast and burning;
but she was gone again, swaying and sniffing amongst
the flowers.

' I suppose I'm only hindering you,' he growled ;
' I'd better go.'

She laughed.

' Oh, I like to see you on your knees, you look so

15

226 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

funny !' and as she spoke she flung a clove carnation at
him. ' Doesn't it smell good?'

' Too good,' muttered Shelton. ' Oh, Antonia ! why
do you do it ?'

' Why do I do what ?' she cried, with icy can-
dour ; and Shelton felt as if a cold douche had been
poured down his back.

' Don't you know what you're doing ?' he mur-
mured.

' Why, picking flowers !' and once more she was back,
bending and sniffing amongst the blossoms.

' That's enough.'

' Oh no,' she called ; ' it's not — not nearly enough.
Keep on sorting them, Dick, if you — love me.'

' You know I love you,' answered Shelton, in a
smothered voice.

Antonia stopped her plucking for a moment, and
gazed at him across her shoulder ; there was something
inquiring and puzzled in her face. He shivered, per-
haps from the strain of remaining so long upon his
knees.

' I'm not a bit like you, you know, Dick,' she said,
and began plucking sweet peas. ' What will you have
for your room ?'

' Choose !' he answered.

' Cornflowers and clove pinks. Poppies are too
frivolous, and white pinks are too — too '

' White,' said Shelton.

' And mignonette too hard and '

' Sweet,' muttered Shelton. ' But why corn-
flowers ?'

Antonia stood before him with her hands flat against
her sides ; there was a touch of pathos in the slim.

PARADISE 227

young figure, and a touch of uncertainty in her grave
face.

' Because they're dark and deep.'

' And why clove pinks ?'

But Antonia did not answer.

' And why clove pinks ?' repeated Shelton,

' Because,' said Antonia, flushing, and touching a bee
that had settled on her skirt, ' perhaps — because of
something in you that I don't understand.'

'Ah !' he said, burying his nose in the clove pink.
' And what flowers shall I give you ?'

She put her hands behind her, and her upper teeth
showed in a smile.

' There are all the other flowers for me.'

Shelton snatched up from the mass in front of him a
pink poppy with a straight stem and a curve in the
neck, banked it up with white pinks and sprigs of hard,
sweet mignonette, and struggling off his knees, held it
out to her.

' There, I've got you !' he said.

But Antonia did not move.

' Oh no, you haven't !' and behind her back her
fingers slowly crushed the petals of a blood-red poppy.
She shook her head, a brilliant smile on her lips ; then,
with eyes fixed on the flowers he was holding out, she
stood before him like a temptation. The blossoms fell
from his hand, he flung his arms round her, and kissed
her passionately on her smiling lips.

But the next moment his hands dropped to his sides,
and not fear exactly, nor exactly shame, overwhelmed
him. She had not resisted, but he had kissed the smile
off her lips ; he had kissed a strange, cold, frightened
look into her eyes.

15—2

228 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' She didn't mean to tempt me,' he thought, in a
whirl of shame, surprise, and anger. ' What did she
mean ? I'm not made of cottonwool ;' and like a
scolded dog, he kept his intent and troubled watch upon
her face.

CHAPTER XXV

THE RIDE

' Where now ?' asked Antonia, as they turned their
horses round in the High Street of Oxford City. ' I
won't go back the same way, Dick !'

' We could have a gallop on Port Meadow, cross the
Upper River twice, and get home that way ; but you'll
be tired.'

Antonia shook her head. She was riding a chestnut
mare. Aslant of her flushed cheek the brim of her
straw hat drew a curve of shade, and her ear glowed
transparent and rosy in the sun.

Since that kiss a strange difference had come in their
relations ; outwardly she was the same comrade-like
girl, with the same cool vitality and the same quick
decisions. But as before a change one feels the subtle
difference in the quality of a wind, so Shelton's percep-
tions were affected by the inner change in her. He
had scored a mark on her candid surface ; rubbed
it out with the most tender care, but left all the same
an ineffaceable roughness in the fibre of the parchment.
He had let himself go, and made an ineffaceable mark ;
and he knew that Antonia belonged to the most civilized
section of the most civilized nation in Europe, whose
creed was : ' Let us love and hate, marry and work, but

229

230 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

not commit ourselves ; to commit ourselves is to leave
an ineffaceable mark, and that is beyond forgiveness.
Let our lives be like our faces, free from every kind of
wrinkle, even those of laughter ; in this way we shall be
saved.'

And he felt that she was ruffled by the vague dis-
comfort of an injury. That he should have committed
himself had made her wonder, but that he should give
her the feeling that she had committed herself was
clearly more serious altogether.

' Do you mind if I just ask at the Bishop's Head
for letters ?' he said, as they passed the old hotel.

A dirty and very thin envelope was brought out to
him addressed ' Mr. Richard Shelton, Esq.,' in an
ornamental, passionately distinct handwriting, as though
the writer had put his soul into securing the delivery
of the letter. It was dated three days back, and, open-
ing it as they rode away, Shelton read as follows :

'Imperial Peacock Hotel,

' Folkestone.
' MoN CHER Monsieur Shelton,

' This is already the third time I have taken up
pen to write to you, but, having nothing but misfortune
to recount, I hesitated, awaiting better days. Indeed, I
have been so profoundly discouraged that if I had not
thought it my duty to let you know of my fortunes I
know not even now if I should have found the necessary
spirit. Les choses vont de mal en mal. From what I
hear there has never been such a bad season here.
Nothing going on. All the same, I am tormented by
an infinity of affairs which bring me not enough to
support life. I know not what I shall do, but one thing

THE RIDE 231

is certain, in no case shall I return here another year.
The patron of this hotel, my good employer, is one of
those innumerable specimens who do not forge or steal
because they have no need, and if they had would lack
the courage ; who observe the marriage laws because
they have been brought up to believe in them, and know
that breaking them brings danger and loss of reputation ;
who do not gamble because they dare not ; do not
drink because it disagrees with them ; go to church
because of their neighbours, and to procure an appetite
for the mid-day meal ; commit no murder because, not
transgressing in any other fashion, they are not obliged.
What is there to respect in such persons ? And yet they
are highly esteemed, and form three-quarters of Society.
The rule with these gentlemen is to shut their eyes,
never use their thinking powers, and close the door on
all the dogs of life for fear they should get bitten.'

Shelton paused, for he had become conscious of
Antonia's eyes fixed on him with the unknowable gleam
that he had begun to dread. In that chilly questioning
of her spirit there was nothing really mysterious nor
anything really inquisitive — in fact, there was a
certain quality of obviousness. ' I am prepared to be
told things,' she seemed to be saying ; ' that is, useful
things— things that help one to believe without
thinking.'

He shifted the letter from one hand to the other.

' It's from that young foreigner,' he said ; and went on
reading to himself.

' I have eyes, and here I am ; I have a nose pour
flairer le humbug. I see that amongst the value of things
nothing is worth as much as free thought. Everything

232 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

else they can take from you, on ne pent pas vous oter cela !
I see no future for me here, and certainly should have
left long ago if I had had the money; but as I have
already told you, all that I can do barely suffices to
procure me de quoi vivre. Je me sens ecceure. Do not
pay too much attention to my Jeremiads ; you know
what a pessimist I am. Je ne perds pas courage.

' Hoping that you are well, and cordially pressing
your hand,

' Your very devoted

' Louis Ferrand.'

He remained with the letter open in his hand, frown-
ing, resenting the curious turmoil which any intrusion
of Ferrand aroused. It was as though the young
foreigner had the power to twang within him a neglected
string, which gave forth a mutinous moan, like the tattoo
of the unemployed's drum.

' Well, what does he say ?' asked Antonia.

Should he show it to her ? If he might not, what
should he do when they were married ? He held the
letter tightly.

' I don't quite know,' he said at last ; ' it's not very
cheering.'

' What is he like, Dick — I mean, to look at ? Like a
gentleman, or what?'

Shelton stifled an impulse to laugh.

' He looks very well in a frock-coat,' he replied, ' and
his father was a wine merchant.'

Antonia flicked her skirt with her riding-whip.

' Of course,' she murmured, 'I don't want to hear if
there's anything I ought not.'

Oddly enough, instead of allaying Shelton's discomfort

THE RIDE 233

the words had the opposite effect. His temperament
disagreed with the conception of the ideal wife as
a person from whom the half of life must be excluded.

' It's only,' he stammered again, ' that it's not very
cheerful.'

' Oh, all right !' she cried, and, smartly touching her
horse, flew off in front. ' I hate dismal things.'

Shelton bit his hps. It was not his fault that the
world held a dark side. He knew that her words were
loosed against something in himself, and, as always at a
sign of her displeasure, he was afraid. He galloped after
her across the scorched turf of Port Meadow.

' What is it ?' he said, as he came alongside. ' You're
angry with me !'

• Oh no !'

' Darling, I can't help it if things are not cheerful. I
have eyes,' he added, unconsciously quoting from the
letter.

Antonia did not look at him, and again touched her
horse.

' Well, I don't want to see gloomy things,' she said
breathlessly, ' and I can't see why you should. It's
wicked to be discontented ;' and she galloped off again.

He was ruffled. It was not his fault that there were
a thousand different kinds of human beings, a thousand
different points of view, outside the fence of her bring-
ing-up ! ' What business,' he thought, digging the
dummy rowels of his spurs into his horse's sides and
following, ' has our class to turn up its nose at the rest
of the world ? We're the only people who haven't an
idea what life really means.' But the chase began to
excite him ; chips of dried turf and dust came flying
back and stinging his face. He gained on her, drew

234 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

almost within reach of her rein, then, as though she
had been playing with him, was hopelessly left behind.

She stopped under the far hedge, fanning herself with
a dock-leaf, and her face glowed with triumph.

'Aha, Dick!' she said, ' I knew you'd never catch me ;'
and she drew a gloved hand down the crest of the
chestnut mare, who turned her blowing muzzle with
good-humoured contempt towards Shelton's steed, while
her flanks heaved rapturously, and gradually darkened
with sweat.

' No,' grunted Shelton, getting off and loosening his
girths ; ' we'd better take them steadily if we mean to
get home at all.'

' Don't be cross, Dick !'

' We oughtn't to have galloped them like this ; they're
not in condition. If you take my advice, you'll go back
the way we came.'

Antonia dropped the reins, and straightened her back
hair.

' There's no fun in that,' she said, looking straight
before her. ' Out and back again ; I hate a dog's walk.'

' Very well,' said Shelton ; he would have her longer
to himself !

The road led up an interminable hill, and from the top,
a vision of Saxonia, as unshakable and complacent as
the sides of a Berkshire pig, lay, wooded and fat, before
their eyes. Their way branched down into an ungated
glade, and Shelton sidled up till his knee touched the
mare's off-flank.

Antonia's profile had a quality that conjured delight-
ful visions. She was like a statue of Youth ; her*eyes
tantalized in their brilliant innocence, her cheeks
glowed, her brow was unruffled, but in the curve of her

THE RIDE 235

smile and the set of her chin lurked something resolute
and mischievous. Shelton put his hand on the mare's
mane.

' I can't think what made you promise to marry me,'
he said gently.

She smiled.

' And what made_yoM ?'

' I ?' cried Shelton.

She slipped her hand into his.

• Oh, Dick !' she said, ' I wish '

' I wish,' he stammered, taking the words out of her
mouth, ' to be everything to you. Do you think I
shall ?'

' After we are married ?' she asked, and quickly, in
her clear voice, added : ' Of course !'

'Of course!' he repeated. The words seemed too
much or too little.

' Dick,' she cried, looking straight before her, where
the river gleamed at the end of the glade in a curving
line of silver, ' there are such a lot of splendid things
we might do.'

Did she mean amongst those splendid things that
they might understand each other, or merely pretend
to, with that sacred and stately pretence time-honoured
with the best people ?

They crossed the river by the horse-ferry, and rode a
long time in silence, while the twilight slowly gathered
behind the aspens. To Shelton all the beauty of the
evening, with its restless leaves, grave young moon, and
lighted campion flowers, was but a part of her; the
scerts, the witchery and shadows, the quaint field
noises, a yokel's whistle, and the splash of water-fowl,
each seemed to him enchanted. The flighting bats, the

236 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

dim hayricks, the spring of his horse beneath him, the
scent of the sweet-briar — she seemed to sum them all
up in herself. The finger-marks had deepened under
her eyes, a languor had come upon her, which only
made her the more youthful, the more precious, sweet,
and sane. To him her young shoulders bore upon them
the very image of our land — grave and aspiring, eager
yet contained — before there had come upon that land
the wrinkles of greed, the folds of wealth, dimples of
luxury, or the simper of content. Fair, unconscious,
and free ! He was silent, with straining eyes and
twitching hands, with a beating heart, and fierce long-
ing within it.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE BIRD OF PASSAGE

That night, after the ride, Shelton was taking the
things from his pockets before going to bed, when his
eyes fell on Ferrand's letter, and with a sleepy sense of
duty he began reading it a second time. In the dark-
panelled bedroom, his four-poster, with back of
crimson damask and dainty sheets, was lighted by the
candle glow; the copper pitcher of hot water in the
basin, the backs of his brushes, the line of his well-
polished boots, all shone tenderly, and Shelton's face
alone was gloomy, as he stared at the neat characters
on the yellowish paper in his hand.

'The poor beggar wants money, of course,' he
thought. Why should he go on helping a fellow who
had no claim on him, who was a hopeless case, an
incurable — one of those whom it was a duty to let sink
for the benefit of the community at large ? Ferrand's
vagabond refinement had beguiled him into charity that
would have been better bestowed on hospitals, or any
good work but missionaries. The notion of giving a
helping hand, a bit of himself, a ray of fellowship to a
fellow-being irrespective of claims, and merely because
he was down on his luck, was sentimental nonsense !
The hne must be drawn ! But in the very muttering

237

238 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

of this conclusion he was visited by a twinge of honesty.
' You're a humbug !' he thought ; ' )'ou simply don't want
to part with your money !'

So he sat down in his shirt-sleeves at his writing-
table, and savagely penned the following on paper
stamped with the Holm Oaks address and crest :

' My dear Ferrand,

' I am sorry you are having such a bad spell.
You seem to be dead out of luck. I hope by the time
you get this things will have changed for the better-
I should very much like to see you again and have a
talk, but shall be away some time longer, and doubt
even when I get back whether I should have time to
run down and look you up. Keep me au courant as to
your movements.

' Yours sincerely,

' Richard Shelton.'

He intended to enclose a cheque, but a moth flutter-
ing round the candle so distracted his attention that,
by the time he had caught it and put it out of the
window, he had forgotten not having enclosed the
cheque, and the letter, removed with his clothes before
he was awake, was posted in this empty condition.

One morning about a week later, while he was sitting
in the smoking-room in the company of the gentleman
called Mabbey — who was describing to him the number
of grouse he had killed on August 12 last year, and the
number he intended to kill this year — the door was softly
opened, and the butler entered the room, carrying his
head as though it were in possession of some fatal secret.

' A young man is asking for you, sir,' said he to

THE BIRD OF PASSAGE 239

Shelton, with a discreet bend : ' I don't know if you
would wish to see him, sir.'

' A young man !' repeated Shelton ; ' what sort of
young man ?'

' I should say a sort of foreigner, sir,' replied the
butler apologetically. ' He's wearing a frock-coat, but
he looks as if he might have been walking a good
deal, sir.'

Shelton rose hastily ; there was an ominous ring in
the description.

' Where is he ?' he asked.

' I put him in the young ladies' little room, sir.'

'All right,' said Shelton; 'I'll come and see him.
Now, what the deuce !' he thought, as he ran down the
stairs.

It was with a queer mixture of vexation and pleasure
that he opened the door of the little room consecrated
to the birds, beasts, racquets, golf-clubs, and general
litter of the young ladies, and found Ferrand standing
impassively beneath the cage of a canary, with his
hands folded on his pinched-up brown felt hat, and a
nervous smile on his lips. He was dressed in the frock-
coat Shelton had given him, tightly buttoned, and cut
a presentable figure but for the travel-worn look that
pervaded his nondescript personality. He wore a pair
of pince-nez, which somewhat veiled the cynicism in
his prominent eyes, and clashed with the pagan look
that never quite left him. In the midst of the strange
surroundings he still preserved that air of being intimate
with, and master of, his own fate which was his chief
attraction.

' I'm glad to see you,' said Shelton, holding out his
hand.

240 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' Forgive me this liberty,' began Ferrand, ' but I
thought it due to you after all you've done for me not
to throw up my efforts to get employment in England
without letting you know. I'm entirely at the end of
my resources.'

The phrase seemed familiar.

' But I wrote to you,' said Shelton ; ' didn't you
get my letter ?'

A flicker passed over Ferrand's face, and he drew the
letter out of his pocket.

' Yes,' he answered, holding it out.

Shelton took the letter and stared at it.

' But,' said he, ' surely I sent you a cheque ?'

Ferrand did not smile ; there was a look about him
as though Shelton had done him an injury in forgetting
the cheque.

Shelton could not repress a flash of suspicion.

' Of course,' he said, ' I — I — meant to enclose a
cheque !'

Too subtle to speak, the curl of the young foreigner's
lip implied : ' I am capable of much, but not of that ;'
and at once Shelton felt guilty of meanness.

' It was stupid of me,' he said, and was silent.

' I had no intention of intruding myself here,' said
Ferrand ; ' I hoped to see you in the neighbourhood,
but I arrived exhausted with fatigue. I've eaten
nothing since yesterday at noon, and walked thirty
miles.' He shrugged his shoulders. ' You see, I had no
time to lose before assuring myself whether you were
here or not.'

' Of course ' began Shelton, and again he did not

know how to go on.

' I should very much like,' said the young foreigner,

THE BIRD OF PASSAGE 24I

' for one of your good legislators to find himself in these
country villages with a penny in his pocket. In other
countries bakers are obliged to sell you an equivalent
of bread for a penny; here they won't sell you as much as
a crust under twopence. You don't encourage poverty.'

' What is your idea now ?' asked Shelton, with the
desire to gain time.

' As I told you,' replied Ferrand, ' there's nothing to
be done at Folkestone, though I should have stayed
there if I had had the money to defray certain expenses ;'
and again his voice betrayed reproach at Shelton's
omission of the cheque. 'They say things will certainly
be better at the end of the month. Now that I know
English well, I thought perhaps you could procure me
a situation for teaching languages.'

' I see,' said Shelton.

As a matter of fact he was far from seeing ; he
literally did not know what to do. He revolted some-
how against the brutality of giving Ferrand money and
asking him to clear out ; besides, it so happened that he
had no money in his pocket.

' It needs some philosophy to support what I've gone
through this last week,' said Ferrand, with a shrug of
his shoulders. ' On Wednesday last, when I received
your letter, I had just eighteenpence, and at once made a
resolution to come and see you ; on that sum I've done
the journey. But I'm nearly at the end of my strength.'

Shelton caressed his chin ; the gesture was pecuhar
to him when thoroughly perplexed.

' Well,' he had just begun, ' we must ' when he

saw by the expression of his visitor's face that some-
one had entered the room behind him. He turned,
and found Antonia in the doorway. ' Excuse me a

16

242 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

moment,' he stammered, and going up to Antonia, drew
her out of the room.

' Dick,' she said with a smile, ' it's the young foreigner ;
I'm certain it is ! What fun !'

' Yes,' answered Shelton slowly ; ' he's come over to
see me about getting some sort of tutorship. Do you
think your mother would mind if I took him up to
have awash ? He's had a — a longish walk. And might
he have some breakfast ? I fancy he must be hungry.'

' Of course ! I'll tell Dobson. Shall I speak to
mother ? He looks nice, Dick.'

He gave her a grateful, rather furtive look, and went
back to his guest ; a snobbish impulse had made him
disguise from her the true state of the case.

Ferrand was standing where he had been left, and his
face had remained impassive, but the blankness of it
was more mordant than any expression of mortification ;
it had dignity.

' Come up to my room !' said Shelton ; and while his
guest was ^vashing, brushing, and embellishing his
person, he stood thinking that Ferrand was really by no
means unpresentable, and he felt quite grateful to him.

He took an opportunity, when the young foreigner's
back was turned, of examining the counterfoils of his
cheque-book. Naturally, there was none drawn in
Ferrand's favour ! So that he felt more mean than ever.

A message came almost directly from Mrs. Dennant ;
he took the traveller downstairs to the dining-room and
left him there, while he went up to his future mother-
in-law. He met Antonia coming down.

' How many days did you say he went without food
that time — you know ?' she asked in passing.

' Four.'

THE BIRD OF PASSAGE 243

' He doesn't look a bit common, Dick.'

Shelton gazed at her dubiously.

' Ah,' thought he, in spite of himself, ' they're surely
not going to make a show of him !'

Mrs. Dennant was writing, attired in a dark-blue dress
with white spots, and a fine lawn collar threaded with
black velvet.

' Have you seen the new hybrid Algy's brought me
from Kidstone ?' she asked. ' Isn't it charmin' ?' and
she bent her face towards the specimen rose. ' They
say it's unique; I'm awfully interested to find out if
that's true. Anyway, I've told Algy I really must have
some.'

Shelton thought of the unique hybrid breakfasting
downstairs ; he wished, perhaps, that Mrs. Dennant
would manifest as much interest in him as in the rose.
But he secretly knew that this was absurd of him, for
at the sight of Mrs. Dennant and her rose, he felt some-
how all the force of that potent law of hobbies con-
trolling the upper classes, and forcing them to take
more interest in birds, roses, missionaries, or limited
editions of books (objects, in a word, governed by
Societies, and thoroughly exploited in print) than in the
untidy manifestations of mere life that came daily before
their eyes.

' Oh, Dick, about that young Frenchman. Antonia
says he wants a tutorship ; now, can you really recom-
mend him ? There's Mrs. Robinson at the Gateways
wants someone to teach her boys languages ; and, if he
were quite satisfactory, it's really time Toddles had a
few lessons in French ; he goes to Eton next half.'

Shelton stared at the rose ; he had suddenly realized
why it was that people take more interest in roses than

16 — 2

244 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

in human beings — one could do it with a quiet heart,
without incessant misgivings and shocks to one's senses
of propriety and of property.

' He's not a Frenchman, you know,' he said to gain
time.

' He's not a German, I hope,' replied Mrs. Dennant,
putting her fingers to the edge of one of the petals as
though to impress its shape on her brain ; ' I don't like
Germans. Isn't he the one you wrote about — come
down in the world ? Such a pity with a young fellow !
His father was a merchant, I think you told us. Antonia
says he's quite refined lookin'.'

'Oh yes,' said Shelton, glad to be on safe ground;
' he's refined enough looking.'

Mrs. Dennant took the rose from the vase and put it
to her nose.

'Delicious perfume!' she said. 'That was a very
touchin' story about his goin' without food in Paris.
Old Mrs. Hopkins has a room to let in her cottage ; I
should like to do her a good turn. I'm afraid there's a
hole in the ceilin', though. Or there's the room here in
the left wing on the ground-floor where John the foot-
man used to sleep. It's quite nice ; perhaps he could
have that.'

' You're awfully kind,' said Shelton, ' but

' I should like to do something to restore his self-
respect,' went on Mrs. Dennant, ' if, as you say, he's
such a clever young fellow. Seein' a little refined life
again might make a world of difference to him. It's so
sad when a young man loses his self-respect.'

As ever, Shelton was struck by the practical way she
looked at things. Restore his self-respect ! It seemed
a splendid idea ! He smiled, and began :

THE BIRD OF PASSAGE 245

' You're too kind. I-

' I don't believe in doin' things by halves,' said Mrs.
Dennant ; ' he doesn't drink, does he ?'

' Oh no,' said Shelton ; ' I'm afraid he's a bit of a
tobacco maniac, though.'

' Well, that's a mercy ! You wouldn't believe the
trouble I've had vv^ith drink, especially cooks and coach-
men. And now Bunyan has taken to it.'

' Oh, you'd have no trouble with Ferrand,' returned
Shelton ; ' you couldn't tell him from a gentleman as far
as manners go.'

Mrs. Dennant smiled one of her rather sweet, kindly
smiles.

' My dear Dick,' she said, ' there's not much comfort
in that. Look at poor Bobby Surcingle, look at Oliver
Semples and Victor Medallion ; you couldn't have better
families. But if you're sure he doesn't drink ! Algy '11
laugh, of course, but that doesn't matter ; he laughs at
everything.'

Shelton began to feel guilty ; he had not been prepared
for so rapid an adoption of his client.

' I really believe there's a lot of good in him,' he
stammered ; ' but, of course, I know very little, and from
what he tells me he's had a very curious hfe. I shouldn't
like '

' Where was he educated ?' inquired Mrs. Dennant.
' They have no public schools in France, so I've been
told; but, of course, he can't help that, poor young
fellow ! Oh ! and, Dick, there's one thing ; has he a lot of
relations ? One has always to be so careful about that.
It's one thing to help a young fellow, but quite another
to help his family too. One sees so many cases of that
where men marry girls without money, don't you know.'

246 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' He's told me,' said Shelton, ' that he has no relations
nearer than cousins, and they are rich people.'

Mrs. Dennant took out her handkerchief, and, bend-
ing over the rose, delicately removed a tiny insect.

' These green-fly get everywhere,' she said. ' It seems
a very sad story ; can't they do anything for him ?' and
she pursued her researches into the heart of the rose.

' I believe he's quarrelled with them,' said Shelton ; ' I
haven't liked to press him about that.'

' No, of course not,' assented Mrs. Dennant absently —
she had found another green-fly — ' I always think it's
painful when a young man seems to be so friendless.'

Shelton was silent ; he was thinking deeply. Oddly
enough, he had never before felt so distrustful of
Ferrand.

' I think,' he said at last, ' the best thing would be for
you to see him yourself.'

' An excellent suggestion,' said Mrs. Dennant. ' I
should be so glad if you would tell him to come up. I
must say I do think that was a most touchin' story about
Paris. I wonder whether the light's strong enough now
for me to photograph this rose.'

Shelton withdrew and went downstairs. Ferrand
was still at breakfast. Antonia stood at the sideboard
carving cold beef for him, and in the window sat Thea
with her Persian kitten.

Both girls were following the traveller's movements
with an inscrutable curiosity in their blue eyes that sent
a shiver down Shelton's spine. To speak truth, he
cursed the arrival of the young foreigner, as though
somehow it affected his relations with Antonia.

CHAPTER XXVII

SUB ROSA

In the interview, which Shelton had the mixed dehght
of watching, between Ferrand and the Honourable Mrs.
Dennant, certain definite results were achieved, the
most notable of which was the permission accorded to
the young foreigner to occupy the room in the left wing
on the ground-floor which had formerly been tenanted
by John the footman. Shelton was lost in admiration
of Ferrand's manner throughout the palaver. The
subtle combination of deference and dignity in his voice
and attitudes was almost paralyzing; paralyzing, too,
the subterranean, as it were, smile on his lips.

' A charmin' young man, Dick,' said Mrs. Dennant,
when Shelton lingered a moment at the close of the
interview with the intention of saying once more that
he knew very little about him : ' I shall send a note
round to Mrs. Robinson at once. They're rather
common, you know — the Robinsons. I think they'll
take anyone I recommend.'

' I'm sure they will,' said Shelton ; ' that's why I think
you ought to know '

But Mrs. Dennant's eyes were fixed hare-like and!
fervent on something beyond, and, turning, he saw the
rQse» whichj in a tall vase on a tall and spindly stool^

HI

248 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

seemed to nod condescendingly in the slanting sunshine
of the window. She dived her aquiline nose suddenly
towards the sighting-glass of her kodak.

' The light's perfect now,' she said, in a muffled,
ecstatic voice. ' I feel sure that livin' with refined
people will do wonders for him. Of course, he under-
stands that his meals will be served apart.'

Shelton, who could no longer leave Ferrand at loose
ends upon the door-mat, retired. He was doubly
uneasy now that his efforts had succeeded in lodging
Ferrand in a position of trust, but fell back on his
faculty of believing the best of people ; and an instinct
assured him that, vagabond as the young foreigner was,
he had a large outlook, a curious self-respect, that would
always save him from the meaner sorts of ingratitude.

In fact, as Mrs. Dennant, who was by no means
devoid of practical sense, foresaw, the arrangement
worked very well. Ferrand entered upon his duties
as French tutor to the Robinson boys. In the Den-
nants' household he kept to his own room, which, day
and night, he perfumed with tobacco, emerging at noon
into the garden, or, if wet, into the study, to administer
a lesson to Toddles. After a time it became customary
for him to lunch with the house-party, partly through
a mistake of Toddles', who thought apparently that it
was natural, and partly through John Noble, one of
Shelton's friends, who was staying in the house, and
had discovered Ferrand to be a most awfully interesting
person — he was always discovering the most awfully
interesting persons. In his grave, toneless voice, passing
his hand over his brow, he descanted upon Ferrand
with an enthusiasm in which was mingled a species of
shocked toleration and a spasmodic laugh, as one should

SUB ROSA 249

say : ' Of course, I know it's excessively odd, but really
he's a most awfully interesting person.' Shelton had
always held John Noble in affectionate neglect. He
was a politician, belonging to that small, kid-gloved
Peculiar party, the members of which, thoroughly in
earnest, of an honesty above suspicion, and always
extremely busy, are yet constitutionally averse to any-
thing peculiar for fear of finding that they have over-
stepped the limits of practical politics. As such he
inspired confidence, possessed a level head, desired
salvation — that is, did not care for things unless he saw
some practical benefit to be had out of them in this
world or the next — had no faculty whatever for leaving
things to take care of themselves, a perfect sense of
decency, and not enough imagination to cover his
thumbnails, which he bit. He got into the habit of
discussing all manner of subjects with Ferrand, and
on one occasion Shelton overheard them arguing on
Anarchism.

' No Englishman approves of murder,' John Noble
said, in the gloomy voice that contrasted so strangely
with the optimistic cast of his fine head, ' but the main
principle is all right. Equalization of property is bound
to come. I sympathize with them, but not with their
methods.'

' Forgive me,' struck in Ferrand ; ' do you know any
Anarchists ?'

' No,' returned Noble ; ' I certainly don't.'

' You say that you sympathize with them, but the
first time it comes to action '

' Well ?'

' Oh, monsieur ! one doesn't make Anarchism with
the head.'

250 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

Shelton perceived that he meant to add ' but with
the heart, and the lungs, and the Hver.' Taking no
interest in Anarchism, he drew a deeper and more
general meaning from the saying, and seemed to see,
issuing with the discoloured smoke from Ferrand's
curhng lips, the words : ' What do you, an English
gentleman, of excellent position, and with all the preju-
dices of your class, know about us who are outcasts ?
If you want to understand us you must be an outcast
yourself ; we are not playing at the game.'

This conversation took place upon the lawn, at the
conclusion of one of Toddles' lessons in French, and
Shelton left John Noble maintaining to the young
foreigner, with his reasonable stubbornness, that Anar-
chists and himself had much in common. He was
returning to the house, when someone called his name
from beneath the holm-oak. There, sitting Turkish
fashion on the grass, with a pipe between his teeth, he
found a man who had arrived the night before, and
impressed him by a taciturnity which, oddly enough,
had left an impression of friendly frankness. His name
was Whyddon, and someone had said that he was just
back from service in Central Africa. He had a brown
face and a large jaw, small but good and steady eyes,
and a strong, spare figure.

' Oh, Mr. Shelton !' he said, 'I wondered if you could
tell me what sort of tips I ought to give the servants
here ; after ten years away I'm so out of it.'

Shelton smiled, and sat down beside him, uncon-
sciously also assuming a cross-legged attitude, which he
did not find comfortable.

' I was listening,' said his new acquaintance, ' to the
little chap having his French. lesson> I've forgpttea

SUB ROSA 251

all mine. One feels a hopeless duffer knowing no
languages.'

' But I suppose you speak Arabic ?' said Shelton.

' Oh, Arabic and a dialect or two ; they don't count.'
There was a most attractive simplicity in his voice.
Lighting his pipe, he went on : ' That tutor has a strange
face.'

' Do you think so ?' said Shelton, interested. ' He's
had a strange life.'

Whyddon spread his hands, palms downwards, on the
grass, puffed smoke, and looked at Shelton with a smile
in his eyes.

' I should put him down as a rolling stone,' he said.
' It's an odd thing, I've seen white men in Central Africa
with a good deal of his look about them.'

' That's very good diagnosis,' said Shelton, surprised,
' as I happen to know.'

' I'm always sorry for those fellows,' continued
Whyddon ; ' there's generally some good in them.
They are their own enemies. A bad business to be
unable to take pride in anything one does!' and there
was a look of pity on his face.

' That's exactly it,' said Shelton. ' I've often tried to
put it into words. Is it incurable ?'

'I think so,' returned Whyddon.

' Do you understand why ?'

Whyddon pondered.

' I rather think,' he said at last, ' it must be because
they have too much critical faculty. You can't teach a
man, I think, to be proud of his work ; that lies in his
blood ;' and, taking his pipe from his mouth, he folded his
arms across his breast and heaved a sigh. He looked
statuesque sitting there under the dark foliage, with his

252 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

eyes on the bright sunshine outside — like a type of all
those Englishmen who wear out their bodies in the
dark places of hard work, keeping their souls burnished
with a splendid optimism. ' You can't think,' he said,
straightening his neck and showing his teeth in a smile,
' how delightful it is to be at home ! You learn to love
the old country by being away from it.'

Shelton suddenly conceived for him a feeling of warm
liking and admiration, and after his departure, which
occurred on the following day, he often thought of his
brown face with the look of settled daring which was
bitten deep into it, and its sympathetic taciturnity. He
often thought, too, of his diagnosis of Ferrand, for he was
always stumbling on instances of that power of subtle
criticism which was the young foreigner's prime claim
to be considered ' a most awfully interesting ' and perhaps
rather shocking person.

There was an old schoolfellow of Shelton's staying in
the house whose wife was with him, and together they
provided a picture of complete and harmonious domestic
vacuity. Passionless, smiling, good, it was impossible
to imagine a difference arising bet\veen them. Shelton,
whose bedroom was next to theirs, could just hear
them in the mornings talking in exactly the tones they
used at lunch, and laughing with exactly the same laughs.
Their life seemed to accord them perfect satisfaction ;
they were supplied with their convictions by Society
just as, when at home, they were supplied with all the
other necessaries of life by the Army and Navy Stores.
Their fairly good-looking faces, with the fairly kind
expressions, quickly and carefully regulated by a due
and paramount sense of compromise, became so dis-
tasteful to him that when compelled to be in the same

SUB ROSA 253

room he would even read to get away from the necessity
of looking at them. And yet they were kind — that is,
fairly kind, with an unoriginal kindness — and clean and
quiet in the house, except when they laughed, which
was often, and at things which made him want to howl,
as a dog howls at music.

' Mr. Shelton,' said Ferrand one day, meeting him in
the road to the village, ' I'm not an amateur of marriage
— never had the chance, as you may suppose; but in any
case, you have some people in the house who would
make me mark time before I committed it. They seem
the ideal young married people — don't quarrel, have
perfect health, agree with everybody, go to church, and
have children — but I should very much like to be told
what is beautiful in their life. On the contrary ' — and
he contorted his mouth in a grimace — ' it seems to me
so ugly that I can only gasp. I would much rather
they ill-treated each other, just to show they had the
corner of a soul. If that is marriage, Dieu m'en garde !'

But Shelton did not reply ; he was thinking too
deeply.

The saying of John Noble's, ' He's really a most
awfully interesting person,' daily grew to be more on his
nerves, for it seemed to sum up an indescribable some-
thing in the attitude of all the Dennant family towards
the stranger within their gates. They treated him with
a sort of superior wonder on the ' don't touch ' system,
Hke an object in an exhibition. The restoration, how-
ever, of his self-respect proceeded with success. It is
true that the semblance of having outgrown Shelton's
clothes, his detached air, his vividly burnt face, and the
quick but carefully checked play of cynicism upon his
lips, introduced a suggestion of danger into the family

254 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

circle ; but, on the whole, he did much credit to his
patrons. He had subdued his terror of using a razor,
and looked particularly well in a suit of Shelton's
flannels. After all, he had only been eight years exiled
from the frac and other implements of, at all events
middle-class, gentihty, and part of that time he had
been a waiter. None the less, Shelton wished him at
the devil. Not because of his manners — for he was
never tired of watching the subtlety with which the
young foreigner adapted himself to the point of view of
his hosts, while preserving always the flavour of non-
acceptance which distilled from his every movement —
but because that very non-acceptance, that very
subtlety, were constant spurs to his own vision, in-
ducing him to dissect the life into which he had been
born and was about to marry. The process was uncom-
fortable. He asked himself when it had commenced,
and he had to go back to the first moment of his
meeting with Ferrand on the journey from Dover to
London.

There was certainly kindness in a hospitality which
opened its doors to so strange a bird, but once he had
admitted the kindness, Shelton fell to analyzing it.
Surely to himself, to people of his class, the use of
kindness was a luxury, significant of no sacrifice, and
productive of a pleasant feeling in the heart, such
as massage will set up in the calves of the legs.
' Besides,' he thought, ' everybody is kind. The
question is : What understanding is there, what real
sympathy ?' The attempt to solve this problem gave
him much food for thought.

The improvement which Mrs. Dennant not un-
frequently commented on, the triumphant conquest of

SUB ROSA 255

his position by Ferrand, merely seemed to Shelton
signs that he was making the most of his sudden fall
into green pastures; under similar circumstances,
Shelton reflected, he himself would have done the same.
All this in the young foreigner he felt to be a con-
venient bow to property, and he had more respect for
the sarcastic smile which he suspected Ferrand to be
wearing at heart.

It was not long before a gradual yet sure change
came over the spirit of the situation, and more and
more Shelton grew conscious of a quaint uneasiness in
the very breathing of the household.

' Curious fellow you've got hold of there, Shelton,'
said Mr. Dennant to him one day during a game of
croquet; ' he'll never do any good for himself, I'm afraid.'
' In one sense I'm afraid not,' admitted Shelton.
' Do you know his story ? I will bet you sixpence ' —
and Mr. Dennant paused to swing his mallet with
proper accuracy — 'that he's been in prison.'
' Prison !' ejaculated Shelton.

' I think,' said Mr. Dennant, with bent knees care-
fully measuring for his next shot, ' that you ought to
make inquiries — ah! missed it ! Awkward these hoops!'
he cocked a judicial eye at the hoop — ' one must draw
the line somewhere.'

' I never could draw,' returned Shelton, nettled and
uneasy ; ' but I quite understand — I'll give him a
hint to go.'

' Don't,' said Mr. Dennant, moving after his second
ball, which Shelton had despatched to the farther end
of the ground, ' be offended, my dear Shelton, and by
no means give him a hint ; he interests me very much —
a very nice quiet young fellow.'

256 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

That this was not his private opinion Shelton in-
ferred from a study of Mr. Dennant's manner whenever
he found himself in the presence of his vagabond guest.
Underlying the well-bred banter of the tranquil voice,
the quiescent and quizzical mask of the pale brown face,
could be detected a throb of uneasiness, a suspicion that
he, Algernon Cuffe Dennant, J. P., accustomed to laugh
at other people, was being laughed at. What more
natural than that he should grope for the reason of
such a phenomenon ! A nondescript foreigner was
affecting the nerves of an English Justice of the Peace
— no small tribute to the biting and intrusive flavour of
Ferrand's personality. The latter would sit silent
throughout a lunch, and yet make what the novelists
call ' an effect.' He, the object of their kindness,
curiosity, education, and patronage, inspired — fear.
There was no longer any doubt ; it was'not of Ferrand
they were afraid, but of the ' unintelligible ' in him ; of
some horrid subtlety passing through the brain under
that long, straight, wet-looking hair; of something
bizarre and unconventional suddenly popping out from
the curving lips below that thin, lopsided nose.

But to Shelton in this, as in everything else, Antonia
was the crux of the matter. At first anxious to show
her faith in her lover, she seemed unable to do enough
for the young foreigner, as though she had set her
heart on his salvation ; but in watching her eyes when
they rested on Ferrand, Shelton was perpetually re-
minded of her remark on the first day of his visit to
Holm Oaks : ' I suppose he's really good — I mean all
those things you told me about were only. ..."

Curiosity never left her glance, nor that story of
his four days' starvation her mind ; a sentimental

SUB ROSA 257

picturesqueness clung about that incident many times
more valuable than the mere human being with whom
she had so strangely come into contact. There was
tragedy in the way she watched Ferrand and in the way
Shelton watched her. If he had been told that he was
watching her, he would have denied it in good faith ;
but, as a matter of fact, it was too grimly interesting to
him to find out with what eyes she viewed this visitor
who embodied all the rebellious under-side of life, all
that was absent in herself, and he was bound to watch
her.

' Dick,' she said to him one day, ' you never talk to
me about Monsieur Ferrand.'

' Do you want to talk about him ?' replied Shelton.

' Don't you think he's improved ?'

' He's fatter.'

Antonia looked grave.

' No, but really improved ?'

' I don't know,' said Shelton ; ' I can't judge him.'

Antonia plucked at the edge of her blouse ; her face
was averted, but something in her attitude alarmed him.

' He was once a sort of gentleman,' she said suddenly ;
' why shouldn't he become one again ?'

Sitting on the low wall of the fruit garden, her head
was framed, as in an old ItaHan picture, by a halo of
golden plums. The light, low in the west, lay barred
behind the dense foliage of the holm-oak, but a little
patch filtering through a gap had rested in the heart of
the plum-tree Hke a crown to the girl's long-hmbed
figure, and the hues of her raiment, with the dark of
the leaves, the red of the wall, the gold of the plums,
and the passionate passing glow, were woven into a
deep block of pagan colour, whence her face was dis-

17

258 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

engaged, meeting the eye, chaste and serene with its
steadfast profile, in the deep, sweet scentlessness of the
summer evening. A bird amongst the currant-bushes
kept a sensuous chant vibrating through the tree, till
all its shape and colour seemed alive.

' Perhaps he doesn't want to become a gentleman,'
said Shelton.

Antonia swung her foot impatiently.

' How can he help wanting to ?' she exclaimed.

' He may have a different philosophy of life.'

Antonia was slow to answer this.

' I don't know anything about philosophies of life,'
she said at last.

' Well,' he answered coldly, ' everyone has a different
philosophy of life.'

With the falling sun-glow the charm had passed off
the tree. Chilled and harder, yet less deep, it was no
longer a block of woven colour, old and soft and im-
passive, like the careless warmth of a goddess ; it was
now only a northern tree, with a gray light through the
green of its leaves — the gray, cool light of Antonia's eyes.

' I don't in the least understand,' she said ; ' everyone
wants to be good.'

' And safe ?' queried Shelton gently.

Antonia stared.

' Suppose,' he said — 'I don't pretend to know him;
I only say suppose — what Ferrand really cares for is
doing things differently from other people ? If you were
to load him with a character and give him plenty of
money on condition that he acted as we all act, do
you think he would observe your condition ?'

' Why not ?'

' Ah ! why isn't a cat a dog, or a pagan a Christian ?'

SUB ROSA 259

Antonia slid from the wall.

' You don't seem to think there's any use in trying,'
she said, turning away.

Shelton made a movement as if he would go after
her, and then stood still, watching her figure slowly
pass beside the wall, her head outlined in the sober
light above it, and her hands turned back on her narrow
hips. She halted a moment at the bend and looked
behind her; then, with an impatient gesture, disap-
peared. Antonia was slipping away from him.

A glimpse from a point outside himself would have
shown him that it was he who was moving, and she
standing still, like the figure of one standing by a
stream watching its inevitable passage with clear,
direct, and sullen eyes.

17 — a

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE RIVER

One day towards the end of August Shelton took
Antonia alone upon the river — the river that, Hke soft
music, balances and soothes the land, where the reeds
and poplars, the silver swan-sails, sun and moon,
woods, and the white slumbrous clouds, have conspired
a poem ; where cuckoos, the wind, pigeons, and the
weirs are always singing or tuning for a song, and in
the flash of a naked body, the play of water-lily leaves,
queer goblin stumps, and the twilight face of Pan
through twisted tree-roots, shines the whole free world
that never existed, yet always will exist.

The reach down which Shelton paddled was innocent
of launches, champagne bottles, and loud laughter ; it
was an uncivilized reach, and seldom troubled by such
humanizing influences. He paddled slowly, silent and
absorbed, watching Antonia. An unaccustomed languor
clung about her ; her eyes had shadows, as though she
had not slept ; the colour glowed soft in her cheeks,
and the stuff of her white frock seemed alight with
golden radiance. She made Shelton pull into the reeds,
and plucked two of the rounded lilies saihng like ships
against the slow-moving water. On her lap in their
white and golden insularity they seemed emblems of the
spirit that hovered round her.

260

THE RIVER 261

' Pull into the shade, Dick,' she said ; 'it's too hot out
here.'

The brim of her linen hat kept the sun from her face,
but her head was drooping like the head of a flower at
noon.

Shelton saw that the heat really affected her, as too
hot a day will dim the clear iciness of a northern plant.
His sculls started ripples that leaped from the stroke,
and swam in grave diminuendo till they touched the
banks.

He shot the boat into a bushy cleft, and, shipping his
sculls, caught the branch of an overhanging tree. The
skiff, with a mutinous vibration, rested motionless, save
for the stir of balancing movement which gives to a boat
its likeness to a living thing.

' I should hate to live in London,' said Antonia
suddenly ; ' the slums must be so awful. What a pity,
when there are places like this ! But it's no good
thinking.'

'No,' answered Shelton slowly ; ' I suppose it is no
good.'

'There are some bad cottages at the lower end of
Cross Eaton. I went there one day with Miss True-
cote. The people won't help themselves. It's so
discouraging to help people who won't help them-
selves.'

She was leaning her elbows on her knees, and, with
her chin resting on her hands, gazed up at Shelton.
All around them hung a tent of green, thick and soft,
and below swam a mirror of water, dyed to its very
depth with green refraction. Willow boughs swaying
out over the boat caressed Antonia's arms and shoulders ;
her face and hair alone were free, and, hke those of an

262 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

island spirit, ruled their environment, content, and
chaste, and unsubdued.

' So discouraging,' she repeated.

' It's all a mystery,' said Shelton.

Antonia neither spoke nor moved ; a silence, close as
the thicket of the leaves, enveloped them ; she seemed
thinking deeply.

' Doubts don't help you,' she said suddenly ; ' how
can you get any good out of them ? The only thing is
to win victories.'

'Victories?' said Shelton. 'I'd rather understand
things and let them slide.'

He had risen to his feet, his brown fist grasping a
stunted branch, and canting the boat's nose deeper into
the bank.

' How can you say that, Dick ? Let things slide ! It's
like Monsieur Ferrand.'

' Have you such a bad opinion of him ?' asked Shelton.
He felt on the verge of some discovery.

Antonia thrust her chin deeper into her hands ; there
was the impatience in the movement that comes before
an attempt to free the mind.

'I hked him at first,' she said; 'I thought he
was different. I thought he couldn't really be '

' Really be what ?' asked Shelton eagerly.

But Antonia did not answer.

' I don't know,' she said at last. ' I can't explain
what I mean. I thought '

Shelton still stood holding the branch, and the oscilla-
tion of the boat freed a constant infinity of tiny ripples
that glided over the green mirage under the branches
towards the flowing water outside. I n spite of an instinct
to keep silence, he asked :

THE RIVER 263

' You thought— what ?'

He ought to have seen something pathetic in her
face as she looked up at him ; it had grown younger,
more childish, even timid. She said in a voice smooth
and round and young, as if touchingly she were liber-
ating her soul :

' You know, Dick, I do think we ought to try. I
know I don't try half hard enough. It doesn't do any
good thinking ; when you think, everything seems so
mixed, as if there were nothing to lay hold of. I do so
hate to feel like that. It isn't as if we didn't know what
was right. Sometimes I think, and think, and it's all
no good, only a waste of time, and you feel at the end
as if you had been doing wrong.'

Shelton frowned.

' What hasn't been through fire is no good,' he said
dully, and, letting go the branch, he sat down. The
boat, freed from restraint, edged out towards the cur-
rent. ' But what about Ferrand ?'

' I lay awake last night wondering what it is makes
you like him? He is so bitter; he makes me feel
unhappy. He never seems contented with anything.
And he despises ' — her face hardened — ' I mean, he
hates us all.'

' So should I if I were he,' said Shelton.

The boat drifted along the bank, and gleams of sun-
light chased over their faces. Antonia went on :

* He seems to be always looking at dark things, or
else he looks as if— as if he could— enjoy himself too
much. I thought— I thought at first,' she stammered,
' that we could do him good.'

' Do him good ! Ha, ha !'

His laughter startled a rat that shot into the water,

264 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

and went swimming for its life against the stream ; and
he suddenly saw that he had done what he should not
have done — had done an unpardonable thing : let her
with a jerk into a secret hitherto unacknowledged even
by himself — the secret that her eyes were not his, her
way of looking at things not his way of looking at them,
nor ever would be. He quickly muffled his laughter.
After one look Antonia had dropped her eyes ; her
figure had regained its indifferent languor, but the bosom
of her dress heaved, as though she were moved. Shelton
watched her, racking his brains to explain away that
fatal laugh, but he could not. It was one of those
clear brutalities that come from the heart, a little piece
of truth, and, as such, indelible. He paddled slowly on,
close to the bank, in one of the long silences of the river.

The breeze had died away, not a fish was rising,
and but for the lost music of the larks no birds were
piping ; alone, a single pigeon at brief intervals cooed
complacently from a neighbouring wood.

They did not stay much longer in the boat.

On the homeward journey in the pony-cart, rounding
a corner of the road, they came upon Ferrand in his
pince-nez, holding a cigarette between his fingers and
talking to a tramp, who was squatting on the bank and
also smoking a cigarette. The young foreigner recog-
nised them, and at once removed his hat.

' There he is,' muttered Shelton, acknowledging the
salute.

Antonia bowed.

' Oh !' she cried, when they were out of hearing, ' I
wish he'd go. I can't bear to see him ; it's like looking
at the dark.'

CHAPTER XXIX

ON THE WING

That night, after he had gone up to his room, Shelton
filled his pipe for the unpleasant duty before him. He
had made up his mind to tell Ferrand to put an end to
his visit. He was still debating whether he should
write or go down to the young foreigner's room, when
there came a knock at the door, and the latter himself
appeared.

' I should be sorry,' said Ferrand, breaking an awk-
ward silence, ' if you were to think me ungrateful, but I
don't see any future for me here. It would be better
for me to go. I should never be content to pass my
life teaching languages — ce n'estguere dans mon caractere.'

As soon as what he had been cudgelling his brains to
find a way of saying had thus been said for him, Shelton
experienced a sense of disapproval.

' What do you expect to get that's better ?' said he
brutally, and avoiding the young foreigner's eyes.

' Thanks to your kindness,' replied the latter, ' I find
myself restored, and feel that I ought to make some
good efforts to dominate my social position.'

' I should think it well over, if I were you,' said
Shelton.

' I have, and it seems to me that I'm wasting my
time. For a man with any courage languages are not

265

266 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

a career ; and, though I've many defects, I still have
courage.'

Shelton put his pipe down in silence. The belief of
Ferrand in his career was pathetic ; it was not an
assumed belief, but neither was it, he felt, the true
motive of his departure. ' He's tired,' he thought ;
'that's it. He wants to be off.' And having the in-
stinctive conviction that nothing would keep Ferrand,
he redoubled his cautions.

' I should have thought,' said he, ' that you would
have done better to have held on and saved a little
before going off to goodness knows where.'

'I've never been able to save,' replied Ferrand — 'that's
impossible for me — but, thanks to you and your good
friends, I've enough to make front to the first necessi-
ties. I'm in correspondence with a friend; it's of great
importance for me to reach Paris before all the world
returns. I've a chance to get a post in one of the West
African companies. One makes fortunes out there —
if one survives, and, as you know, I don't set much
store by my life.'

' We have a proverb,' said Shelton : ' " A bird in the
hand is worth two in the bush !" '

' Like all proverbs,' returned Ferrand, ' that's a half-
truth. All these things are an affair of temperament.
It's not in my character to dandle one when I see two
waiting to be caught ; voyager, apprendre, c'est phis fort
que moi.' He paused, then, with a nervous goggle of the
eyes and an ironical smile, continued : ' Besides, my
dear Monsieur Shelton, it will be better for me to go.
I have never been one to rock myself with illusions, and
I see pretty clearly that my presence is hardly accept-
able in this house.'

ON THE WING 267

' What makes you say that ?' asked Shelton, feeling
that the murder was out.

' My dear sir, all the world has not your understand-
ing and absence of prejudice, and though your friends
have been so extremely kind to me, I am in a false
position ; I cause them embarrassment, which is not
extraordinary when you reflect what I have been, and
that they know my history.'

' Not through me,' said Shelton quickly, ' for I don't
know it myself.'

' It's enough,' said the young foreigner, ' that they
feel I'm not a bird of their feather. They cannot
change, and I cannot change either ; I have never
wanted to remain where I'm not welcome.'

Shelton turned to the window, and, leaning his chin
on his hands, stared out into the darkness ; he would
never quite fathom this singular compound of delicacy
and cynicism, and he wondered whether or no Ferrand
had smothered the words : ' Why, even you won't be
sorry to see my back!'

' Well,' he said at last, ' if you must go, you must.
When do you start ?'

' I've arranged with a man to carry my things to the
early train in the morning. I think it better not to say
good-bye. I've written a letter instead; here it is. I
left it open for you to read if you wish.'

' Then,' said Shelton, with a curious rush of relief,
and regret, and goodwill, ' I shan't see you again ?'

Ferrand passed his hand stealthily down his trousers
and held it out.

' I shall never forget what you have done for me,' he
said.

' Mind^you write,' said Shelton.

268 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' Yes, yes '—the young foreigner's face was oddly con-
torted — ' you don't know what a difference it makes to
have' a correspondent ; it gives one courage. I hope to
remain a long time in correspondence with you.'

' I dare say you do,' thought Shelton grimly, but with
a certain queer emotion.

' You will do me the justice to remember that I have
never asked you for anything,' said Ferrand. ' Thank
you a thousand times. Good-bye !'

He again wrung Shelton's hand in his damp grasp,
and, going out, left Shelton with a lump in his throat.
' You will do me the justice to remember that I have
never asked you for anything.' The phrase exercised a
stupefying effect on him, and his mind flew back over
all his relations with the young foreigner. It was a
fact : from beginning to end he had never actually
asked Shelton for anything. Amazing ! He turned
away from the door, and, sitting on his bed, began to
read the letter Ferrand had left in his hand. It was
written, as usual, in French.

' Dear Madame (it ran),

' It will be insupportable to me, after your kind-
ness, if you take me for ungrateful. Unfortunately, a
crisis has arisen which plunges me into the necessity
of leaving your hospitality. In all lives, as you are
doubtless aware, there arise circumstances that one
cannot control, and I know you will pardon me that I
enter into no explanation on an event which gives me
great chagrin, and, above all, renders me subject to an
imputation of ingratitude, which, believe me, dear
Madame, by no means lies in my character. I know
well enough that it is a breach of politeness to leave

ON THE WING 269

you without in person conveying the expression of my
profound reconnaissance, but if you consider how hard
it is for me to be compelled to abandon all that is so
distinguished in the domestic life, you will forgive my
weakness. People like me, who have gone through
existence with their eyes open, have been obliged to
remark that those who are endowed with riches have a
right to look down on such as are not by wealth and
breeding fitted to occupy the same position. I shall never
dispute a right so natural and salutary, seeing that with-
out this distinction, this superiority, which makes of the
well-born and the well-bred a race apart, the rest of the
world would have no standard by which to rule their
lives, no anchor to throw into the depths of that vast
sea of fortune and misfortune in which we others drive
before the wind. It is because of this, dear Madame,
that I regard myself so doubly fortunate to have been
able for a few minutes in this bitter pilgrimage called
life to sit beneath the tree of security. To have been
able, if only for an hour, to sit and see the pilgrims pass,
all the pilgrims with blistered feet and ragged garments,
and who yet, dear Madame, guard in their hearts a
certain joy in life, an illegitimate joy, unknown in
houses, like the desert air which travellers tell you fills
men as with wine — to be able thus to sit for an hour,
and with a complacent smile to watch them pass, lame
and blind, in all the rags of their deserved misfortunes,
can you not conceive, dear Madame, how that must be
for such as me a great pleasure ? Whatever one may
say, it is always sweet, from a position of security, to
watch the sufferings of others; it gives one a good
sensation in the heart.

' In writing this, I remember that I myself once had

270 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

the chance of passing all my life in this enviable security,
and as you may imagine, dear Madame, I curse myself
that I should ever have had the courage to step beyond
the boundaries of this fine tranquil existence. Certainly
there have been times during my life when I have asked
myself: " Is there really any difference between the
wealthy and us others, birds of the fields, who have
perhaps our own opinions, grown from the pains of
being a httle in want of bread, who see that the human
heart is not always an affair of figures, or of these good
maxims that one finds in copy-books — is there really any
difference ?" It is with shame that I confess to have
put to myself a question so heretical. But now, when
for these three or four weeks I have had the delight of
resting under your roof, I see how wrong I was to
entertain such doubts. It is a great happiness to me
to have decided this point, for it is not in my character
to pass through life uncertain — mistaken, perhaps — on
psychological matters such as these. No, Madame ;
you may rest happily assured that there is a great differ-
ence, which in the future will be sacred for me. For,
believe me, Madame, it would be a calamity for high
Society if by chance there should arise amongst them
any unfortunate understanding of all that side of life
which, vast as the plains, bitter as the sea, now black
as the ashes of a corpse, and sometimes more free than
the wings of a bird that flies away, is so justly beyond
the conception of their philosophy. Yes, believe me,
dear Madame, there is no danger in the world so much
to be dreaded as this by all the members of that circle,
most illustrious and respectable, which is called high
Society.

' From what I have said you may imagine how hard

ON THE WING 271

it is for me to take my flight. I shall always keep for
you the most distinguished sentiments. With the ex-
pression of my full regard for yourself and your good
family, and of a gratitude as sincere as it is badly ex-
pressed,

' Believe me, dear Madame,
' Your very devoted

' Louis Ferrand.'

On finishing, Shelton's first impulse was to tear the
letter up; but he reflected that he had no right to do
this, and that Mrs. Dennant's French was orthodox.
He felt sure she would never understand the young
foreigner's subterranean innuendoes. He closed the
envelope and got into bed, still haunted by Ferrand's
parting look.

It was with no small feeling of embarrassment, how-
ever, that, having despatched the letter to its destina-
tion by an early footman, he made his appearance at
the breakfast-table on the following morning. From
behind an expensive Viennese coffee-urn, filled with
French coffee, Mrs. Dennant, who had just placed four
eggs in a German egg-boiler, looked round at him with
a kindly smile.

' Dick, an egg ?' she said, holding up a fifth.

' No, thank you,' replied Shelton, hastily greeting the
table and dropping into a seat.

He was a little late, and the babble of conversation
rose hilariously around him.

' My dear,' continued Mr. Dennant, who was talking
to his youngest daughter, 'you'll have no chance
whatever against us — not the least little bit of
chance.'

272 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' Father, what nonsense ! You know we shall beat
your heads off!'

' Before it's too late, then, I will eat a muffin.
Shelton, pass the muffins, that's a good fellow !' But
in making this request Mr. Dennant avoided his
guest's eye.

Shelton glanced at Antonia ; she, too, seemed to
avoid looking at him. She was talking to an Authority
on Art about supernatural appearances, and seemed in
the highest spirits. He rose, and, going to the side-
board, helped himself to cold grouse.

' Who was the young man I saw yesterday on the
lawn ?' he heard the Authority on Art ask as he came
back to his place. ' He struck me as having an — er—
quite intelligent face.'

His own quite intelligent face, raised at a slight slant
so as to look with greater accuracy through his gold
nose-nippers, was the very pattern of ironical approval.
' It's a curious thing how often one meets with inteUi-
gence,' it seemed to say.

Mrs. Dennant paused in the act of adding cream to
his cup, and Shelton fixed his eyes on her face ; its hare-
like superiority was unchanged. Thank goodness she
had smelt no rat in the letter ! He felt strangely dis-
appointed.

' Oh, do you mean Monsieur Ferrand,' she said,
' teachin' Toddles French ? Dobson, Professor Brayne's

cup.'

' I hope I shall see him again,' cooed the Authority ;
' he was quite interesting on the subject of young
German working men. It seems they tramp from place
to place to learn their trades. What nationality was he,
if I may ask ?'

ON THE WING 273

Mr. Dennant, at whom this question was aimed, lifted
his quizzical brows, and said :

' Ask Shelton.'

' Half Dutch, half French,' muttered the latter.

' Very interesting combination ; I hope I shall see
him again.'

• Well, you won't,' said Thea suddenly from her seat
next her father ; ' he's gone.'

Shelton saw that good breeding — good breeding
which was partly good breeding and partly superiority
to the consciousness of having feelings at all — alone
prevented them all from saying : ' Thank goodness !'

' Gone ? Dear me ! it's very '

' Yes,' murmured Mr. Dennant, ' it's very sudden.'

' Now, Algie,' said Mrs. Dennant, ' it's quite a charmin'
letter he wrote me.'

' Oh, mother !' cried Antonia.

And Shelton felt his face go crimson. He had
suddenly remembered that her French was better than
her mother's.

' He seems to have had some singular experiences,'
said the Authority on Art.

'Yes,' echoed Mr. Dennant ; 'he's had some singular
experiences. If you want to know all the details.
Professor, ask our friend Shelton ; it's quite a romance.
In the meantime, my dear, may I have another cup ?'

The Authority on Art, who was not devoid of a certain
absent-minded malice, spurred his curiosity to a further
effort, and, turning his well-defended eyes on Shelton,
murmured :

' Well, Mr. Shelton, you are the historian, it seems.'

' There is no history,' said Shelton, without look-
ing up.

18

274 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' Ah, that's very dull,' cooed the Authority on Art.
' My dear Dick,' said Mrs. Dennant, ' that was really
a most touchin' story about his goin' without food in
Paris.'

Shelton shot another look at Antonia ; her face was
full of malicious curiosity. Something within him flamed

up. ' I hate your d d superiority !' thought he,

staring the Authority on Art in the face.

'There's nothing,' said that gentleman, ' more interest-
ing than starvation. Come, Mr. Shelton.'

' I can't tell stories,' said Shelton ; ' never could.'

At that moment he cared not a straw for Ferrand, his
coming, his going, or his history. His heart felt like
lead.

CHAPTER XXX

THE LADY FROM BEYOND

The morning was sultry, a brooding, steamy morning.
Antonia had gone to her music, and from the room
where Shelton endeavoured to fix his attention on a
book he could hear her practising scales with a cold
fury that had the power of casting additional dejection
on his spirit. He did not see her till lunch, and then
she again sat next to the Authority on Art. Her cheeks
were pale, there was something feverish in the way she
chattered to her neighbour, but she still refused to look
at Shelton. He felt very miserable. After lunch, when
most of the party had left the table, an uncanny pre-
lude occurred to an incident which befell later.

There had been a discussion upon the advantages of
having neighbours in the country.

' Of course,' said Mrs. Dennant, ' there are the
Foliots ; but then nobody calls on them.'

'Ah!' murmured the Authority, 'the Foliots — the
Foliots — the people — er — who — quite so !'

' It's really distressin', she looks so sweet ridin'
about. Many people with worse stories get called
upon,' continued Mrs. Dennant, with that large frank-
ness of intrusion upon doubtful subjects which may
always be made by the best people in a certain way :

275 18—2

276 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' But, after all, one couldn't ask them to meet any-
body.'

' Exactly,' assented the Authority. ' I used to know
Foliot. A thousand pities. They say she was a very
pretty woman.'

' Oh, not pretty!' said Mrs. Dennant — ' more interest-
in' lookin', I should say.'

Shelton, who remembered the lady in question,
noticed that they spoke of her in the past tense. He
did not look at Antonia ; for though troubled at her
presence while such a subject was being discussed, he
hated his conviction that her face was as unruffled as
though the Foliots had been a separate species. There
was, in fact, a faint curiosity about her eyes, a faint
impatience about her lips ; she was rolling little crumbs
of bread, and suddenly yawning, she muttered some-
thing, and rose. Shelton intercepted her at the door.

' Where are you going ?' he asked.

' For a walk.'

' Mayn't I come ?'

She shook her head.

' I'm going to take Toddles.'

Shelton held the door open for her, and returned to
his seat at the table.

' Yes,' said the Authority, sipping his sherry, ' I'm
afraid it's all up with young Foliot.'

' Such a pity !' murmured Mrs. Dennant, and her
kindly face looked disturbed. ' I've known him ever
since he was a boy. Of course, I think he made a great
mistake to bring her down here. Not even bein' able
to get married makes it so doubly awkward. Oh, I
think he made a great mistake.'

' Ah !' said the Authority, ' but d'you suppose that

THE LADY FROM BEYOND 277

makes much difference ? Even if What's-his-name gave
her a divorce, I don't think, you know, that '

' Oh, it does make a difference ! So many people
would be inclined to look over it in time. But as it is
it's quite hopeless. It's so very awkward for people,
too, meetin' them about. The Telfords and the
Butterwicks — by the way, they're comin' to dinner to-
night — live quite near them, you know.'

' Did you ever meet her before — er — before — the
flood ?' asked the Authority ; his lips parting and un-
expectedly revealing his teeth gave him a shadowy —
ever so shadowy — resemblance to a goat.

' Yes ; I |did ^meet her once at the Branksomes'. I
thought her quite a charmin' person.'

' Poor fellow !' said the Authority vaguely ; ' they tell
me he was going to have taken the hounds.'

' And there are those delightful coverts of his. Algie
often used to shoot there, and now they say he just has
his brother to shoot with him. Oh, it's really too
melancholy ! Did you know him, Dick ?'

' Foliot?' replied Shelton absently. ' No; I never met
him. I've seen her, of course, once or twice at Ascot.'

Through the window he had caught sight of Antonia
in her scarlet tam-o'-shanter, swinging her stick, and
he got up with an appearance of unconcern, and went
to the window. Just then Toddles came running out
of the house, and bounded up against his sister. They
went off arm in arm. Shelton saw that she knew he
was at the window, yet she gave him no friendly glance ;
he felt more than ever miserable. He threw open the
French window and stepped out upon the drive ; there
was something lurid and gloomy in the upper air ; the
elms had a heavy blackness of outline, still and distinct ;

278 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

the wonted rustle of the aspen-tree was gone, and even
the rooks were silent. A store of undischarged elec-
tricity lay heavy on the heart of Nature. He paced
slowly up and down, his pride forbidding him to go to
the gate and look after her, and presently sat down on
a stone seat under the house fronting the road. He
remained there a long while staring up at the elms,
asking himself what he had done and what he ought to
do. And somehow he was afraid. A sense of loneli-
ness was upon him, so real and painful that he shivered
in the sweltering heat. He was there, perhaps, an hour,
quite alone, and without seeing a soul pass along the
road, when there came the sound of a horse's hoofs,
and at the same moment he heard a motor-car
approaching from the opposite direction. The eques-
trian made her appearance first, riding a gray horse
with the high-set tail of an Arab. She was holding
him with difficulty, for the whirr of the approaching
car grew momentarily louder. Shelton rose from the
bench ; the car flashed by. He saw the horse stagger
and rear in the gateway, crushing, as it seemed, its
rider against the gate-post.

He started to run, but before he reached the gate the
lady was on foot, holding the plunging horse by the
bridle.

' I hope you aren't hurt !' cried Shelton breathlessly,
and he, too, made a grab at the bridle : ' Those beastly
cars !'

' I don't know,' she said. ' Please don't ; he won't let
a stranger touch him.'

Shelton let go, and, standing back, watched her coax
the horse to a standstill. She was rather tall, dressed
in a gray habit, with a gray Russian-shaped cap upon

THE LADY FROM BEYOND 279

her head, and he suddenly recognised in her the Mrs.
FoHot of whom they had been speaking at lunch.

' He'll be quiet now,' she said, ' if you wouldn't mind
holding him a minute.'

She gave him the reins, and leaned against the gate.
She was very pale.

' I do hope he hasn't hurt you,' said Shelton. He
was not more than a couple of yards from her, and well
able to see her face — a curious face, with high cheek-
bones and a flattish moulding, listless, enigmatic, but
with something unexpectedly passionate in its paleness.
Her lips, compressed till they were lines of pallor,
smiled; pallid, too, were her gray, deep-set eyes with
greenish tints ; and, above all, pale was the ashy mass
of hair coiled under her gray cap. ' I do hope you're
not hurt,' he repeated.

'Th — thanks!' she said; 'I shall be all right in
a minute. Will you lead him into the road ? I'm
sorry to have made such a fuss.'

She continued to bite her lips and smile that
travesty of a smile.

' I'm sure you're hurt ; do let me go for '

stammered Shelton. ' I mean, I can easily get help.'

' Help !' she said, with a little hard laugh ; ' oh no,
thanks !'

She turned away from the gate, and crossed the road
to where he was holding the horse. Shelton was
puzzled; to conceal his embarrassment he looked at
the horse's legs, and noticed that the gray was resting
one of them. He ran his hand down.

' I'm afraid,' he said, ' your horse has knocked his off
knee ; it's swelling already.'

She smiled again.

28o THE ISLAND PHARISEES

'Then we're both cripples,' she said.

' He'll be lame when he gets cold. Wouldn't you like
to put him up in the stables here ? I'm sure you ought
to drive home.'

' No, thanks ; if I'm able to ride him he ought to be
able to carry me. Would you give me a hand up ?'

Her voice sounded harder, as though something had
offended her; and rising from his inspection of the
horse's leg, Shelton saw Antonia and Toddles close by.
They had come through a wicket-gate leading from the
fields.

The latter ran up to him at once.

' We saw it,' he whispered — ' a jolly smash-up. Can't
I do something ?'

' Hold his bridle,' answered Shelton, and he looked
from one lady to the other.

There are moments when faces and expressions fix
themselves on the mind with a painful distinctness, and
this was one of such moments to Shelton. Those two
faces close together, under their respective headgear of
scarlet and gray, presented a contrast almost cruelly
vivid — a contrast such as is only seen in those phases
of Nature where the human being has been at work.
Antonia was flushed with the haste she had made ;
her eyes had grown deep blue ; the flash of startled
uncertainty had passed and left her face interrogative.

' Wouldn't you like to come in and wait ? We could
send you home in the brougham,' she said.

The lady called Mrs. Foliot stood with one arm across
the crupper of the saddle, biting her hps and still
smiling her enigmatic smile, and it was her visage that
remained most vividly on Shelton's mind, in its ashy
setting of hair, \vith its pallor, and its fixed, scornful eyes.

THE LADY FROM BEYOND 281

' Oh no, thanks !' she said ; ' you're very kind.'

The tone caused a complete change in the young
girl's face; the doubt, the confusion, the semi-friendliness,
the anxiety in it vanished, and were replaced by a mask
of hostility, and this expression seemed to embrace
Shelton too. After a long, cold look at them both she
turned away. Mrs. Foliot gave a little laugh, and
raised her foot for Shelton's assistance. He heard a
hiss of pain as he swung her into the saddle, but by
the time he stood upright she was smiling again.

' Anyway,' he said impatiently, ' let me come and see
that you don't break down.'

' No,' she answered ; ' it's only two miles. I'm not
made of sugar.'

' Then I shall simply have to follow.'

She shrugged her shoulders, and fixed a resolute look
on him.

' Would that boy like to come ?' she asked.

Toddles left his post at the horse's head.

' By Jove !' cried he, ' wouldn't I just !'

'Then,' she said, ' I think that '11 be best. You've
been awfully kind.'

She bowed, smiled once more her inscrutable smile,
touched the gray with her whip, and started with
Toddles trotting at her side.

Shelton was left with Antonia beneath the elms. A
puff of tepid air bathed their faces, as though it had
fallen from the bushy branches of the trees above, and
its breath seemed more than ever a warning of the
menace in the heavy purple of the heat clouds; low
rumbles of thunder travelled slowly from the horizon.

' We're going to have a storm,' he hazarded.

Antonia nodded. The flush had left her; she was

282 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

nearly as pale as the lady who had ridden away, and
her face still wore its look of cold offence.

' I've got a headache,' she said. ' I shall go in and
lie down,'

Shelton tried to speak, but he could not ; something
kept him silent — a sort of perverse wonder, a submission
to something that was coming to pass, like the mute
submission of the fields and birds to the menace of the
storm.

He watched her into the house, and went back to the
stone seat. And the silence seemed to grow, the flowers
even ceased to exude fragrance ; they, too, were numbed
by the weight of the air.

All the long house behind him seemed asleep or
deserted. No noise came forth, no laughter, the sound
of no music, not even the ringing of a bell ; the heat
had wrapped it round with an impenetrable drowsiness.
And the silence began to add to the solitude and op-
pression within ^him. What an unlucky chance, that
woman's accident ! Designed by Providence to put
Antonia further away from him than ever ! Why was
not the world entirely composed of immaculate persons ?
He rose and began to pace up and down, tortured by a
dreadful heartache.

' I must get rid of this,' he thought, ' at all costs. I'll
go for a good tramp, and chance getting caught in the
storm.'

As he left the drive he ran into Toddles returning
with a face as red as a turkey-cock.

' I saw her home,' he crowed. ' I say, she's a ripper !
She'll be as lame as a tree to-morrow ; so will the gee.
Jolly hot, isn't it ?'

This meeting showed Shelton that he had been an

THE LADY FROM BEYOND 283

hour upon the stone seat ; he had thought it had been
about ten minutes, and the discovery alarmed him. It
seemed to bring the seriousness of his fear — his inex-
plicable, miserable fear — suddenly home to him. He
started with a swinging stride, keeping his eyes reso-
lutely fixed on the road, and unconscious of the per-
spiration streaming down his face.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE STORM

It was past seven when Shelton returned from his walk;
the storm had not yet broken, a few heat drops had
splashed heavily on the leaves, and the brooding silence
recommenced. The world seemed prisoned beneath
the purple firmament drawing ever more menacingly
close.

By rapid walking in the heat he had sweated away
his despond, and ran up to his room to dress for dinner
with the eagerness of a man who is to see his mistress
after a long estrangement. He took a cold bath, and,
straightening his tie-ends, smiled at himself in the glass.
He thought of his fear, unhappiness, and doubts as a
man thinks of a bad dream, with the comfortable cer-
tainty of how much worse off he would have been had
it all been true.

It was the night of a dinner-party, and when he
reached the drawing-room the guests were already
assembled, chattering of the expected storm. Antonia
was not yet down, and Shelton stood by the piano lost
in the anticipation of her entry. Red faces, spotless
shirt-fronts, angular elbows, and freshly-twisted hair
were all around him, but he had no consciousness of
the persons to whom they belonged. Someone handed

284

THE STORM 285

him a buttonhole, a clove pink — one of those flowers
Antonia had declared suitable to him, and as he held it
absently to his nose she herself came in, breathless, as
though she had dressed hurriedly and rushed down-
stairs. Her cheeks, no longer languid and pale, glowed,
and her hand kept stealing to her throat. The fires
of the impending tempest seemed to have been lighted
within her beforehand, to be scorching her body, colour-
less in its white frock from head to foot, and as she
passed, so close that her skirt brushed his knee, her
fragrance burned his senses like a love-philtre.

She had never seemed to him so lovely.

Perhaps never again will Shelton breathe the perfume
of melons and pines without a sense of intoxication in
his blood. From where he sat at dinner he could not
see Antonia, and amidst the clatter of voices, the clink
of glass and silver, the sights and sounds and scents of
the feast, he kept thinking of the way he would go to her
and say that nothing in the world mattered but her love.
He paid little heed to the number of times the butler
filled his glass, but drank all he was given. The frosted,
pale-gold liquid of the champagne seemed Hke water,
after his walk.

The windows stood wide open in the heat, and the
world beyond was draped in a thick, soft blackness,
where only the trees could be discerned like blots of
pitch upon a blue-black curtain. Not a breath came
in, not a single candle-flame, tall above the flowers,
quivered, but two large moths, like creatures clinging
to hope, and fearful of the heavy dark, flew in and
began wheeling above the table between the lights over
the heads of the guests, whose necks they fanned with
their wings. One fell scorched into a dish of fruit, and

286 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

was borne away ; but the other, eluding the swish of
napkins and the efforts of the footmen, continued to
make its soft, fluttering rushes at the flame of a centre
candle, till, at the request of his neighbour, Shelton
rose and caught it in his hand. He took it to the
window and threw it into the darkness, and he noticed
that the air was thick and tepid to his face, like
lukewarm water. At a sign from Mr. Dennant the
muslin curtains were drawn across the windows, and
in recognition, perhaps, of this protection, this frothy,
dainty barrier between them and the muffled terrors of
Nature, everyone broke out with a renewed vigour of
talk. It was such a night as comes sometimes after a
long spell of fine weather, frightening in its heat, and in
its silence broken by the intoning of distant thunder
that came travelling low along the ground like the
mutinous muttering of all the dark places of hfe — such
a night as seems, with its very breathlessness, to
smother light, with its menace of fate to justify
cowardice itself.

The ladies rose at last, and Shelton, who stood by
the door, scarcely breathed as Antonia passed. He
returned to the table. The circle of rosewood, divested
of its cloth, strewn with flowers and silver gilt, bore to
his fancy a resemblance to some autumn pool whose
brown depths of oily water gleam under the sunset
with red and yellow leaves, and above it in the heat the
smoke of cigarettes clung, like a mist to the top of water
when the sun goes down. A queer exaltation had come
over him, and he became involved in an argument with
his neighbour on the English character — of all subjects
to choose in an English country house.

' In England we've mislaid the recipe of life,' he said

THE STORM 287

slowly. ' Pleasure, you know, is a lost art. We don't
get drunk, we're ashamed of love, and as to beauty,
we've lost the eye for it. In exchange we've got money,
but what's the good of money when we don't know how
to spend it ?' and, excited by the smile on his neigh-
bour's lips, he went on : ' And as to thought, we're so
occupied in thinking of what our neighbours are thinking
that we never think at all. Have you ever watched a
foreigner's eyes when he's listening to an Englishman ?
We're in the habit of despising foreigners, but, by Jove !
the contempt we have for them is nothing to the
contempt they have for us. It worries me that we
should give them the chance. And they're perfectly
right ! Look at our taste : we haven't any. What's
the good of having possessions if we don't know how to
enjoy them ?'

' That's rather new to me,' said his neighbour. ' It's
interesting ; there may be something in what you say.
Did you see that case in the papers the other day of old
Hornblower, who left the 1820 port that fetched a
guinea a bottle ? When the purchaser — poor feller !—
came to drink it he found eleven bottles out of twelve
completely uUaged— ha ! ha! Well, there's nothing
wrong with this ;' and he drained his glass.

' No,' replied Shelton, relapsing into gloom.

When they rose to join the ladies he lingered.
Instead of leaving the room with the others, he parted
the curtains and went out on to the gravel terrace.

Black and breathless, the night seemed to envelop
him in a bath of heat. A heavy odour, sensual and
sinister in its mordant fascination, filled the air, as
from a sudden flowering of amorous shrubs. And he
stood drinking it in with greedy nostrils; he would have

288 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

liked to fling himself on the turf and roll. Putting his
hand down, he felt the grass ; it was dry, and gave an
electric sensation to the palm of his hand. Close by,
glowing with pale candescence, were three or four lilies,
the authors of that intoxicating perfume. The blossoms
seemed to be rising at him through the darkness, as
though putting up faces to be kissed. He straightened
himself abruptly, and returned to the house, wiping his
flushed face.

The guests had nearly all gone when Shelton, who
was watching her, saw Antonia slip through the draw-
ing-room window into the garden. He could follow
the white glimmer of her frock across the lawn, but lost
it amongst the shadow of the trees, and, casting a
hasty look round to see that he was not observed, he
too slipped out. The blackness and the heat were
stifling, but he took great breaths of it as if it were the
purest mountain air, and, treading softly on the grass,
stole on towards the holm-oak. His lips were dry, and
his heart beat painfully. The mutter of distant thunder
had quite ceased, and suddenly waves of hot air came
wheeling against his face with a curious fanning, and in
their midst a sudden rush of cold ; and all this was
repeated twice or thrice. ' The storm's coming,' he
thought, and, bending almost double to hide the gleam
of his shirt-front, stole on towards the tree. She was
lying in the hammock, her figure a white blurr in the
very heart of the tree's shadow, rocking to a little
monotonous creak of the branch. Shelton held his
breath; she had not heard him. He crept closer behind
the trunk inch by inch, till he stood within touch of her.
' I mustn't startle her,' he thought, and, clenching
his hands to steady his voice, he whispered : ' Antonia.'

THE STORM 289

There was a faint stir in the hammock, but no
answer. He stood over her, but even then he could not
see her face ; he only had a sense of something breath-
ing, stirring, alive, within a yard of him — of something
warm and soft. He whispered again, ' Antonia !' but
again there came no answer, and a sort of fear and a
sort of frenzy seized upon him. He could no longer
hear her breathe ; the creaking of the branch had
ceased. What was passing in that silent, living creature
within a yard of him ? And then he heard again the
sound of her breathing, but different, quick and scared,
like the fluttering of a bird, and in a moment he was
staring in the dark at an empty hammock.

He stayed beside the empty hammock till he could
bear the uncertainty no longer. As he crossed the
lawn the sky was rent from end to end by a jagged
flash, a spurt of rain spattered him from head to foot,
and with a deafening crack the thunder broke.

He sought the smoking-room, but recoiled at the door,
and, going to his own room, threw himself on the bed.
The thunder groaned and sputtered in long volleys ;
livid gleams of lightning showed him the outline of
every single article in the room with a weird distinctness
that rent from them all likeness to the purpose for
which they were intended, and seemed to bereave them
of their utility, of their luxurious matter-of-factness, to
present them as skeletons, as abstractions, with some-
thing indecent in their appearance, hke the naked
nerves and sinews of a preserved leg in a museum.
The sound of the rain sluicing against the house was
bewildering, stunning, even to his powers of thought,
and he rose to shut his windows ; then, returning to his
bed, threw himself on it again, this time with his face

19

290 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

down. He stayed there while the storm lasted, in a
kind of stupor ; but when it was over, and the boom of
retreating thunder grew every minute more distant, he
dragged himself up, and, lighting his candles, began to
undress. Then for the first time he saw something
white lying close to the door.
It was a note :

' I have made a mistake. Please forgive me, and go
away. — Antonia.'

CHAPTER XXXII

WILDERNESS

When he read this note Shelton was stunned. He
put it down on the dressing-table beside his gold sleeve-
links, stared at his face in the glass, and laughed. At
the end of the laugh his lips writhed ; he threw himself
on the bed, and pressed his face into the pillows. He
lay there half dressed during the rest of the night, and
when, soon after dawn, he got up, had not made up his
mind what he would do. The only thing certain was
that he must not meet Antonia.
At last he penned the following :

' I have had a sleepless night with toothache, and
think it best to run up to the dentist at once. If a
tooth must come out, the sooner the better.'

He addressed it to Mrs. Dennant, and left it on his
table. After doing this he threw himself on his bed
again, and this time fell into a doze.

He woke with a start, dressed, and let himself quietly
out of the house. The similarity of his departure to that
of Ferrand struck him. ' Both outcasts,' he thought.

He tramped steadily on till noon without knowing
or caring where he was going ; then, entering a field,
walked along the hedge, threw himself down in the far
corner, and fell asleep.

291 19—2

292 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

He was awakened by the whirr of a covey of partridges,
whose wings glistened in the sun as they strung over an
adjoining field of mustard. They soon settled in the
old-maidish fashion peculiar to partridges, and began
calling each other together again.

Some cattle had approached in his sleep, and a
beautiful bay cow, with her head turned sideways, was
snuffing at him gently, exhaling an overpowering sweet-
ness. Her legs and coat were as fine as a racehorse's,
a dribble ran from the corner of her black, moist lips,
and her eye was soft and cynical. Drowsily inhahng
the vague sweetness of the mustard field, and rubbing
the dry grass-stalks between his fingers, Shelton had a
moment's happiness — the happiness of the sun and sky,
of the eternal quiet, and untold movements of the fields.
He wondered why human beings could not leave their
troubles alone, as the cow in front of him left the
flies in the corner of her eye. He dozed off again,
and woke with a laugh, for this was what he had
dreamed :

He fancied himself in a room, at once hall and
drawing-room, of some country house. In the centre of
this room was standing a lady, blended of a number of
people he had known, who was looking at her face in
a hand-glass. The door, or passage, admitted an old
English garden with statues into his dream, and
through this door people kept passing without any
apparent object.

Detaching herself from amongst these people, he saw
his own mother advancing towards the lady with the
hand-glass, in whom he suddenly recognised Mrs. Fohot.
But as he looked his mother changed into Mrs.
Dennant, and began speaking in a voice that was

WILDERNESS 293

neither his mother's nor Mrs. Dennant's, but a crystalli-
zation of all the refined voices he had ever heard. ' Je
fais de la phtlosophie,' it said ; ' I take the individual for
what she is worth. I never condemn ; and, above all,
one must have spirit !' But, to Shelton's grief — for he
had in some way identified himself with the success of
this meeting between the lady who was not exactly Mrs.
Dennant and the lady with the mirror — the latter
merely continued looking at herself in the glass ; and
though he could not see her face, he could see in the
hand-glass its reflection — pale, with greenish eyes, and a
smile like the image of scorn. And then, by a swift
transition, he found himself walking in the garden
amongst the statues and talking to Mrs. Dennant.

It was this conversation from which he awoke with
a laugh. ' My dear Dick,' she was saying, ' but I've
always been accustomed to classes. It was most
unkind of her not to receive me because I belong to a
" class." ' And her voice awakened pity in Shelton ;
it was like the voice of a frightened child. ' I don't
know what I shall do if I have to stand on my own
feet ; I wasn't brought up to it. But I suppose I can
try ; I'm not so very old. But how am I to go to work ?
One must be of a certain brand, otherwise people don't
think anything of you; not that I care much what
people think, but you know what it is— one feels happier
with a brand;' and she gave her skirts an unhappy
rustle. ' But, Dick dear, whatever you do ' — and the
voice was full of entreaty—' let Antonia stay in a
" class." Never mind about me — if I must come out of
it, I must— but let her stay ; any " class " so long as it is
a " class." It's dreadful to have to think for yourself

And so he awoke, with a laugh on his lips and

294 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

actually tears in his eyes. His dream had had in it the
element called Art, for, in its grotesque absurdity, Mrs.
Dennant had said things which revealed the bottom of
her soul more fully than anything she would have said
in real life.

' No,' said a voice quite close, from behind the hedge,
' not many Frenchmen, thank God ! A few coveys of
Hungarians over from the Duke's. Sir James, some of
this pie ?'

Shelton raised himself with drowsy curiosity — he was
still half asleep — and applied his face to a gap in the
high, thick osiers of the hedge. Four men were seated
on camp-stools round a folding-table, on which was a
pie and other preparations for lunch. A game cart,
decorated with birds and hares, stood at a short distance ;
the tails of some dogs kept waving incessantly above the
long grass, and a valet was opening bottles. He had for-
gotten that it was the first of September, and anxiously
scrutinized the four faces, having little desire to be seen.
The host was a man with the trim figure of a soldier
and a freckled face ; an older man sat next him, square-
jawed, who had an absent-looking eye and a sharp nose;
nor did Shelton know the third, a bearded person whom
they addressed as the Commodore ; but in the fourth,
to his alarm and disgust, he recognised the gentleman
called Mabbey. It was really no matter of surprise to
meet him miles from his own place, for he was one of
those sportsmen who wander about with two guns and
a valet from the twelfth of August to the end of January,
and are supposed to go to Monte Carlo or to sleep for
the rest of the year.

' Did you hear what a bag we made on the twelfth.
Sir James ?' he was saying.

WILDERNESS 295

' Ah ! yes ; what was that ? Have you sold your bay
horse, Glennie ?'

Shelton had not decided whether to turn his back on
the hedge or to sneak away, when the Commodore's
rather thick voice began :

' My man tellsh me that Mrs. Foliot — haw — has
lamed her Arab. Does she mean to come out cubbing,
Glennie ?'

Shelton could not help observing the half-envious,
half-contemptuous smile that came over all their faces.
' That lucky dog Foliot is paying for his good time now ;
what a donkey to get caught out !' it seemed to say.
He turned his back on the hedge and shut his eyes, but
could not help listening.

' Cubbing ?' replied Glennie ; ' hardly !'

' I never could shee anything wonderful in her looks,'
said the voice of the Commodore ; ' so quiet, you never
knew she was in the room. I remember sayin' to her
once : " Mrs. Lutheran, now what do you like besht
in the world ?" and what do you think she answered ?
" Music !" Haw !'

The voice of Mabbey said :

' He was always a dark horse, Foliot. It's always
the dark horses that get let in for this kind of thing ;'
and there was a sound as though he had licked his lips.

' They say,' said the voice of the host, ' that he never
returns a greetin' now. He's a queer fish ; they say
she's devoted to him.'

Coming as it did upon his meeting with Mrs. Foliot,
and upon the dream from which he had just awakened,
this conversation exercised a sort of mesmeric effect on
Shelton.

' Well, if he gives up his huntin' and his shootin', I

295 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

don't see what the deuce he'll do with himself; he's
resigned his clubs, and as to his chance of Parlia-
ment ' said the voice of Mabbey.

' A thousand pities,' said the voice of Sir James ;
' still, he knew what to expect.'

' Very queer fellows, those Foliots,' said the voice of
the Commodore. ' There was his father : he'd always
rather talk to any shcarecrow he came across than to
you or me. I wonder what he'll do with his horses ; I
should like to get hold of that chestnut.'

' You can't tell what a fellow '11 do,' said the voice of
Mabbey — ' take to drink or writin' books. Old Charlie
Wayne got to gazin' at stars, and twice a week he used
to go and paddle round in the East End, teachin' pot-
hooks '

' Glennie,' interrupted the voice of Sir James, ' what's
become of Smollett, your old keeper ?'

' Obliged to get rid of him.' Shelton again made an
effort to close his ears, but again ended in listening.
' He was getting a bit too old ; lost me a lot of eggs last
season.'

' Ah !' said the voice of the Commodore, ' when they
oncesh begin to lose eggsh '

' Well, as a matter of fact, his son — you remember
him, Sir James — used to load for you ? — got a girl into
trouble, and when her people gave her the chuck old
Smollett took her in ; beastly scandal about it. The
girl refused to marry young Smollett, and old Smollett
backed her up. Naturally, the parson and the whole
village cut up rough ; my vv'ife offered to get her into
one of those reformatory what-d'you-call-'ems, but the
old fellow said she shouldn't go if she didn't want to !
Bad business altogether ; put him quite off his stroke.

WILDERNESS 297

I only got five hundred pheasants last year instead of
a good thousand.'

There was a silence of horror. Shelton, raising him-
self again, peeped through the hedge. All were eat-
ing pie.

' In W shire,' said the voice of the Commodore,

' they always matry— haw — and live reshpectable ever
after.'

' Quite so,' replied the voice of the host ; ' it was a bit
too thick. The girl said the fellow had taken advantage
of her.'

' She's sorry by this time,' said the voice of Sir James;
' lucky escape for young Smollett. Queer, the obstinacy
of some of these old fellows !'

' What do we do after lunch ?' asked the voice of the
Commodore.

' The next field,' said the voice of the host, ' is
pasture. We line up along the hedge, and drive that
mustard towards the roots ; there ought to be a good
few birds.'

Shelton rose, and, crouching, stole softly towards
the gate.

'On the twelfth, shootin' in two parties,' followed
the voice of Mabbey from the distance.

He felt tired, and, whether from his walk or his
sleepless night, he seemed to ache in every limb;
but this gave him a kind of pleasure, and he continued
his tramp along the road. He was no nearer to a
decision as to what he should do. It was late in the
afternoon when he reached Maidenhead, and, after
-breaking his fast, got into a London train and went
to sleep. About ten o'clock that evening he walked
into St. James's Park and sat down.

298 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

The lamp-light dappled athwart the tired foliage
on to those benches which have given rest to so
many vagrants. Darkness has ceased to be the lawful
cloak of the unhappy; but Mother Night was soft
and moonless, and man had not quite despoiled her
of her comfort.

Shelton was not alone upon the seat, for at the
far end was sitting a young girl with a red, round,
sullen face ; and beyond, and beyond again, were dim
benches and dim figures sitting on them, as though life
and its institutions had shot them out in an endless
line of rubbish.

'Ah!' thought Shelton, in the inconsequential way
of very tired people, ' but the institutions are all right ;
it's only the spirit that's all '

' Wrong ?' said a voice behind him ; ' why, of course !
You've taken the wrong turning, old man.'

He turned, and saw a policeman, with a red face
actually shining through the darkness, talking to a
strange old figure like some aged, dishevelled bird,
who had asked him a question.

' Well,' said the old man, ' thank you, constable.
As I've come wrong I think I'll take a bit of a rest
here ;' and he came round to the seat on which Shelton
was sitting, but, chewing his gums, seemed to hesitate
to take the liberty of sitting down.

Shelton made room on the bench, and the old fellow
took the vacant place.

'You'll excuse me, I'm sure, sir,' he said in a shaky
voice, snatching at his battered hat ; ' I saw you was
a gentleman ' — he dwelt lovingly on the word — ' I
wouldn't disturb you for the world. I'm not very used
to being out at night, and the seats do get so full. Old

WILDERNESS 299

age must lean against something; you'll excuse me,
I'm sure.'

' Of course,' said Shelton gently.

' I'm a respectable old man, really,' said his neigh-
bour; ' I never in my life took a liberty. But you know,
sir, at my age you get nervous ; standin' about the
streets as I been this last week, an' sleepin' in them

doss-houses Oh, they're dreadful rough places — a

dreadful rough lot there ! Yes,' repeated the old
man, as Shelton turned to scrutinize him, struck by
the self-pity in his voice, ' a dreadful rough place !'

A slight movement of his head, which grew on a lean,
plucked neck, like that of an old fowl's, had brought his
face into the light. It was long, and run to seed, with
a large, red nose ; its thin, colourless lips were twisted
sideways and split apart, showing the semi-toothlessness
of his mouth ; and his eyes had the peculiar aged look
of eyes in which all the colour has run into a little, hard
rim round the iris, and over them kept coming a iilm
like the film that comes over the eyes of a parrot. He
was, or would properly have been, clean shaven. His
hair — for he had removed his hat to take out a clay
pipe — was thick and lank, of a dusty colour, and as far
as Shelton could see without a speck of gray ; the
scrupulous parting in the middle produced a laughable
incongruity with the rest of the visage.

' But I can put up with that,' he began again. ' I
never interferes with nobody, and so nobody doesn't
interfere with me ; but what frightens me ' — and his
voice grew steady, as if terrified out of its shake — ' is
never knowin' from day to day what's to become of yer.
Oh, that's dreadful, that is !'

' It must be,' said Shelton.

300 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' Ah ! it is,' said the old fellow ; ' and the winter comin'
on. I never was much used to the open air, bein' in
domestic service all my life ; but I don't mind that, so
long as I can see my way to earn a livin'. Well, thank
God ! I've got a job at last ;' and his voice grew suddenly
cheerful. ' Sellin' papers is not what I been accustomed
to ; but the St. Paul, they tell me that's one of the most
respectable of the evenin' papers — in fact, I know it is.
And now I'm sure to get on ; I try hard.'

' How did you get the job ?' asked Shelton.

' I've got my character,' said the old fellow, making
a gesture with a skinny hand towards his chest, as if
he kept his character there like a piece of portable
property.

' Thank God, nobody can't take that away ! I never
parts from that ;' and, fumbling, he produced a packet
of letters, holding first one, then another to the light,
and he looked anxiously at Shelton. ' In that house
where I been sleepin' they're not honest ; they've
stolen a parcel of my things — a lovely shirt an' a pair
of beautiful gloves that a gentleman gave me for holdin'
his horse. Now wouldn't you prosecute them ?'

' It depends on what you can prove.'

' I know they had 'em. A man must stand up for
his rights ; that's only proper. I can't afford to lose
beautiful things like them. I think I ought to prosecute
them, don't you, sir ?'

Shelton could barely restrain a smile.

'There!' said the old fellow, smoothing a piece of
paper and shakily holding it out, ' that's Sir James !'
and his withered finger-tip trembled on the middle of
the page : ' " Joshua Creed, in my service five years as
butler, during \\hich time I have found him all that a

WILDERNESS 301

servant should be." And this 'ere,' he pursued, fumbhng
with another— 'this 'ere's Lady Glengow : "Joshua

Creed " I thought I'd like you to read 'em since

you've been so kind.'

' Will you have a pipe ?'

' Thank ye, sir,' replied the old butler, filling his clay
from Shelton's pouch, and laying it on the bench beside
him. He then took hold of a front tooth and began to
feel it tenderly, working it backvi^ards and forwards with
a sort of pride.

' My teeth's a-comin' out now,' he said ; ' but I enjoys
pretty good health for a man of my age.'

' How old is that ?'

' Seventy-two ! Barrin' my cough, and my rupture,
and this 'ere affliction'— he passed his hand over his
face—' I've nothing to complain of; everybody has
somethink, it seems. I think I'm a wonder for my
age, don't you, sir?'

Shelton, for all his pity, would have given the world
to laugh.

'Seventy-two!' he said; 'it's a great age. You
remember the country when it was very different to
what it is now ?'

' Ah !' said the old butler, ' there was gentry then ; I
remember them drivin' down to Newmarket (my
native place, sir) with their own horses. There wasn't
so much o' this here middle class then. There was more,
too, o' what you might call the milk o' human kindness
in people then — none o' them Amalgamated Stores, every
man keepin' his own little shop ; not so eager to cut his
neighbour's throat, as you might say. And then look
what a change in the price of bread ! Oh dear ! why, it
isn't a quarter what it was then !'

302 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' And are people happier now than they were ?' asked
Shelton.

The old butler sucked desperately at his pipe.

'No,' he continued, shaking his head; 'they've lost
the contented spirit. I see people runnin' here and
runnin' there, readin' books and findin' out things ;
they ain't not so self-contented as they were.'

' Is that possible ?' thought Shelton.

' No,' repeated the old man, again sucking at his pipe,
and this time blowing out a volcano-full of smoke ; ' I
don't see as much happiness about, not the same look
on the faces. 'Tisn't likely. See these 'ere motor-cars,
too ; they say 'orses is goin' out altogether ;' and as if
dumfounded at his own conclusion, he sat silent for
some time, exclusively engaged in lighting and relighting
his pipe.

The girl at the far end of the seat stirred, cleared her
throat hoarsely, and settled down again ; her movement
disengaged an odour of frowsy clothes. The policeman
approached and scrutinized the three faces in turn ; his
broad visage wore an expression of jovial contempt,
which was instantly modified by curiosity when his
glance lighted on Shelton.

'There's good men in the police,' said the old butler,
when the policeman had passed on — ' there's good men
in the police, as good men as you can see, and there's
them that treats you like dirt — a dreadful low class of
man. Oh dear, yes ! when they see you down in the
world, they think they can speak to you as they like ;
but I don't give them no chance to worry me. I keep
myself to myself, and speak civil to all the world. Oh,
you have to hold the candle to them ; for, oh dear ! if
they're crossed — some of them, they're a dreadful un-
scrupulous lot !'

WILDERNESS 303

' Are you going to spend the night here ?'

' It's nice and warm to-night,' repHed the old butler.
' I said to the man at that dreadful low place, I said :
" Don't you ever speak to me again," I said, " and don't
you come near me !" Straightforward and honest's
been my motto through life, and I don't want to have
nothing to say to them fellows ' — he made an annihi-
lating gesture — ' after the way they treated me, takin'
my things like that. To-morrow I shall get a room. I
can get a room for three shillin's a week, don't you
think so, sir ? Well, then I shall be all right. I'm not
afraid now ; the mind at rest. So long as I can keep
myself, that's all I want. I shall do first rate, I think;'
and he stared at Shelton, but the look in his eyes and
the half- scared optimism of his voice convinced the
latter that he was in dread of something. ' So long as I
can keep myself,' he repeated complacently, ' I shan't
need no workhouse, and I shan't lose my respectability.'

' No workhouse,' thought Shelton ; and for some
time he sat without speaking. ' When you have
time,' he said at last, 'come and see me; here's my
card.'

The old butler returned to consciousness with a jerk,
for he had begun to nod.

'Thank ye, sir ; I will,' he said, with pitiful alacrity.
'Down by Belgravia ? Oh, I know it well; I lived
down in them parts with a gentleman of the name of
Bateson — perhaps you knew him ; he's dead now — the
Honourable Bateson. Thank ye, sir; I'll be sure to
come ;' and snatching at his battered hat, he toilsomely
secreted Shelton's card with the rest of his character.
Five minutes later he had again begun to nod.

Shelton, too, relapsed into reverie. Poor old chap !
As naive and complacent as any Pharisee !

304 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

The policeman passed for the second time, and his
gaze seemed to say, ' Now, what is a gentleman doing
on that seat with those two rotters ?'

' Ah !' thought Shelton, catching his eye ; ' exactly !
You don't know what to make of me — a man of my
" class " sitting here ! Poor devil ! to spend your
days spying on your fellow-creatures ! Poor devil ! But
3'ou don't know that you're a poor devil, and so you're
not one.'

The man on the next bench sneezed — a shrill, dis-
approving sneeze.

' Exactly,' thought Shelton. ' Why on earth did I pity
the bobby ?'

The policeman passed for the third time, and, once
more assuring himself that the two lower creatures were
harmlessly dozing, spoke to Shelton :

' It's not very safe on these 'ere benches,' said he ; ' you

never know who you may be sittin' next to. If I were

-you, sir, I should be gettin' on — if you're not goin' to

spend the night here, that is ;' and he laughed, as at an

excellent joke.

Shelton looked at him, and itched to say : ' Why
shouldn't I, bobby?' but it struck him that it would
sound very odd. ' Besides,' he thought, ' I shall only
catch a cold ;' and, without speaking, he left the seat,
and passed through the gates to go to his rooms.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE END

He reached his rooms at midnight so exhausted
that, without waiting to light up, he dropped into a
chair in the dark sitting-room. The curtains and
bhnds had been removed for cleaning, and the tall
windows admitted the stare of the night outside.
Shelton fixed his eyes on it, as one lost man might fix
his eyes upon another.

An unaired, dusty odour clung about the room, but,
like one of those God-sent whiffs of grass or flowers
wafted to one sometimes in the streets, a perfume came
to his nostrils, the spice from the withered ragged car-
nation still clinging to his buttonhole ; and he suddenly
awoke once more to the fact that he had a decision to
make. He got up and lighted a candle ; the dust was
thick on everything he touched. ' Ugh !' he thought,
' how wretched !' and the sensation of loneliness that
had seized him on the stone seat at Holm Oaks the day
before returned with redoubled force.

On his table, heaped indiscriminately, were a pile of
bills and circulars. He opened them, tearing at their
covers with the random haste of a man back from a
holiday. A single long envelope was placed apart from
the rest for forwarding.

305 20

3o6 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

' My dear Dick (he read),

' I enclose you herewith the revised draft of your
marriage settlement. It is now shipshape. Return it
before the end of the week, and I will have it engrossed
for signature. I go to Scotland next Wednesday for a
month's holiday ; shall be back in good time for your
wedding. My love to your mother when you see
her.

' Your affectionate uncle,

'Edmund Paramor.'

Shelton smiled, and took out the draft.

' This Indenture made the day of , 189-,

between Richard Paramor Shelton '

He put it down again and sank back in his chair,
the chair in which Ferrand had been wont to sit on
those mornings when he came to expound his philo-
sophy.

He did not stay there long, but in sheer unhappiness
got up, and, taking a candle, roamed about the rooms,
fingering those things that had not been put away, and
gazing in the mirror at his face, which seemed to him
repulsively wretched-looking. He went out at last into
the hall and opened the door, with the intention of
returning downstairs into the street ; but a sudden
appreciation of the fact that, street or house, town or
country, he would have to take his trouble along with
him, caused him to shut it abruptly. He felt in the
letter-box, drew forth a letter, and with this in his
hand went back to the sitting-room.

It was from Antonia. And such was his excitement
that he was obliged to take two or three turns between
the window and the wall opposite before he could read

THE END 307

it ; then, with a heart beating so that he could barely
hold the paper, he commenced.
It began without a name :

' I was wrong to ask you to go away. I see now
that it was breaking my promise, and I didn't mean
to do that. I don't know why things have come to
be so different. You never think as I do about any-
thing.

' I had better tell you that that letter of Monsieur
Ferrand's to mother was impudent. Of course you
didn't know what was in it ; but when Professor Brayne
was asking you about him at breakfast, I felt that you
believed that he was right and we were wrong, and I
can't understand it. And then in the afternoon, when
that woman hurt her horse, it was all as if you were
on her side. How can you feel like that ?

' I must say this, because I don't think I ought to
have asked you to go away, and I want you to believe
that I will keep my promise ; I should feel that you and
everybody else had a right to condemn me. I was
awake all last night, and have a bad headache this
morning. I can't write any more.

' Antonia.'

His first sensation on reading this letter was a sort
of stupefaction of relief that had in it an odd element of
anger. He was reprieved ! She would not break her
promise ; she considered herself bound ! But in the
midst of the feverish exaltation of this thought he
smiled, and the smile was not a success.

He read the letter again, and, like a judge criticising
a piece of evidence, began to weigh what she had said,

20 — 2

3o8 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

the thoughts in her head when she was writing, and
the facts which had led up to this chmax.

That farewell document of the young foreigner had
done the business. True to his fatal gift of divesting
things of their clothing, Ferrand had not vanished with-
out showing up his benefactor in his true colours ; and
even to Shelton himself those colours were made plain.
Antonia instinctively felt that he was a traitor to her,
and sounding his heart even at that moment of stress
and indecision, he knew that this was true.

' And then in the afternoon, when that woman hurt

her horse ' That woman ! ' It was as if you were

on her side !'

He saw Antonia's mind, the clear rigidity of it, its
intuitive perception of that with which it was not safe
to be sympathetic, its instinct for self-preservation, its
spontaneous contempt for those who had not that
instinct. And she had written those words considering
herself bound to him — a man capable of sentiment, of
rebellious sympathies, of a sort of untidiness of prin-
ciple ! Here was the answer to the question he had
been asking himself all day : ' How had things come to
this pass ?' and he began to feel compassion for her.

Poor child ! She could not jilt him ; there was some-
thing so vulgar in the word ! It should not be said that
Antonia Dennant had deliberately accepted a man and
deliberately thrown him over. These things were not
done ! They were impossible ! At the bottom of his
heart he had a deep and unconscious sympathy with
this impossibility.

A third time he read the letter, which seemed now to
be impregnated with a fresh meaning, and the anger
which had mingled with his first sensation of relief

THE END 309

detached itself and grew in force. There was some-
thing tyrannous in that letter, a denial of his right to
think for himself. It was like a finger pointed at him
as an unsound person. And with a shock the convic-
tion was forced on him that in marrying her he would
be marrying not only her, but her class — his own class.
She would always be there to keep him up to the mark,
to force him to look upon her and himself, and all the
people they knew and all the things they did, with com-
placency; she would always be there to force him to
consider himself superior to everyone whose life was
not cast in their own moral mould. Ah yes ! to con-
sider himself superior, not blatantly, not consciously,
but with a sort of subconscious self-righteousness.

But this anger of his, which resembled the paroxysm
that two days before had made him mutter at the

Authority on Art, ' I hate your d d superiority,'

struck him all at once as impotent and ludicrous.
What was the good of being angry ? He was on the
point of losing her ! And the sheer physical anguish of
that thought, reacting on his anger, intensified it three-
fold. She was so certain of herself, so superior to her
emotions, to her natural impulses — superior to her very
desire to be free from him. But of that fact, at all
events, Shelton had no longer any doubt. It was
beyond doubt, beyond argument. She did not really
love him ; she wanted to be free of him !

A photograph had hung in his bedroom at Holm
Oaks of a group round the hall door ; Mrs. Dennant,
the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, Lady Bonington,
Halidome, Mr. Dennant, the stained-glass man— all were
there ; and on the left-hand side, looking straight in
front of her, Antonia. Her face in its youthfulness.

310 THE ISLAND PHARISEES

more than all those others, expressed their immutable
point of view. Behind those calm young eyes lay a
whole world of safety and tradition. ' I am not as
others,' they seemed to say.

He thought of that photograph, and Mr. and Mrs.
Dennant singled themselves out ; he could see their
faces as they talked over the situation — their faces with
a look on them of concern, a peculiar, uneasy, dis-
located look — and hear the ring of their voices, still
decisive, but a trifle acid, as if they had had a quarrel :

' He's made an ass of himself!'

' Ah ! it's too distressin' !'

He felt a deep wound— he had been inflicting himself
on them, too. They, too, thought him unsound, didn't
want him ; but to save the situation they would have
been glad to keep him. She didn't want him, but
she refused to forfeit her right to say : ' Commoner
girls may break their promises, but I will not !'
He sat down at the table between the candles with
his head on his hands. And the grief that was anger
and the anger that was grief grew and grew within him.
Her refusal to free herself had thrown that duty upon
him ! She was ready to marry him without love as a sort
of duty to her ideal of herself.

Ah ! no ! she hadn't, after all, the monopoly of pride !

As if she actually stood before him, he could see the
shadows under her eyes that he had dreamed of kissing,
the eager movements of her lips. His throat contracted,
his eyes grew sore ; for several minutes he remained
without moving hand or limb. Then once more his
anger blazed up. She was going to sacrifice herself and
— him ! All the virility, all the manhood in him, scoffed
at such a sacrifice. That was not exactly what he wanted !

THE END 311

He went to the bureau, took paper and envelope,
and, sitting down once more at the table, wrote as
follows :

' There never was, is not, and never would have been
any question of promise between us, I should be a cad
to trade on any such thing. You are absolutely free.
Our engagement is at an end by mutual consent.

' Richard Shelton.'

He sealed it, and as he sat with his hands between
his knees, that imagined verdict of Mr. Dennant's rang
in his ears like a refrain. His forehead drooped lower
and lower to the table, till at last by some fate it
reposed on the long and legal document of his Marriage
Settlement. And he had a sensation of relief, like a
man who drops from fatigue at the end of a journey.

THE END

IILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD

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