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HARVARD
COLLEGE
LIBRARY

•'-V-i/ ''/ -

DANGEROUS

AGES

ROSE MACAULAY

Authorof "Pottcriim"

"*i

^^cuflif Hi. mmmm

(n)

BONI AND LIVERIGHT

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

*^JLy HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

GIFT OF
HENRY HARMON STEVENS

MAR 10 t927

\^ /'harvard

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

JUN 13 \^r^

BONI & LlVERIGHT, iNa

First EditioH September^ J921

Second Edition September, 1921

Printed in the United States of America

TO MY MOTHER
DRIVING GAILY THROUGH THE
ADVENTUROUS MIDDLE YEARS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAQB

L NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY ix

n. MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY 29

m. FAMILY LIFE 54

IV. ROOTS 75

V. SEAWEED 84

VI. JIM 104

Vn. GERDA XX7

Vm. NAN 134

DC. THE PACE 145

X. PRINCIPLES 169

XL THAT WHICH REMAINS 184

Xn. THE MOTHER 195

Xni. THE DAUGHTER 213

XIV. YOUTH TO YOUTH 229

XV. THE DREAM 233

XVL TIME 236

XVn. THE KEY 241

'As to that/ said Mr Cradock, %e may say that all
ages are dangerous to all people, in this dangerous life
we live.'

'Reflecting how, at the best, human life on this
minute and perishing planet is a mere episode, and
as brief as a dream. . . .'

Trivia: Logan Pxarsazx Sioth.

CHAPTER I

Neville's birthday

Neville, at five o'clock (Nature's time, not man's) on
the morning of her birthday, woke from the dream-
broken sleep of smnmer dawns, hot with the burden of
two sheets and a blanket, roused by the multitudinous
silver calling of a world full of birds. They chattered
and bickered about the creepered house, shrill and
sweet, like a himdred brooks nmning together down
steep rocky places after snow. And, not like brooks,
and strangely unlike birds, like, in fact, nothing in the
world except a cuckoo dock, a cuckoo shouted fool-
ishly in the lowest boughs of the great elm across the
silver lawn.

Neville turned on her face, cupped her small, pale,
tanned face in her simbumt hands, and looked out with
sleepy violet eyes. The sharp joy of the young day
struck into her as she breathed it through the wide
window. She shivered ecstatically as it blew coldly
onto her bare throat and chest, and forgot the restless
birthday bitterness of the night; forgot how she had
lain and thought ^'Another year gone, and nothing done
yet. Soon all the years will be gone, and nothing ever
win be done." Done by her, she, of course, meant, as
all who are familiar with birthda}rs will know. But
what was something and what was nothing, neither she

12 DANGEROUS AGES

nor others with birthdays could satisfactorily define.
They have lived, they have eaten, dnmk, loved, bathed,
suffered, talked, danced in the night and rejoiced in
the dawn, warmed, in fact, both hands before the fire
of life, but still they are not ready to depart. For they
are behindhand with time, obsessed with so many
worlds, so much to do, the petty done, the undone vast.
It depressed Milton when he turned twenty-three; it
depresses all those with vain and ambitious tempera-
ments at least once a year. Some call it remorse for
wasted days, and are proud of it; others call it vanity,
discontent or greed, and are ashamed of it. It makes
no difference either way.

Neville, flinging it off lightly with her bedclothes,
sprang out of bed, thrust her brown feet into sand
shoes, her slight, straight, pyjama-clad body into a big
coat, quietly slipped into the passage, where, behind
three ^ut doors, slept Rodney, Gerda and Kay, and
stole down the back stairs to the kitchen, whidi was
dim and blinded, blue with china and pale with dawn,
and had a gas stove. She made herself some tea. She
also got some bread and marmalade out of the larder,
spread two thick chunks, and munching one of them,
sliiq)ed out of the sleeping house into the dissipated
and riotous garden.

Looking up at the hone)^uckle-buried window of the
bedroom of Gerda, Neville nearly whistled the call to
which Gerda was wont to reply. Nearly, but not quite.
On the whole it was a morning to be out alone in. Be-
sides, Neville wanted to forget, for the moment, about
birthda)rs, and Gerda would have reminded her.

Going round by the yard, she fetched Esau instead,
who wouldn't remind her, and whose hysterical joy
she hushed with a warning hand.

Across the wet and silver lawn she sauntered, be*

NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY 13

tween the monstrous shadows of the ehxiSy her feet in
the old sand shoes leaving dark prints in the dew, her
mouth full of bread and marmalade, her black plait
bobbing on her shoulders, and Esau tumbling round
her. Across the lawn to the wood, cool and dim still,
but not quiet, for it rang with music and rustled with
life. Through the boughs of beeches and elms and
firs the yoimg day flickered gold, so that the bluebell
patches were half lit, like blue water in the sim, half
grey, like water at twilight. Between two great waves
of them a brown path ran steeply down to a deep little
stream. Neville and Esau, scrambling a little way up-
stream, stopped at a broad swirling pool it made be-
tween rocks. Here Neville removed coat, shoes and
pyjamas and sat poised for a moment on the jutting
rock, a slight and naked body, long in the leg, finely
and supplely knit, with light, flexible muscles — a body
built for swiftness, grace and a certain wiry strength.
She sat there while she twisted her black plait roimd
her head, then she slipped into the cold, clear, swirling
pool, which in one part was just over her depth, and
called to Esau to come in too, and Esau, as usual, didn't,
but only barked.

One swim round is enough, if not too much, as
everyone who knows sunrise batihing will agree. Neville
scrambled out, discovered that she had forgotten the
towel, dried herself on her coat, resumed her pyjamas,
and sat down to eat her second slice of bread and
marmalade. When she had finished it she climbed a
beech tree, swarming neatly up the smooth trunk in
order to get into the sunshine, and sat on a broad
branch astride, whistling shrilly, tr}dng to catch the
tune now from one bird, now from another.

These, of course, were the moments when being alive
,was enough. Swimming, bread and marmalade, sitting

14 DANGEROUS AGES

high in a beech tree in the golden eye of the morning
sun — ^that was life. One flew then, like a gay ship
with the wind in its sails, over the cold black bottom-
less waters of misgiving. Many such a Jime morning
Neville remembered in the past. • • . She wondered
if Gerda and if Kay thus sailed over sorrow, too. Rod-
ney, she knew, did. But she knew Rodney better, in
some ways, than she knew Gerda and Kay.

To think suddenly of Rodney, of Gerda and of Kay,
sleeping in the still house beyond the singing wood and
silver garden, was to founder swiftly in the cold, dark
seas, to be hurt again with the stabbing envy of the
night. Not jealousy, for she loved them all too well
for that. But envy of their chances, of their contacts
with life. Havjpg her own contacts, she wanted all
kinds of others too. Not only Rodney's, Gerda's and
Kay's, but those of all her family and friends. Con-
scious, as one is on birthda)^, of intense life hurr3dng
swiftly to annihilation, she strove desperately to dam
it. It went too fast. She looked at the wet strands of
black hair now spread over her shoulders to dry in the
Sim, at her strong, supple, active limbs, and thought of
the days to come, when the black hair should be grey
and the supple limbs refuse to carry her up beech trees,
and when, if she bathed in the sunrise, she would get
rheumatism. In those days, what did one do to keep
from sinking in the black seas of regret? One sat by
the fire, or in the simlit garden, old and grey and full
of sleep — ^yes, one went to sleep, when one could.
When one couldn't, one read. But one's eyes got tired
soon — ^Neville thought of her grandmother — ^and one
had to be read aloud to, by someone who couldn't read
aloud. That wouldn't be enough to stifle vain regrets;
only rejoicing actively in the body did that. So, before

NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY 15

that time came, one must have slain regret, crushed
that serpent's head for good and all.

But did anyone ever succeed in doing this? Rodney,
who had his full, successful^ useful, interesting life;
Rodney 9 who had made his mark and was making it;
Rodney, the envy of many others, and particularly the
envy of Neville, with the jagged ends of her long since
broken career stabbing her; Rodney from time to time
burned inwardly with scorching ambitions, with jeal-
ousies of other men, with all the heats, rancours and
troubles of the race tibiat is set before us. He had done,
was doing, something, but it wasn't enough. He had
got, was getting, far, — ^but it wasn't far enough. He
couldn't achieve what he wanted; there were obstacles
ever3nwrhere. Fools hindered his work; men less
capable than he got jobs he should Jiave had. Im-
mersed in politics, he would have liked more time for
writing; he would have liked a hundred other careers
besides his own, and could have but the one. (Gerda
and Kay, still poised on the threshold of life, still be-
lieved that they could indeed have a himdred.) No,
Rodney was not immune from sorrow, but at least he
had more with which to keep it at bay than Neville.
Neville had no personal achievements; she had only her
love for Rodney, Gerda and Kay, her interest in the
queer, enchanting pageant of life, her physical vigours
(she could beat any of the rest of them at swimming,
walking, tennis or squash) and her active but wasted
brain. A good brain, too; she had easily and with
brilliance passed her medical examinations long ago—
those of them for which she had had time before she
had been interrupted. But now a wasted brain; squan-
dered, atrophied, gone soft with disuse. Could she
begiQ to use it now? Or was she forever held captive,
in deep woods, between the two twilights?

1 6 DANGEROUS AGES

^'I am in deep woods,
Between the two twilights.
Over valley and hill
I hear the woodland wave
Like the voice of Time, as slow,
The voice of Life, as grave,
The voice of Death, as still. . . ."

The voices, the young loud clear voices of Gerda
and of Kay, shrilled down from the garden, and Esau
yapped in answer. They were calling her. They had
probably been to wake her and had found her gone.

NeviUe smiled (when she smiled a dimple came in
one pale brown cheek) and swung herself down from
the beech. Kay and Gerda were of enormous im-
portance; the most important things in life, except
Rodney; but not everything, because nothing is ever
ever5rthing in this so complex world.

When she came out of the wood into the garden, now
all golden with morning, they flung themselves upon
her and called her a sneak for not having wakened
them to bathe.

"You'll be late for breakfast," they chanted. "Late
on your forty-third birthday."

They each had an arm roimd her; they propelled
her towards the house. They were lithe, supple
creatures of twenty and twenty-one. Between them
walked Neville, with her small, pointed, elfish face,
that was sensitive to every breath of thought and emo-
tion like smooth water wind-stirred. With her great
violet eyes brooding in it under thin black brows, and
her wet hair hanging in loose strands, she looked like
an ageless wood-dryad between two slim young sap-

NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY 17

lings. Kay was a little like her in the face, only his
violet eyes were short-sighted and he wore glasses.
Gerda was smaller, fragile and straight as a wand, with
a white little face and wavy hair of pure gold, bobbed
round her thin white neck. And with far-set blue eyes
and a delicate deft chin and thin straight lips. For
all she looked so frail, she could dance all night and
return in the morning cool, composed and exquisite,
like a lily bud. There was a look of inunaculate sex-
less purity about Gerda; she might have stood for the
angel Gabriel, wide-eyed and yoimg and grave. With
this wide innocent look she would talk unabashed of
tilings which Neville felt revolting. And she, herself,
was the product of a fastidious generation and class,
and as nearly sexless as may be in this besexed world,
which however is not, and can never be, saying much.
Kay would do the same. They would read and discuss
Freud, whom Neville, unfairly prejudiced, found both
an obscene maniac and a liar. They might laugh with
her at Freud when he expanded on that complex, which-
ever it is, by which niothers and daughters hate each
other, and fathers and sons — ^but they both all the same
took seriously things which seemed to Neville merely
loathsome imbecilities. Gerda and Kay didn't, in point
of fact, find so many things either funny or disgusting
as Neville did; throwing her mind back twenty years,
Neville tried to remember whether she had foimd the
world as funny and as frightful when she was a medical
student as she did now; on the whole she thought not.
Boys and girls are, for all their high spirits, creatures
of infinite solemnities and pomposities. They laugh;
but the twinkling irony, mocking at itself and every-
thing else, of the thirties and forties, they have not yet
learnt. They cannot be gentle cynics; they are so full
of faith and hope, and when these are hurt they turn

1 8 DANGEROUS AGES

savage. About Elay and Gerda there was a certain
splendid earnestness with regard to life. Admirable
creatures, thought Neville, watching them with whim*
sical tenderness. They had nothing to do with the pre*
war, dilettante past, the sophisticated gaiety ef the
young centiuy. Their childhood had been lived doting
the great war, and they had emerged from it hot with
elemental things, discussing life, lust, love, politics and
social reform, with cool candour, intelligent thorough-
ness and Elizabethan directness. They wouldn't mind
having passions and giving them rein; they wouldn't
think it vulgar, or even tedious, to lead loose lives.
Probably, in fact, it wasn't; probably it was Neville,
and the people who had grown up with her, who were
overdvilized, too far from the crude stuff of life, the
monotonies and emotionalisms of Nature. And now
Nature was taking her rather startling revenge on the
next generation.

Neville ran upstairs, and came down to breakfast
dressed in blue cotton, with her damp hair smoothly
taken back from her broad forehead that jutted brood-
ingly over her short pointed face. She had the look of
a dryad at odds with the world, a whimsical and elfish
intellectual.

Rodney and Kay and Gerda had been putting parcels
at her place, and a pile of letters lay among them.
There is, anyhow, that about birthdays, however old
they make you. Kay had given her a splendid great
podket-knife and a book he wanted to read, Gerda an
oak box she had carved, and Rodney a new bicsrde
(by the front door) and a Brangwyn drawing (on the
table). If Neville envied Kay and Gerda their future
careers, she envied Rodney his present sphere. Her

NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY 19

liusband and the father of Gerda and Kay was a clever
and distmguished-lookmg man of forty-five^ and mem^
bar, in the Labour interest, for a division of Surrey,
He look^edy however, more like a literary man. How ta
be useful though married: in Rodney's case the prob-
lem was so simple, in hers so complicated. She had
envied Rodney a little twenty years ago; then she had
stopped, because the bringing up of Kay and Gerda
had been a work in itself; now she had begun agahi.
Rodney and she were more like each other than they
were like their children; they had some of the same
vanities, fastidiousnesses, humours and withdrawals, ^
and in some respects the same outlook on life. Only
Rodney's had been solidified and developed by the con-
tacts and exigencies of his career, and Neville's dis-
embodied, devitalised and driven inwards by her more
dilettante life. She ^'helped Rodney with the con-
stituency" of course, but it was Rodney's constituency,
not hers; she entertained his friends and hers when
they were in town, but she knew herself a light woman,
not a dealer in affairs. Yet her nature was stronger
than Rodney's, larger and more mature; it was only
his ei^rience she lacked.

Rodney was and had always been charming; there
could be no doubt about that, whatever else you might
come to think about him. Able, too, but living on his
nerves, wincing like a high-strung horse from the annoy-
ances and disappointments of life, such as Quaker oats
because the grape-nuts had come to an end, and the
industrial news of the morning, which was as bad as
usual and four times repeated in four quite different
tcmes by the four daily papers which lay on the table.
They took four papers not so much that there might
be one for each of them as that they might have the
entertainment of seeing how different the same new?

20 DANGEROUS AGES

can be made to appear. One bond of vadon this famfly
had which few families possess; they were (roughly
q)eaking) united politically, so believed the same news
to be good or bad. The chief difference in their po-
litical attitude was that Kay and Gerda joined socie-
ties and leagues, being still yoimg enough to hold that
causes were helped in this way.

"What about to-day?" Rodney asked Neville.
'What are you going to do?"

She answered, "Tennis." (Neville had once been a
coimty player.) "River, lying about in the sun."
(It should be explained that it was one of those nine
days of the English summer of 1920 when this was a
possible occupation.) "An3rthing anyone likes. • • •
I've already had a good deal of day and a bathe. • • .
Oh, Nan's coming down this afternoon."

She got that out of a letter. Nan was her youngest
sister. They all proceeded to get and impart other
things out of letters, in the way of families who are
fairly imited, as families go.

Gerda opened her lips to impart something, but re-
membered her father's distastes and refrained. Rod-
ney, civilised, sensitive and progressive, had no patience
with his children's imsophisticated leaning to a primi-
tive crudeness. He told them they were young savages.
So Gerda kept her news till later, when ^e and Neville
and Kay were l3dng on rugs on the lawn after Neville
had beaten Kay in a set of singles.

They lay and smoked and cooled, and Gerda, a
cigarette stuck in one side of her mouth, a buttercup
in the other, mmnbled "Penelope's baby's come, by the
way. A girl. Another surplus woman."

Neville's brows lazily went up.

"Penelope Jessop? What's she doing with a baby?
I didn't know she'd got married."

NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY all

"Oh, she hasn't, of course. . . . Didn't I tell you
about Penelope ? She lives with Martin Annesley now."

"Oh, I see. Marriage in the sight of heaven. That
sort of thing."

Neville was of those who find marriages in the sight
of heaven imcivilised and socially reactionary, a re-
version, in fact, to Nature, which bored her. Gerda
and Kay right ly believed such marriages to have some
advantages over those more visible to the himian eye
(as being more readily dissoluble when fatiguing) and
many advantages over no marriages at all, which do not
increase the population, so depleted by the Great War.
When they spoke in this admirably civic sense, Neville
was apt to say "It doesn't want increasing. I waited
twenty minutes before I could board my bus at Trafal-
gar Square the other day. It wants more depleting,
I should say — a Great Plague or something," a view
which Kay and Gerda thought truly egotistical.

"I do hope," said Neville, her thoughts having led
her to the statement, "I do very much hope that neither
of you will ever perpetrate that sort of marriage. It
would be so dreadfully common of you,"

"Impossible to say," Kay said, vaguely.

"Considering," said Gerda, "that there are a million
more women than men in this country, it stands to
reason that some system of polygamy must become the
usual thing in the future."

"It's always been the usual thing, darling. Dread-
fully usual. It's so much more amusing to be imusual
in diese ways."

Neville's voice trailed drowsily away. Polygamy.
Sex. Free Love. Love in chains. The children seemed
so often to be discussing these. Just as, twenty years
ago, she and her friends had seemed always to be dis-
cussing the Limitations of Personality, the Ethics of

i22 DANGEROUS a6eS

Friendship, and the Nature, if any^ of God. This last
was to Kay and Gerda too hypothetical to be a stimu-
lating theme. It would have sent them to sleep, as sex
did Neville.

Neville, led by Free Love to a private vision, brooded
csmically over savages dancing round a wood-pile in
primeval forests, engaged in what missionaries, jour-
nalists, and writers of fiction about our coloiured
brothers call "nameless orgies" (as if you would ex-
pect most orgies to answer to their names, like the
stars) and she saw the steep roads of the round world
nmning back and back and back — on or back, it made
no difference, since the world was round — to this. Saw,
too, a thousand stuffy homes wherein sat couples linked
by a legal formula so rigid, so lasting, so indelible, that
not all their tears could wash out a word of it, unless
they took to themselves other mates, in which case their
second state might be worse than their first. Free love
— ^love in chains. How absurd it all was, and how
tragic too. One might react back to the remaining
choice — no love at all — and that was absurder and
more tragic still, since man was made (among other
ends) to love. Looking imder her heavy lashes at her
pretty young children, incredibly youtifciful, absurdly
theoretical, fiercely clean of mind and frank of speech,
their clearness as yet unblurred by the expediencies,
compromise and experimental contacts of life, Neville
was stabbed by a sharp pang of fear and hope for
them. Fear lest on some fleeting impulse they might
founder into the sentimental triviality of short-lived
contacts, or into the tedium of bonds which must out-
live desire; hope that, by some fortunate chance, they
might each achieve, as she had achieved, some relation
which should be both durable and to be endured. As
to the third path — ^no love at all — she did not believe

NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY 23

that either Kay or Gerda would tread that. They
were emotional, in their cool and youthful way, and
also believed that they ought to increase the popula-
tion. What a wonderful, noble thing to believe, at
twenty, thought Neville, remembering the levity of
her own irresponsible youth, when her only interest
in the population had been a nightmare fear lest they
should at last become so numerous that they would
be driven out of the towns into the country and would
be scuttling over the moors, downs and woods like
black beetles in kitchens in the night. They were bet-
ter than she had been, these children; more public-
spirited and more in earnest about life.

Across the garden came Nan Hilary, having come
down from town to see Neville on her forty-third birth-
day. Nan herself was not so incredibly old as Neville;
(for forty-three is incredibly old, from any reasonable
standpoint). Nan was thirty-three and a half. She
represented the thirties; she was, in Neville's mind, a
bridge between the remote twenties and the new, ex-
traordinary forties in which one could hardly believe.
It seems normal to be in the thirties; the right, ordinary
age, that most people are. Nan, who wrote, and lived
in rooms in Chelsea, was rather like a wild animal —
a leopard or something. Long and lissome, with a
small, roimd, sallow face and withdrawn, brooding yel-
low eyes under sulky black brows that slanted up to
the outer comers. Nan had a good time socially and
intenectually. She was clever and lazy; she would
fritter away days and weeks in idle explorations into
the humanities, or curled up in the sim in the country

24 DANGEROUS AGES

like a cat. Her worst fault was a cynical imkindness,
against which she did not strive because investigating
the less admirable traits of human beings amused her.
She was infinitely amused by her nephew and her niece,
but often spiteful to them, merely because they were
young. To sum up, she was a csniic, a rake, an excel-
lent literary critic, a sardonic and brilliant novelist,
and she had a passionate, adoring and protecting affec-
tion for Neville, who was the only person who had
always been told what sh^ called the darker secrets
of her life.

She sat down on the grass, her thin brown hands
clasped round her ankles, and said to Neville, "You're
looking very sweet, aged one. Forty-three seems to
suit you."

"And you," Neville returned, "look as if youM jazzed
all night and written imkind reviews from dawn till
breakfast time."

"That's just about right," Nan owned, and flung her-
self full length on her back, shutting her eyes against
the sun. "That's why I've come down here to cool
my jaded nerves. And also because Rosalind wanted
to lunch with me."

"Have you read my poems yet?*' enquired Gerda,
who never showed the customary abashed hesitation
in dealing with these matters. She and Kay sent their
literary efforts to Nan to criticise, because they be-
lieved (a) in her powers as a critic, (b) in her influ-
ence in the literary world. Nan used in their behalf
the former but seldom the latter, because, in spite of
queer spasms of generosity, she was jealous of Gerda
and Kay. Why should they want to write? Why
shouldn't they do anyiidng else in the world but tres-
pass on her preserves? Not that verse was what she
ever wrote or could write herself. And of course

NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY 25.

everyone wrote now, and especially the very young;
but in a niece and nephew it was a tiresome trick.
They didn't write well, because no one of their age
ever does, but they might some day. They already
came out in weekly papers and anthologies of contem-
porary verse. Very soon they would come out in little
volumes. They'd much better, thought Nan, marry
and get out of the way.

"Read them — ^yes," Nan returned laconically to
Gerda's question.

''What," enquired Gerda, perseveringly, "did you
think of them?"

"I said I'd read them," Nan replied. "I didn't say
I'd thought of them."

Gerda looked at her with her wide, candid gaze, with
the unrancorous placidity of the young, who are still
used to being snubbed. Nan, she knew, would tease
and bafiBe, withhold and gibe, but would always say
what she thought in the end, and what she thought was
always worth knowing, even though she was middle-
aged.

Nan, turning her lithe body over on the grass, caught
the patient child's look, and laughed. Generous im-
pulses alternated in her with malicious moods where
these absurd, solemn, egotistic, pretty children of
Neville's were concerned.

"All right. Blue Eyes. I'll write it all down for you
and send it to you with the MS., if you really want it.
You won't like it, you know, but I suppose you're used
to that by now."

Neville listened to them. Regret turned in her, cold
and tired and envious. They all wrote except her. To
write: it wasn't much of a thing to do, imless one did
it really well, and it had never attracted her personally,
but it was, nevertheless, something — a, little piece of

26 DANGEROUS AGES

individual output thrown into the flowing river. She
had never written, even when she was Gerda^s age.
Twenty years ago writing poetry hadn't been as it is
to-day, a necessary part of youth's accomplishment like
tennis, French or dancing. Besides, Neville could
never have enjoyed writing poetry, because for her the
gulf between good verse and bad was too wide to be
bridged by her own achievements. Nor novels, be-
cause she disliked nearly all novels, finding them
tedious, vulgar, conventional, and out of all relation
both to life as lived and to the world of imagination.
What she had written in early youth had been queer
imaginative stuff, woven out of her childhood's explora-
tions into fairyland and of her youth's into those still
stranger tropical lands beyond seas where she had
travelled with her father. But she hadn't written or
much wanted to write; scientific studies had alwa3rs
attracted her more than literary achievements. Then
she had married Rodney, and that was the end of all
studies and achievements for her, though not the end
of anything for Rodney, but the beginning.

Rodney came out of the house, his pipe in his mouth.
He still had the loimging walk, shoulders high and
hands in pockets, of the undergraduate; the walk also
of ELay. He sat down among his family. ELay and
Gerda looked at him with approval; though they knew
his weakness, he was just the father they would have
chosen, and of how few parents can this be said. They
were proud to take him about with them to political
meetings and so forth, and prouder still to sit under
him while he addressed audiences. Few men of his
great age were (on the whole) so right in the head and
soimd in the heart, and fewer still so delightful to the
eye. When people talked about the Wicked Old Men^
who, being still unfortunately unrestrained and un-

NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY 27

murdered by the Yoxing, make this wicked world what
it is, Kay and Gerda always contended that there were
a few exceptions.

Nan gave Rodney her small, fleeting smile. She
had a critical friendliness for him, but had never be-
lieved him really good enough for Neville.

Gerda and Kay began to play a single, and Nan
said, "I'm in a hole."

"Broke, darling?" Neville asked her, for that was
usually it, though sometimes it was human entangle-
ments.

Nan nodded. "If I could have ten pounds. . . .
I'd let you have it in a fortnight."

"That's easy," said Rodney, in his kind, offhand
way.

"Of course," Neville said. "You old spendthrift."

"Thank you, dears. Now I can get a birthday pres-
ent for mother."

For Mrs. Hilary's birthday was next week, and to
celebrate it her children habitually assembled at The
Gulls, St. Mary's Bay, where she lived. Nan always
gave her a more expensive present than she could
afford, in a spasm of remorse for the irritation her
mother roused in her.

"Oh, poor mother," Neville exclaimed, suddenly re-
membering that Mrs. Hilary would in a week be sixty-
three, and that this must be worse by twenty years
than to be forty-three.

The hurrying stream of life was loud in her ears.
How quickly it was sweeping them all along — ^the young
bodies of Gerda and of Kay leaping on the tennis
coiut, the clear, analysing minds of Nan and Rodney
and herself musing in the sun, the feverish heart of
her mother, loving, hating, feeding restlessly on itself
by the seaside, the age-calmed soul of her grand-

28 DANGEROUS AGES

mother, who was eighty-four and drove out in a donkey
chair by the same sea.

The lazy talking of Rodney and Nan, the oyings
and strikings of Gerda and Kay, the noontide chirrup-
ings of birds, the duckings of distant hens pretending
that they had laid eggs, all merged into the rushing of
the inexorable river, along and along and along. Time,
like an ever-rolling stream, bearing all its sons away.
Clatter, chatter, clatter, does it matter, matter, matter?
They fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.
• . . No, it probably didn't matter at all what one did,
how much one got into one's life, since there was to be,
anyhow, so soon an end.

The garden became strange and far and flat, like
tapestry, or a dream. . . .

The lunch gong boomed. Nan, who had fallen
asleep with the suddenness of a lower animal, her
cheek pillowed on her hand, woke and stretched.
Gerda and ELay, not to be distracted from their pur-
pose, finished the set.

"Thank God," said Nan, "that I am not lunching
with Rosalind."

CHAPTER n

MRS. Hilary's birthday

They all turned up at The Gulls, St. Mary's Bay, in
time for Ixmch on Mrs. Hilary's birthday. It was her
special wish that all those of her children who could
should do this each year. Jim, whom she preferred,
couldn't come this time; he was a surgeon; it is an
uncertain profession. The others all came; Neville
and Pamela and Gilbert and Nan and with Gilbert
his wife Rosalind, who had no right there because
she was only an in-law, but if Rosalind thought it
would amuse her to do anything you could not pre-
vent her. She and Mrs. Hilary disliked one another
a good deal, though Rosalind would say to the
others, "Your darling mother! She's priceless, and
I adore herl" She would say that when she had
caught Mrs. Hilary in a mistake. She would draw
her on to say she had read a book she hadn't read
(it was a point of honour with Mrs. Hilary never
to admit ignorance of any book mentioned by others)
and then she would say, "I do love you, mother 1
It's not out yet; I've only seen Gilbert's review copy,"
and Mrs. Hilary would say, "In that case I suppose I
am thinking of another book," and Rosalind would
say to Neville or Pamela or Gilbert or Nan, "Your
daxhng mother. I adore her I " and Nan, contemptuous

30 DANGEROUS AGES

of her mother for thinking such trivial pretence worth
while, and with Rosalind for thinking malicious ex-
posure worth while, would shrug her shoulders and
turn away.

All but Neville arrived by the same train from
town, the one getting in at 12.11. Neville had come
from Surrey the day before and spent the night, because
Mrs. Hilary liked to have her all to herself for a little
time before the others came. After Jim, Neville was
the child Mrs. Hilary preferred. She had always been
a mother with marked preferences. There were vari-
ous barriers between her and her various children;
Gilbert, who was thirty-eight, had annoyed her long
ago by taking up literature as a profession on leaving
Cambridge, instead of doing what she described as '^a
man's job," and later on by marrying Rosalind, who
was fast, and, in Mrs. Hilary's opinion, immoral.
Pamela, who was thirty-nine and working in a settle-
ment in Hoxton, annoyed her by her devotion to
Frances Carr, the friend with whom she lived. Mrs.
Hilary thought them very silly, these dose friendships
between women. They prevented marriage, and led
to foolish fussing about one another's health and happi-
ness. Nan annoyed her by "getting talked about" with
men, by writing books which Mrs. Hilary found both
dull and not very nice, in tone, and by her own irritated
reactions to her mother's personality. Nan, in fact,
was often rude and ciurt to her.

But Jim, who was a man and a doctor, a strong,
good-humoured person and her eldest son, annoyed her
not at all. Nor did Neville, who was her eldest daugh-

MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY 31

ter and had given her grandchildren and infinite
sympathy.

Neville, knowing all these things and more, always
arrived on the evenings before her mother's birthdays,
and they talked all the morning. Mrs. Hilary was at
her best with Neville. She was neither irritable nor
nervous nor showing off. She looked much less than
sixty-three. She was a tall, slight, trailing woman, with
the remains of beauty, and her dark, untidy hair was
only streaked with grey. Since her husband had died,
ten years ago, she had lived at St. Mary's Bay with
her mother. It had been her old home ; not The Gulls,
but the vicarage, in the days when St. Mary's Bay had
been a little fishing village without an esplanade. To
old Mrs. Lennox it was the same fishing village still,
and the people, even the summer visitors, were to her
the flock of her late husband, who had died twenty
years ago.

"A good many changes lately," she would say to
them. "Some people think the place is improving. But
I can't say I like the esplanade."

But the visitors, unless they were very old, didn't
know anything about the changes. To them St. Mary's
Bay was not a fishing village but a seaside resort. To
Mrs. Hilary it was her old home, and had healthy air
and plenty of people for her mother to gossip with and
was as good a place as any other for her to parch in
like a withered flower now that the work of her life
was done. The work of her life had been making a
home for her husband and children; she had never
had either the desire or the faculties for any other
work. Now that work was over, and she was rather
badly left, as she cared neither for cards, knitting,
gardening, nor intellectual pursuits. Once, seven years
ago, at Neville's instigation, she had tried London life

32 DANGEROUS AGES

for a time, but it had been no use. The people she
met there were too unlike her, too intelligent and up to
date; they went to meetings and concerts and picture
exhibitions and read books and talked about public
afifairs not emotionally but coolly and drily; they were
mildly surprised at Mrs. Hilary's vehemence of feel-
ing on all points, and she was strained beyond endur-
ance by their knowledge of facts and catholicity of
interests. So she returned to St. Mary's Bay, where
she passed muster as an mtelligent woman, gossipped
with her mother, the servants and their neighbours,
read novels, brooded over the happier past, walked
for miles alone along the coast, and slipped every now
and then, as she had slipped even in youth, over the
edge of emotionalism into hysterical passion or grief.
Her mother was no use at such times; she only made
her worse, sitting there in the calm of old age, looking
tranquilly at the end, for her so near that nothing mat-
tered. Only Jim or Neville were of any use then.

Neville on the eve of this her sixty-third birthday
soothed one such outburst. The tedium of life, with
no more to do in it — why couldn't it end? The lights
were out, the flowers were dead — and yet the unhappy
actors had to stay and stay and stay, idling on tiie
empty, darkened stage. (That was how Mrs. Hilary,
witli her gift for picturesque language, put it.) Must
it be empty, must it be dark, Neville uselessly asked,
knowing quite well that for one of her mother's tem-
perament it must. Mrs. Hilary had lived in and by
her emotions; nothing else had coxmted. Life for her
had burnt itself out, and its remnant was like the fag
end of a cigarette, stale and old.

"Shall I feel like that in twenty years?" Neville
speculated aloud.

MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY 33

"I hope," said Mrs. Hilary, "that you won't have
lost Rodney. So long as you have him . . ."

"But if I haven't . • ."

Neville looked down the years; saw herself without
Rodney, perhaps looking after her mother, who would
then have become (strange, incredible thought, but who
could say?) calm with the calm of age; Kay and Gerda
married or working or both. . . . What then? Only
she was better equipped than her mother for the fag
end of life; she had a serviceable brain and a sound
education. She wouldn't pass empty da3rs at a seaside
resort. She would work at something, and be inter-
ested. Interesting work and interesting friends — ^her
mother, by her very nature, could have neither, but was
just clever enough to feel the want of them. The thing
was to start some definite work now, before it was too
late.

"Did Grandmama go through it?" Neville asked her
mother.

"Oh, I espect so. I was selfish; I was wrapped up
in home and all of you; I didn't notice. But I think
she had it badly, for a time, when first she left the
vicarage. . . . She's contented now."

They both looked at Grandmama, who was playing
patience on the sofa and could not hear their talking
for the sound of the sea. Yes, Grandmama was (ap-
parently) contented now.

"There's work," mused Neville, thinking of the vari-
ous links with life, the rafts, rather, which should carry
age over the cold seas of tedious regret. "And there's
natural gaiety. And intellectual interests. And con-
tacts with other people — ^permanent contacts and tem-
porary ones. And beauty. All those things. For some
people, too, there's religion."

"And for all of us food and drink," said Mrs. Hilary,

34 DANGEROUS AGES

sharply. ^'Oh, I suppose you think I've no right to
complain, as I've got all those things, except work/'

But Neville shook her head, knowing that this was a
delusion of her mother's, and that she had, in point of
fact, none of them, except the contacts with people,
which mostly either over-strained, irritated or bored
her, and that aspect of religion which made her cry.
For she was a Unitarian, and thought the Gospels in-
finitely sad and the souls of the departed most probably
so merged in God as to be deprived of all individuality.

"It's better to be High Church or Roman Catholic
and have services, or an Evangelical and have the Voice
of God," Neville decided. And, indeed, it is probable
that Mrs. Hilary would have been one or other of these
things if it had not been for her late husband, who
had disapproved of superstition and had instructed her
in the Higher Thought and the Larger Hope.

Though heaviness endured for the night, joy came
in the morning, as is apt to happen where there is sea
air. Mrs. Hilary on her birthday had a revulsion to
gaiety, owing to a fine day, her unstable temperament,
letters, presents and being made a fuss of. Also Grand-
mama said, when she went up to see her after breakfast,
"This new dress suits you particularly, my dear child.
It brings out the colour in your eyes," and everyone
likes to hear that when they are sixty-three or any
other age.

So, when the rest of her children arrived, Mrs. Hilary
was ready for them.

They embraced her in turn; Pamela, capable, humor-
ous and intelligent, the very type of the professional

MRS- HILARY'S BIRTHDAY 35

woman at her best, but all the time preferrmg Frances
Carr, anxious about her because she was over-working
and run down; Nan, her extravagant present in her
hands, on fire to protect her mother against old age,
depression and Rosalind, yet knowing too how soon
she herself would be smouldering with irritation; Gil-
bert, spare and cynical, writer of plays and literary
editor of the Weekly Critic, and with him his wife
Rosalind, whom Mrs. Hilary had long since judged as
a voluptuous rake who led men on and made up un-
seemly stories and her lovely face, but who insisted
on coming to The Gulls with Gilbert to see his adorable
mother. Rosalind, who was always taking up things
— ^art, or religion, or spiritualism, or young men — ^and
dropping them when they bored her, had lately taken
up psycho-analysis. She was studying what she called
her mother-in-law's "case," looking for and finding
complexes in her past which should account for her
somewhat unbalanced present.

"I've never had complexes," Mrs. Hilary would de-
clare, indignantly, as if they had been fleas or worse,
and indeed when Rosalind handled them they were
worse, much. From Rosalind Mrs. Hilary got the most
unpleasant impression possible (which is to say a good
deal) of psycho-analysts. "They have only one idea,
and that is a disgusting one," she would assert, for
she could only rarely and with difficulty see more than
one idea in anything, particularly when it was a dis-
gusting one. Her mind was of that sort — ^tenacious,
intolerant, and not many-sided. That was where
(partly where) she fell foul of her children, who saw
sharply and dearly all around things and gave to each
side its value. They knew Mrs. Hilary to be a muddled
bigot, whose mind was stuffed with concrete instances
and insusceptible of abstract reason. If anyone had

36 DANGEROUS AGES

asked her what she knew of psycho-analysis^ she would
have replied, in effect, that she knew Rosalind, and
that was enough, more than enough, of psycho-analysis
for her. She had also looked into Freud, and rightly
had been disgusted.

"A man who spits deliberately onto his friends'
stairs, on purpose to annoy the servants . . . that is
enough, the rest follows. The man is obviously a loath-
some and indecent vulgarian. It comes from being a
German, no doubt." Which settled that; and if any-
one murmured "An Austrian," she would say "It comes
to the same thing, in questions of breedhig." Mrs.
Hilary, like Grandmama, settled people and things very
quickly and satisfactorily.

They all sat in the front garden after lunch and
looked out over the wonderful shining sea. Grand-
mama sat in her wheeled chair, Tchekov's Letters on
her knees. She had made Mrs. Hilary get this book
from Mudie's because she had read favourable reviews
of it by Gilbert and Nan. Grandmama was a cleverish
old lady, cleverer than her daughter.

"Jolly, isn't it," said Gilbert, seeing the book.

"Very entertaining," said Grandmama, and Mrs,
Hilary echoed "Most," at which Grandmama eyed her
with a twinkle, knowing that it bored her, like all the
Russians. Mrs. Hilary cared nothing for style
("Literature!" said Lady Adela. "Give me something
to readi") ; she liked nice lifelike books about people
as she believed them to be, and though she was quite
prepared to believe that real Russians were like Rus-
sians in books, she felt that she did not care to meet
either of them. But Mrs. Hilary had learnt that intelli-
gent persons seldom liked the books which seemed
to her to be about real, natural people, any more than
they admired the pictures whidi struck her as being

MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY 37

like things as they were. Though she thought those
who differed from her profoundly wrong, she never
admitted ignorance of the books they admired. F«r
she was in a better position to differ from them about
a book if she had nominally read it — and really it didn't
matter if she had actually done so or not, for she knew
beforehand what she would think of it if she had. So
well she knew this, indeed, that the line between the
books she had and hadn't read was, even in her own
mind, smudgy and vague, not hard and dear as with
most people. Often when she had seen reviews which
quoted extracts she thought she had read the book, just
as some people, when they have seen publishers' ad-
vertisements, think they have seen reviews, and declare
roundly in libraries that a book is out when it lacks a
month of publication.

Mrs. Hilary, having thus asserted her acquaintance
with Tchekov's Letters, left Gilbert, Grandmama and
Neville to talk about it together, and herself began
telling the others how disappointed Jim had been that
he could not come for her birthday.

"He was passionately anxious to come," she said, in
her dear, vibrating voice, that struck a different note
when she mentioned each one of her children, so that
you always knew which she meant. "He never misses
to-day if he can possibly help it. But he simply couldn't
get away. . . . One of these tremendously difficult new
operations, that hardly anyone can do. His work must
come first, of course. He wouldn't be Jim if it didn't.'*

"Fancy knifing people in town a day like this," said
Rosalind, stretching her large, lazy limbs in the sim.
Rosalind was big and fair, and sensuously alive.

Music blared out from the parade. Gilbert, adjust-
ing his glasses, observed its drcumstances, with his air
of detached, fastidious interest.

38 DANGEROUS AGES

"The Army/' he remarked. "The Army calling for
strayed sheep."

"Oh," exclaimed Rosalind, raising herself, "wouldn't
I love to go out and be saved 1 I was saved once, when
I was eleven. It was one of my first thrills. I felt I
was blacker in guilt than all creatures before me, and
I came forward and foxmd the Lord. Afraid I had a
relapse rather soon, though."

"Horrible vulgarians," Mrs. Hilary commented,
really meaning Rosalind at the age of eleven. "They
have meetings on the parade every morning now. The
police ought to stop it."

Grandmama was beating time with her hand on
the arm of her chair to the merry music-hall tune and
the ogreish words.

"Blood! Blood!
Rivers of blood for you,
Oceans of blood for me!
All that the sinner has gat to do
Is to plunge into that Red Sea.

Clean I CleaQl
Wash and be clean!
Though filthy and black as a sweep you've been,
The waves of that sea shall make you clean. . . .'^

"That," Mrs. Hilary asserted, with disgust, "is a
most disagreeable way of worshipping God." She was
addicted to these undeniable statements, taking nothing
for granted.

"But a very racy tune, my dear," said Grandmama,
"though the words are foolish and unpleasing."

Gilbert said, "A stimulating performance. If we
don't restrain her, Rosalind will be getting saved
again."

He was proud of Rosalind's vitality, whimsies and
exuberances.

MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY 39

Rosalind, who had a fine rolling voice, began reciting
"General Booth enters into heaven," by Mr. Vachell
Lindsay, which Mrs. Hilary found disgusting.

"A wonderful man," said Grandmama, who had been
reading the General's life in two large volumes.
"Though mistaken about many things. And his Life
would have been more interesting if it had been written
by Mr. Lytton Strachey instead of Mr. Begbie; he
has a better touch on our great religious leaders.
"Your grandfather," added Grandmama, "alwa3rs got
on well with the Army people. He encouraged them.
The present vicar does not. He says their methods
are deplorable and their goal a delusion."

Rosalind said "Their methods are entrancing and
their goal the Lord. What more does he want? Clergy-
men are so narrow. That's why I had to give up being
a churchwoman."

Rosalind had been a churchwoman (high) for nine
months some six years ago, just after planchette and
just before flag daj^. She had decided, after this brief
trial, that incense and confessions, though immensely
stimulating, did not weigh down the balance against
early mass, Lent, and being thrown with other church-
women.

"What about a bathe?" Neville suggested to all of
them. "Mother?"

Mrs. Hilary, a keen bather, agreed. They all agreed
except Grandmama, who was going out in her donkey
chair instead, as one does at eighty-four.

They all went down to the beach, where the Army
still sang of the Red Sea, and where the blue high tide
clapped white hands on brown sand.

(tee by one they emerged from tents and sprang

40 DANGEROUS AGES

through the white leaping edge into the rocking blue,
as other bathers were doing all round the bay. When
Mrs. Hilary came out of her tent, Neville was waiting
for her, poised like a slim girl, knee-deep in tumbling
waves, shaking the water from her eyes.

"Come, mother. I'll race you out."

Mrs. Hilary waded in, a figure not without grace
and dignity. Looking back they saw Rosalind coming
down the beach, large-limbed and splendid, hke Jimo.
Mrs. Hilary shrugged her shoulders.

"Disgusting," she remarked to Neville.

So much more, she meant, of Rosalind than of Rosa-
lind's costume. Mrs. Hilary preferred it to be the
other way about, for, though she did not really like
either of them, she disliked the costiune less than she
disliked Rosalind.

"It's quite in the fashion," Neville assured her, and
Mrs. Hilary, remarking that she was sure of that,
splashed her head and face and pushed oflF, mainly to
escape from Rosalind, who always sat in the foam, not
being, like the Hilary family, an active swimmer.

Already Pamela and Gilbert were far out, swinuning
steadily against each other, and Nan was tumbling
and turning like an eel close behind them.

Neville and Mrs. Hilary swam out a little way.

"I shall now float on my back," said Mrs. Hilary.
"You swim on and catch up with the rest."

"You'll be all right?" Neville asked, lingering.

"Why shouldn't I be all right? I bathe nearly every
day, you know, even if I am sixty-three." This was
not accurate; she only bathed as a rule when it was
warm, and this seldom occurs on our island coasts.

Neville, sasdng, "Don't stop in long, will you," left
her and swam out into the blue with her swift, over-
hand stroke. Neville was the best swimmer in a swim-

MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY 41

ming family. She dove the water like a torpedo
destroyer, swift and untiring between the hot summer
sun and the cool summer sea. She shouted to the others,
caught them up, raced them and won, and then they
began to duck each other. When the Hilary brothers
and sisters were swimming or playing together, they
were even as they had been twenty years ago.

Mrs. Hilary watched them, swimming slowly round,
a few feet out of her depth. They seemed to have for-
gotten her and her birtiiday. The only one who was
within speaking distance was Rosalind, wallowing with
her big white limbs in tumbling waves on the shore;
Rosalind, whom she disliked; Rosalind, who was more
than her costume, which was not saying much; Rosa-
lind, before whom she had to keep up an appearance
of immense enjo3nnent because Rosalind was so
malicious.

"You wonderful woman 1 I can't think how you do
it,'' Rosalind was crying to her in her rich, ripe voice
out of the splashing waves. "But fancy their all swim-
ming out and leaving you to yourself. Why, you might
get cramp and sink. I'm no use, you know; I'm hope-
less; can't keep up at all."

"I shan't trouble you, thank you," Mrs. Hilary called
back, and her voice shook a little because she was get-
ting chilled.

"Why, you're shivering," Rosalind cried. "Why
don't you come out? You are wonderful, I do admire
you. . . . It's no use waiting for the others, they'll be
ages. . . . I say, look at Neville; fancy her being forty-
three. I never knew such a family. . . . Come and sit
in the waves with me, it's lovely and warm."

"I prefer swimming," said Mrs. Hilary, and she was
shivering more now. She never stayed in so long as
this; she usually only plunged in and came out.

42 DANGEROUS AGES

Grandmama, stopping on the esplanade in her
donkey chair, was waving and beckoning to her.
Grandmama knew she had been in too long, and that
her rheumatism would be bad.

^'Come out, dear/' Grandmama called, in her old thin
voice. ''Come out. You've been in jar too long J'

Mrs. Hilary only waved her hand to Grandmama.
She was not going to come out, like an old woman, be-
fore the others did, the others, who had swum out and
left her alone on her birthday bathe.

They were swimming back now, first all in a row,
then one behind the other; Neville leading, with her
arrowy drive, Gilbert and Pamela behind, so alike, with
their pale, finely cut, intellectual faces, and their sharp
chins cutting through the sea, and their quick, short,
vigorous strokes, and Nan, still far out, swimming lazily
on her back, the sim in her eyes.

Mrs. Hilary's heart stirred to see her swimming
brood, so graceful and strong and swift and young.
They possessed, surely, everything that was in the
heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water
over the earth. And she, who was sixty-three, possessed
nothing. She could not even swim with her children.
They might have thought of that, and stayed with her.
. . . Neville, anyhow. Jim would have, said Mrs.
Hilary to herself, half knowing and half not knowing
that she was IsHlng.

*'Coine out, dear!'* called Grandmama from the
esplanade. ''You'll be iUr

Back they came, Neville first. Neville, seeing from
afar her mother's blue face, called "Mother dear, how
cold you are! You shouldn't have stayed in so long!**

"I was waiting," Mrs. Hilary said, "for you."

"Oh why, dear?"

"Don't know. I thought I would. . . . It's pretty

MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY 43

poor fun," Mrs. Hilary added, having failed after tiy-
ing not to, "bathing all alone on one's birthday."

Neville gave a little sigh, and gently propelled her
mother to the shore. She hadn't felt like this on her
birthday, when IS^y and Gerda had gone off to some
avocation of their own and left her in the garden. Many
things she had felt on her birthday, but not this. It is
an undoubted truth that people react quite differently
to birthdays.

Rosalind rose out of the foam Uke Aphrodite, grandly
beautiful, though all the paint was washed off her face
and lips.

"Wonderful people," she apostrophised the shore-
coming family. "Anyone would think you were all
nineteen. / was the only comfy one."

Rosalind was always talking about age, emphasising
it, as if it were very important.

They hurried up to the tents, and last of all came
Nan, riding in to shore on a swelling wave and lying
full length where it flung her, for the joy of feeling
the wet sand sucking away beneath her.

Grandmama, waiting for them on the esplanade, was
angry with Mrs. Hilary.

"My dear child, didn't you hear me call? You're
perfectly blue. You know you never stay in more than
five minutes. Neville, you should have seen that she
didn't. Now you'll get your rheumatism back, child,
and only yourself to thank. It's too silly. People of
sixty-three carrying on as if they were fifty; I've no
patience with it."

44 DANGEROUS AGES

^'They all swam out/' said Mrs. Hilary, who, onc^
having succumbed to the impulse to adopt this attitude,
could not check it. ^^I waited for them."

Grandmama, who was cross, said "Very silly of you
and very selfish of the children. Now you'd better go
to bed with hot bottles and a posset."

But Mrs. Hilary, though she felt the red-hot stab-
bings of an attack of rheumatism already beginning,
stayed up. She was happier now, because the children
were making a fuss of her, suggesting remedies and so
on. She would stay up, and show them she could be
plucky and cheerful even with rheumatism. A definite
thing, like illness or pain, always put her on her mettle;
it was so easy to be brave when people knew you had
something to be brave about, and so hard when they
didn't.

They had an early tea, and then Gilbert and Rosa-
lind, who were going out to dinner, caught the 5.15
back to town. Rosalind's departure made Mrs. Hilary
more cheerful still. She soared into her gayest mood,
and told them amusing stories of the natives, and how
much she and Grandmama shocked some of them.

"All the same, dear," said Grandmama presently,
"you know you often enjoy a chat with your neighbours
very much. You'd be bored to death with no one to
gossip with."

But Neville's hand, slipping into her mother's, meant
**You shall adopt what pose you like on your birthday,
darling. If you like to be too clever for anyone else
in the Bay so that they bore you to tears and you shock
them to fits — ^well, you shall, and we'll believe you."

Nan, listening sulkily to what she called to herself
"mother's swank," for a moment almost preferred
Rosalind, who was as frank and unposturing as an ani-
mal; Rosalind, with her malicious thrusts and her cor*

MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY 45

nipt mind and her frank feminine greediness. For
Rosalind, anyhow, didn't pretend to herself, though
she did midoubtedly, when for any reason it suited her,
lie to other people. Mrs. Hilary's lying went all
through, deep down; it sprang out of the roots of her
being, so that all the time she was making up, not only
for others but for herself, a sham person who did not
exist. That Nan found infinitely oppressive. So did
Pamela, but Pamela was more tolerant and S5anpathetic
and less ill-tempered than Nan, and observed the ways
of others with quiet, ironic humour, saying nothing un-
kind. Pamela, when she didn't like a way of talking —
when Rosalind, for instance, was being malicious or
indecent or both — ^would skilfully carry the talk some-
where else. She could be a rapid and good talker, and
could tell story after story, lightly and coolly, till
danger points were past. Pamela was beautifully bred;
she had savoir-faire as well as kindness, and never lost
control of herself. These family gatherings really bored
her a little, because her work and interests lay else-
where, but she would never admit or show it. She
was kind even to Rosalind, though cool. She had al-
ways been kind and cool to Rosalind, because Gilbert
was her special brother, and when he had married this
fast, painted and unHilaryish young woman, she had
seen the necessity for taking firm hold of an attitude
in the matter and retaining it. No one, not even
Neville, not even Frances Carr, had ever seen behind
Pamela's guard where Rosalind was concerned. When
Nan abused Rosalind, Pamela would say "Don't be a
spitfire, child. What's the use?" and change the sub-
ject. For Rosalind was, in Pamela's view, one of the
things which were a pity but didn't really matter, so
long as she didn't make Gilbert unhappy. And Gil-
bert, so far, was absurdly pleased and proud about her,

46 DANGEROUS AGES

in spite of occasional disapprovals of her excessive
intimacies with others.

But, whatever they all felt about Rosalind, there was
no doubt that the family party was happier for her
departure. The departure of in-laws, even when they
are quite nice in-laws, often has this effect on family
parties. Mrs. Hilary had her three daughters to her-
self — the girls, as she still called them. She felt cosy
and comforted, though in pain, lying on the sofa by the
bay window in the warm afternoon sunshine, while
Grandmama looked at the London Mercury, which
had just come by the post, and the girls talked.

Their voices rose and fell against the soft splashing
of the sea; Neville's, sweet and light, with pretty
cadences, Pamela's, crisp, quick and decided. Nan's,
trailing a little, almost drawling sometimes. The Hilary
voices were all thin, not rich and full-bodied, like Rosa-
lind's. Mrs. Hilary's was thin, like Grandmama's.

"Nice voices," thought Mrs. Hilary, languidly listen-
ing. "Nice children. But what nonsense they often
talk."

They were talking now about the Minority Report
of some committee, which had been drafted by Rodney.
Rodney and the Minority and Neville and Pamela and
Nan were all interested in ^hat Mrs. Hilary called
"This Labour nonsense which is so fashionable now."
Mrs. Hilary herself, being unfashionable, was anti-
Labour, since it was apparent to her that the working
classes had already more power, money and education
than was good for them, sons of Belial, flown with
insolence and bonuses. Grandmama^^being so nearly

MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY 47

out of it all, was used only to say, in reply to these
sentiments, "It will make no difference in the end. We
shall all be the same in the grave, and in the life be-
yond. All these movements are very interesting, but
the world goes round just the same." It was all very
well for Grandmama to be philosophical; she wouldn't
have to live for years ruled and triumphed over by
her own gardener, which was the way Mrs. Hilary
saw it.

Mrs. Hilary began to get angry, hearing the girls
talking in this silly way. Of course it was natural that
Neville should agree with Rodney; but Pamela had
picked up foolish ideas from working among the poor
and living with Frances Carr, and Nan was, as usual,
merely wrong-headed, childish and perverse.

Suddenly she broke out, losing her temper, as she
often did when she disagreed with people's politics,
for she did not take a calm and tolerant view of these
things.

"I never heard such stuff in my life. I disagree with
every word you've all said."

She always disagreed in bulk, like that. It seemed
simpler than arguing separate points, and took less time
and knowledge. She saw Neville wrinkling her broad
forehead, doubtfully, as if wondering how the subject
could most easily be changed, and that annoyed her.

Nan said, "You mean you disagree with the Report.
Which clauses of it?" and there was that soft vicious-
ness in her voice whid^^ showed that she knew Mrs.
Hilary had not even rea'd the Minority Report, or the
Majority Report either. Nan was spiteful; always try-
ing to prove that her mother didn't know what she
was talking about; always trying to pin her down on
points of detail. Like the people with whom Mrs.
Hilary had faited to get on during her brief sojourn

48 DANGEROUS AGES

in London; they too had always shunned general dis-
putes about opinion and sentiment, such as were car-
ried on with profit in St. Mary's Bay, and pinned the
discussion down to hard facts, about which the Bay's
information was inaccurate and incomplete. As if you
didn't know when you disagreed with a thing's whole
drift, whether you had read it or not. . . . Mrs. Hilary
had never had any head for facts.

"It's the whole idea," she said, hotly. "And I de-
test all these Labour people. Vile creatures. ... Of
course I don't mean people like Rodney — ^the Uni-
versity men. They're merely amateurs. But these
dreadful Trades Union men, with their walrus mous-
taches. . . . Why can't they shave, like other people,
if they want to be taken for gentlemen?"

Neville told her, chaffingly, that she was a mass of
prejudice.

Grandmama, who had fallen asleep and dropped the
London Mercury onto the floor, diverted the conversa-
tion by waking up and remarking that it seemed a less
interesting number than usual on the whole, though
some of the pieces of poetry were pretty, and that Mrs.
Hilary ought not to lie under the open window.

Mrs. Hilary, who was getting worse, admitted that
she had better be in bed.

"I hope," said Grandmama, "that it will be a lesson
to you, dear, not to stay in the water so long again,
even if you do want to diow off before your daughter-
in-law." Grandmama, who disliked Rosalind, usually
called her to Mrs. Hilary "your daughter-in-law,"
saddling her, so to speak, with the responsibility for
Gilbert's ill-advised marriage. To her grandchUdren
she would refer to Rosalind as "your sister-in-law," or
"poor Gilbert's wife."

"The bathe was worth it," said Mrs. Hilary, swing-

MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY 49

ing up to high spirits again. "It was a glorious bathe.
But I have got rheumatics.*'

So Neville stayed on at The Gulls that night, to
massage her mother's joints, and Pamela and Nan went
back to Hoxton and Chelsea by the evening train.
Pamela had supper, as usual, with Frances Carr, and
Nan with Barry Briscoe, and they both talked and
talked, about all the things you don't talk of in families
but only to friends.

Neville meanwhile was saying to Grandmama in the
drawing-room at The Gulls, after Mrs. Hilary had
gone to bed, "I wish mother could get some regular
interest or occupation. She would be much happier.
Are there no jobs for elderly ladies in the Bay?"

"As many in the Bay," said Grandmama, up in arms
for the Bay, "as an3nvhere else. Sick-visiting, care
conunittees, bo3rs' and girls' classes, and so on. I still
keep as busy as I am able, as you know."

Neville did know. "If mother could do the
same. . . ."

"Mother can't. She's never been a rector's wife, as
I have, and she doesn't care for such jobs. Mother
never did care for any kind of work really, even as a
girl. She married when she was nineteen and found
the only work she was fitted for and interested in.
That's over, and there's no other she can turn to. It's
common enough, child, with women. They just have
to make the best of it, and muddle through somehow
tiU the end."

"You were different, Grandmama, weren't you? I
mean, you were never at a loss for things to do."

50 DANGEROUS AGES

Grandmama's thin, delicate face hardened for a mo-
ment into grim lines.

"At a loss — ^yes, I was what you call at a loss twenty
years ago, when your grandfather died. The meaning
was gone out of life, you see. I was sixty-four. For
two years I was cut adrift from ever}^thing, and did
nothing but brood and find trivial occupations to pass
the time somehow. I lived on memories and emotions;
I was hysterical and peevish and bored. Then I
realised it wouldn't do; that I might have twenty years
and more of life before me, and that I must do some-
thing with it. So I took up again all of my old work
that I could. It was the hardest thing I ever did. I hated
it at first. Then I got interested again, and it has kept
me going all these years, though I've had to drop most
of it now of course. But now I'm so near the end that
it doesn't matter. You can drop work at eighty and
keep calm and interested in life. You can't at sixty;
it's too young. . . . Mother knows that too, but there
seems no work she can do. She doesn't care for parish
work as I do; she never learnt any art or craft or handi-
work, and doesn't want to; she was never much good
at intellectual work of any kind, and what mind she
had as a girl — and her father and I did try to train
her to use it — ran all to seed during her married life,
so it's pretty nearly useless now. She spent herself
on your father and all you children, and now she's
bankrupt."

"Poor darling mother," Neville murmured.

Grandmama nodded. "Just so. She's left to read
novels, gossip with stupid neighbours, look after me,
write to you children, go on walks, and brood over the
past. She would have been quite happy like that forty
years ago. The young have high spirits, and can amuse

MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY 51

themselves without work. She never wanted work
when she was eighteen. It's the old who need work.

' They've lost their spring and their zest for life, and
need something to hold on to. It's all wrong, the way
we arrange it — making the yoimg work and the old
dt idle. It should be the other way about. Girls
and bo3rs don't get bored with perpetual holidays; they
live each moment of them hard; they would welcome
the eternal Sabbath; and indeed I trust we shall all do
that, as our youth is to be renewed like eagles. But
old age on this earth is far too sad to do nothing in.
Remember that, child, when your time comes."
**Why, yes. But when one's married, you know, it's

. not so easy, keeping up with a job. I only wish I
cxiuld. . • . I don't /i^^ being merely a married woman.
Rodney isn't merely a married man, after all. . . . But
anyhow I'll find something to amuse my old age, even
if I can't work. I'll play patience or croquet or the
piano, or all three, and I'll go to theatres and picture
shows and concerts and meetings in the Albert Hall.
Mother doem't do any of those things. And she is
so unhappy so often."

"Oh very. Very unhappy. Very often. . . . She
should come to church more. This Unitarianism is
dq>ressing. No substance in it. I'd rather be a Papist
and keep God in a box. Or belong to the Army and

V sing about rivers of blood. I daresay both are satisfy*
ing. All this sermon-on-the-moimt-but-no-miracle busi-
ness is most saddening. Because it's about impossibili-
ties. You can receive a sacrament, and you can find
salvation, but you can't live the sermon on the mount.
So of course it makes people discontented."

Grandmama, who often in the evenings became a
fluent though drowsy talker, might have wandered on

52 DANGEROUS AGES

like this till her bed-time, had not Mrs. Hilary here
appeared, in her dressing-gown. She sat down, and
said, trsdng to sound natural and not annoyed and fail-
ing. "I heard so much talk, I thought I would come
down and be in it. I thought you were coming up
to me again directly, Neville. I hadn't realised you
meant to stay down and talk to Grandmama instead."

She hated Neville or any of them, but especially
Neville, to talk intimately to Grandmama; it made
her jealous. She tried and tried not to feel this, but
it was never any use her fighting against jealousy, it
was too strong for her.

Grandmama said placidly, "Neville and I were dis-
cussing different forms of religion."

"Is Neville thinking of adopting one of them?" Mrs.
Hilary enquired, her jealousy making her sound sar-
castic and scornful.

"No, mother. Not at present. . . . Come back to
bed, and I'll sit with you, and we'll talk. I don't be-
lieve you should be up."

"Oh, I see I've interrupted. It was the last thing
I meant. No, Neville, I'll go back to my room alone.
You go on with your talk with Grandmama. I hate
interrupting like this. I hoped you would have let me
join. I don't get much of you in these dasrs, after alL
But stay and talk to Grandmama."

That was the point at which Nan would have sworn
to herself and gone down to the beach. Neville did
neither. She was gentle and soothing, and Grandmama
was infinitely untroubled, and Mrs. Hilary presently
picked up her spirits and went back to bed, and Neville
spent the evening with her. These little scenes had
occurred so often that they left only a slight impression
on those concerned and slightest of all on Mrs. Hilary.

MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY 53

When Mrs. Hilary and Grandmama were both set-
tled for the night (old and elderly people settle for the
night — other people go to bed) Neville went down to
the seashore and lay on the sand, watching the moon
rise over the sea.

Beauty was there, rather than in elderly people. But
in elderly people was such pathos, such tragedy, such
pity, that they lay like a heavy weight on one's soul.
If one could do anything to help. . . •

To be aimless: to live on emotions and be by them
consumed: that was pitiful. To have done one's work
for life, and to be in return cast aside by life like a
broken tool: that was tragic. .

The thing was to defy life; to fly in the face of the :
fool nature, break her absurd rules, and wrest out of
the breakage something for oneself by which to live
at the last.

Neville flung her challenge to the black sea that
slowly brightened imder the moon's rising eye.

CHAPTER m

FAMILY LIFE

If you have broken off your medical studies at London
University at the age of twenty-one and resume them
at forty-three, you will find tihem (one is told) a con-
siderably tougher job than you found them twenty-two
years before. Youth is the time to read for exaraina-
tioss; youth is used to such foolishness, and takes it
lightly in its stride. At thirty you may be and prob-
ably are much cleverer than you were at twenty; 3^u
will have more ideas and better ones, and infinitely
more power of original and creative thought; but you
will not, probably, find it so easy to grip and retain
knowledge out of books and reproduce it to order. So
the world has ordained that youth shall spend labori-
ous days in doing this, and that middle age shall, in the
main, put away these childish things, and act and work
on in ^Ate of the information thus acquired.

Neville Bendish, who was not even in the thirties^
but so near the brink of senile decay as the forties,
entered her name once more at the London University
School of Medicine, and plunged forthwith into her
interrupted studies. Her aim was to spend this sum-
mer in reacquiring such knowledge as should prepare
her for the October session. And it was difficult be-
yond her imaginings. It had not been difficult twenty^

FAMILY LIFE 55

two years ago; she had worked then with pleasure and
interest, and taken examinations with easy triumph.
As Kay did now at Cambridge, only more so, because
she had been cleverer than Kay. She was a vain crea-
ture, and had believed that deverness of hers to be
unimpaired by life, until she came to try. She sup-
posed that if she had ^ent her married life in head
work, her head would never have lost the trick of it.
But she hadn't. She had ^ent it on Rodney and
Gerda and Kay, and the interesting, amusing life led
by the wife of a man in Rodney's position, which had
brought her always into contact with people and ideas.
Much more amusing than grinding at intellectual work
of her own, but it apparently caused the Oioin to
atrophy. And she was, anyhow, tired of doing nothing
in particular. After forty you must have your job,
you must be independent of other people's jobs, of
human and social contacts, however amusing and
imstructive.

Rodney wasn't altogether pleased, though he under-
stood. He wanted her constant companioash%> and
interest in his own work.

'Tfou've had twenty-two years of it, darling," Neville
said. "Now I must Live my own Life, as the Vic-
torians used to put it. I must be a doctor; quite seri-
ously I must. I want it. It's my job. The only one
I could ever really have been much good at. The
sight of human bones or a rabbit's brain thrills me, as
the sight of a platform and a listening audience thrills
you, or as pen and paper (I suppose) thrill the children.
You ought to be glad I don't want to write. Our
family seems to run to that as a rule."

"But," Rodney said, "you don't mean ever to >r«c-
tise, surely? You won't have time for it, with all the
other things you do."

S6 DANGEROUS AGES

^•'It's the other things I shan^t have time for, old
man. Sorry, but there it is. . . . It's all along of
mother, you see. She's such an object lesson in how
not to grow old. If she'd been a doctor, now. . . ."

"She couldn't have been a doctor, possibly. She
hasn't the head. On the other hand, you've got enough
head to keep going without the slavery of a job like
this, even when you're old."

"I'm not so sure. My brain isn't what it was; it
may soften altogether unless I do something with it
before it's too late. Then there I shall be, a burden
to myself and everyone else. . . . After all, Rodney,
you've your job. Can't I have mine? Aren't you a
modem, an intellectual and a feminist?"

Rodney, who believed with truth that he was all
these things, gave in.

Kay and Gerda, with the large-minded tolerance of
their years, thought mother's scheme was all right and
rather sporting, if she really liked the sort of thing,
which they, for their part, cHdn't.

So Neville recommenced medical study, finding it
difficult beyond belief. It made her head ache.

She envied Kay and Gerda, as they all three lay and
worked in the garden, with chocolates, cigarettes and
Esau grouped comfortably round them. Kay was read-
ing economics for his Tripos, Gerda was drawing pic-
tures for her poems; neither, apparently, found any
difficulty in concentrating on their work when thqr
happened to want to.

What, Neville speculated, her thoughts, as usual,
wandering from her book, would become of Gerda?

FAMILY LIFE 57

She was a clever child at her own things, though with
great gaps in her equipment of knowledge, which came
from ignoring at school those of her studies which had
not seemed to her of importance. She had &mly de-
clined a University education; she had decided that it
was not a fruitful start in life, and was also afraid of
get^g an academic mind. But at economic and social
subjects, at drawing and at writing, she worked with-
out indolence, taking them earnestly, still young enough
to believe it important that she should attain pro-
ficiency.

Neville, on the other hand, was indolent. For
twenty-two years she had pleased herself, done what she
wanted when she wanted to, played the flirt with life.
And now she had become soft-willed. Now, sitting in
the garden with her books, like Gerda and Kay, she
would find that the volumes had slipped from her knee
and that she was listening to the birds in the elms. Or
she would fling them aside and get up and stretch her-
self, and stroll into the little wood bes^nd the garden,
or down to the river, or she would propose tennis, or go
up to town for some meeting or concert or to see some-
one, though she didn't really want to, having quite
enough of London during that part of the year when
they lived there. She only went up now because other-
wise she would be working. At this rate she would
never be ready to resume her medical course in the
autumn.

"I will attend. I will. I will," she whispered to
herself, a hand pressed to each temple to constrain her
mind. And for five minutes she would attend, and
then she would drift away on a sea of pleasant indo-
lence, and time fluttered away from her like an escaping
bird, and she knew herself for a light woman who would
never excel. And Kay's brown head was bent over his

58 DANGEROUS AGES

book; and raised sometimes to chaff or talk, and bent
ovtar his books again, the thread of his attention un-
broken by his easy interruptions. And Gerda's golden
head lay pillowed in her two clasped hands, and she
slared up at the blue through the green and did nothing
at all, for that was often Gerda's unashamed way.

Often Rodney sat in the garden too and worked.
ABd his work Neville felt that she too could have done;
it was work needing initiative and creative thought,
work suitable to his forty-five years, not cramming in
kfiowledge from books. Neville at times thought tluit
she too would stand for parliament one day. A f oolish,
cfaildfeh game it was, and probably really therefore
more in her line than solid work.

Nan came down in July to stay with them. While
she was there, Barry Briscoe, who was helping with a
W. E. A. summer school at Haslemere, would come over
OR Svntfays and spend the day with them. Not ev&i
fbe rams of July 1920 made Barry weary or depressed.
Bis eyes were bright behind his glasses; his hands were
usttaDf full of papers, committee reports, agenda, and
tiie other foods he fed on, unsatiated and unabashed.
Barry was splendid. What ardour, what enthusiasm,
burming like beacons in a wrecked world! So wrecked
a world that all but the very best and the very worst
had given it up as a bad job; the best because they
hoped on, hoped ever, the worst because of the pickings
that fall to such as they out of the collapsing ruins.
But Barry, from the very heart of the ruin, would cry
''Here is what we must do," and his eyes would gleam
with faith and resolution, and he would form a com-

FAMILY LIFE 59

inittee and act. And when he saw how the committee
failed, as committees will, and how little good it all
was, he would laugh ruefully and try something else.
Barry, as he would tell you frankly — ^if you enquired,
not otherwise, — ^believed in God. He was the son of a
famous Quaker philanthropist, and had been brought
up to see good works done and even garden cities built.
I am aware that this must prejudice many people
against Barry; and indeed many people were annoyed
by certain aspects of him. But, as he was intellect-
ually brilliant and personally attractive, these people
were as a rule ready to overlook what they called the
Quaker oats. Nan, who overlooked nothing, was
frankly at war with him on some points, and he with
her. Nan, cynical, clear-eyed, selfish and blase, cared
nothing for the salvaging of what remained of the world
out of the wreck, nothing for the I. L. P., less than
nothing for garden cities, philanthropy, the W. £v A.,
and God. And committees she detested. Take them
all away, and there remained Barry Briscoe, and for
him she did not care nothing.

It was the oddest friendship, thought Neville, ob-
serving how, when Barry was there, all Nan's perversi-
ties and moods fell away, leaving her as agreeable as he.
Her keen and ironic intelligence met his, and they so
understood each other that they finished each other's
sentences, and others present could only with difficulty
keep up with them. Neville believed them to be in
love, but did not know whether they had ever informed
one another of the fact. They might still be pretend-
ing to one another that their friendship was merely one
of those affectionate intellectual intimacies of which
some of us have so many and which are so often mis-
understood. Or they might not. It was entirely their
business, either way.

6o DANGEROUS AGES

Barry was a chatterbox. He lay on the lawn and
rooted up daisies and made them into ridiculous chains,
and talked and talked and talked. Rodney and Neville
and Nan talked too, and Kay would lunge in with the
crude and charming dogmatics of his years. But
Gerda, chewing a blade of grass, lay idle and with-
drawn, her fair brows impuckered by the afternoon sun
(because it was July, 1920), her blue eyes on Barry,
who was so different; or else she would be withdrawn
but not idle, for she would be drawing houses tumbling
down, or men on stilts, fantastic and proud, or goblins,
or geese nmning with outstretched necks round a
green. Or she would be writing something like this:

Float on the tide.
In the rain.
I am the starfish vomited up by the retching cod.
He thinks
That I am he.
But I know.
That he is I.
For the creature is far greater than its god."

(Gerda was of those who think it is rather chic to
have one rh3ane in your poem, just to show that you
can do it.)

"That child over there makes one feel so cheap and
ridiculous, jabbering away."

That was Barry, breaking off to look at Gerda where
she lay on her elbows on a rug. idle and still. "And it's
not," Tie went on, "that she doesn't know about the
subject, either. IVe heard her on it."

He threw the daisy chain he had just made at her,
so that it alighted on her head, hanging askew over one
eye.

FAMILY LIFE 6i

"Just like a daisy bud herself, isn't she," he com-
mented, and raced on, forgetting her.

Neat in her person and ways, Gerda adjusted the
daisy chain so that it ringed her golden head in an
orderly circle. Like a daisy bud herself, Rodney
agreed in his mind, his eyes smiling at her, his affection,
momentarily turned that way, groping for the wild, re-
mote little soul in her that he only vaguely and pa-
ternally knew. The little pretty. And clever, too, in
her own queer, uneven way. But what was she, with it
all? He knew Kay, the long, sweet-tempered boy,
better. For Kay represented highly civilized, passably
educated, keen-minded youth. Gerda wasn't highly
civilized, was hardly passably educated, and keen would
be an inapt word for that queer, remote, woodland
mind of hers. . • . Rodney returned to more soluble
problems.

Mrs. Hilary and Grandmama came to Windover.
Mrs. Hilary would rather have come without Grand-
mama, but Grandmama enjoyed the jaunt, as she called
it. For eighty-four, Grandmama was wonderfully
sporting. They arrived on Saturday afternoon, and
rested after the journey, as is usually done by people
of Grandmama's age, and often by people of Mrs.
Hilary's. Sunday was full of such delicate clashings
as occur when new people have joined a party. Grand-
mama was for morning church, and Neville drove her
to it in the pony carriage. So Mrs. Hilary, not being
able to endure that they should go off alone together,
had to go too, though she djd not like church, morning
or other.

She sighed over it at lunch.

62 DANGEROUS AGES

"So stuffy. So long. And the hymns. . . ."

But Grandmama said, "My dear, we had David and
Goliath. What more do you want?"

During David and Goliath Grandmama's head had
nodded approvingly, and her thin old lips had half
snailed at the valiant child with his swaggering lies
about bears and lions, at the gallant child and the gianL

Mrs. Hilary, herself romantically sensible, as middle-
aged ladies are, of valour and high adventmre, granted
Grandmama David and Goliath, but still repined at the
hynms and the sermon.

"Good words, my dear, good words/' Grandmama
said to that. For Grandmama had bc^n brought up
not to criticise sermons, but had failed to bring up Mrs.
Hilary to the same self-abnegation. The trouble with
Mrs. Hilary was, and had always been, that she ex-
pected (even now) too much of Ufe. Grandmama ex-
pected only what she got. And Neville, wisest of all,
had not listened, for she too expected what she would
get if she did. She was really rather like Grandnama,
in her cynically patient acquiescence, only brought up
in a different generation, and not to hear sermons. In
the gulf of years between these two, Mrs. Hilary's rest-'
less, questing passion fretted like unquiet waves.

"This Barry Briscoe," said Mrs. Hilgxy to Neville
after limch, as she watched Nan and <@ start off for
a walk together. "I suppose he's in love with her?"

"I suppose so. Something of the kind, anyhow.*'

Mrs. Hilary said, discontentedly, "Another of Nan's
married men, no doubt. She collects them."

"No, Barry's not married."

FAMILY LIFE 63

Mrs. Hilary looked more interested. "Not? Oh,
then it may come to something. . . . I vn^ Nan would
marry. It's quite time."

*T^an isn't exactly keen to, you know. She's got so
much else to do."

"Fiddlesticks. You don't encourage her in such
nonsense, I hope, Neville."

"I? It's not for me to encourage Nan in ans^thing.
She doesn't need it. But as to marriage — ^yes, I think
I wish she would do it, sometime, whenever she's ready.
It would give her something she hasn't got; emotional
steadiness, perhaps I mean. She squanders a bit, now.
On the other hand, her writing would rather go to the
wall; if she went on with it it would be against odds all
the time."

"What's writing?" enquired Mrs. Hilary, with a snap
of her finger and thumb. "Writing/''

As this seemed too vague or too large a question for
Neville to answer, she did not try to do so, and Mrs.
Hilary replied to it herself.

"Mere showing ofif," she e^lained it. "Throwing
your paltry ideas at a world which doesn't want them.
Writing like Nan's I mean. It's not as if she wrote
really good books."

"Oh well. Who does that, after all? And what is
a good book?" Here were two questions which Mrs.
Hilary, in her turn, could not answer. Because most
of the books which seemed good to her did not, as she
well knew, seem good to Neville, or to any of her
chfldren, and she wasn't gomg to give herself away.
She murmured something about Thackeray and Dick-
ens, which Neville let pass.

"Writing's just a thing to do, as I see it," Neville
went on. "A job, like another. One must have a job,
you know. Not for the money, but for the job's sake.

64 DANGEROUS AGES

And Nan enjoys it. But I daresay she'd enjoy mar-
riage too."

"Does she love this man?"

"I don't know. I shouldn't be surprised. She
hasn't told me so."

"Probably she doesn't, as he's single. Nan's so per-
verse. She will love the wrong men, always."

"You shouldn't believe all Rosalind tells you, mother.
Rosalind has a too vivid fancy and a scandalous
tongue."

Mrs. Hilary coloured a little. She did not like
Neville to think that she had been letting Rosalind
gossip to her about Nan.

"You know perfectly well, Neville, that I never trust
a word Rosalind says. I suppose I needn't rely on my
daughter-in-law for news about my own daughter's af-
fairs. I can see things for myself. You can't deny
that Nan has had compromising affairs with married
men."

"Compromising." Neville turned over the word,
thoughtfully and fastidiously. "Fxmny word, mother.
I'm not sure I know what it means. But I don't think
anything ever compromises Nan; she's too free for
that. • . . Well, let's marry her off to Barry Briscoe.
It will be a quaint menage, but I daresay they'd pull it
off. Barry's delightful. I should think even Nan
could live with him."

"He writes books about education, doesn't he? Edu-
cation and democracy."

"Well, he does. But there's always something, after
all, against all of us. And it might be worse. It might
be poetry or fiction or psycho-analysis."

Neville said psycho-analysis in order to start another
hare and take her mother's attention off Nan's mar-
riage before the marriage became crystallised out of all

FAMILY LIFE 65

being. But Mrs. Hilary for the first time (for usually
she was reliable) did not rise. She looked thoughtful^
even a shade embarrassed, and said vaguely, ^'Oh,
people must write, of course. If it isn't one thing it
will be another." After a moment she added, "This
psycho-analysis, Neville," sa5dng the word with distaste
indeed, but so much more calmly than usual that Neville
looked at her in surprise. "This psycho-analysis. I
suppose it does make wonderful cures, doesn't it, when
all is said?"

"Cures— oh yes, wonderful cures. Shell-shock, in-
somnia, nervous depression, lumbago, suicidal mania,
family life — ^anything." Neville's attention was stray-
ing to Grandmama, who was coming slowly towards
them down the path, leaning on her stick, so ^e did not
see Mrs. Hilary's curious, lit eagerness.

"But how can they cure all those things just by talk-
ing indecently about sex?"

"Oh mother, they don't. You're so crude, darling.
You've got hold of only one tiny part of it — the part
practised by Austrian professors on Viennese degener-
ates. Many of the doctors are really sane and bril-
liant. I know of cases. ..."

"Well," said Mrs. Hilary, quickly and rather crossly,
I can't talk about it before Grandmama."

Neville got up to meet Grandmama, put a hand under
her arm, and conducted her to her special chair beneath
the cedar. You had to help and conduct someone so
old, so frail, so delightful as Grandmama, even if Mrs.
Hilary did wish it were being done by any hand than
yovars. Mrs. Hilary in fact made a movement to get
to Grandmama first, but sixty-three does not rise from
low deck chairs so swiftly as forty-three. So she had
to watch her daughter leading her mother, and to note
once more with a familiar pang the queer, immistakable

66 DANGEROUS AGES

likeness between the smooth, clear oval face and the old
wrmkled one, the heavily lashed deep blue eyes and the
old faded ones, the elfish, close-lipped, dimpling smile
and the old, elfish, thin-lipped, sweet one. Neville, her
Neville, flower of her flock, her loveliest, first and best,
her dearest but for Jim, her pride, and nearer than Jim,
because of sex, which set Jim on a platform to be wor-
shipped, but kept Neville on a level to be loved, to be
stormed at when storms rose, to be climg to when sdl
God's waters went over one's head. Oh Neville, tihat
you should smile at Grandmama like that, that Grand-
mama should, as she alwasrs had, steal yom: confidence
that should have been all your mother's! That you
should perhaps even talk over your mother with Grand-
mama (as if she were something further from each of
you than each from the other), pushing her out of the
close circle of your intimacy into the region of prob-
lems to be solved. ... Oh God, how bitter a thing to
bear!

The garden, the summer border of bright flowers,
swam in tears. . . . Mrs. Hilary turned away her face,
pretending to be pulling up daisies from the grass.
But, imlike the ostrich, she well knew that they always
saw. To the children, as to Grandmama, they were an
old story, those hot, facile, stinging tears of Mrs. Hil-
ary's that made Neville weary with pity, and Nan cold
with scorn, and Rosalind happy with lazy malice, and
Pamela bright and cool and firm, like a woman doctor.
Only Grandmama took them unmoved, for she had al-
ways known them.

Grandmama, settled in her special chair, remarked
on the imusual (for July) fineness of the day, and re-

FAMILY LIFE 67

quested Neville to read them the chief items of news
in the Observer^ which she had brought out with hen
So Neville read about the unfortunate doings of the
Supreme Council at Spa, and Grandmama said ^Toor
creatures,'^ tolerantly, as she had said when they were
at Paris, and again at San Remo; and about General
Dyer and the Amritsar debate, and Grandmama said
"Poor man. But one mustn't treat one's fellow
creatures as he did, even the poor Indian, who, I quite
believe, is intolerably provoking. I see the Morning
Post is getting up a subscription for him, contributed
to by Those Who Remember Cawnpore, Haters of
Trotzky, Montague and Lansbiuy, Furious English-
womian, and many other generous and emotional people.
That is kind and right. We should not let even our
more inq)ulsive generals starve."

Then Neville read about Ireland, which was just
then in a disturbed state, and Grandmama said it
certainly seemed restless, and mentioned with what
looked like a gleam of hope that they would never re-
turn, that her friends the Dormers were there. Mrs.
Hilary shot out, with still averted face, that the whole
of Ireland ou^t to be sunk to the bottom of the sea,
it was more bother than it was worth. This was her
usual and only contribution towards a solution of the
Irish question.

Then Mr. Churchill and Russia had their turn (it
was the time of the Golovin trouble) and Grandmama
said people seemed always to get so very sly, as well as
so very much annoyed and excited, whenever Russia
was mentioned, and that seemed like a sign that God
did not mean us, in this country, to mention it much,
perhaps not even to think of it. She personally seldom
did. Then Neville read a paragraph about the Anglo-

68 DANGEROUS AGES

Catholic Congress^ and about that Grandmama was for
the first time a little severe, for Grandpapa had not
been an Anglo-Catholic, and indeed in his day there
were none of this faith. You were either High Church,
Broad Church or Evangelical. (Unless, of course, you
had been led astray by Huxley and Darwin and were
nothing whatever.) Grandpapa had been Broad, with
a dash of Evangelical; or perhaps it was the other way
round; but anyhow Grandpapa had not been High
Church, or, as they called it in his time, Tractarian.
So Grandmama enquired, snippily, *'Who are these
Anglo-Catholics, my dear? One seems to hear so much
of them in these days. I can't help thinking they are
rather noisy . . /' as she might have spoken of Bol-
shevists, or the Labour Party, or the National Party, or
Sinn Fein, or any other of the organisations of which
Grandpapa had been innocent. "There are so many of
these new things," said Grandmama, "I daresay
modern young people like Gerda and Kay are quite in
with it all."

"I'm afraid," said Neville, "that Gerda and Kay are
secularists at present."

"Pr>or children," Grandmama said gently. Secular-
ism made her think of the violent and vulgar Mr,
Bradlaugh. It was, in her view, a noisier thing even
than Anglo-Catholicism. "Well, they have plenty of
time to get over it and settle down to something
quieter." Broad-Evangelical she meant, or Evangeli-
cal-Broad; and Neville smiled at the idea of Gerda, in
particular, being either of these. She believed that if
Gerda were to turn from secularism it would either be
to Anglo-Catholicism or to Rome. Or Gerda might
become a Quaker, or a lone mystic contemplating in
woods, but a Broad-Evangelical, no. There was a deli-

FAMILY LIFE 69

cate, reckless extravagance about Gerda which woxild
prohibit that. If you came to that, what girl or boy
did, in these days, fall into any of the categories which
Grandmama and Grandpapa had known, whether re-
ligiously or politically? You might as well suggest that
Gerda and Kay should be Tories or Whigs.

And by this time they had given Mrs. Hilary so much
time to recover her poise that she could join in, and say
that Anglo-Catholics were very ostentatious people, and
only gave all that money which they had, imdoubtedly^
given at the recent Congress in order to make a splash
and show off.

"Tearing off their jewellery in public like that," said
Mrs. Hilary, in disgust, as she might have said tearing
off their chemises, "and gold watches Ij^g in piles on
the collection table, still ticking. . . ." She felt it was
indecent that the watches should have still been tick-
ing; it made the thing an orgy, like a revival meeting, or
some cannibal rite at which victims were offered up still
breathing. . . •

So much for the Anglo-Catholic Congress. The
Church Congress was better, being more decent and in
order, though Mrs. Hilary knew that the whole
established Church was wrong.

And so they came to literature, to a review of Mr.
Conrad's new novel and a paragraph about a famous
annual literary prize. Grandmama thought it very
nice that young writers should be encouraged by cash
prizes. "Not," as she added, "that there seems any
danger of any of them being discouraged, even without
that. . . . But Nan and Kay and Gerda ought to go in
for it. It would be a nice thing for them to work for."

Then Grandmama, settling down with her pleased
old smile to something which mattered more than the

70 DANGEROUS AGES

news in the papers, said ^'And now, dear, I want to hear
all about this friendship of Nan's and this nice young
Mr. Briscoe."
So Neville again had to answer questions about that.

Mrs. Hilary, abruptly leaving them, trailed away
by herself to the house. Since she mightn't have
Neville to herself for the afternoon she wouldn't stay
and share her. But when she reached the house and
looked out at them through the drawing-room windows,
their intimacy stabbed her with a pang so sharp that
she wished she had stayed.

Besides, what was there to do indoors? No novels
lay about that looked readable, only "The Rescue"
(and she couldn't read Conrad, he was so nautical) and
a few others which looked deficient in plot and as if
they were trsdng to be Clever. She turned them over
restlessly, and put them down again. She wasn't
sleepy, and hated writing letters. She wanted someone
to talk to, and there was no one, unless she rang for
the housemaid. Oh, this dreadful ennui. . • . Did
anyone in the world know it but her? The others all
seemed busy and bright. That was because they were
young. And Grandmama seemed serene and bright.
That was because she was old, close to the edge of life,
and sat looking over the gulf into space, not caring.
But for Mrs. Hilary there was ennui, and the dim,
empty room in the cold grey July afternoon. The
empty stage; no audience, no actors. Only a lonely,
disillusioned actress trailing about it, hungry for the
past. ... A book Gerda had been reading lay on the
table. "The Breath of Life," it was called, which was

FAMILY LIFE 71

surely just what Mrs. Hilary wanted. She picked it
up, opened it, turned the pages, then, tucking it away
out of sight under her arm, left the room and went up-
stairs.

"Many wonderful cures," Neville had said. And
had mentioned depression as one of the diseases cured.
What, after all, if there was something in this stuff
which she had never tried to imderstand, had always
dismissed, according to her habit, with a single label?
"Labels don't help. Labels get you nowhere." How
often the children had told her that, finding her terse
terminology that of a shallow mind, endowed with in-
adequate machinery for acquiring and retaining knowl-
edge, as indeed it was.

Gerda, going up to Mrs. Hilary's room to tell her
about tea, found her asleep on the sofa, with "The
Breath of Life" fallen open from her hand. A smile
flickered on Gerda's delicate mouth, for she had heard
her grandmother on the subject of psycho-analysis, and
here she was, having taken to herself the book which
Gerda was reading for her Freud drcle. Gerda read
a paragraph on the open page.

"It will often be found that what we believe to be un-
h^^piness is really, in the secret and imconscious self, a
joy, which the familiar process of inversion sends up
into our consciousness in the form of grief. If, for in-
stance, a mother bewails the illness of her child, it is
because her imconscious self is experiencing the pleasure
of importance, of being condoled and S3anpathised with,
as also that of having her child (if it is a male) entirely
for the time dependent on her ministrations. If, on

72 DANGEROUS AGES

the other hand, the sick diild is her daughter, her grief
is in reality a hope that this, her young rival, may die,
and leave her supreme in the affections of her husband.
If, in either of these cases, she can be brought to face
and understand this truth, her grief will invert itself
again and become a conscious joy. . • •"

"I wonder if Grandmother believes all that,** specu-
lated Gerda, who did.

Then she said aloud, "Grandmother" (that was what
Gerda and Kay called her, distinguishing her thus from
Great-Grandmama), "tea's ready."

Mrs. Hilary woke with a start. "The Breath of
Life" fell on the floor with a bang. Mrs. Hilary looked
up and saw Gerda and blushed.

"IVe been asleep. ... I took up this ridiculous
book of yours to look at. The most absurd stuff. . . •
How can you children muddle your minds with it? Be-
sides, it isn't at all a nice book for you, my diild. I
came on several very queer things. . . ."

But the candid innocence of Gerda^s wide blue eyes
on hers transcended "nice" and "not nice." • . • You
might as well talk like that to a wood anemone, or a
wild rabbit. ... If her grandmother had only known,
Gerda at twenty had discussed things which Mrs.
Hilary, in all her sixty-three years, had never heard
mentioned. Gerda knew of things of which Mrs. Hilary
' would have indignantly and sincerely denied the exist-
ence. Gerda's young mind was a cess-pool, a clear
little dew-pond, according to how you looked at it.
Gerda and Gerda's friends knew no inhibitions of
speech or thought. They believed that the truth would
make them free, and the truth about life is, from some
points of view, a squalid and gross thing. But better
look it in the face, thought Gerda and her contempo-
raries, than pretend it isn't there, as elderly people do.

FAMILY LIFE 73

"I don't want you to pretend anything isn't there,
darling/' Neville, between the two generations, had
said to Gerda once. "Only it seems to me that some
of you diildren have one particular kind of truth too
heavily on your minds. It seems to block the world for
you."

"You mean sex," Gerda had told her, blimtly.
* Well, it nms all through life, mother. What's the tise
of hiding from it? The only way to get even with it
is to face it. And use it."

"Face it and use it by all means. All I meant was,
it's a question of emphasis. There are other things.

Of coiu-se Gerda knew that. There was drawing,
and poetry, and beauty, and dancing, and swimming,
and music, and politics, and economics. Of course
there were other things; no doubt about that. They
were like songs, like colour, like sunrise, like flowers,
these other things. But the basis of life was the desire
of the male for the female and of the female for the
male. And this had been warped and smothered and
talked down and made a furtive, shameful thing, and
it must be brought out into the day. . . .

Neville smiled to hear all this tripping sweetly off
Gerda's lips.

"All right, darling, don't mind me. Go ahead and
bring it out into the day, if you think the subject really
needs more airing than it already gets. I should have
thought m)rself it got lots, and always had."

And there they were; they talked at cross purposes,
these two, across the gulf of twenty years, and with the
best will in the world could not hope to understand,
either of them, what the other was really at. And now
here was Gerda, in Mrs. Hilary's bedroom, looking
across a gulf of forty years and sasdng nothing at all.

74 DANGEROUS AGES

for she knew it would be of no manner of use, since
words don't carry as far as that.
So all she said was "Tea's ready, Grandmother."
And Mrs. Hilary supposed that Gerda hadn't, prob-
ably, noticed or imderstood those very queer things she
had come upon while reading "The Breath of Life.*'
They went down to tea.

CHAPTER IV

ROOTS

It was a Monday evening, late in July. Pamela Hil-
ary, returning from a Care Committee meeting, fitted
her latch-key into the door of the rooms in Cow Lane
which she shared with Frances Carr, and let herself into
the hot dark passage hall.

A voice from a room on the right called "Come along,
my dear. Your pap's ready."

Pamela entered the room on the right. A pleasant,
Oxfordish room, with the brown paper and plain green
curtains of the college days of these women, and Diirer
engravings, and sweet peas in a bowl, and Frances Carr
stirring bread and milk over a gas ring. Frances Carr
was small and thirty-eight, and had a nice brown face
and a merry smile. Pamela was a year older and tall
and straight and pale, and her ash-brown hair swept
smoothly back from a broad white forehead. Her grey
eyes regarded the world shrewdly and pleasantly
through pince-nez. Pamela was distinguished-looking,
and so well-bred that you never got through her guard;
she never hurt the feelings of others or betrayed her
own. Competent she was, too, and the best organiser
in Hoxton, which is to say a great deal, Hoxton needing
and getting, one way and another, a good deal of or-
ganisation. Some people complained that they
couldn't get to know Pamela, the guard was too com-
plete. But Frances Carr knew her.

76 DANGEROUS AGES

Frances Carr had piled cushions in a deep chair for
her.

"Lie back and be comfy^ old thing, and I'll give you
your pap."

She handed Pamela the steaming bowl, and pro-
ceeded to take off her friend's shoes and substitute
moccasin slippers. It was thus that she and Pamela
had mothered one another at Somerville eighteen years
ago, and ever since. They had the maternal instinct,
like so many women.

"Well, how went it? How was Mrs. Cox?"

Mrs. Cox was the chairwoman of the Committee.
All committee members know that the chairman or
woman is a ticklish problem, if not a sore burden.

"Oh well. . . ." Pamela dismissed Mrs. Cox with
half a smile. "Might have been worse. ... Oh look
here, Frank. About the library fund. . . ."

The front door-bell tingled through the house.

Frances Carr said "Oh hang. All right, I'll see to it.
If it's Care or Continuation or Library, I shall send it
away. You're not going to do any more business to-
night."

She went to the door, and there, her lithe, drooping
slimness outlined against the gas-lit street, stood Nan
ffilary.

"Oh, Nan. . . . But what a late call. Yes, Pamela's
just in from a committee. Tired to death; she's had
neuralgia all this week. She mustn't sit up late, really.
But come along in."

Nan came into the room, her dark eyes blinking
against the gaslight, her small round face pale and

ROOTS 77

smutty. She bent to kiss Pamela, then ourled herself
up in a wicker chair and yawned.

"The night is damp and dirty. No, no food, thanks.
IVe dined. After dinner I was bored, so I came along to
pass the time, . • . When are you taking your holi-
days, both of you? It's time."

"Pamela's going for hers next week," said Frances
Carr, handing Nan a cigarette.

"On the contrary," said Pamela, "Frances is going
for hers next week. Mine is to be September this
year."

"Now, we've had all this out before, Pam, you know
we have. You faithfully promised to take August if
yoiu- neuralgia came on again, and it has. Tell her she
is to. Nan."

"She wouldn't do it the more if I did," Nan said,
lazily. These competitions in unselfishness between
Pamela and Frances Carr always bored her. There
was no end to them. Women are so terrifically self-ab-
negatory; they must give, give, give, to someone all the
time. Women, that is, of the mothering type, such as
these. They must be forever cherishing something,
sending someone to bed with bread and milk, guarding
someone from fatigue.

"It ought to be their children," thought Nan, swiftly.
"But they pour it out on one another instead."

Having put her hand on the clue, she ceased to be in-
terested in the exhibition. It was, in fact, no more and
no less interesting than if it had been their children.
Most sorts of love were rather dull, to the spectator.
Pamela and Frances were all right; decent people, not
sloppy, not gushing, but fine and direct and keen,
though rather boring when they began to talk to each
other about some silly old thing that had happened in
their last year at Oxford, or their first year, or on some

78 DANGEROUS AGES

reading party. Some people re-Kve their lives like this;
others pass on their way^ leaving the past behind.
They were all right, Pamela and Frances. But all this
mothering. ...

Yet how happy they were, these two, in their useful,
competent work and devoted friendship. They had
achieved contacts with life, permanent contacts. Pa-
mela, in spite of her neuralgia, expressed calm and en-
tirely unbumptious attainment. Nan feverish seeking.
For Nan's contacts with life were not permanent, but
suddenly vivid and passing; the links broke and she
flew off at a tangent. Nan bad lately been taken with
a desperate fear of becoming like her mother, when she
was old and couldn't write any more, or love any more
men. Horrible thought, to be like Mrs. Hilary, roam-
ing, questing, feverishly devoured by her own impa-
tience of life. . . .

In here it was cool and calm, soft and blurred with
the smoke of their cigarettes. Frances Carr left them
to talk, telling them not to be late. When she had
gone, Pamela said "I thought you were still down at
Windover, Nan."

''Left it on Saturday. . . . Mother and Grandmama
had been there a week. I couldn't stick it any longer.
Mother was outrageously jealous, of course."

"Neville and Grandmama? Poor mother."

"Oh yes, poor mother. But it gets on my nerves.
Neville's an angel. I can't think how she sticks it.
For that matter, I never know how she puts up with
Rodney's spoilt fractiousness. . . . And altogether life
was a bit of a strain ... no peace. And I wanted
some peace and solitude, to make up my mind in."

"Are you making it up now?" Pamela, mildly in-
terested, presumed it was a man.

"Trying to. It isn't made yet. That's why I roam

ROOTS 79

about your horrible slums in the dark. I'm consider-
ing; getting things into focus. Seeing them all round."

"Well, that sounds all right."

"Pam." Nan leant forward abruptly, her cigarette
between two brown fingers. "Are you happy? Do
you enjoy your life?"

Pamela withdrew, lightly, inevitably, behind guards.

"Within reason, yes. When committees aren't too
tiresome, and the accounts balance, and . . ."

"Oh, give me a straight answer, Pam. You de-
pendable, practical people are always frivolous about
things that matter. Are you happy? Do you feel
right-side-up with life?"

"In the main — ^yes." Pamela was more serious this
time. "One's doing one's job, after all. And human
beings are interesting."

"But I've got that too. My job, and human beings.

. . . Why do I feel all tossed about, like a boat on a

choppy sea? Oh, I know life's furiously amusing and

exciting — of course it is. But I want something solid.

YouVe got it, somehow."

Nan broke off and thought "It's Frances Carr she's
got. That's permanent. That goes on. Pamela's
anchored. All these people I have — ^these men and
women — ^they're not anchors, they're stimulants, and
how different that is!"

They looked at each other in silence. Pamela said
then, "You don't look well, child."

"Oh ^" Nan threw iier cigarette end impatiently

into the grate. "I'm all right. I'm tired, and I've
been thinking too much. That never suits me. . . .
Thanks, Pam. You've helped me to make up my mind.
I like you, Pam," she added dispassionately, "because
you're so gentlewomanly. You don't ask questions, or
pry. Most people do."

8o DANGEROUS AGES

"Surely not. Not most decent people."

"Most people aren't decent. You think they are.
YouVe not lived in my set — ^nor in Rosalind's. You're
still fresh from Oxford — stucik all over with Oxford
manners and Oxford codes. You don't know the
raddled gossip who fishes for your secrets and then
throws them about for fun, like tennis balls."

"I know Rosalind, thank you, Nan."

"Oh, Rosalind's not the only one, though she'll do.
Anyhow I've trapped you into sasdng an honest and
unkind thing about her, for once; that's something.
Wish you weren't such a dear old fraud, Pammie."

Frances Carr came back, in her dressing gown, look-
ing about twenty-three, her brown hair in two plaits.

"Pamela, you mustn't sit up any more. I'm awfully
sorry. Nan, but her head . . ."

"Right oh. I'm off. Sorry I've kept you up, Pam-
mie. Good-night. Good-night, Frances. Yes, I shall
get the bus at the corner. Good-night."

The door closed after Nan, shutting in the friends
and their friendship and their anchored peace.

Off went Nan on the bus at the comer, whistling
softly into the night. Like a bird her heart rose up and
sang, at the lit pageant of London swinging by. Queer,
fantastic, most lovely lifel Sordid, squalid, grotesque
life, bitter as black tea, sour as stale wine! Glorious-
ly funny, brilliant as a flower-bed, bright as a Sitwell
street in hell —

"(Down in Hell's gilded street
Snow dances fleet and sweet,
Bright as a parakeet. . . .)"

ROOTS 8 I

unsteady as a swing-boat, silly as a drunkard's dream,
ly tragic as a poem by Masifield. ... To have one's
corner in it, to run here and there about the city,
grinning like a dog — ^what more did one want? Hu-
man adventures, intellectual adventures, success, even
a little fame, men and women, jokes, laughter and love,
dancing and a little drink, and the fields and mountains
and seas beyond — ^what more did one want?

Roots. That was the metaphor that had eluded /

Nan. To be rooted and grounded in life, like a tree.
Someone had written something about that.

"Let your manhood be
Forgotten, your whole purpose seem
The purpose of a simple tree
Rooted in a quiet dream. . . ."

Roots. That was what Neville had, what Pamela
had; Pamela, with her sensible wisdom that so often
didn't apply because Pamela was so far removed from
Nan's conditions of life and Nan's complicated, im-
stable temperament. Roots. Mrs. Hilary's had been
torn up out of the ground. . . .

"I'm like mother." That was Nan's nightmare
thought. Not intellectually, for Nan's brain was sharp
and subtle and strong and fine, Mrs. Hilary's was an
amorphous, undeveloped muddle. But where, if not
from Mrs. Hilary, did Nan get her black fits of melan-
choly, her erratic irresponsible gaieties, her pas-
sionate angers, her sharp jealousies and egoisms? The
clever yoimg woman saw herself in the stupid elderly
one; saw herself slipping down the years to that. That
was why, where Neville and Pamela and their brothers
pitied, Nan, understanding her mother's bad moods
better than they, was vicious with hate and scorn. For
she knew these things through and through. Not the

82 DANGEROUS AGES

sentimentality; she didn't know that, being qmical and
cool except when stirred to passion. And not the pos-
ing, for Nan was direct and blunt. But the feverish
angers and the black boredono — ^they were hers.

Nevertheless Nan's heart sang into the night. For
she had made up her mind, and was at peace.

She had held life at arm's length, pushed it away, for
many months, hiding from it, running from it because
she didn't with the whole of her, want it. Again and
again she had changed a dangerous subject, headed for
safety, raced for cover. The week-end before this last,
down at Windover, it had been like a game of hide and
seek. . . . And then she had come away, without warn-
ing, and he, going down there this last week-end, had
not found her, because she couldn't meet him again till
she had decided. And now she had decided.

How unsuited a pair they were, in many wasrs, and
what fun they would have! Unsuited • • • what did
it matter? His queer, soft, laughing voice was in her
ears, his lean, clever, merry face swam on the rushing
tides of night. His untidy, careless clothes, the
pockets bulging with books, papers and tobacco, his
glasses, that left a red mark on either side of the bridge
of his nose, his easily ruffled brown hair — ^they all
merged for her into the infinitely absurd, infinitely de-
lightful, infinitely loved Barry, who was going to give
her roots.

She was going away, down into Cornwall, in two
days. She would stay in rooms by herself at Marazion
and finish her book and bathe and climb, and lie in the
sim (if only it came out) and sleep and eat and drink.
There was nothing in the world like 3rour own company;
you could be purely animal then. And in a month
Gerda and Kay were coming down, and they were going
to bicycle along the coast, and she would ask Barry to

ROOTS 83

come too, and when Barry came she would let him say
what he liked, with no more fencing, no more
cover. Down by the green edge of the Cornish sea they
would have it out — ^**grip hard, become a root . . ."
become men as trees walking, rooted in a quiet dream.
Dream? No, reality. This was the dream, this world
of slipping shadows and hurrying gleams of heartbreak-
ing loveliness, through which one roamed, a child
chasing butterflies which ever escaped, or which, if cap-
tured, crumbled to dust in one's clutching hands. Oh
for something strong and firm to hold. Oh Barry,
Barry, these few more weeks of dream, of slipping
golden shadows and wavering lights, and then reality.
Shall I write, thought Nan, "Dear Barry, you may
ask me to marry you now." Impossible. Besides,
what hurry was there? Better to have these few more
gay and lovely weeks of dream. They would be the
last.

Has Barry squandered and spilt his love about as I
mine? Likely enough. Likely enough not. Who
cares? Perhaps we shall tell one another all these
things sometime; perhaps, again, we shan't. What
matter? One loves, and passes on, and loves again.
One's heart cracks and mends; one cracks the hearts of
others, and these mend too. That is — inter alia — ^what
life is for. If one day you want the tale of my life,
Barry, you shall have it; though that's not what life is
for, to make a tale about So thrilling in the living, so
flat and stale in the telling — oh let's get on and live
some more of it, lots and lots more, and let the dead
past bury its dead.

Between a laugh and a sleepy yawn. Nan jumped
from the bus at the comer of Oakley Street.

CHAPTER V

SEAWEED

"Complexes," read Mrs. Hilary, "are of all sorts and
sizes." And there was a picture of four of them in a
row, looking like netted dierry trees whose nets have
got entangled with each other. So that was what they
were like. Mrs. Hilary had previously thought of
them as being more of the nature of noxious insects, or
fibrous growths with infinite ramifications. Slim young
trees. Not so bad, then, after all.

"A complex is characterised, and its elements are
bound together by a specific emotional tone, experi-
enced as feeling when die complex is aroused. Apart
from the mental processes and corresponding actions
depending on purely rational mental systems, it is
through complexes that the typical mental process (the
specific response) works, the particular complex repre-
senting the particular set of mental elements involved
in the process which begins with perception and cog-
nition and ends with the corresponding conation."

Mrs. Hilary read it three times, and the third time
she understood it, if possible, less than the first. Com-
plexes seemed very difficult things, and she had never
been clever. Any of her children, or even her grand-
children, would understand it all in a moment. If you
have such things — and everyone has, she had learnt —
}rou ought to be able to understand them. Yet why?

SEAWEED 85

You didn't understand your bodily internal growths;
you left them to your doctor. There were doctors who
explained your complexes to you. . . . What a revolt-
ing ideal It would surely make them worse, not
better. (Mrs. Hilary still vaguely regarded these
growths as something of the nature of cancer.)

Sometimes she imagined herself a patient, interview-
ing one of these odd doctors. A man doctor, not a
woman; she didn't trust woman doctors of any kind;
she had always been thankful that Neville had given it
up and married instead.

"Insomnia," she would say, in these imaginary inter-
views, because that was so easy to start off with.

"You have something on your mind," said the doctor.
"You suffer from depression."

"Yes, I know that. I was coming to that. That is
what you must cure for me."

"You must think back. . . . What is the earliest
thing you can remember? Perhaps your baptism?
Possibly even your first bath? It has been done. . . ."

"You may be right. I remember some early baths.
One of them may have been the first of all, who knows?
What of it, doctor?"

But the doctor, in her imaginings, would at this point
only make notes in a big book and keep silence, as if he
had thought as much. Perhaps, no more than she, he
did not know what of it.

Mrs. Hilary could hear herself protesting.

"I am not tmhappy because of my baptism, which,
so far as I know, went off without a hitdi. I am not
troubled by my first bath, nor by any later bath. In-
deed, indeed you must believe me, it is not that at all."

"The more they protest," the psycho-analyst would
murmur, "the more it is so." For that was what Dr.

86 DANGEROUS AGES

Freud and Dr. Jung always said, so that there was no
escape from their aspersions.

"Why do you think you are so often unhappy?" he
would ask her, to draw her out and she would reply,
"Because my life is over. Because I am an old
discarded woman, thrown away onto the dust-heap like
a broken egg-shell. Because my husband is gone and
my diildren are gone, and they do not love me as I
love them. Because I have only my mother to live
with, ^nd she is calm and cares for nothing but only
waits for the end. Because I have nothing to do from
morning till night. Because I am sixty-three, and that
is too old and too yoimg. Because life is empty and
disappointing, and I am tired, and drift like seaweed
tossed to and fro by the waves."

It sounded indeed enough, and tears would fill her
eyes as she said it. The psycho-analyst would listen,
passive and sceptical but intelligent.

"Not one of your reasons is the correct one. But I
will find the true reason for you and expose it, and
after that it will trouble you no more. Now you shall
relate to me the whole history of your life."

What a comfortable moment! Mrs. Hilary, when
she came to it in her imagined interview, would draw a
deep breath and settle down and begin. The story of
her life! How absorbing a thing to relate to someone
who really wanted to hear it! How far better than the
confessional — for priests, besides requiring only those
portions and parcels of the dreadful past upon which
you had least desire to dwell, had almost certainly no
interest at all in hearing even these, but only did it be-
cause they had to, and you would be boring them.
They might even say, as one had said to Rosalind dur-
ing the first confession which had inaugurated her brief
ecclesiastical career, and to which she had looked for-

SEAWEED 87

ward with some interest as a luxurious re-living of a
stimulating past — "No details, please." Rosalind, who
had had many details ready, had come away dis-
appointed, feeling that the Chmrch was not sdl she
had hoped. But the psycho-analyst doctor would
really want to hear details. Of course he would
prefer the kind of detail which Rosalind would
have been able to furnish out of her experience,
for that was what psycho-analysts recognised as
true life. Mrs. Hilary's experiences were pale in
comparison; but psycho-analysts could and did
make much out of little, bricks without clay. . She
would tell him all about the children — ^how sweet they
were as babies, hoW Jim had nearly died of croup,
Neville of bronchitis and Nan of convulsions, whereas
Pamela had always been so well, and Gilbert had suf-
fered only from infant debility. She would relate how
early and how xmusually they had all given signs of in-
telligence; how Jim had alwa}rs loved her more than
ans^thing in the world, xmtil his marriage, and she him
(this was a firm article in Mrs. Hilary's creed) ; how
Neville had always cherished and cared for her, and
how she loved Neville beyond anything in the world but
Jim; how Gilbert had disappointed her by taking to
writing instead of to a man's job, and then by marr)dng
Rosalind; how Nan had always been tiresome and per-
verse. And before the children came — ^all about
Richard, and their courtship, and their yoimg married
Kfe, and how he had loved and cared for her beyond
anything, incredibly tenderly and well, so that all those
who saw it had wondered, and some had said he spoilt
her. And back before Richard, to girlhood and child-
hood, to parents and nursery, to her brother and sister,
now dead. How she had fought with her sister be-
cause they had both always wanted the same things and

88 DANGEROUS AGES

got in one another^s wayl The jealousies, the bitter,
angry tears 1

To pour it all out — ^what comfort 1 To feel that
someone was interested, even though it might be only
as a case. The trouble about most people was that
they weren't interested. They didn't mostly, even
pretend they were.

She tried Barry Briscoe, the week-end he came down
and foimd Nan gone. Barry Briscoe was by way of
being interested in people and things in general; he had
that kind of alert mind and face.

He came up from the tennis lawn, where he had been
playing a single with Rodney, and sat down by her and
Grandmama in the shade of the cedar, hot and friendly
and laughing and out of breath. Now Neville and
Rodney were playing Gerda and ELay. Grandmama's
old eyes, pleased behind their glasses, watched the balls
fly and thought everyone clever who got one over the
net. She hadn't played tennis in her youth. Mrs.
Hilary's more eager, excited eyes watched Neville
driving, smashing, vollesdng, returning, and thought
how slim and young a thing she looked, to have all that
power stored in her. She was fleeter than Gerda, she
struck harder than Kay, she was trickier than all of
them, the beloved girl. That was the way Mrs. Hilary
watched tennis, thinking of the players, not of the play.
It is the way some people talk, thinking of the talkers,
not of what they are sajdng. It is the personal touch,
and a way some women have.

But Barry Briscoe, watching cleverly through his
bright glasses, was thinking of the strokes. He was an
unconscious person. He lived in moments.

SEAWEED 89

"Well done, Gerda," Grandmama would call, when
Gerda, cool and nondialant, dropped, a sitter at Rod-
nej^'s feet, and when Rodney smashed it back she said
'*But father's too much for you."

"Gerda's a scandal** Barry said, "She doesn't care.
She can hit all right when she likes. She thinks about
something else half the time."

His smile followed the small white figure with its
bare golden head that gleamed in the grey afternoon.
An absurd, lovable, teasable child, he foimd her.

Grandmama's maid came to wheel her down to the
farm. Grandmama had promised to go and see the
farmer's wife and new baby. Grandmama always saw
wives and new babies. They never palled. You
would think that by eighty-four she had seen enough
new babies, more than enough, that she had seen
through that strange business and could now take it for
granted, the stream of fimny new life cascading into
the already so full world. But Grandmama would al-
ways go and see it, handle it, admire it, peer at it with ,
her smiling eyes that had seen so many lives come and
go and that must know by now that babies are born to
trouble as naturally as the sparks fly upward.

So off Grandmama rode in her wheeled chair, and
Mrs. Hilary and Barry Briscoe were left alone. Mrs.
Hilary and this pleasant, brown, friendly young man,
who cared for Workers' Education and Continuation
Schools, and Penal Reform, and Garden Cities, and
Getting Things Done by Acts of Parliament, about all
which things Mrs. Hilary knew and cared nothing. But
vaguely she felt that they sprang out of and must in-
clude a care for human beings as such, and that there-
fore Barry Briscoe would listen if she told him things.

So (it came out of lying on grass, which Barry was
doing) she told him about the pneumonia of Neville as

90 DANGEROUS AGES

a child, how they had been staying in Cornwall, miles
from a doctor, and without Mr. Hilary, and Mrs. Hilary
had been in despair; how Jim, a little chap of twelve,
had ridden off on his pony in the night to fetch the
doctor, across the moors. A long story; stories about
illnesses always are. Mrs. Hilary got worked up and
excited as she told it; it came back to her so vividly, the
dreadful night.

"He was a Dr. Chalmers, and so kind. When he saw
Neville he was horrified; by that time she was delirious.
He said if Jim hadn't gone straight to him but had
waited till the morning, it might have been too late. . • ."

"Too late: quite. . . •" Barry Briscoe had an under-
standing, sympathetic grip of one's last few words. So
much of the conversation of others eludes one, but one
should hold fast the last few words.

"Oh played, Gerda: did you that time, Bendish "

Gerda had put on, probably by accident, a sudden,
absurd twist that had made a fool of Rodney.

That was what Barry Briscoe was really attending to,
the silly game. This alert, seemingly interested, at-
tentive young man had a nice manner, that led you on,
but he didn't really care. He lived in the moment: he
cared for prisoners and workers, and probably for
people who were ill now, but not that someone had been
ill all those years ago. He only pretended to care; he
was polite. He turned his keen, pleasant face up to her
when he had done shouting about the game, and said
"How splendid that he got to you in time I" but he
didn't really care. Mrs. Hilary foimd that women were
better listeners than men. Women are perhaps better
trained; they think it more ill-mannered not to show
interest. They will listen to stories about servants, or
reports of the inane sayings of infants, they will hear
you through, without die flicker of a yawn, but with

SEAWEED 91

ejaculations and noddings, while you tell them about
your children's diseases. They are well-bred; they
drive themselves on a tight rein, and endure. They are
the world's martyrs.

But men, less restrained, will fidget and wander and
sigh and yawn, and change the subject.

To trap and hold the ssonpathy of a man — ^how
wonderful! Who wanted a pack of women? What
you really wanted was some man whose trade it was
to listen and to give heed. Some man to whom your
daughter's pneumonia, of however long ago, was not
irrelevant, but had its own significance, as havmg
helped to build you up as you were, you, the problem,
with your wonderful, puzzling temperament, so full of
complexes, inconsistencies and needs. Some man who
didn't lose interest in you just because you were grey-
haired and sixty-three.

"I'm afraid I've been taking your attention from the
game," said Mrs. Hilary to Barry Briscoe.

Compunction stabbed him. Had he been rude to
this elderly lady, who had been telling him a long tale
without a point while he watched the tennis and made
polite, attentive sounds?

"Not a bit, Mrs. Hilary." He sat up, and looked
friendlier than ever. "I've been thrilled." A charm-
ing, easy liar Barry was, when he deemed it necessary.
His Quaker parents would have been shocked. But
there was truth in it, after all. For people were so
interested in themselves, that one was, in a sense, in-
terested in the stories they told one, even stories about
illness. Besides, this was the mother of Nan; Nan,
who was so abruptly and inexplicably not here to-day,
whose absence was hurting him, when he stopped to
think, like an aching tooth; for he was not sure, yet
feared, what she meant by it.

92 DANGEROUS AGES

"Tell me," he said, half to please Nan's mother and
half on his own account, "some stories oi Nan when she
was small. I should think she was a fearful child. . • •"

He was interested, thought Mrs. Hilary, in Nan, but
not in her. That was natural, of course. No man
would ever again want to hear stories of her childhood.
The familiar bitterness rose and beat in her like a wave.
Nan was thirty-four and she was sixty-three. She could
talk only of far-off things, and theories about conduct
and life which sounded all right at first but were ex-
posed after two minutes as not having behind them the
background of any knowledge or any brain. That
hadn't mattered when she was a girl; men would often
rather they hadn't. But at sixty-three you have noth-
ing. . . . The bitter emptiness of sixty-three turned
her sick with frustration. Life was over, over, over,
for her and she was to tell stories of Nan, who had
everything.

Then the mother in her rose up, to claim and grasp
for her child, even for the child she loved least.

"Nan? Nan was always a most dreadfully sensitive
child, and temperamental. She took after me, I'm
afraid; the others were more like their father. I re-
member when she was quite a little thing. . . ."

Barry had asked for it. But he hadn't known that,
out of the brilliant, uncertain Nan, exciting as a Punch
and Judy show, anything so tedious could be spim. . • .

Mrs. Hilary was up in town by herself for a day's
shopping. The sales were on at Barker's and Derry
and Tom's. Mrs. Hilary wandered about these shops,
and even Ponting's and bought little bags, and presents
for everyone, remnants, oddments, imderwear, some

SEAWEED 93

green silk for a frock for Gerda, a shady hat for her-
self, a wonderful cushion for Grandmama with a picture
of the sea on it, a silk knitted jumper for Neville, of the
same purplish blue as her ej'^es. She was happy, going
about like a bee from flower to flower, gathering this
honey for them all. She had come up alone; she
hadn't let Neville come with her. She had said she
was going to be an independent old woman. But what
she really meant was that she had proposed herself for
tea with Rosalind in Campden Hill Square, and wanted
to be alone for that.

Rosalind had been surprised, for Mrs. Hilary seldom
f avoiu^ed her with a visit. She had found the letter on
the hall table when she and Gilbert had come in from
a dinner party two evenings ago.

**Your mother's coming to tea on Thursday, Gilbert.
Tea with me. She says she wants a talk. I feel
flattered. She says nothkig about wanting to see you,
so you'd better leave us alone, anyhow for a bit."

Rosalind's beautiful bistre-brown eyes smiled. She
enjoyed her talks with her mother-in-law; they fur-
ni^ed her with excellent material, to be worked up
later by the raconteuse's art into something too deli-
cious and absurd. She enjoyed, too, telling Mrs. Hilary
the latest scandals; she was so shocked and disgusted;
and it was fun dropping little accidental hints about
Nan, and even about Gilbert. Anyhow, what a
treasure of a relic of the Victorian age! And how
comic in her jealousy, her ingenuous, futile boasting,
her so readily exposed deceits! And how she hated
Rosalind herself, the painted, corrupt woman who was
dragging Gilbert down !

"Whatever does she want a talk about?" Rosalind
wondered. "It must be something pretty urgent, to
make her put up with an hour of my company."

94 DANGEROUS AGES

At foui: o'clock on Thursday afternoon Rosalind
went upstairs and put on an extra coating of powder
and rouge. She also blackened her eyelashes and put
on her lips salve the colour of strawberries rather than
of the human mouth. She wore an afternoon dress
with transparent black sleeves through which her big
arms gleamed, pale and smooth. She looked a superb
and altogether improper creature, like Lucrezia Borgia
or a Titian madonna. She came down and lay among
great black and gold satin cushions, and lit a scented
cigarette and opened a new French novel. Black and
gold was her new scheme for her drawmg-room; she
had had it done this spring. It had a sort of opulent
and rakish violence which suited her ripe magnificence,
her splendid flesh tints, her brown eyes and corn-gold
hair. Against it she looked like Messalina, and Gilbert
like rather a decadent and cynical pope. The note of
the room was really too pronounced for Gilbert's
fastidious and scholarly eloquence; he lost vitality in it,
and dwindled to the pale thin casket of a brain.

And Mrs. Hilary, when she entered it, trailing in, tall
and thin, in her sagging grey coat and skirt, her wispy
grey hair escaping from under her floppy black hat, and
with the air of having till a moment ago been hung
about with parcels (she had left them in the hall),
looked altogether xmsuited to her environment, Uke a
dowdy lady from the provinces, as she was.

Rosalind came forward and took her by the hands.

*Well, mother dear, this is an unusual honour. . . .
How long is it since we last had you here?"

Rosalind, enveloping her mother-in-law in extrava-
gant fragrance, kissed her on each cheek. The kiss of

SEAWEED 95

Messalina! Mrs. Hilary glanced at the great mirror
over the fireplace to see whether it had come off on
her cheeks, as it might well have done.

Rosalind placed her on a swelling, billowy, black and
gold chair, piled cushions behind her shoulders, made
her lie back at an obtuse angle, a grey, lank, elderly
figure, strange in that opulent setting, her long dusty
black feet stretched out before her on the golden carpet.

Desperately uncomfortable and angular Rosalind
made you feel, petting you and purring over you and
calling you "mother dear," with that glint always be-
hind her golden-brown eyes which showed that she was
up to no good, that she knew you hated her and was
only leading you on that she might strike her claws
into you the deeper. The great beautiful cat: that was
what Rosalind was. You didn't trust her for a
moment.

She was pouring out tea.

"Lemon? But how dreadfully stupid of me! I*d
forgotten you take milk ... oh yes, and sugar. . . •"

She rang, and ordered sugar. Mothers take it; not
the mothers of Rosalihd's world, but mothers' meetings,
and school treats, and mothers-in-law up from the sea-
side.

"Are you up for shopping? How thrilling I Where
have you been? . . . Oh, High Street. Did you find
an3rthing there?"

Mrs. Hilary knew that Rosalind would see her off,
hung over with dozens of parcels, and despise them,
knowing that if they were so many they must also be
cheap.

"Oh, there's not much to be got there, of course," she
said. "I got a few little things — chiefly for my mother
to give away in the parish. She likes to have things.

• • •

96 DANGEROUS AGES

"But how noble of you both ! I'm afraid I never rise
to that. It's all I can manage to give presents to my-
self and nearest rellies. And you came up to town just
to get presents for the parish 1 You're wonderful,
mother I "

"Oh, I take a day in town now and then. Why not?
Everyone does."

Extraordinary how defiant Rosalind made one feel,
prying and questioning and trying to make one look
absurd.

"Why, of course 1 It freshens you up, I expect;
makes a change. . . . But you've come up from Wind-
over, haven't you, not the seaside?"

Rosalind always called St. Mary's Bay the seaside.
To her our island coasts were all one; the seaside was
where you went to bathe, and she hardly distinguished
between north, south, east and west.

"How are they down at Windover? I heard that
Nan was there, with that young man of hers who per-
forms good works. So unlike Nan herself! I hope
she isn't going to be so silly as to let it come to any-
thing; they'd both be miserable. But I should think
Nan knows better than to marry a square-toes. I
daresay he knows better too, really. . . • And how*s
poor old Neville? I think this doctoring game of hers
is simply a scream, the poor old dear."

To hear Rosalind discussing Neville. • . . Messalina
coarsely patronising a wood-nymph ... the cat strik-
ing her claws into a singing bird. . . . And poor — and
old! Neville was, indeed, six years ahead of Rosalind,
but she looked the yoimger of the two, in her slim
activity, and didn't need to paint her face either. Mrs.
Hilary all but said so.

"It is a great interest to Neville, taking up her medi-
cal studies again," was all she could really say. (What

SEAWEED 97

a hampering thing it is to be a lady 1 ) "She thorough-
ly enjoys it, and looks younger than ever. She is play-
ing a lot of tenniS; and beats them all."

How absurdly her voice rang when she spoke of
Neville or Jim! It always made Rosalind's lip curl
mockingly.

"Wonderful creature I I do admire her. When I'm
her age I shall be too fat to take any exercise at all.
I think it's splendid of women who keep it up through
the forties. • . . She won't be bored, even when she's
sixty, will she?"

That was a direct hit, which Mrs. Hilary could bear
better than hits at Neville.

"I see no reason," said Mrs. Hilary, "why Neville
should ever be bored. She has a husband and children.
Long before she is sixty she will have Kay's and
Gerda's children to be interested in.'^

"No, I suppose one can't well be bored if one has
grandchildren, can one," Rosalind said, reflectively.

There was a silence, during which Mrs. Hilary's eyes,
coldly meeting Rosalind's with their satirical comment,
said "I know you are too selfish a woman ever to bear
children, and I thank God for it. Little Hilarys who
should be half yours would be more than I could en-
dure."

Rosalind, quite xmderstanding, smiled her slow, full-
mouthed, curling smile, and held out to her mother-in-
law the gold case with scented cigarettes.

"Oh no, you don't, do you. I never can remember
that. It's so unusual."

Her eyes travelled over Mrs. Hilary, from her dusty
black shoes to her pale, lined face. They put her, with
deliberation, into the dass with companions, house-
keepers, poor relations. Having successfully done that
(she knew it was successful, by Mrs. Hilary's faint

98 DANGEROUS AGES

flush) she said "You don't look up to much, mother
dear. Not as if Neville had been looking after you
very well."

Mrs. Hilary, seeing her chance, swallowed her nat-
ural feelings and took it.

"The fact is, I sleep very badly. Not particularly
just now, but always. . • • I thought . . • That is,
someone told me . • • that there have been wonderful
cures for insomnia lately . . . through that new
thing. . . •"

"Which new thing? Sedobrol? Paraldehyd? Gil-
bert keeps getting absmrd powders and tablets of all
sorts. Thank God, I always sleep like a top."

"No, not those. The thing you practice. Psycho-
analysis, I mean."

"Oh, psycho. But you wouldn't touch that, surely?
I thought it was anathema."

"But if it really does cure people. . . ."

Rosalind's eyes glittered and gleamed. Her straw-
berry-red mouth curled joyfully.

"Of course it has. . . . Not that insomnia is always
a case for psycho, you know. It's sometimes incipient
mania."

"Not in my case." Mrs. Hilary spoke sharply.

"Why no, of course not. . . . Well, I think you'd
be awfully wise to get analysed. Whom do you want
to go to?"

"I thought you could tell me. I know no names.
... A man/' Mrs. Hilary added quickly.

"Oh, it must be a man? I was going to say, Fve a
vacancy myself for a patient. But women usually want
men doctors. They nearly all do. It's supposed to
be part of the complaint. . . • Well, I could fix jrou
up a preliminary interview with Dr. Claude Evans,
lie's very ^ood. He turns you right inside out and

SEAWEED 99

shows you eveiything about yourself , from your first
infant passion to the thoughts you think you're keep-
ing dark from him as you sit in the counting room.
He's great."

Mrs. Hilary was flushed. Hope and shame tingled
in her together.

"I shan't want to keep anything dark. I've no
reason."

Rosalind's mocking eyes said ^'That's what they all
say." Her lips said "The foreconscious self always has
its reasons for hiding up the things the xmconsdous
self knows and feels."

"Oh, all that stuff. . . ." Mrs. Hilary was sick of it,
having read too much about it in "The Breath of Life."
"I hope this Dr. Evans will talk to me in plain English,
not in that affected jargon."

"He'll use language suited to you, I suppose," said
Rosalind, "as far as he can. But these things can't
alwa}rs be put so that just anyone can grasp them.
They're too complicated. You should read it up be-
forehand, and try if you can understand it a little."

Rosalind, who had no brains herself, insulting Mrs.
Hilary's, was rather more ihan Mrs. Hilary could bear.
Rosalind she knew for a fool, so far as intellectual mat-
ters went, for Nan had said so. Clever enough at
dothes, and talking scandal, and winning money at
games, and skating over thin ice without going through
— ^but when it came to a book, or an idea, or a political
question, Rosalind was no whit more intelligent than
she was, in fact much less. She was a rotten psycho-
anals^t, all her in-laws were sure.

Mrs. Hilary said, "I've been reading a good deal
about it lately. It doesn't seem to me very difficult,
though exceedingly foolish in parts."

Rosalind was touchy about psycho-analj^is; she al-

100 DANGEROUS AGES

ways got angry if people said it was foolish in any way.
She was like that; she could see no weak points in
anything she took up; it came from being vain, and
not having a brain. She said one of the things angry
people say, instead of discussing the subject rationally.

"I don't suppose the amount of it you've been able
to read would seem difficult. If you came to an3rthing
difficult you'd probably stop, you see. Anyhow, if it
seems to you so foolish why do you want to be
analysed?"

"Oh, one may as well try things. I've no doubt
there's something in it besides the nonsense."

Mrs. Hilary spoke jauntily, with hungry, unquiet,
seeking eyes tihat would not meet Rosalind's. She was
afraid that Rosalind would find out that she wanted
to be cured of being miserable, of being jealous, of
having inordinate passions about so little. Rosalind,
in some wa3rs a great stupid cow, was uncannily clever
when it came to being spiteful and knowing about you
the things you didn't want known. It must be horrible
to be psydio-analysed by Rosalind, who had no pity
and no reticence. The things about you would not only
be known but spread abroad among all those whom
Rosalind met. A vile, dreadful tongue.

"You wouldn't, I expect, like me to analyse you,'*
said Rosalind. "Not a course, I mean, but just once,
to advise you better whom to go to. It'd have the ad-
vantage, anyhow, that I'd do it free. Anyone else will
charge you three guineas at the least."

"I don't think," said Mrs. Hilary, "that relations —
or connections— ought to do one another. No, I'd
better go to someone I don't know, if you'll give me
the name and address."

"I thought you'd probably rather," Rosalind said,
in her slow, soft, cruel voice, like a cat's purr. "Well,

SEAWEED loi

ni write down the address for you. It's Dr. Evans:
hell probably pass you on to someone down at the sea-
side, if he considers you a suitable case for treatment."

He would; of course he would. Mrs. Hilary felt no
doubt as to that.

Gilbert came in from the British Museum. He
looked thin and nervous and sallow amid all the splen-
dour. He kissed his mother, thinking how queer and
untidy she looked, a stranger and pilgrim in Rosalind's
drawing-room. He too might look there at times a
stranger and pilgrim, but at least, if not voluptuous, he
was neat. He glanced proudly and yet ironically from
his mother to his magnificent wife, taking in and under-
standing the supra-normal redimdandes of her make-
up.

"Rosalind," said Mrs. Hilary, knowing that it would
be less than useless to ask Rosalind to keep her secret,
"has been recommending me a psycho-analyst doctor.
I think it is worth while tr3dng if I can get my in-
somnia cured that way."

"My dear mother! After all your fulminations
against the tribe! Well, I think you're quite right
to give it a trial. Why don't you get Rosalind to take
3rou on?"

The fond pride in his voice! Yet there was in his
eyes, as they rested for a moment on Rosalind, some-
thing other than fond pride; something more Uke
mockery.

Mrs. Hilary got up to go, and fired across the rich
room the one shot in her armoury.

"I believe," she said, "that Rosalind prefers chiefly
to take men patients. She wouldn't want to be bored
with an old woman."

The shot drove straight into Gilbert's light-stnmg
sensitiveness. Shell-shocked officers; any other offi-

I02 DANGEROUS AGES

cers; anything male, presentable and passably young;
these were Rosalind's patients; he knew it, and every-
one else knew it. For a moment his smile was fixed
into the deliberate grin of pain. Mrs. Hilary saw it,
saw Gilbert far back down the years, a small boy
standing up to punishment with just that brave, nervous
grin. Sensitive, defiant, vulnerable, fastidiously proud
— ^so Gilbert had always been and always would be.

Remorsefully she clung to him.

"Come and see me out, dearest boy" (so she called
him, though Jim was really that) — ^and she ignored
Rosalind's slow, imconcerned protest against her last re-
mark. "Why, mother, you know I asked to do you"
. . . but she couldn't prevent Rosalind from seeing
her out too, hanging her about with all the ridiculous
parcels, kissing her on both cheeks.

Gilbert was cool and dry, pretending she hadn't hurt
him. He would always take hurts like that, with that
deadly, steely lightness. By its deadliness, its steeli-
ness, she knew that it was all true (and much more
besides) that she had heard about RosaUnd and her
patients.

She walked down to the bus with hot eyes. Rosalind
had yawned softly and largely behind her as she went
down the front steps. Wicked, monstrous creature!
L3dng about Gilbert's clever, nervous, eager life in
great soft folds, and throttling it. If Gilbert had been
a man, a real male man, instead of a writer and there-
fore effeminate, decadent, he would have beaten her
into decent behaviour. As it was she would ruin him,
and he would go under, not able to bear it, but cynically
grinning still. Perhaps the sooner the better. Any-

SEAWEED 103

thing was better than the way Rosalind went on now,
disgracing him and getting talked about, and making
him hate his mother for disliking her. He hadn't even
come with her to the bus, to carry her parcels for her.
. . . That wasn^t like Gilbert. As a rule he had excel-
lent manners, though he was not affectionate like Jim.

Jim, Jim, Jim. Should she go to Harley Street?
What was the use? She would find only Margery
there; Jim would be out. Margery had no serious
faults except the one, that she had taken the first place
in Jim's affections. Before Margery, Neville had had
this place, but Mrs. Hilary had been able, with Neville's
never failing and skilful help, to disguise this from her-
self. You can't disguise a wife's place in her husband's
heart. And Jim's splendid children too, whom she
adored — ^they looked at her with Margery's brown eyes
instead of Jim's grey-blue ones. And they preferred
really (she knew it) their maternal grandmother, the
jolly lady who took them to the theatres.

Mrs. Hilary passed a church. Religion. Some peo-
ple found help there. But it required so much of you,
was so exhausting in its demands. Besides, it seemed
infinitely far away — ^an improbable, sad, remote thing,
that gave you no human comfort. Psycho-analysis was
better; that opened gates into a new life. "Know thy-
self," Mrs. Hilary murmured, kindling at the prospect.
Most knowledge was dull, but never that.

"I will ring up from Waterloo and make an appoint-
ment/' she thought.

CHAPTER VI

JIM

The psycho-analyst doctor was little and dark and
while he was talking he looked not at Mrs. Hilary
but down at a paper whereon he drew or wrote some-
thing she tried to see and couldn't. She came to the
conclusion after a time that he was merely scribbling
for effect.

"Insomnia," he said. "Yes. You know what that
means?"

She said, foolishly, "That I can't sleep," and he
gave her a glance of contempt and returned to his
scribbling,

"It means," he told her, "that you are afraid of
dreaming. Your unconscious self won't let you sleep.
. . . Do you often recall your dreams when you
wake?"

"Sometimes."

"Tell me some of them, please."

"Oh, the usual things, I suppose. Packing; miss-
ing trains; meeting people; and just nonsense that
means nothing. All the usual things, that everyone
dreams about."

At each thing she said he nodded, and scribbled
with his pencil. "Quite," he said, "quite. They're
bad enough in meaning, the dreams you've men*

lOd

JIM 105

tioned. I don't suppose you'd care at present to hear
what they S)mibolise. . . • The dreams you haven't
mentioned are doubtless worse. And those you don't
even recall are worst of all. Your unconscious is,
very naturally and properly, frightened of them. . . .
Well, we must end all that, or you'll never sleep as
you should. Psycho-analysis will cure these dreams;
first it will make you remember them, then you'll talk
them out and get rid of them."

"Dreams," said Mrs. Hilary. "Well, they may be
important. But it's my whole life. . . ."

"Precisely. I was coming to that. Of course you
can't cure sleeplessness imtil you have cured the fimda-
mental things that are wrong with your life. Now, if
you please, tell me all you can about yourself."

Here was the wonderful moment. Mrs. Hilary drew
a long breath, and told him. A horrid (she felt that
somehow he was rather horrid) little man with furtive
eyes that wouldn't meet hers — (and he wasn't quite a
gentleman, either, but still, he wanted to hear all about
her) he was listening attentively, drinking it in. Not
watching tennis while she talked, like Barry Briscoe
in the garden. Ah, she could go on and on, never tired;
it was like swimming in warm water.

He would interrupt her with questions. Which had
she preferred, her father or her mother? Well, per-
haps on the whole her father. He nodded; that was
the right answer; the other he would have quietly put
aside as one of the deliberate inaccuracies so frequently
practised by his patients. "You can leave out the
perhaps. There's no manner of doubt about it, you
know." Lest he should say (instead of only looking
it) that she had been in love with her good father and
he with her, Mrs. Hilary hurried on. She had a chaste
mind, and knew what these Freudians were. It would.

io6 DANGEROUS AGES

she thoilght (not knowing her doctor and how it would
have come to the same thing, only he would have
thought her a more pronounced case, because of the
deception), have been wiser to have said that she had
preferred her mother, but less truthful, and what she
was enjojdng now was an orgy of truth-telling. She
got on to her marriage, and how intensely Richard had
loved her. He tried for a moment to be Indecent about
love and marriage, but in her deep excitement she
hardly noticed him, but swept on to the births of the
children, and Jim's croup.

"I see," he said presently, "that you prefer to avoid
discussing certain aspects of life. You obviously have
a sex complex.''

"Of course, of course. Don't you find that in all
your patients? Surely we may tsJit that for granted.
• . ." She allowed him his sex complex, knowing that
Freudians without it would be like children deprived
of a precious toy; for her part she was impatient to
get back to Jim, her life's chief passion. The (Edipus
complex, of course he would say it was; what matter,
if he would let her talk about it? And Neville. It
was strange to have a jealous passion for one's daugh-
ter. But that would, he said, be an extension of the
ego complex — quite simple really.

She came to the present.

"I feel that life has used me up and flung me aside
like a broken tool. I have no further relation to life,
nor it to me. I have spent myself and been spent, and
now I am bankrupt. Can you make me solvent again?''

She liked that as she said it.

He scribbled away, like a mouse scrabbling.

"Yes. Oh yes. There is no manner of doubt about
it. None whatever. If you are perfectly frank, yoa

JIM 107

can be cured. You can be adjusted to life. Every
age in human life has its own adjustment to make, its
own relation to its environment to establish. All that
repressed libido must be released and diverted. . . .
You have some bad complexes, which must be sub-
limated. . . ."

It sounded awful, the firm way he said it, like teeth
or appendixes which must be extracted. But Mrs.
Hilary knew it wouldn't be like that really, but de-
lightful and luxurious, more like a Turkish bath.

"You must have a course," he told her. "You are
an obvious case for a course of treatment. St. Mary's
Bay? Excellent. There is a practising psycho-analyst
there now. You should have an hour's treatment twice
a week, to be really effective. . . . You would prefer a
man, I take it?"

He shot his eyes at her for a moment, in statement,
not in enquiry. Well he knew how much she would
prefer a man. She murmured assent. He rose. The
hour was over.

"How much will the course be?" she asked.

"A guinea an hour. Dr. Cradock charges. He is very
cheap."

"Yes, I see. I must think it over. And you?"

He told her his fee, and she blenched, but paid it.
She was not rich, but it had been worth while. It
was a beginning. It had opened the door into a new
and richer life. St. Mary's Bay was illumined in her
thoughts, instead of being drab and empty as before.
Sublimated complexes twinkled over it like stars. Freed
libido poured electrically about it. And Dr. Cradock,
she felt, would be more satisfactory as a doctor than
this man, who affected her with a faint nausea when
he looked at her, though he seldom did so.

io8 DANGEROUS AGES

Windover too was illumined. She coiild watch al-
most calmly Neville talking to Grandmama, wheeling
her round the garden to look at the borders, for Grand-
mama was a great gardener.

Then Jim came down for a week-end, and it was as
if the sun had risen on Surrey. He sat with Mrs. Hilary
in the arbour. She told him about Dr. Evans and the
other psycho-analyst doctor at St. Mary's Bay. He
frowned over Dr. Evans, who lived in the same street
as he did.

"Rosalind sent you to him; of course; she would.
Why didn't you ask me, mother? He's a desperate
Freudian, you know, and they're not nearly so good
as the others. Besides, this particular man is a shoddy
scoundrel, I believe. . . . Was he offensive?"

"I wouldn't let him be, Jim. I was prepared for
that. I ... I changed the conversation."

Jim laughed, and did his favourite trick with her
hand, straightening the thin fingers one by one as they
lay across his sensitive palm. How happy it always
made her!

"Well," he said, "I daresay this man down at the
Bay is all right. I'll find out if he's any good or not.
. . . They talk a lot of tosh, you know, mother; you'll
have to sift the grain from the chaff."

But he saw that her eyes were interested, her face
more alert than usual, her very poise more alive. She
had found a new interest in life, like keeping a parrot,
or learning bridge, or getting religion. It was what
they had always tried to find for her in vain.

"So long," he said, "as you don't believe more than
half what they tell you. . . . Let me know how it goes

JIM 109

on, won't you, and what this man is like. If I don't
approve I shall come and stop it."

She loved that from Jim.

"Of course, dearest. Of course I shall tell you about
it. And I know one must be careful."

It was something to have become an object for care;
it put one more in the foreground. She would have
gone on willingly with the subject, but Jim changed
her abruptly for Neville.

"Neville's looking done up."

She felt the little sharp pang which Neville's name
on Jim's lips had always given her. His very pro-
nimciation of it hurt her — "Niwle," he said it, as if
he had been an Irishman. It brought all the past back;
those two dear ones talking together, studsdng to-
gether, going off together, bound by a hundred common
interests, telling each other things they never told her.

"Yes. It's this ridiculous work of hers. It's so
absurd: a married woman of her age making her head
ache working for examinations."

In old days Jim and Neville had worked together.
Jim had been proud of Neville's success; she had been
quicker than he. Mrs. Hilary, who had welcomed
Neville's marriage as ending all that, foresaw a renewal
of the hurtful business.

But Jim looked grave and disapproving over it.

"It is absurd," he agreed, and her heart rose. "And
of course she can't do it, can't make up all that leeway.
Besides, her brain has lost its grip. She's not kept it
sharpened; she's spent her life on people. You can't
have it botli ways — a, woman can't, I mean. Her work's
been different. She doesn't seem to realise that what
she's tr3dng to learn up again now, in the spare mo-
ments of an already full life, demands a whole life-
time of hard work. She can't get back those twenty

no DANGEROUS AGES

years; no one could. And she can't get back the dear,
gripping brain she had before she had children. She's
given some of it to them. That's nature's way, unfortu-
nately. Hard luck, no doubt, but there it is; you can't
get roimd it. Nature's a hybrid of fool and devil."

He was talking really to himself, but was recalled to
his mother by the tears which, he suddenly perceived,
were distortir g her face.

"And so," she whispered, her voice choked, "we
women get left. • . ."

He looked away from her, a little exasperated. She
cried so easily and so superfluously, and he knew that
these tears were more for herself than for Neville.
And she didn't really come into what he had been say-
ing at all; he had been talking about brains.

"It's all right as far as most women are concerned,"
he said. "Most women have no brains to be spoilt.
Neville had. Most women could do nothing at all with
life if they didn't produce children; it's their only possi-
ble job. They've no call to feel ill-used."

"Of course," she said, unsteadily, struggling to dear
her voice of tears, "I know you children all think I'm
a fool. But there was a time when I read difficult books
with your father . . . he, a man with a first-dass mind,
cared to read with me and discuss with me. . . •"

"Oh yes, yes, mother, I know."

Jim and all of them knew all about those long-ago
difficult books. They knew too about the dever friends
who used to drop in and talk. . . . If only Mrs. Hilary
could have been one of the nice, jolly, refreshing people
who own that they never read and never want to. All
this fuss about reading and cleverness — ^how tedious it
was! As if being stupid mattered, as if it was worth
bothering about

JIM III

'^Of course we don't think you a fool, mother dear;
how could we?"

Jim was kind and affectionate, never ironic, like Gil-
bert, or impatient, like Nan. But he felt now the need
for fresh air; the arbour was too small for him and
Mrs. Hilary, who was as tiring to others as to herself.

"I think I shall go and interrupt Neville over her
studies," said Jim, and left the arbour.

Mrs. Hilary looked after him, painfully loving his
square, straight back, his fine dark head, just flecked
with grey, the clean line of his profile, with the firm jaw
clenched over the pipe. To have produced Jim —
wasn't that enough to have lived for? Mrs. Hilary
was one of those mothers who apply the Magnificat to
their own cases. She always felt a bond of human
sympathy between herself and that lady called the
Virgin Mary, whom she thought over-estimated.

Neville raised heavy violet eyes, faintly ringed with
shadows, to Jim as he came into the library. She
looked at him for a moment absently, then smiled. He
came over to her and looked at the book before her.

"Working? WhereVe you got to? Let's see how
much you know."

He took the book from her and glanced at it to see
what she had been reading.

"Now we'll have an examination; it'll be good prac-
tice for you."

He put a question, and she answered it, frowning a
little.

"H'm. That's not very good, my dear."

112 DANGEROUS AGES

He tried again; this time she could not answer at aU.
At the third question she shook her head.

"It's no use, Jimmy. My head's hopeless this after-
noon. Another time."

He shut the book.

"Yes. So it seems. . . • You're overdoing it,
Neville. You can't go on like this."

She lay back and spread out her hands hopelessly.

"But I must go on like this if I'm ever going to get
through my exams."

"You're not going to, old thing. You're quite ob-
viously unfitted to. It's not your job any more. It's
absurd to try; really it is."

Neville shut her eyes.

"Doctors . . . doctors. They have it on the brain,
— the limitations of the feminine organism."

"Because they know something about it. But I'm
not speaking of the feminine organism just now. I
should say the same to Rodney if he thought of turn-
ing doctor now, after twenty years of politics."

"Rodney never could have been a doctor. He hates
messing about with bodies."

"Well, you know what I think. I can't stop you, of
course. It's only a question of time, in any case. You'll
soon find out for yourself that it's no use."

"I think," she answered, in her small, unemotional
voice, "that it's exceedingly probable that I shall."

She lay inertly in the deep chair, her eyes shut, her
hands opened, palms downwards, as if they had failed
to hold something.

"What then, Jim? If I can't be a doctor what can I
be? Besides Rodney's wife, I mean?" I don't say
besides the children's mother, because that's stoi^d
being a job. They're charming to me, the darlings,

JIM 113

but they don't need me any more; they go their own
way.'*

Jim had noticed that.

"Well, after all, you do a certain amoimt of political
work — public speaking, meetings, and so on. Isn't that
enough?"

"That's all second-hand. I shouldn't do it but for
Rodney. I'm not public-spirited enough. If Rodney
dies before I do, I shan't go on with that. . • . Shall I
just be a silly, self-engrossed, moping old woman, no
use to anyone and a plague to myself?"

The eyes of both of them strayed out to the garden.

"Who's the silly moping old woman?" asked Mrs.
Hilary's voice in the doorway. And there she stood,
leaning a little forward, a strained smile on her face.

"Me, mother, when I shall be old," Neville quickly
answered her, smiling in return. "Come in, dear. Jim's
telling me how I shall never be a doctor. He gave me
a viva voce exam., and I came a mucker over it."

Her voice had an edge of bitterness; she hadn't liked
coming a mucker, nor yet being told she couldn't get
throu^ exams. She had plenty of vanity; so far every-
one and everything had combined to spoil her. She
was determmed, in the face of growmg doubt, to prove
Jim wrong yet.

"Well," Mrs. Hilary said, sitting down on the edge
of a chair, not settUng herself, but looking poised to go,
so as not to seem to intrude on their conversation, "well,
I don't see why 3rou want to be a doctor, dear. Every-
one knows women doctors aren't much good. /
wouldn't trust one."

"Very stupid of you, mother," Jim said, tr3dng to
pretend he wasn't irritated by being interrupted.
"They're every bit as good as men."

114 DANGEROUS AGES

^Tancy being operated on by a woman surgeon. I
certainly shouldn't risk it/'

'*You wouldn't risk it . . . you wouldn't trust them.
You're so desperately personal, mother. You think
that contributes to a discussion. All it does contribute
to is your hearers' knowledge of your limitations. It's
uneducated, the way you discuss."

He smiled at her pleasantly, taking the sting out of
his words, turning them into a joke, and she smiled too,
to show Neville she didn't mind, didn't take it seri-
ously. Jim might hurt her, but if he did no one should
know but Jim himself. She knew that at times she
irritated even his good temper by being xmeducated
and so on, so that he scolded her, but he scolded her
kindly, not venomously, as Nan did.

"Well, I've certainly no right to be uneducated," she
said, "and I can't say I'm ever called so, except by my
children. . . . Do you remember the discussions father
and I used to have, half through the night?"

Jim and Neville did remember and thought "Poor
father," and were silent.

"I should think," said Mrs. Hilary, "there was very
little we didn't discuss. Politics, books, trades unions,
class divisions, moral questions, votes for women, di-
vorce . . • we thrashed ever3^thing out. We both thor-
oughly enjoyed it."

Neville said "I remember." Familiar echoes came
back to her out of the agitated past.

"Those lazy men, all they want is to get a lot of
money for doing no work."

"I like the poor well enough in their places, but I
cannot abide them when they try to step into ours."

"Let women mind their proper business and leave
men's alone."

JIM 115

Tm oertainfy not gping to-be on caUing terms with
my grocer's wife,"

'1 hate these affected, posing, would-be dever books.
Why can't pec^le write in good jdain English?'' . . .

Ridiard Hilary, a scholar and a patient man, blinded
Iqr conjugal love, had met futilities with arguments, ex-
pressions of emotional distaste with facts, trying to lift
each absurd wrangle to the level of a discussion; and at
last he died, leaving his wife with the conviction that
she had been the equal mate of an able man. Ha: chil-
dren had to face and conquer, with varying degrees
of success, the temptation to undeceive ha:.

''But I'm interrupting," said Mrs. Hilary. ''I know
you two are having a private talk. Ill leave you
aiuue. • • .

*^o, no, motho:." That was Neville, of course.
''Stay and defend me from Jim's scorn."

How artifidal one had to be in family fife! What
an absurd thing these emotions made of it!

Mrs. Hilary looked happier, and more settled in her

''Where are Kay and Gerda?" Jim asked.

Neville told him ''In Guildford, helping Barry Bris-
coe with W. E. A. meetings. They're q^ending a lot of
time over that just now; they're both as keen as
mustard. Nearly as keen as he is. He sets people on
fire. It's very good for the children. Th^re bring-
ing him up here to sp&id Sunday. I think he hopes
every time to find Nan back again from Cornwall, poor
Barry. He was very down in the mouth when she
suddenfy took herself off."

"If Nan doesn't mean to have him, she shouldn't
have aicouraged him," said Mrs. Hilary. "He was
quite obviously in love with her."

ii6 DANGEROUS AGES

"Nan's always a dark horse," Nevflle said. "She
alone knows what she means."

Jim said "She's a flibberty-gibbet. She'd much
better get married. She's not much use in the world at
present. Now if she was a doctor ... or doing some-
thing useful; like Pamela. ..."

"Don't be prejudiced, Jimmy. Because you don't
read inodern novels yourself you think it's no use their
being written."

"I read some modem novels. I read Conrad, in
spite of the rather absurd attitude some people take up
about him; and I read good detective stories, only
they're so seldom good. I don't read Nan's kind.
People tell me they're tremendously dever and modem
and delightfully written and get very well reviewed,
I daresay. I very seldom agree with reviewers, in any
case. Even about Conrad they seem to me (when I
read them — ^I don't often) to pick out the wrong points
to admire and to miss the points I should criticise."

Mrs, Hilary said "Well, I must say I can't read
Nan's books myself. Simply, I don't think them good.
I dislike all her people so much, and her style."

"You're a pair of old Victorians," Neville told them,
pleasing Mrs. Hilary by coupling them together and
leaving Jim, who knew why she did it, undisturbed.
Neville was full of graces and tact, a possession Jim
had always appreciated in her.

"Amd there," said Neville, who was standing at the
window, "are Barry Briscoe and the children coming

in."

Jim looked over her shoulder and saw the three
wheeling their bicycles up the drive.

"Gerda," he remarked, "is a prettier thing every
time I see her."

CHAPTER Vn

GERDA

It rained so hard^ so much harder even than usual, that
Sunday, that only Barry and Gerda went to walk.
Barry walked in every kind of weather, even in the
July of 1920.

To-day after lunch Barry said ^^I'm going to walk
over the downs. Anyone coming?" and Gerda got up
silently, as was her habit. Elay stretched himself and
yawned and said ^^Me for the fireside. I shall have to
walk every day for three weeks after to-day," for he
was going to-morrow on a reading-party. Rodney and
Jim were plajdng a game of chess that had lasted since
breakfast and showed every sign, of lasting till bed-
time; Neville and Mrs. Hilary were talking, and Grand-
mama was upstairs, having her afternoon nap.

They tramped along, waterproofed and bsure-headed,
down the sandy road. The rain swisdiod in Gerda's
golden locks, till they dung dank and limp about her
cheeks and neck; it beat on Barry's glasses, so that lie
took them off and blinked instead. The trees stormed
and whistled in the southerly wind that blew from

117

ii8 DANGEROUS AGES

across Merrow Downs. Barry tried to whistle down it,
but it caught the soimd from his puckered lips and
whirled it away.

Through Merrow they strode, and up onto the road
that led across the downs, and there the wind caught
them full, and it was as if buckets of water were being
flimg into their faces. The downs sang and roared;
the purple-grey sky shut down on the hill's shoulder
like a tent.

"Lord, what fun," said Barry, as they gasped for
breath.

Gerda was upright and slim as a wand against the
buffeting; her white little face was stimg into shell-
pink; her wet hair blew back like yellow seaweed.

Barry thought suddenly of Nan, who revelled in
storms, and quickly shut Us mind on the thought. He
was sdiooling himself to think away from Nan, with
her wild animal grace and her flashing mind and her
cruel, careless indifference.

Gerda would have walked like this forever. Her
wide blue eyes blinked away the rain; her face felt
stung and lashed, yet happy and cold; her mouth was
stiff and tight. She was part of the storm; as free, as
fierce, as singing; though outwardly she was all held
together and silent, only smiling a little with her shut
mouth.

As they climbed the downs, the wind blew more wild-
ly in their faces. Gerda swayed against it, and Barry
took her by the arm and half pushed her.

So they reached Newlands Corner, and all southern
Surrey stormed below them, and beyond Surrey stormed
Sussex, and beyond Sussex the angry, unseen sea.

They stood looking, and Barry's arm still steadied
Gerda against the gale.

Gerda thought "It will end. It will be over, and we

GERDA 119

shall be sitting at tea. Then Sunday will be over^ and
on Monday he will go back to town." The pain of
that end of the world turned her cold beneath the glow
of the storm. Then life settled itself, very simply.
She must go too, and work with him. She would tell
him so on the way home, when the wind would let them
talk.

They turned their backs on the storm and ran down
the hill towards Merrow. Gerda, light as a leaf on the
wind, could have rim all the way back; Barry, fit and
light too, but fifteen years ahead of her, fell after five
minutes into a walk.

Then they could talk a little.

"And to-morrow I shall be plugging in town," sighed
Barry.

Gerda always went straight to her point.

"May I come into your office, please, and learn the
work?"

He smiled down at her. Splendid child I

"Why, rather. Do you mean it? When do you
want to come?"

"To-morrow?"

He laughed. "Good. I thought you meant in the
autumn. . . . To-morrow by all means, if you will.
As a matter of fact we're frightfiilly short-handed in
the office just now. Our ts^jist has crocked, and we
haven't another yet, so people have to t3^ their own
letters."

"I can do the typing," said Gerda, composedly. "I
can t3^ quite well."

"Oh, but that'll be dull for you. That's not
what you want, is it? Though, if you want to learn
about the work, it's not a bad way . . . you get it all
passing through your hands. . . . Would you really
take on that job for a bit?"

I20 DANGEROUS AGES

Gerda nodded.

They were rapid and decided people; they did not
beat about the bush. If they wanted to do a thing and
there Mened no reason why not^ they did it.

"That's irst-daas," said Barry. "Give it a trial,
anyhow* ... Of course you'll be on trial too; we may
find it doesn't work. If so, there are plenty of oibec
jobs to be done in the office. But that's what we most
want at the moment."

Barry had a way of assuming that people would
want, naturally, to do the thing that most needed doing.

Gerda's soid sang and whistled down the whistling
wind. It wasn't over, then: it was only beginning.
The W. E. A. was splendid; work was splendid; Barry
Briscoe was splendid; life was splendid. She was sorry
for Kay at Cambridge, Kay who was just off on a read*
ing party, not helping in the world's work but merely
getting education. Education was inspiring in con-
nection with Democracy, but when applied to oneself
itwasduU.

The rain was lessening. It fell on their heads more
lightly; the wind was like soft wet kisses on their ba(±s,
as they tramped through Merrow, and up the lane to
Windover.

They all sat roimd the tea-table, and most of them
were warm and sleepy from Sunday afternoon by the
fire, but Barry and Gerda were warm and tingling from
walking in the storm. Some people prefer one sensa-
tion, some the other.

Neville thought "How pretty Gerda looks, pink like
that." She was glad to know that she too looked
pretty, in her blue afternoon dress. It was good, in

GERDA 121

that channing room, that they should all look agreeable
to the eye. Even Mrs. Hilary, with her nervous, faded
grace, marred by self-consciousness and emotion.
And Grandmama, smiling and shrewd, with her old in-
drawn lips; and Rodney, long and lounging and clever;
Jim, square-set, sensible, dean-cut, beautiful to his
mother and to his women patients, good for eversrone
to look at; Barry, brown and charming, with his quick
smile; the boy Kay, with his pale, roimded, oval face,
his violet eyes like his mother's, only short-sighted, so
that he had a trick of screwing them up and peering,
and a mouth that widened into a happy sweetntss when
he smiled.

They were all right: they all fitted in with the room
and with each other.

Barry said "IVe not been idle while walking. IVe
secured a secretary. Gerda says she's coming to work
at the ofBce for us for a bit. Now, at once."

He had not Gerda's knack of silence. Gerda would
shut up tight over her plans and thoughts, like a little
03^ter. She was no babbler; she did things and never
talked. But Barry's plans brimmed up and over.

Neville said "You sudden child! And in July and
August, too. • . • But youll have only a month before
you join Nan in Cornwall, won't you?"

Gerda nodded, mimching a buttered scone.

Grandmama, like an old war-horse scenting the fray,
thought "Is it going to be an affair? Will they fall in
love? And what of Nan?" Then rebuked herself for
forgetting what she really knew quite well, having been
told it often, that men and girls in these days worked
together and did everything together, with no thought
of affairs or of falling in love. . . . Only these two
were very attractive, the young Briscoe and the pretty
child, Gerda.

122 DANGEROUS AGES

Neville, who knew Gerda, and that she was certainly
in love again (it happened so often with Gerda),
thought '^Shall I stop it? Or shall I let things take
their course? Oh, I'll let them alone. It's only one of
Gerda's childish hero-worships, and he'll be kind with-
out flirting. It'll do Gerda good to go on with this new
work she's so keen on. And she knows he cares for
Nan. I shall let her go."

Neville very nearly always let Gerda and Kay go
their own way now that they were grown-up. To in-
terfere would have been the part of the middle-aged
old-fashioned mother, and for that part Neville had no
liking. To be her children's friend and good comrade,
that was her role in life.

"It's good of you to have her," she said to Barry.
"I hope you won't be sorry. . . . She's very stupid
sometimes — ^regular Johnny Head-in-air."

"I should be a jolly sight more use," Kay remarked.
"But I can't come, imfortunately. She can't spell, you
know. And her punctuation is weird."

"She'll learn," said Barry, cheerfully, and Gerda
smiled serenely at them over her tea-cup.

Barry in the office was quick, alert, cheerful, and
business-like, and very decided, sometimes impatient.
Efficient: that was the word. He would skim the cor-
re^ondence and dictate answers out of his head, walk-
ing about the room, interrupted all the time by the tele-
phone and by people coming in to see him. Gerda's
hero-worship grew and grew; her soul swelled with it;
she shut it down tight and remained calm and ccoL
When he joked, when he smiled his charming smile, her

GERDA 123

heart turned over within her. When he had signed the
typed letters, she woiild sometimes put her hand for a
moment where his had rested on the paper. He
was stem with her sometimes, spoke sharply and im-
patiently, and that, in a queer way, she liked. She had
felt the same pleasure at school, when the head of the
school, whom she had greatly and secretly venerated,
had had her up to the sixth form room and rowed her.
Why? That was for psycho-analysts to discover;
Gerda only knew the fact. And Barry, after he had
spoken sharply to her, when he had got over his anger,
woiild smile and be even kinder than usual, and that
was the best of all.

There were other people in the office, of course; men
and women, busy, efficient, coming in and out, talking,
working, organising. They were kind, pleasant people.
Gerda liked them, but they were shadowy.

And behind them all, and behind Barry, there was
the work. The work was enormously interesting.
Gerda, child of her generation and of her parents, was
really a democrat, really public-spirited, outside the
little private cell of her withdrawn reserves. Beauty
wasn't enough; making poetry and pictures wasn't
enough; one had to give everyone his and her chance
to have beauty and poetry and pictures too. In spite
of having been brought up in this creed, Gerda and Kay
held to it, had not reacted from it to a selfish aristoc-
racy, as you might think likely. Their democracy
went mudi further than that of their parents. They
had been used ardently to call themselves Bolshevists
until such time as it was forced upon them that Bol-
shevism was not, in point of fact, a democratic system.
They and some of their friends still occasionally used
that T:ibel, in moments rather of after-dinner enthusi-
asm than of the precise thinking that is done in morn*

124 DANGEROUS AGES

ing light. For, after aU, even Mr. Bertrand Russell,
even Mrs. Philip Snowden, might be wrong in their
hurried jottings down of the results of a cursory survey
of so intricate a system. And, anyhow, Bolshevism
had the advantage that it had not yet been tried in this
coimtry, and no one, not even the most imaginative and
dear-sighted political theorist, could forecast the pre-
cise form into whidi the curious British climate might
mould it if it should ever adopt it. So that to believe
in it was, anyhow, easier than believing in anjrthing
which had been tried (and, like all things which are
tried, foimd wanting) such as Liberalism, Toryism, So-
cialism, and so forth.

But the W. E. A. was a practical body, which went
in for practical adventure. Dowdy, schoolmarmish,
extension-lectureish, it might be and doubtless was.
But a real thing, with guts in it, really doing something;
and after all, you can't be incendiarising the political
and economic constitution all your time. In your times
off you can do something useful, something which shows
results, and for which such an enormous amount of
faith and hope is not required. Work for the Revolu-
tion — yes, of course, one did that; one studied the
literature of the Internationals; one talked. • . . But
did one help the Revolution on much, when all was
said? Whereas in the W. E. A. office one really got
things done; one typed a letter and something happened
because of it; more adult classes occurred, more work-
ers got educated. Gerda, too yoimg and too serious to
be cynical, believed that lliis must be right and good.

A dever, strange, diarming diild Barry found her,
old and young beyond her twenty years. Her wide-set

GERDA 125

blue eyes seemed to see horizons, and too often to be
blind to foregrounds. She had a slow, deliberating
habit of work, and of some things was astonishingly
ignorant, with the ignorance of those who, when at
school, have worked at what they preferred and quietly
disregarded the rest. If he let her compose a letter, its
wording would be quaint. Her prose was, in fact,
worse than her verse, and that was saying a good deal.
But she was thorough, never slipshod. Her brain
groimd slowly, but it ground exceeding small; there
were no blurred edges to her apprehension of facts;
either she didn't know a thing or she did, and that sharp
and dear distinction is none too common. She would
file and index papers with precision, and find them
again, slow and sure, when they were required. Added
to these secretarial gifts, such as they were, she had
vision; she saw always the dream through or in spite
of the business; she was like Barry himself in that.
She was a good companion, too, though she had no wit
and not very much humour, and none of Nan's gifts of
keen verbal brilliance, frequent ribaldry and quick
response; she would digest an idea slowly, and did not
make jokes; her clear mind had the quality of a crystal
rather than of a flashing diamond. The rising generar
tion; the woman citizen of to-morrow: what did not
rest on her, and what might she not do and be? Nan,
on the other hand, was the woman citizen of to-day.
And Nan did not bother to use her vote because she
found all the parties and all the candidates about
equally absurd. Barry had argued with Nan about
that, but made no impression on her cynical indiffer-
ence; she had met him with levity. To Gerda there
was a wrong and a right in politics, instead of only a
lot of wrongs; touching yoimg faith. Nan called it, but
Barry, who shared it, foimd it cheering.

126 DANGEROUS AGES

This pretty Kttle white pixyish person, with her
yellow hair cut straight across her forehead and wav-
ing round her neck like the curled, shining petals of a
celandine, with her straight-thinking mind and her
queer, secret, mystic thoughts — ^she was the woman of
the future, a citizen and a mother of citizens. She and
the other girls and boys were out to build the new
heaven and the new earth, and their children would
carry it on. This responsibility of Gerda's invested
her with a special interest in the eyes of Barry, who
lived and worked for the future, and who, when he saw
an infant mewling and puking in a pram, was apt to
think "The hope for the world," and smile at it en-
couragingly, overlooking its present foolishness of
aspect and habit. If ever he had children ... if
Nan would marry him . . . but Nan would always
lightly slide away when he got near her. ... He coidd
see her now, with the cool, amused smile tilting her lips,
always sliding away, eluding him. . . . Nan, like a
wild animal for grace, brilliant like blown fire, cool like
the wind, stabbing herself and him with her keen wit.
• • •

Gerda, looking up from her typewriter to say "How
do you spell comparatively?" saw his face in its mo-
mentary bitterness as he frowned, pen in hand, out of
the window. He was waiting to sign the letters before
he went out to a committee meeting, and she thought
she was annoying him by her slowness. She spelt com-
paratively anyhow, and with the wholehearted wrong-
ness to which she and the typewriter, both bad ^)ellers,
often attained in conjunction, hastily finished and laid
the letters before him. Called back to work and
actuality, Barry was again cheerful and kind, and he
smilingly corrected comparatively.

"You might ask me," he suggested, "instead of ex*

GERDA .127

perimentingy when Z do happen to be at hand. Other-
wise a dictionary, or Miss Pinner in the next
room . . . ?"

Gerda was happy, now that the shadow was off his
face. Raillery and rebuke she did not mind; only the
shadow, which fell coldly on her heart too.

He left the office then for the day, as he often did,
but it was warm and alive with his presence, and she
was doing his work, and she would see him again in
the morning.

Gerda went home only for week-ends now; it was too
slow a journey to make every morning and evening.
She stayed during the week at a hotel called the Red
House, in Magpie Alley, off Bouverie Street. It was a
hotel kept by revolutionary souls exclusively for revo-
lutionary souls. Gerda, who had every right there, had
gained admittance through friends of hers who lodged
there. Every evening at six o'clock she went back
through the rain, as she did this evening, and changed
her wet clothes and sat down to dinner, a meal which
all the revolutionary souls ate together so that it was
sacramental, a breaking of common bread in token of
a common faith.

They were a friendly party. At one end of the table
Aunt Phyllis presided. Aimt Phyllis, who was really
the aimt of only one yoimg man, kept this Red House.
She was a fiery little revolutionary in the late forties,
small, and thin and darting, full of faith and fire. She
was on the staff of the British Bolshevist, and for
the rest, wrote leaflets, which showered from her as
from trees in autumn gales. So did the Rev. Anselm
Digby. Mr. Digby had also the platform habit, he

128 DANGEROUS AGES

would go round fhe country denoimcing and inciting to
revolution in the name of Christ and of the Third Inter-
national. Though grizzled, he belonged to the League
of Youth, as well as to many other eager fraternities.
He was unbeneficed, having no time for parish work.
This ardent clergyman sat at the other end of Aunt
Fhyllis's table, as befitted his years.

The space between the two ends was filled by
yoimger creatures. It was spring with them; their
leaflets were yet green and unf alien; all that fell from
them was poetry, pathetic in its sadness, bitter in its
irony, free of metrical or indeed of any other restraints,
and mainly either about how unpleasant had been the
trenches in whidi they had spefit the years of the great
war and those persons over military age who had not
been called upon to enter them, or about freedom; free
love, free thought and a free world. Yes, both these
subjects sound a little old-fashioned, but the Red House
was concerned with these elemental changeless things.
And some of them also wrote fiction, quiet, grey, a little
tired, about unhappy persons to whom nothing was
very glad or very sad, and certainly neither right nor
wrong, but only rough or smooth of surface, bright or
dark of hue, sweet or bitter of taste or smell. Most of
those in the room belonged to a Freudian circle at
their dub, and all were anti-Christian, except an Irish
Roman Catholic, who had taken an active part in the
Easter uprising of 1916, since when he had been living
in exile; Aunt Phyllis, who believed in no churches but
in the Love of God; and of course, Mr. Digby. AD
these people, though they did not always get on very
well together, were linked by a common aim in life,
and by common hatreds.

But, in spite of hate, the Red House lodgers were a

GERDA 129

happy set of revolutionaries. Real revolutionaries;
having their leaflets printed by secret presses; mem-
bers of societies which exchanged confidential letters
with the more eminent Russians, such as Litvinoff and
Trotzky, collected for future publication secret circu-
larS; private strike-breaking orders, and other obiter
dicta of a rash government, and believed themselves to
be working to establish the Soviet government over
Europe. They had been angry all this summer be-
cause the Glasgow conference of the I. L. P. had
broken with the Third International. They spoke with
acerbity of Mr. Ramsay Macdonald and Mr. and Mrs.
Philip Snowden. But now, in August, they had little
acerbity to spare for anything but the government's
conduct of Irish affairs.

But, though these were Gerda's own people, the drde
in which she felt at home, she looked forward every
night to the morning, when there would be the office
again, and Barry.

Sometimes Barry took her out to dinner and a
theatre. They went to the "Beggar's C^ra," "The
Grain of Mustard Seed," "Mary Rose" (which they
found sentimental), and to the "Beggar's O^ra" again
Gerda had her own ideas, very definite and critical,
about dramatic merit. Barry enjoyed discussing the
plays with her, listening to ha: dear Kttle silver voice
pronouncing judgment. Gerda mig^t be forever
mediocre in any form of artistic e]q>ression, but she
was an artist, with the artist's love of merit and scorn
of the second-rate.

130 DANGEROUS AGES

They went to "Mary Rose" with some girl cousins
of Barry's, two jolly girls from Girton. Against their
undiscriminating enthusiasm, Gerda and her fastidious
distaste stood out sharp and dear, like some delicate
etching among flamboyant pictures. That fastidious-
ness she had from both her parents, with something of
her own added.

Barry went home with her. He wondered how her
fastidiousness stood the grimy house in Magpie Alley
and its ramshackle habit of life, after the distinctions
and beauty of Windover, but he thought it was prob-
ably very good for her, part of the e]q)erience which
should mould the citizen. Gerda shrank from no ex-
perience. At the corner of Bouverie Street they met
a painted girl out for hire, strayed for some reason into
this unpropitious locality. For the moment Gerda had
fallen behind and Btury seemed ^lone. The girl
stopped in his pajth,^looIdsd'up^in his "face enquiringly,
and he pushed his way, not urgently, past her. The
next moment Gerda's hand caught his arm.

"Stop, Barry, stop."

"Stop? What for?"

"The woman. Didn't you see?"

"My dear child, I can't do anything for her.**

Like the others of her generation, Gerda was in-
terested in persons of that profession; he knew that
already; only they saw them through a distorting mist.

"We can find out where she works, what wages she
gets, why she's on the streets. She's probably working
for sweated wages somewhere. We ought to find out."

"We can't find out about every woman of that kind
we meet. The thing is to attack the general principle
behind the thing, not each individual case. • • . Be-
sides, it would be so f rightfiilly impertinent of us. How

GERDA 131

would you like it if someone stopped you in the street
and asked you where you worked and whether you
were sweated or not, and why you were out so late?"

"I shouldn't mind, if they wanted to know for a good
reason. One ought to find out how things are, what
people^s conditions are."

It was what Barry too believed and practised, but
he could only say "It's the wrong way round. YouVe
got to work from the centre to the circumference. . . .
And don't fall into the sentimental mistake of thinking
that all prostitution comes from sweated labour. A
great deal does, of course, but a great deal because it
seems to some women an easy and attractive way of
earning a living. . . . Oh, hammer away at sweated
labour for all you're worth, of course, for that reason
and every other; but you won't stop prostitution till
you stop the demand for it. That's the poisonous root
of the thing. So long as the demand goes on, you'll get
the supply, whatever economic conditions may be."

Gerda fell silent, pondering on the strange tastes of
those who desired for some reason the temporary com-
pany of these unfortimate females, so unpleasing to the
eye, to the ear, to the mind, to the smell; desired it so
much that they would pay money for it. Why?
Against that riddle the non-comprehension of her sex
beat itself, baflEled. She might put it the other way
round, try to imagine herself desiring, pajdng for, the
temporary attentions of some dirty, conunon, vapid,
and patchouli-scented man — and still she got no nearer.
For she never could desire it. . . . Well, anyhow,
there the thing was. Stop the demand? Stop that de-
sire of men for women? Stop the ready response of
women to it? If that was the only way, then there
was indeed nothing for it but education — ^and was
even education any use for that?

132 DANGEROUS AGES

"Is it love/* she asked of Barry, "that the men feel
who want these women?'*

Barry laughed shortly. "Love? Good Lord, no."

"What then, Barry?"

"I don't know that it can be explained, exactly. • . •
It's a passing taste, I suppose, a desire for the company
of another sex from one's own, just because it is another
sex, though it may have no other attractions. . . . It's
no use trying to analyse it, one doesn't get an3rwhere.
But it's not love."

"What's love, then? What's the difference?"

"Have I to define love, walking down Magpie Alley?
You could do it as well as I could. Love has the
imagination in it, and the mind. I suppose that's the
difference. And, too, love wants to give. This is all
platitude. No one can ever say anything new about
love, it's all been said. Got your latch-key?"

Gerda let herself into the Red House and went up to
bed and lay wakeful. Very certainly she loved Barry,
with all her imagmation and all her mind, and she
would have given him more than all that was hers.
Very surely and truly she loved him, even if after all
he was to be her imde by marriage, which would make
their family life like that in one of Louis Couperus's
books. But why unhappy like that? Was love im-
happy? If she might see him sometimes, talk to him, if
Nan wouldn't want all of him all the time — ^and it
would be unlike Nan to do that — she could be happy.
One could share, after all. Women must share, for
there were a million more women in England than
men.

But probably Nan didn't mean to many him at aU.
Nan never married people

GERDA 133

Next morning at the office Barry said he had heard
from Nan. She had asked him to come too and bicycle
in Cornwall, with her and Gerda and Kay.

"You will, won't you," said Gerda.

"Rather, of coiurse."

A vaguely puzzled note soimded in his voice. But
he would come.

Cornwall was illuminated to Gerda. The sharing
process would begin there. But for a week more she
had him to herself, and that was better.

CIL\PTER VIII

NAN

Nan at Marazion bathed, sailed, climbed, walked and
finished her book. She had a room at St. Michael's
Caf6, at the edge of the little town, just above the
beach. Across a space of sea at high tide, and of wet
sand and a paved causeway slimy with seaweed at the
ebb, St. Midiael's Mount loomed, dark against a sunset
sky, pale and unearthly in the dawn, an embattled ship
riding anchored on full waters, or stranded on drowned
sands.

Nan stayed at the empty little town to be alone.
But she was not alone all the time, for at Newlyn, five
miles away, there was the artist colony, and some of
these artists were her friends. (In point of fact, it is
* impossible to be alone in Cornwall; the place to go to
for that would be Hackney, or some other district of
outer London, where inner Londoners do not go for
holidays.) Had she liked she could have had friends
to play with all day, and talk and laughter and music
all night, as in London. She did not like. She went
out by herself, worked by herself; and all the time,
in company, or alone, talkhig or working, she knew her*
self withdrawn really into a secret cove of her own
which was warm and golden as no actual coves in this
chill summer were warm and golden; a cove on whose
good brown sand she lay and made castles and played,

134

NAN 135

whfle at her feet the great happy sea danced and beat^
the great tumbling sea on which she would soon put out
her boat.

She would count the days before Barry would be with
her.

"Three weeks now. Twenty days; nineteen,
eighteen . . ." desiring neither to hurry nor to retard
them, but watching them slip behind her in a deep con-
tent. When he came, he and Gerda and Kay, they
would spend one night and one day in this fishing-town,
loimging about its beach, and in Newlyn, with its steep
crooked streets between old grey walls hung with
shrubs, and beyond Newlyn, in the tiny fishing hamlets
that hung above the little coves from Penzance to
Land's End. They were going to bicycle all along the
south coast. But before that they would have had it
out, she and Barry; probably here, in the little pale
climbing fishing-town. No matter where, and no mat-
ter how; Nan cared nothing for scenic arrangements.
All she had to do was to convey to Barry that she would
say yes now to the question she had put off and off, let
him ask it, give her answer, and the thing would be
done.

Meanwhile she wrote the last chapters of her book,
sitting on the beach among drying nets and boats, ia
some fishing cove up the coast. The Newlyn shore she
did not like, because the artist-spoilt children crowded
round her, interrupting.

"Lady, lady! Will you paint us?"

"No. I don't paint."

"Then what are you doing?"

'^Writing. Go away."

136 DANGEROUS AGES

"May we come with you to where you're sta5ring?"

"No. Go away."

"Last year a lady took us to her studio and gave us
pennies. And when she'd gone back to London she
sent us each a doll."

Silence.

"Lady, if we come with you to your studio, will you
give us pennies?"

"No. Why should I?"

"You might because you wanted to paint us. You
might because you liked us."

"I don't do either. Go away now."

They withdrew a little and turned somersaults, stq>-
posing her to be watching. The artistic colony had a
lot to answer for, Nan thougjht; they were making para-
sites and prostitutes of the infant pc^ulace. Children
could at their worst be detestable in their vanity, their
posing, their affectaticm, their unashamed greed.

"Barry's and mine," she thought (I suppose well
have some) ," shall at least not pose. They may break
all the commandments, but if they turn somersaults to
be looked at I shall drop them into a public creche and
abandon them."

The prettiest Uttle girl looked sidelong at the unkind
lady, and believed her half-smile to denote admiration.
Pretty little girls often make this aror.

Stephen Lumley came along the beach. It was lundi
time, and after lunch they were going out sailing.
Stephen Lumley was the most important artist just now
in Newlyn. He had been in love with Nan for some
months, and did not get on with his wife. Nan liked
him; li^ painted brilliantly, and was an attractive,
clever, sardonic person. Sailing with him was fun.
They understood each other; they had rather the same
cynical twist to them. They understood each other

NAN 137

really better than Nan and Barry did. Neither of
th^n needed to make any effort to comprehend each
other's point of view. And each left the other where
he was. Whereas Barry filled Nan, beneath her cyni-
cism, beneath her levity, with something quite new — a
queer desire, to put it simply, for goodness, for straight
living and generous thinking, even, within reason, for
usefulness. More and more he flooded her inmost
bdng, drowning the old landmarks, like the sea at high
tide. Nan was not a Christian, did not believe in God,
but she came near at this time to believing in
Christianity as possibly a fine and adventurous thing
to live.

Echoes of the great little world so far off came to the
Cornish coasts, through the Western Mercury and the
stray, belated London papers. Rumours of a projected
coal strike, of fighting in Mesopotamia, of political
I»isoners on hunger strike, of massacres in Ireland,
and typists murdered at watering-places; echoes of
Fleet Street quarrels, of Bolshevik gold ("Not a bond!
Not a francl Not a roublel") and, from the religious
world, of fallen man and New Faiths for Old. And on
Sunda}rs one bought a paper which had for its ^)ecial
star comic turn the reminiscences of the expansive wife
of one of our more patient politicians. The world went
on just the same, quarrelling, chattering, lying; senti-
inental, busy and richly absurd; its denizens tilting
against each other's politics, murdering each other, try-
ing and always failing to swim across the channel, and
always taSdng, talking, talking. Maraaion and New-
1301, and every other place were the world in little, doing
aH tile same ttnngs in their own miniature way. Each

138 DANGEROUS AGES

human soul was the world in little, with all the same
conflicts, hopes, emotions, excitements and intrigues.
But Nan, swimming^ sailing, eating, writing, walking
and lounging, browning in salt winds and waters, was
happy and remote, like a savage on an island who
meditates exclusively on his own affairs.

Nan met them at Penzance station. The happy
three; they would be good to make holiday with. Al-
ready they had holiday faces, though not yet browned
like Nan's.

Barry's hand gripped Nan's. He was here then, and
it had come. Her head swam; she felt light, like
thistledown on the wind.

They came up from the station into quiet, gay, warm
Penzance, and had tea at a shop. They were going to
stay at Marazion that night and the next, and spend
the day bicycling t j Land's End and back. They were
all four Ml of vigour, brimming with life and energy
that needed to be spent. But Gerda looked pale.

"She's been overworking in a stuffy office," Barry
said. "And not, except when she dined with me,
getting proper meals. What do you think she weighs,
Nan?"

"About as much as that infant there," Nan said,
indicating a stout person of five at the next table.

"Just about, I daresay. She's only six stone. What
are we to do about it?"

His eyes caressed Gerda, as they might have caressed
a child. He would be a delightful unde by marriage,
Nan thought.

They took the road to Marazion. The tide was

NAN 139

going out. In front of them the Mount rose in a shal-
lowing violet sea.

"My wordl'* said Barry, and Kay, screwing up his
eyes, miurmured, "Good old Mount." Gerda's lips
parted in a deep breath; beauty always struck her
dumb.

Into the pale-washed, straggling old village they rode,
stabled their bicycles, and went down to the shining
evening sands, where now the paved causeway to the
Mount was all exposed, running slimy and seaweedy be-
tween rippled wet sands and dark, slippery rocks.
Bare-footed they trod it, Gerda and Kay in front,
Barry and Nan behind, and the gulls talking and wheel-
ing round them.

Nan stopped, the west in her eyes. "Look."

Point beyond point they saw stretching westward
to Land's End, dim and dark beyond a rose-fltished
sea.

"Isn't it clear," said Nan. "You can see the cliff
villages ever so far along . . . Newlyn, Mousehole,
Clement's Island off it — and the point of Lamorna."

Barry said "We'll go to Land's End by the coast road
to-morrow, shan't we, not the high road?"

"Oh, the coast road, yes. It's about twice the dis-
tance, with the ups and downs, and you can't ride all
the way. But we'll go by it."

For a moment they stood side by side, looking west-
ward over the bay.

Nan said, "Aren't you glad you came?"

"I should say sol"

His answer came, quick and emphatic. There was
a pause after it. Nan suddenly turned on him the edge
of a smile.

Barry did not see it. He was not looking at her.

140 DANGEROUS AGES

nor over the bay, but in front of him, to where Gerda, a
thin little upright form, moved bare-legged along die
shining causeway to the moau

Nan's smile flickered out. The sunset tides of rose
flamed swiftly over her cheeks, her neck, her body, and
receded as sharply, as if someone had hit her in the
face. Her pause, her smile, had been equivalent, as
she saw them, to a permission, even to an invitation.
He had turned away unnoticing, a queer, absent tender-
ness in his eyes, as they followed Gerda . . . Gerda
. • • walking light-footed up the wet causeway. • . .
Well, if he had got out of the habit of wanting to make
love to her, she would not offer him chances again.
When he got the habit back, he must make his own
chances as best he cotild.

"Come on," said Nan. "We must hurry."

She left no more pauses, but talked all the time,
about Newlyn, about the artists, about the horrid chil-
dren, the fishing, the gulls, the weather.

"And how's the book?" he asked.

"Nearly done. I'm waiting for the end to make
itself."

He smiled and looking roimd at him she saw that he
was not smiling at her or her book, but at Gerda, who
had stepped off the causeway and was wading in a rock
pool.

He must be obsessed with Gerda; he thought of her,
apparently, all the time he was talking about other
things. It was irritating for an aimt to bear.

They joined Kay and Gerda on the island. Kay
was prowling about, looking for a way by which to
enter the forbidden castle. Kay always trespassed
when he could, and was so courteous and gentle when
he was caught at it that he disarmed comment. But

NAN 141

this time he could not manage to evade tbie polite but
firm eye of the fisherman on guard. They crossed over
to Marazion again all together and went to the caf6
for suf^r.

It was a merry, rowdy meal they had; ham and eggs
and coffee in an upper room, with the soft sea air blow-
ing in on them through open windows. Nan and Barry
chattered, and Kay took his cheerful part; only Gerda
sparse of word, was quiet and dreamy, with her blue
eyes opened wide against sleep, for she had not slept
until late last night.

"High time she had a holiday," Barry said of her.
*'Four weeks' grind in August — ^it's beginning to tell
now."

Fussy Barry was about the child. As bad as
Frances Carr with Pamela. Gerda was as strong as a
little pony really, though she looked such a small, white,
brittle thing.

They got out maps and schemed out roads and
routes over their cigarettes. Then they strolled about
the little town, exploring its alleys and narrow byways
that gave on the sea. The moon had risen now, and
Marazion was cut steeply in shadow and silver light,
and all the bay lay in shadow and silver too, to where
the lights of Penzance twinkled like a great lit church.

Barry thought once, as he had often thought in the
past, "How brilliant Nan is, and how gay. No wonder
she never needed me. She needs no one," and this time
it did not hurt him to think it. He loved to listen to
her, to talk and laugh with her, to look at her, but he
was free at last; he demanded nothing of her. Those
restless, urging, disappointed hopes and longings lay

142 DANGEROUS AGES

dead in him, dead and at peace. He could not have put
his finger on the moment of their death; there had been
no moment; like good soldiers they had never died, but
faded away, and till to-night he had not known that
they had gone. He would show Nan now that she need
fear no more pestering from him; she need not keep
on talking without pause whenever they were alone
together, which had been her old way of defence, and
which she was beginning again now. They could drop
now into undisturbed friendship. Nan was the most
stimulating of friends. It was refreshing to talk things
out with her again, to watch her quick mind flashing
and turning and cutting its way, brilliant^ clear, sharp,
like a diamond.

They went to bed; Barry and Kay to the room they
had got above a public house. Nan and Gerda to Nan's
room at the cafe, where they squeezed into one bed.

Gerda slept, lying very straight and still, as was her
habit in sleep. Nan lay wakeful and restless, watching
the moonlight steal across the floor and lie palely on the
bed and on Gerda's waxen face and yellow hair. The
pretty, pale child, strange in sleep, like a little mer-
maiden lost on earth. Nan, sitting up in bed, one dark
plait hanging over each shoulder, watched her with
brooding amber eyes. How young she was, how very,
very young. It was touching to be so young. Yet
why, when youth was, people said, the best time? It
wasn't really touching to be young; it was touching not
to be young, because you had less of life left Touch-
ing to be thirty; more touching to be forty; tragic to be
fifty and heartbreaking to be sixty. As to seventy, as
to eighty, one would feel as one did during the last
dance of a ball, tired but fey in the paling dawn, des-
perately making the most of each bar of music be-
fore one went home to bed. That was touching; Mrs.

NAN 143

Hilary and Grandmama were touching. Not Gerda
and Kay, with their dance just beginning.

A bore, this sharing one bed. You couldn't sleep,
however small and quiet your companion lay. They
must get a bed each, when they could, during this tour.
One must sleep. If one didn't one began to think.
Every time Nan forced herself to the edge of sleep, a
picture sprang sharply before her eyes — the flaming
sky and sea, herself and Barry standing together on the
causeway.

"Aren't you glad you came?" Her own voice, soft,
encouraging.

"I should say so!" The quick, matter-of-fact
answer.

Then a pause and she turning on him the beginnings
of a smile. An allowing, inviting . . . seductive . . .
smile.

And he, smiling too, but not at her, looking away to
where Gerda and Kay walked bare-legged to the
Moimt.

Flame scorched her again. The pause each time she
saw it now became longer, more deliberate, more in-
viting, more emptily unfilled. Her smile became more
luring, his more rejecting. As she saw it now, in the
cruel, distorting night, he had seen her permission and
refused it. By day she had known that simple Barry
had seen nothmg; by day she would know it again.
Between days are set nights of white, searing flame, two
in a bed so that one cannot sleep. Damn Gerda, lying
there so calm and cool. It had been a mistake to ask
Gerda to come; if it hadn't been for Gerda they
wouldn't have been two in a bed.

"Barry's a good deal taken up with her just now,"
said Nan to herself, putting it into plain, deliberate
words, as was her habit with life's situations. "He

144 DANGEROUS AGES

does get taken up with pretty girls, I suppose, when he's
thrown with them. All men do, if you come to that
For the moment he's thinking about her, not about me.
That's a bore. It will bore me to death if it goes on.
... I wonder how long it will go on? I wonder how
soon he'll want to make love to me again?"

Having thus expressed the position in clear words,
Nan turned her mind elsewhere. What do people
think of when they are seeking sleep? It is worse than
no use to think of what one is writing; that wakes one
up, goads every brain-cell into xmwholesome activity.
No use thinking of people; they are too interesting.
Nor of sheep going through gates; they tumble over
one another and make one's head ache. Nor of the
coming day; that is too difficult: nor of the day which
is past; that is too near. Wood paths, quiet seas,
numing streams — ^these are better.

"Any lazy man can swim
Down the current of a stream."

Or the wind in trees, or owls crying, or waves ting
on warm shores. The waves beat now; tz.a ud
whisperingly with the incoming tide, broke, and sidir .
back, dragging at the wet sand. . . . Nan, hearirj
them, drifted at last into sleep.

CHAPTER IX

THE PACE

The coast road to Land's End is like a switchback.
You climb a mountain and are flung down to sea level
like a shooting star, and climb a moimtain again.
Sometimes the road becomes a sandy cliff path and you
have to walk.

But at last, climbing up and being shot down and
walking, Nan and Barry and Gerda and Kay reached
Land's End. They went down to Sennan Cove to
bathe, and the high sea was churning breakers on the
beach. Nan dived through them with the arrowy
straightness of a fish or a submarine, came up behind
them, and struck out to sea. The others behind her,
less skilful, floundered and were dashed about by the
waves. Barry and Kay struggled through them some-
how, bruised and choked; Gerda, giving it up — she
was no great swinmier — ^tranquilly rolled and paddled
in the surf by herself.

Kay called to her, mocking.

"Coward.. Sensualist. Come over the top like a

man."

Nan, turning to look at her from the high crest of a
wave, thought "Gerda's afraid in a high sea. She is
afraid of things: I remember."

Nan herself was afraid of very little. She had that
kind of buoyant physical gallantry which would take

146 DANGEROUS AGES

her into the jaws of danger with a laugh. When in
London during the air raids she had walked about the
streets to see what could be seen; in France with the
Fannys she had driven cars over shelled roads with a
cool composure which distinguished her even among
that remarkably cool and composed set of young
women; as a child she had ridden unbroken horses and
teased and dodged savage bulls for the ftm of it; she
would go sailing in seas that fishermen refused to go
out in ; part angry dogs which no other onlooker would
touch; sleep out alone in dark and lonely woods, and
even on occasion brave pigs. The kind of gay courage
she had was a physical heritage which can never be
acquired. What can be acquired, with blood and tears,
is (ht courage of the will, stubborn and unyielding, but
always nerve-racked, proudly and tensely strung up.
Nan's form of fearlessness, combined as it was with the
agility of a supple body excellently trained, would carry
her lightly through all physical adventures, much as her
arrowy strength and skill carried her through the
breakers without blimdering or mishap and let her
now ride buoyantly on each green moimtain as it
towered.

Barry, emerging spluttering from one of these, said
"All very jolly for you. Nan. You're a practised hand.
We're being drowned. I'm going out of it," and he
dived through another wave for the shore. Elay, a
clumsier swimmer, followed him, and Nan rode her
tossing horses, laughing at them, till she was shot onto
the beach and dug her fingers deep into the sucking
sand.

"A very pretty landing," said Barry, generously,
rubbing his bruised limbs and coughing up water.

Gerda rose from the foam where she had been play-
ing serenely impervious to the tauntings of Kay.

THE PACE 147

Bany said '^Happy child. She's not filled up with
salt water and batterei black and blue."

Nan remarked that neither was she, and they went
to their rock crannies to dress. They dressed and un-
dressed in a publicity^ a mixed shamelessness that was
almost appalling.

They rode back to Marazion after tea along the high
roady more soberly than they had come.

"Tired, Gerda?" Barry said, at the tenth mile, as
they pulled up a hill. **Hold on to me.**

Gerda refused to do so mean a thing. She had her
own sense of honour, and believed that everyone should
carry his or her own burden. But when they had to
get off and walk up the hill she let him help to push her
bicycle.

"Give us a few days, Nan," said Barry, "and we'll all
be as fit as you. At present we're fat and scant of
breath from our sedentary and useful life."

"Our life" — as if they had only the one between
them.

At Newlyn Nan stopped. She said she was going to
supper with someone there and would come on later.
She was, in fact, tired of them. She dropped into
Stephen Lumley's studio, which was, as usual after
painting hours, full of his friends, talking and smoking.
That was the only way to spend the evening, thought
Nan, talking and smoking and laughing, never pausing.
Anyhow that was the way she spent it.

She got back to Marazion at ten o'clock and went
to her room at the little cafe. Looking from its
window, she saw the three on the shore by the moonlit
sea. Kay was standing on the paved causeway, and
Barry and Gerda, some way off, were wading among the
rocks, bending over the pools, as if they were looking
for crabs.

148 DANGEROUS AGES

Nan went to bed. When Gerda came in presently,
she lay very still and pretended to be asleep.

It was dreadful, another night of sharing a bed
Dreadful to lie so close one to the other; dreadful to
touch accidentally; touching people reminded you how
alive they are, with their separate, conscious throbbing
life so close against yours.

Next morning they took the road eastward. They
were going to ride along the coast to Talland Bay,
where they were going to spend a week. They were
giving themselves a week to get there, which would
allow plenty of time for bathing by the way. It is no
use hurrsdng in Cornwall, the hills are too steep and the
sea too attractive, and limch and tea, when ordered in
shops, so long in coming. The first day they only got
round the Lizard to Cadgwith, where they dived from
steep rocks into deep blue water. Nan dived from a
high rock with a swoop like a sea bird's, a pretty thing
to watch. Barry was nearly as good; he too was
physically proficient. The Bendishes were less com-
petent; they were so much younger, as Barry said.
But they too reached the water head first, whidi is,
after all, the main thing in diving. And as often as
Nan dived, with her arrowy swoop, Gerda tumbled in
too, from the same rock, and when Nan climbed a yet
higher rock and dived again, Gerda climbed too, and
fell in sprawling after her. Gerda to-day was not to
be outdone, anyhow in will to attempt, whatever her
achievement might lack. Nan looked np from the sea
with a kind of mocking admiration at the little figure
poised on the high shelf of rock, slightly imsteady about

THE PACE 149

the knees, slightly blue about the lips, thin white arms
pointing forward for the plunge.

The child had pluck. ... It must have hurt, too,
that slap on the nearly flat body as she struck the sea.
She hadn't done it well. She came up with a dazed
look, shaking the water out of her eyes, coughing.

"You're too ambitious," Barry told her. "That was
much too high for you. You're also blue with cold.
Come out."

Gerda looked up at Nan, who was scrambling nimbly
onto the highest ledge of all, crying "I must have one
more."

Barry said to Gerda "No, you're not going after her.
You're coming out. It's no use thinking you can do all
Nan does. None of us can."

Gerda gave up. The pace was too hard for her.
She couldn't face that highest rock; the one below had
made her feel cold and queer and shaky as she stood
on it. Besides, why was she trying, for the first time in
her life, to go Nan's pace, which had always been, and
was now more than ever before, too hot and mettlesome
for her? She didn't know why; only that Nan had
been, somehow, all day setting the pace, daring her, as
it were, to make it. It was becoming, oddly, a point of
honour between them, and neither knew how or why.

On the road it was the same. Nan, with only the
faintest, if any application of brakes, would commit
herself to lanes which leaped precipitously downwards
like mountain streams, zig-zagging like a dog's-tooth
pattern, shingled with loose storr,3, whose unseen end
might be a village round some sharp turn, or a cove by
the sea, or a field path running to a farm, or merely

150 DANGEROUS AGES

the foot of one hill and the beginning of the steep puU
up the next. Coast roads in Cornwall are like that —
often uncertain in their ultimate goal (for map-makers,
like bicyclists, are apt to get tired of them, and, tiring,
break them off, so to speak, in mid-air, leaving them
suspended, like snapped ends of string). But how-
ever uncertain their goal may be, their form is not un-
certain at all; it can be relied on to be that of a snake
in agony leaping down a hill or up; or, if one prefers
it, that of a corkscrew plunging downwards into a
cork.

Nan leaped and plunged with them. She was at the
bottom while the others were still jolting, painfully
brake-held, albeit rapidly, half-way down. And some-
times, when the slope was more than usually like the
steep roof of a house, the zig-zags more than usually
acute, the end even less than usually known, the whole
situation, in short, more dreadful and perilous, if pos-
sible, than usual, the others surrendered, got off and
walked. They couldn't really rely on their brakes to
hold them, supposing something should swing round on
them from behind one of the corners; they couldn't
be sure of turning with the road when it turned at its
acutest, and such failure of harmony with one's road is
apt to meet with a dreadful retribution. Barry was
adventurous, and Kay and Gerda were calm, but to all
of them life was sweet and limbs and bicycles precious;
none of them desired an untimely end.

But Nan laughed at their prognostications of such
an end. "It will be found impossible to ride down
these hills," said their road book, and Nan laughed at
that too. You can, as she observed, ride down any-
thing; it is riding up that is the difficulty. Anyhow,
she, who had ridden bucking horses and mountainous
seas, could ride down anything that wore the semblance

THE PACE 151

of a road. Only fools, Nan believed, met with disasters
while bicycling. And jamming on the brakes was bad
for the wheels and tiring to the hands. So brakeless,
she zig-zagged hke greased lightning to the bottom.

It was on the second day, on the long hill that nms
from Manaccan down to Helford Ferry, that GSerda
suddenly took her brakes off and shot after her. That
hill is not a badly spiralling one, but it is long and steep
and usually ridden with brakes. And just above Hel-
ford village it has one very sharp turn to the left.

Nan, standing waiting for the others on the bridge,
looked round and saw Gerda shooting with unrestrained
wheels and composed face round the last bend. She
had nearly swerved over at the turn, but not quite.
She got off at the bridge.

"Hullo," said Nan. "Quicker than usual, weren't
you?" She had a half-grudging, half -ironic grin of
appreciation for a fellow sportsman, the same grin with
which she had looked up at her from the sea at Cadg-
with. Nan liked daring. Though it was in her, and
she knew that it was in her, to hate Gerda with a cold
and deadly anger, the sportsman in her gave its tribute.
For what was nothing and a matter of ordinary routine
to her, might be, she suspected, rather alarming to the
quiet, white-faced child.

Then the demon of mischief leapt in her. If Gerda
meant to keep the pace, she should have a pace worth
keeping. They would prove to one another which was
the better woman, as knights in single combat of old
proved it, or fighters in the ring to-day. As to Barry,
he should look on at it, whether he liked it or not.

Barry and Kay rushed up to them, and they went
through the little thatched rose-sweet hamlet to the
edge of the broad blue estuary and shouted for the
ferry.

152 DANGEROUS AGES

After that the game began in earnest. Nan, from
being casually and imconsciously reckless^ became de-
liberately dare-devil and alwa3rs with a backward,
ironic look for Gerda, as if she said "How about it?
Will this beat you?"

"A bicycling tour with Nan isn't nearly so safe as the
front trenches of my youth used to be/' Barry com-
mented. "Those quiet, comfortable old days!"

There, indeed, one was likely to be shot, or blown to
pieces, or buried, or gassed, and that was about all.
But life now was like the Apostle Paulas; they were
in journeyings often, in weariness often, in perils of
waters, m perils by their own coimtrjmien, in perils on
the road, in the wilderness, in the sea, in hunger and
thirst, in cold and nakedness. In perils too, so Gerda
believed, of cattle; for these would stray in bellowing
herds about narrow lanes, and they would all charge
straight through them, missing the lowered horns by
some incredible fluke of fortune. If this seems to
make Gerda a coward, it should be remembered that she
showed none of these inward blenchmgs, but went on
her way with the rest, composed as a little wax figure
at Madame Tussaud's. She was, in fact, of the stuff
of which martyrs are made, and would probably have
gone to the stake for a conviction. But stampeding
cattle, and high seas, and brakeless lightning descents,
she did not like, however brave a face she was sus-
tained by grace to meet them with. After all she was
only twenty, an age when some people still look be-
neath their beds before retiring.

Bulls, even, Gerda was called upon to face, in the
wake of two unafraid males and a reckless aunt. What

THE PACE 153

yoang female of twenty, always excq>ting those who
have worked on the land, and whose chief reward is
familiarity with its beasts, can with complete equanimi-
ty face bulls? One day a path they were taking down
to the sea ran for a while along the top of a stone
he^e, about five feet hi^ and three feet wide. Most
pec^le would have walked akxig this, leading their bi-
cycles. Nan, naturaUy, bicycled, and Barry and Kay,
finding it an amusing experiment, bicyded after her.
Gerda, in honour bound, iHcyded too. She accepted
stoically the probability that she would very soon bi-
cyde off the hedge into the field and be hurt. In the
fidds on dther side of them, cows stared at them in
mOd surprise and some disdain, coming up dose to
look« So, if one bicyded off, it would be intd the very
jaws, onto the very horns, of cattle. Female cattle, in-
deed, but cattle none the less.

Tlien Kay chanted ^Tat bulls of Basan came round
about me on either side," and it was just like that.
One fat bull at least trotted up to the hedge, waving his
tail and snorting, pawing and glaring, evincing, in short,
all the S3miptoms common to his kind.

So now if one bicyded off it would be into the very
niaw of an angry bidl.

**You look out you don't fall, Gerda," Kay flimg
back at her over his shoxilder. "It will be to a dread-
ful death, as you see. Nobody Tl save you; nobody'U
dare."

"Feeling unsteady?" Barry's gentler voice asked her
from behind. "Get off and walk it. I will too."

But Gerda rode on, her eyes on Nan's swift, sure
progress ahead. Barry should not see her mettle fail;
Barry, who had been through the war and would de-
mise cowards.

They reached the end of the hedge, and the path ran

154 DANGEROUS AGES

off it into a field. And between this field and the last
one there was an open gap, through which the bull of
Basan lumbered with fierce eyes and stood waiting for
them tQ descend.

"I don't like that creature," Kay said. "I'm afraid
of him. Aren't you, Barry? '^

"Desperately," Barry admitted. "Anyone would be,
except Nan, of course."

Nan was bicycling straight along the field path, and
the bull stood staring at her, his head well down, in
readiness, as Gerda saw, to charge. But he did not
charge Nan. Bulls and other ferocious beasts think
it waste of time to charge the fearless; they get no fun
out of an unfrightened victim. He waited instead for
Gerda, as she knew he would do.

Kay followed Nan, still chanting his psalm. Gerda
followed Kay. As she dropped from the hedge onto
the path she turned round once and met Barry's eyes,
her own wide and grave, and she was thinking "I can
bear anything if he is behind me and sees it happen.
I couldn't bear it if I were the last and no one saw."
To be gored all alone, none to care . • . who could bear
that?

The next moment Barry was no longer behind her,
but close at her side, bicycling on the grass by the path,
between her and the bull. Did he know she was
frightened? She hadn't shown it, surely.

"The wind," said Gerda, in her clear, small crystal-
line voice, "has gone round more to the south. Don't
you think so?" And reminded Barry of a French
aristocrat demoiselle going with calm and polite con-
versation to the scaffold.

"I believe it has," he said, and smiled.

And after all the bull, perhaps not liking the look of
the bicycles, didn't charge at all, but only ran by their

THE PACE 155

sides with snorting noises until they left him behind
at the next gate.

"Did you," enquired Gerda, casually, "notice that
bull? He was an awfully fine one, wasn't he?"

*^A remarkably noble face, I thought," Kay re-
turned.

They scrambled down cliffs to the cove and bathed.

Nan, experienced in such things, as one is at the age
of thirty-tiiree if one has led a well-spent life, knew
now beyond peradventure what had happened to Barry
and what would never happen again between him and
her. So that was that, as she put it, definite and matter-
of-fact to herself about it. He had stopped wanting
her. Well then, she must stop wanting him, as speedi-
ly as might be. It took a little time. You could not
^oot down the hills of the emotions with the lightning
rapidity with which you shot down the roads. Also,
the process was excruciatingly painful. You had to
unmake so many plans, unthink so many thoughts. . . .
Oh, but that was nothing. You had to hear his voice
softened to someone else, see the smile in his eyes
caressing someone else, feel his whole mind, his whole
soul, reaching out in protecting, adoring care to some-
one else's charm and loveliness ... as once, as so
lately, they had reached out to yours. . . . That was
torture for the bravest, far worse than any bulls or seas
or precipices could be to Gerda. Yet it had to be gone
through, as Gerda had to leap from towering cliffs into
wild seas and ride calmly among fierce cattle. . . «
When Nan woke in the night it was like toothache, a
sharp, gnawing, searing hell of pain. Memory choked

156 DANGEROUS AGES

her, bitter self-anger for joy once rejected and then for-
ever lost took l^er by the throat, present desolation
drowned her soul in hard, slow tears, jealousy scorched
and seared.

But, now every morning, pride rose, mettlesome and
gallant, making her laugh and talk, so that no one
guessed. And with pride, a more reckless physical
daring than usual; a kind of scornful adventurousness,
that courted danger for its own sake, and wordlessly
taunted the weaker spirit with "Follow if you like and
can. If you don't like, if you can't, I am the better
woman in that way, though you may be the beloved."
And the more the mettle of the little beloved rose to
meet the challenge, the hotter the pace grew. Per-
haps they both felt, without knowing they felt it, that
there was something in Barry which leaped instinc-
tively out to applaud reckless courage, some element in
himself which responded to it even while he called it
foolhardy. You could tell that Barry was of that type,
by the quick glow of his eyes and smile. But the
rivalry in daring was not really for Barry; Barry's
choice was made. It was at bottom the last test of
mettle, the ultimate challenge from the loser to the
winner, in the lists chosen by the loser as her own. It
was also — for Nan was something of a bully — the
heckling of Gerda. She might have won one game, and
that the most important, but she should be forced to
own herself beaten in another, after being dragged
painfully along rough and dangerous ways. And over
and above and beyond all this, beyond rivalry and be-
yond Gerda, was the eternal impatience for adventure
as such, for quick, vehement living, which was the es-
sence of Nan. She found things more fun that way:
that summed it.

THE PACE 1 57

The long strange da)rs slid by like many-coloured
dreams. The steep tumbling roads tilted behind them,
with their pale, old, white and slate hamlets huddled be-
tween fields above a rock-bound sea. Sometimes they
would stop early in the day at some fishing village, find
rooms there for the night, and bathe and sail till eve-
ning. When they bathed. Nan would swim far out to
sea, striking through cold, green, heaving waters, slip-
ping deveriy between currents, numbing thought with
bodily action, drowning emotion in the sea.

Once they were all caught in a current and a high
sea and swq)t out, and had to battle for the shore.
Even Nan, even Barry, could not get to the cove from
^ich they had bathed; all they could try for was the
jut of rocks to westward toward which the seas were
sweeping, and to reach this meant a tough fight.

"Barry!"

Nan, looking over her shoulder, saw Gerda's bluing
face and wide staring eyes and quickening, flurried
strokes. Saw, too, Barry at once at her side, heard his
"All right, I'm here. Catch hold of my shoulder."

In a dozen strokes Nan reached them, and was at
Gerda's other side.

"Put one hand on each of us and strike for all you're
worth with your legs. That's the way. . . ."

Numbly Gerda's two hands gripped Barry's right
shoulder and Nan's left. Between them they pulled
her, her slight weight dragging at them heavily, help-
ing the running sea against them. They were being
swept westward towards the rocks, but swept also out-
wards, beyond them; they struck northward and north-
ward and were carried always south. It was a dose

158 DANGEROUS AGES

thing between their swimming and the current, and it
looked as though the current was winning.

"It'll have to be all we know now," said Nan, as
they struggled ten yards from the point.

She and Barry both rather thought that probably
it would be all they knew and just the little more they
didn't know — they would be swept round the point
well to the south of the outermost rock — ^and then, hey
for open sea!

But their swimming proved, in this last fierce minute
of the struggle, stronger than the sea. They ^ were
swept towards the jutting point, almost round it, when
Nan, flinging forward to the right, caught a slippery
ledge of rock with her two hands and held on. Barry
didn't think she could hold on for more than a second
against the swinging seas, or, if she did, could con-
solidate her position. But he did not know the full
power of Nan's trained, acrobatic body. Slipping her
shoulder from Gerda's clutch, she grasped instead
Gerda's right hand in her left, and with her other arm
and with all her sinuous, wiry strength, heaved herself
onto the rock and there flung her body flat, reaching out
her free hand to Barry. Barry caught it just in time,
as he was being swung on a wave outwards, and pulled
himself within grip of the rock, and in another moment
he lay beside her, and between them they hauled up
Gerda.

Gerda gasped "Kay," and they saw him struggling
twenty yards behind.

"Can you do it?" Barry shouted to him, and Kay
grinned back.

"Let you know presently. ... Oh yes, I'm all right.
Getting on fine."

Nan stood up on the rock, watching him, measuring
with expert eye the ratio between distance and pace,

THE PACE 159

the race between Kay's swimming and the sea. It
seemed to her to be anyone's race.

Barry didn't stand up. The strain of the swim had
been rather too much for him, and in his violent lurch
onto the rock he had strained his side. He lay flat,
feeling battered and sick.

The sea, Nan judged after another minute of watch-
ing, was going to beat Kay in this race. For Kay's
face had turned a curious colour, and he was blue
round the lips. Kay's heart was not strong.

Nan's dive into the tossing waves was as pretty a
thing as one would wish to see. The swoop of it
carried her nearly to Kay's side. Coming up she
caught one of his now rather limp hands and put it on
her left shoulder, saying "Hold tight. A few strokes
will do it."

Kay, who was no fool and who had known that he
was beaten, held tight, throwing all his exhausted
strength into striking out with his other three limbs.

They were carried round the point, beyond reach of
it had not Barry's outstretched hand been ready. Nan
touched it, barely grasped it, just and no more, as
they were swung seawards. It was enough. It pulled
them to the rock's side. Again Nan wriggled and
scrambled up, and then they dragged Kay heavily after
them as he fainted.

"Neat," said Barry to Nan, his appreciation of a
well-handled job, his love of spirit and skill, rising as
it were to cheer, in spite of his exhaustion and his con-
cern for Gerda and Kay. "My word. Nan, you're a
sportsman."

"He does faint sometimes," said Gerda of Kay.
"He'll be all right in a minute."

Kay came to.

"Oh Lord," he said, "that was a bit of a grind." And

i6o DANGEROUS AGES

then, becoming garrulous with the weak and fatuous
garrulity of those who have recently swooned,
"Couldn't have done it without you, Nan. I'd given
mjrself up for lost. All my past life went by me in a
flash. ... I really did think it was U. P. with me, you
know. And it jolly nearly was, for all of us, wasn't
it? . . . Whose idea was it bathing just here? Yours,
Nan. Of course. It would be. No wonder you felt
our lives on your conscience and had to rescue us all.
Oh Lord, the water I've drunk! , I do feel rotten."

"We all look pretty rotten, I must say," Nan com-
mented, looking from Kay's limp greenness to Gerda's
shivering blueness, from Gerda to Barry, prostrate,
bruised and coughing, from Barry to her own cut and
battered knees and elbows, bleeding with the unac-
countable profuseness of limbs cut by rocks in the sea.
"I may die from loss of blood, and the rest of you
from prostration, and all of us from cold. Are we well
enough to scale the rocks now and get to our clothes?"

"We're not well enough for anything," Barry re-
turned. "But we'd better do it. We don't want to die
here, with the sea washing over us in this damp way."

They climbed weakly up to the top of the rock
promontory, and along it till they dropped down into
the little cove. They all fdt beaten and ]hnp, as if
they had been playing a violent but not heating game
of football. Even Nan's energy was drained.

Gerda said with chattering teeth, as she and Nan
dressed in their rocky corner, "I suppose. Nan, if it
hadn't been for you and Barry, I'd have drowned."

"Well, I suppose perhaps you would. If j^u come
to think of it, we'd most of us be dying suddenly half
the time if it weren't for something — some chance or
other."

Gerda said "Thanks awfully, Nan," in her directy

THE PACE i6i

duldlike way, and Nan turned it off with "You might
have thanked me if you had drowned, seeing it was my
fault we bathed there at all. I ought to have known it
wasn't safe for vou or Kay."

Looking at the little fragile figure shivering in its
vest, Nan felt in that moment no malice, no triumph,
no rivalry, no jealous anger; nothing but the protecting
care for the smaller and weaker, for Neville's little
pretty, precious child that she had felt when Gerda's
hand cluto^d her siioulder in the sea.

"Life-saving seems tc soften the heart," she re-
flected, grimly, conscious as always of her own re-
actions.

"Well," said Kay weakly, as they climbed up the
cliff path to the Utile village, "I do call that a rotten
bathe. Now let's make for the pub and drink
whiskey."

It was three daj^ later. They had spent an after-
noon and a night at Polperro, and the sun shone in the
morning on that increcUble place as they rode out of
it after breakfast. Polperro shakes the soul and the
aesthetic nerves like a glass of old wine; no one can
survey it unmoved, or leave it as he entered it, any
more than you can come out of a fairy ring as you
went in. In the afternoon they had bathed in the rock
pools along the coast. In the evening the moon had
magically gleamed on the little town, and Barry and
Gerda had sat together on the beach watching it, and
then in the dawn they had risen (Barry and Gerda
again) and rowed out in a boat to watch the pilchard
haul, returning at breakfast time sle^y, fishy and
bright-eyed.

1 62 DANGEROUS AGES

As they climbed the steep hill path that leads to Tal-
land, the sun danced on the little harbour with its
fishing-boats and its sad, crowding, crying gulls, and
on the huddled white town with its narrow crooked
streets and overhanging houses: Polperro had the eerie
beauty of a dream or of a little foreign port.
Such beauty and charm are on the edge of pain;
you cannot disentangle them from it. They intoxi-
cate, and pierce to tears. The warm mornmg sun
sparkled on a still blue sea, and burned the gorse and
bracken by the steep path's edge to fragrance. So
steep the path was that they had to push their bi-
cycles up it with bent backs and labouring steps, so
narrow that they had to go in single file. It was neVer
meant for cyclists, only for walkers; the bicycling
road ran far inland.

They reached the clifPs highest point, and looked
down on Talland Bay. By the side of the path, on a
grass plateau, a stone war-cross reared grey against a
blue sky, with its roll of names, and its comment —
"True love by life, true love by death is tried. . . ."

The path, become narrower, rougher and more wind-
ing, plunged sharply, steeply downwards, running
perilously along the cliff's edge. Nan got on her bi-
cycle.

Barry called from the rear, "Nan ! It can't be done !
It's not rideable. . . . Don't be absurd."

Nan, remarking casually "It'll be rideable if I ride
it," began to do so.

"Madwoman," Barry said, and Elay assured him,
"Nan'U be all right. No one else would, but she's got
nine lives, you know."

Gerda came next behind Nan. For a moment she
paused, dubiously, watching Nan's flying, brakeless
progress down the wild ribbon of a footpath, between

THE PACE 163

the hfll and the sea. A false swerve, a failure to turn
with the path, and one would fly off the cliff's edge into
space, fall down perhaps to tiie blue rock pools far
below.

To refuse Nan*s lead now would be to fail again
in pluck and skill before Barry. "My word, Nan,
you're a sportsman! " Barry had said, coughing weak-
ly on the rock onto which Nan had dragged them all
out of the sea. That phrase, and the ring in his
hoarse voice as he said it, had stayed with Gerda.

She got onto her bicyde, and shot off down the pre-
cipitous path.

"My God!" It was Barry's voice again, from the
rear. "Stop, Gerda • . . oh, you little fool. . . .
Stop. . . •"

But it was too late for Gerda to stop then if she had
tried. She was in full career, rushing, leaping, jolting
over the gorse roots imder the path, past thought and
past hope and oddly past fear, past anything but the
knowledge that what Nan did she too must do.
Strangely, inaptly, the line of verse she had just read
sung itself in her mind as she rushed.

"True love by life, true love by death is tried. . . ."

She took the first sharp turn, and the second. The
third, a right angle bending inward from the cliff's very
edge, she did not take. She dashed on instead, straight
into space, like a yoimg Phoebus riding a horse of the
morning through the blue air.

Nan, far ahead, nearly on the level, heard the crash
and heard voices crying out. Jamming on her brakes
she jumped off; looked back up the precipitous path;

1 64 DANGEROUS AGES

saw nothing but its windings. She left her bicycle at
the path's side and turned and ran up. Rounding a
sharp bendy she saw them at last above her; Barry
and Kay scrambling furiously down the side of the
cliff, and below them, on a ledge half-way down to the
sea, a tangled heap that was Gerda and her bicycle.

The next turn of the path hid them from sight again.
But in two minutes she had reached the place where
their two bicycles lay flung across the path, and was
scrambling after them down the cliff.

When she reached them they had disentangled Gerda
and the bicycle, and Barry held Gerda in his arms.
She was unconscious, and a cut in her head was bleed-
ing, darkening her yellow hair, trickling over her
colourless face. Her right leg and her left arm lay
stiff and oddly twisted.

Barry, his face drawn and tense, said ^^We must get
her up to the path before she comes to, if possible. It'll
hurt like hell if she's conscious."

They had all learnt how to help their fellow creatures
in distress, and how you must bind broken limbs to
splints before you move their owner so much as a yard.
The only splint available for Gerda's right leg was her
left, and they bound it tightly to this with three hand-
kerchiefs, then tied her left arm to her side with Nan's
stockings, and used the fourth handkerchief (which
was Gerda's, and the cleanest) for her head. She came
to before the arm was finished, roused to pained con-
sciousness by the splinting process, and lay with
clenched teeth and wet forehead, breathing sharply but
making no other sound.

Then Barry lifted her in his arms and the others sup-
ported her on either side, and they climbed slowly and
gently up to the path, not by the sheer way of their

THE PACE 165

descent but by a diagonal track that joined the path
further down.

"I'm sorry, darling," Barry said through his teeth
when he jolted her. "I'm frightfully sorry. . . . Only
a little more now."

They reached the path and Barry laid her down on
the grass by its side, her head supported on Nan's knee.

"Very bad, isn't it?" said Barry gently, bending over
her.

She smiled up at him, with twisted lips.

"Not so bad, really."

"You little sportsman," said Barry, softly and stoop*
ing, he kissed her pale dieek.

Then he stood up and spoke to Nan.

"I'm going to fetch a doctor if there's one in Talland.
Kay must ride back and fetch the Polperro doctor, in
case there isn't. In any case I shall bring up help
and a stretcher from Talland and have her taken
down."

He picked up his bicycle and stood for a moment
looking down at the face on Nan's knee.

*Tfou'll look after her," he said, quickly, and got on
the bicycle and dashed down the path, showing that
he too could do that fool's trick if it served any good
purpose.

Gerda, watching him, caught her breath and forgot
pain in fear until, swerving round the next bend, he
was out of sight.

Nan sat very still by the path, staring over the sea,
shading Gerda's head from the sim. There was noth-
ing more to be done than that; there was no water^
even, to bathe the cut with.

1 66 DANGEROUS AGES

"Nan."

"Yes?"

"Am I much hurt? How much hurt, do you thmk?"

"I don't know how much. I thmk the arm is broken.
The leg may be only sprained. Then there's the cut —
I daresay that isn't very much — ^but one can't tell that."

"I must have come an awful mucker," Gerda mur-
mured, after a pause. "It must have looked silly,
charging over the edge like that. ... You didn't."

"No. I didn't."

"It was stupid," Gerda breathed, and shut her eyes.

"No, not stupid. Anyone might have.' It was a
risky game to try."

"You tried it."

"Oh, I ... I do try things. That's no reason why
you should. . . . You'd better not talk. Lie quite
quiet. It won't be very long now before they come.
. . . The pain's bad, I know."

Gerda's head was hot and felt giddy. She moved
it restlessly. Urgent thoughts pestered her; her nor-
mal reticences lay like broken fences about her.

"Nan."

"Yes. Shall I raise your head a little?"

"No, it's all right. . . . About Barry, Nan."

Nan grew rigid, strung up to endure.

"And what about Barry?"

"Just that I love him. I love him very much; be-
yond an3^ing in the world."

"Yes. You'd better not talk, all the same."

"Nan, do you love him too?"

Nan laughed, a queer little curt laugh in her throat.

"Rather a personal question, don't you think? Sup-
pose, by any chance that I did? But of course I don't."

"But doesn't he love you, Nan? He did, didn't he?"

"My dear, I think you're rather delirious. This isn't

THE PACE 167

the way one talks. . . . You'd better ask Barry the
state of his affections, since you're interested in them.
I'm not, particularly."

Gerda drew a long breath, of pain or fatigue or
relief.

"I'm rather glad you don't care for him. I thought
we might have shared him if you had, and if he'd cared
for us both. But it might have been difficult."

"It might; you never know. . . . Well, you're wel-
come to my share, if you want it."

Then Gerda lay quiet, with dosed eyes and wet
forehead, and concentrated wholly on her right leg,
which was hurting badly.

Nan too sat quiet, and she too was concentrating.

Irrevocably it was over now; done, finished with.
Barry's eyes, Barry's kiss, had told her that. Gerda,
the lovely, the selfish child, had taken Barry from her,
to keep for always. Walked into Barry's office, into
Barry's life, and deliberately stolen him. Thinking,
she said, that they might share him. . . . The little
fool. The little thief. (She waved the flies away from
Gerda's head.)

And even this other game, this contest of physical
prowess, had ended in a hollow, mocking victory for
the winner, since defeat had laid the loser more utterly
in her lover's arms, more imshakably in his heart.
Gerda, defeated and broken, had won everything. Won
even that tribute which had been Nan's own. "You
little sportsman," Barry had called her, with a break
of tenderness in his voice. Even that, even the palm
for valour, he had placed in her hands. The little
victor. The greedy little grabber of other people's
things. ....

Gerda moaned at last.

1 68 DANGEROUS AGES

"Only a little longer," said Nan, and laid her hand
lightly and coolly on the hot wet forehead.

The little winner . . « damn her. . . .

The edge of a smile, half-ironic, wholly bitter,
twisted at Nan's lips.

Voices and steps. Barry and a doctor, Barry and a
stretcher, Barry and all kinds of help. Barry's anxious
eyes and smile. "Well ? How's she been ? "

He was on his knees beside her.

"Here's the doctor, darling. • . . I'm sorry I've been
so long."

CHAPTER X

PSINOFLES

Through the late September and October days Gerda
would lie on a wicker couch in the conservatory at
Windover, her sprained leg up, her broken wrist on a
splint, her mending head on a soft pillow, and eat pears.
Grapes too, apples, figs, chocolates of course — ^but par-
ticularly pears. She also wrote verse, and letters to
Barry, and drew in pen and ink, and read Sir Leo
Chiozza Money's "Triumph of Nationalisation" and
Mrs. Snowden on Bolshevik Russia, and "Lady Adela,"
and "Coterie," and listened while Neville read Mr. W,
H. Mallock's "Memoirs" and Disraeli's "Life." Her
grandmother (Rodney's mother) sent her "The Diary
of Opal Whiteley," but so terrible did she find it that it
caused a relapse, and Neville had to remove it. She
occasionally struggled in vain with a modern novel,
which she usually renounced in perplexity after three
chapters or so. Her taste did not lie in Uiis direction.

"I can't imderstand what they're all about," she
said to Neville. "Poetry means something. It's about
something real, something that really is so. So are
books like this — " she indicated "The Triumph of Na-
tionalisation." "But most novels are so queer. They're
about people, but not people as they are. They're not
interesting/'

'^ot as a rule, certainly. Occasionally one gets an

169

I70 DANGEROUS AGES

idea out of one of them, or a laugh^ or a thrill. Now
and then they express life, or reality, or beauty, in some
terms or other — ^but not as a rule."

Gerda was different from Kay, who devoured
thrillers, shockers, and ingenious crime and mystery
stories with avidity. She did not believe that life was
really much like that, and Kay's assertion that if it
weren't it ought to be, she rightly regarded as prag-
matical. Neither did she share Kay's more funda-
mental taste for the Elizabethans, Carolines and Au-
gustans. She and Kay met (as regards literature) only
on economics, politics, and modem verse. Gerda's
mind was artistic rather than literary, and she felt no
wide or acute interest in human beings, their actions,
passions, foibles, and desires.

So, surroimded by books from the Times library, and
by nearly all the weekly and monthly reviews (the
Bendishes, like many others, felt, with whatever regret,
that they had to see all of these), Gerda for the most
part, when alone, lay and dreamed dreams and ate
pears.

Barry came down for week-ends. He and Gerda
had declared their affections towards one another even
at the Looe infirmary, where Gerda had been conveyed
from the scene of accident. It had been no moment
then for an3^ing more definite than statements of
reciprocal emotion, which are always cheering in sick-
ness. But when Gerda was better, well enough, in fact,
to lie in the Windover conservatory, Barry came down
from town and said, "When shall we get married?*'

Then Gerda, who had had as yet no time or mind-
energy to reflect on the probable, or rather certain^

PRINCIPLES 171

width of the gulf between the sociological theories of
herself and Barry, opened her blue eyes wide and said
"Married?'*

"Well, isn't that the idea? You can't jilt me now,
you know; matters have gone too far."

"But, Barry, I thought you knew. I don't hold with
marriage."

Barry threw back his head and laughed, because she
looked so innocent and so serious and young as she
lay there among the pears and bandages.

"All right, darling. You've not needed to hold with
it up till now. But now you'd better catch on to it as
quickly as you can, and hold it tight, because it's
what's going to happen."

Gerda moved her bandaged head in denial.

"Oh, no, Barry. I can't. ... I thought you knew.
Haven't we ever talked about marriage before?"

"Oh, probably. Yes, I think I've heard you and
Kay both on the subject. You don't hold with legal
ties in what should be purely a matter of emotional
impulse, I know. But crowds of people talk like that
and then get married. I've no doubt Kay will too,
when his time comes."

"Kay won't. He thinks marriage quite wrong. And
so do I."

Barry, who had stopped laughing, settled himself
to talk it out.

"Why wrong, Gerda? Superfluous, if you like; ir-
relevant, if you like; but why wrong?"

"Becatise it's a fetter on what shouldn't be fettered.
Love might stop. Then it would be ugly."

"Oh very. One has to take that risk, like other risks.
And love is really more likely to stop, as I see it, if
there's no contract in the eyes of the world, if the two
people know each can walk away from the other, and

172 DANGEROUS AGES

is expected to, directly they quarrel or feel a little
bored. The contract, the legalisation — absurd and
irrelevant as all legal things are to anything that mat-
ters — ^the contract, because we're such tradition-bound
creatures, does give a sort of illusion of inevitability
which is settUng, so that it doesn't occur to the people
to fly apart at the first strain. They go through with
it instead, and in nine cases out of ten come out on the
other side. In the tenth case they just have either to
make the best of it or to make a break. ... Of course
people always can throw up the sponge, even married
people, if things are insupportable. The door isn't
locked. But there's no point, I think, in having it
swinging wide open."

"I think it should be open," Gerda said. "I think
people should be absolutely free. . . . Take you and
me. Suppose you got tired of me, or liked someone else
better, I think you ought to be able to leave me with-
out any fuss."

That was characteristic of both of them, that they
could take their own case theoretically without becom-
ing personal, without lovers' protestations to confuse
the general issue.

"Well," Barry said, "I don't think I ought. I think
it should be made as difficult for me as possible. Be-
cause of the children. There are usually children, of
course. If I left you, I should have to leave them too.
Then they'd have no father. Or, if it were you that
went, they'd have no mother. Either way it's a pity,
normally. Also, even if we stayed together always
and weren't married, they'd have no legal name. Chil-
dren often miss that, later on. Children of the school
age are the most conventional, hideboimd creatures.
They'd feel ashamed before their schoolfellows."

PRINCIPLES 173

^'I suppose they'd have my name kgalby, wouldn't
they?"

^'I suppose so. But they mig^t prefer mine. The
other boys and girls would have their fathers', you

•sec

"Not all of them. I know several pec^le who dont
hold with marriage either; there'd be all their chil-
dren. And anyhow it's not a question of what the
children would prefer while they were at school. It's
what's best for them. And ans^thing would be better
than to see their parents hating each other and still
having to live together."

"Yes. Anj^thing would be better than that. Ex-
cept that it would be a useful and awful warning to
them. But the point is^ most married people don't
hate each other. They develop a kind of tolerating,
companionable affection, after the first excitement
called being in love is past — so far as it does pass.
That's mostly good enough to live on; that and com-
mon interests and so forth. It's the stuff of ordinary
life; the emotional excitement is the hors d'oeuvre. It
would be greedy to want to keep passing on from one
hors d'oduvre to another — ^leaving the meal directly the
joint comes in."

"I like dessert best," Gerda said, irrelevantly, biting
into an apple.

"Well, you'd never get any at that rate. Nor n^uch
of the rest of the meal either."

"But people do, Barry. Free unions often last for
years and years — sometimes forever. Only you
wouldn't feel tied. You'd be sure you were only living
together because you both liked to, not because you
had to."

"I should feel I had to, however free it was. So

174 DANGEROUS AGES

you wouldn't have that consolation about me. I might
be sick of you, and pining for someone else^ but still I
should stay."

"Why, Barry?"

"Because I believe in permanent unions, as a gen-
eral principle. They're more civilised. It's unusual,
uncivic, dotting about from one mate to another, leav-
ing your young and forgetting all about them and hav-
ing new ones. Irresponsible, I call it. Living only for
a good time. It's not the way to be good citizens, as I
see it, nor to bring up good citizens. . . . Oh, I know
that the whole question of sex relationships is horribly
complicated, and can't be settled with a phrase or a
dogma. It's been for centuries so wrs^ped in cant and
humbug and expediencies and camouflage ; I don't pro-
fess to be able to pierce through all that, or to so much
as begin to think it out clearly. The only thing I can
fall back on as a certainty is the children question. A
confused and impermanent family life must be a bad
background for the young. They want all they can
get of both their parents, in the way of education and
training and love."

"Family life is such a hopeless muddle, anyhow."

"A muddle, yes. Hopeless, no. Look at your own.
Yoiu: father and mother have always been friends with
each other and with you. They brought you up with
definite ideas about what they wanted you to become
— fairly well thought-out and consistent ideas, I sup-
pose. I don't say they could do much — parents never
can — ^but something soaks in."

"Usually something silly and bad."

"Often, yes. Anyhow a queer kind of mixed brew.
But at least the parents have their chance. It's what
they're there for; they've got to do all they know, while

PRINCIPLES 175

the children are young, to influence them towards what
they personally believe, however mistakenly, to be the
finest points of view. Of course lots of it is, as you
say, silly and bad, because people are largely silly and
bad. But no parent can be absolved from doing his
or her best."

Barry was walking round the conservatory, eager
and full of faith and hope and fire, talking rapidly, the
educational enthusiast, the ardent citizen, the social
being, the institutionalist, all over. He was all these
things; he was rooted and grounded in citizenship, in
social ethics. He stopped by the couch and stood look-
ing down at Gerda among her fruit, his hands in his
pockets, his eyes bright and lit.

"All the same, darling, I shall never want to fetter
you. If you ever want to leave me, I shan't come after
you. The legal tie shan't stand in your way. And
to me it would make no difference; I shouldn't leave
you in any case, married or not. So I don't see how
or why you score in doing without the contract."

"It's the idea of the thing, partly. I don't want to
wear a wedding ring and be Mrs. Briscoe. I want to
be Gerda Bendish, living with Barry Briscoe because
we like to. ... I expect, Barry, in my case it would
be for always, because, at present, I can't imagine
stopping caring more for you than for anything else.
But that doesn't affect the principle of the thing. It
would be Tvrong for me to marry you. One oughtn't to
give up one's principles just because it seems all right
in a particular case. It would be cheap and shoddy
and cowardly."

"Exactly," said Barry, "what I feel. I can't give up
my principle either, you know. I've had mine longer
than you've had yours."

176 DANGEROUS AGES

**IVe had mine since I was about fifteen."

"Five years. Well, I've had mine for twenty. Evar
since I first began to think anything out, that is."

"People of your age," said Gerda, "people over
thirty, I mean, often think like that about marriage.
IVe noticed it. So has Kay."

"Observant infants. Well, there we stand, then.
One of us has got either to change his principles — ^her
principles, I mean — or to be false to them. Or else,
apparently, there can be nothing doing between you
and me. That's the position, isn't it?"

Gerda nodded, her mouth full of apple.

"It's very awkward," Barry continued, "my having
fallen in love with you. I had not taken your probable
views on sociology into accoimt. I knew that, though
we differed in spelling and punctuation, we were agreed
(approximately) on politics, economics, and taste in
amusements, and I thought that was enough. I forgot
that divergent views on matrimony were of practical
importance. It would have mattered less if I had dis-
covered that you were a militarist and imperialist and
quoted Marx at me."

"I did tell you, Barry. I really did. I never hid it.
And I never supposed that you'd want to marry me."

"That was rather stupid of you. I'm so obviously a
marrjdng man. . . . Now, darling, will you think the
whole thing out from the beginning, after I've gone?
Be first-hand; don't take over theories from other
people, and don't be sentimental about it. Thrash the
whole subject out with yourself and with other people
= — ^with your own friends, and with your family too.
They're a modern, broad-minded set, your people, after
all; they won't look at the thing conventionally; the)rTl
talk sense; they won't fob you off with stock phrases,

PRINCIPLES 177

or talk about the sanctity of the home. They^re not
institutionalists. Only be fair about it; weigh all the
pros and cons, and judge honestly, and for heaven's
sake don't look at the thing romantically, or go ofiF on
theories because they soxmd large and subversive.
Think of practical points, as well as of ultimate prin-
ciples. Both, to my mind, are on the same side. I'm
not asking you to sacrifice right for expediency, or
expediency for right. I don't say 'Be sensible,' or *Be
idealistic' We've got to be both."

"Barry, I've thought and talked about it so often
and so long. You don't know how much we do talk
about that sort of thing, at the club and ever3n?7here
and Kay and I. I could never change my mind."

"What a hopeless admission! We ought to be ready
to change our minds at any moment; they should be
as changeable as pound notes."

"What about yours, then, darling?"

"I'm always ready to change mine. I shall think
the subject out too, and if I do change I shall tell you
at once."

"Barry. '^ Gerda's face was grave; her forehead was
corrugated. "Suppose we neither of us ever change?
Suppose we both go on thinking as we do now for al-
ways? What then?"

He smoothed the knitted forehead with his fingers.

"Then one of us will have to be a traitor to his or
her principles. A pity, but sometimes necessary in
this complicated world. Or, if we can neither of us
bring ourselves down to that, I suppose eventually
we shall each perpetrate with. someone else the kind of
union we personally prefer."

They parted on that. The thing had not grown seri-
ous yet; they could still joke about it.

178 DANGEROUS AGES

Though Gerda said "What's the use of my talking
about it to people when IVe made up my mind?" and
though she had not the habit of talking for conversa-
tion's sake, she did obediently open the subject with
her parents, in order to assure herself beyond a doubt
what they felt about it. But she knew already that
their opinions were what you might expect of parents,
even of broad-minded, advanced parents, who rightly
believed themselves not addicted to an undiscriminatuig
acceptance of the standards and decisions of a usually
mistaken world. But Barry was wrong in saying they
weren't institutionalists; they were. Parents are.

Rodney was more opinionated than Neville, on this
subject as on most others. He said, crossly, "It^s a
beastly habit, unlegitimatised union. When I say
beastly, I mean beastly; nothing derogatory, but merely
like the beasts — the other beasts, that is."

Gerda said "Well, that's not really an argument
against it. In that sense it's beastly when we sleep
out instead of in bed, or do lots of other quite nice
things. The way men and women do things isn't neces-
sarily the best way," and there Rodney had to agree
with her. He fell back on "It's unbusinesslike. Sup-
pose you have children?" and Gerda, who had supposed
all that with Barry, sighed. Rodney said a lot more,
but it made little impression on her, beyond corroborat-
ing her views on the matrimonial theories of middle-
aged people.

Neville made rather more. To Neville Gerda said
"How can I go back on everything I've always said
and thought about it, and go and get married? It
would be so reactionary/'

PRINCIPLES 179

Neville, who had a headache and was irritable, said.
It's the other thing that's reactionary. It existed long
before the marriage tie did« That's what I don't un-
derstand about all you children who pride yourselves
on being advanced* If you frankly take your stand on
going back to nature, on being reactionary — well, it is,
aiQrhow, a point of view, and has its own merits. But
your minds seem to me to be in a hopeless muddle.
You think you're going forward while you're really
going back."

'^Marriage/' said Gerda, ^^is so Victorian. It's like
antimacassars."

^'Now, my dear, do you mean anything by either of
those statements? Marriage wasn't invented in Vic-
toria's reign. Nor did it occur more frequently in that
reign than it had before or does now. Why Victorian,
then? And why antimacassars? Think it out. How
can 2L legal contract be like a doyley on the back of a
chair? Where is the resemblance? It sounds like a
riddle, only there's no answer. No, you know you've
got no answer. That kind of remark is sheer senti-
mentality and muddle-headedness. Why are people in
their twenties so often sentimental? That's another
riddle."

^That's lAat Nan says. She told me once that she
used to be sentimental when she was twenty. Was
she?"

^More than she is now, anyhow.''

Neville's voice was a little curt. She was not happy
about Nan, vAio had just gone to Rome for the winter.

^^ell," Gerda said, ^'anyhow I'm not sentimental
about not meaning to marry. I've thought about it
for years, and I know.''

^^Thoug^ about itl Much you know about it.'^
Neville, tired and cross from over-work, was, unlike

i8o DANGEROUS AGES

herself, pla}dng the traditional conventional mother.
"Have you thought how it will affect your children, for
instance?"

Those perpetual; tiresome children. Gerda was sick
of them.

"Oh yes, IVe thought a lot about that. And I can't
see it will hurt them. Barry and I talked for ever so
long about the children. So did father."

So did Neville.

"Of course I know," she said, "that you and Kay
would be only too pleased if father and I had never
been married, but youVe no right to judge by yourself
the ones you and Barry may have. They may not be
nearly so odd. . . . -^d then there's yoiu* own per-
sonal position. The world's full of people who think
they can insult a man's mistress."

"I don't meet people like that. The people I know
don't insult other people for not being married. They
think it's quite natural, and only the people's own busi-
ness."

"You've moved in a small and rarefied clique so far,
my dear. You'll meet the other kind of people pres-
ently; one can't avoid them, the world's so fidl of
them."

"Do they matter?"

"Of course they matter. As mosquitoes matter, and
wasps, and cars that splash mud at you in the road.
You'd be constantly annoyed. Your own scullery maid
would turn up her nose at you. The man that brought
the milk will sneer."

"I don't think," Gerda said, after reflection, "that
I'm very easily annoyed. I don't notice things, very
often. I think about other things rather a lot, yon
see. That's why I'm slow at answesring."

"Well, Barry would be annoyed, anyhow."

PRINCIPLES i8i

"Barry does lots of unpopular things. He doesn't
mind what people say."

"He'd mind for you. . . . But Barry isn't going to
do it. Barry won't have you on your terms. If you
won't have him on his, he'll leave you and go and find
some nicer girl."

"I can't help it, mother. I can't do what I don't
approve of for that. How could I?"

"No, darling, of course you couldn't; I apologise.
But do try and see if you can't get to approve of it,
or anyhow to be indifferent about it. Such a little
thing! It isn't as if Barry wanted you to become a
Mormon or something. . . . And after all you can't
accuse him of being retrograde, or Victorian, if you
like to use that silly word, or lacking in ideals for social
progress — can you? He belongs to nearly all your
illegal political societies, doesn't he? Why, his house
gets raided for leaflets from time to time. I don't think
they ever find any, but they look, and that's some-
thing. You can't call Barry hide-bound or conven-
tionally orthodox."

"No. Oh no. Not that. Or I shouldn't be caring
for him. But he doesn't understand about this. And
you don't, mother, nor father, nor anyone of your
ages. I don't know how it is, but it is so."

"You might try your Aunt Rosalind," Neville sug-
gested, with malice.

Gerda shuddered. "Aunt Rosalind . . . she
wouldn't understand at all. . . ."

But the dreadful thought was, as Neville had in-
tended, implanted in her that, of all her elder relatives,
it was only Aunt Rosalind who, though she mightn't
understand, might nevertheless agree. Axmt Rosalind
on free unions . . . that would be terrible to have to
hear. For Aunt Rosalind would hold with them not

ii82 DANGEROUS AGES

because ^e thought them right but because she en-
joyed them — ^the worst of reasons. Gerda somehow
felt degraded by the mtroduction into the discussion
of Aunt Rosalind, whom she hated, whom she knew,
without having been told so, that her mother and all
of them hated. It dragged it down, made it vulgar.

Gerda lay back in silence, the springs of argument
and talk dried in her. She wanted Kay.

It was no use; they couldn't meet. Neville could
not get away from her traditions, nor Gerda from
hers.

Neville, to change the subject (though scarcely for
the better), read her "The Autobiography of Mrs.
Asquith" till tea-time.

They all talked about it again, and said the same
things, and different things, and more things, and got
no nearer one another with it all. Soon Barry and
Gerda, each comprehending the full measure of the seri-
ous intent of the other, stood helpless before it, the one
in half-amused exasperation, the other in obstinate
determination.

"She means business, then,** thought Barry. *^e
won't come roxmd,** thought Gerda and their love
pierced and stabbed them, making Barry hasty of
speech and Gerda sullen.

"The waste of it," said Barry, on Sunday evening,
when IVe only got one day in the week, to spend it
quarrelling about marriage. I've hundreds of things
to talk about and tell you — ^interesting things, funny
things — but I never get to them, with all this arguing
we have to have first."

PRINCIPLES 183

"I don't want to argue, Barry. Let's not. WeVe
said everything now, lots of times. There can't be any
more. Tell me your things instead 1"

He told her, and they were happy talking, and for-
got how they thought differently on marriage. But
always the difference lay there in the backgroxmd,
coiled up like a snake, ready to uncoil and seize them
and make them quarrel and hurt one another. Always
one was expecting the other at any moment to throw
up the ^>onge and cry "Oh, have it your own way,
since you won't have it mine and I love you." But
neither did. Their wills stood as stiff as two rocks
over against one another.

Gerda grew thinner under the strain, and healed
more slowly than before. Her fragile, injured body
was a battie-groxmd between her will and her love,
and suffered in the conflict. Barry saw that it could
not go on. They would, he said, stop talking about it;
they would put it in the background and go on as if
it were not there, until such time as they could agree.
So they became friends again, lovers who lived in the
present and looked to no future, and, since better nught
not be, that had to do for the time.

CHAPTER XI

THAT WHICH REMAINS

Through September Nevflle had nursed Gerda by day
and worked by night. The middle of October, just
when they usually moved into town for the winter, she
•collapsed, had what the doctor called a nervous break-
down.

"YouVe been overworking," he told her. "You're
not strong enough in these days to stand hard brain-
work. You must give it up.'*

For a fortnight she lay tired and passive, surrendered
and inert, caring for nothing but to give up and lie
still and drink hot milk. Then she struggled up and
mooned about the house and garden, and cried weakly
from time to time, and felt depressed and bored, and
as if life were over and she were at the bottom of the
sea.

"This must be what mother feels," she thought
"Poor mother. . . . I'm like her; I've had my life,
and I'm too stupid to work, and I can only cry. . . .
Men must work and women must weep. ... I never
knew before that that was true. ... I mustn't see
mother just now, it would be the last straw . . . like
the skeletons people used to look at to warn themselves
what they would come to. . . . Poor mother . . . and
poor me. . . . But mother's getting better now she's
being analysed. That wouldn't help me at all. I

184

THAT WHICH REMAINS 185

analyse myself too much already. • • • And I was so
happy a few months ago. What a dreadful end to a
good ambition. I shall never work again, I suppose, in
any way that counts. So that's that. . . . Why do I
want to work and to do something? Other wives and
mothers don't. ... Or do they, only they don't know
it, because they don't analyse? I believe they do, lots
of them. Or is it only my horrible egotism and vanity,
that can't take a back seat quietly? I was always like
that, I know. Nan and I and Gilbert. Not Jim so
mudi, and not Pamela at all. But Rodney's worse than
I am; he wouldn't want to be counted out, put on the
shelf, in the forties; he'd be frightfully sick if he had
to stand by and see other people working and getting
on and in the thick of things when he wasn't. He
couldn't bear it; he'd take to drink, I think. ... I
hope Rodney won't ever have a nervous breakdown
and feel like this, poor darling, he'd be dreadfully tire-
some. . . . Not to work after all. Not to be a doctor,
. . . What then? Just go about among people, grin-
ning like a dog. Winter in town, talking, dining, being
the political wife. Summer in the country, walking,
riding, reading, playing tennis. Fun, of course. But
what's it all for? When I've got Gerda off my hands
I shall have done being a mother, in any sense that
matters. Is being a wife enough to live for? Rodney's
wife? Oh, I want to be some use, want to do things,
to count. . . . And Rodney will die some time — ^I know
he'll die first — and then I shan't even be a wife. And
in twenty years I shan't be able to do things with my
body much ftiore, and what then? What w!Il be left?
... I think I'm getting hysterical, like poor mother.
. . . How ugly I look, these days."

She stopped before the looking-glass. Her face
looked back at her, white and thin, almost haggard^

1 86 DANGEROUS AGES

traced in the last few weeks for the first time with
definite lines round brow and mouth. Her dark hair
was newly streaked with grey.

"Middle age," said Neville, and a cold hand was laid
round her heart. "It had to come some time, and this
illness has opened the door to it. Or shall I look young
again when I'm quite well? No, never young again."

She shivered.

"I look like mother to-day. ... I am like
mother. . . ."

So youth and beauty were to leave her, too. She
would recover from this illness and this extinguishing
of charm, but not completely, and not for long. Middle
age had begun. She would have off da}rs in future,
when she would look old and worn instead of alwa3f5,
as hitherto, looking charming. She wouldn't, in future,
be sure of herself; people wouldn't be sure to think "A
lovely woman, Mrs. Rodney Bendish.'^ Soon they
would be saying "How old Mrs. Bendish is getting to
look," and then "She was a pretty woman once."

Well, looks didn't matter much really, after all. . . .

"They do, they do," cried Neville to the glass, pas-
sionately truthful. "If you're vain they do — and I
am vain. Vain of my mind and of my body. . . .
Vanity, vanity, all is vanity . . . and now the silver
cord is going to be loosed and the golden bowl is going
to be broken, and I shall be hurt."

Looks did matter. It was no use canting, and mini-
mising them. They affected the thing that mattered
most — one's relations with people. Men, for instance,
cared more to talk to a woman whose looks pleased
them. They liked pretty girls, and pretty women.
Interesting men cared to talk to them: they told them
things they would never tell a plain woman. Rodney

THAT WHICH REMAINS 187

did. He liked attractive women. Sometimes he made
love to them, prettily and harmlessly.

The thought of Rodney stabbed her. If Rodney
were to get to care less ... to stop making love to
her . . . worse, to stop needing her. . . . For he did
need her; through all their relationship, disappointing
in some of its aspects, his need had persisted, a simple,
demanding thing.

Humour suddenly came back.

"This, I suppose, is what Gerda is anticipating, and
why she won't have Barry tied to her. If Rodney
wasn't tied to me he could flee from my wrinkles. . . ."

"Oh, what an absurd fuss one makes. What does
any of it matter? It's all in the course of nature, and
the sooner 'tis over the sooner to sleep. Middle age
will be very nice and comfortable and entertaining,
once one's fairly in it. ... I go babbling about my
wasted brain and fading looks as if I'd been a mixture
of Sappho and Helen of Troy. . . . That's the worst of
being a vain creature. . . . "What will Rosalind do when
her time comes? Oh, paint, of course, and dye — ^more
thickly than she does now, I mean. She'll be a ghastly
sight. A raddled harridan. At least I shall always
look respectable, I hope. I shall go down to Gerda.
I want to look at something young. The yoimg have
their troubles, poor darlings, but they don't know how
lucky they are."

In November Neville and Gerda, now both convales-
cent, joined Rodney in their town flat. Rodney
thought London would buck Neville up. London does
buck you up, even if it is November and there is no

1 88 DANGEROUS AGES

gulf stream and not much coal. For there is always
music and always people. Neville had a critical appre-
ciation of both. Then, for comic relief, there are poli-
tics. You cannot be really bored with a world which
contains the mother of Parliaments, particularly if her
news is communicated to you at first hand by one of
her members. Disgusted you may be and are, if you
are a right-minded person, but at least not bored.

What variety, what excitement, what a moving pic-
ture show, is this tragic and comic planet I Why want
to be useful, why indulge such tedious inanities as
ambitions, why dream wistfully of doing one's bit,
making one's work, in a world already as full of bits,
bright, coloured, absurd bits, like a kaleidoscope, as
full of marks (mostly black marks) as a novel from a
free library? A dark and bad and bitter world, of
course, full of folly, wickedness and misery, sick with
poverty and pain, so that at times the only thing Neville
could bear to do in it was to sit on some dreadful com-
mittee thinking of ameliorations for the lot of the very
poor, or to go and visit Pamela in Hoxton and help her
with some job or other — that kind of direct, imme-
diate, human thing, which was a sop to uneasiness and
pity such as the political work she dabbled in, however
similar its ultimate aim, could never be.

To Pamela Neville said, "Are you afraid of getting
old, Pamela?"

Pamela replied, "Not a bit. Are you?" And she
confessed it.

"Often it's like a cold douche of water down my
spine, the thought of it. I reason and mock at myself.

THAT WHICH REMAINS 189

but I donH like it. . . . You're different; finer, more
real, more unselfish. Besides, you'll have done some-
thing worth doing when you have to give up. I shan't."

Pamela's brows went up.

"Kay? Gerda? The pretty dears: I've done noth-
ing so nice as them. You've done what's called a
woman's work in the world — isn't that the phrase?"

"Done it — ^just so, but so long ago. What now? I
still feel young, Pamela, even now that I know I'm not.
... Oh Lord, it's a queer thing, being a woman. A
well-off woman of forty-three with everything made
comfortable for her and her brain gone to pot and her
work in the world done. I want something to bite my
teeth into — some solid, permanent job — and I get noth-
ing but sweetmeats, and people point at Kay and Gerda
and say 'That's your work, and it's over. Now you
can rest, seeing that it's good, like God on the seventh
day.' "

"/ don't say 'Now you can rest. Except just now,
while you're run down.' "

"Run down, yes; nm down like a disordered clock
because I tried to tackle an honest job of work again*
Isn't it sickening, Pamela? Isn't it ludicrous?"

"Ludicrous — no. Everyone comes up against his
own limitations. You've got to work within them that's
all. After all, there are plenty of jobs you can do that
want doing — simply shouting to be done."

"Pammie dear, it's worse than I've said. I'm a low
creature. I don't only want to do jobs that want
doing: I want to count, to make a name. I'm damnably
ambitious. You'll despise that, of course — and you're
quite right, it is despicable. But there it is. Most
men and many women are tormented by it — they itch
for recognition."

"Of course. One is."

I90 DANGEROUS AGES

*^ou too, Pammie?"

"I have been. Less now. Life gets to look short,
when you're thirty-nine."

"Ah, but you have it — ^recognition, even fame, in the
world you work in. You count for something. If you
value it, there it is. I wouldn't grumble if I'd played
your part in the piece. It's a good part — a useful part
and a speaking part."

"I suppose we all feel we should rather like to play
someone else's part for a change. There's nothing ex-
citing about mine. Most people would far prefer
yours."

They would, of course; Neville knew it. The happy
political wife rather than the unmarried woman
worker; Rodney, Gerda and Kay for company rather
than Frances Carr. There was no question which was
the happier lot, the fuller, the richer, the easier, the
more entertaining.

"Ah well. . . . You see, Rosalind spent the after-
noon with me yesterday, and I felt suddenly that it
wasn't for me to be stuck up about her — ^what am I too
but the pampered female idler, taking good things with-
out earning them? It made me shudder. Hence this
fit of blues. The pampered, lazy, brainless animal —
it is such a terrific sight when in hmnan form. Rosa-
lind talked about Nan, Pamela. In her horrible way —
you know. Hinting that she isn't alone in Rome, but
with Stephen Lumley."

Pamela took off her glasses and polished them.

"Rosalind would, of course. What did you say?"

"I lost my temper. I let out at her. It's not a thing
I often do with Rosalind — ^it doesn't seem worth while.
But this time I saw red. I told her what I thought of
her eternal gossip and scandal. I said, what if Nan
and Stephen Lumley, or Nan and anyone else, did

THAT WHICH REMAINS 191

arrange to be in Rome at the same time and to see a lot
of each other; where was the harm? No use. You
can't pin Rosalind down. She just shrugged her shoul-
ders and smiled, and said 'My dear, we all know our
Nan. We all know too that Stephen Lumley has been
in love with her for a year, and doesn't live with his
wife. Then they go off to Rome at the same moment,
and one hears that they are seen everywhere together.
Why shut one's eyes to obvious deductions? You're so
like an ostrich, NeviDe.' I said I'd rather be an ostrich
than a ferret, eternally digging into other people's con-
cerns, — and by the time we had got to that I thought
it was far enough, so I had an engagement with my
dressmaker."

"It's no use tackling Rosalind," Pamela agreed.
"She'll never change her spots. ... Do you suppose
it's true about Nan?"

"I daresay it is. Yes, I'm afraid I do think it's quite
likely true. . . . Nan was so queer the few times I saw
her after Gerda's accident. I was unhappy about her.
She was so hard, and so more than usually C3niical ancf
unget-at-able. She told me it had been all her fault,
leading Gerda into mischief, doing circus tricks that
the child tried to emulate and couldn't. I couldn't read
her, quite. Her tone about Gerda had a queer edge
to it. And she rather elaborately arranged, I thought,
so that she shouldn't meet Barry. Pamela, do you
think she had finally and absolutely turned Barry down
before he took up so suddenly wiUi CJerda, or . . ."

Pamela said, "I know nothing. She told me nothing.
But I rather thought, when she came to see me just
before she went down to Cornwall, that she had made
up her mind to have him. I may have been wrong."

Neville leant her forehead on her hands and sighed.

"Or you may have been right. And if you were

192 DANGEROUS AGES

right, it's the ghastliest tragedy — for her. . . . Oh, I
shouldn't have let Gerda go and work with him; I
should have known better. . . . Nan had rebuffed him,
and he flew off at a tangent, and there was Gerda sitting
in his office, as pretty as flowers and with her funny
little silent charm. . . . And if Nan was all the time
waiting for him, meaning to say yes when he asked her.
. . . Poor darling Nan, robbed by my horrid little girl,
who doesn't even want to marry. ... If that's the
truth, it would account for the Stephen Lumley busi-
ness. Nan wouldn't stay on in London, to see them
together. If Lumley caught her at that psychological
moment, she'd very likely go off with him, out of mere
desperation and bravado. That would be so terribly
like Nan. . . . What a desperate, wry, cursed business
life is. . . . On the other hand, she may just be going
about with Lumley on her own terms not his. It's her
own affair whichever way it is; what we've got to do
is to contradict the stories Rosalind is spreading when-
ever we get the chance. Not that one can scotch scan-
dal once it starts — ^particularly Rosalind's scandal."

"Ignore it. Nan can ignore it when she comes back.
It won't hurt her. Nan's had plenty of things said
about her before, true and untrue, and never cared."

"You're splendid at the ignoring touch, Pam. I be-
lieve there's nothing you can't and don't ignore."

"Well, why not? Ignoring's easy."

"Not for most of us. I believe it is, for you. In a
sense you ignore life itself; anyhow you don't let it
hold and bully you. When your time comes you'll
ignore age, and later death."

"They don't matter much, do they? Does an3rthing?
I suppose it's my stolid temperament, but I can't feel
that it does."

Neville thought, as she had often thought before,

THAT WHICH REMAINS 193

that Pamela, like Nan, only more calmly, less reck-
lessly and disdainfully, had the aristocratic touch.
Pamela, with her delicate detachments and her light,
even touch on things great and small, made her feel
fussy and petty and excitable.

"I suppose you're right, my dear. . . . 'All is laugh-
ter, all is dust, all is nothingness, for the things that
are arise out of the unreasonable. . . .' I must get
back. Give my love to Frances . . . and when next
you see Gerda do try to persuade her that marriage is
one of the things that don't matter and that she might
just as well put up with to please us all. The child is a
little nuisance — ^as obstinate as a mule.''

Neville, walking away from Pamela's grimy street In
the November fog, felt that London was terrible. An
ugly clamour of strident noises and hard, shrill voices,
jabbering of vulgar, trivial things. A wry, desperate,
cursed world, as she had called it, a pot seething with
bitterness and all dreadfulness, with its Rosalinds float-
ing on the top like scum.

And Nan, her Nan, her little vehement sister, whom
she had mothered of old, had pulled out of countless
scrapes — ^Nan had now taken her life into her reckless
hands and done what with it? Given it, perhaps, to a
man she didn't love, throwing cynical defiance thereby
at love, which had hurt her; escaping from the intoler-
able to the shoddy. Even if not, even supposing the
best. Nan was hurt and in trouble; Neville was some-
how sure of that. Men were blind fools; men were
fickle children. Neville almost wished now that Barry
would give up Gerda and go out to Rome and fetch

194 DANGEROUS AGES

Nan back. But, to do that^ Barry would have to fall
out of love with Gerda and into love again with Nan;
and even Barry, Neville imagined, was not such a
weathercock as that. And Barry would really be hap-
pier with Gerda. With all their differences, they were
both earnest citizens, both keen on social progress.
Nan was a C)nniical flibberty-gibbet; it might not have
been a happy union. Perhaps happy unions were not
for such as Nan. But at the thought of Nan playing
that desperate game with Stephen Lumley in Rome,
Neville's face twitched. . . .

She would go to Rome. She would see Nan; find out
how things were. Nan always liked to see her, would
put up with her even when she wanted no one else.

That was, at least, a job one could do. These family
jobs — ^they still go on, they never cease, even when one
is getting middle-aged and one's brain has gone to pot.
They remain, always, the jobs of the affections.

She would write to Nan to-night, and tell her she was
starting for Rome in a few days, to have a respite from
the London fogs.

But she did not start for Rome, or even write to Nan,
for when she got home she went to bed with influenza.

CHAPTER XII

THE MOTHER

The happiness Mrs. Hilary now enjoyed was of the
religious type— a deep, warm glow, which did not lack
excitement. She felt as those may be presumed to
feel who have just been converted to some church —
newly alive, and sunk in spiritual peace, and in pro-
found harmony with life. Where were the old rubs,
frets, jars and ennuis? Vanished, melted like yester-
day's snows in the sun of this new peace. It was as if
she had cast her burden upon the Lord. That, said
her psycho-analyst doctor, was quite in order; that
was what it ought to be like. That was, in effect, what
she had in point of fact done; only the place of the
Lord was filled by himself. To put the matter briefly,
transference of burden had been effected; Mrs. Hilary
had laid all her cares, all her perplexities, all her grief,
upon this quiet, acute-looking man, who sat with her
twice a week for an hour, drawing her out, arranging
her symptoms for her, penetrating the hidden places of
her soul, looking like a cross between Sherlock Holmes
and Mr. Henry Ainley. Her confidence in him was, he
told her, the expression of the father-image, which sur-
prised Mrs. Hilary a little, because he was twenty
years her junior.
Mrs. Hilary felt that she was getting to know herself

195

196 DANGEROUS AGES

very well indeed. Seeing herself through Mr. Cradock's
mind, i^e felt that she was indeed a curious jumble of
complexes, of strange, mysterious impulses, desires and
fears. Alarming, even horrible in some ways; so that
often she thought "Can he be right about me? Am I
really like that? Do I really hope that Marjorie (Jim's
wife) will die, so that Jim and I may be all in all to
each other again? Am I really so wicked?" But Mr.
Cradock said that it was not at all wicked, perfectly
natural and normal — ^the Unconscious was like that
And worse than that; how much worse he had to break
to Mrs. Hilary, who was refined and easily shocked, by
gentle hints and slow degrees, lest she should be
shocked to death. Her dreams, which she had to re-
count to him at every sitting, bore such terrible signifi-
cance — they grew worse and worse in proportion, as
Mrs. Hilary could stand more.

"Ah well," Mrs. Hilary sighed uneasily, after an in-
terpretation into strange terms of a dream she had
about bathing, "it's very odd, when IVe never even
thought about things like that"

"Your Unconscious," said Mr. Cradock, firmly,
"has thought the more. The more yoiu: Unconscious is
obsessed by a thing, the less your conscious self thinks
of it. It is diy of the subject, for that very reason."

Mrs. Hilary was certainly shy of the subject, for that
reason or others. When she felt too shy of it, Mr.
Cradock let her change it. "It may be true," she
would say, "but it's very terrible, and I would rather
not dwell on it."

So he would let her dwell instead on the early days
of her married life, or on the children's childhood, or
on her love for Neville and Jim, or on her impatience
with her mother.

THE MOTHER 197

They were happy little times, stimulating, cosy lit-
tle times. They spoke straight to the heart, easing it
of its weight of tragedy. A splendid man, Mr. Cradock,
with his shrewd, penetrating sympathy, his kind firm-
ness. He would listen with interest to everything; the
sharp words she had had with Grandmama, troubles
with the maids, the little rubs of daily life (and what a
rubbing business life is, to be sure ! ) as well as to pro-
founder, more tragic accounts of desolation, jealousy,
weariness and despair. He would say "Your case is a
very usual one," so that she did not feel ashamed of
being like that. He reduced it all, dispassionately and
yet not unssmapathetically, and with clear scientific pre-
cision, to terms of psychical and physical laws. He
trained his patient to use her mind and her will, as well
as to remember her dreams and to be shocked at noth-
ing that they signified.

Mrs. Hilary would wake each morning, or during the
night, and clutch at the dream which was flsdng from
her, clutch and secure it, and make it stand and deliver
its outlines to her. She was content with outlines; it
was for Mr. Cradock to supply the interpretation.
Sometimes, if Mrs. Hilary couldn't remember any
dreams, he would supply, according to a classic prece-
dent, the dream as well as the interpretation. But on
the whole, deeply as she revered and admired him, Mrs.
Hilary preferred to remember her own dreams; what
they meant was bad enough, but the meaning of the
dreams that Mr. Cradock told her she had dreamt was
beyond all words. . . . That terrible Unconscious!
Mrs. Hilary disliked it excessively; she felt rather as if
it were a sewer, sunk beneath an inadequate grating.

198 DANGEROUS AGES

But from Mr. Cradock i^e put up with hearing about
it. She would have put up with anything. He was so
steadying and so wonderful. He enabled her to face
life with a new poise, a fresh lease of strength and
vitality. She told Grandmama so. Grandmama said
"Yes, my dear, IVe observed it in you. It sounds to
me an unpleasing busine^, but it is obviously doing
you good, so far. I only wish it may last. The danger
may be reaction, after you have finished the course
and lost touch with this young man." (Mr. Cradock
was forty-five, but Grandmama, it must "be remem-
bered, was eighty-four.) "You will have to guard
against that. In a way it was a pity you didn't take
up church-going instead; religion lasts."

"And these quackeries do not," Grandmama finished
her sentence to herself, not wishing to be discouraging.

"Not always," Mrs. Hilary truly replied, meaning
that religion did not always last.

"No," Grandmama agreed. "Unfortunately not al-
ways. Particularly when it is High Church. There
was your imcle Bruce, of course. . . ."

Mrs. Hilary's unde Bruce, who had been High
Church for a season, and had even taken Orders in
the year i860, but whose faith had wilted in the heat
and toil of the day, so that by 1870 he was an agnostic
barrister, took Grandmama back through the last cen-
tury, and she became reminiscent over the Tractarian
movement, and, later, the Ritualists.

"The Queen never could abide them," said Grand-
mama. "Nor could Lord Beaconsfield, nor your father,
though he was always kind and tolerant. I remember
when Dr. Jowett came to stay with us, how they talked

about it Ah well, they Ve become very prominent

since then, and done a great deal of good work, and
there are many very able, excellent men and women

THE MOTHER 199

among them. . . . But they're not High Qiurch any
longer, they tell me. They're Catholics in these days.
I don't know enough of them to judge them, but I don't
think they can have the dignity of the old High Church
party, for if they had I can't imagine that Gilbert's
wife, for instance, would have joined them, even for
so short a time as she did. . . . Well, it suits some
people, and psycho-analysis obviously suits others.
Only I do hope you will try to keep moderate and bal-
anced, my child, and not believe all this young man
tells you. Parts of it do sound so very strange."

(But Mrs. Hilary would not have dreamt of repeat-
ing to Grandmama the strangest parts of all.)

"I feel a new woman," she said, fervently, and
Grandmama smiled, well pleased, thinking that it cer-
tainly did seem rather like the old evangelical conver-
sions of her youth. ^ (Which, of course, did not alwasrs
last, any more than the High Church equivalents did.)

All Grandmama committed herself to, in her elderly
caution, which came however less from age than from
having known Mrs. Hilary for sixty-three years, was
"Well, well, we must see."

And then Rosalind's letter came. It came by the
afternoon post — the big, mauve, scented, sprawled
sheets, dashingly monographed across one corner.

"Gilbert's wife," pronounced Grandmama, non-com-
mittally from her easy chair, and, said in that tone, it
was quite sufficient comment. "Another cup of tea,
please, Emily."

Mrs. Hilary gave it to her, then began to read aloud
the letter from Gilbert's wife. Gilbert's wife was one

200 DANGEROUS AGES

of the topics upon which she and Grandmama were iu
perfect accord, only that Mrs. Hilary was irritated
when Grandmama pushed the responsibility for the
relationship onto her by calling Rosalind "your daugh-
ter-in-law."

Mrs. Hilary began to read the letter in the tone used
by well-bred women when they would, if in a slightly
lower social stratum, say "Fancy that nowl Did you
ever, the brazen hussy!" Grandmama listened,
cynically disapproving, prepared to be disgusted yet
entertained. On the whole she thoroughly enjoyed let-
ters from Gilbert's wife. She settled down comfort-
ably in her chair with her second cup of tea, while Mrs,
Hilary read two pages of what Grandmama called
"foolish chit-chat." Rosalind's letters were really like
the gossipping imbecilities written by Eve of the Tatler,
or the other ladies who enliven our shinier-paper
weeklies with their bright personal babble. She did
not often waste one of them on her mother-in-law; only
when she had something to say which might annoy her.

"Do you hear from Nan?" the third page of the let-
ter began. "I hear from the Bramertons, who are win-
tering in Rome — the Charlie Bramertons, you know,
great friends of mine and Gilbert's (he won a pot of
money on the Derby this year and they Ve a dinky flat
in some palace out iheve — ) , and they meet Nan about,
and she's alwa3rs with Stephen Lumley, the painter
(rotten painter, if you ask me, but he's somehow
diddled London into admiring him, don't expect youVe
heard of him down at the seaside). Well, they're quite
simply always together, and the Brams say that every-
one out there says it isn't in the least an ambiguous case
— ^no two ways about it. He doesn't live with his wife,
you know. Youll excuse me passing this on to you,
but it does seem you ought to know. I mentioned it

THE MOTHER 201

to Neville the other day, just before the poor old dear
went down with the plague, but you know what Neville
is, she always sticks up for Nan and doesn't care what
she does, or what people say. People are talking;
beasts, aren't they 1 But that's the way of this wicked
old world, we all do it. Gilbert's quite upset about it,
says Nan ought to manage her affairs more quietly.
But after all and between you and me it's not the first
time Nan's been a Town Topic, is it.

"How's the psycho going? Isn't Cradock rather a
priceless pearl? You're over head and ears with him
by now, of course, we all are. Psycho wouldn't do you
any good if you weren't, that's the truth. Cradock told
me himself once that transference can't be effected
without the patient being a little bit smitten. Per-
sonally I should give up a man patient at once if he
didn't rather like me. But isn't it soothing and com-
forting, and doesn't it make you feel good all over, like
a hot bath when you're fagged out. . . ."

But Mrs. Hilary didn't get as far as this. She
stopped at "not the first time Nan's been a Town Topic.
. . ." and dropped the thin mauve sheets onto her lap,
and looked at Grandmama, her face queerly tight and
flushed, as if she were about to cry.

Grandmama had finished her tea, and had been
listening quietly.

Mrs. Hilary said "Oh, my God," and jerked her head
back, quivering like a nervous horse who has had a
shock and does not care to conceal it.

"Your daughter-in-law," said Grandmama, without
excitement, "is an exceedingly vulgar young woman."

"Vulgar? Rosalind? But of course. . . . Only
that doesn't affect Nan. . . ."

"Your daughter-in-law," Grandmama added, "is
also a very notorious liar."

202 DANGEROUS AGES

"A liar ... oh yes, yes, yes. . . . But this time it's
true. Oh I feel, I know, it's true. Nan would. That
Stephen Lumley — ^he's been hanging about her for ages.
... Oh yes, it's true what they say. The very
worst. . . ."

Grandmama glanced at her curiously. The very
worst in that direction had become strangely easier of
credence by Mrs. Hilary lately. Grandmama had ob-
served that. Mr. Cradock's teaching had not been
without its effect. According to Mr. Cradock, people
were usually engaged either in practising the very
worst, or in desiring to practise it, or in wishing and
dreaming that they had practised it. It was the nature
of mankind, and not in the least reprehensible, though
curable. Thus Mr. Cradock. Mrs. Hilary had, against
her own taste, absorbed part of his teaching, but noth-
ing could ever persuade her that it was not reprehensi-
ble: it quite obviously was. Also disgusting. Mr.
Cradock might say what he liked. It was disgusting.
And when the man had a wife. . . .

"It is awful," said Mrs. Hilary. "Awful. ... It
must be stopped. I shall go to Rome. At once."

"That won't stop it, dear, if it is going on. It will
only irritate the young people."

"Irritate! You can use a word like thatl Mother,
you don't realise this ghastly thing."

"I quite see, my dear, that Nan may be carrying on
with this artist. And very wrong it is, if so. All I
say is that your going to Rome won't stop it. You
know that you and Nan don't always get on very
smoothly. You rub each other up. • . • It would be
far better if someone else went. Neville, say.'*

"Neville is ill." Mrs. Hilary shut her lips ti^tly on
that. She was glad Neville was ill; she had always
hated (she could not help it) the devotion between

THE MOTHER 20j

Neville and Nan. Nan, in her tempestuous childhood^
flaring with rage against her mother, or sullen, spiteful
and perverse, long before she could have put into words
the qualities in Mrs. Hilary which made her like that,
had alwajrs gone to Neville, nine years older, to be
soothed and restored to good temper. Neville had
reprimanded the little naughty sister, had told her she
must be "decent to mother" — feel decent if you can,
behave decent in any case," was the way she had put
it. It was Neville who had heard Nan's confidences
and helped her out of scrapes in childhood, schoolgirl-
hood and ever since. This was very bitter to Mrs.
Hilary. She was jealous of both of them; jealous that
so much of Neville's love should go elsewhere than to
her, jealous that Nan, who gave her nothing except
generous and extravagant gifts and occasional, spas-
modic, remorseful efforts at affection and gentleness,
should to Neville give all.

"Neville is ill," she said. "She certainly won't be
fit to travel out of England this winter. Influenza
coming on the top of that miserable breakdown is a
thing to be treated with the greatest care. Even when
she is recovered, post-influenza will keep her weak tiU
the summer. I am really anxious about her. No;
Neville is quite out of the question."

"Well, what about Pamela?"

"Pamela is up to her eyes in her work. . . . Besides,
why should Pamela go, or Neville, rather than I? A
girl's mother is obviously the right person. I may not
be of much use to my children in these da}^, but at least
I hope I can save them from themselves."

"It takes a clever parent to do that, Emily," said
Grandmama, who doubtless knew.

"But, mother, what would you have me do? Sit with

204 DANGEROUS AGES

my hands before me while my daughter lives in sin?
What's your plan?"

^^I'm too old to make plans, dear. I can only look
on at the world. I've looked at the world now for

many, many years, and I've learnt that only great wis-
dom and great love can change people's decisions as to
their way of life, or turn them from evil courses.
Frankly, my child, I doubt if you have, where Nan
is concerned, enough wisdom or enough love. Enough
sympathy, I should rather say, for you have love. But
do you feel you understand the child enough to inter-
fere wisely and successfully?"

"Oh, you think I'm a fool, mother; of course I know
you've always thought me a fool. Good God, if a
mother can't interfere with her own daughter to save
her from wickedness and disaster, who can, I should
like to know?"

"One would indeed like to know that," Grandmama
said, sadly.

"Perhaps you'd like to go yoiurself," Mrs. Hilary
shot at her, quivering now with anger and feeling.

"No, my dear. Even if I were able to get to Rome
I should know that I was too old to interfere with
the lives of the young. I don't understand them
enough. You believe that you do. Well, I suppose
you must go and try. I can't stop you."

"You certainly can't. Nothing can stop me. . . .
Vou're singularly unsympathetic, mother, about this
awful business.'*

"I don't feel so, dear. I am very, very sorry for yoxLy
and very, very sorry for Nan (whom, you must re-
member, we may be slandering) . I have always looked
on unlawful love as a very great sin, though there may
be great provocation to it."

"It is an awful sin." Mr. Cradock could say what

THE MOTHER 205

he liked on that subject; he might tell Mrs. Hilary
that it was not awful except in so far as any other
jdelding to nature's promptings in defiance of the law
of man was awful, but he could not persuade her. Like
many other people, she set that particular sin apart, in
a special place by itself; she would talk of ^'a bad
woman," "an immoral man," a girl who had "lost her
character," and mean merely the one kind of badness,
the one manifestation of immorality, the one element
in character. Dishonesty and cruelty she could for-
give, but never that.

"I shall start in three days," said Mrs. Hilary, be-
coming tragically resolute. "I must tell Mr. Cradock
to-morrow."

"That young man? Must he know about Nan's
affairs, my dear?"

"I have to tell him evers^thing, mother. It's part
of the course. He is as secret as the grave."

Grandmama knew that Emily, less secret than the
grave, would have to ease herself of the sad tale to
someone or other in the course of the next day, and
supposed that it had better be to Mr. Cradock, who
seemed to be a kind of hybrid of doctor and clergyman,
and so presumably was more discreet than an ordinary
hmnan being. Emily must tell. Emily always would.
That was why she enjoyed this foolish psycho-analysis
business so much.

At the very thought of it a gleam had brightened
Mrs. Hilary's eyes, and her rigid, tense pose had re-
laxed. Oh the comfort of telling Mr. Cradock! Even
if he did tell her how it was all in the course of nature,
at least he would S5mipathise with her trouble about
it, and her annoyance with Grandmama. And he would
tell her how best to deal with Nan when she got to
her. Nan's was the sort of case that Mr. Cradock

2o6 DANGEROUS AGES

really did understand. Any situation between the sexes
— ^he was all over it. Psydio-analysts adored sex; they
made an idol of it. They communed with it, as devotees
with their God. They couldn't really enjoy, with their
whole minds, anything else, Mrs. Hilary sometimes
vaguely felt. But as, like the gods of the other devotees,
it was to them immanent, evers^where and in every-
thing; they could be alwajrs happy. If they went up
into heaven it was there; if they fled down into hell it
was there also. Once, when Mrs. Hilary had tenta-
tively suggested that Freud, for instance, over-stated
its importance, Mr. Cradock had said firmly "It is im-
possible to do that," which settled it once and for all.

Mrs. Hilary stood up. Her exalted, tragic mood
clothed her like a flowing garment.

"I shall write to Cook," she said. "Also to Nan, to
tell her I am coming."

Grandmama, after a moment's silence, seemed to
gather herself together for a final effort.

"Emily, my child. Is your mind set to do this?"

"Absolutely, mother. Absolutely and entirely."

"Shall I tell you what I think? No, you don't want
to hear it, but you drive me to it. . . . If you go to
that foolish, reckless child and attempt to interfere
with her, or even to question her, you will run the risk,
if she is innocent, of driving her into what you are
trying to prevent. If she is already committed to it,
you run the risk of shutting the door against her re-
turn. In either case you will alienate her from your-
self: that is the least of the risks you run, though the
most certain. . . . That is all. I can say no more.
But I ask you, my dear ... I beg you, for the child's
sake and your own ... to write neither to Cook nor
to Nan."

Grandmama's breath came rather fast and heavily;

THE MOTHER 207

her heart was troubling her; emotion and effort were
not good for it.

Mrs. Hilary stood looking down at the old shrunk
figure, shaking a little as she stood, knowing that she
must be patient and calm.

"You will please allow me to judge. You will please
let me take the steps I think necessary to help my child.
I know that you have no confidence in my judgment
or my tact; you've always shown that plainly enough,
and done your best to teach my children the same
view of me. . . ."

Grandmama put up her hand, meaning that she could
not stand, neither she nor her heart could stand, a
scene. Mrs. Hilary broke off. For once she did not
want a scene either. In these days she found what
vent was necessary for her emotional S3^tem in her
mterviews with Mr. Cradock.

"I daresay you mean well, mother. But in this mat-
ter I must be the judge. I am a mother first and fore-
most. It is the only thing that life has left for me to
be." (Scarcely a daughter, she meant: that was made
too difficult for her; you would almost imagine that
the office was not wanted.)

She turned to the writing table.

"First of all I shall write to Rosalind, and tell her
what I think of her and her abominable gossip."

She began to write.

Grandmama sat shnmk and old and tired in her
chair.

Mrs. Hilary's pen scratched over the paper, telling
Rosalind what she thought.

"Dear Rosalind," she wrote, "I was very much sur-
prised at your letter. I do not know why you should
trouble to repeat to me these ridiculous stories about
Nan. You cannot suppose that I am likely to care

208 DANGEROUS AGES

either what you or any of your friends are saying about
one of my children. . . ." And so on. One knows the
style. It eases the mind of the writer and does not
deceive the reader. When the reader is Rosalind Hilary
it amuses her vastly.

Next day, at three p.m., Mrs. Hilary told Mr. Cra-
dock all about it. Mr. Cradock was not in the least
surprised. Nor had he the slightest, not the remotest
doubt that Nan and Stephen Lumley were doing what
Mrs. Hilary called living in sin, what he preferred to
call obeying the natural ego. (After all, as any theo-
logian would point out, the terms are s3aion3mious in
a fallen world.)

"I must have your advice," Mrs. Hilary said. 'TTou
must tell me what line to take with her."

"Shall you," Mr. Cradock enquired, thoughtful and
intelligent, "find your daughter in a state of conflict?"

Mrs. Hilary spread her hands helplessly before her.

"I know nothing; nothing."

"A very great deal," said Mr. Cradock, "depends on
that. If she is torn between the cravings of the primi-
tive ego and the inhibitions put upon these cravings by
the conventions of society — if, in fact, her censor, her
endopsychic censor, is still fimctioning. . . ."

"Oh, I doubt if Nan's got an endopsychic censor.
She is so lawless always."

"Every psyche has a censor." Mr. Cradock was
firm. "Regarded, of course, by the psyche with very
varying degrees of respect. Well, what I mean to say
is, if your daughter is in a state of conflict, with forces
pulling her both wa}rs, her case will be very much easier

THE MOTHER 209

to deal with than if she has let her primitive ego so
take possession of the situation that she feels in a
state of harmony. In the former case, you will only
have to strengthen the forces which are opposing her
sexual craving. . . ."

Mrs. Hilary fidgeted uneasily. "Oh, I don't think
Nan feels that exactly. None of my children. . . ."

Mr. Cradock gave her an amused glance. It seemed
sometimes that he would never get this foolish lady
properly educated.

"Your children, I presume, are human, Mrs. Hilary.
Sexual craving means a craving for intimacy with a
member of another sex."

"Oh well, I suppose it does. I don't care for the
name, somehow. But please go on."

"I was going to say, if you find, on the other hand,
that your daughter's nature has attained harmony in
connection with this course she is pursuing, your task
will be far more difficult. You will then have to create
a discord, instead of merely strengthening it. • . • May
I ask your daughter's age?"

"Nan is thirty-three."

"A dangerous age."

"All Nan's ages," said Mrs. Hilary, "have been dan-
gerous. Nan is like that."

"As to that," said Mr. Cradock, "we may say that
all ages are dangerous to all people, in this dangerous
life we live. But the thirties are a specially dangerous
time for women. They have outlived the sh5messes
and restraints of girlhood, and not attained to the
caution and discretion of middle age. They are reck-
less, and consciously or unconsciously on the lookout
for adventure. They see ahead of them the end of
youth, and that quickens their pace. . . . Has passion
always been a strong element in your daughter's life?"

210 DANGEROUS AGES

"Oh, passion. . . /' (Another word not liked by
Mrs. Ililary.) "Not quite that, I should say. Nan has
been reckless; she has got into scrapes, got herself
talked about. She has played about with men a good
deal always. But as to passion . . ."

"A common thing enough," Mr. Cradock told her, as
it were reassuringly. "Nothing to fight shy of, or be
afraid of. But something to be regulated of course.
• . • Now, the thing is to oppose to this irregular de-
sire of your daughter's for this man a new and a
stronger set of desires. Fight one group of complexes
with another. You can't, I suppose, persuade her to be
analysed? There are good analysts in Rome."

"Oh no. Nan laughs at it. She laughs at every-
thing of that sort."

"A great mistake. A mistake often made by shallow
and foolish people. They might as well laugh at
surgery. . . . Well now, to go into this question of the
battle between the complex-groups. . • ."

He went into it, patiently and exhaustively. His
phrases drifted over Mrs. Hilary's head.

"... a deterrent force residing in the ego and pre-
venting us from stepping outside the boimds of pro-
priety. . . . Rebellious messages sent up from the
Unconscious, which wishes to live, love and act in
archaic modes . . . conflict with the progress of human
society . . . inhibitory and repressive power of the
censor. . . ." (How wonderful, thought Mrs. Hilary,
to be able to talk so like a book for so long together ! )
. . . "give the censor all the help we can . . . keep
the Unconscious in order by turning its energies into
some other channel . . . give it a substitute. • • . The
energy involved in the intense desire for someone of
another sex can be diverted . . . employed on some
useful work. Libido ... it should all be used. Find

THE MOTHER 211

another channel for your daughter's libido. . . . Her
life is perhaps a rather vacant one?"

That Mrs. Hilary was able to reply to.

"Nan's? Vacant? Oh no. She is quite full of
energy. Too full. Always doing a thousand things.
And she writes, you know."

"Ah. That should be an outlet. A great deal of
libido is used up by that. Well, her present strong
desire for this man should be sublimated into a desire
for something else. I gather that her root trouble is
lawlessness. That can be cured. You must make her
remember her first lawless action." (Man's first dis-
obedience and the fruit thereof, thought Mrs. Hilary.)

"O dear me," she said, "I'm afraid that would be
impossible. When she was a month old she used to
attempt to dash her bottle onto the floor."

"People have even remembered their baptisms, when
driven back to them by analysis."

"Our children were not baptised. My husband was
something of a Unitarian. He said he would not tie
them up with a rite against which they might react in
later life. So they were merely registered."

"Ah. In a way that is a pity. Baptism is an im-
pressive moment in the sensitive consciousness of the
infant. It has sometimes been foimd to be a sort of
lamp shining through the haze of the early memory.
Registration, owing to. the non-participation of the in-
fant, is useless in that way."

"Nan might remember how she kicked me when I
short-coated her," Mrs. Hilary mused, hopefully.

Mr. Cradock flowed on. Mrs. Hilary, listened, as-
sented, was impressed. It all sounded so simple, so
wonderful, even so beautiful. But she thought once or
twice, "He doesn't know Nan."

"Thank you," she said, rising to go when her hour

212 DANGEROUS AGES

was over. "You have made me feel so much stronger,
as usual. I can't thank you enough for all you do for
me. I could face none of my troubles and problems
but for your help."

"That merely means," said Mr. Cradock, who al-
ways got the last word, "that your ego is at present in
what is called the state of infantile dependence or
tutelage. A necessary but an impermanent stage in its
struggle towards the adult level of the reality-prin-
ciple."

"I suppose so," Mrs. Hilary said. "Good-bye."
"He is too clever for me," she thought, as she went
home. "He is often above my head." But she was
used to that in the people she met

CHAPTER Xin

THE DAUGHTER

Mrs. HttARY hated travelling, which is indeed detest-
able. The Channel was choppy and she a bad sailor;
the train from Calais to Paris continued the motion,
and she remained a bad sailor (bad sailors often do
this) . She lay back and smelled salts, and they were of
no avail. At Paris she tried and failed to dine. She
passed a wretched night, being of those who detest
nights in trains without wagons-lits, but save money by
not having wagons-lits, and wonder dismally all night
if it is worth it. Modane in the chilly morning annoyed
her as it annoys us all. The customs people were
rude and the other travellers in the way. Mrs. Hilary,
who was not good in crowds, pushed them, getting ex-
cited and red in the face. Psycho-analysis had made
her more patient and calm tiian she had been before,
but even so, neither patient nor calm when it came to
jostling crowds.

"I am not strong enough for all this," she thought,
in the Mont Cenis tunnel.

Rushing out of it into Italy, she thought, "Last time
I was here was in '99, with Richard. If Richard were
here now he would help me." He would face the cus-
toms at Modane, find and get the tickets, deal with im-
dvil Germans — (Germans were often uncivil to Mrs.
Hilary and she to them, and though she had not met

213

214 DANGEROUS AGES

any yet on this journey, owing doubtless to their state
of collapse and depression consequent on the Great
Peace, one might get in at any moment, Germans being
naturally buoyant). Richard would have got hold of
pillows, seen that she was comfortable at night, told
her when there was time to get out for coffee and when
there wasn't (Mrs. Hilary was no hand at this; she
would try no runs and get run out, or all but rim out) .
And Ridiard would have helped to save Nan. Nan
and her father had got on pretty well, for a naughty
girl and an elderly parent. They had appreciated one
another's brains, which is not a bad basis. They had
not accepted or even liked one another's ideas on life,
but this is not necessary or indeed usual in families.
Mrs. Hilary certainly did not go so far as to suppose
that Nan would have obeyed her father had he ap-
peared before her in Rome and bidden her change
her way of life, but she might have thought it over.
And to make Nan think over anything which she bade
her do would be a phenomenal task. What had Mr.
Cradock said — ^make her remember her first disobedi-
ence, find the cause of it, talk it out with her, get it
into the open — ^and then she would be cured of her
present lawlessness. Why? That was the connection
that always puzzled Mrs. Hilary a little. Why should
remembering that you had done, and why you had
done, the same kind of thing thirty years ago cure you
of doing it now? Similarly, why should remembering
that a nurse had scared you as an infant cure you of
your present fear of burglars? In point of fact, it
didn't. Mr. Cradock had tried this particular cure on
Mrs. Hilary. It must be her own fault, of course, but
somehow she had not felt much less nervous about
noises in the house at night since Mr. Cradock had
brought up into the light, as he called it, that old fright

THE DAUGHTER 215

in the nursery. After all, why should one? However,
hers not to reason why; and perhaps the workings of
Nan's mind might be more orthodox.

At Turin Germans got in. Of course. They were
all over Italy. Italy was welcoming them witii both
hands, establishing again the economic entente. These
were a mother and a backfisch, and they looked shyly
and sullenly at Mrs. Hilary and the other English-
woman in the compartment. They were thin, and Mrs.
Hilary noted it with satisfaction. She didn't believe
for one moment in starving Germans, but these cer-
tainly did not look so prosperous and buxom as a pre-
war German mother and backfisch would have looked.
They were equally uncivil, though. They pulled both
windows up to the top. The two English ladies
promptly pulled them down half-way. English ladies
are the only beings in the world who like open windows
in winter. English lower-class women do not, nor do
English gentlemen. If you want to keep warm while
travelling (to frowst, as the open air school calls it)
do not get in with well-bred Englishwomen.

The German mother broke out in angry remon-
strance, indicating that she had neuralgia and the back-
fisch a cold in the head. There followed one of those
quarrels which occur on this topic in trains, and are so
bitter and devastating. It had now more than the
pre-war bitterness; between the combatants flowed
rivers of blood; behind them ranked male relatives
killed or maimed by the male relatives of their foes
on the opposite seat. The English ladies won. Ger-
many was a conquered race, and knew it. In revenge,
the backfisch coughed and sneezed "all over the car-
riage," as Mrs. Hilary put it, "in the disgusting German
way," and her mother made noises as if she could be
sick if she tried hard enough.

2i6 DANGEROUS AGES

So it was a detestable journey. And the second
night in the train was worse than the first. For the
Germans, would you believe it, shut both windows while
the English were asleep, and the English, true to their
caste and race, woke with bad headaches.

When they got to Rome in the morning Mrs. Hilary
felt thoroughly ill. She had to strive hard for self-
control; it would not do to meet Nan in an unnerved,
collapsed state. All her psychical strength was neces-
sary to deal with Nan. So when she stood on the plat-
form with her luggage she looked and felt not only like
one who has slept (but not much) in a train for two
nights and fought with Germans about windows but
also like an elderly virgin martyr (spiritually tense
and stnmg-up, and distraught, and on the line between
exultation and hysteria).

Nan was there. Nan, pale and pinched, and looking
plain in the nipping morning air, though wrapped in a
fur coat. (One of the points about Nan was that,
though she sometimes looked plain, she never looked
dowdy; there was always a distinction, a chic, about
her.)

Nan kissed her mother and helped with the luggage
and got a cab. Nan was good at railway stations and
such places. Mrs. Hilary was not.

They drove out into the hideous new streets. Mrs.
Hilary shivered.

"Oh, how ugly I"

"Rome is ugly, this part."

"It's worse since '99."

But she did not really remember clearly how it had
looked in '99. The old desire to pose, to diow that she

THE DAUGHTER 217

knew something, took her. Yet she felt that Nan, who
knew that she knew next to nothing, would not be
deceived.

"Oh ... the Foruml"

"The Forum of Trajan," Nan said. "We don't pass
the Roman Forum on the way to our street."

"The Forum of Trajan, of course, I meant that."

But she knew that Nan knew she had meant the
Forum Romanum.

"Rome is always Rome," she said, which was safer
than identifying particular buildings, or even Forums,
in it. "Nothing like it anywhere."

"How long can you stay, mother? IVe got you a
room in the house I'm lodging in. It's in a little street
the other side of the Corso. Rather a mediaeval street,
I'm afraid. That is, it smells. But the rooms are
dean."

"Oh, I'm not stasdng long. . . . We'll talk later ; talk
it all out. A thorough talk. When we get in. After a
cup of tea. ^ . ."

Mrs. Hilary remembered that Nan did not yet know
why she had come. After a cup of strong tea. ... A
cup of tea first. . . . Coffee wasn't the same. One
needed tea, after those awful Germans. She told Nan
about these. Nan knew that she would have had tire-
some travelling companions; she always did; if it
weren't Germans it would be inconsiderate English.
She was unlucky.

"Go straight to bed and rest when we get in," Nan
advised; but she shook her head. "We must talk first."

Nan, she thought, looked pinched about the lips, and
thin, and her black brows were at times nervous and
sullen. Nan did not look happy. Was it guilt, or
merely the chill morning air?

IThey stopped at a shabby old house in a narrow

2i8 DANGEROUS AGES

mediaeval street in the Borgo, which had been a palace
and was now let in apartments. Here Nan had two
bare, gilded, faded rooms. Mrs. Hilary sat by a char-
coal stove in one of them, and Nan made her some tea.
After the tea Mrs. Hilary felt revived. She wouldn't
go to bed; she felt that the time for the talk had come.
She looked romid the room for signs of Stephen Lxmi-
ley, but all the signs she saw were of Nan; Nan's books,
Nan's proofs strewing the table. Of course that bad
man wouldn't come while she was there. He was no
doubt waiting eagerly for her to be gone. Probably
they both were. . . .

"Nan " They were still sitting by the stove, and

Nan was lighting a cigarette. "Nan— do you guess
why I've come?"

Nan threw away the match.

"No, mother. How should I? . . . One does come
to Rome, I suppose, if one gets a chance."

"Oh, I've not come to see Rome. I know Rome.
Long before you were born. . . . I've come to see you.
And to take you back with me."

Nan glanced at her quickly, a sidelong glance of
suspicion and comprehension. Her lower lip projected
stubbornly.

"Ah, I see you know what I mean. Yes, I've heard.
Rumours reached us — ^it was through Rosalind, of
course. And I'm afraid • . • I'm afraid that for once
she spoke the truth."

"Oh no, she didn't. I don't know what Rosalind's
been sasdng this time, but it would be odd if it was
the truth."

THE DAUGHTER 219

"Nan, it's no use denying things. I know J

It was true; she did know. A few months ago she
would have doubted and questioned; but Mr. Cradock
had taught her better. She had learnt from him the
simple truth about life; that is, that nearly everyone is
nearly always involved up to the eyes in the closest
relationship with someone of another sex. It is nature's
way with mankind. Another thing she had learnt from
him was that the more they denied it the more it was
so; protests of innocence and admissions of guilt were
alike proofs of the latter. So she was accurate when
she said that it was no use for Nan to deny an3rthing.
It was no use whatever.

Nan had become cool and sarcastic — ^her nastiest,
most dangerous manner.

"Do you think you would care to be a little more
e:q)licit, mother? I'm afraid I don't quite follow.
What is it no use my denying? What do you know?'*

Mrs. Hilary gathered herself together. Her head
trembled and jerked with emotion; wisps of her hair,
tousled by the night, escaped over her collar. She
spoke tremulously, tensely, her hands wrung together.

"That you are going on with a married man. That
you are his mistress," she said, putting it at its crudest,
since Nan wanted plain speaking.

Nan sat quite still, smoking. The silence thrilled
with Mrs. Hilary's passion.

"I see," Nan said at last. "And it's no use my deny-
ing it. In that case I won't." Her voice was smooth
and clear and still, like cold water. "You know the
man's name too, I presume?"

"Of course. Everyone knows it. I tell you, Nan,
everyone's talking of you and him. A town topic,
Rosalind calls it."

220 DANGEROUS AGES

"Rosalind would. Town must be very duU just now,
if that's all they have to talk of."

"But it's not the scandal I'm thinking of," Mrs.
Hilary went on, "though, God knows, that's bad enough
' — I'm thankful Father died when he did and was
spared it — ^but the thing itself. The awful, awful thing
itself. Have you no shame, Nan?"

"Not much."

"For all our sakes. Not for mine — I know you don't
care a rap for that — ^but for Neville, whom you do
profess to love. . . ."

"I should think we might leave Neville out of it.
She's shown no signs of believing any story about me."

"Well, she does believe it, you may depend upon it.
No one could help it. People write from here saying
it's an open fact."

"People here can't have much to put in their letters."

"Oh, they'll make room for gossip. People always
will. Always. But I'm not going to dwell on that side
of things, because I know you don't care what anyone
says. It's the wrongness of it. ... A married man.
. . . Even if his wife divorces him! It would be in
the papers. . . . And if she doesn't you can't ever
marry him. ... Do you care for the man?"

"What man?"

"Don't quibble. Stephen Lumley, of course."

"Stephen Lumley is a friend of mine. I'm fond of
him."

"I don't believe you do love him. I believe it's all
recklessness and perversity. Lawlessness. That's what
Mr. Cradock said."

"Mr. Cradock?" Nan's eyebrows went up.

Mrs. Hilary flushed a brighter scarlet. The colour
kept running over her face and going back again, all
the time she was talking.

THE DAUGHTER 221

"Your psycho-analyst doctor," said Nan, and her
voice was a little harder and cooler than before. '*I
suppose you had an interesting conversation with him
about me."

"I have to tell him eversrthing," Mrs. Hilary stam-
mered. "It's part of the course. I did consult him
about you. I'm not ashamed of it. He understands
about these things. He's not an ordinary man."

"This is very interesting." Nan lit another cigarette.
**It seems that I've been a boon all roimd as a town
topic — to London, to Rome and to St. Mary's Bay.
. . . Well, what did he advise about me?"

Mrs. Hilary remembered vaguely and in part, but
did not think it would be profitable just now to tell Nan.

"We have to be very wise about this," she said, col-
lecting herself. "Very wise and firm. Lawlessness.
... I wonder if you remember. Nan, throwing your
shoes at my head when you were three?"

"No. But I can quite believe I did. It was the sort
of thing I used to do."

"Think back, Nan. What is the first act of naughti-
ness and disobedience you remember, and what moved
you to it?"

Nan, who knew a good deal more about psycho-
analysis than Mrs. Hilary did, laughed curtly.

"No good, mother. That won't work on me. I'm
not susceptible to the treatment. Too hard-headed.
What was Mr. Cradock's next brain-wave?"

"Oh well, if you take it like this, what's the
use. . . ."

"None at all. I advise you not to bother yourself.
It will only make your headache worse. . . . Now I
think after all this excitement you had better go and
lie down, don't you? I'm going out, anyhow."

Then Stephen LunJey knocked at the door and came

222 DANGEROUS AGES

in. A tall, slouching hollow-chested man of forty, who
looked unhappy and yet C3niically amused at the world.
He had a cough, and unusually bright eyes under over-
hanging brows.

Nan said, "This is Stephen Lumley, mother. My
mother, Stephen," and left them to do the rest, watch-
ing, critical and aloof, to see how they would manage
the situation.

Mrs. Hilary managed it by rising from her chair
and standing rigidly in the middle of the room, breath-
ing hard and staring. Stephen Lumley looked en-
quiringly at Nan.

"How do you do, Mrs. Hilary," he said. "I expect
you're pretty well played out by that beastly journey,
aren't you."

Mrs. Hilary's voice came stifled, choked, between
pants. She was working up; or rather worked up:
Nan knew the symptoms.

"You dare to come into my presence. ... I must
ask you to leave my daughter's sitting-room imme-
diately. I have come to take her back to England
with me at once. Please go. There is nothing that can
possibly be said between you and me — ^nothing."

Stephen Lumley, a cool and quiet person, raised his
brows, looked enquiry once more at Nan, found no
answer, said, "Well, then, I'll say good-bye," and
departed.

Mrs. Hilary wrimg her hands together.

"How dare he! How dare he! Into my very pres-
ence! He has no shame. . . ."

Nan watched her coolly. But a red spot had begun
to burn in each cheek at her mother's opening words
to Lumley, and still burned. Mrs. Hilary knew of
old that still-burning, deadly anger of Nan's.

"Thank you, mother. You've helped me to make

THE DAUGHTER 223

up my mind. I'm going to Capri with Stephen next
"week. IVe refused up till now. He was going with-
out me. YouVe made up my mind for me. You can
tell Mr. Cradock that if he asks."

Nan was fiercely, savagely desirous to hurt. In the
same spirit she had doubtless thrown her shoes at Mrs.
Hilary thirty years ago. Rage and disgust, hot re-
bellion and sick distaste — what she had felt then she
felt now. During her mother's breathless outbreak at
Stephen Lumley, standing courteous and surprised be-
fore her, she had crossed her Rubicon. And now with
flaming words she burned her boats.

Mrs. Hilary burst into tears. But her tears had
never yet quenched Nan's flames. Nan made her lie
down and gave her sal volatile. Sal volatile eases the
head and nervous system and composes the manners,
but no more than tears does it quench flames.

The day that followed was strange, and does not
soimd likely, but life often does not. Nan took Mrs.
Hilary out to lunch at a trattoria near the Forum, as
it were to change the subject, and they spent the usual
first afternoon of visitors in Rome, who hasten to view
the Forum with a guide to the most recent excavations
in their hands. Mrs. Hilary felt completely uninter-
ested to-day in recent or any other excavations. But,
obsessed even now with the old instinctive desire (the
fond hope, rather) not to seem imintelligent before her
children, more especially when she was not on good
terms with them, she accompanied Nan, who firmly
and deftly closed or changed the subjects of unlawful
love, Stephen Lumley, Capri, returning to England, and

224 DANGEROUS AGES

her infant acts of wilfulness, whenever her mother
opened them, which was frequently, as Mrs. Hilary
found these things easier conversational topics than the
buildings in the Forum. Nan was determined to keep
the emotional pressure low for the rest of the day, and
she was fairly competent at this when she tried. As
Mbs. Hilary had equal gifts at keeping it high, it was
a well-matched contest. When she left the Forum for
a tea shop, both were tired out. The Forum is tiring;
emotion is tiring; tears are tiring; quarrelling is tiring;
travelling through to Rome is tiring; all five together
are annihilating.

However, they had tea.

Mrs. Hilary was cold and bitter now, not hj^terical.
Nan, who was living a bad life, and was also tiresomely
exactly informed about the differences between the
Forum in '99 and the Forum to-day (a subject on which
Mrs. Hilary was hazy) was not fit, imtil she came to a
better mind, to be spoken to. Mrs. Hilary shut her
lips tight and averted her reddened eyes. She hated
Nan just now. She could have loved her had she been
won to repentance, but now — ^*Wan was never like the
rest," she thought.

Nan persisted in making light, equable conversation,
which Mrs. Hilary thought in bad taste. She talked
of England and Uie family, asked after Grandmama,
Neville and the rest.

"Neville is extremely ill," Mrs. Hilary said, quite
untruly, but that was, to do her justice, the way in
which she always saw illness, particularly Neville's.
"And worried to death about Gerda, who seems to have
gone off her head since that accident in Cornwall. She
is still sticking to that insane, wicked notion about not
getting married."

Nan had heard before of this.

THE DAUGHTER 225

"She'll give that up," she said, coolly, "when she
finds she really can't have Barry if she doesn't. Gerda
gets what she wants."

"Oh, you all do that, the whole lot of you. . . . And
a nice example you're setting the child."

"She'll give it up," Nan repeated, keeping the con-
versation on Gerda. "Gerda hasn't the martyr touch.
She won't perish for a principle. She wants Barry and
she'll have him, though she may hold out for a time.
Gerda doesn't lose things, in the end."

"She's a very silly child, and I suppose she's been
mixing with dreadful friends and picked up these ideas.
At twenty there's some excuse for ignorant foolish-
ness." But none at thirty-three, Mrs. Hilary meant.

"Barry Briscoe," she added, "is being quite firm
about it. Though he is desperately in love with her,
Neville tells me; desperately."

He's soon got over you, even if he did care for you
once, and even if you did send him away, her emphasis
implied.

In Nan, casually flicking the ash off her cigarette, a
queer impulse came and went. For a moment she
wanted to cry; to drop hardness and lightness and pre-
tence, and cry like a child and say "Mother, comfort
me. Don't go on hurting me. I love Barry. Be kind
to me, oh be kind to mel "

If she had done it, Mrs. Hilary would have taken
her in her arms and been all mother, and the wound
in their affection would have been temporarily healed.

Nan said nonchalantly "I suppose he is. They're
sure to be all right. . . . Now what next, mother? It's
getting dark for seeing things."

"I am tired to death," said Mrs. Hilary. "I shall go
back to those dreadful rooms and try to rest. ... It
has been an awful day. ... I hate Rome. In '99 it

226 DANGEROUS AGES

was so different. Father and I went about together;
he showed me everythmg. He knew about it alL
Besides . . ."

Besides, how could I enjoy sight-seeing after that
scene this morning, and with this awful calamity that
has happened?

They went back. Mrs. Hilary was desperately miss-
ing her afternoon hour with Mr. Cradock. She had
come to rely on it on a Wednesday.

Nan sat up late, correcting proofs, after Mrs. Hilary
had gone to bed. GsJleys lay all round her on the floor
by the stove. She let them slip from her knee and lie
there. She hated them. . . .

She pressed her hands over her eyes, shutting them
out, shutting out life. She was going off with Stephen
Liunley. She had told him so this morning. Both
their lives were broken; hers by Barry, whom she
loved, his by his wife, whom he disliked. He loved
her; he wanted her. She could with him find relief,
find life a tolerable thing. They could have a good
time together. They were good companions; their
need, though dissimilar, was mutual. They saw the
same beauty, spoke the same tongue, laughed at the
same things. In the very thought of Stephen, with
his cynical humour, his clear, keen mind, his lazy power
of brain. Nan had found relief all that day, reacting
desperately from a mind fuddled with sentiment and
emotion as with drink, a soft, ignorant brain, which
knew and cared about nothing except people, a h3^
terical passion of anger and malice. They had pushed
her sharply and abruptly over the edge of decision,

THE DAUGHTER 227

that mind and brain and passion. Stephen, against
whom their fierce anger was concentrated, was so
different. . . .

To get away, to get right away from everything and
everyone, with Stephen. Not to have to go back to
London alone, to see what she could not, surely, bear
to see — Barry and Gerda, Gerda and Barry, always,
everywhere, radiant and in love. And Neville, Gerda's
mother, who saw so much. And Rosalind, who saw
everything, everything, and said so. And Mrs.
Hilary. . . .

To saunter round the queer, lovely corners of the
earth with Stephen, light oneself by Stephen's clear,
flashing mind, look after Stephen's weak, neglected
body as he never could himself . . . that was the only
anodyne. Life would then some time become an ad-
venture again, a gay stroll through the fair, instead of
a desperate sickness and nightmare.

Barry, oh Barry. . . . Nan, who had thought she
was getting better, found that she was not. Tears
stormed and shook her at last. She crumpled up on
the floor among the galley-slips, her head upon the
chair.

Those damned proofs — ^who wanted them? What
were books? What was anything?

Mrs. Hilary came in, in her dressing-gown, red-eyed.
She had heard strangled sounds, and knew that her
child was crying.

"My darling!"

Her arms were round Nan's shoulders; she was
kneeling among the proofs.

228 DANGEROUS AGES

"My Kttle girl— Nan!"

"Mother. . . ."

They held each other dose. It was a queer moment^
though not aa unprecedented one in the stormy history
of their relations together. A queer, strange, com-
forting, healing moment, the fleeting shadow of a great
rock in a barren land; a strayed fragment of some-
thing which should have been betweai them alwa}rs
but was not. Certainly an odd moment.

"My own baby. • . . You^re unhappy. . . ."

"Unhappy — ^yes. . . . Darling mother, it can't be
helped. Nothing can be helped. . . . Don't let's talk
. . . darling."

Strange words from Nan. Strange for Mrs. Hilary
to feel her hand held against Nan's wet cheek and
kissed.

Strange moment: and it could not last. The crying
child wants its mother; the mother wants to comfort
the crying child. A good bridge, but one inadequate
for the strain of daily traffic. The child, having dried
its tears, watches the bridge break again, and thinks
it a pity but inevitable. The mother, less philosophic,
may cry in her turn, thinking perhaps that the bridge
may be built this time in that way; but, the child hav-
ing the colder heart, it seldom is.

There remain the moments, impotent but inde-
structible.

CHAPTER XIV

YOUTH TO YOUTH

Kay was home for the Christmas vacatioB. He was
full, not so much of Cambridge, as of schemes for
establishing a co-operative press next year. He was
learning printing and binding, and wanted Gerda to
learn too.

"Because, if you're really not going to marry Barry,
and if Barry sticks to not having you without, you'll
be rather at a loose end, won't you, and you may as
well come and help us with the press. . . . But of
course, you know," Kay added absently, his thoughts
still on the press, "I should advise you to give up on
that point."

"Give up, Kay? Marry, do you mean?"
"Yes. . . . It doesn't seem to me to be a point worth
itnaking a fuss about. Of course I agree with you in
theory — I always have. But I've come to think lately
that it's not a point of much importance. And per-
fectly sensible people are doing it all the time. You
know Jimmy Kenrick and Susan Mallow have done
it? They used to say they wouldn't, but they have.
The fact is, people do do it, whatever they say about
it beforehand. And though in theory it's absurd, it
seems often to work out pretty well in actual life. Per-
sonally I should make no bones about it, if I wanted
a girl and she wanted marriage. Of course a girl can

229

v<^-

230 DANGEROUS AGES

alwa3rs go on being called by her own name if she
likes. That has points."

"Of course one could do that," Gerda pondered.

"It's a sound plan in some ways. It saves trouble
and explanation to go on with the name you've pub-
lished your things under before marriage. ... By the
way, what about your poems, Gerda? They'll be about
ready by the time we get our press going, won't they?
We can afford to have some slight stuff of that sort
if we get hold of a few really good things to start
with, to make our name."

Gerda's thoughts were not on her poems, nor on
Kay's press, but on his advice about matrimony. For
the first time she wavered. If Kay thought that. . . .
It set the business in a new light. And of course other
people were doing it; sound people, the people who
talked the same language and belonged to the same
set as one's self.

Kay had spoken. It was the careless, authentic voice
of youth speaking to youth. It was a trumpet blast
making a breach in the walls against which the bat-
teries of middle age had thimdered in vain. Gerda told
herself that she must look further into this, think it
over again, talk it over with other people of the age
to know what was right. If it could be managed with
honour, she would find it a great relief to give up on
this point. For Barry was so firm; he would never
give up; and, after all, one of them must, if it could
be done with a clear conscience.

Ten days later Gerda said to Barry, "IVe been think-
ing it over again, Barry, and IVe decided that perhaps
it will be all right for us to get married after all.''

YOUTH TO YOUTH 231

Barry took both her hands and kissed each in turn,
to show that he was not triumphing but adoring.

"You mean it? You feel you can really do it with-
out violating your conscience? Sure, darling?"

"Yes, I think I'm sure. Lots of quite sensible, good
people have done it lately."

"Oh any number, of course — ^if that's any reason."

"Not, not those people. My sort of people, I mean.
People who beheve what I do, and wouldn't tie them-
selves up and lose their liberty for anything."

"I agree with Lenin. He says liberty is a bourgeois
dream."

"Barry, I may keep my name, mayn't I? I may still
be called Gerda Bendish, by people in general?"

"Of course, if you like. Rattier silly, isn't it? Be-
cause it won't be your name. But that's your con-
cern."

"It's the name I've always written and drawn imder,
you see."

"Yes. I see your point. Of course you shall be
Gerda Bendish anywhere you Uke, only not on cheques,
if you don't mind."

"And I don't much want to wear a wedding ring,
Barry."

"That's as you like, too, of course. You might keep
it in your purse when travelling, to produce if censori-
ous hotel keepers look askance at us. Even the most
abandoned ladies do that sometimes, I believe. Or
your marriage lines will do as well. . . . Gerda, you
blessed darling, it's most frightfully decent and sport-
ing of you to have changed your mind and owned up.
Next time we differ I'll try and be the one to do it, I
honestly will. ... I say, let's come out by ourselves
and dine and do a theatre, to celebrate the occasion."

So they celebrated the triumph of institutionalism.

232 DANGEROUS AGES

Their life together, thought Barry, would be a keen,
jolly, adventuring business, an ardent thing, full of
gallant dreams and endeavours. It should never grow
tame or stale or placid, never lose its fine edge. There
would be mountain peak beyond mountain peak to
scale together. They would be co-workers, playmates,
friends and lovers all at once, and they woidd walk in
liberty as in a bourgeois dream.

So planned Barry Briscoe, the romantic, about whose
head the vision splendid always hovered, a realisable,
capturable thing.

Gerda thought, "I*m happy. Poetry and drawing
and Barry. IVe everything I want, except a St.
Bernard pup, and Kay's giving me that for Christmas.
rm happy:'

It was a tingling, intense, sensuous feeling, like
stretching warm before a good fire, or lying in fragrant
thymy woods in June, in the old Junes when suns were
hot. Life was a song and a dream and a simuner
morning.

"You're happy, Gerda," Neville said to her once,
gladly but half wistfully, and she nodded, with har
small gleaming smile.

"Go on being happy," Neville told her, and Gerda
did not know that she had nearly added "for it's cost
rather a lot, your happiness." Gerda seldom cared how
much things had cost; she did not waste thought on
such matters. She was happy.

CHAPTER XV

THE DSEAM

Basry and Gerda were married in January in a regis-
try office, and, as all concerned disliked wedding
parties, there was no wedding party.

After they had gone, Neville, recovered now from
the lilies and languors of illness, plunged into the roses
and raptures of social life. One mightn't, she said to
herself, be able to accomplish much in this world, or
imprint one's personality on one's environment by
deeds and achievements, but one could at least enjoy
life, be a pleased participator in its spoils and pleasures,
an enchs^ted spectator of its never-ending flux and
pageant, its richly glowing moving pictures. One could
watch the play out, even if one hadn't much of a part
oneself. Music, art, drama, the company of eminent,
pleasant and entertaining persons, all the various forms
of beauty, the carefully cultivated richness, graces and
elegances which go to build up the world of the fortu-
nate, the cultivated, the prosperous and the well-bred —
Neville walked among these like the soul in the lordly
pleasure house built for her by the poet Tennyson, or
like Robert Browning glutting his sense upon the world
— "Miser, there waits the gold for thee!" — or Francis
Thompson swinging the earth a trinket at his wrist. In
truth, she was at times self-consciously afraid that she
resembled all these three, whom (in the moods they
thus expressed) she disliked beyond reason, finding
them morbid and hard to please.

233

234 DANGEROUS AGES

She too knew herself morbid and hard to please. If
she had not been so, to be Rodney's wife would surely
have been enough; it would have satisfied all her
nature. Why didn't it? Was it perhaps really be-
cause, though i5he loved him, it was not with the un-
critical devotion of the early dajrs? She had for so
many years now seen clearly, through and behind his
charm, his weakness, his vanities, his scorching ambi-
tions and jealousies, his petulant angers, his depend-
ence on praise and admiration. She had no jealousy
now of his frequent confidential intimacies with other
attractive women ; they were harmless enough, and he
never lost the need of and dependence on her; but they
may have helped to clarify her vision of him.

Rodney had no failings beyond what are the com-
mon need of human nature; he was certainly good
enough for her. Their marriage was all right. It was
only the foolish devil of egotism in her which goaded to
unwholesome activity the other side of her nature, that
need for self-expression which marriage didn't satisfy.

In February she suddenly tired of London and the
British climate, and was moved by a desire to travel.
So she went to Italy, and stayed in Capri with Nan
and Stephen Limiley, who were leading on that island
lives by turns gaily indolent and fiercely industrious,
finding the company stimulating and the climate agree-
able and soothing to Stephen's defective lungs.

From Italy Neville went to Greece. Corinth, Athens,
the islands, Tempe, Delphi, Crete — ^how good to have
money and be able to see all these! Italy and Greece
are Europe's pleasure groxmds; there the cultivated and

THE DREAM 235

the prosperous traveller may satisfy his soul and forget
carking cares and stabbing ambitions, and drug himself
with loveliness.

If Neville abruptly tired of it, and set her face
homewards in early April, it was partly because she
felt the need of Rodney, and partly because she saw,
fleetingly but day by day more lucidly, that one could
not take one's stand, for satisfaction of desire, on the
money which one happened to have but which the
majority bitterly and emptily lacked. Some common
way there had to be, some freedom all might grasp, a
liberty not for the bourgeois only, but for the pro-
letariat — the poor, the sad, the gay proletariat, who
also grew old and lost their dreams, and had not the
wherewithal to drug their souls, unless indeed they
drank much liquor, and that is but a poor artificial
way to peace.

Voyaging homewards through the spring seas, Neville
saw life as an entangling thicket, the Woods of Wester-
main she had loved in her childhood, in which the scaly
dragon squatted, the craving monster self that had to be
subjugated before one could walk free in the enchanted
woods.

''Him shall change, transforming late,
Wondcrouriy renovate. . . ."

Dimly discerning through the thicket the steep path
that climbed to such liberty as she sought, seeing far
off the place towards which her stumbling feet were set,
where life should be lived with alert readiness and re-
sponse, oblivious of its personal achievements, its per-
sonal claims and spoils, Neville the spoilt, vain, am-
bitious, disappointed egoist, strained her eyes into the
distance and half smiled. It might be a dream, that
liberty, but it was a dream worth a fight. . . .

CHAPTER XVI

TDiffE

February at St. Mary^s Bay. The small flir dickered
and fluttered in the grate with a sound like the windy
beating of wings. The steady rain sloped against the
closed windows of The Gulls, and dropped patteringly
on the asphalt pavements of Marine Crescent out^de,
and the cold grey sea txmibled moaning.

Grandmama sat in her arm-chair by the hearth, read-
ing the Autobiography of a Cabinet Minister's Wife
and listening to the fire, the sea and the rain, and sleep-
ing a little now and again.

Mrs. Hilary sat in another arm-chair, surrounded by
bad novels, as if she had been a reviewer. She was re-
garding them, too, with something of the reviewer's
pained and inimical distaste, dipping now into one,
shutting it with a sharp sigh, trying another ; flinging it
on the floor with an ejaculation of anger and fatigue.

Grandmama woke with a start, and said ^^What fell?
Did something fall?" and adjusted her glasses and
opened the Autobiography again.

"A sadly vulgar, imtruthful and ill-written book.
The sort of autobiography Gilbert's wife will write
when she has time. It reminds me very much of her
letters, and is, I am sure, still more Uke the diary which

236

TIME 237

•

she no doubt keeps. Poor Gilbert. • • •" Grandmama
seemed to be confusing Gilbert momentarily with the
Cabinet Minister. "I remember," she went on, "meet-
ing this young woman at Oxford, in the year of the first
Jubilee. ... A very bright talker. They can so sel-
dom write. • . •" She dozed again.

"Will this intolerable day," Mrs. Hilary enquired
of the housemaid who came in to make up the fire,
"never be over? I suppose it will be bed-time some
time. . . J*

"It's just gone a quarter past six, ma'am," said the
housemaid, offering little hope, and withdrew.

Mrs. Hilary went to the window and drew back the
curtains and looked out at Marine Crescent in the
gloomy, rainy twilight. The long evening stretched
in front of her — the long evening which she had never
learnt to use. Psycho-analysis, which had made her
so much better while the course lasted, now that it was
over (and it was too expensive to go on with forever)
had left her worse than before. She was like a drunkard
deprived suddenly of stimulants; she had nothing to
turn to, no one now who took an interest in her soul.
She missed Mr. Cradock and that bi-weekly hour; she
was like a creeper wrenched loose from its support and
flung flat on the ground. He had given her mental ex-
ercises and told her to continue them; but she had!
always hated mental exercises; you might as well go
in for the Pelman course and have done. What one
needed was a person. She was left once more face to
face with time, the enemy; time, which gave itself to
her lavishly with both hands when she had no use for
it. There was nothing she wanted to do with time,
except kill it.

"What, dear?" mmmured Grandmama, as she rattled

238 DANGEROUS AGES

the blind tassel against the sill. ''How about a game
of piquet?"

But Mrs. Hilary hated piquet, and all card games,
and halma, and dominoes, and ever}rthing. Grand-
mama used to have friends in to play with her, or the
little maid. This evening she rang for the little maid,
May, who would rather have been writing to her young
man, but liked to oblige the nice old lady, of whom the
kitchen was fond.

It was all very well for Grandmama, Mrs. Hilary
thought, stormily revolting against that placidity by
the hearth. All very well for Grandmama to sit by
the fire contented with books and papers and games
and sleep, unbitten by the murderous hatred of time
that consumed herself. Everyone always thought that
about Grandmama, that things were all very well for
her, and perhaps they were. For time could do little
more hurt to Grandmama. She need not worry about
killing time; time would kill her soon enough, if she
left it alone. Time, so long to Mrs. Hilary, was short
now to Grandmama, and would soon be gone. As to
May, the little maid, to her time was fleeting, and flew
before her face, like a bird she could never catch. . . .

Grandmama and May were playing casino. A bitter
game, for you build and others take, and yoiu: labour
is but lost that builded; you sow and others reap. But
Grandmama and May were both good-tempered and
ladylike. They played prettily together, age and youth.

Why did life play one these tricks, Mrs. Hilary cried
within herself. What had she done to life, that it
should have deserted her and left her stranded on
the shores of a watering-place, empty-handed and piti-
ful, alone with time the enemy, and with Grandmama,
for whom it was all very well?

TIME 239

In the Crescent music blared out — once more the
Army, calling for strayed sheep in the rain.

"Glory for you, glory for me ! " it shouted. And then,
presently:

"Count — ^your — ^blessingsl Count them one by onel
And it will surprise you what the Lord has donel "

Grandmama, as usual, was beating time with her
hand on the arm of her chair.

"Detestable creatures," said Mrs. Hilary, with
acrimony, as usual.

"But a very racy tune, my dear," said Grandmama,
placidly, as usual.

"Blood! Blood 1 " sang the Army, exultantly, as usual.

May looked happy, and her attention strayed from
the game. The Army was one of the joys, one of the
comic turns, of this watering-place.

"Six and two are eight," said Grandmama, and
picked them up, recalling May's attention. But she
herself still beat time to the merry music-hall tune and
the ogreish words.

Grandmama could afford to be tolerant, as she sat
there, looking over the edge into eternity, with Time,
his fangs drawn, stretched sleepily behind her back.
Time, who flew, bird-like, before May's pursuing feet;
time, who stared balefuUy into Mrs. Hilary's face, re-
turning hate for hate, rested behind Grandmama's back
like a faithful steed who had carried her thus far and
whose service was nearly over.

The Army moved on; its music blared away into the

240 DANGEROUS AGES

distance. The rain beat steadily on wet asphalt roads;
the edge of the cold sea tumbled and moaned; the noise
of the fire flickering was like unsteady breathing, or
the soft fluttering of wings.

"Time is so long/' thought Mrs. Hilary. "I can't
bear it."

"Time gets on that quick/' thought May. "I can't
keep up with it."

"Time is dead/' thought Grandmama. "What next?."

CHAPTER XVII

THE KEY

Not Grandmama's and not Neville's should be, after
all, the last word, but Pamela's. Pamela, who seemed
lightly, and as it were casually, to swing a key to the
door against which Neville, among many others, beat;
Pamela, going about her work, keen, debonair and
detached, ironic, cool and quiet, responsive to life and
yet a thought disdainful of it, lightly holding and easily
renouncing; the world's lover, yet not its servant, her
foot at times carelessly on its neck to prove her power
over it — Pamela said blandly to Grandmama, when the
old lady commented one day on her admirable com-
posure, "Life's so short, you see. Can ans^thing which
lasts such a little while be worth making a fuss about?'*

"Ah," said Grandmama, "that's been my philosophy
for ten years . . . only ten years. You've no business
with it at your age, child."

"Age," returned Pamela, negligent and cool, "has
extremely little to do with ans^thing that matters. The
difference between one age and another is, as a rule,
enormously exaggerated. How many years we've lived
on this ridiculous planet — ^how many more we're going
to live on it — ^what a trifle 1 Age is a matter of ex-
ceedingly little importance."

"And so, you would imply, is ever3^thing else on the
ridiculous planet," said Grandmama, shrewdly.

241

242 DANGEROUS AGES

Pamela smiled; neither affirming nor densong.
Lightly the key seemed to swing from her open hand.

^^I certainly don't see quite what all the fuss is
about/' said Pamela.

THE END

77 5

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