The Challoners

ersity of California
Duthem Regional
Library Facility

m

H

t:|^Jf■^-&^:-s^M^m-^;^^^■^^k\.M^'^^AiJ^^^^^

/*'

PICKWICK BOOKSHOP

6743 Hollywood Boulevard

Hollywood, Calif.

' • . ■ '

NEW.OL^&Rj^E BOOKS

^OS ANGELES, CAL.

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2008 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/challonersOObens

THE CHALLONERS

THIRD EDITION

OLIVE LATHAM
By E. L. Voynich

THE ISSUE

By George Morgan
Illustrated. S1.50
AN ANGEL BY BREVET
By Helen Pitkin

Frontispiece. J1.50
THE NEVER-NEVER LAND
By Wilson Barrett

POKETOWN PEOPLE

By Ella Middleton Tybout
Illustrated in colors. $1.50
HEART OF LYNN

By Mary Stewart Cutting
Illustrated. J1.25
PIGS IN CLOVER
By Frank Danby
$1.50
A SEQUENCE IN HEARTS
By Mary Moss
gi.50
KITTY OF THE ROSES
By Ralph. Henry Barbour

Illustrated in colors. ^.00
NEW SAMARIA

By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D.
Illustrated. S1.25

THE CHALLONERS

by
E. F. BENSON

AUTHOR or " DODO," ETC.

' O world, as God has made it ! all is beauty ;
And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.
What further may be sought for or declared?"

The Guardian Angel. — R. Browning

PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

1904

'^m '^m '^m

Copyright, 1904
By J. B. LiPPiNCOTT Company

Published July, 1904

Eleclrotyped and Printed by
J. B. Ltppincott Company, Philadelphia, U. S. A,

THE CHALLONERS

CHAPTER I

The hot stress of a real midsummer day towards
the end of June had given place to the exquisite tem-
pered warmth of evening, and a little breeze born of
the hour before sunset, and made fragrant among the
glowing flower-beds of the vicarage garden just ruf-
fled the hair of Helen Challoner as she half sat, half
lay in a long deck-chair at the edge of the crocjuet-
lawn, reading a red-covered book with the absorbed
s intentness which she devoted to any occupation that

^ interested her. To the west a line of tall box-hedge,
of that smooth and compacted growth which many
years alone can give, screened her from the level rays
\ of the sun, which was but an hour above the horizon,
"^ and performed the almost more desirable function of
' screening her from the windows of the house, for a
^ cigarette was between her fingers, and the juxtaposi-
^ tion of women and tobacco was a combination that
' had probably never occurred to her father as possible.
The cigarette, however, was as a matter of fact
wasting its sweetness uninhaled and burning down
with a long peninsula of charred paper on the lee-
ward side of it, for her book absorbed her quite com-
pletely. Indeed, this seat here under cover of the box-
hedge was a manoeuvre of double strategy, for the

5

403892

6 THE CHALLONERS

book was no less anathema in this house than the
cigarette, being, in fact, " The Mill on the Floss," by
an author who, however celebrated, yet remained in
the opinion both of Helen's father and aunt a person
of unchristian belief and heathenish conduct.

Helen wore no hat, and the dusky, smouldering gold
of her hair burned low over her forehead. Her eye-
lids, smooth with the unwrinkled firmness of flesh of
twenty-two years, drooped low over her book, but
between the lids there showed a thin line of matchless
violet. There were but a few pages more to read, and
her underlip, full and sensitive in outline, quivered
from time to time with the emotion that so filled her,
and her breath came quickly through her thin nostrils.
As she read on, her half-smoked cigarette dropped
from between the fingers of her left hand and sent
up little whorls of blue smoke as it lay unheeded on
the grass, and her eyes grew suddenly dim. Then
the last page was turned, and with a sudden sobbing
intake of her breath she closed the book.

She sat quite still for a moment, the book lying in
her lap, looking with misty, unseeing eyes over the
great stretch of open land and sky in front of her.
In the immediate foreground lay the croquet-lawn,
with disjected mallets and aimless balls scattered
about, while slowly across it, like some silent tide, the
shadows grew and lengthened. Beyond, at the top of
a grassy bank still in sunlight, ran a terraced walk
bordered deeply with tall herbacious plants; farther
out of sight behind the border were a few fields,
water meadows of the chalk-stream, and beyond again
and above rose the splendid and austere line of Hamp-
shire downs, tanned with this month of English sum-

THE CHALLONERS 7

mer to a russet mellowness. A sky of untarnished
blue held a slip of pale and crescent moon, and the
splendour and the unutterable sadness of evening, of
a day gone, brooded a sweet, regretful presence over
everything.

Suddenly the girl sat up.

" Martin !" she cried, " Martin !"

" Well?" asked a very lazy voice from a hammock
between two trees at the end of the lawn.

" Come here. Oh, do come. I can't shout."

The hammock-ropes wheezed and creaked, and a
tall, loose-limbed boy, looking not much more than
twenty, strolled over to where she sat.

"I've won my bet," he said; "so pay up, Helen.
I said the end would make you cry. You are crying,
you know. I count that crying."

" I know. I'll pay all right," she said. " I almost
wish it had been more."

" So do I," said Martin. " That's easily arranged
then."

Helen paid no attention to this.

" Oh, Martin, those two coming together like that
at the end. And that beast, that beast "

"Stephen?"

" Yes, among others. But Tom particularly. They
none of them knew, they none of them guessed what
she, what Maggie was. Oh, oh ! How horribly sad,
and how horribly beautiful — like, like this evening."

Martin took out his cigarette-case.

" For you ?" he asked.

" No ; you gave me one which I haven't — I don't
know where it is. Oh, it's smoking itself on the grass.
Oh, my goodness! Anyhow, Maggie lived; that is

8 THE CHALLONERS

the point. Dreadful people, dreadful circumstances, all
that one would think would make living impossible,
surrounded her. But she managed it. And what
am I to do, please?"

Martin laughed.

" I wonder if you know how like you that is," he
said.

"What is?"

" Your instant application of Maggie to yourself.
Really it is very odd that you and I are twins. If
only I had half your eye for the practical way of get-
ting through things, I should pass my examinations.
And if you had only half my eye for the theoretical
beauty of leaving distasteful things alone "

Helen sat up with a quick, decisive movement, let-
ting the book drop on the grass.

" Martin, if we didn't happen to have been brother
and sister we should have fallen desperately in love
with each other and been accepted at once. At least
I should have proposed to you, and you would cer-
tainly have said * Yes.' And I should have made home
happy for you on twopence farthing a year, and al-
ways had your slippers warm when you came home
in the evening, and the kettle boiling on the hob.
And you could have spent the rest of our joint incomes
on grand pianos and music paper."

" You are too overwhelmingly generous, Helen,"
said he. " I don't think I can accept it from you."

Helen got up.

" Oh, how I hate, how I hate " she began.

" That's no use," said Martin.

"Use? Of course not. Oh, it's all very well for
you. You are away half the year at Cambridge, and

THE CHALLONERS 9

have no end of a time. But I am here. I and the
Room !"

" What's the ' Room' ?" asked her brother.

Helen pushed back her hair again and sat down on
the lawn by Martin.

" The Room is the latest of my many trials," she
said. " It is quite new. Outside it is corrugated iron,
inside it is distemper, covered by a dreadful sort of
moisture, which is Essence of Village Children. On
the walls there are maps of the Holy Land and Hamp-
shire. I know the road from Dan even unto Beersheba
as well as I know the road from here to Winchester.
There is a library there of soiled books of travel and
missionary enterprise, and a complete set of "Good
Words." There is also a wellspring there, only I can't
find it and stop it up, which continually pours up an
odour of stuffiness. It is the sort of place where
nothing nice could ever happen. And there on Tues-
day evening I teach arithmetic to dreadful little boys.
On Wednesday I read to mothers, — I am getting to
hate the word, — who knit shapeless articles while I
read. I read them abominable little stories about the
respective powers of faith, hope, and love, and the
virtue of being good, and the vice of being wicked. I
don't suppose any of them could be wicked if they
tried."

Helen paused a moment.

" Oh, Martin, it is heavenly to have you at home,
and be able to say all these things straight out just
once. It makes me feel so much better. May I go
on?"

" Yes; take your time," said Martin.

"Well, where had I got to? Oh, yes, Wednesday.

10 THE CHALLONERS

On Thursday Mr. Wilkins, — he's the new curate,
whom you haven't seen yet: spectacles, bicycle, and
proposes to me every now and then, — Mr. Wilkins on
Thursday has something for men only ; I don't know
what, but I'm sure it's dreadful. Friday — girls' class.
And on Saturday a choir practice. A — Choir — Prac-
tice. Now, you have been to church here "

" Rather," said Martin.

" And heard the singing. It is to produce that
marvellous result that we practice. Even I know how
awful it is. There was a man called the Reverend
P. Henley. I sing the alto of his horrid chant. Would
you like to hear me sing? And on Sunday I have the
Sunday-school. They use heaps of pomatum, you
know. And they learn by heart their duty towards
their neighbours, and when I am not looking pull
each other's hair. Then it is Monday again, and we
begin all over again. Oh, think of it ! You see, I am
not by nature a ministering angel, and I have to spend
my whole life in ministering to these people. They
have no intelligence, nothing that I can lay hold of
or join hands with. It is not their fault, and it is not
my fault that I am not a ministering angel. But what
is the use of battering at their intelligences when they
haven't got any? Also they are personally distasteful
to me."

Martin laughed at this tirade, and thoughtfully exe-
cuted a gnat that had designed to dine off his brown
fingers.

" Why, I thought you were such a success," he said.
" Father held you up to me as an example and a
shining light."

" Of course I'm a success," cried Helen. " I've got

THE CHALLONERS 11

to do this sort of thing; and if one has to do some-
thing, it is simple imbeciHty not to do it well. You're
an imbecile, you know, darling."

" Oh, I know that," said he. " At least I've been
told it often enough."

Helen was silent a moment, looking very affection-
ately at her brother's long, slim figure as he lay
stretched on the grass by her side. His straw hat was
tilted over his eyes, and of his face there appeared
only his chin and his mouth a little open, shewing a
very white line of teeth. And the current of her
thoughts hardly changed when she went on to speak
of him, not herself.

" Martin, how is it you can't get through your ex-
aminations?" she asked. "You do work, don't you?
And though I called you an imbecile just now, you
have more perception than most people. Or do you
spend all your day at the piano?"

" He has forbidden me to have a piano in my rooms
next term," said Martin. " So I shall have to waste
more time in walking to the pianos of other people
and interrupting their work as well as my own."

" Ah, that's too bad," said Helen.

Martin only grunted in reply, and his sister went
on:

" But it is foolish of you," she said. " Indeed it is
foolish. No doubt what you have got to do, Greek,
Latin, is all very dull to you and seems very useless,
but it is surely better to look at it as one of those
things that has got to be done. As you say, and as
father says, and as I say, I am a success at all these
dreadful functions in the Room. Why? Merely be-
cause it has got to be done, and therefore, although it

12 THE CHALLONERS

is all intensely stupid and bores me so much that I
could cry, I attend sufficiently to do it respectably.
Now, can't you adopt the same attitude towards clas-
sics? Besides, you know what father feels about it."

" I am perfectly aware of what father feels about
it," said Martin, dryly.

" Has he been at you again ?"

" Yes, I think you might call it that without con-
veying a false impression. He apparently wants to
give me to understand that it is some moral crime not
to be able to do Greek iambics. Well, I am a criminal
then. I can't. Also that it is impossible to be edu-
cated without. Then I began arguing, — which is al-
ways stupid, — and said I supposed it depended on what
one meant by education. And he said he imagined
he was the best judge of that. So there we were."

"And what do you mean by education?" asked
Helen.

" Why, of course, the appreciation of beauty," said
Martin, quickly. " ' O world as God has made it,' —
you know the lines."

" Ah, say them," she said.

Martin sat up, tilting back his hat.

" ' O world as God has made it, all is beauty,
And knowing this is love, and love is duty,
What further may be sought for or declared ?' "

" Yes, that isn't a bad creed," said Helen.

" I hope not, for it is mine. And it seems to me
that you may look for beauty and find it in almost
everything. Where you look for it should depend
entirely on your tastes. Father finds it in the works
of Demosthenes, but I in the works of Schumann and
a few other people he has never heard of."

THE CHALLONERS 13

" But aren't Greek plays beautiful ?" asked Helen.

" Oh, I daresay. But, being what I am, music con-
cerns me more. Don't let's argue. It is so enfeebling.
When I begin arguing I always feel like Mr. Tulliver,
when he said, ' It's puzzling work, is talking.' "

Helen laughed.

" Well, you and I ought to be pretty well puzzled
by now," she said. " I'm sure we've talked enough.
I'll play you one-half game of croquet before dinner.
Oh, by the way, father is dining with Uncle Rupert.
You and Aunt Clara and I will be alone. You will
have to read prayers."

" And sing the hymn an octave below," remarked
Martin.

The Honorable and Reverend Sidney Challoner —
or, as he preferred to be addressed, the Reverend-
Honorable — was a man of method and economy who
hated wasting anything from time down to the brown
paper in which parcels arrived, and at this moment he
was employing the half-hour before it was necessary
to go to dress for dinner at Chartries, his brother's
place, which stood pleasantly among woods about a
mile distant, in finishing his sermon for Trinity Sun-
day. His study, where he worked, was singularly like
himself, and seemed as integral a part of him as the
snail-shell is of the snail. There w^as nothing, for
instance, in the least drowsy or dusty about the room.
Everything was in its place, the place of each thing
being in every case strictly determined by the use to
which it was to be put, and the frequency with which
it was to be used. A scrupulously orderly and ener-
getic severity in fact, was the keynote of the room.

Something of the same characteristic also ran

14 THE CHALLONERS

through the sermon at which he was working, which
was an exposition, historically introduced, of the less
encouraging and comfortable verses of the Athanasian
creed, which his congregation would have recited
during the service. He was master of a style of Eng-
lish, in itself neat, correct, and lucid, which served
him, not as in the sermons of so many preachers, to
clothe and cover his lack of ideas, but to reveal the
abundance of them and convey without possibility or
misunderstanding, but rather with the precision of
hitting a nail on the head, what he thought on any
particular subject. There survived in him, indeed, a
full if not a double portion of the Puritan spirit on
religious matters; and though his mind, his soul, his
actions were all dictated and impelled by a fervent and
whole-hearted Christianity, yet his eloquence was wont
to dwell, and did so here, on the doctrine of eternal
damnation with a very curious gusto. It appeared to
him that the truth of it was abundantly warranted in
the Bible, and that it was therefore his duty as minis-
ter of the Word to bring this as well as other doctrines
home to his flock. And something of the same grim
aspect of duty extended to affairs of ordinary life ; and
where censure was clearly deserved, any offence was
visited by him with a force that his approbation some-
times lacked if there was nothing to blame. The
Puritan, too, survived in a certain mistrust he had of
mirth and gaiety: without being in the least sour, he
was so intensely serious that at any given moment it
appeared to him that there was probably something
better to do than to laugh, and a moment's thought
easily discovered what it was. Of work he was in-
satiable : if he was unsparing to others, at any rate he

THE CHALLONERS 15

never spared himself, and the day of rest was to all
in his house the most iron day of all. All pleasure,
except that which was to him the greatest pleasure in
life, active religious work and religious exercises, was
put away; but since all exercises, even religious ones,
are fatiguing, it was a weary household that went up
to bed on Sunday evening.

Now, though to have a very strong vocation towards
a particular work, to be convinced that such work is
the highest and best in the world, and to do it is a
disposition of affairs that makes for happiness, it is
probable that if you had taken Mr. Challoner una-
wares and asked him if he was happy, he would have
hesitated before he answered. For, in spite of his
firm and convinced attitude, both towards life in gen-
eral and to those most intimate with him, there rose
deep down in the man a great fountain of tenderness,
a great longing for love. Herein lay the secret tragedy
of his life : he longed with the same intensity with
which he served God for the ordinary human affec-
tions and relationships, but through the armour-crust
of his nature — an armour, be it noted, of welded and
hammered work and duty — his human hand could not
break its way to clasp the hands of others. That still
was the tragedy of his life with regard to his two
children, just as it had been even more bitterly so with
regard to his wife, a half-Italian by birth, whom he
had adored with that serious fervour which suffused
his nature. It was just his spiritual anxiety and care
for her which had, by a refined irony of fate, come
like an impassible barrier between them. To her he
seemed always to be checking the innocent and sunny
impulses of joy that were as vitally hers as fervour

16 THE CHALLONERS

was his. He put it that there was always something
better to be done with the precious passing hours than
to sing or laugh or gather flowers or embroider some
dainty fragment of personal embellishment. Or,
rather, let her take these innocent tastes and raise them,
elevate them, dedicate them. Let her sing by all
means, but let her gift of music be devoted to the help
of the parish choir; let her gather flowers to send to
the sick; let her embroider an altar-cloth. But poor
Mrs. Challoner, a girl still in years, whose motor-power
in life was joy, found that to fit her pleasures to use-
ful ends meant that they ceased to be pleasures.
There are many natures, not necessarily shallow or
selfish, like that; and when her husband told her that
the flowers with which she loved to fill her rooms were
beautiful to her so that thereby her thoughts might
be led heavenwards, she was minded to throw them
away.

From the first, indeed, the marriage had been
strangely ill-assorted. It may have been made in
heaven, but in that case it would probably have been
far better if it had not come down to earth. Sidney
Challoner had had his reason and his senses taken cap-
tive for a time by this delicious piece of dew and sun-
light; on her side his imperiousness, his eager over-
mastering desire for her, his extreme good looks, and
perhaps also the fact that he stood next in succession
to the earldom of Flintshire, his elder brother, the pres-
ent holder of that delightful position, being unmar-
ried, led her to accept his devotion. This disillusion-
ment had soon come to each. The exquisite child-like
beauty of his wife, behind which he had conjectured
the child-like spirit, he found to be a mere mask;

THE CHALLONERS 17

while to her the fiery, dominating lover turned to a
hard, unbending master. A year after their marriage
twins were born, and from that time the girl-mother
had drooped and dwindled. The fogs of this northern
climate — fogs, too, more intimate and distressing of
mind and spirit — and the absence of mirth and laughter
chilled her to the bone, and a year afterwards she was
dead.

Her death left him inconsolable, in so far that he
determined never to marry again ; but when his sister
Clara came to keep house for him and look after the
early education of Martin and Helen, it cannot be
denied that the widower found himself more comfort-
able than he had been. For Clara w^as one of those
not uncommon English spinsters who had a perfect
passion for doing the things she ought to do and
leaving completely undone the things she ought not.
As the feminine element in the house of a parish priest
it was her clear mission to be aunt, if not mother, to
the flock, and classes and instructions, so hated of her
niece's soul, grew up under her care like seed sown in
April. She had practically no pleasures, and her only
relaxation was Patience, which she played regularly
from the time dinner was finished till family prayers
at a quarter to ten. Precisely at twenty minutes to
ten, if the cards were going awkwardly, she began to
cheat, and continued, if necessary, to cheat until the
parlourmaid began to set out a row of chairs for the
servants. Thus she was able by the time they filed in
to sweep the cards triumphantly up together in their
due and proper order and be humbly thankful for the
temptations into which she had not fallen that day.

Mr. Challoner this evening found that the perora-

18 THE CHALLONERS

tion with which he concluded his sermon took rather
less time than he had anticipated, and there was still
some ten minutes after he had arranged the sheets in
order and placed them under a paper-weight to be read
through in the morning before he need go to dress.
As his custom was, he closed his eyes for a moment
after finishing his work, in silent prayer that it might
bear good fruit, and then, hearing the clash of croquet-
balls from the garden, he strolled out to see his children.
He had had a very unpleasant talk with Martin that
morning on the subject of his late failure at Cam-
bridge, and though the occasion seemed to him then
and seemed still to have demanded stern speaking, he
had wondered several times since whether he had not
been too severe. Yet how else except by very earnest
remonstrance could he awaken in the lad his sense of
responsibility with regard to the spending of the days
that would never come again. All his life he had
faithfully and strenuously striven to implant in his boy
the duty of making the best and the most of his youth.
Prayer and work were the two great guides of life.
These must be constant and concentrated; and how
gravely and mortally would he himself be to blame if
through any want of inculcation on his part his son
grew up tepid in the one and slack in the other. Still,
and here his essential tenderness groped about, Martin
was young yet and more tender perhaps in mind even
than in years, and the clash of croquet-balls and a sud-
den burst of boyish laughter from the lawn made him
long to enter into his children's pleasures. So without
putting on his hat, for the evening breeze was not too
cool to the head, he went out down the box-hedge and
round the corner on to the croquet-lawn.

THE CHALLONERS 19

Martin, standing with his back to him, had not heard
his approach, and was examining the position of his
two balls, which were quite close together, but with an
uncompromising wire between them. On the bank
where they had been sitting lay " The Mill on the
Floss," and Helen was standing close by her brother,
in the proud, calm consciousness of having wired him
with complete success.

" Well, of all the devilish things to do, Helen," said
Martin at length, and struck wildly in the hopes of an
impossible cannon off the wire.

" My turn, I think," she said.

She walked across to the ball in play and saw her
father.

" Come and play, father," she said.

" No, dear; thanks. I must go and dress in a few
minutes. Martin, old boy, come here a moment."

Again his duty, the need for remonstrance, strove
with his tenderness.

" Martin," he said, gently, " that's rather strong lan-
guage to use to your sister, isn't it? Don't get in that
sort of habit, dear fellow; never use words idly like
that."

At this all the genial instinctive pleasure faded out
of Martin's face and his eyes fell.

" Yes, father, I'm sorry," he said, in a perfectly dull,
conventional voice.

" I know it was only thoughtlessness, old boy," said
his father ; " but try to think. There then. How's
the game going? — is Helen playing with the frightful
precision we are getting accustomed to? Look there,
she's hit your ball from right across the lawn. Don't
be too merciless, Helen, with your poor brother."

20 THE CHALLONERS

Helen smiled and made some laughing reply to her
father. Then her eye caught sight of the book lying
on the bank, her smile faded, and as she went after
the ball she had hit she wondered what could be done.
She guessed, though she had not heard the words, that
Martin had already been rebuked for wdiat he had
said. She knew there had been one dreadful hour
already that morning, and another was certain if her
father saw the book. Mean time he was strolling
down the lawn right in its direction, where it was
lying radiant and blatant in its crimson cover on the
vivid green of the grass. Martin also had seen what
would happen, and as she passed him whispered to
her:

" He'll see it. O Lord !" with a drearily comic ex-
pression.

Mr. Challoner strolled on, came to where the book
lay, and picked it up with the amiable intention of put-
ting it on the chair to save its cover from the damp.
As he did this, he read the title on the back. Then
there was a dreadful pause.

" Is this yours, Martin ?" he asked.

"Yes, father."

Mr. Challoner said nothing more, but went on his
w^ay, taking the book with him. At the corner of the
box-hedge, however, he turned.

" If you are up when I come back, Martin," he said,
'Svill you come into my study? But don't wait up
for me if I am late."

He turned his back again to walk on, and Martin
thought he had gone. But next moment he paused
again, and raised his voice slightly.

" You should answer when I speak to you," he said.

THE CHALLONERS 21

" I thought you had gone, sir," said Martin, with a
little tremor of irritation in his tone.

This time he passed out of sight, and Martin threw
down his croquet-mallet.

" Rather bad luck," he said. " I'm not popular to-
day. Helen, what a fool you were to leave it on the
grass."

" Oh, I am so sorry Martin," she said. " What can
I do? Would it do any good if I said I had been
reading it ?"

" No, not the slightest," said he. " There would be
enough to go round."

" I will if you like," said she. " You see, the worst
of it is that only three days ago, the day before you
came home, he said that he would not have a book of
hers in the house. But you couldn't be expected to
know that."

" No, but I did," said Martin, " because you told
me."

Helen threw down her mallet too.

" Oh, it's dreary," she said.

Lord Flintshire, Mr. Challoner's elder brother, with
whom he was dining to-night, was a figure of some dis-
tinction. He had been at one time a political factor
of great weight in the country, a weight due chiefly
to the force of inertia, since he never professed the
least personal interest in politics and could not possibly
be considered as having any ambition or aim to gratify
in spending so much time and labour in the interests
of the Conservative party. His wealth and position,
in fact, were like a large, heavy parcel strongly tied up
and dropped into the Tory scale. But at the age of
fifty-five he and they considered that he had done

22 THE CHALLONERS

enough, resigned the Cabinet appointment he held, and
for the last seven years had devoted himself with far
more zest than he had ever brought into the political
arena to the aristocratic pursuit of doing nothing what-
ever. To the successful discharge of this he brought
all his acuteness and perception and practised it with
such charming success as to raise it to the level of a
fine art. He was never in a hurry and never either felt
or exhibited the slightest sign of irritation or annoy-
ance at anything which the world or the powers of
heaven or hell chose to do. He had great apprecia-
tion of the fine arts and even a higher appreciation of
the inimitable comedy of life, so that to live in a beauti-
ful house, which he did, and fill it with congenial
people constituted for him a far more engrossing occu-
pation than politics had ever been. For his brother
Sidney he had a very real affection, but also a cer-
tain sympathetic pity. He could understand, as he
had once told him, what it must be to " feel like
that."

" You live perpetually in a bracing climate, my dear
fellow," he said, " and find it positively necessary to do
dumb-bells all day. Yes, I will certainly give you a
hundred pounds for your village Room. I shall be
charmed to do so, but I don't want to hear about it.
And, pray, let me know if you want more."

There was only a small party that night, and when
the women went upstairs and the men seceded to the
smoking-room. Lord Flintshire detained his brother for
a moment as he was leaving.

" Will you not stop a quarter of an hour, my dear
fellow," he said, "and have a chat? I have not seen
you since Easter. How are you all? How are Helen

THE CHALLONERS 23

and Martin ? That girl grows handsomer every time I
see her. And Martin?"

" Martin has just achieved one of his annual fail-
ures at Cambridge," said his father. " Yes, I will wait
a quarter of an hour, Rupert. I should like to talk to
you about him. I am a good deal troubled."

"Wild oats of some kind?" asked the other. "If
so, I should, if I were you, look very steadily in another
direction. As one grows older, my dear Sidney, one
is apt to look on wild oats as something much more
poisonous than they really are — nightshade — deadly
nightshade, for instance. But they are only wild oats
really."

Sidney sat down.

" Ah, you don't expect me to share that view," he
said. " Sin is sin whether you are twenty or sixty.
But Martin, as far as I know, has not been "

" Playing about," said Lord Flintshire, with the
amiable desire to find a periphrasis. But it did not
please his brother.

" I can't discuss things with you in that spirit," he
said. " However, that point is really alien. I have
no reason to suspect Martin of such things. But what
I deplore is his general slackness. It is to the mind like
low physical health to the body : it predisposes to all
diseases. I had to speak to him severely about his
failure at Cambridge this morning, — too severely per-
haps,— and this evening again he has distressed me
very much."

" What has he done?" asked Rupert.

" Well, you will think it very insignificant, no doubt,
but to me it appears most significant of his general
state. He was playing croquet with Helen and I heard

24 THE CHALLONERS

him say to her, ' Well, of all the devilish things to do.'
Now, when we were boys, Rupert, we didn't say that
sort of thing at all, and we couldn't have said it to
our sisters."

Lord Flintshire felt some kindly amusement at this.
Sidney was such a dear fellow.

" But it is some years since we were boys," said he
at length, " and rightly or wrongly the world has be-
gun to take things more — how shall I say it — to ride
life on the snaffle instead of the curb. What else has
Martin done?"

" He has brought into the house ' The Mill on the
Floss.' "

Rupert's admirable courtesy enabled him not to
smile.

" Have you read the book?" he asked.

" No ; but I will not have a book of that author in
the house. I said so only the other day. Martin must
have known it. For all I know, he has given it to his
sister to read."

" I hope so," said Lord Flintshire, quietly. " Be-
cause it is a very beautiful book. Of course his dis-
obedience to your wishes is a different point, and to
my mind a more serious one. But am I to understand
that you are consulting me as to what general line you
should take with Martin, what policy you should pur-
sue?"

" Yes, I am very much puzzled, and I cannot seem
to get any guidance about it. It does no good, I am
afraid, to pull the poor lad up first here and then there
thirty times a day. And it appears to do no good
either to talk to him on the general principles of
earnestness and industry. But I do so want him to

THE CHALLONERS 25

grasp them. All the faults I see in him spring from
slackness. He will not think. He did not think what
the word he used to his sister means. He never thinks
how just a little carelessness about his work repeated
and again repeated must lead to a habit of idleness. I
am most deeply thankful that our father was strict with
us, Rupert. He made industry a habit with one."

Rupert laughed.

" A habit from which I have succeeded in freeing
myself," he said. " But Martin is not slack about
everything. He is not slack about music."

" Ah, that is a distraction which is responsible for a
great deal of his idleness," said his father. " But I
have forbidden him to have a piano in his room next
term."

Lord Flintshire did not pursue this. There was a
plot already on foot here, and his brother got up, and
with his quick, neat touch put straight a couple of
books lying on the table.

'' There is this, too," he said. " Not only does my
continual correction of him seem to do no real good,
but it certainly does harm to my relations with the
boy. He will get to look on me as a continual menace
to his pleasure, as a continual school-master. And I
want to be kind to the lad, to make him happy, to make
a friend of him. But when that which I consider my
duty leads me to correct him, and again and again to
correct him, I am so afraid that his estimate of the
love I bear him will be lowered, eclipsed. And noth-
ing in the world, Rupert, could be sadder to me than
that my children should not think of me as their
friend."

His strong, tender voice quivered for a moment as

26 THE CHALLONERS

he spoke these words, and he paused a moment to
regain the complete control of himself.

" But nothing, not even that," he said, " must or
shall stand in my way or count for anything in regard
to the responsibility which God has laid upon me to
make my children worthy children of Him. I should
be the weakest and most culpable of fathers if for the
sake of any human affection, however sweet, I sacri-
ficed one jot or tittle of that."

Rupert was silent a moment. Though he had al-
ways felt great respect and esteem and strong affec-
tion for his brother, he had never found him, emo-
tionally speaking, particularly interesting. He had the
greatest admiration for his industrious, strenuous life,
his undoubted mental gifts, his swift and keen intelli-
gence, the absolute undeviating probity of his char-
acter; but his admiration had been somewhat of the
sort a mechanician may feel for his bright engine with
its rhythmical accuracy, its precise strokes, its clean
efficiency and strength. But suddenly the engine had
developed a human and a pathetic side : its throbs were
not steam-driven only, but they were the throbs of a
human heart. True, he had known the wild adora-
tion of Sidney for his girl-wife, but that with its
speedy disillusionment had seemed to him the one con-
cession Sidney had made to the flesh. It was human,
but it was not high humanity, otherwise he would have
made a better recovery, so to speak. His passion had
been awakened then, but not the man, and his religion
and his passion together had mixed no better than oil
and water. The experience had not humanized him.

Lord Flintshire's strong appreciation of the inimi-
table comedy of life did not help him here, as he sat

THE CHALLONERS 27

silent for a moment before replying. Elements of
comedy were not wanting, his brother's heart-felt dis-
tress at the fact of Martin calling his sister devilish,
for instance, was ludicrous enough, but these things
combined to form nothing to laugh at; the result was
tragedy, tragedy in no grand and great style, but a
pitiful little tragedy of misunderstanding and estrange-
ment. And Rupert, knowing his brother and knowing
Martin, saw no possibility of comedy entering with
any unexpected " happy ending." For Sidney was,
so to speak, an irreconcileable : he admitted no sort or
shadow of compromise ; he would hold no parleying
Math the enemy, even if the enemy was entrenched in
one of his own household. He and Martin, in fact,
disagreed vitally and fundamentally; the lad was a
good lad accidentally, essentially he was an artist to
his finger-tips. Those were the influences which gov-
erned him. But to his father all the artists and all
the artistic achievements of man were no more than a
fringe on the visible garment of God.

" No one can really help you in this," said Rupert
at length, '' except yourself and Martin. But I can
suggest to you a certain point of view. Do, I beg you,
allow for individualism in other people. You yourself,
dear Sidney, have a great deal of it. But there is no
reason to suppose that Martin has any less. And re-
member abso that the younger generation is always
ahead of the elder, and though we can, by using ex-
treme care, influence them a little, yet the reins of
government are in their hands, not ours. That is
partly why I retired from politics. And as a practical
suggestion I offer you this : I beg you to say nothing
more about ' The Mill on the Floss' to Martin. It is

28 THE CHALLONERS

quite impossible that he should agree with you, simply
because he is of the next generation to you. Indeed,
if you do not take care, that which you are afraid of
will certainly happen, even if it has not happened al-
ready. He will get to think of you as a man who is
always finding fault, always correcting — a thing fatal
to friendship."

" Is it irremediable if it has already happened?"
asked Sidney, with a rather pathetic humility.

" Of course it is not, just because boys are so ex-
traordinarily generous, so eager to like one. Martin is
a delightful boy : he is upright, honest, clean. Be
thankful for that, and let him develop on his own
lines. He will do so, by the way, whether you like it
or not; so it is just as well to like it. Besides, you
must not interfere with other people's individualities.
I feel that rather strongly."

Lord Flintshire got up and began walking softly up
and down the room. In face he was very like his
brother, but, though older, he looked younger, for
there was a softness about his features extraordinarily
youthful.

" As one gets old, my dear Sidney," he said, '"' one
stands in danger of getting old-fashioned. That seems
to me to be a very terrible thing. One's own convic-
tions may become hard, fixed in outline, incapable of
growth or adaptation, and one may become incapable
of imagining that one can be wrong. You may
draw your convictions from the highest source ; you
may be able to say quite honestly, ' I believe with
my whole heart that the will of God is so.' But, as
Oliver Cromwell once remarked, ' It is just possible
that one may be mistaken.' "

THE CHALLONERS 29

He paused a moment.

" I seldom talk so much," he said, " but I have not
quite done even now. The younger generation, take
them all round, ride life, as I said, on the snaffle. Now,
if 3'ou choose, you may call that slackness, and as slack-
ness condemn it. But all your condemnation of it will
do no good. Martin will continue to be what you call
slack; mean time you are in danger of becoming what
he would call tiresome. He will also, on occasion,
continue to call his sister ' devilish.' Nor is there the
slightest reason why he should not. If you or I had
called our sisters devilish when we were boys, it would
have been undesirable. What you forget is that ' devil-
ish' does not mean now what it meant thirty years ago,
nor does Martin mean by it what you mean by it."

Mr. Challoner got up too, his mouth drawn rather
tight.

'* I am much obliged to you for your advice, Ru-
pert," he said, " but I find I disagree with you in
principle so absolutely and fundamentally that there
is no use in my discussing with you. I too claim my
individual liberty, a very large part of which is con-
cerned with my sense of responsibility for my chil-
dren."

" My dear fellow, you make a great mistake," said
Lord Flintshire.

" I cannot alter my convictions."

" And you will make a great mess of it," said the
other.

CHAPTER II

Lady Sunningdale had few habits, and was thus
very adaptable, but one was to make a punctual first
appearance half an hour before luncheon. Her ap-
pearance, though long-delayed, was brilliant when it
came, and it was as if a fresh and many-coloured sun
had arisen to take the shine out of the splendour of the
noon-day. Years were the only things in which she
was no longer young, but the youthfuln^ss of her mind,
tastes, character was perfectly spontaneous and natu-
ral, and she still retained to the full all the eager curi-
osity of youth, all youth's insatiable appetite for pleas-
ure. In person she was very tall and largely made, but
she moved with exquisite briskness and vigour, and,
though stout, still clung to her waist. Her hat gener-
ally contained a perfect aviary of birds perched about
on it, and her dresses to match her tastes were rather
youthful in cut and colour. She wore also white satin
shoes with extremely high heels, which had been
known, when she walked in wet or clayey places, to
be drawn with a cloop, like the drawing of a cork,
completely off her feet, the heel being driven into the
ground by her weight in the manner of a nail. But,
as a rule, she avoided clayey places; indeed, she sel-
dom walked at all, except at this stated time, half an
hour before luncheon. But she made up for her lack
of walking by talking; this she did on all occasions
to as many people as possible, and was extremely en-
tertaining.
30

THE CHALLONERS 31

She was staying now (she spent the greater part of
her Hfe in staying) for a rather extensive week-end,
that is to say from Friday till Monday, with Lord
Flintshire, and the morning after her arrival came
radiantly downstairs at a quarter-past one. Two
irrepressible dachshunds barked excitedly round her,
and as she stepped on to the terrace where her host was
sitting, she was trying, without the least success, to
put up a pale-blue sunshade with a handle of Saxe-
china.

" Dear Flints," she cried, " how sweet of you to
wait for me! Where is everybody? Yes. Isn't it a
divine morning? Everything looks as if it had been
washed during the night. Why is one such a fool as
ever to leave the country and go to London? If one
had a single spark of originality one w^ould never go
near it. Yes. Please put up my sunshade for me,
I know I look hideous this morning ; but it doesn't mat-
ter how one looks in the country, which is another of
its charms. But I didn't sleep a wink, — I never close
my eyes in the country ; really, London is the place to
live in. I have contradicted myself, have I not ? Who
cares? I'm sure I don't. Where are the dogs ? Please
whistle on your fingers, if you can. So piercing, is it
not? There they are! Ah, how naughty! Yes, who
cares whether one contradicts one's self? It shews, in
fact, that one's powers of sympathy and of seeing
other points of view are defective, unless one sees both
sides of every question, and upholds both vehemently.
Yes, do let us walk down the terrace. I adore walking.
Oh, Suez Canal, running over the flower-beds like that!
How naughty !"

"Suez Canal?" interpolated Lord Flintshire, who,

32 THE CHALLONERS

walking by her side, looked like a small rowing-boat
towed by a brig in full sail.

"Yes, don't you see how dreadfully long he is?
Now tell me all about your brother who dined here
last night. I thought him too fascinating, and we had
a great talk about somebody called Kennet, I think he
said. Mr. Chancellor is very high-church, is he not?
His mouth looked to me high-church. There is some-
thing perfectly beautiful about high-church mouths.
Look at Lady Otterbourne's : her mouth is exactly like
your brother's. So is the Bishop of Tavistock's, whom
I adore. He plays the flute divinely, looking funnier
than anything I ever saw — so funny that I never want
to laugh. Somehow a bishop playing on a flute — or
do I mean low-church? I think I must mean low-
church. And so your brother is Martin's father. I
sent a message by him last night to tell Martin to
come and see me this afternoofi. I completely lost my
heart to Martin last winter. It is terrible to lose one's
heart when one is fifty, because one has already lost
one's looks, so that it leaves one really denuded. Be-
sides it seems so careless. That is a chestnut, I think.
But everything worth saying has been said years before
even I was born. Where is Suez? Naughty!"

Lady Sunningdale's conversation flowed in the man-
ner of a river in flood; it flowed over everything, it
foamed and spouted, and there was always the sense —
never left unjustified — that there was plenty more to
come. It flowed, in fact, over so many different sub-
jects that her interlocutor had a practically limitless
range of topics from which to select the matter of his
reply ; on the other hand, he could fly off on any tan-
gent of his own without initiating incongruity, or,

THE CHALLONERS 33

again, he could be silent, completely confident that
Lady Sunningdale would go on. But the last topic
suited Lord Flintshire very well.

" Do tell me what you think of Martin," he said.

'' But too fascinating and a genius. That combina-
tion is so rare; geniuses are usually quite unpresent-
able. He was staying with us at Easter, and I used to
borrow him, as one borrows a book and tries to forget to
return it. Where is Sahara ? Will you whistle again,
please. And his playing — well, merely sublime. He
can even play Wagner on the piano. Orchestral music
on the piano is generally detestable, but Martin — I
used to tell him I believed he had instruments con-
cealed about his person. He is quite clever enough to.
My dear, you can hear the strings. Then he used to
draw me caricatures of all the extremely tiresome peo-
ple who were in the house. And his mimicry! Sun-
ningdale finding fault with the soup, and me telling
him he was a gross feeder. My dear Flint, I could
have sworn it was us. You know the charming way
we behave at dinner. Frank Yorkshire, too, — you
would have thought that nobody could have imitated
Frank. But Martin — ' Beauty is probably evil in its
origin, which accounts for the extreme plainness of
good people!' Simply too killing. I suppose your
low-church brother doesn't approve of him, or appre-
ciate him. A slight frigidity occurred when I men-
tioned Martin!"

" He certainly doesn't appreciate all the excellencies
you have mentioned. I doubt if he really knows they
exist."

" That is always the way," said Lady Sunningdale,
with a florid gesture of despair. " That very rare

3

34 THE CHALLONERS

product, a natural artistic genius, always makes its way-
ward appearance in utterly uncongenial places. 1 am
bound to say it usually leaves them before long; but
what a waste of time! Dear Flints, don't walk quite
so fast. I had no idea this terrace was so interminable.
We shall be miles from the house when we reach the
end. Where are my angels? But it really is a pity.
And I suppose his father will make a curate or a Greek
scholar of him."

" That is just what he is afraid he will not do. He
was talking to me about it last night."

Lady Sunningdale's attention suddenly and com-
pletely wandered.

" You should build a pergola here. Flints," she said.
" There is a pergola at Frank Yorkshire's villa in
Capri, which is the most divine thing I ever saw, cov-
ered with roses. We used to dine there, and earwigs
dropped into one's hair, and from the dark one heard
those extraordinary Italian melodies from the piazza.
That is where I should like to live, to leave the world
utterly and entirely and just exist. So unworldly.
Yes. My angels, they want their dinner, and so does
their mamma."

They had got to the end of the terrace, and Lady
Sunningdale gazed about her with roving, abstracted
eyes. She never did anything, even gaze, without her
thoughts being occupied with something totally dif-
ferent, and now as she looked over the great swelling
lines of downs which flowed and melted into each
other like interlacing muscles away to the horizon,
across the hollow where the roofs and grey spires of
Winchester trembled in a haze of heat, her thoughts
were further away than the horizon itself.

THE CHALLONERS 35

" So affected of people to pretend not to like food,"
she said, " or, if it is genuine, it shows they are partly
imbecile, lacking the sense of taste. Yes, what Mar-
tin wants is to be chucked into an artistic milieu to see
w^hat he is really worth. And the artistic milieu is
exactly what he hasn't got. He is starving, he is
living on himself. Now, no artist except the very
greatest artist can do that, and even then he dies very
quickly. He wants to be soaked and steeped in art.
Paris, now ! There is the artistic milieu there ; but the
music is generally atrocious, — nearly as bad as in Lon-
don. He could lunch at the Cafe Champetre then."

"Why do you wish him to do that?" asked Lord
Flintshire.

" Dear Flints, because the cooking is so good. The
really artist is a gourmet in everything, including food.
Think of the story of Beethoven and the soup. He
threw it in the footman's face because it was cold. He
could not bear that it should not be hot. Cold soup in
one's face — how horrible ! — and thrown by Beethoven !
Even that would not make it pleasant. Certainly Mar-
tin has the instincts of a great artist. He has a sense
of form in all he does, which, I expect, means nothing
to your brother. Certainly also he has the sense of
form in himself. My dear, he is an absolute Adonis,
and as slim as asparagus, the English kind."

Lord Flintshire laughed.

" And when do you expect this paragon ?" he
asked.

" After lunch. To let Martin go on learning Greek
and curacies is like looking on at somebody being
slowly murdered. Pray do as I tell you and get him
away from that terrible parsonage. Why, the word

36 THE CHALLONERS

is enough to upset an artist. It sounds so like par-
snips."

" I feel sure his father would never consent to let
him run free in Paris," he said.

"Why not?"

" Because he has the insular distrust of Paris as a
residence for the young."

" My dear Flints," she said, with some impatience,
" if a young man is going to get into messes and make
mudpies, he will make them anywhere. Surely it is
the least desirable thing in the world that he should
make them in the parsonage. Yes. You see your
brother has so much character himself that he doesn't
seriously think that anybody else has got any."

" I wish you would say these things to him," said
Lord Flintshire.

" I will, if I get an opportunity. But if not Paris,
London, Rome, anywhere. Take poor Martin's collar
off, and let him roll in the grass. Yes, let us turn.
Surely it is lunch-time. But do put up a pergola here
all down the terrace and leave out the earwigs. My
angels, we are going to our dinners."

She turned, her very high heels clicking on the hard
gravel of the terrace, and paused a moment.

" The mistake in principle which your fascinating
brother is making," she said, " lies in thinking that
every one is cast in the same mould, which is his own,
and has to be educated in the same manner. Whereas
one of the few things of which we can be absolutely
certain is that everybody is cast in different moulds.
What fools people are really ! Fancy trying to make a
scholar or a parson of poor Martin ! Such a waste, too,
as well as an impossibility. Sunningdale might as well

THE CHALLONERS 37

insist on my taking lessons in juggling or mathematics.
Don't you hate conjuring-tricks? What is the point
of cutting open a loaf of bread and finding a globe of
gold-fish inside it? Nobody in their senses could call
me stupid, but I am morally incapable of adding up
three figures correctly. Why? Simply because the
process bores me, and I therefore do it wrong."

" That is a fascinating theory of education for the
young."

" It may or may not be fascinating, but it is certainly
true. The point of education is to develop any taste
you may possess, not to bore you with the acquisition
of knowledge. Ah, there is Stella Plympton coming
to meet us. She has immense charm, and look at the
way her head is set on her shoulders. Really, to have
a neck is the only thing that matters. A girl with a
neck has only to say ' Good-morning' for every one to
exclaim, ' How brilliant !' Whereas people like me,
with no neck, have to talk from morning till night at
the tops of our voices, and wear ridiculous hats, or else
every one says, ' Poor dear, how much she has aged,
and how very dull and heavy she is.' Flints, I have
immense trials. I often wonder how I keep up as I
do, and am so frequently the life and soul of the party.
Yes. Every one made in the same mould indeed !
Stella and me, for instance. Flints, you brother is an
imbecile. I don't propose to learn Greek, because he
can talk it in his sleep. Helen, too ! Is she to be kept
in that dreadful parsonage all her life, and see nobody
but district visitors? I think we ought to take your
brother's family in hand. He neglects them shame-
fully; he ought to be prosecuted for criminal neglect.
A man has a duty towards his children."

403802

38 THE CHALLONERS

Lord Flintshire laughed.

" And only last night I was telling Sidney that his
sense of duty towards them was too strong."

Again Lady Sunningdale's attention rushed head-
long away with the bit in its teeth ; it was so rapid that
one could not say it wandered.

" The last act of the ' Gotterdammerung' !" she ex-
claimed. " My dear, they gave it superbly the other
night; at Covent Garden, too, of all places, — though
the ravens did come in ten bars too soon, and Siegfried
had to throw them away. I never slept for a week
afterwards."

The performance in question, therefore, must have
taken place at least a week ago, for there was no man-
ner of doubt that when Martin arrived, an hour or so
after lunch. Lady Sunningdale was snatching a brief
interval of much-needed repose after her sen'night
vigil under the cedar on the lawm. The rest of the
party, with the exception of Stella Plympton, had
dispersed to spend the afternoon in what she con-
sidered the violent English fashion ; that is to say,
Frank Yorkshire and her brother had gone to play golf.
Lord Flintshire had taken Lady Sunningdale's daugh-
ter for a ride, and Lord Sunningdale himself, who had
an insatiable mania for losing large sums of money in
what he euphemistically called farming, had gone to
feel horses' legs and poke pigs in the back with the
Scotch bailiff. Martin, in consequence, who had
walked over the fields from the terrible parsonage and
approached his uncle's house from the garden side,
found an idyll of placidity occupying the stage below
the cedar, for a young woman of about his own age
was sitting with an air of extreme content doing

THE CHALLONERS 39

nothing whatever, and in a basket-chair close by was
Lady Sunningdale, recuperating after the " Gotterdam-
merung." Martin had formed a somewhat copious
subject of conversation during lunch, and it required no
particular exercise of ingenuity on Stella's part to guess
who the tall, straw-hatted figure was. From him
again she looked at Lady Sunningdale's slumbers, and
glancing back to Martin raised her eyebrows, as if to
ask what had better be done. Then she rose noiselessly
from her chair, and beckoning to him with a little
amused, friendly gesture, walked quietly away from
the immediate neighbourhood.

" You must be Mr. Challoner," she said, holding out
her hand ; " and Lady Sunningdale, apparently ex-
hausted by the prospect of your arrival, is snatching a
few moments of repose. What are we to do, then?
Shall we wake her and risk her immediate displeasure,
or let her sleep and risk her ultimate displeasure ? We
are quite certain to decide wrong."

Much as Martin liked Lady Sunningdale, his instant
and instinctive decision was not to wake her, for an
enforced tete-a-tete with Stella had its obvious attrac-
tions. She was nearly as tall as he, and her dark-grey
eyes almost on a level with his. Her face was a short
oval, slightly and charmingly irregular in feature, the
nose a little tip-tilted, the mouth a little full. This,
set on the neck, which, according to Lady Sunningdale,
could supply the place of intellectual brilliance, made
a very good reason for risking the ultimate, not the
immediate displeasure.

" My name is Stella Plympton, by the way," the
girl went on. " Pray excuse my introducing so stupid
a topic. A person's name matters so very little, does

40 THE CHALLONERS

it not? But sometimes it is inconvenient not to know
uninteresting things, like names, and the hours at
which trains leave stations. Aren't you thirsty after
your walk? Will you not go and forage for fluids?
And what are we to do?"

Martin looked at her with his direct lucid gaze.

" No fluid for me, thanks," he said. " What do you
advise ? One can't go and say ' Hi, Lady Sunning-
dale.' "

Stella laughed.

"I couldn't," she said; "but I think you might, if
you felt disposed. She adores you, you know."

Martin laughed also, flushing slightly.

" I adore her," he said. " She makes me laugh all
the time. And I love laughing."

" So do I," she said. " So please go and say ' Hi,
Lady Sunningdale.' I'm sure it would make me laugh.
You won't? Then a false and conventional code of
politeness dictates that I should inflict my company on
you, though you would probably rather be left alone.
Anyhow, do not let us grill here in the sun like beef-
steaks. There appears to be chairs in the shade over
there. From there, too, we shall occupy a strategic
position in which to observe Lady Sunningdale's
slumbers."

There was a slightly sub-acid flavour about this of
which Martin was just conscious. Stella, it seemed,
was conscious of it too, for she explained :

" I feel rather a failure this afternoon," she said,
" for Lady Sunningdale asked me to stop and amuse
her till you came. The result of my efforts to be en-
tertaining, you can see!"

" Please amuse me instead," said Martin.

THE CHALLONERS 41

" I daren't try, for fear you should fall asleep too.
How is your sister? I remember meeting her once.
But, though I have never seen you before, I feel as if
I knew you much better. Really at lunch we talked
solidly and exclusively about you. You can do every-
thing, they said, except pass examinations. That
seemed to me very admirable, for it is notorious, as
Lady Sunningdale said, that any fool can pass exami-
nations. She deduced from that that you can't be a
fool."

Martin laughed.

" I ought to apologize, then," said he ; " though
really is isn't my fault that I monopolized the conversa-
tion at lunch or that I am left on your hands now. I
hope it wasn't a long lunch."

" Ah, but isn't it the fault of your character that
you get talked about?"

" But not that Lady Sunningdale goes to sleep after
lunch. At least I don't see how !"

Stella laughed too.

" You put it down to mere lunch?" she said. " But
if one were disagreeable one might suggest that it was
the conversation at lunch, not lunch itself, that led to
the desire for repose. How rude of me!"

Martin looked across to the cedar; he was quite
willing that Lady Sunningdale's need for repose should
not yet be satisfied.

" But I thought you settled that it was your
efforts to amuse her that produced that result," he
said.

The sound of Stella's laughter perhaps roused Lady
Sunningdale, for she moved in her chair and suddenly
sat bolt upright.

42 THE CHALLONERS

" Ah, she is awake," said Stella. *' We can pea-
shoot each other no longer. What a pity!"

" But that at least is very polite of you," said Martin,
rising.

" And that is very modest," she answered. " It
might have been true."

Shrill, staccato cries came from the cedar as the two
walked back across the hot velvet of the lawn.

" Stella dear, it is too bad of you," shrieked Lady
Sunningdale. " I send for my own particular young
man and you monopolize him all the afternoon. Mar-
tin, you perfidious monster. What do you mean by
flirting with Stella under my very eyes? Did I close
them a moment? I think I must have. Is it not tea-
time? Where is Sahara? There is a terrible black
dog of Flints's. My dear, it is too hot for words, and
have you walked all the way from the terrible parson-
age to see me ? That is too sweet of you. What have
you and Stella been talking about? Stella dearest, if
you would whistle three or four times for Sahara.
Martin, Frank Yorkshire is here. So odd, two counties
in the same house in another county. Is not geography
detestable? Yes. I sat next your father last night. I
don't think I ever saw anybody so unlike as you two.
I don't think that's grammar. Stella, you went fast
asleep, I thought, in that chair, and when I woke up, I
found it was me in the other. Where are the dogs?
Martin, the ' Gotterdammerung,' was too exquisite!
Ternina ! Floods, I assure you — I wept floods, and at
the critical moment I tugged at my necklace, and it
broke, and a large pearl fell into the trombone below.
Why did you not come up to town, as I told you, for it?
Not the pearl, — do not be so foolish."

THE CHALLONERS 43

Her slumber had slightly dishevelled Lady Sunning-
dale, and as she poured forth this surprising nonsense
she effected various small repairs and generally made
the crooked straight. Sahara, the delinquent dachs-
hund, recalled by shrill whistling from Stella, wad-
dled pathetically up to her, and a violent wagging of
heliotrope in a flower-bed near probably indicated the
locality of Suez Canal.

" And we are going to send you to London or Paris
or Rome, Martin," she continued. " And we don't
quite know which. Tell me, is your father naturally
solemn, or is his solemnity beautifully assumed. I
don't think any one could really be as solemn as he ap-
pears to be. He sat next me at dinner last night
and was quite fascinating. I shall have seven candle-
sticks on my dressing-table for the future, and he
extremely reserved. Dear me, I suppose it would have
been better not to have said that. But really his at-
titude about you is ridiculous. Do imitate him. I am
sure you can."

The corners of Martin's mouth quivered slightly.

" I think I won't," he said.

" You mean you can."

" I think, perhaps, I could," said Martin, guardedly.

" Ah, do. Imitate our conversation last night about
matters of high- and low-church. Wasn't it dreadful ?
I mixed them up, and I don't know which is which
now. Why will Suez Canal always leap about in gar-
den-beds when there is the whole lawn ? Naughty !
Martin, we have been talking a great deal about you.
I am rather bored with you. I stop here over Sunday,
and I shall go to church if your father preaches. I
think that will give me more influence with him. He

44 THE CHALLONERS

said he would very likely come over to tea to-day,
I shall never forgive him if he does not, because I
w^ant to talk to him about you. We are not going to
let you blush unseen any more, and waste your sweet-
ness on the parsonage air. You've got to go and work.
Men must work, though I never saw the slightest need
for women to weep. I haven't wept for years, except
the other night at the ' Gotterdammerung.' What a
charming picture of domestic life, Martin reading
Greek history at the table and Mrs. Martin sobbing
violently in the corner ! Yes. How I run on ! I sup-
pose you really ought to go to Germany and eat cherry
jam with your chicken."

" How horrible!" said Stella. " Must one take it?"

" If you want to enter into the essential Teutonic
spirit you must. You might as well hope to feel like
an Anglo-Saxon without being always in a rage or
playing violent games as try to be German without
jam. How I hate women who play games ! They are
nearly as odious as men who don't. Let us go indoors,
and Martin shall play to us till tea-time. Afterwards
he shall play till dinner-time."

Lady Sunningdale surged slowly to her feet and
looked helplessly about.

"Where are the dogs?" she said. "It is too tire-
some. They are sure to stray into the woods, and
Flints's horrid pheasants will peck them. My dar-
lings! Ah, there they are amid what was once be-
gonias. It looks more like a battlefield now. How
naughty ! Come at once, all of you !"

There was no doubt whatever that Martin's piano-
playing was of a very remarkable order, and before he
was half-way through Chopin's first ballade, Stella,

THE CHALLONERS 45

who had been accustomed to consider the piano as an
instrument for the encouragement of conversation
after dinner, or at the most as the introduction to the
vocal part of a concert, found herself sitting bolt up-
right in her chair with a strange tingling excitement
spreading through her and a heightened and quickened
beating of the blood. She was essentially unmusical;
but something in this was extraordinarily arresting;
her nerves, if not her sense of melody, were at atten-
tion. As for Lady Sunningdale, she always gasped
when Martin played, and did so now.

" Too heavenly," she said at the end. " Now make
me miserable. Play the rain on the roof. Tum, tum,
turn, tum, don't you know. Yes, how clever of you to
guess."

It was rather clever, for Lady Sunningdale's ren-
dering did not really resemble any one tune in the
world more than any other.

Martin paused a moment. Then the slow, sullen
drip of hot, steady rain on the roof began, as it
sounded to a man who was alone in an alien land.
It fell with hopeless regular iteration from grey skies,
then there was the gurgle of some choked gutter, and
the collected water overflowed and was spilt with a
little chuckle. Very distantly on the horizon remote
lightning winked and flickered, but there was as yet
no sound of thunder in the dark sultriness of the
afternoon, but only the endless, monotonous rhythm of
the dropping rain. Then, faintly at first but with slow
crescendo, there was heard the distant drums of thun-
der, buffeting and rumbling among the hills. Then all
at once the rain grew heavier; larger drops, as if of
lead, fell beating with a resonant insistance on the roof,

46 THE CHALLONERS

and the voice of the storm grew angry and articulate.
Suddenly with an appalling crash it burst immediately
overhead, drowning for a moment the beat of the rain,
and by the blaze of the simultaneous flash sea, sky,
and the wave-beaten rocks of Majorca leapt into light.
Then, as thunder will, it drew away, and for a time the
rain was not so heavy, but again the storm swept up,
and once more the chariots of God crashed on their
way above them, and the wild lantern of the storm
flared this way and that, and once more again after
that stupendous riot in the skies the hot darkness was
punctuated by the dreadful melancholy of the dripping
rain. Then the storm growled itself away into the dis-
tance; a little light came back into the weeping skies;
the pulse of the rain grew fainter, and again a choked
gutter gurgled and overflowed. Suddenly, through
some unconjectured rift in the clouds, one beam of the
sun, divinely clear, shot down for a moment on them
with excellent brightness. Yet it was only for a mo-
ment ; again the clouds drifted up, and the rain, which
for that minute had ceased, began again, dripping with
hopeless regular iteration on to the roof as evening
closed in, some evening far away in a land of exile be-
neath an alien sky.

Effusive as she usually was, and accustomed to fill
any interval of silence that might conceivably occur
with discursive volubility, even Lady Sunningdale was
silent except for an " Oh, Martin," which she no more
than whispered. For there was that in the room which,
in spite of her superficial frivolity and the dragon-fly
dartings of her mind, she knew and recognized and
adored, that the touch of art which makes even of
things that are common and unclean gems and jewels.

THE CHALLONERS 47

Stella too said nothing, but sat still, much more up-
right than her lolling wont, holding the arms of her
chair. From where she sat she could see Martin's
profile cut with great clearness of outline against a
brocaded screen of scarlet and gold that stood beyond
the piano, and between the music and the musician
she was dumb. Even in the desultory accidental con-
versation which she had had with him during the slum-
bers of Lady Sunningdale there had been something
arresting to her in his brilliant boyish personality, and
now from his finger-tips there flowed out, so it seemed
to her, a personality just as brilliant, but either very
mature or by the instinct of genius still boyish, but
clad, as it were, in the purple of the artistic nature.
There was nothing amateurish about it; and, unmusi-
cal as she was, she could not help recognising the
certainty of the performance.

For a few^ moments after the last note had died into
silence he sat silent also, with head bent over the keys.
Then he looked up.

" Is that enough, Lady Sunningdale?" he asked.

" No, you angel from heaven, it is never enough !"
she cried; "but play something different — something
brilliant; I should expire with several hollow church-
yard groans if you played that again. It makes me
miserable. Play something virtuoso, and let me come
closer, where I can see your hands."

She moved to a low chair to the right of the piano.

" Brahms's ' Paganini Variations,' " he suggested.

" Ah, yes, do. It makes me shriek with laughter."

Then, with the same absolute facility and certainty,
with the same cleanness and perfection, suggesting, in-
deed, a slim poised figure, he took a header into that

48 THE CHALLONEES

ridiculous theme. But out of the foam and bubble
beneath his hands flowers grew, stars were scattered,
and all nature went mad with dancing. But when the
riot of jubilance was at its height, a tall, severe figure
suddenly appeared at the French window of the draw-
ing-room, advanced very audibly on the bare boards,
and spoke sufficiently loud to be heard.

" Ah, Lady Sunningdale," said Mr. Challoner, " how
are you? And Martin wasting his time at the piano,
as usual. How kind of you to let him play to you !"

Martin wasted no more time there; at the noise of
interruption, before his brain had conjectured who it
was, his hands stopped, the eager, active vitality died
out of his face, as when a candle is blown out, and he
banged a random chord in sheer rage. Then, instan-
taneously, he recognized the voice, and he rose quickly
from the music-stool, trembling.

'* Yes, wasting my time, as usual," he said, excitedly,
the artist in him suddenly struck dead, leaving just
an angry, startled boy. " I must go home. Lady Sun-
ningdale. Thank you so much for letting me play to
you, and I hope I haven't bored you. Good-bye. I
have a lot of work to do."

He closed the piano lid as he spoke, but it slipped
from his fingers and shut with a bang that set all the
strings jarring.

"Ah, how could you interrupt like that?" cried
Lady Sunningdale to his father. " Yes, how are you,
Mr. Challoner ? Martin, pray begin it again. We will
all sit quite quiet without stirring a finger or breathing.
You are superb!"

His father sat down, distressed at Martin's rudeness,
but honestly desirous of being sympathetic.

THE CHALLONERS 49

" Dear boy, I am so sorry," he said. " Pray, play
your piece."

" I can't," said Martin. " I don't know it."

For a moment father and son looked at each other,
the one with surprise and indignation, the other in
impetuous rebellion and anger.

" Lady Sunningdale asks you to play again what
you were playing," said his father, the desire to be
sympathetic vanishing, the sternness deserved by this
deplorable lack of manners in Martin increasing every
moment.

" It is quite impossible that I should play it," said
Martin. " I couldn't play a note of it."

" You seemed to me to know it," said Mr. Challoner.
" Surely you have played it a hundred times at home."

Martin was really incapable in the shock of this tran-
sition from the world which he loved and in which he
was at home to this other world of decent behaviour.

" More like a thousand times," he said and simply,
and directly left the room.

There was a somewhat awkward pause. Mr. Chal-
loner was seriously angry with his ill-behaved son;
Lady Sunningdale was disgusted at being deprived of
her music, and Stella, with a natural eye for drama,
was immensely interested. It seemed to her there
might be a good deal of drama behind this little inci-
dent. Then, luckily perhaps. Lady Sunningdale re-
membered that she was, so to speak on a mission to
the dark ignorance of Mr. Challoner, that savage in
matters of art, on behalf of Martin, and she put her
disgust in her pocket.

" It was charming of you to have come over to see
me," she said to him, with her easy-natured charm.

4

50 THE CHALLONERS

" Yes, I suppose Martin wastes a terrible lot of time at
the piano when he should be doing Greek history.
Demosthenes ! How fascinating ! Stella dearest, do
see what Suez Canal is doing, and slap him. And will
you tell us when tea is ready ? Do you know, Mr. Chal-
loner, Martin plays remarkably, — really remarkably?"

Stella, as she was wont to do, strolled out through
the window by which catastrophe had entered, leaving
the two others alone.

" Yes, it is that incessant waste of time that dis-
tresses me," said Mr. Challoner. " But the piano at
the parsonage is so old that he hardly cares to play
on it. But, first, I must apologise to you, Lady Sun-
ningdale, for the extremely rude way in which Martin
behaved to you. I promise you he shall make his
apologies in person."

For a moment her irritation mastered her.

"He apologise?" she cried. " It ought to be you.
Dear Mr. Challoner, how rude I am ! Pray forgive me.
But you don't know, you can't know, what music is to
Martin. You don't know what divine, glorious mood
in him you shattered. It was like throwing a brick at
an iridescent soap-bubble. I suppose Brahms is a name
to you like Smith or Jones."

Then she recalled diplomacy again.

" So difficult to understand Brahms, is it not?" she
said. " That is the fascination of it. But I assure
you it is worth thinking over. Martin is wonderful.
He has improved so enormously, too. He is not
second-rate or third-rate, but first-rate. What have
you been doing to him ?"

" You mean at playing the piano?" asked Mr. Chal-
loner, as if he had said " sweeping a crossing."

THE CHALLONERS 51

Lady Sunningdale longed for Sahara to bite him.

" Yes, at playing the piano," she said, swallowing
her irritation again. " He ought to study, you know.
He is wasting his time, that is quite true, but not at the
piano. I am dreadfully impertinent, am I not? But
Flints is an old friend and Martin is his nephew, and
music is music, so I feel it very strongly. Of course
it is only natural that you, Mr. Challoner, with your
earnest nature and your serious aims and all that, —
you were too interesting last night, I lay awake for
hours thinking over what you had said, — should con-
sider poor Martin very frivolous, but he is an artist
to his finger-tips. It is his nature. Mon Dieu ! what
finger-tips, too ! You know he was playing, and play-
ing, I assure you, with consummate ease when you in-
terrup — when you came in, a thing that really great
pianists require to practice for months!"

" You are too kind to take such an interest in my
lazy son," said Mr. Challoner, still very stiffly, — so
stiffly, in fact, that Lady Sunningdale looked hastily at
the fireplace, thinking he must have swallowed the
tongs.

" I assure you it is not kindness that prompts me
at all," she said. " It is mere justice and mere econ-
omy. I am very economical. Ask Sunningdale. The
world cannot afford to lose a talent like that. If he
is like that when he is practically uneducated, to what
may not he grow? Heaven knows, the world is so
very stupid that we should hoard and save every grain
of talent that exists. It is like what you so beautifully
said to me last night about the ten talents in a napkin."

" Surely not," said Mr. Challoner, a faint smile
breaking his gravity.

52 THE CHALLONERS

" Well, the one talent, then. I have no head for
numbers. And poor Martin's talent seems to me to be
put in a very damp napkin, except now and then when
somebody like me lifts up a corner of it and lets the
sparkle of gold appear."

It happened very rarely that Lady Sunningdale was
stirred into such coherence and earnestness. As a rule,
her multifarious little interests were like children play-
ing " King of the Castle," rapidly pulling each other
down from their momentary pre-eminence, first one
and then another perching precariously on the summit
But certainly the most long-lived " King" there was
music, and Martin's future, with the rain-storm of
Chopin and the mad frolic of Brahms still in her ears,
was very securely throned.

" Think me impertinent, my dear Mr. Challoner,"
she went on. " Think me what you will, only do give
your most serious attention to what I say. Martin de-
voting his fingers, his brain, the power of his extraor-
dinary artistic nature to ancient history is a thing to
make Julius Csesar weep. The pity of it when he
might be starting us all on a new chapter in music!
Really I believe that to be possible. And really I am
in earnest ; and when, as I hope, you know me better,
and see how completely scatter-brained I usually am,
you will appreciate how deeply I feel this."

" You mean that my son should devote the most
useful, the most active years of his life to playing the
piano?" he asked.

"Playing the piano?" she cried, feeling it was al-
most hopeless to try to make him understand. " That
is, of course, a thread in the golden garment of music ;
but to take piano-playing as synonymous with music

THE CHALLONERS 53

would be the same as calling the baptism of those
of riper years the same thing as Christianity. Music
— music, that must be his life. Flints told me this
morning that you found him slack, lazy. So would
you be if you had to learn scales, just as he may be —
I am sure he is — at classical studies."

"What do you propose, then?" he asked, inwardly
rather rebelling at the consideration he felt somehow
forced to give to her eagerness. For, in spite of her
discursiveness, it was clearly impossible not to recog-
nise the surprising quickness and intuition of her men-
tal processes.

" Why, just what I have been telling you. First let
him throw his dictionaries and histories into the
fire."

" I have an immense, a vital belief in the educating
power of the classics," said Mr. Challoner.

"For everybody? You cannot mean it! Can you
tell from looking at a picture if the artist knew Latin?
Or pick me a piece of Greek out of ' Tristan und Isolde.'
In any case, Martin has spent some ten years at them,
he tells me, and what is the result? He fails to pass
his examinations. Whether they are a criterion of edu-
cation, or whether they are an instrument, he or they
have failed. He is second-rate at that, third-rate, — it
is all one. There is first-rate, and — the rest of the
world. What is the good of turning another second-
rate person into the sheepfold of the second-rate, par-
ticularly when on other lines that person has all the
appearance, anyhow, of being first-rate? Well, that
is what I think. How kind of you to let me talk so.
Where are my angels? Is it not tea-time?"

Lady Sunningdale's unparalleled effort in concen-

54 THE CHALLONERS

tration of thought here broke completely down, and a
whole tribe of clamouring competitors invaded the cas-
tle of her mind, dethroning the " King."

" Yes, Martin really was playing too divinely," was
the " King's" expiring cry. " So like a great artist,
too, to bang down the piano lid when he was inter-
rupted. Beethoven did it too, you know, and shouted,
' I play no more to such swine.' So delicious of him.
And Helen, how is she? You must bring her over.
Frank Yorkshire is dying, if not dead, to see her. He
is one of those people, you know, who does nothing
and appreciates so much. So infinitely better than
doing a great deal rather badly, and not recognizing
the first-rate when you see it. And are you going to
preach on Sunday? I should have been so happy if I
had been a man, to have lived in a country-place like
this and just spend my days in doing a little good
among these simple people. How beautiful it must be !
I abhor London, — so shallow. Yes. You really must
preach on Sunday, Mr. Challoner; otherwise I shall
stay at home and read improper novels. You would
not like to have that on your conscience, would you?
People are growing terribly slack about Sunday, are
they not? Yes, shall we try to find some tea? Talk-
ing makes one so hungry."

CHAPTER III

Mr. Challoner was seated at the very orderly
table in his study, on which, neatly corrected, revised,
and arranged, were the sheets of his sermon for the
next Sunday. In front of him, with his face towards
the window, stood Martin. Neither father nor son
wore a very pleasant expression : Martin looked like
some timid wild animal, at bay in a corner, frightened
into a sort of desperation, while his father's thick,
bushy eyebrows were contracted into a very heavy
frown and his mouth was tightly compressed, as if he
were holding back with difficulty some impulse of anger
that nearly mastered him.

" I was ashamed of you," he said; " I was ashamed
that a son of mine could behave with such abominable
rudeness to Lady Sunningdale and me. A few years
ago, when such behaviour would have been more ex-
cusable, because you were younger, I should have given
you a whipping!"

" I am sure you would," said Martin,

Mr. Challoner's face grew a shade paler.

" Martin, I wish you to understand once and for
all," he said, " that I will be treated by you both in
public and in private with ordinary respect and cour-
tesy."

" I have already told you I was sorry I was rude
to you," said Martin, speaking very quickly and in-
cisively, with an odd little tremor of angry fright in
his voice.

55

56 THE CHALLONERS

" You have often told me you were sorry lately,"
said his father, " and almost before the words were
out of your mouth I have had occasion to find fault
with you for something else."

Martin gave a short, mirthless laugh.

" That is quite true," he said; " I can't do right, it
appears."

Mr. Challoner paused a moment; Martin had never
before come to open words with him like this.

" What do you mean by speaking to me like that?"
he asked, in a voice scarcely audible.

There was no answer.

" I have asked you a question, Martin," he said, his
voice rising suddenly.

Martin pushed back his hair with a hopeless gesture.

" What answer do you expect me to give?" he asked,
impatiently. " There is no answer to such a question.
You get angry with me and you frighten me. I think
you do it on purpose. You have frightened me into
silence all my life, now you have frightened me at last
into answering you. I hate anger; it makes me sick.
And you have been angry with me every day since I
came home for my holidays."

He sat down on a chair behind him with a sort of
dull, indifferent acquiescence in whatever might hap-
pen, his face sullen, frightened, joyless. It seemed as
if it could scarcely be the same radiant boy who had
played Brahms an hour ago.

There was a pause, and all the imprisoned longing
for love in the father beat dismally at its bars, for he
felt, and felt truly, that just now Martin almost hated
him. It seemed terribly hard that his own daily and
constant desire that Martin should grow up a useful

THE CHALLONERS 57

God-fearing man, industrious and earnest, should be
the bar that separated them, yet so he knew it to be.
Had he been a weak, indulgent father, one who had
not implanted in him the unbending, ineradicable sense
of his duty towards the son whom God had given him,
how sweet might have been the human relations be-
tween them. His love for his son was the very reason
why he corrected him, — that and the duty attached to
his own fatherhood ; and when he saw him slack, lazy,
or as now wanting in courtesy and respect, it was still
from sheer duty that his anger sprang. And now for
the first time from Martin's own lips he heard the
effect. He frightened him, on purpose, so it appeared.
Was this, then, one of the hopeless, incomprehensible
puzzles that God seems sometimes to set his groping
children, this fight between duty and love, in which one
must lose, and be vanquished. It seemed to him
cruelly hard if this was so.

Martin felt his mouth go suddenly dry as he spoke,
but he was past really caring what might happen. His
father, he knew, was about as angry with him as he
could be, and he himself hated and feared his anger in
the instinctive unreasoning way in which a grown man
will fear something which can really hurt him no
longer, but which he feared in childhood. That vi-
brating note was in his father's voice which he asso-
ciated with early failures of his own in Latin declen-
sions, and the hint of what would have happened to
him if he had been younger also carried him back to
early, dreadful scenes. But finding his father did not
reply, he looked up at him, and saw that the anger in
his face had been extinguished like a wind-blown lamp.
But all tenderness, all sense of being intimate with him

58 THE CHALLONERS

was so alien to Martin that he did not trouble to guess
what emotion had taken the place of anger. Anger,
however, was gone, taking his own fear with it, and
with a certain mercilessness characteristic of youth, he
deliberately, so to speak, hit back.

" Whatever I do, you find fault with," he said. " I
try to please you, it is no use. Would it not be better
if I went away? There is no good in my stopping
here; I don't suppose this sort of thing gives you any
pleasure. Uncle Rupert, I am sure, would let me go
and stay with him in London next week till the Long
Term begins at Cambridge. That will be in another
fortnight. You told me you wished me to be up there
all the time. So would it not be much better if I went
away?"

His father did not reply at once, but sat fingering his
writing things with rather tremulous hands.

" Are you not happy at home?" he asked at length.

" No," said Martin, shortly.

The brevity and certainty of this struck more deeply
yet. If Martin a few months before had felt sick at
his father's anger, the latter was certainly the more
to be pitied now.

" Martin, what is the matter between us?" he said.

" I don't know ; but it's the same as it has always
been, only it's rather worse. I can't please you, I sup-
pose, and you are always down on me for something.
It is to be hoped it is doing some good, because other-
wise it seems, — well, rather unnecessarily unpleasant.
First it was my work, then what I said to Helen, then
' The Mill on the Floss,' and now this. To-morrow it
will be something else. There Is sure to be something.
I daresay I don't understand you, and I know you

THE CHALLONERS 59

don't understand me. This afternoon, for instance.
Oh, it's no use trying to explain," he said.

" It may be the utmost use. It may make the
greatest difference. I only wish that you had said to
me years ago what you are saying now. I have tried
to be a good father to you, but sometimes, often, I have
been puzzled as to what to do. You don't confide in
me, you don't tell me your joys and pleasures, and let
me share them. I often hear you laughing when I am
not with you. But when I am, not so often."

Martin half shrugged his shoulders, as if to say,
" There we are again."

" That is quite true," he said. " But what can I do
when music, which to me is the greatest joy and pleas-
ure in life, seems to you just a waste of time. You
have often told me so. You don't know one bit what
it means to me ; and as it seems to you a waste of time,
how can I confide in you about a thing you don't
really approve of and of which, you will pardon me,
you are absolutely ignorant? In the middle of the
Brahms, or whatever it was, you come in and inter-
rupt by saying that I am wasting my time, as usual.
I might as well come in in the middle of prayers and
say you were wasting — there I go again. I am sorry.
That will show you how hopeless it all is."

Mr. Challoner was silent a moment, really too much
pained to speak. But he was wise enough to recognise
that to say anything just then would be to effectually
stop the only confidence that Martin had reposed in
him for years.

" Well, Martin," he said, after a moment.

" Ah, it's no use," he said. " Even at the very in-
stant when I am consciously trying to be careful, I

60 THE CHALLONERS

say something like that, and you are shocked at it. But
I meant it : it exactly expressed what I meant. Music
is to me like that. You never thought that possible.
All these years you have been thinking that I was very
fond of music — just that — and wasted a great deal of
time at the piano. Whereas it seems to me that I am
wasting time when I am reading ' Thucydides.' "

" That is what Lady Sunningdale said. She talked
to me about it after you went away. You know her
well, do you not?"

" Yes ; she has been tremendously kind to me."

His father rose.

" You must go now, dear lad," he said. " I have
got some work to do before to-morrow. And let us
try, both of us, to find more of a friend in each other.
I shall never have another son, and you will never have
another father. It would be very sad, would it not, if
we did not, each of us, make the best of that relation ?"

There came into his beautiful brown eyes the shadow
of tears, and Martin wondered.

" I will try, father," he said.

Mr. Challoner did not at once begin the work which
he wished to finish before bedtime when Martin left
him, but sat with his head resting on his hand, thinking
very deeply. He was much troubled and perplexed,
and his future line of action, usually so clear to him,
so precisely indicated by his sense of duty, and, to do
him justice, so undeviatingly followed, was now very
misty and ill defined. Hitherto he had never enter-
tained any serious doubts that he was not doing the
best possible for Martin, both in always correcting
and admonishing when he seemed to be idle, even in
trifles where some small carelessness on his part in-

THE CHALLONERS 61

dicated the danger of his falhng into slack or slovenly
habits, and in his convictions that school and college
education in classical subjects was the best possible
method of training and developing his mind. He did
not in the least even now, with regard to the latter,
think it certain that he was mistaken, but it had been
brought home to him very clearly in the last twenty-
four hours that other people thought he was. For his
brother's opinion he always felt a considerable respect,
but for Lady Sunningdale's, though he wondered at
it, he could not help feeling more. A dozen times yes-
terday at dinner, a dozen times more this afternoon,
he had asked himself how the observations of a woman
who really appeared to be scarcely capable of consecu-
tive orderly thought could be worth consideration, but
as often some plump grain of solid sense, showing
acuteness and perception amid the husks and chaff,
answered the question. He himself was conscious of
not being quite at his ease with her, but he could not
help admiring her intense vitality, her speed, her busy,
acute inquisitiveness. And it was she who hailed Mar-
tin, poor, desultory, idle Martin, as a genius.

Suppose he took their advice and let his son go free
into that world of which he himself knew so little, of
which, however, he had so abundant a mistrust, how
dangerous and hazardous an experiment! Martin,
with his slackness, his ineradicable tendency to what
was easy and pleasant; Martin, above all, with this
apparently so great musical gift, unsuspected by his
father, but adored by others, was exactly the sort of
boy to be petted, spoiled, ruined by the careless, highly-
coloured butterflies which Mr. Challoner believed to
dance there all day in the sun. To them music, paint-

62 THE CHALLONERS

ing, drama, the visible arts, were ends in themselves,
the object being enjoyment, while to him such a doc-
trine savoured almost of profanity. To him painting,
sculpture, music, were recreations which might at in-
tervals be innocently allowed to the earnest worker,
but even in such times of refreshment the Christian
would look for something more, and find in beauty
that which should lead his thoughts to the Fountain
and Creator of it. Such, however, was not the view,
as he was aware, of the world of Art into which he
was invited to let Martin plunge; to them music was
sweet sound and led the soul nowhere but to music;
painting was line and colour ; sculpture was form, and
the end and fulfilment and consummation of it was
perfection of form and the appreciation thereof. About
this latter branch of art he had never been able to
come to a definite conclusion. Certainly studies in the
nude seemed to him to be things dangerous, if not
inherently sensual.

" All Art is perfectly useless." He remembered
having read that sentence in some book of Martin's
which he had found lying about. A rapid glance at it
on that occasion had justified its confiscation and a
few words to Martin on the subject. But that sentence
occurred to him again now, for there in half a line
was expressed tritely and unmistakeably the exact
opposite of what he held to be the truth. All Art,
he would have said himself, that does not — apart from
the natural and innocent enjoyment of it — raise and
elevate the soul, is not art at all. As a corollary, the
highest form of painting in his eyes was religious
painting, because it led by a direct road to its goal,
the highest form of music, religious music. These two

THE CHALLONERS 63

were wholly laudable; Raphael, so to speak, shook
hands with missionaries, and Handel took Luther's
arm. But at the other end of the line of artists came
those who, however consummate was their art, treated
of themes which in themselves were dangerous, or,
worst of all, who by clothing sin in melodious and
beautiful garb rendered it, even if not attractive, at
any rate more venial. He himself, as has been seen,
was not musical ; but when a few weeks ago he had
found himself in London with Martin, and with the
eminently laudable desire of getting more into sym-
pathy with his son, had taken him to see " Tannhauser"
at the opera, the evening had not been wholly a suc-
cess, for the curtain had not risen ten minutes on
Venusberg before his incredulous horror had deepened
into certainty, and he had got swiftly up and peremp-
torily ordered Martin to leave also. And Wagner was
hustled by him into the outer darkness to gnash teeth
in company with Zola, George EHot, and Titian.

Here, then, is stated in brief, so that the real and
soul-searching difficulty in his course of action with
regard to Martin's future may be better understood,
the attitude of Mr. Challoner towards Art. With the
whole force of his strenuous, upright soul he believed
that one thing in the world alone mattered, and that
art, science, knowledge were at the best but by-paths
that led on to the great high-road of the Gospel. In
that they contained many things of beauty the worker
was allowed to wander in their coolnesses at times for
the refreshment of his weariness, but all the beauty
he found there was but the sign-post pointing him
back to the high-road. Other by-paths were there also,
beautiful as these, if one looked on the outward form

64 THE CHALLONERS

only, but instinct with danger, and of an evil glitter.
Such led through tangled gardens of vivid meretri-
cious gaudiness, but if one stooped to pluck those
poisonous flowers, they were vitriol to the fingers, and
the unnameable beasts of darkness, coiled among the
leaves, alert and ready to spring, would fasten on the
hand.

Martin had left his father's presence that evening
with an idea that was really quite new to him. The
truism, in fact, that a father loved his son had sud-
denly emerged from those dull ranks and taken its
place in the far more notable array of truths. For
the interview which had begun in a manner so dis-
mally familiar to him, except that in this case it was
set one or two octaves higher than usual, had ended
in a manner unexpected and unprecedented. Never
before had he known, though he had vaguely taken
it for granted, that his father really cared for intimacy
and love in his relations with himself. At any rate he
had never seen the fact bare and exposed, for whenever
it had shewn itself it had always been wrapped up,
so to speak, in the memory of some rebuke. But to-
night it had flashed on him ; he had seen through these
coverings, and a heart of gold shone and beat within.
And with the natural instinctive generosity of youth
he himself was quick to respond ; and though his
habitual reserve and shyness with his father could not
at once be dispersed, so as to allow him any effusive
rejoinder, his response had been very genuine, and his
resolve, as he left the study, to explore and develop
the reef which had suddenly gleamed in what, to be
frank, he had considered hard unyielding rock, very
vivid. With this in his head, ready to be matured by

THE CHALLONERS 65

the unconscious processes of sleep, during which the
mind, though the senses he dormant, goes on delving
in its difficulties and groping for light, he went up to
bed.

As he undressed, his mind flashed quickly backward
and forward through the events of the day; for a
moment a smile uncurled his lips as he thought of some
extravagance or incoherence of Lady Sunningdale's,
the next his mouth was pursed again into a low whistle
of some half-dozen bars of a tune that ran in his head.
That Brahms, — to which had come so fruitful an inter-
ruption,— what a delicious piece of boisterous irrespon-
sibility ! It had infected Stella Plympton, too ; he had
known that from a glance at her wide eyes and half-
opened mouth when he began. Then suddenly, just
before the interruption came, she had given one
heavenly ripple of unconscious laughter at some sur-
prising piece of virtuosite. Yes, she understood, un-
derstood probably better than Lady Sunningdale, who
always gasped. The gasp, it is true, was a great com-
pliment to his nimble fingers, but it should be as im-
possible to think of fingers or nimblesness, when that
was going on, as to think about the chemical con-
stituents of water when one is satisfying a noble thirst.
Then came that dreadful scene in the study, with its
utterly unexpected end. Well, he would try, any-
how.

The moon was shining outside against the blind with
an amazing white brilliance, and as he undressed he
went across to the open window and let the flood o£
cool light shine in. It made the yellow flame of his
bedroom candle look insufferably vulgar and tawdry,
and blowing it out he again crossed to the window and

5

66 THE CHALLONERS

sat there while the stirring of some fragrant breeze sent
its soft ripples against his skin. As Lady Sunningdale
had said, he was a gourmet in sensations, and the ex-
quisiteness of the sleeping summer night, peopled with
ivory lights and ebony shadows, and the great velvet
vault of the sky pricked by the thin, remote fires of
innumerable stars and lit by that glorious sexless flame
of the moon smote him with a sudden pang of pleasure.
Somehow all this must be translatable into music, the
stars scattered over the sky were likely staccato notes
of strings across the great tune of the moonshine; it
was the first slow movement in the great symphony of
night and day. At sunrise the scherzo would laugh
and dance down the breeze of morning with a thousand
quivering leaves and a million nodding flowers, trees
waving, birds among the branches. Noonday would
combine all the powers of light and air into a third
movement of intolerable splendour. . . .

He got up from where he sat, and stretched his arms
wide, as if to embrace it all. Then half-laughing at
himself, he dived into his nightshirt, leaving the rest
of his clothes in a heap on the floor, and, as his custom
always was, laid his face on his hand and fell asleep.

It was still early when he woke, but the sun was up,
and even as he had anticipated before he went to sleep,
the slow movement of the moon had given place to a
dancing, rapturous scherzo. A breeze stirred with a
short sweeping rhythm among the trees, birds chirped
in the leafy temples, and the sparkle of the early sun-
light gave an inimitable briskness to the young day.
Then with a sudden ebb in the full tide of his joy of
life came the thought that it was Sunday, a day in
that house neither of rest or gladness in his view, but

THE CHALLONERS 67

one much taken up with lengthy unmusical services, in
which there was a great deal of singing, with intervals
in which no amusement could be indulged in.

He walked from his window back to his bed and
looked at his watch. It was still not yet seven, but
the '' land of counterpane" was no longer desirable
or even possible, and putting on coat and trousers he
went quietly downstairs and out across the lawn into the
fields beyond, where a bathing-place had been scooped
out of the river-bed. Till breakfast, at any rate, — still
two hours away, — he need put no restraint on the flood
of vitality and joy that ran this morning in spate
through him and this beautiful world. There were two
hours of it, with the cool shock of the racing water,
the caress of the warm wind, the sense of being alone,
and young, and out-of-doors. Pagan it might be, but
irresistibly delightful.

Then suddenly, while still thrilling with these joys,
the mellow tones of the church-bell struck across the
staccato sounds of life, and all at once the scene with
his father the evening before and his own resolve to
try to please him flashed into his mind. The bell, he
knew, must be for the early celebration in the parish-
church, and he had still twenty minutes, enough, if he
was quick, in which to dress in the prescribed Sunday
garb (though why black was suitable to Sunday he
had long given up trying to guess, leaving it to rot
away among the unconjecturable riddles of life), and,
a thing which pleased his father so intensely, play the
hymn on the melancholy one-manualled organ, the
curious quavering tones of which formed so remark-
able a contrast to the nasal notes of village voices. So
with something of a sigh for his renunciation of the

68 THE CHALLONERS

river-bank, he hurried back home, and before the bell
had ceased ringing passed through the church-yard
where yew-trees of noble growth looked down upon
the horrors of the modern stone-mason with his
" chaste" designs and " handsome" crosses into the
grey, cool church.

To judge by the interior it is probable that the
mouth which Lady Sunningdale so much admired in
the vicar and the Bishop of Tavistock was a low-
church mouth, for Mr. Challoner at any rate did not
attempt to make any appeal to the souls of his parish-
ioners by means of the senses. Two brass flower-vases,
of that curiously feeble design that somehow suggests
at once low-church ecclesiasticism, stood on the altar,
over which a flood of mauve and magenta light
poured in through misshapen figures of apostles and
prophets in the east window. In one transept stood
the organ to which Martin directed his steps, the pipes
of which, framed in a wooden border ornamented with
fretsaw work, were painted white with a scroll of red
pattern in line embellishing their top ends. Behind
the organ-bench was a red plush curtain with golden
fleurs-de-lys stamped on it, to screen the person of the
organist from the eyes of the congregation. The seats
for the people, who were thinly scattered over the
church, were faced eastwards, and were made of shiny,
varnished pitch-pine, while the floor of the aisles and
accesses was tiled with a cheerful ecclesiastical pattern
in violent blue and Indian red, and pierced here and
there with gratings of cast-iron work through which,
in winter, came the hot, stale blasts from the warming
apparatus. A black iron stove stood near the font at
the west end of the church, and rows of somewhat

THE CHALLONERS 69

dilapidated rush-bottomed chairs denoted the place
allotted to the school-children.

To Martin, who for the last two months had been
accustomed to the grey dimness and carved spacious-
ness of King's Chapel, the first sight of these staring
crudenesses came with a shock of almost physical re-
pulsion. Why had it been done? What did it all
mean? What emotions were the ill-coloured, badly
designed windows intended to arouse or what was the
affinity between pitch-pine and worship? Impression-
able and impatient as he always was, he nearly turned
back after he had opened the door and was confronted
by this half-forgotten tawdry brilliance. Then the mo-
tive which had made him forsake the cool riverside, the
desire to please his father, prevailed.

The organ was blown by a small boy with a highly
polished face, who stood directly by the player's left-
hand, and, since the bellows were not powerful enough
to supply the lungs of the organ, unless plied by an
energetic arm, was often blown too, and breathed
heavily into the organist's ear. It was still a few
minutes to eight when Martin came in, and found the
village school-master preparing to begin that series of
somewhat elementary harmonies to which is given the
vague title of a " voluntary." But he slid quickly off
the seat with a smile of welcome to the other, and in a
searching whisper told him what the hymns were going
to be, and what " Kyrie" would be sung between the
commandments. This later information was given with
a self-depreciatory blush, for Mr. Milton was not at all
mute and inglorious, but composed chants and hymn-
tunes with so many accidentals that the choir quailed
before them, and garnished them with accidents.

70 THE CHALLONERS

Martin glanced at the organ-stops : there were
" Bourdon" (which sounded as if you were playing
pedals when you were not, and was much in request),
"Open Diapason," "Flute," "Cor Anglais," and a
few others of more doubtful import. He added
" Tremolo" to certain other soft stops, in curiosity as
to what it meant, and began the first bar of the prelude
to " Lohengrin." But as " Tremolo" seemed to convert
other sounds into a distant bleating of sheep, he hastily
put it in. Five minutes later the vestry-door in the
transept opposite opened and the curate, followed by his
father, came out. Mr. Challoner looked up as he en-
tered, saw Martin's head above the curtains of the
organ, and a sudden warm tide of thankfulness and
love glowed in his heart. Surely the dear lad could not
go very far wrong, if he sought strength here.

The worshippers were but few, and it was not long
before Martin was out in the sunshine again, but with
all the joy and exhilaration of the earlier hour by the
river driven out of him. Like most very emotional peo-
ple, religion was as essential to him as breathing, but in
him it was a natural, child-like religion that springs
primarily from the huge enjoyment of the beautiful
things in this world, for which he had to thank some-
body. And though it would be impossible to say that
it was not real to him, yet a London fog, so to speak,
would make a pagan of him for the time being. And
now, though he did believe in the truth and reality
of the service in which he had taken part, the deadly
ugliness of the church, the melancholy voices, Mr. Mil-
ton's " Kyrie" ten times repeated, the intolerable voices
singing absurd tunes had risen like a London fog be-
tween him and it. The service had passed over his

THE CHALLONERS 71

head like a flight of birds unseen in this dreadful
atmosphere, he had heard only the rustle of their
wings. But what he had been conscious of with every
jarred fibre in his being was the gross material ugli-
ness of the sights and sounds of this last hour. Why
should " throne" be allowed to rhyme with " join" in
sacred subjects, whereas it would be admissible in no
other class of poetry? Was it because anything was
good enough in a hymn, or because those who were
responsible for the " form" of English worship were
entirely without any sense of " form" themselves? Or
why in church allow music that would be tolerated no-
where else? Or why have windows in the house of
God which for colouring and design could only be
paralleled in the worst type of suburban villa? Pitch-
pine seats, tiles again only to be found in the fire-
places of villas and the aisles of churches ! Often be-
fore, though never perhaps so vividly, had the ugliness
of Protestantism struck him; often before, though
never perhaps so insistently, had his nature, wishing to
aspire, demanded beauty as its ladder. Most of all
here was beauty necessary, for the sublimest act of all
was here performed, the worship and praise of God,
the sacramental approach to him. Even as a little
thing, a little rhythmical noise, may utterly distract a
man's attention from a subject which requires concen-
tration, so this ambient ugliness utterly distracted Mar-
tin. Only ugliness was no little thing to him.

He had not long to wait for his father, for he fol-
lowed him almost immediately out of the vestry, and
his face lit up with extraordinary pleasure when he
saw that Martin had waited for him. Here was his
highest joy: to see his children with him in that

72 THE CHALLONERS

divine act, and find them caring, lingering for him,
and the consciousness of that compact the night before
was as vividly present in his mind as it had been in
Martin's when he left the delights of the river-bank
at the sound of the church-bell.

" Dear lad," he said, " the first thing I saw when I
came into church was you, and I was so thankful."

Then with the active desire to get into Martin's
sympathy he went on.

" And what was that beautiful, exquisite tune you
played us before service ?"

Martin brightened.

" Ah, I am glad you liked it," he said, cordially. " Is
it not beautiful? It was Wagner, — the beginning of
the overture to ' Lohengrin.' "

Mr. Challoner's face grew suddenly grave. Wagner
was identified with " Tannhauser" to him.

" Certainly it was most beautiful," he said ; " but do
you think it is quite — quite suitable to play something
from an opera in church, before the Holy Communion,
too? One wants everything, is it not so, to be of the
highest?"

Mr. Milton's " Kyrie" occurred to Martin, but he
dismissed it.

" I don't see why one shouldn't play an opera over-
ture, father," he said. " Does not the fact that it is
beautiful make it suitable?"

" But the associations of it?" said his father,

" I don't suppose anybody knew what it was except
me," said Martin. " I am sorry if you think I should
not have played it. But really I had no time to think.
I was nearly late, and on the organ there was only a
book of dreadful extracts, chiefly by organists. But I

THE CHALLONERS 73

will play something definitely sacred at the eleven
o'clock service. That is if you would like me to play
again."

" Thank you, dear lad, thank you. Ah, what a
lovely morning! Look at the hills. 'I will lift up
mine eyes to the hills.' How wonderful the apprecia-
tion of natural beauty in the Psalms is, — ' Sweeter
also than honey,' — so many of David's similes are
drawn from ordinary, every-day sensations, but lifted
up, ennobled, dedicated. But how was it you were
nearly late? I looked into your room before I started
for church and found you had already gone!"

" I went down to bathe," said Martin; " in fact, it
was only the bell beginning that reminded me there
was service at eight."

Mr. Challoner looked at him a moment with a sort
of appeal.

" But, dear Martin," he said, " you did not come
without preparation?"

" I am afraid I did," said Martin, and the joy of his
waking hours dropped utterly dead, while the hope-
lessness of the compact of the evening before rose
close in front of him.

They took a turn up and down the lawn before
going in, and his father very gently, but very firmly
impressed on him the positive sin of his omission. His
voice trembled with the earnestness of his feeling, for
to him the danger of coming to the Communion un-
prepared was as vital as the need for coming. He
hated to say what he felt he must say ; it was so soon
after their compact to try to understand one another,
to get on without perpetual correction and admonish-
ment. But this could not be left unsaid. Once it oc-

74 THE CHALLONEES

curred to Martin to tell him the truth, to say, " I came
in order to please you; otherwise I should not," but
the impulse passed. There was no need to give his
father such pain as that ; and he merely assented dully
where assent was needed, said, " Yes, I see," at inter-
vals, and gave the promise required. But it was a
dreary beginning to the day.

The Chartries pew, the only family pew remaining
in the church, was well attended at the eleven o'clock
service, Lady Sunningdale being, as usual, the brightest
object present; indeed, among the rest of the congre-
gation she resembled a bird of paradise which had by
mistake found its way into a colony of sparrows. But
what this violation of her habits in appearing so long
before lunch had cost her none but her maid knew.
However, there she was, and the colours of the spec-
troscope blossomed together in her hat, and in a fit of
absence of mind, to which she was prone, she as nearly
as possible put up a pink sunshade, forgetting where
she was, to shield her from the sun which was shining
through a mauve-coloured saint on to the middle of
her face in a manner which she felt to be aggressive
and probably unbecoming. So she moved to behind the
shadow of a neighbouring pillar, from where, looking
at the organ, she could see who sat there.

" Too heavenly," she said in a shrill whisper to Stella
Plympton. " Martin is at the organ. I'm afraid he
won't play the Brahms, though. What a pity it is
not Good Friday; he would be sure to give us the
Charfreitag music."

That, however, was not to be, and instead the
familiar strains of " O Rest in the Lord" were the pre-
lude to which six choir-boys, four choir men, including

THE CHALLONERS 75

the carpenter, who in a fluty falsetto sang a steady
third below the trebles and believed it to be alto, ad-
vanced to their places. But Martin, in Lady Sun-
ningdale's opinion, could do no wrong, and again she
whispered shrilly to Stella, —

" Is he not wonderful ? That tune is exactly like
the stained glass. It is absolutely the ' air' of the
place. Look, there is Helen Challoner sitting with
the choir. Is she not a dream? Tell Frank to look
at her."

But this was unnecessary, as Frank Yorkshire was
already looking. He was a rather stout, very pleasant-
faced young man of about thirty, with smooth flaxen
hair, rather prominent blue eyes, and an expression of
extraordinary amiability, which his character fully en-
dorsed. He was remarkably adaptable, and while he
would willingly talk flippancies with Lady Sunning-
dale, his tenantry adored him for his friendliness and
his great common sense if the baby was ill or the pig
would not put on flesh. In other respects he was a
Baron of the realm, immensely wealthy, and unmar-
ried, so that he was perpetually drenched by showers
of eligible girls, whom aspiring mothers hurled at his
head. These he returned with thanks, uninjured.

He had, in fact, many pleasant qualities and one
notable one, which Lady Sunningdale had already men-
tioned as being characteristic of him, namely, his un-
deviating pursuit of the first-rate. It was this which
turned a character that would otherwise have been
rather materialistic into something of an idealist, and
supplied 3. sort of religion to a mind which otherwise,
an extremely rare phenomenon, was completely atheis-
tic, not with an atheism into which he had drifted from

76 THE CHALLONERS

carelessness or insouciance, but with one that sprang
from a reasoned and clear conviction that there could
not possibly be any God whatever. On all other mat-
ters he had an open mind and was extremely willing
to adopt any opinion that seemed to him reasonable,
but on this one point he was hopelessly bigoted. This
reasonableness and willingness to be convinced had
led people to suppose that he was weak. But this was
not in the least true, he was only fair. Another quality,
and a fine one, was his also: he was practically un-
acquainted with fear, either physical or moral, and
would, had he lived in those uncongenial times, have
gone as cheerfully to the stake for his entire absence
of religious beliefs as he would now blandly uphold his
abhorrence of sport on the ground of cruelty to animals
in a roomful of hunting-men. His faculty of reverence
finally, of which he possessed a considerable measure,
he exercised entirely over the talents of other people,
on whatever line they ran. He knelt, for instance, at
the shrine of Lady Sunningdale's acute perceptions, he
hung up votive offerings to Martin's music, he even, at
this moment, bowed the knee before the village car-
penter, whose talent for singing the wrong note was
of that instinctive and unerring quality which ap-
proaches genius.

He was a great friend of Martin's. Helen he only
knew slightly. And, after service, desultory conversa-
tion in the church-yard ended in the twins going back
to lunch at Chartries. Though Mr. Challoner was op-
posed on principle to anything, however remote, con-
nected with festivity taking place on Sunday, he raised
no objection, merely reminded Helen that her Sunday-
school class met at three. Lord Yorkshire, strolling by

THE CHALLONERS 77

her, thought he heard a nuance of impatience in her
assent, and his question had a touch of insincerity
about it.

"Don't you find that charming?" he asked. "I
think there can be nothing so interesting as helping to
form a child's mind. It is so plastic — like modelling
clay. You can mould it into any shape you choose !"

Helen glanced quickly at him.

" Do you really want to know if I find it charming?"
she asked.

" Immensely."

" I detest it. I don't think they have any minds to
mould. Why should one think they have? But they
have shiny faces, and they fidget. And I point out Ur
of the Chaldees on the map."

He laughed.

" I suppose the chances are in favour of their not
having minds, as you say," he remarked. " But I had
to allow for your delighting in it, when I started the
subject. What do they think about then? Do they
just chew their way through life like cows ? You know
some people don't chew enough. I expect Martin
doesn't. But that is why he is so extraordinary."
There was intention in this, and it succeeded. Any one
who admired Martin had found a short cut to his sis-
ter's favour.

" Ah, Martin never chews," she said. " I don't
think he ever thinks; he just — just blazes. Now, do
tell me, Lord Yorkshire, because you know him well.
He isn't stupid, is he, because he can't or doesn't pass
examinations?"

" He couldn't conceivably be stupid, any more than
I could be a Red Indian. But it is by a misguided in-

78 THE CHALLONERS

genuity that he contrives not to pass examinations. It
is hardly worth while doing it."

" Ah, do tell him that," said Helen. " I think you
have influence with him."

" What on earth makes you think that?"

" He quotes you."

"Are you sure you do not mean he mimics me?
He does it to my face, too, so why not behind my back.
It is quite admirable. Ah, I see he has shown you a
specimen. Don't I talk wonderfully like him ? But in-
fluence,— one might as well sit down and think how to
influence a flash of lightning."

Helen considered this a moment.

" Well, there are such things as lightning-conduc-
tors," she said. " Besides, there are times when Mar-
tin isn't the least like a flash of lightning. He is often
like a stagnant pool."

" I don't recognise that," said Frank.

" No, you probably have never seen it."

They had passed out of the narrow path from the
church-yard during this, and their way lying across the
open fields, Lady Sunningdale, as her habit was, an-
nexed Frank as well as Martin.

" Dear Helen, it is too bad," she said as she manoeu-
vred. " You will have to go back immediately after
lunch. What is a Sunday-school ? It sounds so beau-
tiful, like a hymn tune. Yes, I adore church-music;
really there is nothing like it. And it was so wonderful
of you to play the lucubrations of Mendelssohn, Mar-
tin."

" Yes, I felt that, too," said Frank, in his low, slow
voice. " There was a stained-glass window just oppo-
site me which was exactly like the tone-colour of Men-

THE CHALLONERS 79

delssohn. A figure which I take to have been a
prophet, probably minor, in jewelled slippers was di-
recting an enamoured gaze towards a pink town, —
which may or may not have been the New Jerusalem.
I always wonder where artists in stained-glass get their
botany from. Nameless herbs enveloped the feet of
the minor prophet."

Martin laughed.

" I know that window," he said. " When I was
little it used to come into my nightmares. Now it
has become a daymare. I don't know which is
worst."

Lady Sunningdale sighed.

" Church is very fatiguing," she said. " I had quite
forgotten how tiring it was. I shall not go any more
for a year or two. Dear me, these tiresome shoes!
And my darlings wanted to come with me. But that
isn't allowed, is it? It is only in Scotland that dogs
go to church, I think. I went to Scotland once. I
can't bear the Scotch. They are so plain and so ex-
tremely truthful. There is nothing in the least un-
expected about them. Dear me, there's the other shoe.
Yes, thank you, Martin. And they use a silly slang
instead of talking English. Martin, I had a talk to
your father yesterday about you. I really think I made
an impression."

" Telling the truth produces a very marked type of
face," said Frank, " and in later life mutton-chop
whiskers. That is why one always engages butlers
with mutton-chop whiskers. They are sure to be re-
liable. Truth-telling is quite incurable, and so has a
certain claim to distinction."

Martin listened to this with something of the air of a

80 THE CHALLONERS

parrot " taking notice," and then turned to Lady Sun-
ningdale.

" Do you really mean that?" he asked, eagerly.

" Yes, of course I do. It seemed news to him that
playing the piano could be taken seriously. And he
took me seriously. There are my treasures come to
meet me. I am so hungry. Don't jump up, Suez
Canal. My darlings!"

CHAPTER IV

Helen, as Lady Sunningdale had mentioned, had to
start back again for her Sunday-school soon after lunch.
They had all moved out under the cedar on the lawn,
and when she arose. Lord Yorkshire also got up and
offered himself as an escort. This was perfectly agree-
able to the girl, though she wondered exactly how high
Aunt Clara's eyebrows would rise if she knew that
her niece might have been found walking on Sunday
afternoon with a young man who could not possibly
be brought under the elastic bonds of cousinship. But
the eyebrows of Lady Sunningdale, who, it must be
supposed, was chaperone, remained low and level, and
the two started.

Frank had been admirably entertaining in his own
way during lunch, capping the extravagancies of Lady
Sunningdale with incongruities that rivalled her own,
and giving wings of epigram and paradox to his speech ;
but Helen had received a very distinct impression that
under his flippancy, which Martin imitated so faith-
fully, there lay something of sterling and very human
solidity. And this unknown factor interested her quite
apart from and much more than his conversational
fireworks, which were as obviously superficial to the
essential " he" as his eyebrow or moustache. Perhaps
he also knew the unimportance of their leadings, for
certainly, as soon as they were alone, such corusca-
tions died slowly down, and it seemed to Helen that
a very pleasant mellow light, restful after fireworks,
took its place.

6 8i

82 THE CHALLONERS

" I think it is unkind of you not to admit me into
the school itself," he was saying. " Why am I to be
debarred from the knowledge of Ur of the Chaldees?
Geography has an enormous fascination for me. I can
pore for hours over maps of countries which I have
never seen and almost certainly shall never see, just
reading the names of unheard of places with gusto."

" Ah, you feel that, too," she said. " Martin always
tells me I am a gypsy. Certainly I want to wander,
to go on just for the sake of going on. The explora-
tion, that is the point. And I think it is the playing
at exploration that is so fascinating in a map. Dic-
tionaries, too, — new words. And, best of all, new
books with new ideas."

" There is one thing better," said he ; "I cap your
new books with new people, new ideas."

The personal note entered, however slightly, into
this, and Helen was silent a moment.

" Ah, but new books implies new people," she said.
" Nothing can be more real than the people in some
books."

" Quite true ; and nothing can be less real than some
people in real life. Do you know what I mean? One
wonders with some people if there is anybody there.
My impression is that there often isn't."

" I have an aunt " Helen began, and stopped,

feeling that it was not quite kind to lay Aunt Clara on
the dissecting-table.

Frank guessed this.

"Ah, I have three," he said; "perhaps mine will
do."

Helen laughed, and, after a moment, he went on :

" I believe that curiosity which is a convenient ex-

THE CHALLONERS 83

pression to sum up all this passion for the new," he
said, " is quite modern. I don't think, at least, that
the generation to which our aunts belong had it, with
certain adorable exceptions, like Lady Sunningdale,
anything like to the extent we have it. What was
good enough for our grandfathers was nearly good
enough for our fathers. But what was good enough
for our fathers is not nearly good enough for us."

She turned a quick, luminous glance at him. He
was talking about things that very much concerned
her.

" Ah, that is interesting," she said, eagerly. " Give
me more news of that."

" It has struck you, too?" he asked.

" Your saying it reminds me that I knew it all the
time."

" I know what you mean. Yes, I think it is the case.
At any rate, take yourself, Martin, and me, — all, I ex-
pect, quite normal people. Well, we all want to wan-
der, to experience everything. We are probably not
really afraid of any experience that could conceivably
happen to us. And we claim the right to all experi-
ence. We claim the right to our own individuality, too.
It seems to us quite certainly ours ; the only possession
we have which is inalienable. We may lose every-
thing else, from our character to our teeth, but not
our individuality. Do you remember how Magda
throws her arms wide, and cries, ' Son lo !' — ' I am I' ?
That somewhat important point had never struck her
father or mother. Poor things! They thought she
was a sort of them. Is that bad grammar?"

Their way lay at this point through one of the game
covers, and a sudden piteous crying, dreadfully human,

84 THE CHALLONERS

arose from the bushes near the path. Helen stopped
with fright and horror in her face.

" A child — is it a child ?" she asked.

" No ; nearly as bad though, — a hare," said he, and
pushed his way through tangled bracken and brambles
in the direction of the sound. In a moment he called
to her.

" Will you come here, Miss Challoner ?" he said.
" Come round to the right : it is a clearer path."

She followed his directions, and found him kneeling
a few yards off, holding in both hands a hare that was
caught by the hind-leg in a horrible jagged-toothed
trap.

" Pull the two sides of the trap apart," he said, " as
quickly as you can. Be quick. The poor brute is
struggling so I can hardly hold it."

His voice was so changed that she would hardly
have recognised it. It was no longer low and cour-
teous, but sharp and angry. She knelt down by him
and, exerting her full strength, did as he bade her.
The leg was caught only by the skin, and holding the
animal in one hand he gently disimpaled it where the
iron teeth had clutched. But just as it was free a sud-
den tremor of nerves passed through Helen at this
humane surgery; the trap slipped from her hand,
and caught Frank's finger just at the base of the nail.
He took his breath quickly with the pain and let go of
the hare, which, none the worse, ran off up the winding
path down which they had come.

" I must trouble you to open the trap once more,"
he said, the blood streaming from his finger. But now
his voice was quite normal again.

"Oh, I'm an absolute fool," cried Helen. "Oh,

THE CHALLONERS 85

I'm so sorry," and again she wrenched the trap
open.

Frank was rather pale, but he laughed quite natur-
ally.

" Thank you so much," he said, as she released his
finger. " What strong hands you have. But I should
dearly like to clap that thing on the nose of the brute
who set it. What an infernal contrivance. How can
men be such butchers! I shall take it and show it to
your uncle."

He shook the blood off his finger and bound it
tightly round with the handkerchief.

" Oh, Lord Yorkshire, I'm so sorry," said Helen
again. " I am an absolute born idiot. How could I
be such a fool?"

He laughed again.

" My dear Miss Challoner," he said, " nothing
whatever has happened which can justify your violent
language. Besides, it would have been worth while to
set that poor, jolly beast free at the cost of real pain,
and not just a finger-scratch. Well, we've vindicated
the liberty of one individual anyhow. Did you see its
eyes? They said ' I am I,' like Magda."

He held the bushes back for her to regain the
path.

" But you'll have your finger attended to?" she said.

" Yes, at once, please. I'll ask you to tie it rather
tighter, if you don't mind the sight of blood. I al-
ways think blood is such a beautiful colour," he chat-
tered on, to prevent her apologising further. " One
talks of a blood-red sunset and admires it, and
dragon's-blood china ; but when it comes to the real
article, so many people shrink from it. That's better.

S6 THE CHALLONERS

thanks; that's excellent. I assure you it is nothing
at all."

His manner was so entirely natural that there was
nothing left for her except to be natural too ; and they
walked on out of the cool, green-shadowed path, flecked
here and there with the sunshine that filtered through
the trees that met above them, into the blaze and bright-
ness of the fields that bordered the church-yard.

" Yes, the cry of Magda for her right to her own in-
dividuality," he said. " At last this generation has said,
' I will lead my own life, not the life dictated to me by
other people.' I wonder what we shall make of it."

Helen looked at him again, eagerly.

" And do you mean that the assertion of one's own
individuality is a duty?" she asked.

" Ah, that is a difficult question. Certainly, I think
there are — are indications that one is supposed to play
one's hand for all it's worth. But duty? Probably
you and I mean different things by it."

" I mean the will of God for me," she said, simply.

They paused at the gate into the church-yard, and
their eyes met. It seemed to Frank that she waited
for his answer with some eagerness. And he shook
his head.

" No, I don't mean that," he said.

She held out her hand to him.

" I'm sorry," she said.

" So am I, very sorry, indeed. But I can't help it."

Her eyes wandered over the woods behind him.
Then came back to his face.

" No, I recognise that," she said. " Good-bye, Lord
Yorkshire. Thank you so much for coming with me.
And please have your finger attended to."

THE CHALLONERS 87

She smiled at him and went up the church-yard path
towards the shining corrugated-iron Room. As she
passed the walk leading to the vicarage, she met her
father.

" You are nearly ten minutes late, Helen," he said.

" I know, dear. I am sorry. But you know you are
late, too."

He did not smile.

" I was detained by other parish work," he said. " I
was not amusing myself. Pray do not delay any
longer."

The evening meal on Sunday at the vicarage was
of a strictly Sabbatical order, and consisted of cold
things to eat and no waiting on the part of servants.
It took place late after evening church and had, to
Martin's mind, a dreariness of its own, an indi-
viduality (to which Frank would have said it un-
doubtedly had a right) which marked it off from all
other meals. Every one was fatigued with the exer-
cises of the day, and though they were religious
exercises which had produced that fatigue, it brought
with it a tendency which made cheeriness difficult.
However, cheeriness was not a quality exactly en-
couraged by Mr. Challoner on Sunday, so perhaps that
was all for the good. But this evening, Martin, who
had spent the whole afternoon at his uncle's, coming
back only just before supper, was conscious of a Sun-
day easily got through, and was chattering on with a
good deal of rather thoughtless enjoyment about Lady
Sunningdale, every now and then mimicking, with
extreme fidelity, some more than usually incoherent
speech of hers in which Wagner, her dogs, South Italy,
her husband, egg-shell china, and scandal were about

88 THE CHALLONERS

equal ingredients, without noticing a somewhat omin-
ous gravity that was deepening on his father's face.

At length Mr. Challoner spoke, interrupting him.

" There, dear Martin, is not that enough ? It is
Sunday evening, remember. Cannot we find some-
thing rather more suitable to the day to talk about?
And you would scarcely like Lady Sunningdale, who
is so good to you, to know that you imitate her."

" Oh, she is always insisting that I should do it to
her face," said Martin. " I often do. She shrieks."

" That is enough, I think, Martin," said his father
again, mindful of their compact of the evening before,
and determining to be gentle. " Have you only just
come back?"

" Half an hour ago," said Martin, the gleam in his
eye suddenly quenched, for he knew what the next
question must be.

" Then, you did not go to church this evening?"
asked his father.

" No ; I had been twice."

Now, Mr. Challoner had been from church to Sun-
day-school and from Sunday-school to church prac-
tically since eight that morning, and it not in the least
unreasonable that he should be tired with so many
busy hours in ill-ventilated places on so hot a day.
The effect of this tiredness on him, as on most of us,
was shewn in a tendency to that which, when it occurs
in children, their elders label " crossness." And he
answered in a tone in which that very common emotion
was apparent.

" I was not asking you to justify your absence," he
said, and the meal proceeded in rather dreary silence.

Then two small incidents happened. Martin dropped

THE CHALLONERS 89

a plate with a hideous clatter, and a moment afterwards
upset a wineglass, which he had just filled with claret,
all over the table. He apologised and wiped it up, but,
unfortunately, looking up, he saw his father's face
wearing such an extraordinary expression of true
Christian patience that for the life of him he could
not help giving a sudden giggle of laughter. He
could not possibly have helped it; if he was going
to be hung for it he must have laughed.

Now, the laughter of other people when we our-
selves do not see anything whatever in the situation to
provoke mirth is one of the authentic trials of life,
especially if one half suspects, as Mr. Challoner did
now, that one is in some manner inexplicable to one's
self the cause of it. It was therefore highly to his
credit that, remembering the interview he had had
with Martin the night before, he could manage to keep
inside his lips the words that tingled on his tongue.
Of more than that he was incapable; he could not just
then be genial or start a subject of conversation, he
could only just be silent.

Martin could easily manage that; his last observa-
tion had not found favour, and he held his tongue
and ate large quantities of cold beef. Helen sitting
opposite her father, in the absence of Aunt Clara, who
was spending the Sunday away, had also nothing ap-
parently which she considered as suitable, and the meal
proceeded in silence. Then, after a long pause, she
raised her eyes, which so happened to catch Martin's,
who was still struggling with his unseemly mirth. At
this moment also her father looked up and saw a
glance which he interpreted into a glance of meaning
pass between them, a thing irritating to the most placid

90 THE CHALLONERS

temperament. He saw, too, the corners of Martin's
mouth twitching. This w^as too much.

" I will not have that sort of thing, children," he
said, his voice rising sharply. " It is an extremely
rude and vulgar thing to exchange glances like that."

Martin's merriment was struck as dead as beech-
leaves in frost.

" I was doing nothing of the kind," he said, his
temper flashing out. " Helen looked up at the same
moment as I looked up. We all three looked up, in
fact. It was purely accidental."

Helen was vexed that Martin should speak so, but
felt bound to endorse him.

" Indeed, father, it is so," she said.

Again the silence descended, and Martin, seeing
that both his father and sister had finished their meat,
changed their plates and arranged the second course.
After a very long pause their father spoke again.

" I should have thought my children might have had
something to say to me in the evening when they have
left me alone all day, enjoying themselves elsewhere.
Has nothing happened to you since breakfast which I
am worthy of hearing?"

Martin's intolerance of this injustice again stung
him into ill-advised speech.

" I tried to tell you what I have been doing," he
said, " but you stopped me. You said it was unsuit-
able," and his handsome face flushed angrily.

Then a thing unprecedented happened.

" I beg your pardon, dear Martin," said his father.

Helen was engaged next morning in the fragrant
labour of picking sweet-peas, when a maid came out of

THE CHALLONERS 91

the house to say that Lord Yorkshire was there. Her
father and Martin she knew were both out, and she
went in to see him, conceahng from herself the quite
perceptible thrill of pleasure that the announcement had
given her. She was, as usual, hatless, and her hair
was in golden disarray from the breeze, and as she
went towards the house she took off her gardening
gloves, trying by sundry pats and pokes to give it some
semblance of order. She was not very successful in
this, nor need she have been, for she looked to him like
some beautiful wild flower when she entered.

" I ought to apologise for coming at this unearthly
hour," he said, " for my only excuse is that Martin
left a book of music at Chartries, and, having an idle
morning, I thought I would bring it over."

Helen was delighted to see him, and since it would
have been ungracious to convey the impression that
this morning visit was a bore, especially since it was
not, she took the straightforward line.

" How good of you," she said. " And the finger?"

He held up a bandaged hand.

" I am only reminded of it by that," he said.

" I am so glad. Isn't it extraordinary that any one
could be so awkward as I was. I am always dropping
and spilling things. Martin used to say, ' It is a lovely
day, let us go and spill something.' But he is much
worse than I am, really. Do come and look at the
garden. It is really pretty."

"And are you gardening?" he asked, glancing at
the gloves.

" Mildly. I am really only picking sweet-peas. It
is so nice of them — the more you pick the more they
flower."

92 THE CHALLONEES

She picked up her basket as they walked out and
held it up to him.

" How energetic of them," he said. " Ah, what a
dehcious smell. That reminds me of lots of nice
things. It will now remind me of one nice thing the
more. Smell is the keenest of all the senses to remind
one of things. Sight and hearing are not nearly so
intimate. And Martin is out?"

" Yes; he went to try and get a fish. But there is
too much sun."

" I am delighted to hear it," said Frank.

" I think I am, too, really," she said. " But I do like
the dear boy to be pleased."

" Well, I hope we are all going to please him," said
he. " For the combined armies are going to advance
and rescue him. Lord Flintshire, Lady Sunningdale,
and, in my own humble manner, myself, are all going
to try to get your father to allow him to study music in
earnest. In fact, I am a sort of skirmisher in advance
of the heavy — of the main body. It is my business to
bring on the general engagement by asking him to
stay with me in London, and bringing some people, who
really know, to hear him play."

Helen turned a radiant face on him.

" Ah, that is good of you," she said ; " and it is really
angelic of me to feel that, as I shall be left here all
alone."

" But the scheme includes you. Lady Sunningdale
is writing to you to ask you to come up with him and
stay with her for a week or two. I hope you will say
' Yes.' "

Helen gave a long sigh, as Moses, perhaps, sighed
on Pisgah.

THE CHALLONERS 93

" I don't know if I could manage it," she said,
" though it would be heavenly. Perhaps, as Aunt
Clara comes back in a day or two, I could leave father.
But I don't know. Oh, I should enjoy it," she cried.

" I expect you have a very fine faculty for enjoy-
ment," said he.

Again the personal note entered, but this time it did
not make her pause.

"I? I should just think I had. And I love London
in little raids like this, it is so full of charming things
to do. But Martin, — it is good of you. Lord York-
shire. And do be very good for him. Do use your
influence with him. Do make him, at any rate, work
hard to pass his examination at Cambridge first. It
would make everything so much easier, so much hap-
pier."

" For him ?" he asked, with a marked intonation.

" Yes, and for all of us."

He looked at her gravely.

" That sounds worth while," he said.

He let that string vibrate, as it were, for a moment
or two, and then passed on.

" But what becomes of the liberty of the individual
which we talked of yesterday ?" he said. " To in-
fluence anybody always seems to me a slight infringe-
ment of rights. One imposes one's personality — such
as it is — on another."

" Ah, but in a good cause, to show him the stupidity
of not passing examinations. Surely, that is a rule
absolutely without exception, that it is always wise not
to be stupid."

He laughed. Helen, with her direct vivid person-
ality, seemed to him unlike anybody else he had ever

94 THE CHALLONERS

seen, with the exception, perhaps, of her twin. The
extraordinary and rather rare charm also of perfect
naturalness, not the assumption of it, was hers also.

" Well, it is certainly hard to think of any excep-
tion to that rule," he said, " though one always dis-
trusts rules without exceptions. It seems so very un-
likely that they should exist, considering how utterly
different every one person is from every other. On
the face of it, it seems impossible."

This had aroused another train of thought in the
girl.

" Oh, nothing would be impossible, if one were
wise," she said. " Oh, I hate fools. And I am one."

And she snipped viciously among the sweet-peas.

He followed this with some success.

"Was the Sunday-school very stupid?" he asked,
sympathetically.

" Hideously — quite hideously. How clever of you
to guess. It was also extremely ugly. I don't know
which I dislike most, ugliness or stupidity. In fact,
they are difficult to tell apart. Yet, after all, beauty is
only skin deep."

" But what has that to do with the wonder of it?"
he asked. " That particular proverb seems to me about
the silliest. Why, the most subtle brain in the world
is only a few inches deep, and, as far as measurement
goes, it is about the same depth as the most stupid.
Or would you say that the beauty of some wonderful
evening moment of a Corot was only skin deep, the
depth of the paint on the canvas? Surely not. It has
all the depth of beauty of the summer night. No, that
proverb is perfectly meaningless, and was probably in-
vented by somebody more than usually plain."

THE CHALLONERS 95

Helen's basket of sweet-peas was full, and she
emerged from the fragrant tangle of the garden-beds
and strolled with him up the lawn, her face on flame
with what he had called curiosity. That divine mo-
ment, when a girl becomes a woman, when all she has
drunk in all her life begins to make products of its
own had just come to her. And at this psychlogical
moment he had come, too.

" But surely one sees very beautiful people who are
very dull, very stupid, very wicked even," she said. " Is
not that what the proverb means, perhaps, that as far
as beauty itself goes it is only a very superficial gift?"

He shook his head.

" Look at that splendid Gloire de Dijon," he said.
" It may be very stupid, very dull, very wicked, as far
as we know. But that does not concern us. It is beau-
tiful, and its beauty does not, anyhow, touch us only
superficially, but very deeply. Does not beauty stir in
you some chord of wider vibration than any purely in-
tellectual quality? Some — how shall I say it? — some
longing for the infinite?"

Again their talk had taken the bit in its teeth, and
as she gently fingered the rose he had pointed to, her
lips drew themselves into a quivering curve of ex-
traordinary tenderness.

" Ah, yes, yes," she said. " I could kneel down and
thank God for it."

He looked at her gravely, remembering the conclu-
sion of their walk the afternoon before.

" You are very much to be envied," he said. " With
my whole heart I congratulate you."

She raised her head, dismissing the gravity of the
last minute.

96 THE CHALLONERS

" Ah, but the Sunday-school," she said.

" But I envy that, too," said he. " It, as well as
you, has its beaux jours. You would not grudge it
them?"

She laughed.

" Ah, you have committed an inanity," she said. " I
was so afraid you were a person who never said
anything stupid. But to pay compliments is stupid.
And now I have been rude. That is even more
stupid."

" I think it is," said he, " because it is also unneces-
sary."

There was a further challenge in this, but she did
not take the glove he had flung, and having reached
the tree at the end of the lawn underneath which,
three days ago, the ill-fated " Mill on the Floss" had
lain, they turned back again towards the house, and
she directed their talk, like their steps, in another direc-
tion.

" It is good of you, — I mean about Martin," she
said. " That is just what he wants, to go among
people who will take him and his music seriously, not
gasp just because he plays extremely fast. No one
here really knows the difference between Rule Britan-
nia and the Dead March. And yesterday — oh dear!
oh dear!" And she broke out laughing.

" There isn't much," observed Frank, parentheti-
cally. " But please tell me about yesterday."

" I think I must, because, though you will laugh,
you will laugh kindly. It was at the early service,
and the dear boy played the overture to ' Lohengrin'
as a voluntary, and my father thought it wasn't quite
suitable."

THE CHALLONERS 97

He considered this a moment.

" Do you know, I don't think I want to laugh at
all?" he said. "1 understand perfectly."

" But Martin didn't. That was so funny."

" No, he wouldn't. That is one of the penalties of
genius. In fact, it is what genius means. It is having
one point of view so vivid that all others are dark, in-
visible beside it. And genius is always intolerant."

Her eye brightened.

" I don't know if you know or not," she said, " but
I expect you do. Is Martin really all that, — dear,
stupid, old Martin ?"

" I believe so. We are going to get him to London
to find out. You will give him my message, won't
you? I go up to town to-day, and he may come any
day he likes; the sooner the better. Lady Sunning-
dale is writing to you.

" Oh, it would be heavenly!" said she.

He took his leave soon after, and went back to
Chartries for an early lunch, since Lady Sunningdale,
who never started anywhere in the morning, unless it
was impossible to get there otherwise, had retained his
services in order to minimize the dangers and difficul-
ties incident to travel by rail with Suez Canal and
Sahara. For Sahara had an unreasoning dislike of
locomotive engines, which had never, at present, hurt
her, and always tried to bite them, while Suez Canal,
whenever it was feasible, jumped down between the
platform and the train and smelled about for whatever
there might be of interest among the wheels of the
carriages. In addition to these excitements, their mis-
tress never moved without a tea-basket, a collapsible
card-table, — which usually collapsed, — a small library

7

98 THE CHALLONERS

of light literature, a jewel-case, so that the tedium of a
journey in her company was reduced to a minimum,
since when the train was in motion these recreations
could be indulged in, and when it stopped there was
more than enough to be done in collecting these price-
less impedimenta to prevent any companion of hers
from feeling a moment's boredom that arose from idle-
ness.

She also could hardly ever produce either her own
or the dogs' railway tickets when called upon to do so,
thus giving use to games of hide-and-seek all over the
carriage.

And to-day, in addition, Frank had something very
considerable of his own to think about, something that
made him very alert, yet very inattentive, that bright-
ened his eye, yet prevented him seeing anything. And
he could almost swear that the odour of sweet-peas per-
vaded the railway carriage.

Martin, mean time, was spending the morning on
the banks of the stream which had given him those
good moments early the day before. But to-day the
sun was very hot and bright, and after an hour's fruit-
less, but patient, attempts on the subaqueous lives, he
abandoned the vain activity of the arm, and with the
vague intention of returning home and getting through
some ^schylus before fishing again towards evening,
sat down to smoke a cigarette in the fictitious coolness,
bred by the sound of running water, preparatory to
trudging back across the baked fields. Tall grasses
mixed with meadow-sweet and ragged-robin moved
gently in the little breeze that stirred languidly in the
air, but the sky was utterly bare of clouds and stretched
a translucent dome of sapphire from the low-lying

THE CHALLONERS 99

horizon of the water-meadows on the one hand up
to the high yellowing line of the downs on the other.
At his feet flowed the beautiful stream, twining ropes
of shifting crystal as it hurried on its stainless journey
over beds of topaz-coloured gravel or chalk that
gleamed with the lustre of pears beneath the surface.
Strands and patches of weed waved in the suck of the
water, struck by the sun into tawny brightness, shot
here and there with incredible emerald, and tall brown-
flowering rushes twitched and nodded in the stress of
the current. Suspended larks carolled invisible against
the brightness of the sky, swallows skimmed and
swooped, and soon a moorhen, rendered bold by Mar-
tin's immobility, half splashed, half swam across the
stream just in front of him. And he thought no more
of the fish he had not caught, but sat with hands
clasped round his knees, and, without knowing it,
drank deep of the ineffable beauty that was poured out
around him on meadow and stream and sky. Every
detail, too, was as exquisite as the whole: the yellow
flags that stood ankle-deep in the edge of the river were
each a miracle of design; the blue butterflies that
hovered and poised on the meadow-sweet were more
gorgeous with the azure of their wings and white and
black border than a casket of lapis-lazuli set with silver
and shod with ebony.

By degrees as he sat there, his cigarette smoked out,
but with no thought of moving or of ^schylus, the
vague and fluid currents of his mind that for years had
coursed through his consciousness, though he himself
had scarcely been conscious of them, began for the
first time to crystallize into something illuminating and
definite. Like some supersaturated solution of chemi-

100 THE CHALLONERS

cal experiment, his mind, long crying out for and de-
manding beauty, needed but one more grain of desire
to render its creed solid, and to himself now for the
first time came the revelation of himself, and like a
spectator at some enthralling drama, he watched him-
self, learning what he was, without comment either of
applause or disgust, but merely fascinated by the fact
of this new possession, his own individuality, and, even
as Frank had said to Helen only yesterday, his own
inalienable right to it. It was none other's but his
alone. There was nothing in the world the same as it,
since every human being is a unique specimen, and,
bad or good, it was his own clay, his own material, out
of which his will, like some sculptor's tool should
fashion a figure of some kind. And everything he saw,
the yellow iris, the blue butterfly, the water-weeds, were
in their kind perfect. Their natural growth, unstunted
by restraint or attempt to control them into some-
thing else, had brought them to that perfection; and
was it conceivable in any thinkable scheme of things
that man, the highest and infinitely most marvellous
work of nature, should not be capable of rising, indi-
vidual by individual, to some corresponding perfection ?
Soil, sun, environment were necessary ; the flags would
not grow in the desert, the lark would not soar nor
carol in captivity, but given the freedom, the care, or the
cultivation which each required, every living and grow-
ing thing had within itself the perfection possible to
itself.

Up to this point his thought had been as intangible
as a rainbow, though like a rainbow of definite shape
and luminous colour, and showed itself only in a bright-
ened, unseeing eye, and in fingers that twitched and

THE CHALLONEES 101

clutched till the nails were white with pressure round
his flannelled knee. Then suddenly the crystallization
came, ungrammatical, but convincing.

" It is me," he said aloud, as Magda had said it.

In a moment the whole solution was solid.

Beauty. That was the food for which every fibre of
his nature hungered and with which it would never
be satiated. Long ago he had known it, but known it
second-hand, know^n it as in a dream, when he quoted
Browning, three days ago, to his sister. But that
dream, that second-hand information, had become real
and authentic. No matter how trivial might be the
experience, that was what he demanded of all experi-
ence,— whether he ate or drank, it was beauty he
craved; whether he ran or sat down, he knew now
that, in so far as it was consciously done, it was the
thrill of speed, the content of rest that he demanded
of the function. Then, suddenly, he asked himself
what he demanded in the exercise of the highest func-
tion of all, that of worship — Was it the pitch-pine pew,
the magenta saint, the tuneless chant ? Was it the fear
of hell, the joy of an uncomprehended heaven, even
though the gate-stones of the New Jerusalem were of
jaspar and agate? Not so; for what did he worship?
Absolute beauty, that quality of which everything that
is beautiful has some grain of mirrored reflection.
That was God, the supreme, the omnipotent, present in
all that was beautiful just as much as he was present
in the breaking of the Bread and the outpouring of the
mystic Wine, for all was part of Him.

CHAPTER V

The big drawing-room at Yorkshire House was
full to overflowing, and for the avoidance of asphyxia-
tion the six long windows that looked on to the Green
Park were all open. Louis Seize candlesticks, con-
verted to the more modern use of electric light, were
brilliant on the crimson satin of the walls, and a couple
of dozen rows of chairs, all occupied, were directed
towards the end of the room where the Steinway grand
stood. Behind the chairs there was a throng of stand-
ing folk, but, except for the voice of the piano, no
sound broke the stillness. A quarter of an hour ago
the smaller drawing-room opening out of this had been
full of chattering groups, but now it was completely
empty, except for some half-dozen people who had
been unable to find a standing-place in the larger room,
and crowded as near as they could to the doorway.
But the last human voice had been that of Martin.

" I'll play it if you like," he said, " but it will take
nearly half an hour."

Then he sat down and, since he had played before,
a hush most abnormal during the ordinary piano solo
fell on the " party" which had been invited in after
dinner. Many, no doubt, were unmusical, but more,
since it was Frank's house and it was he who had
invited the guests, had some instinct for perfection,
that bond that joins together all artists. Lady Sun-
ningdale, of course, was there, and had early estab-
lished herself in a front row, and Helen, who was

THE CHALLONERS 103

under her chaperonage, sat next her. At the end of
the fourth etude of Chopin's, she had said to Martin:

" Martin, play the Brahms Variations," and the de-
mand had led to his word of warning. But warning
was not needed. If the piece was going to take an
hour, no one would have complained.

Frank, knowing the acoustic properties of the room
better than Lady Sunningdale, had placed himself in
the seat of the second window, with Karl Rusoff beside
him. He had himself not felt the slightest hesitation
in asking the great pianist to listen to the recital of
this wonderful debutant, and Karl's absolute silence at
the end of the Variations convinced him that he had
been right. And as the last glorious fantasy vibrated
and died on the air, while the crowd burst gloves in
applause, he turned to him.

"Well?" he said.

Karl Rusoff nodded his great grey head up and
down once or twice.

" Ah, my dear friend," he said, " I usually think it
very clever to unearth a genius. But with your genius
it needed no cleverness. Shall I tell you what will
happen? We, — the pianists, I mean, — with our nim-
ble professional fingers will in a year's time be fighting
each other for seats at his concerts, if he is kind enough
to give any. Let him give one, however, just to show
us, to — yes, I mean it — to let us weep over our own
deficiencies. Fire, my God, what fire ! But I hope he
won't give many. He ought — I only say he ought — to
be too busy with his owm work. As regards his piano-
playing, of course you were right. Who has taught
him? Nobody, I tell you. How can you teach thatf
Will I teach him ? Certainly I will, as Moliere's house-

104 THE CHALLONERS

maid taught her master. He does a hundred things
quite wrong. But — ah, a big but!"

Martin had risen and bowed his thanks to the storm
of applause, but his eye sought the corner where Karl
Rusoff sat, with his great grey, leonine head and his
grey eyes gleaming through his spectacles. The latter
rose and came up the gangway between the chairs and
the w^all towards him and shook hands with him.

" Mr. Challoner," he said, " that was a great treat
to me. Thank you. You can play what is really diffi-
cult, magnificently. Now, my dear young man, I want
to ask you a great favour. Attempt something much
more difficult, — that is to say, something where the
notes are quite easy, but where the rest, which is every-
thing, must be a poem. Play, if you happen to know
it — really know it, I mean — Chopin's fifteenth prelude,
the rain on the roof."

Martin looked round the room, but nobody had
moved from his seat, except Frank, who had followed
Monsieur Rusoff.

" Yes, I know it," he said. " But are you sure you
really want me to play again?" he asked, with the
charming horror that a nice boy has of being a bore.
" Are you sure they aren't sick of me?"

" No, do play again, Martin, if you will," said
Frank, who had followed Karl. " We can really stand
a little more."

" I have asked him to play the fifteenth prelude,"
said Rusoff.

" Ah, yes, do," said Frank.

So the rain beat, the gutter choked, the chariots of
God thundered overhead, one ray of sunlight gleamed,
and again the rain, pitiless and slow, spoke of an alien

THE CHALLONERS 105

land. And at the end, in the moment's silence, more
appreciative than any applause, which followed, Mar-
tin's glance again sought the great pianist, and with a
sudden spasm of joy, so keen that for a moment he
thought he must shout or laugh, he saw that Karl
Rusoff had taken off his spectacles and was wiping his
eyes.

The party that Frank had brought together that
evening was very typical of his tastes and of the posi-
tion which he held in the world. Though only thirty,
thanks partly to the great wealth which was always
completely at the service of any artistic cause, but
chiefly to his own exquisite and unerring artistic sense,
he had now for some years been a sort of accredited
godfather to any new talent, and for any one to " come
out" at his house was a guarantee that the aspirant
was to be taken seriously. During the three months
of London season he gave a succession of evening
parties, which all had some definite raison d'etre, chiefly
musical. And to-night he had taken special pains to
get all the right people, with the result that there were
not perhaps a dozen people in London whose opinion
was worth having who were not there. And the opin-
ion, for once, was practically unanimous; for, though
Claud Petman, plump and short-fingered, had some-
thing to say to Henry Runton about the lack of finality
in the determination of his key-colour, and Henry Run-
ton, over ortolans, agreed with the additional criticism
that his phrasing of the fourth variation was a little
pulpy, yet the fact that they were critics rendered it
obligatory on them to criticise. But they had but small
opportunity to express these fine dififerences of opinion
to Martin himself, for Lady Sunningdale, on the con-

106 THE CHALLONERS

elusion of the prelude, beckoned imperatively to her
" monster," and made a brilliant group round him.
She had taken it into her head that she had " dis-
covered" Martin, and told every one so.

" My dear, I assure you I gasped," she said to Karl
Rusoff. " There he was in a poky little room, fur-
nished entirely with prayer-books, in a dreadful par-
sonage, playing on a cracked tin-kettle of a piano, and
playing as he played to-night. Then in the middle his
father came in and said, ' Go and do your Hebrew-
Greek, instead of wasting your time at the Jew's-
harp.' Such a strange man, Flints's brother, you
know, and lives, I believe, entirely on locusts and wild-
honey and wears broadcloth, or is it sack-cloth ? Some-
thing very thick and imperishable, anyhow. Such a
beautiful life, but ascetic, not artistic, — Mendelssohn
and pitch-pine, you know. Of course, I saw at once
how priceless Martin was ; but we had the greatest diffi-
culty in persuading his father to let him come up to
London. He thinks all artists will go to hell, if they
have not already gone there. Yes. I didn't bring my
darlings to-night, because they always bark when any-
one plays the piano, and Suez Canal is so shrill. But,
is not my monster too wonderful? And now I must
go. I never get to bed till it is time to get up, and I
shan't sleep one wink after the music. I never do.
Where is Helen? Yes, she is Martin's twin. Why
aren't we all twins like that ? Supper ? How nice ! I
am famishing. Music always takes so much out of
one. Yes, pray take me into supper, Monsieur Rusoff,
and let us put it back. Martin, don't dare to leave my
side for a single moment."

Frank, in the mean time, had found a chair next

THE CHALLONERS 107

Helen. The girl looked divinely happy. Her pride in
Martin, her intense pleasure in the wonderful recep-
tion he had been given, flushed her cheek with excite-
ment and sparkled in her eyes. Frank had not had
an opportunity of speaking to her the whole evening,
and now, as he was making his way towards her
through the crowd, delayed every other moment by
some acquaintance or friend, he met her eye long
before he was within speaking distance, and as he
smiled in response to her, something suddenly thumped
softly and largely on his heart, as if demanding ad-
mittance. At last he reached her, and she looked
at him with her direct, child-like gaze.

" Thank you," she said, " thank you most awfully."

He laughed, not pretending not to know what she
meant.

" Ah, we are all thanking Martin," he said, " and
those who know best, I think, thank him most. Karl
Rusoff, for instance."

"Then, you were right?" she asked. "There is no
mistake? He is really of the best?"

" Yes, that is Monsieur Rusoff's opinion."

" I should like to kiss him," said Helen.

" Shall I fetch him?" asked Frank.

" Not this moment. Go on, Lord Yorkshire."

" That is a good deal already. And he will take
him as a pupil, he says. He has not consented to take

a pupil for years. Now we have to consult How

is that to be managed?"

Helen's face fell for a moment.

" It must be managed," she said. " I will write to
father to-morrow, telling him all that has happened.
You must write, too; Lady Sunningdale must write.

108 THE CHALLONERS

Poor father! We must give him no peace till he lets
Martin study. What are we to do?"

" You must think it over, and tell me if I can be of
any use," said he. " I am entirely at your disposition.
Anyhow, there is a fortnight for him in London. And
you ? You came up to-day, did you not ? Ah, before I
forget. Lady Sunningdale is coming to my box at the
opera to-morrow night. Please come, too. She, Mar-
tin, you, L Just we four."

Those last three words gave him extraordinary
pleasure.

" But are you sure you have room for me?" asked
Helen. " Lady Sunningdale is so kind : she is dump-
ing me at all her friends' houses, upsetting their din-
ner-tables right and left, and there is no earthly reason
to suppose they want me."

" I want you," said Frank, simply, and again the
words pleased him.

" Thank you, very much. Where is she, by the way?
Will you take me to her? She probably wants to go
home. I see people are leaving."

" It is conceivable she is having supper," said Frank,
gravely. " Let us go and see."

Karl Rusoff attended to Lady Sunningdale's wants,
which were rather extensive, but lingered after she
had left, and when the rooms were growing empty he
came up to Martin.

" My dear Mr. Challoner," he said, " I am sure you
have had enough compliments paid you by this time.
So allow a very rude old Russian, who has no man-
ners at all, to take you into a corner and talk to you
for a little."

Martin turned a brilliant glance, vivid, and full of

THE CHALLONERS 109

huge, youthful enjoyment on him. He knew, he could
not help knowing, how complete had been his success,
and coming straight from the country and from that
home where he was officially an idler, almost a black
sheep, into this cultured, critical world, the knowledge
had somewhat intoxicated him. It was like coming
out of some dark, dripping tunnel into the light of a
noonday and flying along through a kingdom that was
his. For he, he had been the central figure ; round him
had crowds collected, for him ears had been alert and
applause had burst. Artist as he was by nature, and
caring, therefore, infinitely more for his art then for
any adventitious success that he might achieve by it,
he would not have been human, and certainly not
young, if this evening had not been honey and wine
to his boyish heart. For, except to the sour, success
is sweet, and it is only the cynic and the unsuccessful
who affect to find applause hollow. And Martin was
emphatically neither cynic nor sour : the world seemed
to him the most excellent habitation. But he detached
himself at once from the group which was round him ;
he was still sufficiently master of himself to know that
it was probably better worth his while to listen to Karl
Rusoff talking sense than to any one else who might
have pleasant things to say, and they passed cut of the
supper-room into the now deserted room where he had
played.

" Now, my dear Mr. Challoner, listen to me," said
Karl. " Probably a hundred people this evening have
told you that you are a very wonderful young man.
That cannot help being a pleasant hearing, but "

He looked at Martin's radiant face and paused.

" Ah, my dear boy," he said, " I will talk another

110 THE CHALLONERS

time, I think. Go and listen to what everybody else
has to say to you. Drink it all in; enjoy yourself. I
am too serious. I can wait."

" But I would sooner listen to you," said Martin.

" Are you sure? Are you really sure?"

" Quite. Absolutely."

" Well, then, in the sacred name of Art, forget all
the pleasant things that have been said to you. So
many of these delightful people do not know. Our
charming Lady Sunningdale even, she does not know.
She appreciates, I grant you, but that is all."

Martin's face had grown quite serious; the bright-
ness in it seemed to have ceased to be on the surface
only; it glowed beneath like the core of a prospering
fire.

" Tell me what to do, then," he said.

" Work, and live also. Do not forget that any ex-
perience in life, so long only as it is not sensual, — for
whatever is sensual blurs and deadens the fineness of
any gift, — gives richness and breath to your power in
music. Live, then ; live to your utmost and your best.
Do not be afraid of anything. Neither the bitterest
sorrow that the world holds nor its most poignant joy
can bring you anything but good, so long as you em-
brace it willingly, passionately. But shun a sorrow or
a joy, and you are clipped, maimed, blinded."

The old man spoke with extraordinary fire and em-
phasis, and the intense eager gravity of Martin's face
deepened. Here was a coherent code which summed
up, strung together, his own musings by the river-brink.

" Am I then to — am I to take all that comes," he
asked, " and trust that it will somehow make grist for
my own little mill ?"

THE CHALLONEES 111

" Ah, you understand," said Karl. " I see you have
thought of it before. But never call your mill little.
If it is little, you may be sure that others will label
it for you. And if it is not little — then down on your
knees and thank God. Ah, my dear boy, you are all
that you are. Make the most of you. Assume there
is something."

He paused a moment.

" And I will endorse it," he said.

Again Martin looked at him with that lucid glance
as transparent as running water.

" Yes, I will endorse it," he repeated. " And if any
one dishonours your cheque, I will pay it."

Martin gave a long sigh.

" You believe in me?" he asked, almost in a whisper.
The rest of the triumph of the evening, the silence, the
applause, were pale and dim to him as compared with
this. The sun was rising on a dream that he had
scarcely dreamed, and it was not a dream, but a reality.

" I believe in your possibilities," said Karl. " I be-
lieve you can be, — well, a musician. Now, as regards
another point. I have been asked whether I will take
you as a pupil. On my part I ask you to come to me.
I have not taught for some years, but I rather suspect
that one's power of teaching increases not by teaching,
but by learning. So I may be perhaps of some use.
There are certain things I can tell you. Come and
learn them. On the whole, it is worth your while.
Even for a poet the alphabet is necessary."

Martin could not speak for a moment.

" Some day I will try to thank you," he said at
length. " But not by words. I don't think you want
that, and also it would be idle for me to do it."

112 THE CHALLONERS

He paused again,

" But at present, you know, I am not even certain
that I shall be allowed to study. I — I am very stupid,
you know. I can't pass examinations, and my father is
most awfully keen about them. In any case I expect I
shall have to finish my time at Cambridge."

Rusoff rose. Absurd and almost criminal as this
seemed to him, he had no right whatever to express
that to Martin.

" Ah, then, go back to Cambridge, like a good boy,
and do whatever has to be done. Forget also almost
everything that has occurred to-night. You have won
a great deal of applause. Well, that is very easy to win,
and in itself it is worth absolutely nothing. In so far
as it encourages you to good work, whether it is now in
the immediate future at Cambridge or eventually in
music, there is no harm in it ; but the moment it breeds
in you any slackness, or the feeling ' this will do for
them,' it is a poison, an insidious narcotic poison."

He laid his hand on the boy's shoulder.

" It is not by applause," he said, " it is not by any
help really that I or any one else can give you that you
may become great. It is in yourself alone that the
power lies, and it is by your life, by your industry,
and by the fulness and completeness of your experience
and your sympathy that you will be able to get hold of
that power. For your warning, I tell you that it is no
easy task — that, mining in yourself, you will have
to think and struggle and despair before you can bring
your own gold to the surface. You will also have to
find your choice by patient, unremitting work. You
cannot make others feel unless you feel yourself, and
you have to learn how to feel. It is not so easy.

THE CHALLONERS 113

Again, having learned that, you cannot convey what
you feel until you have learned speech. And, for your
encouragement, I believe — or else I would not accept
you, much less ask you to be my pupil — I believe that
you will be able to do so. You have perception. You
can interpret others, as I have heard to-night. So that
some day you may write that which will give tears or
laughter to those not yet born. Good-night."

The summer and the season were at their mid-most,
but though the former had been fine, the latter at
present had been rather objectless. Balls, concerts, par-
ties, all the various devices by which the crowd believes
it amuses itself, and without which it would certainly
be bored, had occurred with their usual frequency, but
up till now no bright particular star had arisen to draw
the eyes and the thoughts of all to itself. There had,
in fact, been no " rage," and neither book, play, vio-
linist, or traveller, nor even a cowboy from the remote
West, had appeared to fill the invitation-cards and
usurp the thoughts of emigrant London. Why nobody
had invented something by this time was not clear, for
absolutely anything in the world can become the rage
of one season to be dropped either like a hot potato or
a soiled glove the next. The year before there had
been a cowboy, — this year he was a hot potato, for he
had become odiously familiar; a female palmist was
also still in existence, but she was a soiled glove, since
the pleasant frisson of having a bewildering future told
in all the horror of detail before your friends is an
experience not to be repeated if subsequent events have
shewn the prophecy to have been altogether erratic.

But from the night of Lord Yorkshire's concert

114 THE CHALLONERS

hope began to wake in the season's middle-aged breast,
that it, too, hke most of its predecessors, would be
known by an engrossing topic to mark it out from
others before it was numbered with the colourless dead.
For the picturesque — of a picturesqueness unequalled
even by last season's cowboy — had at length arisen in
the shape of twins from Hampshire, Challoner twins,
Flints's nephew and niece. They sprang from a coun-
try parsonage, where Flints's brother, whom nobody
had hitherto even heard of, lived like a sort of medi-
aeval ascetic prophet in a lugubrious atmosphere of
fasting and prayer and scourging and sack-cloth. He
preached the most curdling sermons on Sunday, quite
like Savonarola, on the comfortable doctrine of eternal
damnation. About the twins, however, there was
nothing in the least ascetic or mediaeval : they were
both quite young, hardly out of their teens, and were
simply Diana and Apollo come to earth again. The
girl (Helen, too) had Titian hair, in golden, glorious
profusion, a face like the morning, and the inches of a
goddess. And her charm, her bubbling spirits, her
extraordinary enjoyment and vitality! She made
everybody else look like a kitchen-maid, which was so
delightful. But Martin — Phoebus Apollo, drunk with
nectar! He played, too; Karl Rusoff said he had
never heard anything like it, and the dear old angel
simply wept the other night at Frank Yorkshire's,
when Phoebus Apollo first dawned, but wept floods.
And what could have been more romantic than the
manner of their appearance? People were asked — we
were all asked — to Lord Yorkshire's for " Music" in
the bottom left-hand corner, expecting, perhaps, a
couple of songs from Maltina and a nocturne of Ru-

THE CHALLONERS 115

soff's. Instead, this divine boy walks up to the piano
and plays the " Pied Piper" to us all. Yorkshire
brought him up from the country, without a word to
anybody, and just shot him at London. He hit.
Helen was with Lady Sunningdale, — she always scores
somehow, — who gives out openly that she is madly in
love with Martin, and makes him imitate her, which
he does with such awful fidelity that it is impossible
not to believe, if one shuts one's eyes, that it is not she
who is talking. The only question is whether she will
poison Sunningdale and insist on marrying Phoebus
Apollo, or whether he will say " Retro Sathanas." It
may be taken for granted that Yorkshire will marry
the girl. Then, the next night they were all four at
the opera in Yorkshire's box, next the Royal box, and
nobody looked at anything else. The girl was dressed
in grey, very simple, but quite good. There was just a
touch of blue somewhere; no jewels, but that radiant
face and that glorious hair! Poor Lady Sunningdale
beside her looked like a lobster salad in the highest
spirits. But really the boy is the handsomer ; and when
the opera was over people simply stood on the stairs
to see them go out. But the twins were completely
unconscious that it was they whom every one was
looking at, and came downstairs together, chatting,
laughing, and chaffing Lady Sunningdale because she
had gone to sleep in the second act of " Siegfried."
My dear, they are simply divine, and we must secure
them at once for dinner or something, otherwise it will
be too late.

The last sentence, whatever in this brief resume of
what London said was false or exaggerated, was cer-
tainly borne out by subsequent facts. For London,

116 THE CHALLONERS

tired with its spinster ragelessness, rose at them as
trout rise in the days of May-fly, and besought their
presence, finding them, as is not always the case with
its rages, improve on acquaintance. They enjoyed
themseh^es so enormously, and enjoyment is a most in-
fectious disease, of which every hostess prays that her
guests may sicken. They danced divinely, with the
same childish pleasure, all night. Whatever the en-
tertainment was, they were delighted, and their delight
diffused itself through the crowds of which they were
the centre. And it was always interesting to have at
one's house the girl from nowhere, who was going to
make the match of the season, and the boy from no-
where, who was going to send the world mad with
music. The twins, in fact, blazed in the blue; they
were the latest discovery, the point at which all tele-
scopes were aimed. And they presumably, like the
latest-discovered star, were too busy to be either pleased
or embarrassed that everybody was looking at them;
they just sang and shone together with all the other
lesser stars.

Ten days passed thus. Lady Sunningdale plying the
bellows assiduously and from time to time throwing
on fresh faggots of interesting and picturesque infor-
mation to feed the blaze. Nobody, not even the twins
themselves, had been more astonished than she when
they shot up into the zenith of success, for she had not
anticipated anything of the kind ; but that having hap-
pened, she was quick to assume the role of godmother.
Nothing again, a week or two before, had been further
from her thoughts than the idea that Frank Yorkshire
should marry Helen ; but that having been suggested
to her, it was, of course, incumbent on her to say

THE CHALLONEBS 117

that she had brought them together with that ex-
press purpose, and by dint of repetition soon got to
beUeve it.

The alhed forces mean time had concerted their at-
tack on that very well-garrisoned fortress known as
Martin's father. Sheets of desultory letters were
rained upon him by Lady Sunningdale, which he an-
swered with punctilious politeness; while Frank, in
far soberer strain, told Lord Flintshire the opinion of
those like Karl Rusoff, who were thoroughly com-
petent to judge, begging him use it in Martin's behalf.
In consequence he wrote soon afterwards to his brother
with some earnestness :

" You hardly ever come to town, I know, my dear Sidney,"
his letter ran, " but I really wish you would come now. It would
make you prouder than you have ever been of both your children,
if you saw them here. London, I am speaking quite seriously,
has gone off its head about them. And, indeed, I'm sure I don't
wonder. They are absolutely entrancing; their enjoyment of it
all is the most infectious thing I ever saw, and we play ridiculous
round games after dinner instead of grumbling at each other
over Bridge. And their looks ! Helen has taken the shine out
of all the debutantes, and yet not one of them seems to hate her
for it.

" This, however, is frivolous ; but I want to tell you very
seriously what an extraordinary impression Martin's musical abili-
ties have made. He played the other night at Yorkshire's house,
and I assure you all the musical lights of London simply hung on
his hands. I know nothing about it myself ; but when you find a
great pianist and a great musician like Karl Rusoff listening,
absorbed, to a young man of twenty-three, whom nobody has
hitherto ever heard of, one cannot help attaching some weight to
it. Others, too, so Frank tells me, have been no less enthusiastic
about him, but they are only names to you and me.

" Well, this is not entirely unasked advice, for I remember at
Chartries a fortnight ago you consulted me about Martin and his

118 THE CHALLONERS

future. And now it seems to me there is really no choice. He
must be a musician; you cannot take the responsibility of trying
to render unfruitful a gift like his. Nor would it be any good ;
he is bound to be one.

" Now, my dear Sidney, if there is any difficulty about expense,
for I gather he must study exclusively for some time, pray do not
give a thought to it. I will most gladly defray all expenses con-
nected with him. Pray let me hear from you as soon as possible
on the subject; and if you can run up to town for a day or two,
you will see for yourself, and be a most welcome guest at the
house of

" Your affectionate brother,

" Flintshire."

But, in spite of these appeals and assaults, Mr. Chal-
loner shewed as yet no definite signs of yielding. To
Lady Sunningdale his punctilious answers seemed
mere frigid stupidity, and she had not the smallest or
vaguest comprehension of the struggle that was going
on in his mind. She could not understand that there
was any choice to be made, still less that the choice
could be a hard one, in determining whether Martin
should once and for all close his dictionaries and open
his piano, nor, had Mr. Challoner troubled to explain
to her the deep mortification that Martin's ill-success
in classical fields had given him, would she have been
able to understand it. Karl Rusoff beckoned to him,
and it passed her comprehension that his father should
not, so to speak, throw him into the musician's arms.
She could not, in fact, with all her acuteness, imagine
in faintest outline any picture of the deep and real
perplexity which Mr. Challoner was going through, a
perplexity which for hours together tightened his
mouth and ruled deep creases between the thick, black
lines of his eyebrows. The serious talks, too, which

THE CHALLONERS 119

he had with his sister evening after evening, between
dinner and prayers, and the temporary abohtion of
Patience, would have seemed to her, if she had heard
them, meaningless ; they might as veil have been con-
ducted in a foreign tongue of which she knew neither
alphabet, grammar, or vocabulary.

One such occurred on the evening when his brother's
letter arrived.

" I have heard from Rupert," he said, " who wants
me to run up to town. That, I am afraid, is impossible.
I have too r^uch to do, with Mr. Wilkins away for his
holiday and the confirmation classes coming on. All
the same, I should be glad if I could. His letter has
troubled me rather."

"What does he say?" asked his sister, folding her
very dry, thin hands in front of her.

" He says such extraordinary things. He says Lon-
don has gone mad about them. They are amusing
themselves enormously, it appears, — at which, of
course, I am rejoiced ; but I can't help feeling a little
anxious, a little nervous. They are so young, so
thoughtless. I don't like the idea of people putting all
sorts of foolish notions into their heads, making them
think they are exceptional. I understand what people
feel about them well enough. Dear children, I don't
wonder at everybody liking them. But I gravely doubt
whether it is the best of them that people find attrac-
tive, whether it is not their thoughtlessness, their un-
thinking high spirits, their looks, which attract others.
That is so dangerous for them."

Clara Challoner put the pack of cards, which had
been laid out ready for her Patience, back into their
case. She did this without a sigh, because it was her

120 THE CHALLONERS

duty to talk to her brother if he wanted to talk, and
duty came before pleasure.

" That is exactly what I should be afraid of," she
said. " The qualities that you and I, Sidney, were
taught, and rightly, to consider weaknesses and blem-
ishes, such as irresponsible high spirits and careless
gayety, seem to me now to be regarded as virtues.
The younger generation shun earnestness and purpose
in life as they would shun physical pain. Now, look at
Lady Sunningdale, with whom Helen is staying "

" Ah, give her her due," said Mr. Challoner ; " she
is a very clever woman."

" But to what does she devote her cleverness ? To
the mere pursuit of frivolity. I wondered, as I told
you before, whether you were wise to let Helen go
under her wing. She will be among people whose only
aim in life is amusement. That is the one thing they
take any trouble to secure."

Mr. Challoner shook his head.

" I hope, I pray, I have not done wrong to let them
go," he said. " I did it with a definite purpose, in
order to let them see that sort of life. Helen is not
naturally frivolous. Look at her work here with her
classes. How admirable she is, how they adore her,
how her heart is in it. And to bring a girl up in ignor-
ance of what the world is like does no good. Some-
times I wonder whether I have not sheltered her too
much, kept her too much in this sweet place with all her
duties and pleasures round her. But it is not of her
that I am most thinking. She will come back un-
spoiled, with just the memory of a great deal of laugh-
ter and innocent amusement. No; it is of Martin.
Rupert speaks chiefly of him."

THE CHALLONEES 121

He took from his pocket the letter he had just re-
ceived and read it to her.

" It is a great puzzle, a great difficulty to know what
to do," he said. " Even at Cambridge, where he is
surrounded by all those grave, industrious influences,
Martin does not seem to me to gain in depth or in
set purpose of life. And if I consent to this, he is
plunged into surroundings that so much more conduce
to shallowness, to indulgence of the senses. Thank
God, I believe my son is pure. But he is so impres-
sionable, so easily stirred by enjoyment into thought-
lessness, that I am very much afraid."

He got up and moved over to the window, where he
stood looking out. In front the ground sloped sharply
away down to the church-yard, where in the last
fading light of evening the grey tower stood like a
shepherd watching over its flock among the grave-
stones, below which rested the bodies of those entrusted
in sure and certain hope to its hallowed care. Like
all strong, hard-working men, Mr. Challoner was far
too much occupied in the duties of his strenuous life
to give much thought to death, except as to some dim,
quiet friend whose hand some day he would take with-
out fear or regret. But how terrible death could be,
and how terrible it would be to him if through care-
lessness or biassed judgment he had chosen wrongly
for one so dear to him, so peculiarly entrusted to his
care. How terrible, again, would be that quiet friend
if, through want of wideness in sympathy, he had tried
to nip, to starve, to stifle a gift with which God had
endowed his son.

Then suddenly with a wave of bitterness all that
he had planned in long, sweet day-dreams, years ago,

122 THE CHALLONEES

for Martin filled his mind as the harsh salt-water fills
a creek. He had seen him a scholar, minute, pains-
taking, absorbed, perfecting himself in accuracy and
subtlety of mind by the study of the great classical
authors. He would be a fellow of his college, and his
father, so he pictured to himself, would live over again
his own college-days, which perhaps were the happiest
in his life, when he saw Martin seated at the high-
table among the masters of learning, or in professorial
gown crossing the dear familiar grass of the quad-
rangle to the grave grey chapel on summer after-
noons when the sun made jewels of the western panes,
or in winter when the soft, mellow glow of candles
shone dimly by the dark oak stalls and scarcely
reached to the vaulted fans of the roof.

Then the picture took large lines. With the wealth
and position that would one day be his, there was no
limit to the influence that Martin might have in an
England which even now seemed to him to be dozing
in a stupor of contented unreligious, unintellectual en-
joyment. There was need of a scholar, a man with a
great position, a man of strong Christian faith to arise
who, with a life unselfish in its aims, liberal, charitable,
encouraging all sorts of godly learning and scholarship,
should give to the world a strenuous, intellectual ideal
again. How often in his prayers had that vision risen
before him, that future which he desired so eagerly
for his son, and which, so he believed, was humanly
possible for him. Chartries should be again what it
had been four generations ago, the centre of the
scholarly, intellectual men of England. The accounts
of those days in the history of Chartries read to him
like a wonderful true fairy-story. Three or four times

THE CHALLONERS 123

in the year the house was filled by his great-grand-
father with men of learning, and after breakfast and
morning service in the chapel they would meet and
discuss till dinner-time some exquisite point of scholar-
ship or hear from some expert of the latest discoveries
in the Roman forum. At these discussions his great-
grandmother, a woman of culture and knowledge,
had always been present. She had once even read a
paper on the Elgin marbles, then but lately come to
England, in which with a marvellous subtlety and
accuracy of observation she had upheld the view, in
the face of strong attack, that they were Greek origi-
nals, not Roman copies. This and all other papers
read there were preserved among the printed " Horse
aurese Chartrienses," which was the record of these
gatherings.

For Martin, then, he had dreamed a life like that,
— the life of a cultured, scholarly, Christian gentleman,
not monkish, but with a brood of growing children
round him, busy at his books, busy in all matters of
education, instant in prayer, and a churchman staunch
to uphold the rights and the glory and the privileges
of the Mother of his faith. Instead, he was asked to
give permission that Martin, after years of expensive
education, which had ended in utter failure, should de-
vote himself to music, or as Mr. Challoner put it to
himself, to playing the piano, — a profession which, to
his mind, was akin to a sort of mountebank's. Nor was
that all. If it was only in intellectual attainment that
Martin had shewn himself desultory and idle his father
would, it is true, have deeply regretted it ; but it would
have been as nothing compared to the anxiety he felt
with regard to that slackness and indolence of charac-

124 THE CHALLONEES

ter which he thought he saw in him. Left to himself,
he would lounge the day away, not only without ac-
quiring knowledge of any kind, but without a thought
as to the strengthening and building up of his own
character. He would scribble amusing sketches by
the score, play on the piano by the hour, or, as like as
not, lie on the grass and smoke, in purposeless waste of
these infinitely precious hours of youth. Had he ever
shewn interest in matters naval, military, or political,
his father would gladly have seen him a soldier or a
member of Parliament. But he was purposeless, desul-
tory, without aims or interests, and so utterly unlike
himself in every point of character that he could
scarcely believe he was his son. And this estimate
was no new one; ever since Martin was a little boy,
through his school life and through his three years at
the University, he had noticed the same drifting weak-
ness, the same tendency to take any amount of trouble
to save trouble. Nothing had made any impression on
him, — not his confirmation, nor his growing respon-
sibilities as he rose in the school, nor the duties attach-
ing to the sixth form when he was dragged up into it,
nor the widened life at Cambridge. It was all one to
him. He had the pleasant smile when things went well,
the yawn when effort was demanded of him, the eter-
nal drifting towards the piano.

All this passed through his mind with the rapidity
of long and bitterly familiar thought.

"They all urge me to do it, Clara," he said; "yet
they don't know him as I do, and they are in no posi-
tion of responsibility with regard to him. I can't see
my way at all. It is no use his continuing to waste
his time at Cambridge, — and yet London for my poor,

THE CHALLONERS 125

rudderless Martin ! What influences may he not come
under ? Who is Rusoff, of whom Rupert speaks ? But
I must settle. It is no use putting off a decision that
has to be made."

He turned away with a sigh from the window.

" In any case, he had better come home for a day
or two before he goes up to Cambridge," he said, " so
that I can talk it all over with him. In fact, they had
both better come home. They have been in town a
fortnight, — a fortnight of pure amusement. Besides,
the Parish library wants looking after."

" I can manage that, if you would like Helen to
stop a little longer," said his sister.

" No, dear, your hands are full enough already.
Besides, Rupert's letter has made me altogether a little
uneasy. It is time they both came home."

CHAPTER VI

Helen was seated at a big plain deal table in the
village Room with a large array of volumes in hos-
pital spread in front of her. Some wanted covers,
— the cover peculiar to the books in the library of
the Room was brown holland of a strangely discour-
aging hue, stitched over the back and sides, and
turned down inside; others wanted stamp-paper over
torn edges, and most wanted labels, bearing the title,
gummed on to their backs. True, the very magni-
tude of the repairs needed was evidence that the
library was at any rate appreciated by the parish-
ioners, but the thought that her nimble hands were
employed on a useful work did not at the present
moment succeed in consoling her for the extremely
distasteful nature of the occupation. Dispiriting, too,
were her surroundings. On the walls hung the hate-
ful maps of Hampshire and the Holy Land, scientific
diagrams of the construction of flowers, and several
charts of geological strata, shewing old sandstone,
new sandstone, blue lias in which diamonds occur,
and yellow bands of auriferous reef. A large, black,
cast-iron stove stood in one corner, a bagatelle-board
with torn cloth and tipless cues — these, too, would
have to be mended after the library — occupied an-
other table, and standing against the wall were low
deal bookcases. The floor was covered with an affair
of oil-cloth pattern and of corky texture, so inde-
structible as to be practically eternal, and a harmonium,
126

THE CHALLONERS 127

happily not at all eternal but in advanced senile decay
of cypher and dumb-notes and strange noises like a
death-rattle, stood near the door. In spite of the
wide-open windows, the characteristic smell of the
Room hung heavy and stale on the air in this oppres-
sive heat of an August day.

Helen had been back from London some three
weeks, but in spite of her endeavours to settle down
again into the village life, she had not been very
successful in doing so. Duties which before had
seemed tolerable enough had become frightfully tedi-
ous, while those which before had seemed tedious had
become intolerable. Only the evening before her
father had spoken to her about her general behaviour
a propos of what he called the " falling-off" of the
village choir. This meant that on the previous Sun-
day the organist had played one tune and the choir
had sung another, which had displeased his unmusical
ear, though Martin, who had been home from Cam-
bridge for the Sunday, had listened with rapt atten-
tion, and said to Helen that he thought it extremely
Wagnerian. This opinion, it may be remarked, he
had not expressed to his father.

" I am afraid your pleasure-trip to London has un-
settled you, Helen," her father had said, " and you
should really take yourself in hand, and make up your
mind to recapture your habits of industry again. One
is often disposed to be impatient with what one calls
' little duties,' but, dear girl, there is no such thing
as a little duty. There is no such scale possible; duty
is duty, and it is all great ; and your eager and willing
performance of all those things which may seem to
you small is just as much a part of real life as to

128 THE CHALLONERS

the emperor the discharge of the cares of his empire.
For instance, the hymn at the morning service on
Sunday "

" But it isn't my fault if Mr. Milton plays the wrong
hymn," said Helen.

" But it ought to be impossible that such accidents
should occur," said her father. " You should think,
dear Helen, in Whose Honour it is that we stand up
to sing in church, and that knowledge constantly with
you, you will find must elevate the smallest duty and
raise the most insignificant piece of work into an act
of praise and worship."

" I will try, father," said she.

" I know you will. Your holiday, all the mirth and
innocent pleasure you have had in London, ought to
help you to it. Those times of refreshment are given
us not to make us discontented with our work, but to en-
able us to bring to it a rested and more active industry."

But this morning it seemed to have brought to
Helen nothing of the kind, but only a rested and
more active doubt as to whether any of the things
that filled her day could possibly, in the doing, be
good for her, or when done for others. The " Sunday
Magazine," for instance, of which at this moment she
was pasting the torn pages, seemed to her to be singu-
larly ill adapted to do anything for anybody. There
was an essay on the habits of mice, another on the
temptations of engine-drivers ; answers to correspond-
ents dealt with lotions for the hair and the best treat-
ment for burns ; while in the forefront of each number
was an instalment of a serial story connected with
incredible ranches and mining in California. But, in
spite of her conscientious doubts, her fingers moved

THE CHALLONERS 129

apace, and the stack of healed and mended volumes
at her right hand grew quickly tall.

She worked on till about twelve without pause, and
then pushed back her chair and began carrying the
mended volumes to their shelves. If only she could
have entertained any hopes as to the utility of what
she was doing she would have accepted her occupa-
tion with cheerfulness, for her nature was one of that
practical kind which finds almost any pursuit, so long
as it has definite and profitable aim, congenial. This
afternoon again she would have to take choir-prac-
tice in the Room, and even with the eager desire to
find " good in everything" she could not see who
profited by the cacophonous result. And to add to
her labours, the ill-inspired ambitions of Mr. Milton
had caused him to learn with infinite pains and groan-
ings of the organ in evening hours nothing less than
an anthem for the Harvest Festival, and it remained
for her to teach the choir. Hours would go to the
repetition of it before that unmelodious festival; and
even if it had been possible that relentless practice
could make the choir tolerably secure of their notes
(which it could not), yet the result, even if it were
faultlessly performed, would be deplorable, since it
was an anthem of that peculiarly depressing kind
produced by minor organists, contained a fugal pas-
sage which was not a fugue, and, musically speaking,
was of the most suburban and jerry-built construction.

Helen pushed back her hair, and, slightly amused
at the greyness of her own thoughts, smiled to herself
as she went backward and forward between table
and bookcase. If only she had some one, another
sister, to share in these farthing woes of a rector's

9

130 THE CHALLONERS

daughter, she could have laughed at them; she and
a friend, at any rate, could have read each other
striking extracts from the mended leaves of the " Sun-
day Magazine." Then suddenly she heard a step on
the gravel outside, a step not her father's, but strangely
familiar, and the door opened.

" Why, Lord Yorkshire," she said. " How delight-
ful! Do come in."

Frank had the enviable faculty of keeping compara-
tively cool on very hot days, just as on occasions heat-
ing and stirring to the spirit his nature seldom boiled.
But to-day he was much hotter spiritually than physi-
cally, and Helen's genuine pleasure to see him, which
shone in her eyes and her smile and vibrated in her
voice, did not reduce this genial heat.

" I have not done wrong," he asked, " to come and
interrupt you? They told me at the vicarage that
you were here."

" No, indeed, you have not," said she, shaking
hands. " Really, I was longing for an interruption.
Look!" and she pointed to the titles of her mended
stack of books.

He glanced at them with a smile.

" Really, without undue conceit, I don't wonder,"
he said. "And so this is the Room you told me about
in London?"

His eyes wandered round, looking at the maps and
the colored chart of geological formation, at the har-
monium, the bagatelle-board. Then suddenly all the
girl's loyalty to her father rose in her.

" Ah, don't laugh," she said. " I can't bear that
you should laugh."

He looked at her quite gravely.

THE CHALLONERS 131

" Heaven forbid," he said. " Here, as in that map
of geological strata, there is an auriferous reef. There
is to be found a little belt of gold in everything which
we may have to do, as long as it is not — not nasty.
The trouble sometimes is to find it. Haven't you
struck it this morning?"

Helen sat down with a little sigh.

" No. Help me to dig a little," she said. " Look
at the soil ! ' Sunday Magazine.' A serial. Then

* Round the tea-table,' with a receipt for muffins.

* Muffins' is torn. I must mend it. Missionary work
among the aborigines of Somaliland. Oh, dear ! What
has it all got to do with me — this me?" she cried.

" Perhaps you have not yet mended enough to find
out," he suggested.

" That is possible. All the same I have mended a
good deal. Now I am going to talk ' Lady Sunning-
dale' for two minutes; at least there are fifty distinct
and separate things I want to say in one breath. First
of all, please smoke; the Room smells of Sunday-
school. Yes, and give me one, — if my father appears
suddenly you must say it was you. Next, I suppose
you have come from Fareham. How is Lady Sun-
ingdale? And you'll stop for lunch, of course. Next,
Martin. He is going to leave Cambridge at the end
of the long. He is going to settle in London in the
autumn and study under Monsieur RusofT. Oh, why
wasn't I born a boy? I suppose you can't tell me.
So once again about Martin, thanks. What a good
time we had in London ! I have never enjoyed a fort-
night more. Ls every one as kind as that always?"

" I think they always will be to you," said he.
" You two took London by storm. We all went into

132 THE CHALLONERS

mourning and retirement into the country when you
left."

Helen laughed.

" You don't look as if any grief particularly
weighed on you," she said,

" Clearly not now," said he.

This was a little clumsily obvious, and it made her
for the moment slightly embarrassed. She dabbed a
label somewhat crooked on to the back of a work
about missionary enterprise.

" Can you write a legible hand, Lord Yorkshire ?"
she said. " If so, and if you will be kind enough,
please write ' Sunday Magazine' very clearly on twelve
labels, with ordinal numbers, one to twelve, below the
title. And when I've pasted them on, I shall have
finished, and we'll go out. Martin isn't here, I am
afraid. He is up at Cambridge till the end of the
month."

Frank obediently took a pen. He had suffered a
slight repulse.

" A notable charm of life," he remarked, " is its
extreme unexpectedness. If I had been told by a
chiromantist that I should shortly be writing the
words ' Sunday Magazine' — is that legible enough ? —
twelve times over with numerals beneath I should
have distrusted everything else he said. Yet, here
we go."

Helen laughed. She was not quite certain whether
she was pleased or not at the success with which she
had turned the conversation on to topics so alien from
herself as the " Sunday Magazine."

" Quite so," she said. " And if I had been told
that I should be telling you to do so, I should have

THE CHALLONERS 133

considered it too wildly improbable to be even funny.
Yet, as you say, here we go. Oh!"

Her ear had caught the sound of a step outside, and
with a quick sweep of her arm she threw her cigarette
out of the window.

" It's you, remember," she said, with whispered
emphasis.

Frank's cigarette, however, was still unlit, but he
obligingly remedied this, and hurriedly blew out a
cloud of smoke and silent laughter. Next moment
the vicar entered. He paused for a second on the
threshold, his nostrils surprised by this unusual aroma
in the Room, but Frank instantly rose.

"How are you, Mr. Challoner?" he said. "I
called at the vicarage, but every one was out. But
hopes were held out to me that I might find some of
you here, so I came. And behold me," he added,
rather felicitously, " a lay helper," and he pointed to
his half-written labels.

The vicar's somewhat grim face relaxed. There
was a neatness about Frank's speech which his classi-
cal tastes approved.

" It is too kind of you. Lord Yorkshire," he said.
" Helen has impressed you into the service, I sup-
pose. But — I am sure you will excuse me — would
you mind finishing your cigarette outside? Our rules
about smoking in the Room are stringent. You will
excuse me."

His eye glanced rather sternly, as he spoke, at
Helen. This was one of the laxities he deplored in
his children. She knew quite well that smoking was
not allowed in the Room. The most infinitesimal
moral courage on her part could have stopped it. And

134 THE CHALLONERS

he himself knew how she would excuse herself, saying
that she did not think it mattered in the morning
when there was no one there. It was a rule of the
place, however. He had made it ; she knew it.

Frank instantly threw his cigarette out of the win-
dow.

" I am so sorry," he said, " and I am afraid I never
asked leave."

" You have no idea what difficulties we have with
even quite the small boys of the village," continued
Mr. Challoner. " Children of eight and nine think
it manly to pull at an inch of bad tobacco. So I am
sure you will not even mentally accuse me of faddi-
ness. I gave up smoking myself entirely for that
reason. You are too kind to help my daughter. You
will lunch with us, of course."

" Thanks, very much. I came over in the motor
from Fareham, and Miss Helen had already been so
good as to suggest "

" Of course Martin is away from home, I am sorry
to say. Helen has no doubt told you what has been
decided."

He glanced again at her as her quick, nimble fingers
plied the work which an hour ago had seemed so dis-
tasteful. Certainly now there was in her no trace of
that listlessness and want of application and vitality
that a few days before had occasioned his loving re-
bukes. She was all vivid and alert ; the fresh, bright
colour shone like a sunlit banner in her cheeks, and,
as he looked, he realised for the first time this was
no longer " my little girl," but a woman in her own
rig-ht. Then like an echo to this came the thought
that he was not the proprietor of his children. Ad-

THE CHALLONERS 135

viser, corrector, pruner, cultivator he might be, but
he could not make nor stop growth if " my little girl"
decided otherwise.

This was something of a shock, though only mo-
mentary, and there was no perceptible pause before
he spoke again.

" So you will bring Lord Yorkshire home to lunch,
Helen," he said. " I must go on to the village. I
only looked in on my way. Half-past one, Lord York-
shire. And afterwards you must try a cigar that I
can give you. A year ago they wanted keeping, and
now they have got it."

For a little while after he had left neither spoke.
A label had been put on crookedly and required read-
justment ; something else also had gone crookedly,
and Helen had to readjust that, too.

" I'm afraid I must tell him I had been smoking,"
she said. " Oh, dear, what a bore !"

" Is not that too transcendental honesty?" he said.

Her eyes flashed their wide light into his.

" Ah, no ; there is neither less nor greater in hon-
esty," she said. " It is a great bore to be honest. I
wish I wasn't. No, I don't wish that. It is one of
the uncomfortable things which one can't get on with-
out."

Suddenly he knew that a moment which for weeks
had been approaching slowly rushed into the imme-
diate future. He sat upright in his chair and quite
unconsciously moved it nearer hers. His upper teeth
closed on his lower lip, dragging it upward till it was
white. Some mad current of blood sang in his ears,
some sudden mistiness obscured his eyes, and she was
but a dim, wavering form close to him.

136 THE CHALLONERS

" Honesty ! honesty !" he said. " Helen !"

A long-drawn breath rose in her bosom, filling it,
filling her, filling everything. A " Sunday Magazine"
dropped from her hand, and she stood up. He too
stood, and they faced each other for a long moment,
and the new certainty became the only certainty there
was.

" Oh, are you sure, are you sure?" she cried.

And there was no more need of words just then.

" Since you took the hare out of the trap," she
said. " I think I loved you for that."

" Since you caught my finger in the trap "

" And it bled," said she.

" But you bound it up for me."

She raised her face and held him by the shoulders,
arms outstretched.

" And I remember saying to Martin that this was
the sort of room in which nothing nice could happen.
Oh, Frank, how has it happened? How has it hap-
pened?" she said.

" I don't know how, my darling, but I know why."

"Why, then?"

" Because it had to happen as far as I was concerned.
Because it was you, in fact. How could it have been
otherwise?"

Her eyes dropped a moment, and then looked full
at him again.

" Is it real ?" she asked. " And if it hadn't hap-
pened, what would have become of us? Supposing
you had not said ' Helen' ?"

"What else could I have said?"

" You might have said nothing."

THE CHALLONERS 137

" Nothing ? You and I here together, and noth-
ing? I had been saying nothing too long," he cried.

" No, not too long. It has all been perfect. And
— and the ' Sunday Magazine,' and — and twelve
labels, each with their numbers. Oh, I surrender,"
she said.

" When you have utterly conquered?"

" Yes, both. And both of us."

" There is only one."

It was no descent to return to the unfinished work;
the business of label-pasting rather was illuminated
and made glorious, the putting of the books back in
the shelves was a procession of love. Then came the
return to the vicarage under the benediction of the
sun and the intrusion of the presence of others ; but
as some telegraph from lover to lover throbs across
hundreds of miles of arid and desert country that
does not know what secret and blissful tenderness has
passed over it, so from each to the other passed un-
noticed glances that sent the electric current to and
fro, and the words of common life were to them a
cypher charged with intimate meaning.

It had been settled between the two that her father
should be told at once, and accordingly, after lunch,
when he went into his study to get Frank the prom-
ised cigar, with a view to coffee on the shady croquet-
lawn, the latter followed him, while the two ladies
went out, and told him.

" It is the happiest day of my life, Mr. Challoner,"
he said, very simply. " Your daughter has accepted
my devotion and love."

Mr. Challoner turned to him quickly.

138 THE CHALLONERS

"Helen?" he said. "You? Lord Yorkshire, this
is most unexpected. But I am charmed, dehghted, at
your news. And I risk the imputation of a father's
partiality when I say that I congratulate you most
heartily."

He shook hands warmly with the young man, and
an emotion, very deep and heart-felt, vibrated in his
voice.

" May the blessings of God be on you both," he
said.

For a single moment Frank felt as if the ther-
mometer had dropped suddenly, but the sensation was
so instantaneous that before he could analyze it it
had passed, and Mr. Challoner still held his hand in
his strong, firm grasp.

" And I think, I believe, she is a very fortunate
girl," he added. " When — when did you speak to
her?"

" This morning only. We settled to tell you at
once."

" Thank you. That was right of you. How the

years pass; why it seems only yesterday Well,

well, — let us join them outside. Ah, a cigar for you,
I declare I had forgotten."

They crossed the lawn together, and as they ap-
proached the group of chairs underneath the box-
hedge, Mr. Challoner quickened his step a little and
advanced to Helen with hands outstretched.

" Helen, my dearest girl," he said.

The glorified hours of the golden afternoon passed
too quickly. Parish work soon claimed the vicar,
who, as he passed through the village, gave notice

THE CHALLONERS 139

in the school that the choir-practice was postponed till
the next day; Aunt Clara betook herself to district-
visiting, and the two were left alone again while the
shadows began to grow tall on the grass. Sweet
words and sweeter silence sang duets together, and
from talk and silence they learned each other. For
their falling in love had been an instinctive inevitable
thing, and now that the gracious deed v^^as accom-
plished, they explored each other's nature in the ex-
cellent brightness of the love-light.

" Lazy, frightfully lazy," said he. " Will you take
that in hand for me? With the unaccountable delu-
sion, by the way, that I am extremely hard-worked
I lie in bed in the morning, and groan at the thought
of all that I shall have to do before I go to bed again.
After a very long time I get up — and don't do it.
Helen, how could you have been in the world all these
years and I not know it?"

" Oh, what does it matter now? For here we are,
and for all the rest of the years we shall both know
it. Yes, you shall get up at seven every morning. I
will wake you myself."

" That will be nice. And I needn't get up at once?
And what am I to do when I do get up?"

" Why, all the things you lie groaning about," she
said.

" But there aren't any, really. At least nothing to
groan about."

" Now you're talking nonsense. I don't mind,
though. You talked a good deal of nonsense on that
Sunday, the hare-Sunday, you and Lady Sunningdale.
How is she?"

" I forget. I forget everything but — this !"

140 THE CHALLONERS

She bent towards him.

" Am I really all that to you ?" she asked.

" Yes, all. More than all."

After a while she spoke again.

" And you have no back-thought? There is no dark
place at all, no shadow of any kind?"

He looked up quickly.

" Yes, a possible shadow," he said.

"Religion?"

"Yes; it had occurred to you, too, then. What
do you expect?"

Helen sat with her chin resting on her hand a mo-
ment without replying.

" I don't know," she said, at length. " Don't let
us think about it just now, Frank. Let this afternoon
be perfect. But I can tell you this, that though it may
possibly be very painful, it will make no difference to

me. I shall be very sorry — very, very sorry, but

That ' but' is you, if you understand."

" Thank you, my darling," said he.

Mr. Challoner carried a very thankful heart with
him as he went on his various errands that afternoon.
To see Helen happily married was a constant desire
and prayer of his, and though he would with willing-
ness and thankfulness have given her to the keeping
of any good man who could support her and a family,
he did not attempt to disguise from himself the satis-
faction he felt at her having made what is vulgarly
called " a great match." She had the gifts which
should enable her to fill a great position, and to play
a great part worthily was a bigger and a finer thing,
— though he had said " duty was duty and there is

THE CHALLONERS 141

neither less nor greater" than to work on a smaller
scale. More than that, he had, with all his personal
unworldliness, a good deal of pride of race, which
Frank with his undeniable birth and breeding gratified.
For the man himself, also, he felt a very decided liking
and respect; he was an admirable landlord, in spite
of his avowed laziness ; he was generally considered
to get through the day's work with credit. In the
House of Lords, also, he had already achieved a cer-
tain reputation for eminent common sense ; and though
to advocates of extremes his speeches might appear
commonplace, that was rather the fault of those who
held an extreme view. In other words, he lent his
wealth and position to the support of moderation,
much as Lord Flintshire had done.

Another matter dearer to Mr. Challoner's heart
than the obscurities of fiscal affairs was that Frank
was, if not a pillar, at any rate a very sound piece of
the fabric in the twin-towered building called " Church
and State." His patronage was always given to clergy
of moderate views who did not indulge in what Mr.
Challoner called " idolatrous and Romish practices,"
while, on the other hand, he always voted dead against
any attempt to subtract from the power or position
of the English Church as by law established. " A
staunch Churchman," said Mr. Challoner to himself,
as he walked with his long, rapid strides through the
pathway hedged about with the yellowing corn.

For the time his disappointments about Martin were
forgotten. There, it is true, his dreams about his
boy's future had been dispelled by a rude and bitter
awakening, but here, at any rate, was something which
he had never dreamed being realised, and without

142 THE CHALLONERS

overestimating the force and value of education and
the influences which spring from environment and
mode of Hfe, he beheved that Helen would assuredly-
live her mature and wider life on the lines in which
she had been brought up. So in this marriage he saw
a strong weapon forged of steel and wielded by a
loyal hand in defence of his mistress the Church. He
knew well the immense power which in England a
territorial magnate is possessed of; how by the mere
fact of his wealth and position he can control the
course of wide issues. Hitherto Frank had done just
that; he had always ranged himself on the side of
education and religion, or rather he had ranged the
inert weight of all he represented there, while he him-
self had keenly pursued the artistic things of life. But
now Helen, with all the influence of her home and
upbringing strong within her, would come to add life
to this solid weight, making it an active and potent
instead of a passive instrument of good. He almost
envied the girl, — such opportunity was given to few
only, and on her would the responsibility and the glory-
rest.

His district-visiting that afternoon had taken him
into the farthest limits of his parish, and a three-mile
walk into the glories of the sunset lay before him
when he turned homewards. A flush of colour, vivid
and delicate as the cheek of youth, incarnadined the
west, over which a few light fleeces of crimson cloud
hung like flames, and further up from the horizon a
belt of aqueous green melted into the transparent blue
of the sky overhead. The sun had already sunk be-
hind the tawny line of swelling down, and the water-
meadows by the Itchen, where his path lay, were full

THE CHALLONERS 143

of dusky and deepening shadows. Right down the
centre ran the lucent stream, reflecting on its surface
the blue and the green and the flush of the sunset sky.
Rooks cawed their way homeward to where the elms
of Chartries showed black against the luminous west,
and to the left of the long gabled faqade of house-roof
rose the grey gothic tower of his church, the lodestar
of his life, the mistress of his heart. That was the
realest thing in all the world to him; all that was
beautiful at this magic hour in earth and sky was but
a path that conducted his soul thither ; all that he loved
on earth was only the shadow and faint similitude of
the great love of his which centred there. Nothing
had any real existence except in its relation to that;
everything else was but an avenue to an anti-chamber
in the house of many mansions. And as his eye first
caught sight of the grey, cross-surmounted tower, he
stopped a moment, uncovered his head, and with closed
eyes stood still in a Presence more poignantly there
with him than any. Through his impatience with
ways and methods not his own, through his intoler-
ance of that of which he had no ability of comprehen-
sion, through his instinctive dismissal of all that
seemed to him unessential in life, whether it was the
benediction of the evening hour, the piano-playing of
Martin, the sweet eyes of Helen, through all, at mo-
ments like these, when his human emotions were most
aroused, his view pierced triumphant and saw only
the cross of Christ pointing heavenward. Towards
that, and that alone, the essential nature of the man
was directed, even as the compass-needle, though de-
flected and distracted by other neighbouring agencies,
is essentially undeviating and loyal in its allegiance to

144 THE CHALLONERS

the north. His disapprovals, his censorious judgments,
his want of sympathy for what he did not understand
were only the husk of the man, and it was the very
strength of his central devotion that made him intoler-
ant of any who seemed to lapse in things great or
small from his own measure of fervour. Extreme
cases, indeed, the case of the Jew, the Turk, the in-
fidel, he left with faith to the mercy of God, though his
human comprehension did not see how they could be
capable of receiving it. He did not know ; he left
them before the throne of Infinite Compassion, and
turned his thoughts elsewhere, to his own work of
ministering to the sick and needy, to the cultivation
of the intellect, the usury of that sterling talent given
to man, and all that should make a man more capable
of worship, a fitter instrument in the hand of the great
Artificer.

The rose colour in the west faded to the nameless
and indescribable hue of the hour after sunset, a single
spangle of a star flashed in the vault of velvet sky,
and dusk, like the slow closing of tired eyes, fell layer
after layer over field and copse and river. Lights be-
gan to twinkle in the cottages of the village ; day with
its joys and its work and its rewards was over, and
rest was ordained for the world and its myriads. In-
stinctively the mood of the tranquil hour gained on
him, his foot abated a little from the vigour of its
stride, the active fervour of his brain cooled a little,
and a very human tenderness rose and suffused his
thoughts. Here in the church-yard, which he was
now crossing, stood the plain marble slab with its
lettering, now twenty-four years old, below which lay
the remains of her who had been the one passion,

THE CHALLONERS 145

short and sweet and bitter, of his Hfe. How often in
those years had he wondered, with aching longing for
light, what was the design of that interlude, what was
the correct reading, so to speak, of the passion that had
for a year so absorbed and mastered and overwhelmed
him. His wife and he had no spiritual affinity; his
love for her had not raised and inspired him, and he,
strong and loving as he had been, had not helped her
with any success towards the strenuous and active ser-
vice which he knew to be the bounden duty of every
living soul. Had his passion, then, been merely a
casual, carnal longing, a frailty of the flesh? Often
and often he had been afraid to answer that question
honestly, but to-night, as he paused for a moment by
the grave, that doubt assailed him no longer, and in-
stead a strange yearning and regret for a missed op-
portunity took its place. Had he dealt wisely and
gently with that sun-lit child ? Had he failed to realise
what a child she was, and been harsh and deficient in
tenderness to a little one?

His head drooped for a moment as he stood there,
and then, with all the honesty of a nature as upright
as a fir-tree, he answered it. He could not justly con-
demn himself: he had done his best according to the
light that was given him. He had acted in a way he
would have advised another to act, — he would act so
again now. It had not been easy. Often he had longed
to kiss her face into smiles again, and had been stern
instead.

Then briskly again he left the grave, and in the
gloaming stepped across the lawn into the long win-
dow of his study. The lamp was already there,
trimmed and lit, his work was spread on the table in

10

146 THE CHALLONERS

orderly array. There were still ten minutes remaining
to him before he need dress for dinner, and from
habit long-engrained he sat down at once to use them.
He found his place, composed his mind to the topic on
hand, and dipped his pen in the ink. But, contrary to
habit, his attention wandered, and strayed back to the
church-yard and until the dressing-bell sounded he
sat there looking out of the window with unseeing
eyes, questioning, questioning.

CHAPTER VII

Three glasses of claret during dinner and one of
port with his dessert was Mr. Challoner's usual allow-
ance of alcoholic fluid, and, as a rule, neither his sister
nor Helen took any. But to-night, in honour of the
occasion, a half-bottle of champagne, to drink a toast
in which two names were coupled, made its unusual
appearance, and the vicar proposed the health in a
voice which shook a little with feeling.

" God bless you both, my dearest girl," he said, and
drained his glass.

Afterwards, as if to endorse the felicity of the occa-
sion, the malignancy of the cards was abated, and
Aunt Clara's Patience " came out" twice before
prayers without a semblance of cheating on her
part. Why she cared to play at all, if she cheated,
had long been to Helen an unanswerable riddle, and
was so still. But, in her dry and passionless way, to
get out without cheating was a satisfaction to Aunt
Clara. She was pleased also with the engagement of
her niece, but her comparative reticence on that, as on
the subject of Patience (she had said only "Fancy,
Sidney, Miss Milligan came out twice!"), was due not,
as in her brother's case, to excess of feeling, but to the
inability to feel anything at all acutely. The per-
formance of her duties in the house and in the parish
had been for years a sufficient emotional diet ; from
other influences, like a freshly-vaccinated person in
respect of smallpox, she was immune. She always

147

148 THE CHALLONERS

said " Good-night" the moment prayers were over, and
did so on this occasion. But she kissed Helen twice.
That corresponded to her observation to her brother
about the Patience.

To-night, however, contrary to custom, the vicar
lingered in the drawing-room instead of going back
to his study, and, when her aunt was gone, Helen took
this opportunity of getting her little confession made.
He had beckoned her to the arm of the long, deep
chair in which he was sitting, when she would na-
turally have followed her aunt upstairs, and took her
hand in his, stroking it softly. Such a spontaneous
caress was rare with him, and in spite of the enormity
of her confession, she needed no large call on her cour-
age to make it.

" There is one thing I want to tell you, father," she
said. " I hope you will not be very angry with me."

Mr. Challoner pressed her hand gently. Now, as
always, the confidence of his children was a thing im-
mensely sweet to him, to get it unasked, pathetically so.

"What is it, dear?" he said. "I don't think you
need be afraid of that."

" Do you remember this morning requesting Lord
Yorkshire — Frank — not to smoke in the Room?" she
asked.

" Yes, perfectly. And since I feel sure I know
what you want to tell me, it did occur to me that you
might, with a little courage, have asked him not to.
You knew my feeling about it. But you have told me
of your own accord, dear. So that is finished, quite
finished."

The temptation to say no more was extraordinarily
strong, and to end this beautiful day quite happily with

THE CHALLONERS 149

every one — Aunt Clara had kissed her twice, which
she usually only did on Christmas morning — was the
childish impulse dominant in her. To-morrow she
would deal with other things, one perfect pearl of a
day would be hers, — an imperishable treasure. But
the necessity of honesty, consecrated, as it were, by
what had passed between her and Frank on the sub-
ject, conquered. For the last year she had occasionally
smoked, and had never in the least desired to tell her
father that she did. Yet now, somehow, perhaps be-
cause it was connected with him, she must. So she
spoke.

" No, it is not quite finished," she said. " I had
been smoking, too."

For a moment he almost failed to grasp this simple
statement, then a school-master voice rapped out a
question.

"You smoke?" he asked.

"Not often; not much," she said, with the old
childish awe of him suddenly returning.

" And who Did Martin teach you?" he asked,

with an ironic emphasis on " teach," at that fine word
being put to such base uses.

" No ; I asked him for a cigarette," she said.

"And he gave it you?"

There was no reply necessary. He had dropped her
hand, as if it had been a cigarette-end, but now he
took it again.

" My dearest girl," he said, " I do not want you for
a moment to think that I make much out of a little ; do
not think that I regard it as morally wrong in any
way. But think, Helen, — a girl like you smoking. Is
it seemly? Is it not a horrid, a nasty habit? And in

150 THE CHALLONERS

the Room, too ! There, there, don't tremble, my dear.
I am not angry."

There was a moment's pause.

" Let us dismiss it altogether, Helen," he said.
" You told me, anyhow, and I know it was hard for
you to do that. But" — and he was father, responsible
father, when he should have been friend — " but you
knew my feeling about it. It was disobedient."

All the time his heart was warmed by the thought
that she had told him, yet his sense of duty, his re-
sponsibility towards his children, which was one of the
most constant motives of his acts, made him say more.
He did not want to preach, but he was incapable of
not doing so.

" Yes, disobedient," he said, " to what you knew I
felt. And that Martin should give you a cigarette is
as bad."

" Ah, do not bring him into it," she said. " I am
stronger than Martin, — he had to give it me. Martin
would always do what I asked him. Please do not
write to him or speak to him about it."

Then, at the thought of Martin, and of the constant,
continual misunderstandings between him and her
father, her own great happiness urged her to try to
help him.

'* I am much worse than Martin is, dear father,"
she said ; " much more disobedient, much, — ' The
Mill on the Floss,' for instance. I had been read-
ing it."

"And he had lent it you?" asked Mr. Challoner,
quietly.

" No. I found it in his bedroom and took it. Oh,
father "

THE CHALLONERS 151

The issues for each had deepened. The meaning of
that exclamation was understood by him: it pleaded
with him for Martin.

" I have always tried to be a good father to you
both," he said.

Then all that Helen had suppressed and striven not
to have thought for years rose to the surface on this
her first day of liberty. She had not let herself know
how heavy the yoke had been till now, when her manu-
mission was signed. But Martin still was in sub-
jection. She stood up.

" I know that," she said. " If I had not always
known that I should not have cared. It is just that
which makes it so sad. But we have both been afraid
of you. We have concealed things from you because
we were afraid of your displeasure. You know, Mar-
tin is awfully timid ; he shrinks from what hurts. And
we do not tell you everything even now."

The thrill of pleasure that her unasked confidence
had given him had pretty well died out. He felt also
that there was something more coming.

" You or Martin?" he asked.

The tide was irresistible, sweeping her away. A
thing which must be horribly painful to him had to
be told her father to-day, to-morrow, or some time,
and she suddenly knew that she must tell him now.
Besides, here was a burden she could voluntarily bear
for her lover, a pain, a difficult thing she could take on
herself. And, woman all through, as she would have
saved him anything from a toothache to a heartache,
especially if the saving it from him meant the trans-
ference of it to her, she felt, in spite of the pain, an
inward thrill and warmth at the thought that it would

152 THE CHALLONEKS

be spared to Frank. A few minutes before, when
Aunt Clara left the room, she would have gone too, if
she had known that the little confession would lead on
to this, but now the burning of her love, as when
a furnace-door is thrown open, glowed with a white-
ness that consumed all else.

" I, anyhow," she said. " I have something which
you must be told. And I choose to tell you instead of
Frank."

Her father got up also facing her. He was very
grave, very still.

" Does it concern him?" he asked.

" Yes."

" Is it disgraceful?"

" No."

He made one futile attempt to stop in the middle of
the rapids into which he or she, he did not know
which, had steered.

" Then, tell me nothing, Helen," he said. " You
say it is not disgraceful. That is quite sufficient for
me when it comes from your mouth. I do not wish to
be told either by him or you. There is no past that
can be raked up — ah, I need not have asked you that.
You would have turned from him with loathing if
there had been that. For the rest I am satisfied. He
has artistic tastes of which I have no knowledge, and
with which no sympathy. He is honourable and of a
great name, he is liked, respected; he is a man whom
I would have chosen myself for you, and he has the
interests and welfare of the church close to his
heart "

He stopped suddenly, arrested by the sudden white-
ness of her face.

THE CHALLONERS 153

" Or what ?" he asked.

" He is not even a Christian," said Helen, simply.

Mr. Challoner did not reply at once. The habit of
tidiness in him, unconsciously asserting itself, led him
to put square the case of cards which his sister had
used for her Patience. Then he turned down with his
foot the corner of the hearth-rug which Helen's dress,
as she walked to the fireplace, had disarranged. In-
deed, it had distressed him for some time ; it was easy
to trip on it. Then he spoke.

" And did you know that when you promised to be
his wife?" he asked, with a scrupulous desire to be
absolutely fair.

" Yes," said she.

" Then, what are his religious opinions?" asked he,
still scrupulous. " Does he believe in God ?"

" No."

" And you knew that all along?"

" I knew it on the day when, I think, I began to love
him," she said.

A sudden, superficial flow of bitterness, just as a
light breeze will ruffle the surface of some huge wave,
passed over her father.

" For that reason ?" he asked,

Helen looked at him in amazement.

" I did not know you could have asked me that," she
said.

" And I, too, have much to learn about my children,"
said he.

Helen's eye flashed back at him. She was afraid no
longer. The talk she had had with Frank on that
memorable Sunday afternoon she had put away like
stored provisions; often since it had been food to her

154 THE CHALLONERS

thoughts, and it was now all eaten, digested, assimi-
lated. The instinct of individualism had no doubt
often been present to her mind before, but what he
said then had made it blossom and fructify. He had
said, in fact, perhaps no more than she had known,
though without knowing she knew it; his words had
been a taper to a gas-jet already turned on. Without
the taper it might have continued to escape ; the taper
made flame of it. And in the light of it the figure
" father" was shewn her as a man only, capable of
using one vote, in opposition it might be to her own,
but, however dear and intimate he was to her, and in
spite of her parentage, education, and upbringing, he
was still only somebody, not herself. And she, Helen,
had to be herself.

"Yes; you are learning that they are people," she
said, in answer to his bitterness. " Martin and I are
people. I must think for myself and feel for myself.
Yes; I knew that Frank is what he is, — an atheist.
And I love him,"

Mr. Challoner looked at her a moment with terrible,
alien eyes, meeting her full gaze. Then he turned and
went towards the door.

Instantly the daughter in her awoke.

" Father," she cried, holding out her hands to him,
" Father."

But he passed out without turning, and she heard the
door of his study opposite close behind him, and the
click of a lock.

The finality, the sharpness of that click of well-oiled
wards, brought home to the girl, even more than the
bitter and burning words which had been said, what
had happened, the unbridgeable breach that had opened

THE CHALLONERS 155

between herself and her father. For, even now, dis-
traught as she was with the agitation of the scene, so
that she felt almost physically sick, she knew that she
had acted in compulsory obedience to an instinct which
was irresistible; she could not call back into her own
control the love she had given. Whatever else beck-
oned, that to her was the strongest call. And equally
well-known to her was the instinct in obedience to
which her father had acted. Dear as his children were
to him, there was something infinitely dearer, that
which from the tower of the church had pointed
upwards into the clear, sunset sky. No assertion of in-
dividualism made its voice heard there; the one im-
mutable love claimed all allegiances.

Infinitely shocked and distressed as he was, Mr.
Challoner did not suffer during the next half-hour
nearly as keenly as Helen, for the idea that she would
not eventually — after pain and struggle, no doubt — •
see as he saw never entered his mind. Indeed, after
a few minutes the emotion predominant in him was
pity for her at the necessity of the rejection of the
human love offered to and accepted by her. She would
be led to the light — not for a moment did he doubt
that — and the suffering would ennoble and not em-
bitter her. Then, out of pity for her, compunction at
what he had done rose within him. Again he had
been harsh and peremptory ; not even the sacred cause
he championed could justify that nor excuse his lack
of gentleness. He had left her in anger, anger as he
now acknowledged to himself partly personal in its
origin. So, before half an hour was passed, he un-
locked his door, and going upstairs to her bedroom,
tapped softly.

156 THE CHALLONERS

Helen had had no more thought of going to bed than
he, and she let him in at once.

" We did not say good-night, Helen," he said.
" We were both "

She raised her eyes to him.

" Ah, don't let us discuss it any more to-night,"
she said.

" No, dear. I only wanted to say good-night to you,
to — to say that I am sorry for leaving in the manner
I did. You look very tired. Will you not go to bed."

" Yes; soon perhaps."

She kissed him, and stood silent a moment, finger-
ing the lappel of his coat.

" If we did not care for each other it would be
easier," she said. " Poor father ! Good-night, dear.
Thank you for coming."

It had been arranged that Frank should bring the
motor over again next morning and drive Helen back
to Fareham to lunch with Lady Sunningdale, and he
made his appearance rather sooner than expected,
having driven, as he acknowledged, a little over the
regulation two miles an hour. Helen had heard the ap-
proach of wheels, and met him at the door. One glance
at her face was enough to tell him that something, and
what that was he easily guessed, had happened.

" Father is in," she said ; " he waited in on pur-
pose to see you. Yes; he knows."

"You told him? Well?"

" He said very little, but enough. Oh, Frank, it
is very dreadful. He is my father. But all I said to
you holds. He, you; that is what hurts so. It was
awful telling him, too. But I had to."

THE CHALLONERS 157

" My darling, why?" he asked. " You should have
left it to me."

Her eye brightened.

*' Ah, that was one of the reasons why I didn't,"
she said.

" Oh, Helen ! But you look tired, knocked up."

" That doesn't much matter," she said. " Go to
see him now, dear. You will find me on the lawn
when you have finished. And, remember, it all holds.
It was never shaken, not for a moment, even last
night. And he came to say good-night to me after-
wards; poor, dear father! I have always envied him
for his strength till now; but now it is just that which
will make him suffer so horribly."

Frank felt in his coat pocket, and took a note out
of it.

" From Lady Sunningdale," he said. " She is de-
lighted, and is telling everybody how she managed and
contrived it all from the beginning."

Helen took the note.

" Go now, Frank," she said. " I can think of
nothing till this is over."

She strolled out on to the lawn again, and sat down
in the warm shade of the box-hedge to read Lady
Sunningdale's ecstatic and desultory raptures. The
scene the evening before, followed by a very restless
night, full of half-conscious sleep and wide-eyed
awakenings, had so tired her that weariness had
brought a sort of healing of its own, dulling the keenest
edge of her capacity for suffering. Breakfast had been
a meal of ghastly silence, broken only by noises of
knives and forks, loud in the stillness. Her father had
only addressed her directly once, and that to say that

158 THE CHALLONERS

he wished to see Lord Yorkshire when he arrived.
Breakfast over, she had written to Martin to tell him
all that had happened ; then Frank had come.

All sorts of awful, impossible situations flapped like
horrible bats about her as she waited. She pictured
her father insulting her lover; she pictured Frank,
stung by some intolerable taunt, striking him; she
pictured, with dreadful vividness, a hundred things
that could not possibly be. All round her hummed
the myriad noises of the summer noon, and the myriad
scents of the flower-garden, where still the industrious
sweet-peas were prolific, mingled, and were wafted in
web of fragrant smell round her. It was a day of
high festival in sound and smell and light and colour,
a day of a brilliance that had again and again been
sufficient to make her half crazy with the pure joy of
living and sight of joyous life so abundantly mani-
fested. But this morning she was deaf and blind to
the myriad- voiced noon; for in these last twenty-four
hours there had come to her a happiness transcending
all she had ever felt and a bitterness of sorrow, march-
ing side by side, and inextricably mingled with it,
that was as immeasurably more poignant than any she
had ever known as her joy transcended all the other
joys of her very happy years. Whatever might hap-
pen, life could never again be enjoyed by her with
the insouciance of girlhood: some finger had touched
her as she smiled and dreamed in her twenty years of
sleep and had awakened her. And a voice had said,
" Wake ; you are a woman ; you shall love and suffer."
Yet, even now, while she shrank and winced under
the pain, some secret fibre of her being welcomed it.
She — her essential self — was the richer for it; life at

THE CHALLONERS 159

last had touched her sad, bitter, imperfect, but admir-
able life. Like a plant, she had been moved suddenly
out of the warm shelter of a green-house. Here-
after the sun might scorch her, the wind tear her,
the frost wither her, the rain lash her, but she was to
know what it was to be rooted in the great earth, to
grow, with no shelter in between, upward towards the
heavens.

All this was certainly happening to her, but as yet
she guessed but a small part of it. All that her reverie,
when she had read Lady Sunningdale's letter, told her
was that she was acutely unhappy because her father
would suffer ; and in some tremulous, aerial way happy
beyond all that she had ever guessed to be possible
because she loved and was loved. The two feelings
were inextricably intertwined; neither, as she knew
them, could have existence without the other. And
out of this tangled thicket of rose and thorn there
emerged this new self of hers, in no selfish or egoistic
mood, but very conscious, very vital, bleeding from
the thorns, but breathing the inimitable odour of the
roses.

A maid-servant with a message from the vicar
roused her. Would she please to come into his study
for a moment. She got up with a vague, dreadful
sense that this had all happened before, but she could
not remember the outcome, and as she walked across
the lawn the terrible, impossible pictures again flashed
through her head, like scenes of a magic-lantern staring
out of blackness.

The aroma of tobacco as she opened the study door
gave her a sudden, shallow thrill of comfort. But
this was scarcely endorsed by the next impression.

160 THE CHALLONERS

Mr. Challoner, always courteous, had no doubt sug-
gested one of his excellent cigars, and Frank had
accepted it. But the good-fellowship tacitly implied
by the act was here omitted. The vicar stood with
his back to the fireplace, flinty- faced; Frank sat in a
big chair drawn close to the writing-table, the chair in
which times without number Helen and Martin had
sat together looking at Bible pictures after tea on
Sunday. All the furniture of the study, the aromatic
smell of leather bindings that hung there, the uncom-
promising tidiness of it, its orderly severity, the picture
of the Roman forum, the glass paper-weight on the
table, brought a sudden rush of associations into the
girl's mind now that she saw Frank there too; they
were all so closely knit into the fabric of her life, so
intimately suggestive of that stern, tall figure by the
fireplace. And somewhere far away back in her brain
her own voice, in a little childish pipe, whispered to
Martin, " Papa's cross about something. Is it you
or me?"

She took a seat in silence, and the silence lengthened
ominously. Frank was looking at her with a quiet,
level gaze, full of love and full of pity, and she turned
her eyes away, fearing that she would scream with
tears or laughter if she allowed herself to look at him.
And the voice that broke the silence was quiet and
level also; the whole thing was deplorably well-bred.
Insults, violence, all that she had pictured to herself,
would have been a relief, a safety-valve for the burst-
ing pressure that she knew existed beneath. But as
yet there was none.

" I have sent for you, Helen," said her father, " to
choose." He paused a moment. " Lord Yorkshire is

THE CHALLONERS 161

on the one side," he said, " I am on the other. We
have settled it so,"

" That is not quite fairly stated," said Frank, in
the tone a man might use if he demurred to some argu-
ment in a discussion in which he was not really in-
terested.

Mr. Challoner's face grew a shade paler.

" Did you say ' fairly' ?" he asked.

The deadly quietness of this suddenly frightened the
girl. That was a tone in his voice she knew and
dreaded.

" Father," she said, " father."

They neither of them took any notice of her, and
Frank answered in the same gentle, objecting manner.

" You say ' we settled it,' " he said. " I had nothing
to do with it. You merely told me what you were
going to do. That is why I used the word ' fairly.' "

Mr. Challoner considered this for a moment.

" I see your point," he said. " That is so."

Then he turned to Helen.

" So choose," he said. " I settled it so."

Helen looked at Frank a moment and stood up, love
streaming round her in triumphant flood, bearing her
away.

" I have chosen," she said. " You know it."

Then, even in that moment, when she felt so strong,
when her love was to her like a draught of wine or
meat to the hungry, her strength utterly failed her, and
she buried her head on the cushions of the sofa where
she had been sitting and burst into hopeless, hysterical
sobbing. She was not capable of more ; all had given
way, and she lay helpless, sobbing, sobbing, as if to sob
her heart out.

IX

162 THE CHALLONERS

But four hands were busy about her, and as the
stress of her seizure began to leave her, she heard two
voices, for the moment one. And one said, " Helen
darling," and the other, " Helen dear;" and one said,
" If you would be so kind. Lord Yorkshire, there is
some water on the table;" and the other said, " Helen,
would you like to drink a little water?"

For two men in nature, in sympathy, in religion
poles apart were bound together for a moment in
the necessity divine and human of comforting the
weak, of giving help to a sufferer. She who suffered
was loved by them both, and though the distance of
fifty poles could not span the difference between their
ways of love, that was sufficient.

For myriads are the ways of approaching the throne
where all love dwells. From east and west and north
and south those myriad ways converge and meet.
But at present east and west, being human, and think-
ing that they were going in opposite ways, could not
foretell the meeting. But the Centre knew.

By degrees she came to herself again, and one said,
" Some other time," and the other, " Not again now,
Helen." So of the three she wac the only one who
was resolved to go on, to have this ghastly spiritual
surgery finished. Though she had chosen, she knew
there was more that had to be said.

She cast one glance at her father, but her physical
weakness over, his pity, she saw, w^as over also. A
gulf immeasurable by leagues had opened between
them, and though not even yet did he despair that they
would be forever disunited, it was she who must come
to him. From the firm rock on which he stood he
knew, so he believed, that he would never stir a step.

THE CHALLONERS 163

She pushed back her hair from her forehead.

" I don't know why I did that," she said. " It was
stupid of me. Give me a minute."

She got up, still a little unsteadily, and played with
the pens in the tray on the writing-table, recovering
herself. Then she turned suddenly to her father.

" Father," she said, " you can't mean what you say.
How can I choose between you ? What are you asking
me to do? What do you mean?"

" I mean exactly what I say," he answered, with the
same dreadful quietness. That which had not seemed
possible to him last night, that she would really choose
as she had chosen, had become more than possible.
" You choose between us. Are there words in which
I can make that clearer? If you choose me, you say
good-bye to Lord Yorkshire here and now. If you
choose him, you are to understand that you cease to be
my daughter. I will not be at your wedding; I will
not see you afterwards. You shall not be married
from this house, nor, if I could help it, should you be
married in this church."

Then suddenly the quietness of the scene was shat-
tered. As if by a sudden flash of lightning, all that
Helen's choice implied, her rejection not of him alone,
but her rejection of all in the world that he held
sacred, was made dazzlingly clear to him. At that his
self-control gave way, and as his voice rose louder
and louder, he beat with his clenched hand on the
edge of the marble chimney-piece, so that the knuckles
bled.

" Understand what you are doing," he said, " and
let me tell you, so that there can be no mistake. You
will promise to love, honour, and obey an atheist, an

164 THE CHALLONERS

infidel, one who denies God and his Christ. You will
have to say you do this according to God's holy ordi-
nance. That from you, in church, Helen, and a lie.
It cannot be by His ordinance, for by your act you
turn your back on the faith that has been yours from
childhood till now, on all you have believed to be
sacred. And what of the end? What of the life to
which this is but a prelude? What of him, your hus-
band, then? He that believeth not shall be damned.
I would — I would sooner see you in your coffin than
standing by the altar with this man. I would sooner

see you his mistress "

His passion, springing though it did from his own
intense and fervent Christianity, had suddenly shot
out into a bitter and poisonous blossom, and as that
flared through the room, he paused a moment and
looked at her as she stood before him in the beautiful
whiteness of her girlhood. Her physical weakness had
altogether passed, and except that she took one step
back from him in involuntary disgust and shrinking,
you would have said she was listening with quiet,
incredulous wonder to some tale that did not concern
her. But as he paused, hardly yet knowing what he
had said, knowing, in fact, only that no words could
be strong enough to express the intensity of his con-
viction, she turned from him.

" Come, Frank," she said; " let us go."
Frank also had risen with a sudden flush on his
face at those intolerable words, an answer springing to
his lips, and moved quickly towards her with some in-
stinct of protecting her. But her tone checked him,
and he followed her to the door. She had already
opened it, without further speech or looking back,

THE CHALLONERS 165

when her father's voice, scarcely audible and broken
and trembling, stopped her.

" Helen," he said, " indeed I did not think or know
what I said. But, my dearest, what are you doing?
What are you doing? For Christ's sake, Helen, who
died for you."

Frank had passed out. Whatever more took place
between them was not for him to hear. Then the
door closed behind him, leaving father and daughter
alone.

" For Christ's sake, Helen," he said again.

She came back to the hearth-rug where he stood.

" Oh, father," she said, and paused. That was all
the reproach he was ever to hear from her. " You are
making it very hard for me."

" Yes, I am making it as hard as I can. I am bound
by my duty to God to do that. If I knew how to
make it harder, I would."

" You cannot. You have said all that can be said.
And I have nothing more to say. Let me go now."

She kissed him gently.

" Poor father!" she said, and left him.

Mr. Challoner stood long where he was when she
had gone. Never before perhaps in his whole life
had another will come so actively and stubbornly into
collision with his, and never before certainly had he
felt so overwhelmingly a sense of spiritual desolation.
Eager and strenuous all through, it was in the truths
of the Christian faith that he found the incentive of
his life, from it sprang all the earnestness and deep
sense of duty in the man, to it was every effort and
deed of his dedicated.

166 THE CHALLONERS

" But what have I done," he half moaned to himself,
" that this should come to my house, and to one for
whose faith and upbringing I have to answer? Oh,
Lord, if it is through any fault of mine, let me learn
for what deadly sin this punishment is sent!"

Indeed, he had spoken no more than the truth, bitter
and brutal though the truth was, when he told Helen
that he would rather have seen her in her coffin than
by the altar with her lover. And now he took no ac-
count of his personal sorrow; the yearning that she
should accept her father's wish and guidance as such
was non-existent in him, killed by the stronger motive.
All his personal relations with her of trust and affec-
tion, which to the best of his power he had built up
for years, were voiceless now, — simply he strove for
a soul — and that dear to him — in danger imminent
and awful. The rigid Puritan note was here, and he
would sooner have mated her with a thief or an
adulterer, since such might repent and be saved, than
with a reasoned atheist.

Then in a horror of great darkness he questioned
his own spirit. "How had he failed?" and again,
" How had he failed ?" Never had precious plant been
more hedged about from frost or untimely blighting
of March winds than had his daughter been folded
from all that could conceivably have stunted or weak-
ened the one true growth. From the time when her
lips were wet with a mother's milk God counsels,
verse by verse and line by line, had been the guides and
counsellors of her life. What had he left undone that
he could have done? Had any remissness of his own
hindered growth where it should have helped? He
searched the years for his fault, but among all his

THE CHALLONERS 167

failures and weaknesses and harshnesses he could not
find that even for a day had he let anything else take
precedence of the greatest and the only thing in the
world.

And now at the end she would mate with an infidel,
a man, according to his idea, whose intimacy was more
to be shunned than that of a leper's or of one who
was tainted with some deadly and contagious disease.
That, at any rate, could only kill the body ; but Helen
had chosen as the friend and companion of her nights
and days one whose soul was sick with a more fatal
disease, the end of which, ordained and appointed of
God, was eternal death. It was too hideous to be
credible, it was too hideous to be conceivably just.
And the fact that he could think that gives the meas-
ure of his soul's anguish.

God sets a limit to human misery : for it happens
that the tortured brain, tired with suffering, lapses into
a state of semi-sensibility; or again, since one cannot
feel pain on account of another unless the other is
dear, — the pain felt varying, indeed, in proportion to
the affection felt, — the joy of love is always mingled
with it. It was so now with Mr. Challoner. Had he
not have been Helen's father, had he not loved her, he
would have cared less. But she was his daughter, his
own girl, whose sweetness had all her life made sun-
shine in his home. He had said an intolerable thing
to her, and for reproach she had still given him gentle-
ness. In the keenness of his own suffering he had for-
gotten hers; he had forgotten even, except for that
moment when she had broken down, that she must be
suffering. So he went out after her.

She was standing at the door with her lover, and

168 THE CHALLONERS

he went straight up to them. Even the sight of Frank
there gave him no pause.

" It has been a dreadful morning for us all," he said,
" and selfishly I had forgotten that others beside my-
self were unhappy. God knows what is in store for us
all, but we can do no good by being bitter, as I have
been. Let us, — yes, you, too, Lord Yorkshire, — ^let
us all join hands a moment. We are His children, are
we not? We "

His mouth quivered, no more words would come,
and they stood there a moment, all three hands clasped.
Then, feeling that his self-control was utterly giving
way, he left them, and went back to his empty room.

CHAPTER VIII

Helen was sitting on a pile of crimson cushions in
the stern of a Canadian canoe, while from the middle
of the boat Martin, with shirt-sleeves rolled up over
his brown elbows, paddled her gently along the reaches
of the upper river at Cambridge. The dryness and
heat of this glorious summer had made the river very
low in places, and his feet also were bare, with flannel
trousers rolled up to the knee, for again and again he
had to get out to pull the boat round snags or over
shoals where the depth did not allow it to pass with
the draught of two passengers. To the right, across a
stretch of meadow stained brown with length of sum-
mer suns, rose the tower of Grantchester church, em-
bowered in trees, and the booming of the mill sounded
drowsily through the still air. Close to the river, how-
ever, a vivider tone of colour prevailed, tresses of
water-side foliage dabbled in the stream, and tall, slen-
der trees made a shelter from the heat, where cows,
a classical example (and so not appealing to Martin,
who splashed water at them) of unbustling life,
chewed the cud and looked with large incurious eyes
at the gliding constellation of the twins. Between
them in the boat were packages containing lunch, for
Martin had taken a complete day off his studies in
recalcitrant languages and was devoting himself to
Helen, who was staying with an aunt, Lady Susan
Arne. Dr. Arne, her husband, was tutor at King's, at
which seat of learning Martin pursued his antipathetic

169

170 THE CHALLONERS

labours, and had the reputation of being the greatest
authority Hving on the metres of Greek choruses.

Helen had left Chartries a couple of days after the
crisis in her love-affair, at the suggestion of her uncle,
to whom she had confided it.

" I will walk back with you to the vicarage, Helen,"
he had said, '' and persuade your father, in case he
needs persuasion, to let you go away at once. Your
being with him just now only keeps the wound open.
Go away; it will heal better so. Just now, after that
scene, you can only torture each other by your re-
maining there. Poor, dear child !"

"Yes; but 'poor father,' too," said Helen.

" Certainly. Come to Chartries, if you like,"

Helen took his arm.

" That is so good of you, Uncle Rupert," she said;
" but I think I should like to go quite away, if father
will let me. I think I should like to go to Cambridge.
Martin is there. And Martin is so good for one, if one
is, well, not very happy."

" Yes ; that is a good plan. You can stay with
Susan. My dear, I'm more sorry for you than I can
tell you, and also I am as sorry for your father. You
and I both know him, and we both love him, and,
though we are made very differently, we know how —
how splendid he is. And how big."

" I know," said she. " I feel that if I could only
persuade myself he was narrow I should care less.
But his huge, singlehearted devotion to — to God can-
not possibly be called narrow."

They walked on in silence a little.

" But that is all I can do for you, Helen," said he.
" Nobody can really help you except yourself ; we can

THE CHALLONERS 171

only alleviate things a bit. You have made your
choice, absolutely, I gather?"

" Am I being a selfish, egotistic little brute, Uncle
Rupert?" she asked.

'' Not according to my view, which is that when a
thing concerns you so intimately and vitally as this it
is nobody else's business. Not even your father's," he
added.

A good deal of persuasion, as Lord Flintshire found,
was needed. At first his brother would not hear of
Helen's going, for he said that her departure was
shirking the situation. What made him yield was the
suggestion that the situation, if not shirked, might
make her really ill. And a hurried interchange of
telegrams led to her arrival at Cambridge the next
evening.

The expedition to-day had started rather silently,
and Martin decided that, as Helen did not at present
want to talk about her affairs, the best thing to do was
to be completely futile, foolish, and garrulous. For
years he and Helen had adopted this method of treat-
ing each other's depression, and it is was sufficient for
one to say " Hump. Play the fool," for the other to
understand that until further notice he had to talk rot.
This was a device, by the way, which neither had ever
employed when Mr. Challoner was in a similar mood.
He would probably not have understood it.

Martin stood up in the boat, which had stuck, and
peered into the water.

" The great thing," he remarked, " as the White
Knight said, is to guide against the bites of sharks.
He had steel anklets. Ow ! why do they take the

172 THE CHALLONERS

sharpest stones in the world and place them where I
want to step. I'm bleeding like a pig."

He stood precariously on the other foot and ex-
amined the injury.

" A pig," he remarked, fatuously, " that has not
yet had its throat cut. Helen, how fat you must be
getting. You weigh tons. We'll have to throw the
lunch overboard. Or perhaps it would be simpler
if you stepped ashore for a moment. You can easily
step on to the bank from there."

He pulled the canoe over the shoal and took it where
she could get in again. She laid her hand on his shoul-
der as she stepped in.

" You darling," she said. " You can stop now. I'm
better."

" That's good work," said Martin. " Because, really
I was beginning to run rather dry. You mightn't have
thought it."

" I didn't. I had no idea of it. I thought there
was any amount more."

" I can manage ten minutes more, if you like," said
Martin.

" No; I'm going to talk now. Martin, if you look
suddenly grave like that I shall begin to laugh."

" Well, give me a couple of minutes." said the out-
raged Martin. " We always have an interval after the
rot before we begin to talk. Otherwise, you know, we
always laugh. One always laughs at anything abrupt.
Don't you know the story of the man who was sud-
denly told his wife was dead? Just like that. He
said, * Oh, how shocking !' and burst into shrieks of
laughter. And he was really devoted to her, and never
smiled again for years."

THE CHALLONERS 173

Helen gave up all attempts at gravity, and the two
foolish twins laughed till they were completely ex-
hausted, while the Canadian canoe went slowly circling
round and round down the river.

So they landed and lunched, as Martin refused to
drag the boat any more till he had eaten and by de-
grees recovered themselves. Then, taking to the canoe
again, they paddled and talked.

" It has been dreadful at home, Martin," said she.
" Father hardly speaks at all. He has been very gentle
since that scene with Frank and me, yet even that was
hardly so bad as his silence and quietness now. He
is suffering horribly, too ; I am sure of it. Sometimes
I see him looking at me with a sort of appeal in his
eyes like a dumb animal. That is the worst of all ; I
feel such a brute."

" You suffer, too," said Martin, quickly.

" I know ; but though they all — Uncle Rupert, Lady
Sunningdale — think I am right, that doesn't make me
feel less of a brute. Besides, there is no ' right' about
it. I can't give him up, and father can't bear it. And
every evening he uses the prayer for Jews, Turks, and
infidels."

Martin frowned.

" That is not good manners," he said, " with you
there."

" Oh, Martin, manners don't come into it. The
truth of father's beliefs is so overwhelmingly real to
him that he can't think of anything else. That light
is so strong that he can see nothing but it. It is soberly
the whole world to him."

" But it isn't as if Frank was immoral," said Martin.

" I believe he would mind that less," said she.

174 THE CHALLONERS

Martin swung the canoe round a half-submerged
tree-trunk, where the water sucked and gurgled.

" But how unreasonable," he cried. " Frank can't
help his want of belief. But we can all, in some de-
gree, help making brutes of ourselves."

Helen sat up suddenly, causing the boat to rock.

" I can't live my life on other people's lines," she
said, " any more than I expect others to live theirs
on my lines. ' I am I.' I remember Frank quoting
that to me the Sunday he walked back with me from
Chartries. That has been like leaven ; it has fermented
and expanded within me. But, after all, is it only
another way of saying ' I shall be as selfish as I
please' ?"

" Of course not. That is what people think who
haven't got any individuality of their own. Lots of
people haven't. They are like mirrors slightly
cracked, which reflect with certain dimnesses and dis-
tortions what is put opposite them. They say individu-
ality is selfishness. What bosh !"

" Aunt Susan hasn't got any," remarked Helen, let-
ting the conversation drift away a little. " It is that
which makes her so restful. Her mind is like a
cushion. It is quite soft, and if you lean on it you
make great dents in it."

Martin remained quite serious, staring at the water
with vacant black eyes.

" Poor father !" he said at length. " Just think ; you
and me, Helen. He must find us awfully trying."

" I know ; and he continues to love us so. It is
that which makes it so dreadful. Oh, Martin, do get
through your stupid examination. Do turn out satis-
factory, as I've been so eminently the reverse."

THE CHALLONERS 175

Martin transferred his gaze to his sister.

" I really don't think there's much chance of it,"
he said.

" Of your getting through?"

" I might manage that. But there are other things.
The career I propose, for instance."

" But he's reconciled to that," said Helen. " That's
nothing new."

Martin paddled on without answering this, and
Helen looked at him rather closely.

" There is something more," she said. " What is it?
Is there not something more?"

He brought the boat up to the bank in Byron's pool,
where they were to disembark.

" Yes, there is," he said. " At least, there may be.
There is no use in my telling you now. If it happens,
if I am sure it is going to happen, I will tell you be-
forehand. I promise you that. And now I think we
won't talk any more about it."

But a sudden uneasiness seized the girl.

" Promise me one thing," she said. " Promise me
it is nothing disgraceful."

Martin looked rather injured.

" No ; I have not been stealing hens," he said.
" And it is compatible with the highest character."

Helen looked at him a moment in silence.

" Then I'm not afraid," she said. " And I will try
not to guess at it until you tell me."

The afternoon was intensely hot, and having arrived
here, they settled that a boat under trees was far more
to the point than walking under the blaze of the sun,
and Helen merely reclined more recumbently on a pile
of cushions.

176 THE CHALLONERS

" I think we will go for a walk to-morrow, Martin,"
she said, " instead of to-day."

" That may be. By the way, I met last week that
nice girl who was down at Chartries on the Sunday
when I got into so many rows. What was her name?"

" I haven't the slightest idea," said Helen.

" Yes, you have. Oh, I know — Miss PI Oh,

yes, — Stella Plympton."

Helen did not answer for a moment.

" Well, I shall go to sleep," she said. " Martin !"

"Well?"

" You did that remarkably badly," she said; " a cow
could give you points in dissimulation. You remem-
bered her name perfectly."

Dr. Arne, at whose house on the Trumpington
Road Helen was staying, was probably as nearly
happy as is possible to the sons of men, who have so
marked a genius for discontent. Whether his happi-
ness was worth much and what it all came to is
another question ; but happy he was, — an affair of im-
mense importance not only to himself, but to all on
whom his imperturbable serenity shone. For Provi-
dence had endowed him with an apparently insatiable
curiosity about the chorus-metres in Greek plays, and
also with an intuitive perception as regards this ex-
tremely difficult and no doubt fascinating branch of
knowledge, which had proved itself capable of being
trained into something approaching the perfection of
acumen. His intellectual ambitions were thus com-
pletely satisfied, and being without any passion but this,
which the fact that he was tutor of his college enabled
him to gratify without stint, there was really no pos-

THE CHALLONERS 177

sible chink at which the bitter wind of discontent could
enter and make draughts. The same good fortune had
attended his marriage, for he had wooed and won a
woman of good birth and breeding, whose only desire,
as far as he was aware, was to make her husband not
happy, — he was that already, — but comfortable. Ex-
tremely edible meals were offered to his notice at hours
of his choosing, no sacriligious hand ever disturbed the
papers in his study, his wife walked with him after
lunch, and, unless they had people dining with them
or were themselves bidden to other feasts, played pic-
quet with him after dinner. His mode of progression
along roads was naturally a little quicker than hers, his
play of the hand at cards a shade less mediocre, and
in consequence he lived in an atmosphere of slight
domestic superiority. The same atmosphere, though
not domestic, surrounded him in his studies, for, to
make a rough statement of the matter, he knew rather
more about Greek chorus-metres than anybody else
had ever done. His bodily health, moreover, if not
exuberant, — he would have found exuberance very
trying, — was excellent; he appeared, in fact, to be as
immune to the frailties and disorders of the flesh as
he was to any unsatisfied cravings of the spirit. He
was also childless; and though he was not consciously
grateful for this, he was aware that he desired neither
more distractions, anxieties, or even joys than he pos-
sessed in such completeness.

Lady Susan Arne had been compared by her niece to
a cushion ; and, indeed, the superficial similarity — not,
indeed, in point of looks, for Lady Susan was remark-
ably well-favoured — in the nature of the two was
extremely striking when once it had been pointed out.

12

178 THE CHALLONERS

It was true that if one leaned on Lady Susan's mind
there was no firm resistance, only a large dent seemed
to have been made in hers. But Helen, with a certain
impatience in her survey, had overlooked the existence
of a permanent dent there, a thing entirely foreign to
cushions. She, Helen, it is true, might lean and make
a dent, and that the next person who, so to speak, shook
Aunt Susan up, or leaned upon her in another place,
would (still in Helen's view) efface the first dent;
but in a corner of her, where no one ever thought of
leaning or looking, there was a permanent and un-
effaceable dent. This was made in the first place by the
ungratified yearning for a child of her own; it was
now daily renewed by the knowledge of its impossi-
bility. There was in her, in fact, a potential vitality
which under other circumstances might have made
of her a woman, not a housekeeper, and have given her
points more directly in contact with life than were
picquet and constitutionals. As it was, she had ex-
perienced none of the divine unsatisfiedness which ful-
ness of life alone brings with it; she knew only the
content of a rather empty existence. And Helen,
judging with the impatience of youth, which is^kin to
the impatience of kittens or puppies with inanimate
objects that will not come and play with them, had
overlooked this. For, in truth. Aunt Susan was not
inanimate; tucked away in a corner of the cushion
was a real, live thing that groped for life and light,
and she, the individual, was like a room made ready
for the reception of guests, — chairs and tables in order,
games put out for their entertainment, but until the
guests began to arrive the room was in darkness. Aunt
Susan stood there, match-box in hand, so to speak,

THE CHALLONERS 179

waiting for the first ring at the bell to light up her
tapers and shew how orderly, how fragrant, how
charming (a little old-fashioned, too) her room was,
how thoughtfully arranged for the pleasure of others.
But no ring had yet come at her door-bell, and she
still stood there, very patient and still smiling, but still
waiting.

Lady Susan, on Helen's arrival, knew only vaguely
that something uncomfortable had happened at the
vicarage; but Helen, the first evening she was there,
had confided to her, rather as one may confide on cold
nights to one's pillow or to bedclothes tucked round the
neck, the history of the last few days. But she neither
knew nor would have guessed it possible that the news
had kept Aunt Susan awake half the night, and that
while she herself was up the river with Martin her
aunt had gone about her household businesses and
taken her walk with her husband in such a tremor of
excitement that he had to hurry after her, instead of
hanging on his step to wait for her. In all these tran-
quil years at Cambridge she had never been brought
into contact with a thing that moved her like this. The
gentle ministrations in which her years were passed
had not touched her emotions, which, had not her
yearnings for a child kept them alive, would probably
long ago have fossilised. But those yearnings had
nourished and rendered mature their sweet, delicate
sensitiveness, and now when they were aroused, though
even in this second-hand manner, they responded in-
stantly, gently vibrating, not with a crackle of dry
autumn leaves, but like foliage of aspen in the breath of
spring.

Helen got back to this house of quiet towards five

180 THE CHALLONERS

in the afternoon, and found her aunt and Dr. Arne
at tea on the lawn behind the house. The latter, how-
ever, soon went indoors to enjoy — literally enjoy — his
couple of hours' work before dinner, after forewarning
them as to possible dampness on the grass after sunset.

"And have you enjoyed yourself, dear?" asked
Aunt Susan, pleasantly; "and was the lunch I gave
you really sufficient? Dear Martin has always such a
beautiful appetite. It is a pleasure to see him eat his
dinner."

" Yes, dear aunt, we had heaps. And it was all
so good, and so beautifully done up. Exactly like
you."

Aunt Susan, who always looked like a kind, little,
animated Dresden shepherdess, flushed a little.

"And so you had a nice day?" she said. " And no
upsets? Martin is so reckless on water. Dear Helen,
is it quite wise to take off your hat ? It may turn sud-
denly chilly."

Helen laughed, and threw it on the grass.

" No ; no upsets, and quite wise. Aunt Susan. But
a nice day ? There was everything to make it nice ex-
ternally; but one's nice days are made inside one, I
think. And just now my machine for making nice
days creaks and groans; it is out of order."

Aunt Susan, though far too shy to take the initiative,
was longing for the least thing that could be considered
an introduction of this topic.

" Do you know, dear, I lay awake half the night
thinking of you and your trouble," she said.

" Oh, I'm so sorry," cried Helen. " I ought not to
have told you so late last night. Selfish little pig I
am!"

THE CHALLONERS 181

Aunt Susan patted her hand gently.

" Dear, it was deUcious," she said, " lying awake
and thinking about you. I am afraid I actually en-
joyed it. Not that I am not very, very sorry for you
and your father and Lord Yorkshire ; but when I said
it was delicious, I meant it was so real, so alive, so
very interesting. I don't think I have lain awake more
than a few minutes in the last couple of years, and
that was when your uncle had the influenza. And then
it was only his cough that kept me awake; I was not
anxious, for he had it very slightly. Now, if you do
not mind talking about it, do tell me more. You told
me just the facts. Tell me what you feel. How does
it touch, — I am so stupid at saying things, — not what
you will do only, your actions, but yourself?"

The question implied a perception with which Helen
had not credited her aunt.

" Ah, what a difference there is between them !" she
said, quickly. " One's actions may so frightfully belie
one. What one does is so often a parody of one's
best. One's worst part acts, while one's best does
nothing, turns its face to the wall, like Hezekiah. Or,
or" — she was still kindly trying to explain to this dear
little Dresden shepherdess — " one's actions are often
like an unsympathetic repetition of something one
has really said, which gives quite a different meaning
to it. Do you understand?" she asked, eagerly.

" Yes, dear, quite," said Lady Susan. " Surely
everybody understands that. All the same it is our
business if we are kind and good at all not to be
harsh or hard in what we do."

Suddenly Helen's eyes were opened. In a flash she
saw that she had been doing what she deprecated, and

182 THE CHALLONERS

hitherto had judged Aunt Susan merely by her actions.
With the impatience that was so very characteristic of
her, she had observed her ordering dinner, taking the
walk, playing picquet, and otherwise having a great
deal of rather fragrant leisure with which she did
nothing. From this she had drawn the conclusion that
there was, so to speak, no one really there, only a
punctual little domestic automaton. She had been so
taken up with the fact that others did not understand
her, did not allow for her individuality, that she had
as yet never taken the trouble to consider whether
these others also had not their own individuality
equally to be respected. Aunt Susan, she would have
said offhand, had none, yet she was referring to as
a mere commonplace what was still to Helen a blinding
discovery. And she went on talking with a freedom
and a certainty of being understood that she associated
only with the beloved twin.

" Well, it is just that," she said. " Any one, — you.
Uncle David, — any one may say it is merely heartless,
merely selfish of me to go my own way, to pay no
attention to the wish — ah, it is much stronger than
that — of my father. Or you may think that I don't
really know how strong his objection to my marriage
is. I do know, I fully know. And knowing that,
knowing also that he is my father, that I owe nearly
everything to him, that he loves me and I love him,
I am going to do, you may say, as I choose^ throwing
away all the love and the care he has spent on me,
repudiating my debts to him. But I don't. Oh, Aunt
Susan, I don't throw away his love or repudiate my
debts. It is not fair to say that. Simply I can't help
it — I must. Something has come which is stronger

THE CHALLONERS 183

than everything else. Ah, Aunt Susan, you know
what it is."

Lady Susan's delicate little china-looking face
flushed suddenly.

" Yes, dear, I know," she said. " At least I know
some of it. We women are meant to be wives and
mothers. I know half of what a woman longs to
know. And the half I know, dear Helen, is so very
fine that it is worth making some little sacrifice for it."

"Sacrifice?" asked the girl.

" Yes. I cannot tell you in great language what I
mean, because I am not great in any way, so I will
give you my advice in one short word. Wait. Love
is so good that it will not spoil by being kept; it will
only get more mature, more exquisite. And in the
mean time you will have proved yourself a good
daughter, too."

" But why — why?" asked the girl. " Nothing will
ever change what father feels about it, nor what I feel.
It only means that for six months more, or for a year
more, or however long I wait, he and I will go through
dreadful days. It is awful at home, Aunt Susan;
you have no idea how awful. If it would get any
better with waiting, I would do as you suggest."

The older woman was still smiling in the habitual
way which Helen had so often thought so meaningless,
so objectless. But now, as she looked, she saw there
was a very cheerful patience about the smile which
somehow she had not noticed before.

" It is true it may not get better with waiting," she
said, " for it is possible it may not. But you will have
done your best, not only thought your best. You will
have made your action not, as you say, the parody of

184 THE CHALLONERS

yourself, but the faithful expression of your very best
self. You will have put your speech into no unsym-
pathetic mouth, but into the mouth of a fine actor."

Another current seized the girl, sweeping her im-
petuously away. She laid her hand on her aunt's knee.

"Are you unhappy. Aunt Susan?" she asked. " Oh,
I hope not. I always thought you were so contented,
so — so occupied with all the duties you do so well."

Lady Susan, with the only movement of impatience
tliat she had made perhaps for years, swept her hand
away.

" Ah, that is because you are young," she said, " and
because you think that any one who feels an impulse
must act on it, if she wants to realise her life. It is
not so. You know what I have always called you and
Martin, the Volcanoes — dear Volcanoes. When you
feel pressure you burst, and scatter burning ashes any-
where and everywhere, and say with great good-
humour, ' But I am I. If I want to burst, I must.'
And when you see an old woman like me, just getting
through the day's work, day after day, week after
week, with a little dinner-party here, and a little walk
there, and a litttle ordering of the household all
through, you think 'Is that all? Is that life?' And
I answer you, ' Yes; that is life.' "

Helen was silent a moment, suddenly aware that for
the time it was perhaps wiser to listen and attend than
talk about her own individuality.

" Tell me, tell me," she said.

" My dear, there is very little to tell," she said.
" But you in your heydey do not allow, it seems to
me, for the fact of other quiet people living and feeling
perhaps just as much as you do. Because you feel a

THE CHALLONERS 185

thing you scream. You will learn to feel a thing, we
hope, without screaming. I think young people tend
to scream rather more than we used. They call it
living their own lives. That possibly may be a mis-
taken, or, anyhow, a misleading name for it."

Again Helen had no reply. But this did not seem to
her at all like want of individuality. There was no
screaming, it is true, and no assertion, but just as cer-
tainly there was " something there." And, to do her
justice, she respected that. But her aunt paused also,
waiting for her answer, and after a minute she spoke.

" Live your own life, then, in talk with me," she said.
" Let me understand it. It is quite true. Aunt Susan,
I have judged as if there was no other view than mine,
while the whole time my complaint — no, not that ex-
actly, but you understand — has been that other people
behave as if there was no other view than theirs!
About you, for instance. I didn't know, I didn't guess.
I thought you were — you were what you appeared."

Lady Susan seemed to repent of her hasty move-
ment, and recaptured Helen's soft, brown-skinned
hand.

" Yes, dear, I am," she said, quietly. " At least, I
choose to let that be my outward expression of myself,
the expression by which you, Martin, anybody, may
judge me. That certainly is my affair, and nobody
else's."

She ceased stroking Helen's hand a moment and
looked up at her.

" But, dear, would you like to come inside me a
moment? There is only one thing there, but it fills my
house. Oh, Helen, if I had had a child!"

At that all the girl's nature rose.

186 THE CHALLONERS

"Ah, dear aunt, dear aunt!" she said.

Lady Susan's pretty patient smile did not leave her
lips, nor did any tear come to her eyes. The sorrow
was too old and too eternally alive for her to weep
over it now. And she went on quite quietly :

"If only I had been given the chance even to be
made as unhappy as you are making your father, dear,
I should have loved it so. But it was denied me, and
by no fault of mine. So I am learning, I hope, not to
grumble. Ah, but it is hard sometimes, and I think
I miss the joys of love as you would count joys, Helen,
less than I miss what you would count its sorrows.
But those are its opportunities. Dear, its possibilities
in self-denial and self-abandonment. That is Love
triumphant, not crowned with roses, but crowned with
sharp, beloved thorns. And the tragedy of love is
when there is none for whom it can sacrifice itself."

She stroked Helen's hand again gently.

" Make yourself complete, dear," she said ; " there
I am entirely at one with you. But, remember, our
souls are like rose-trees, I think. You cut and prune
them, if you are a wise gardener, for you know that
by the cutting, the renunciation, you do not check or
hinder your development, but you encourage it. You
will be the more fragrant, the fuller of blossom by that
which you might hastily say was a piece of cruelty, a
stunting of your growth."

Her kind eyes looked away from Helen, and out
over the sun-baked lawn, bordered with flower-beds,
in which, clearly to comply with preconceived notions
of a garden on the part of a gardener, lobelias were
set in a formal row in front, and behind them terrible,
speckled calceolarias and hard, crude geraniums. That

THE CHALLONERS 187

garden had often seemed to Helen very typical of her
aunt : it was orderly and completely conventional. Be-
yond Dr. Arne's study windows looked from the red-
brick house across the grass, and from where they sat
she could see him at a table littered with books and
manuscripts, with head bent over his work, or rising
now and then to consult some book of reference which
he took from the volume-lined walls. That sight, also,
had often seemed to her very typical; the Cambridge
professor was at his work (as, indeed, it was most
right and proper that he should be), but that to him
was all. His little life was bounded with books; on
all sides stretched limitless deserts of particles and
chorus-metres. But now, for the first time, Helen
knew how erroneous all her judgments with regard to
Aunt Susan had been, — for a real heart beat there, and
it was somebody, somebody very distinct and indi-
vidual, who ordered dinner and played picquet. Her
life was not negative, emotionless; it was only her
own obtuseness of perception that had so labelled it.
Instead it was sad ; in spite of all its quiet cheerfulness
it was as sad as the level rays of the sun striking hazily
across the lawn; as sad as the grey spires of Kings
which rose against the clear, hot blue of the sky.

And the pathos of it suddenly moved her. Was that
all that the good fairies had brought to her aunt's
cradle, just to grow quietly and gently old, she, who
might have been so fine, missing all the joy and riot
of life, missing, too, the crown of womanhood? " To
live, to live!" that demand was battering at her doors
with buffets that made the panels start. Yet here was
the dear aunt, who had heard often the same insistent
visitor, old, but sweet and unembittered, though it had

188 THE CHALLONERS

never been given to her to let him in, knowing all she
had missed, yet not soured at having missed it.

" Oh, Aunt Susan," she cried, forgetting herself,
forgetting all else in a young creature's somewhat in-
solent pity for the old, " is it not too sad? Is it not
too terribly sad? Is that everybody's fate, just to get
older and older "

Then, with the strong, unconscious egotism of her
years :

"And me?" she said. "Will that happen to me,
too?"

"What? Sadness? Yes, dear Helen, I hope so.
No woman is worth very much until she has been
through a good deal of sadness, a great deal of want-
ing what she cannot get. I hope you will go through
that. But, dear, if you turn bitter under it, you had
almost better not have lived; and certainly you had
better die, for death is better than bitterness. But if
you take the love and the sadness, which is inseparable,
from life without bitterness, it strengthens and cleanses
you. And you will certainly emerge from it a far
finer creature than if you had never been through it.
Emerge? Ah, it may last to the day of your death;
but what then? What does that matter?"

There was a long silence, and the shadows grew and
lengthened on the grass as Helen sat unseeing, but
absorbed, gazing wide-eyed in front of her. She felt
ashamed, humiliated at her own blindness; she had
thought of her aunt as some dweller in the valley, while
she herself was climbing the snowfields far above with
eager, untiring foot. But now at the summit, or near
it, she saw sitting the quiet, patient figure, so high up
that she had not seen her before.

THE CHALLONERS 189

Then, in her gentle voice, Aunt Susan broI<:e in on
her reverie.

" There, dear," she said, " the sun has set; let us go
in. And do tell me, Helen, before you go home, what
you decide to do about this very difficult choice that is
before you. Of course, you will not give Lord York-
shire up. I think that would be very wrong. Do not
be hasty; do not judge quickly. But do confide in me
again, if you can. It is a great privilege, you know,
for old people to be confided in by the young. Come,
it is time to dress; there are a few people to dinner.
Ah, Martin comes, too. I had quite forgotten. Dear
me, how careless ! I must go and see if there is enough
to eat."

Helen rose and gave her a great, tempestuous
hug.

" You dear, you dear," she said.

And then Aunt Susan, after her excursion into
realities, hurried to the kitchen, the excellent house-
keeper again.

There must have been something in the conjunc-
tivity of the twins — except, indeed, at the vicarage at
Chartries — which disposed the beholder to indefensible
levity. London had felt their spell, and even Cam-
bridge, it appeared, that home of sweet and sober
seriousness, went a little off its head about them. The
spell, whatever it was, lay in their combination. Helen
alone, it is true, could rouse that impulse of social
gaiety which is evoked so easily by a girl's beauty and
high spirits, and Martin could make other people enjoy
themselves by the sight of his own enormous power
that way; but it was when they were together that

190 THE CHALLONERS

resistance was clearly hopeless, and it is worthy of
record that to-night, after dinner, Dr. Arne and a
professor of poetry, with their respective wives and
the twins played " Ghosts" in the garden. Why
these elderly people did it they could not have told
you ; but Martin proposed " Ghosts," Helen explained
it in three sentences, and the studious shades were
awakened and appalled by wild shrieks.

For the night was dark and moonless, and while
five out of these six foolish people hid in asparagus
beds, behind tree-trunks, in the wood-shed, and in
other black and dreadful places, the professor of poetry
(selected by lot) was in honour bound to make the
complete circuit of the garden, conscious that at any
moment a ghost with curdling yells might spring out
on him, or even worse, scuttle quickly up behind him,
or perhaps, worst of all, he might suddenly be con-
scious of a small, crouching figure by his side which
accompanied him in awful silence, ready to break forth
into who knew what hideous and babbling speech?
Thus one eye had to be kept on this dreadful object,
while simultaneously the whole attention had to be on
the alert in case of some new reverent from the bushes.
The professor was a man on whom, as far as was
known, the imputation of cowardice had never yet been
laid, but at the first attempt to make the black circuit
of the garden he found he could not possibly face the
corner by the wood-shed, his nerves being already
utterly unstrung by a vague form that groaned among
the gooseberry bushes. He paused while still a few
yards distant from this dreadful being, and then fled
with flying coat-tails back to the house, where in the
safety of the lit drawing-room he wiped the dews of

THE CHALLONERS 191

strangling anguish from his forehead and called
lamentably on his courage.

Not a glimmer from the worm, in the darkness
thick and hot,' " he half moaned to himself. " Oh, this
will never do! I am aware it is probably only Dr.
Arne, and I am not really frightened of him. Come,
come."

And, with his heart in his mouth, he set out again
on his fascinating and abhorred errand, murmuring
again, " ' In the darkness thick and hot. In the dark-
ness thick and hot. In the dark ' Oh, dear me,

what is that?"

The poor professor suffered for his momentary
panic, for Helen had, in his hour of weakness in the
drawing-room, changed her place to behind a large
flower-tub, which had concealed nobody before. Con-
sequently, he approached it inattentively, without cau-
tion or misgiving, to be confronted, shuddering, by a
flapping form which gasped and panted.

He made a fruitless appeal.

" Dear Miss Helen," he said, " I can't go on. I
really do not think it would be right. My work will
suffer. But is it Dr. Arne among the gooseberry
bushes or is it Martin? I think I could run as fast
as Dr. Arne, but if "

Hoots of unearthly laughter assailed him on the
other side.

Afterwards they played " Dumb Crambo." Lady
Susan, in a college cap and a dust-coat of Martin's,
was Alfred letting the cakes burn. At another time
Dr. Arne found himself to be Cleopatra, with Helen
as Mark Antony. He chose his dresses from Helen's

192 THE CHALLONERS

wardrobe — they were much too large for him — with
immense care, and subsequently applied a paper-
weight, in the form of a snake, to his bosom. The
professor of poetry became a prize-fighter, his wife,
a godly and virtuous woman hitherto, unexpectedly
turned out to be Peace the murderer, and did a deed
of blood with immense gusto and a paper-knife. Yet,
all the time, nobody asked himself why he did these
silly things; the twins had said it was to be so, and
that was enough. At their order, too, it seemed as if
the golden gates of youth had swung open, and the
tired and the patient and the elderly and the wise were
bidden to enter once more and be children again.

Helen's visit to Cambridge had been restricted by no
statute of limitations in regard to time, and the days
passed on, the vague " few nights" growing to a week,
and the week to a magnified fortnight. For these
quiet, uneventful hours in which (except when the
twin was with her) even the ticking of clocks seemed
muffled had an extraordinary and growing charm for
her, since she had learned that behind the outward
placidity in her aunt there lay a very real inward life
in which she longed without possibility of satisfaction
and suffered without bitterness. That somehow to
the girl seemed to lift up and consecrate Aunt Susan's
homely little employments, which, so sweetly and
patiently performed, became symbols and signs of a
very beautiful character, and that which Helen had
thought dull, unperceptive, unemotional, was now lit
from within, as it were, by the uncomplaining cheer-
fulness which gave such gentle, unquestioning welcome
to the limitations set about her. For Lady Susan, so

THE CHALLONERS 193

her niece had now learned, had not from her own de-
fective eyesight set her horizons so close about her;
circumstances, childlessness had imposed them, and
that being so, she had taken up her place in the nar-
rowed circle with resignation so cheerful that it could
scarcely be called by that rather depressing name. In
fact, the gentle old lady was put on a pedestal in the
girl's mind, and offerings of incense were made her, a
position which now and then she found slightly em-
barrassing, for Helen, in her first moment of under-
standing and in the reaction from her previous hasty
and mistaken judgment, was one torrent of warm-
hearted sympathy, and w^as disposed to magnify into
heroism the performance of those common tasks, just
because she had before labelled them trivial.

But from home — she must begin taking up her own
little burdens at once — there came no word for her.
She herself wrote regularly to her father, but morning
after morning passed, bringing its posts, and still no
answer came to her. Once she saw among the letters
laid out for Aunt Susan one addressed in the brisk,
scholarly handwriting, and could not help glancing at
her aunt's face as she read it. But she said nothing
to Helen, and replaced the letter in its envelope with a
troubled little sigh. Martin, also, she knew had heard
from him, but there had been no message for her, no
mention even of her. This omission, this intentional
disregard of her, though it hurt her, made her sorry
also, not for herself, but for him. It was inhuman,
but she knew that it was the depth and earnestness of
his feeling about her engagement that made him in-
human. On the other hand, she heard constantly from
Frank, who hinted that if not a day, at any rate a

13

194 THE CHALLONERS

season might be ever so vaguely indicated to which
he could look forward.

The term was drawing to its close, and Martin
would go home in a few days' time. It was understood
that Helen would go with him ; and as the day of de-
parture got near, she knew that her decision must be
made, so far as it concerned herself, as to whether she
should put off her marriage for some definite time,
and do the daughter's part to her father, living at
home, obeying him, performing her parish duties as
before, making amende, as far as she could, for the
great act of disobedience which she was going to com-
mit. Practically, she did not see the use of it; no
good, as far as she could judge, would come of it;
yet, in a way, Aunt Susan was right, the meaning of
it, the sentiment of it, was sound. It would not be
easy; it would be full of sustained effort, of sustained
self-repression. Intercourse would be crammed with
misunderstanding, the atmosphere would be full of
frictional disturbances, but she saw there would be a
certain moral gain to set against this. Also, and this,
too, had a very sensible weight with her, there would
be gain to her in the completeness of which her aunt
had spoken. Ever since she had consciously woke to
her own individuality her eagerness for her own im-
provement and enlargement had been of a very vivid
sort. And perhaps the most excellent way of all had
been here set before her to compass that, not by work-
ing for it, but by apparently limiting, maiming, dis-
couraging it. That was a very simple, very elementary
suggestion, yet it had never occurred to her in this con-
nection. And it was, well, less crude than the other
method.

THE CHALLONERS 195

The evening before her departure she took the op-
portunity provided by Dr. Arne's going to his chorus-
metres after tea to talk to her aunt again. It had
been a chilly day, touched with the autumnal sadness
of early-falling leaves, and early-falling dusk, and the
window-panes streamed. Though it was still August,
a fire burned in the grate, and she sat down on the
floor by her aunt's chair.

" Father has not written to me once since I came
here," she said. " He has written to you and to Mar-
tin I know, but there has never been a message to me.
I don't say this in any complaint, Aunt Susan; but
what is one to do when that happens?"

Lady Susan shut the book she was reading. She
had been expecting Helen to mention this, but was un-
willing to open the subject herself.

" I know he has not, dear," she said, " and I think
it very wrong of him. I have told him so. But don't
let it hurt you, Helen. If other people, yes, misbe-
have, there is never anything to be done except to go
on ' behaving' one's self. And never let what other
people do hurt you. For nothing can really hurt us
except what we do ourselves."

" Ah, but in a way I have done it," said the girl.
" At least, it is in consequence of what I have done."

" No ; your father is wrong, I think," said Lady
Susan, with gentle decision. "And now, dear, as you
are going away to-morrow, I want to ask you some-
thing. You go home with Martin, do you not? And
then? Have you made up your mind?"

" Yes," she said. " I will not give up Frank, but
I will put it all off till next May. Of course, if he
wishes, he is absolutely free."

196 THE CHALLONERS

" Ah," said Aunt Susan, gently. "It is likely he
would wish that, I suppose."

Helen laughed.

"Well, no; not very. But till then I shall live at
home, if father will let me, and try in every way to
please him."

Her voice trembled a little.

" And I hope he will accept that," she said. " And
I hope he will be good to me and forgive me."

Lady Susan stroked her hair in silence a moment.

" You have chosen right, dear," she said.

CHAPTER IX

Helen was sitting again at the deal table in the
" Room," trying to balance the accounts of the quarter.
A money-box, cheap but not strong, probably made in
Germany, with a florid ornament of tin tacked on
round its maw, stood open by her left hand, and on
the table was a heap of money, consisting chiefly of
pennies and small silver coins, — the subscription to the
" Room" being threepence a quarter, — while by her
right hand was a pile of equally mean bills, chiefly
ending with a halfpenny, for brown holland, cotton,
slate-pencils, needles, and gum. There was a discrep-
ancy somewhere of ninepence, but add and subtract
as she would, that ninepence held its ground like the
remnant of the Old Guard. Had it been only deficit,
the remedy from her own pocket would have been
easy, but, unfortunately, there was ninepence too much,
and, though her conscience would not have made any
protest at her supplying it, it did not permit her either
to pocket it or to forge a non-existent bill. And all
the time her natural impatience, mixed luckily with a
certain sense of humour, said to her, " Is it possible to
conceive a less profitable way of wasting time than in
trying to make ninepence vanish?" Her father, how-
ever, with the attention to detail which was so marked
a characteristic of his, always looked over the accounts
afterwards, and whether there was a discrepancy of a
thousand pounds or a penny it made no difference, the

197

198 THE CHALLONERS

principle of admitting discrepancy was equally danger-
ous in either case.

The twins had been at home, in a state of total
eclipse for two days of ominous parental silence. Mr.
Challoner, as usual, was busy ; Helen was busy also, for
after her absence there was more than enough at pres-
ent to occupy her day. But she had not yet broached
the subject that was at the root of the silence: until
the skies cleared a little she felt absolutely unable to do
so. Her father also had said nothing about it; they
ate, they drank, the weather was mentioned, and the
danger of trouble in the East. Mr. Qialloner himself,
except when he read prayers, had hardly said half a
dozen words in Helen's presence : it was " good-night"
and " good-morning," and both were bad. Martin
also was, so to speak, in prison, though not, like his
sister, in the condemned cell. He read Demosthenes in
his father's study while the latter was writing his
sermon, fell asleep and was detected, awoke, and wrote
a futile supererogatory set of Greek iambics contain-
ing several false quantities and forms of aorists pre-
viously unknown and very interesting.

This morning Helen had received a letter from
Frank that troubled her, for he pressed, where he had
only hinted before, for some definite sort of date.
Reasonably enough, he saw no cause for delay; he
knew that in spite of her father's feelings she had
accepted his devotion ; that was all her's, waiting for
her to reward it. The tone was not querulous. If it
had been, the letter she must write would have been
less difficult. It was simply and sincerely trustful. But
before she wrote she must talk to her father; that
could be put off no longer.

THE CHALLONERS 199

For the moment, however, the " sad mechanic exer-
cise" of the accounts occupied her attention. But,
though the superficial brain which was employed on
addition had its work before it, all that was round her
— the walls, the floor, the aspect of the room, the neat,
new^ brown-holland covers of the library — took that
part of her brain that really felt and lived back to the
day when she sat there last. The map of geological
strata was there, too, with its auriferous belt, and she
remembered very well Frank's words about that:
" There is a gold-bearing vein in all we are set to
do. The trouble is to find it." Yes, indeed, that
was the trouble. She did not rebel against the su-
perfluous ninepence, except, indeed, humorously;
but what seemed to her such hard and barren rock
was the living in this hopeless silence. Her conscience,
her whole sense of moral obligation, had accepted the
principle indicated to her by the dear aunt — sofa-
cushion no longer — of this wider self-completion to be
attained by behaving rightly in all relations of life.
But at present she had been throwing good money
after bad. The dutiful daughter had come home.
No more notice was taken of her than of a mended
window-pane.

Mr. Challoner always opened doors smartly. Thus,
when the outer door of the " Room," which gave on
to a small lobby where wet coats were hung, gave a
quick rattle of latch, she knew, with the same cer-
tainty as she had known the crisp foot on the gravel,
who came.

" Have you finished the accounts ?" he said.

" I can't get them quite right, father," she said. " I
think "

200 THE CHALLONERS

" You have the bills and the receipts, have you not ?"
he said. " Where are they ?"

Helen resented this, but silently; no shadow of it
appeared in her face or voice.

" They are all here," she said. " I have ninepence
more than I should."

Mr. Challoner sat down and counted up the silver
and pence, arranging them in neat shilling heaps with
all the care he would have given to a total of millions.
Then rejecting her addition, he added up the receipted
bills, and her mistake, one of pure carelessness, was
patent.

" That balances them," he said. " Perhaps I had
better do the accounts for the future. If I have to do
them in the long run, I may as well do them at once,
instead of wasting your time over them."

Helen stood up, her resentment shewing itself a
little.

" Certainly, if you prefer," she said.

He did not answer, but ran a metal clip neatly
through the receipted bills, and swept the coins back
into the money-box. Then he turned to her quickly.

"What do you intend to do, Helen?" he asked.
" As your father, I think I have a right to ask you,
since you have shewn no sign of wishing to tell me."

The gulf between them seemed to her at that mo-
ment immeasurably wide, and his tone was harsh and
cruel, — it cut her, but cut like a blunt knife, with saw-
ing and tearing.

" Father, don't speak to me like that," she said. " I
can't bear it, and it does no good. I am trying, and
I am going to continue trying, to do my duty to
you "

THE CHALLONEES 201

For one moment the sternness vanished from his
face.

"You are going to give him up?" he asked.

" No ; but I am going to Hve quietly here if you
will have me, for the next six months," she said,
" doing my work in the parish just as usual. During
that time I will not see Frank. If you wish, I will
not even write to him, except just once."

She sat down again opposite him.

" I want to do something for you, which is hard
for me," she said. " I want to make you believe that
I am trying to be a good daughter to you. I know
we disagree vitally and essentially. But is that any
reason why the dearness of our human relations should
be diminished?"

Her voice sank, but looking at his face she could see
that the momentary brightness as he asked the last
question had vanished again, and he sat looking, not
at her, but out of the window, without replying.

" Father," she said, gently, " I have spoken to you."

He shook his head, then looked at her.

" It is useless," he said.

Then suddenly the chilling reserve and silence of the
last days gave way like ice before the South wind.

" My God !" he said, speaking more to himself than
to her. " What have I done? What have I done? Has
this come for some dreadful fault of mine of which I
am ignorant? All your life, Helen, I have tried to
train and teach you in the knowledge and fear of God.
As He sees me, I have done my best, according to my
lights. Never once to my knowledge have I not prayed
every day that His blessing should guide and illumi-
nate every step you take. And I cannot believe — that

202 THE CHALLONERS

is my difficulty — that you try to follow His will in
this. It is impossible that "

He broke off with a sudden helpless raising of his
hands indescribably pathetic.

" God help us both," he said.

There was a long silence, and his fingers clenched
and unclenched themselves as he sat staring dismally
out of the window. All her life, as he had said with
absolute honesty, he had tried to bring Helen up in
the knowledge and fear of God, and this decision of
hers, from which he now realised he was powerless to
move her, was like some overwhelming blow struck at
him from the dark. He could not understand, he
could not even conjecture in the vaguest way, what it
meant or how he was meant to take it. In sorrow,
renunciation, bereavement, it was, at any rate, possible
to acquiesce in there being a design. But that his child
should do this was inexplicable. It could not be the
will of God. Something of this Helen read in his
face, and she saw, for the first time fully, how the
blow had staggered him. His strength had given way
under it ; all vehemence and anger was dead ; and dead,
too, was the hope that she would come round to him.
He was helpless. And the strangeness of that in one
so certain, so accustomed to go without hinderance or
obstacle along the straight road of his God-fearing
life touched her with a profound pity, so that for a
moment, had he but known it, her decision flickered
and wavered like a candle-flame blown about in a
draught. She questioned herself whether such suffer-
ing could be right, whether that which caused it could
be justifiable, whether at whatever cost to herself or
another she could permit it to be. It was like the

THE CHALLONERS 203

suffering of some animal, — blind, uncomprehending, a
thing intolerable. And the animal that suffered was a
strong man and a wise, and her father.

She sat down on the edge of the table beside him.

" Oh, poor father, poor father!" she said.

He looked at her with a wretched semblance of a
smile.

" Ah, that is not the point, Helen," he said. " What
I feel, all my pain, is nothing, nothing. Why I feel it
is everything, dear. Oh, you poor girl, blind, blind."

Then, at last, that tie between father and daughter
or mother and son, one of the immutable and indes-
structible things of the world, stirred, vibrated, made
music, and for a moment across the infinite gulf be-
tween them their spirits and their hands met.

" Dear girl," he said, " it will be delightful to have
you at home. I was afraid that those happy days of
work, you and I, side by side in this home, were over.
I thank you for that, Helen; your father blesses you
for that. Stop with me as long as you can. How
long you — and he must settle. And, my dear, I am so
selfish as to take your offer fully. Do not see him
or write to him. Perhaps "

He paused a moment, stroking her hand.

" And try to make allowance for me," he went on,
" when I am hard or gloomy or out of spirits. But I
am so utterly at sea: my landmarks have gone. I
don't understand. I can only pray that you and I may
have light. God bless you, my dear, now and always."

Helen wrote the same day to Frank :

" My Dearest, — I have just come home, and I have settled to
do a thing which is very hard on both of us ; but I cannot do
otherwise. Frank, we cannot be married yet. We must put it

204 THE CHALLONERS

off for six months, or seven, is it not, — till next May. And for
six months I must live quietly at home here, and not see you.
There, it is written. This, too: you are absolutely free. Ah, in
spite of all these troubles, I can't help smiling when I write that.

" But I can't act otherwise. My father is in a state of misery
about it which I can't describe to you. Somebody he loves is de-
liberately— this is how he sees it — going to do a wicked thing.
This morning, when he talked to me about it, I wondered whether
I could be right in continuing our engagement at all. But I can't
give you up. My love for you is the best part of me, and the
most living part. You see I am yours. Oh, my dear, if only
things had been otherwise, — if you could believe ! If you could
only have not told me, have let me think you were a Christian.
No, I don't wish that really. It would not have been you.

" He is my father. All my life he has watched over me, prayed
for me, loved me. Even if he had been a bad father, I should
still have owed him all I am, until the day I met you. And the
only way in which I can repay him anything is by doing this.
It is small change, I know, for all his gold, but it is all I have.
At least, then, and at most I must do it. I must stop here with
him, — he was such an old darling when I told him,- — trying to be
cheerful, trying in little, tiny human ways to be a good daughter
to him. And it is all so infinitesimal. It is as if I gave him
remedies for a cold in the head when he had cancer. I feel so
mean in offering him so little. But there is only one other thing
that I could offer him, and that I cannot. And, indeed, though
this looks so little and makes little show, it costs me something.
It does indeed.

" And I must do something more. I think I must not even
write to you. While I am here I must have no connection with
you. It would be incomplete without that. One letter you must
send me, when you have thought this over, to say that you agree
with me, if you can.

"And if you cannot? I must do it all the same.

" Do you remember telling me of Magda's cry? That, too, tells
me to do it. I should be stunted, selfish, if I did not.

" Ah, Frank, my darling, be good to me. I long for you every
day, and it is going to be so awfully dreary without you.

" Helen.

THE CHALLONERS 205

" I walked through the wood to-day where you set the hare
free. I shall walk there every day. And I looked at the geo-
logical map with the ' auriferous reef in it. Martin is here."

The letter was not difficult to write, though the final
determination to write it was so hard that when it
came to the paper and ink she sat long with pen un-
dipped, unable to begin. But the memory of the be-
wildered misery in her father's face that morning as
he sat looking out of the window in the Room had
given her a real sense of responsibility towards him.
It was her business to find some anodyne for that.
Perhaps the proof before his eyes, kept there day
after day and week after week, that she wanted to do
her best, might serve. Anyhow, at the moment it had
awakened his humanity and his fatherhood; his hand
had reached to her across the gulf; two puzzled, blind
folk had clasped hands in the darkness.

Nor was the waiting for Frank's answer difficult, —
she knew him so well. And she was not disappointed
here ; the very brevity of the reply was honey to her.

" Dearest, — You must do as you must do. Magda says so,
and so do I. But I am rather low, though she tells me not to be.

" Frank."

But it was then, when she had made the difficult de-
termination, and Frank had so ungrudgingly con-
sented, that Helen's difficulties began. Each day was
an endless series of infinitesimal knots, not to be cut,
but each to be patiently, cheerfully unravelled. Each
singly she could tackle, but she had to avert her eyes
from the future, for the series of knots stretched into
dim distance. All day, too, there was with her the

206 THE CHALLONERS

desire to see Frank, just once to see him, and perhaps
cry a httle on his shoulder; all day, too, there was
the face of her father, always sunless, always grave.
He had never, it is true, been other than austere in
his domestic life, but then Helen had always known
how deep was his love for her. But now it seemed to
her sometimes as if he was trying to stifle and extin-
guish it; that knowing, as he did, there was soon
to be an irrevocable rupture between them, a rupture
that would divide them further than death divides, he
was schooling himself to get used to it, as a man may
school himself, when he sees one he loves in the pangs
of mortal illness, to adjust himself beforehand to the
loss that is coming. The marks of his suffering, too,
were pathetically plain, and again and again she asked
herself whether she had not only increased it by doing
that which cost herself so much. Was it only an im-
pulse of barren sentimentality that she had followed?
Was she like a surgeon who gives an ineffective anaes-
thetic which should not deaden or mitigate the wrench
and shock that was coming?

The encouragement she could find was but small.
But it was this, that in any case she had done what
was most difficult and what seemed, not only to her,
but to Aunt Susan, to be right, and as such was fully
accepted by her lover. Yet what if, after all, this was
a mere senseless mutilation of herself, an objectless
asceticism ?

It was this doubt that day after day most troubled
her. Had she seen the least sign of bud on the barren
stem she would have been much more than content.
But the days became weeks, and there was still none,
not even any return of the moment's tenderness her

THE CHALLONERS 207

father had shewn at their first talk. She could not see
that any practical good was coming of her renuncia-
tion. Like a wrecked sailor on a raft, she watched, as
for a sail, for any horizon-distant sign that her father
accepted her marriage and gave her credit — though
she did not want the credit herself, but only longed
for the evidence of it — for doing her best. But there
was no such sign. He continued to use the prayer
for Turks, infidels, and heretics.

What made things worse was that Martin, the be-
loved twin, with whom disagreement was a thing un-
thinkable, radically disapproved of what she was doing,
and his disapproval, she was afraid, was terribly prac-
tical,— namely, that it was quite certainly no use. Two
things, however, after some three weeks of what
seemed fruitless endeavour, kept her to it. One was
a letter from Aunt Susan, to whom she had sent a
despairing sheet, containing a memorable sentence :
" God does not always pay on Saturday, Helen," she
had said. The other was an innate pride that forbade
her to accept defeat. Here she feared also to lose
the respect not only of her father, but of Frank.

" Yes, my darling, you tried it," she imagined him
saying, " and you found it was doing no good."

And that he should say that was somehow intoler-
able to her. Whatever she might be, she would not
be feeble. " The lame and the blind that arc hated
of David's soul" seemed to her a very legitimate object
of detestation. She would not give a thing up because
she mistrusted her power of doing it.

Thus her apparent failure consumed itself. With
the divine confidence of youth, the less successful she
seemed to be the more she spurred herself on to strive.

208 THE CHALLONERS

All her sense of right had told her, when she made her
decision, that she would thus be doing her best; her
judgment was arrived at coolly and sanely, and the
present practical ill-success of it argued nothing against
the principle.

Then came a crowning despondency and agitation
in something Martin told her after he returned from
a visit to Lady Sunningdale. The short history of that
visit, however, claims an episodic precedence.

Lady Sunningdale had sent her motor over from
Fareham to fetch Martin, and when he arrived, about
tea-time, he rushed straight out on to the lawn to find
her, but only encountered the chilling looks of several
total strangers who were talking about fiscal problems
and seemed surprised, if not pained, to see him. This
was discouraging; and he was wondering what place
there was to flee unto, when a footman came out after
him to say that her ladyship v/as in her bedroom and
wished to see him there immediately. Martin could
not help giving a little giggle of amusement at this,
and the footman, preceding him upstairs, threw open
the door and announced him.

The room was large and very rose-coloured, on the
principle of Lady Sunningdale's famous maxim that
bedrooms should be optimistic. She herself was re-
clining on the optimistic silk coverlet of her bed, with
her shoes off and the blinds down.

"Is that you, monster?" she asked. "I am an
absolute wreck. Yes, pull up one blind and sit down
at a respectful distance. Martin, you must promise to
play absolutely all the time you are here, like a barrel
organ, or I shall die. I shall send a footman to you

THE CHALLONERS 209

after each time with twopence on a tray and orders
that you are not to move on. The house is crammed
with perfectly dreadful people. I cannot imagine why
I asked them. I hope you have not brought your gun,
because I shan't let you go shooting. You will have
to talk to me all day, except when you are playing.
Don't tread on Suez Canal, or you'll be drowned.
Frank is here, and Stella. Otherwise — my dear, why
are politicians so impossible? And why is Helen be-
having like a mad-woman. Really, I thought she had
more brains."

Martin had pulled up one blind during this and
revealed the room. There were pink-silk walls, on
which were several pictures of Lady Sunningdale of
not very recent date, a pink carpet, white furniture,
and a particularly large and pink bed. Lady Sunning-
dale, fenced, like Egypt, on the one side by Suez Canal
and on the other by Sahara, was lying propped up by
a quantity of huge pillows and cushions. French books
with yellow covers bestrewed the bed, and fragments
of chewed pages suggested that the dogs had eaten
one, like Jezebel, leaving only a few very indigestible
pieces. A French maid hovered uneasily about a
toilet-table, and appeared to be putting things in
drawers. Considered as a wreck, finally, Lady Sun-
ningdale looked particularly large and sea-worthy.

" Miss Plympton ?" asked Martin, in an extremely
disengaged voice, but with his face suddenly infected
by the prevailing optimism.

Lady Sunningdale drew conclusions before most
people could have arrived at data.

" Yes ; ever since you played to us at Chartries she
has been trying to learn the ' Merry Peasant,' " she

14

210 THE CHALLONERS

said. "She is not getting on very well; but art is
long, is it not. So is life. Too long, I think, some-
times. But, my dear, the rest of them ! They talk
about fiscal problems and what they've shot. Even
Frank appears to be vaguely interested in free trade
or free food or free drinks or something, which is
deplorable of him. I expect him here immediately.
My bedroom is the only place where one can be free
from those intolerable bores. There are three, three
cabinet ministers in the house! Really, politics ought
to be considered a dangerous habit, like morphia. In
fact, there is a very great resemblance between them.
They are both drugs that send me to sleep, and the
habit grows on one. You have to take more and more,
and the result is death of the intellect, which is quite
as lamentable as death of the body, and renders you far
more tiresome to other people. For, after all, when
one's body is dead one is put away. But people whose
intellect is dead are not put away at all; they pervade
society. There is no one in the world so lost as the
intellectually lost. How big hell must be! Talking
of that, how is your father? What a bear!"

Martin had settled himself in a rose-coloured chair,
and gave a great shout of laughter, suddenly checked.
" Quite well," he said. " He always is."
" Yes, that is so like him," said she. " But, really,
have you any strain of insanity in your very extraor-
dinary family? My darlings, did I kick you? Oh,
Sahara, naughty! All that book, and I hadn't read it.
Commander du the, Hortense. So convenient, she
doesn't know a word of English. Did you ever see
such a murderish-looking woman? But she can make
hats out of a tooth-brush and some waste-paper. Some

THE CHALLONEES 211

day she will kill me for my diamonds, and find out
afterwards that they are paste. Then she will be sorry,
and so shall I. Do attend, monster. Can you tell me
why Helen, head over ears in love with him, — that
was why I brought them together, — should behave like
that? Shutting herself up with the bear and that
dreadful aunt of yours who plays Patience. And
Frank thinks, in some confused way, that it is so beau-
tiful. He looks so funny when Helen's name is men-
tioned, rather like a widower, who hears a hymn-tune
in four sharps on Sunday evening. So frightfully old-
fashioned, that sort of thing. Those two find a sort of
spiritual thrill in standing a hundred miles apart and
shouting ' Caro mio ! O Carissima !' to each other at
the tops of their voices. I can't bear that sort of Pla-
tonic love. Yes, you Challoners are all mad. If Becky
Sharp lived with Savonarola in a grand piano, you
would find a little Challoner crying on the drawing-
room carpet one morning."

"Why Becky Sharp?" he inquired, parenthetically.

" Only to add a little joic-de-vivre. No imputation
on your morals."

Lady Sunningdale struggled to a sitting attitude on
the bed. Several French books flopped to the ground,
and were instantly worried by the dogs : Zohdr and
A Rchours flew in gnawed fragments about the room.

Martin agreed with Lady Sunningdale in the view
she took of Helen's conduct, but he felt bound to de-
fend his sister against so wild an attack.

" Anyhow, she's doing a difficult thing because she
thinks it right," he said. " Give her credit for the
difficulty."

"Difficult?" cried Lady Sunningdale. "There is

212 THE CHALLONERS

no merit in doing a difficult thing just because it's
difficult. I might just as well try to stand on my head
in the drawing-room and say to my wondering guests,
' Admire me, please. Though foolish, this is difficult,
and is only accomplished by prayer and fasting.' Is
that profane? I think it must be, because my father
was a Nonconformist, and whenever I say anything
without thinking, it is nearly sure to be a reminiscence
of my unhappy childish days, and comes out of the
Bible. But it doesn't prove that a thing is the least
worth doing because it is difficult. She is standing
on her head, then ? And in a parsonage, too !"

" Yes, it amounts to that," said Martin. " But with
a moral purpose."

There was a discreet tap at the door and Hortense
entered with tea.

" Ah, muffins," said Lady Sunningdale, in a molli-
fied tone. " The under-piece, please, Martin. How
delicious ! But, though I am not cynical, I always
a little distrust moral purposes. If 3'ou do a thing
with a moral purpose, it usually means that you do
it because if you didn't you would be uncomfort-
able inside. Good people are such cowards, — they are
afraid of a little pain in their consciences. To avoid
that they go and act in some foolish, antiquated man-
ner, and every one says, ' What a saint !' "

Then, out of all this nebulousness, like the gather-
ing clouds of a thunder-storm, there leaped a sudden
flash, like lightning, and rather like genius.

" She is doing sacrifice to an ideal she doesn't fully
believe in," she said. " Helen doesn't believe in cer-
tain things as your father does. Else she would never
marry Frank at all. She would have screamed loudly

THE CHALLONERg 213

for help when he asked her, instead of saying ' Yes.'
Her sacrifice, therefore, isn't quite sincere."

Then a sort of confusing roar of thunder followed,
marring the sharp conclusiveness of the lightning.

" I cannot bear seeing people making a mess of their
lives," she said, '' and it is such a pleasure to see them
make a really clean job of them. Yes. Why continue
poking round in a parsonage, when you have made up
your mind to go away ? It is like ordering the carriage
to go to the station, and then, for no reason, saying
that you will go by the next train. She has shattered
the happy parsonage life, and is feebly trying to pick
up the bits, instead of ringing the bell and leaving the
Room. It is silly."

" Ah, Helen is not silly," said her brother.

" I did not say that. Yes, slap Sahara twice, hard.
But I said she is doing a silly thing. Now, I am silly,
but I hardly ever do a silly thing. Yes, come in. It
must be Frank. Sunningdale never knocks, and no-
body else ever comes in."

Frank appeared at the door.

" I was sent for," he said, apologetically. " Ah,
Martin."

That rang true. " You are her brother," was be-
hind it, and the romantic touch did not escape, though
it rather irritated. Lady Sunningdale. Personally, she
disliked romance on the general grounds that in real
life it was old-fashioned. To her the two completely
satisfactory methods of expression were melodrama
and farce. And Frank's greeting to Martin, the hand
on the shoulder, the linked arm, was all romantic, and
just a little tiresome.

" Frank, what have you been doing with yourself all

214 THE CHALLONERS

day?" she cried. " I have not set eyes on you. But,
of course, if you do prefer golf and Chinese labour to

my inspiring conversation Yes, help yourself to

some tea, and all the muffin there is."

But Frank still lingered by Martin.

" How is she?" he said. " Is all well? Any mes-
sage for me ? No, of course there can't be. She meant
that. But she is well ?"

He sat down on the foot of the rose-coloured
bed.

" Dear lady," he said, " I have done both. I went
out playing golf with a colonial secretary, I think,
and we talked about fiscal problems. Then I drove off
into the bushes and lost the ball. So I said, ' Will the
price of golf balls go up?' Then he drove into the
bushes, too, and he said, ' I expect so. So we will not
look for them for a year. They will then be more
valuable than they are now, but will require painting.'
Lucky golf balls ! The longer most of us live the less
valuable we become."

Lady Sunningdale rather resented this.

" The older people become the more paint they
want," she said, "but the other is absolutely untrue.
Until people are of a certain age they are of no value
at all. I hate boys and girls. You only just escape,
Martin ; and I don't think you would unless you could
play like an elderly person. Young people want air-
ing; they want to be out in the world for a time to
get ripe. Tact, now, — tact and good temper are quite
the only gifts worth having, and tact is entirely an
acquired quality. Until all your edges are rubbed
down, you cannot have tact. People with edges are
always putting their elbows into others, instead of

THE CHALLONERS 215

rolling along comfortably. You have no tact, Martin,
and Helen, it appears, has less."

Frank held up an appealing hand.

" Ah, please, Lady Sunningdale,'' he said.

" Dear Frank, it is no use saying ' please,' " cried
she ; " Helen is behaving idiotically. She ought to
have smoothed the Bear down somehow ; deceived him
for the sake of his comfort. Martin, I think, would
deceive his friends to make them comfortable. Con-
sidering how dreadfully uncomfortable life is, the first
duty towards our neighbour is to try to make things
pleasant. You, too, Frank, you have no tact. You
ought to have said the Ten Commandments, or what-
ever it is, very loud, in the vulgar tongue, when you
went to the Bear's church, and then there wouldn't
have been any question at all. I would be a Parsee or
a Plymouth sister to-morrow if it would make Sun-
ningdale groan less. He has taken to groaning. I
suppose his mind hurts him, as he says he's quite
well."

" Did you say that I would deceive people to make
them comfortable?" asked Martin.

" Yes ; at least I hope you would. But you Chal-
loners are all slightly cracked, I think. You owe your
vividness to that. You, Helen, your father, all see
things out of their real proportion."

"Have you ever seen Aunt Susan?" asked
Martin.

" No; is she dreadful?"

" Not at all, but not vivid. It was she who really
made Helen go home and live there."

" Then your Aunt Susan is a very stupid person,"
said Lady Sunningdale. " My dear, there are only

216 THE CHALLONERS

two sorts of people in the world, the clever and the
stupid. Nobody is good, nobody is bad. At least, they
may be for all that it matters, but goodness and bad-
ness in themselves have no result. There is nothing
more colourless than moral qualities; it is only brains
that give colour to them. Do you choose your friends
because they are good? I am sorry for you. Of
course, I don't want you to choose them because they
are bad. The one is as idiotic as the other. But brains !
There is nothing else in the world, and very little of
that. And moral qualities are like corsets. If they
are tight they hinder free development, and if they are
loose, you might as well not wear them at all."

Lady Sunningdale had taken her feet off the bed
during this remarkable speech and looked more closely
at Martin.

" Your forehead is bulging, Martin," she said, " and
your hair is dipping like a plume into your left eye.
That happens, I notice, when you play, and it means
you are thinking. So you are thinking now. What
is it?"

Martin did not deny the soft impeachment.

" Yes, I was thinking,'' he said. " I don't imagine
that what I was thinking about would interest you in
the least."

Lady Sunningdale made a gesture of despair.

" Haven't you grasped the elementary fact," she
said, " that anything anybody thinks about is deeply
interesting? All the events of the world — who said it
— take place in the brain. Sahara, darling, I am not
a mutton bone, nor are my rings good to eat. Suez,
how tiresome ! And I hadn't read a page of it ! Yes ;
what were you thinking about, Martin?"

THE CHALLONERS 217

Martin lit a cigarette from a smoked-down stump
before he replied.

" I was thinking whether I was going to join the
Roman Church," he said.

Lady Sunningdale gave a deep, contented sigh.

" That's the sort of thing I really like," she re-
marked. " Poor Bear ! Now, why, why, why do you
want to do that ? Yes, turn Sahara out, Frank ; she is
so restless. Suez Canal always follows her. And shut
the door. Now close your eyes and think, Martin,
for a minute if you like, and then tell me why?"

Frank said, under his breath, " I thought so," and
returned to his chair almost on tiptoe. Martin did
not close his eyes at all, but looked at him.

" Frank knows why, I expect," he said, " though I
haven't hinted it to him till this moment. Why is it,
Frank?"

" Well, in one word, * Beauty,' " said he.

Lady Sunningdale was completely bewildered.

"Incense? The Virgin Mary?" she suggested,
vaguely.

Martin frowned. For a moment he looked exactly
like his father.

" Ah, what is the use of my telling you, if you say
that sort of thing ?" he asked.

" But I really haven't an idea," said she. " Did I
say anything dreadful?"

" Frank, speak. You know," said he. " I never
know what I am talking about when I begin to
talk."

" It is only a guess."

" You have guessed right. I believe you are always
right."

218 THE CHALLONERS

" Well, get on somebody," said Lady Sunningdale,
with a show of impatience.

" All is Beauty," said Frank, " and knowing this is
Love, and Love is Duty."

He smiled across to Martin.

" You quoted that, you know, to Helen," he said,
" on the day your father found ' The Mill on the
Floss.' "

"What did he find the mill on?" asked Lady Sun-
ningdale. "Oh, I see. George Eliot, isn't it? How
dull ! I read a book of hers once, ' Scenes from Some-
thing,' and thought it so like your father's house, Mar-
tin. But all is Beauty, is it? I should have said
almost everything was ugly. Anyhow, what has it all
got to do with the Pope?"

Lady Sunningdale's discursiveness, the reader will
have noticed, was liable to put in an appearance at
any time, even when she was really interested. She
herself explained this by the fact that she never
thought about less than three things at once. Conse-
quently, when she opened her mouth, any of the three
was liable to make its escape.

" Yes, that is it," said Martin, answering Frank's
last remark. " I am a Christian, and I cannot any
longer be of a church that leaves out beauty from its
worship. Why, if you love a thing, if you believe in
a thing, you must approach it through beauty, it seems
to me."

He paused a moment, and then the words came as
they had never come before. A sudden clearness of
vision was his. He saw his own thought with pre-
cision, and he could at that moment of self-revelation
delineate it very accurately.

THE CHALLONERS 219

" Why, when one's friends come to see one," he
said, " one makes the room tidy. If you came to see
me at Cambridge, Lady Sunningdale, I should take
down my pipe-rack and put it in my bedroom, I should
sweep my hearth, I should give you a clean tablecloth
for lunch, I should get flowers for the table, I should
practise something which I thought you would like to
hear me play. I should, in my small way, put all the
beauty at my disposal at yours, and put the ugliness
away. But — but take Chartries church. How
beastly !"

Martin paused a moment. Frank was observing him
quietly from underneath his hand, for the afternoon
sun was pouring its light from the window where Mar-
tin had pulled up the blind full into his eyes. The
boy seemed to him at this moment suddenly to have
grown up, become vivider, to have thought for himself.
Crude, elementary, unconvincing it all might be, but
it was original. And Martin's next words endorsed
his opinion. Certainly he was not a child any longer.

" How dare they? How dare they?" he cried. " A
wheezy organ ; awful wood- work ; terrible windows.
Is there anything more hideous in all England than
Chartries church, — unless it be a county jail for the
confinement of prisoners? Because it is for God, will
anything do?"

There certainly was crudity here. Frank felt that,
though Lady Sunningdale did not, for her indifference
on religious matters was perhaps the profoundest thing
about her. He had enquired and rejected, she had
never even looked in that direction. Martin had en-
quired, too, and found an awful Presence. And he
was ashamed to call in old clothes, so to speak. What

220 THE CHALLONERS

was at the service of God was his best. All that was
not best was an insult. And his face flushed suddenly.

" Why, if that church was my room, and you came
to see me, I would cover up the stained glass," he said.
" I would make it decent. I would, I would "

He paused for a moment, then found' the word.

" I would have ' form,' " he said. " I would give
you politeness. I would not say, ' She knows me ; she
will understand,' and sit with you in a back bedroom,
slops about, tooth-brushes, anything. But because God
understands, are we to say ' Anything will do ?' Why,
when the Queen came to Chartries we had four courses
for lunch and a red carpet."

He broke off suddenly.

"Do you understand what I mean?" he demanded
of Frank.

Frank understood perfectly, for he had known a
long time what Martin had only just learned, — that
" form" governed his life. For he did and always had
done everything he believed in as well as he could do it,
lavishing thereon all the pains and trouble at his com-
mand, with the instinctive, open-handed generosity of
love. These pains he did not bestow grudgingly, nor
count the expenditure ; whatever was worth doing was
more than worth all the pains he could possibly bestow
on it. That impulse lies at the root of every artistic
temperament, endless trouble for ever so minute a per-
fection, ever so infinitesimal a finish. But Frank, like
an equitable judge, had to state the other side of the
case to Martin.

" What will your father say to it ?" he asked, using
the most commonplace phrase.

Martin looked at him quickly.

THE CHALLONERS 221

" Same as he said about you and Helen," he re-
marked.

Lady Sunningdale could not help a little spurt of
laughter, the repartee was so exquisitely simple. But
she checked it at once.

" But it's too awful for him," she said. " First
Helen and then you. Martin, do you think you
ought "

" I don't know, but I must," said Martin.

" But it doesn't hurt you to play a creaky organ.
And the stained-glass windows don't hurt you."

Frank had seen further than this.

" How necessary do you feel it?" he asked. " That
is the whole point. Is it as necessary as — as Chopin?"

The door opened and Hortense entered.

"Sept heures et demi, madame," she said.

Lady Sunningdale started to her feet.

" Monsters, you must go at once," she cried. " Yes,
dear Martin, it is too interesting ! You will play to us
this evening, won't you ? So glad you could come ; and
did you ever see such a mess as the dogs have made?
But those things don't hurt you any more than brush-
ing one's teeth hurts, though it cannot help being a
terribly inartistic performance. And you ought to
consider Helen, as well. Not that it matters what
church one belongs to, as far as I can see. Sunning-
dale might become a Parsee to-morrow if it would
make him any happier, only there really is no sun in
England ; so I don't see what he would worship. How
nice always to sit in the sun and say one was worship-
ping! Yes. You extraordinary boy, fancy your l)eing
religious in your little inside. I should never have
guessed it. But you got quite pink when you talked

222 THE CHALLONERS

about Chartries church. Most rehgious people are so
dull. Is that a dreadful thing to say, too ? Dinner at
eight. Take him and shew him his room, Frank."

Lady Sunningdale certainly had the knack of bring-
ing quite unique combinations of people together and
of making them behave quite characteristically of their
respective selves. She herself — this may partly ac-
count for it — behaved with such child-like naturalness
that it was quite impossible for those with her to be
self-conscious. As a hostess she was quite incom-
parable, for rejecting all known conventions which are
supposed to be binding on that very responsible class,
instead of behaving to each of her guests as if he was
a mere unit in the colourless mass known as society,
she talked direct and unmitigated " shop" appropriate
to each. To-night there was present among her guests
a traveller in Central Thibet, to whom she talked can-
nibal-shop, so much encouraging him that his account
of his adventures became scarcely narratable ; an
astronomer who knew Mars better, it appeared, than
the majority of dwellers on this terrestrial globe know
the county in which they live; several cabinet minis-
ters who received relays of telegrams during dinner
(always a charming incident), their wives, whose main
preoccupations were appendicitis, golf, and babies; a
duchess of American extraction, who shied violently
when the words " pig" or " Chicago" were mentioned ;
and a German princess who, when directly questioned,
seemed doubtful as to where her husband's principality
lay, and was corrected on the subject by the astrono-
mer. But owing perhaps to the advent of the Twin
(the name by which Lady Sunningdale referred to

THE CHALLONERS 223

Martin), though she had previously confessed that she
found her guests " dreadful," to-night she went
bravely ahead, steering a triumphant course over shoals
where she grounded heavily and dashing on to rocks
that should have made a wTeck of her. The dinner-
table w-as round; she herself set an excellent example
by screaming over smilax and chrysanthemums to the
person most distantly removed, and Babel, that god so
ardently worshipped by hostesses, shed his full efful-
gence over the diners. Thibet and the Chaldseans
easily led on to astronomy ; astronomy to the observa-
tory at Chicago, which occasioned a sudden and thrill-
ing silence; and from the United States it was but a
step to fiscal problems in which all but the cabinet
ministers laid down incontrovertible opinions. Then
golf let them into the circle again ; and the story of a
golfer being carried off the first tee after a futile drive,
and expiring an hour later from an operation for ap-
pendicitis, while his wife was being confined, was
charmingly to the point. In fact, the desultory rapidity
of conversation left nothing to be desired, and all was
due to Lady Sunningdale's inimitable plan of talking
shop to the shop-keepers.

Later, Martin played, there was Bridge, and Lord
Sunningdale, as usual, went to sleep, and, on awaking,
revoked, subsequently explaining the revoke to the
satisfaction of everybody but his partner, who re-
mained dissatisfied to the last. Women took bed-
candles, men gravitated to the smoking-room, though,
since every one had previously smoked in the drawing-
room, this seemed unnecessary. But, the fact is one
without exception, men left alone leave drawing-
rooms.

224 THE CHALLONERS

Soon, again, after the long clay's shoot, the smoking-
room yawned itself to bed, and cabinet ministers, the
traveller, and the astronomer being gone, Frank was
left alone with Martin. There was no design in the
matter, — both hated going to bed as much as both
detested getting up, but they were neither of them
sorry to have the opportunity of more talk. Frank
had got up from his chair on the last exit, took a
whiskey-and-soda, and moved to the fireplace.

" Lady Sunningdale is extraordinarily clever," he
remarked, " but I can no more discuss anything with
her than I could with a dragon-fly. She is always
darting."

Martin laughed.

" Go on, then," he said.

Frank sat down.

'' Are you determined, Martin ?" he asked.

" I think so. I don't see what else I can do."

" I asked you a question before dinner, which you
didn't have time to answer. Is it as much to you as
Chopin?"

"Why do you repeat that?" asked Martin. "It
does not seem to me apt. How can I make such a
comparison?"

" Easily, I should have thought."

Ag-ain Martin's likeness to his father started to his
face.

" You say, ' easily,' " he said. " Take this, then.
What would you do if in order to get Helen you had
to tell a real, mortal, mean lie, the sort of lie that would
make you blush in the dark?"

"It's like that, is it?"

"Yes; just like that. I must. I can't tell you

THE CHALLONERS 225

why. I don't know whether I know, except as regards
what I said in Lady Sunningdale's room, that, if in
anything, in worship above all is beauty necessary.
That is true, but it is only a sort of symbol of what I
feel. Other people feel differently; they are less ma-
terialistic than I, and ugliness doesn't get in their way.
But if you happen to be gifted or cursed with the
artistic temperament — Lord, how priggish that sounds !
— I don't see how you can help demanding beauty in
the service of what is sublime."

" I never knew you thought about these things,"
said Frank, rather lamely.

Martin snapped his fingers impatiently.

" More fool you, old chap," said he. " All the same,
I don't see why you should have. So Lll apologise.
Probably you thought that because one has high spirits,
a really fine capacity for playing the fool, and also a
certain leaning towards the piano, that I never took
anything seriously. Nor did I till lately. In any case,
this is really so much more my concern than anybody's.
I've got to lead my own life, not to be dragged about
like a sheep. And I must."

He paused a moment.

" I have only given you an external instance of what
seems to me an underlying principle," he said. " The
difference in ' form' between the two churches is an
illustration of the desire of the Roman Church to enlist
beauty in the service of God. That desire is the spirit
of Romanism. Now, English people, take them all
round, are extremely deficient in the seiose of beauty,
and utterly Ijlind to its importance. And in church I
think it really seems to them slightly inappropriate.
The Roman Church is mystical, romantic, poetical.

15

226 THE CHALLONERS

The English is Puritan and ugly and literal. And, do
you know, as soon as I began to think, I found I could
not stand Puritanism. Heavens, how I have jawed!"
Martin got up briskly from his chair, with the un-
mistakable air of closing that particular topic. In
his youthful, boyish manner there lurked a great deal
of masterfulness, which those who came in contact
with it might be disposed to call obstinacy. Though
he never adopted any attitude so ungraceful as that of
a donkey with its legs planted outwards towards the
four quarters of the compass, the effect on such as
pulled was about the same. If he chose, he would
smilingly refuse to go in any direction whatever, cer-
tainly until all efforts to move him were relaxed. But
as he knew himself, and as Frank suspected, there was
just one person in the world with whom, hitherto, he
had never adopted this attitude, and that was his
father. Never yet in his life had he set his will calmly
in opposition to Mr. Challoner's. As he had once told
his father, he was frightened at him, he feared his
anger, but there was certainly no one else in the world
whom he would radically disagree with, and yet obey.
And some cold intimate knowledge of this had sud-
denly struck him when at this moment he stopped the
conversation. All that he had said he had honestly
felt, but vivid as was his imagination, when he flashed
a light into his father's study at home, he could not
picture himself there saying this to him. His own
figure wavered, as if blown by a draught.

There are certain plants which apparently lie dor-
mant, as far as outward observation can go, for months,
and even years, together, and then suddenly grow with

THE CHALLONERS 227

an incredible swiftness, putting forth leaf, bud, and
blossom with a rapidity that is almost uncanny. Some
invisible storage of force must certainly have been
taking place during the prolonged dormancy, the root-
fibre has prospered and been accumulating vitality out
of the ken of human eye, transforming the fertile ele-
ments into itself, and the visible result is the constella-
tion of sudden blossom. And a similar phenomenon is
observable in that most obscure of all growths, that of
the human character. There are no clear causes to be
registered of this sudden activity, only the essence of
the conditions favourable to growth must have been
stored within it, till its reservoir has been filled to
overflowing and discharges all at once its potential
energy. It struck Frank this evening that some such
inexplicable sprouting had just begun in Martin. He
had quite suddenly taken a distinct and defined line
of his own, and was under the spell of an irresistible,
original impulse. He had never been, it is true, devoid
of vividness or vitality, but he had never yet taken a
step. He had been held by the scruff of his neck with
his nose to the grindstone of classical education with-
out attempting to raise it, and his recent emancipation
had been entirely contrived by others, while he himself
had stirred not a finger in it, leaving Frank, his uncle,
and Lady Sunningdale to fight his battle for him,
merely sitting in his tent and, it is true, receiving the
news of victory with engaging delight. But now his
character showed growth : he had thought for him-
self, come to a conclusion consistent with himself, and
was apparently prepared to act on it.

And now that the growth had begun, it was not so
hard to see the causes which made it inevitable. For

228 THE CHALLONERS

he was an artist through and through ; in all his tastes,
in all his achievements the note of " form" sounded
trumpet-like. And if, which Frank had not known,
the desire and the need of God was in the woof of his
nature, that, too, must be expressed with the aesthetic
beauty in which, necessarily to him, emotion had to be
clothed. He could be and was slovenly in execution
where his artistic sympathies were not aroused, as his
more than mediocre performances in classical lan-
guages could testify ; but where his feelings were con-
cerned, any expression of them had to be made with
all the excellence obtainable. He was not able himself
to do badly what appealed to him, neither could he
watch or take part in a thing that was badly done.
And the growth that he had made consisted in the fact
that he recognised this.

CHAPTER X

Karl Rusoff got up rather wearily from the piano,
where he had been practising for the last three hours,
stretched himself, and for a few seconds held his
fingers against his eyes, as if to rest them. The after-
noon was a little chilly, and he walked over to the fire-
place, where he stood warming his hands. The cheer-
ful, flickering blaze shining through his thin, long
hands made the fingers look transparent, as if they
were luminous and lit with a red light from within.

From the windows the dun-coloured gloom of a
cloudy spring afternoon in London left the room
vague and full of shadows that huddled into the cor-
ners, while the light of gas-lamps, already lit in the
street outside, cast patches of yellow illumination high
on the walls and on the mouldings of the ceiling. The
room itself was large, lofty, and well-proportioned, and
furnished with a certain costly simplicity. A few Per-
sian rugs lay on the parquetted floor, a French writing-
table stood in the window, a tall bookcase glimmering
with the gilt and morocco of fine bindings occupied
nearly half of the wall in which the fireplace was set,
two or three large chairs formed a group with a sofa
in the corner, and the Steinway grand occupied more
than the area taken up by all the rest of the furniture.
There, perhaps, simplicity gained its highest triumph, —
the case was of rosewood designed by Harris, and the
formal perfection of its lines was a thing only to be
perceived by an artist. On the walls, finally, hung two

229

230 THE CHALLONEES

or three prints, and on the mantelpiece were a couple of
reproductions of Greek bronzes found at Herculaneum.

It was a room, in fact, that spoke .very distinctly of
an individual and flawless taste. Wherever the eye
fell it lighted on something which, in its kind, was per-
fect; on the other hand, there was nothing the least
startling or arresting, and, above all, nothing fidgetty.
It was a room pre-eminently restful, where a tired
mind might fall into reverie or an active mind pursue
its activities without challenge or annoyance from visi-
ble objects. Pre-eminently also it was a room instinct
with form ; nothing there should have been otherwise.

Karl stood in front of the fireplace for some min-
utes, opening and shutting his hands, which were a
little cramped, a little tired with the long practise they
had just finished. His mind, too, was a little tired
with the monotony of his work, for his three hours at
the piano had been no glorious excursion into the sun-
lit lands of melody, but the repetition of about twelve
bars, all told, from a couple of passages out of the
Waldstein Sonata which he was to play next week at
the last of his four concerts in St. James's Hall. And
though perhaps not half a dozen people in that
crowded hall would be able to tell the difference be-
tween the execution of those dozen bars as he played
them yesterday and as he could play them now, he
would not have been the pianist he was if it had been
possible for him not to attempt to make them perfect,
whether that took a week or a month. The need of
perfection which never says " That will do" until the
achievement cannot be bettered was a ruling instinct
to him.

Besides, to him just now the presence of one out of

THE CHALLONERS 231

those possible six auditors who might be able to tell
the difference was more to him than all the rest of the
ringing hall. Sometimes he almost wished he had
never seen Martin, — never, at any rate, consented to
give him lessons, — for in some strange way this pupil
was becoming his master, and Rusoff was conscious that
the lad's personality, never so vivid as when he was
at his music, was beginning to cast a sort of spell
over his owm. Brilliant, incisive, full of fire as his
own style was, he was conscious when Martin played
certain things that his own rendering, far more cor-
rect, far more finished thought it might be, was elderly,
even frigid, compared to the other. The glorious
quality of his exuberant youth, a thing which in most
artists is beginning to pale a little before they have
attained to that level of technical skill which is neces-
sary to a pianist of any claim to high excellence, was
in Martin at its height and its noonday, while it really
seemed sometimes to his master that he had been,
perhaps in his cradle, perhaps as he bent his unwilling
head over the crabbed intricacies of Demosthenes,
somehow mysteriously initiated into the secrets of
technique. Anyhow, that facility, that art of first mas-
tering and then concealing difficulties which to most
pianist only comes, as it had come to himself, through
months and years of unremitting toil, seemed to be
natural to his pupil. Martin had only got to be told
what to do, and if he was in an obliging humour he
did it. The difficulties of execution simply did not
seem to exist for him. Immensely struck as Karl
Rusoff had been with his performance last summer at
Tord Yorkshire's, he felt now that he had not then
half fathomed the depth of his power, which lay pel-

232 THE CHALLONERS

lucid like a great ocean cave full of changing lights
and shadows, suffused to its depths with sunlight, and
by its very clearness and brightness baffling the eye
that sought to estimate its depths.

And his temperament — that one thing that can
never be taught. Karl Rusoff knew he had never come
across a temperament that, artistically speaking, ap-
proached it. It was, indeed, not less than perfect from
that point of view, sensitive, impressionable, divinely
susceptible to beauty, hating (here largely was the per-
sonal charm of it to his master), hating the second-
rate, especially the skilful second-rate, with glorious
intensity. At the thought Karl's rather grim face re-
laxed into a smile as he remembered how Martin had
sat down to the piano the other day in a sudden burst
of Handel-hatred and with his ten fingers, which
sounded like twenty, and a strangely unmelodious voice,
which sounded like a crow and ranged from high
falsetto treble to the note of kettledrums, had given a
rendering of the " Hail-Stone Chorus," so ludicrous,
yet catching so unerringly the cheap tumult of that toy-
storm in a teacup, that he himself had sat and laughed
till his eyes were dim.

" And why," asked Martin, dramatically, in conclu-
sion, " did that German spend his long and abandoned
life in England? Because he knew, sir, he knew that
in any other country he would have been kindly but
firmly put over the border. Now shall I sing you the
'Hallelujah Chorus'?"

Besides this facility in technique, the power of per-
ception of beauty, which in many of the finest minds
requires years of delicate cultivation before it becomes
at all mature or certain, was already present in Martin

THE CHAIJ.ONERS 233

in apparent fulness of growth; it was already an in-
stinct exerting and asserting itself, not through habit,
but through intuition. It was so much the dominating
ingredient in the composition known as Martin Chal-
loner that almost everything else might be considered
as a mere by-product. His whole will, his whole
energy, was at its service. When once it called to him,
as it had called to him in his adoption of the Roman
faith, it seemed he had to obey and could not question.
It was to him a law that he could not transgress.

But all this, the charm of which Karl Rusoff felt
almost too keenly for his peace of mind, he knew to
be extremely dangerous, and to him this exultant,
beautiful mind was entrusted with all the responsibility
that it entailed, to fashion, to train, to prune. With a
true and honest modesty he recognised how menial,
so to speak, his work in regard to Martin was ; but this
did not lessen the responsibility. He was, to rate him-
self at the highest, the gardener who had to bring this
exquisite plant into fulness of flower, to feed, to water,
to cut, and, above all, to let air and sun, the great
natural influences, have their way with it. He did not
believe in forced growth or in sheltered cultivation;
as he had told Martin in the summer, every emotion,
every pain and joy, so long as it was not sensual, was
his proper food. The richer his experience was, the
richer would his music be. Karl had already seen a
first clear endorsement of his view in the circum-
stances attending Martin's secession to the Roman
Church. He himself did not know with any exactitude
of detail what liad joasscd between him and his father,
but though the painfulness of that had knocked Mar-
tin completely up for a time, what he himself had

234 THE CHALLONERS

foreseen had come true, and he could hardly help in-
wardly rejoicing at even the cruelty of Mr. Challoner's
attitude to his son, so great had been the gain to
Martin artistically. He had suffered horribly, and was
the better for it. Afterwards — the thing had taken
place now more than two months ago — the elastic fibre
of his youth had reasserted itself, and his exuberant
health of body and mind had returned to their former
vigour. The pain had passed, the gain remained.

Then to Karl's reverie there came the interruption
he had been expecting. A quick step sounded outside,
then a noise as of a large quantity of books being
dropped in the passage, a loud and hollow groan, and,
after a short pause, Martin, with half a dozen volumes
of music, entered, flushed, vivid in face, muddy in
boots.

"I am late," he said, " also I am sorry. But there
was not a cab to be found. So I ran. I ran quicker
than cabs. Oh, how hot I am!"

Karl's face lighted up as he saw him. He himself
was unmarried and rather lonely in the world till this
child of his old age had come to him, who should be,
so he told himself, the crown of his life's work, and
illuminate the dull world, long after he himself was
dead, with the melodious torch that he had helped to
light.

" Are you late?" he said. " I have only just finished
practising myself. My dear child, how hot you are.
Let us have tea first. And are you dining out to-
night? If not, have a chop with me here, and we can
work a little afterwards as well. You have not been to
me for a week."

THE CHALLONERS 235

" Yes, thanks, I should like that," said Martin. " I
have been down at Chartries, as you know, for a
couple of days."

He paused a moment, frowning at the fire.

"No; it was no good," he said. "My father
would not see me. He even opposed Helen's coming
to Uncle Rupert's while I was there. But she came."

" How is she ?" asked Karl.

" Very well, and, what is so odd, extraordinarily
happy, — happy in some steadily-shining way. Deep,
broad, bright happiness, like sunlight. Now, how do
you account for that ? Away from Frank, — she doesn't
even write to him or hear from him, — continuing to do
all that she found so intolerable under hugely aggra-
vated conditions, — he not there, — and yet awfully
happy. Not that father has changed to her at all, —
he is very silent, very sad, very — well, sometimes very
cross. And she feels his sadness, too, — feels it as if it
were her own "

" Ah, you have it," said Karl ; " that is why she
is happy. It is what I have always told you — the fact
of sympathy, whether it is with joy or pain, is what
enriches and perfects; the fact of sympathy is what
makes her happy. You are as happy — with the broad
sunshine of happiness, even though a bitter wind whis-
tles— when Isolde sinks lifeless by the body of Tris-
tran as when Siegfried hears the singing of the bird."

He paused a moment looking at the fire, then turned
to Martin.

" Ah, my dear lad," he said, " pray that you drink
to the dregs any cup of sorrow or of joy that may be
given you. Never shrink from pain — you will not
become your best self without it. But by it and

236 THE CHALLONERS

through it, and in no selfish or egoistic manner, you
will fulfil yourself."

He rose from his chair and turned on switch after
switch of electric light.

" It is like this," he said, feeling in his sudden desire
for light some instinctive connection with what he was
saying. " Open the doors, open the windows of your
soul, — let the sun in and the wind. And this is a music-
lesson,'' he added, laughing. " Well I have given a
good many in my life, and should be pleased to know I
never gave a worse one. Now, what have you done
since I saw you last?"

Martin walked quickly over to the piano with a
laugh.

" Listen," he said.

He played a few bars of very intricate phrase after
the manner of the opening of a fugue. Then in the
bass half the phrase was repeated, but it finished with
something perfectly different, a third and a fourth or
a fifth joined in, and before the " whole kennel was
a-yelp" the original subject had passed through rapid
gradations until it had become something totally dif-
ferent to what it began with, though still an incessant
jabber of cognate phrases, never quite coherent, were
somehow strung together and worked against each
other by a miracle of ingenuity. Then the original
subject was repeated with emphatic insistence, as if to
call renewed attention to itself, but it was answered
this time by a phrase that had nothing whatever to do
with it; a third short melody totally different from
anything that had gone before or was to come after
ran its brief and ridiculous course, and then a perfect
hodge-podge of reminiscences of all that had previ-

THE CHALLONERS 237

ously occurred, handled with extraordinary dexterity,
made the brain positively reel and swim. Finally a
huge bravura passage, as much decked out with ribands
and lace as a fashionable woman at a party, brought
this insane composition, which taxed even Martin's
fingers, to a totally unexpected close.

Karl Rusoff had listened at first with sheer uncom-
prehending bewilderment, unable, since indeed there
was neither head nor tail nor body to it, to make any-
thing whatever out of it, and for a moment he won-
dered if Martin was merely playing the fool. But as
he looked at his face bent over the piano, and saw even
his fingers nearly in difficulties, a sudden light struck
him, and he began to smile. And before the end was
reached he sat shaking in his chair with hopeless
laughter.

" Ah, you wicked boy," he said, " why even our dear
Lady Sunningdale would recognise herself."

Martin pushed his plume out of his left eye and
laughed.

" That's the joy of it," he said. " She did recog-
nise it. About half way through she said, ' Why, that's
me.' You know you told me to do that, — to take any-
thing, the east wind, or a London fog, or a friend, and
make music of it."

" Play it once more, if you will," said Karl, " and
then to work. Not that that is no work. There is a
great deal of work in that. Also I perceive with secret
satisfaction that you do not find it easy to play. But
the bravura is rather unkind. She is never quite like
that."

" Ah, the bravura is only her clothes," said Martin,
preparing to begin again. " She even told me which

238 THE CHALLONERS

hat she had on. It is the one she describes as a covey
of birds of paradise which have been out all night in
a thunderstorm, sitting on a tomato-salad."

Again Karl sat and listened to the torrent of frag-
ments and currents of interrupted thoughts. Heard
for the second time it seemed to him even a more
brilliantly constructed absence of construction than be-
fore, an anomalous farrago which could only have been
attained by a really scholarly and studious disregard of
all rules; no one who had not the rules at his finger-
tips could have broken them so accurately. It was a
gorgeous parody of musical grammar in exactly the
mode in which Lady Sunningdale's conversation was a
brilliant parody of speech, full of disconnected wit, and
lit from end to end with humour, but as jerky as the
antics of a monkey, as incapable of sustained flight in
any one direction as a broken-winged bird, a glorious
extravagance.

Karl had left his seat and stood near the piano as
the bravura passage began. This time it seemed to
present no difficulty to Martin, though his unerring
hands were hardly more than a brown mist over the
keys. And Karl felt a sudden spasm of jealousy of
his pupil as a huge cascade of tenths and octaves
streamed out of Martin's fingers.

" Yes, indeed, the bravura is not easy," he remarked,
when Martin had finished, " and I think you played it
without a mistake, did you not ? Is it quite easy to play
tenths like that?"

Martin laughed.

" I find I've got not to think of anything else," he
said. " Will that do for my composition for th^
week?"

THE CHALLONERS 239

Karl laughed.

" Yes, very well, indeed," he said. " It has lots of
humour, — and humour in music is rather rare. But
don't cultivate it, or some day you will find yourself
in the position of a man who can't help making puns.
A dismal fate. Now, let us leave it — it is admirable —
and get to work. I think I told you to study the last
of the Noveletten. Play it, please.?'

This time, however, there was no laughter and no
approbation. Karl looked rather formidable.

" It won't do, — it won't do at all," he said. " You
have the notes, but that is absolutely all. It is per-
fectly empty and dead. A pianola would do as well.
What's the matter? Can't you read anything into it?"

Martin shrugged his shoulders.

" I know it's all wrong," he said. " But I can't
make anything of it. It's stodgy."

Karl's eyes glared rather dangerously from behind
his glasses.

"Oh, stodgy, is it?" he said, slowly. "Schumann
is stodgy. That is news to me. I must try to remem-
ber that."

Martin looked sideways at his master, but Karl's
face did not relax.

" Stodgy !" he repeated. " I know where the stodgi-
ness comes in. Ah, you are either idiotic or you have
taken no trouble about it. Because you have found
that the mere execution was not difficult to you, you
have not troubled to get at the music. I gave you
music to learn, and you have brought me back notes.
Do not bring a piece to me like that again. If I give
you a thing to learn, I do so for some reason. Get up,
please."

240 THE CHALLONERS

Karl paused a moment, summoning to his aid all
that he knew, all he had ever learned to give cunning
to his fingers and perception to his brain. Never per-
haps in his life had he played with more fire, with more
eagerness to put into the music all that was his to put
there, and that in order to charm no crowded hall
packed from floor to ceiling, but to show just one pupil
the difference between playing the music and playing
the notes.

Martin had left the music-stool in what may be
called dignified silence and was standing by the fire;
but before long Karl saw him out of the corner of an
eye (he could spare him neither thought nor look)
steal back towards the piano, and though he could not
look directly at his face, he knew what was there, —
those wide-open, black eyes, finely-chiselled nostrils,
swelling and sinking with his quickened breath, mouth
a little open, and the whole vivid brain that informed
the face lost, absorbed.

He came to the end and sat silent.

"Is that there?" asked Martin, in a half-breathless
whisper. " Is that really all there?"

Karl looked up. Martin's face was exactly as he had
known it would be. But the first mood of the artist
was of humility.

" I played wrong notes," he said. " Half a dozen
at least."

" Oh, more than that," said Martin. " But what
does that matter? You played it. My God, what a
fool I have been ! There I sat, day after day, and never
saw the music."

Karl Rusoff got up. It had been a very good music-
lesson.

THE CHALLONEES 241

" It isn't ' stodgy,' " he said. " It isn't, really. Do
you now see one thing out of a hundred perhaps that
it means? You have got to be the critic of the music
you play, — you have to interpret it. But out of all the
ways of playing that, out of all that can be seen in
it, you saw nothing, your rendering was absolutely
without meaning or colour. To play needs all you are ;
you gave that fingers only. If I want you to practise
fingers only, I will tell you so, and give you a finger
exercise or Diabelli. Otherwise you may take it for
granted that when your fingers are perfect your work
begins. But to play — ah — you have to burn before
you play."

Martin still hung over the piano.

" And I thought it stodgy," he repeated, looking shy
and sideways at Karl's great grey head.

" Well, you won't again," said he. " Will you try
it again now ?"

" No; how can I?" said Martin. " I've got to be-
gin it all over again."

" Then there was a piece of Bach. Play that. And
now read nothing into it except the simplicity of a
child. Just the notes, — the more simply the better.
Wait a moment, Martin. I want to enjoy it. Let me
sit down."

Martin waited, and then began one of the Suites
Anglaises, and like a breath of fresh air in a stuffy
room, or like a cloudless dawn with the singing of
birds after a night of storm and thunder, the exquisite
melody flowed from his fingers, precise, youthful, and
joyous. There was no introspection here, no moods
of a troubled soul, no doubts or questioning; it sang
as a thrush sings, changed and returned on itself,

16

242 THE CHALLONERS

danced in a gavotte, moved slowly in a minuet, and
romped through a Bourree like a child.

At the end Martin laughed suddenly.

" Oh, how good !" he cried. " Did you know
that Bach wrote that for me?" he asked, turning
to Karl.

" Yes, I thought he must have," said Karl. " And
with the command that you were to play it to me. You
played that very well; all your fingers were of one
weight. How did you learn that?"

Martin raised his eyebrows.

" Why, it would spoil it, would it not, to play it any
other way?" he asked.

" Certainly it would."

Then he got up quickly.

" Oh, Martin, you child," he said. " Did I speak to
you roughly about the Schumann?"

" You did rather," he said. " But I deserved to
have my ears boxed."

The two dined alone, and held heated arguments,
not like master and pupil, but like two students who
worked side by side, Karl as often as not deferring
to the other, Martin as often as not blandly disagreeing
with Karl.

" How can you pronounce, for instance," he asked,
"that that Novelette is to be played with those sweat-
ings and groanings, the mere notes being of no use,
whereas Bach is to be played with notes only?"

Karl gazed at him in silence.

"You impertinent infant," he said. "What else do
you propose? To play the Schumann as you played
it? And the Bach as I played the Schumann?"

THE CHALLONERS 243

"That would sound extremely funny," remarked
Martin. '' No, I don't say you are not right ; but how-
do you know you are right?"

" Because Bach wrote for the spinet," said Karl.
" Have you ever tried to play Schumann on a spinet ?
It sounds exactly as you made it sound just now,
A deplorable performance, my poor boy."

" You have told me that. Don't rub it in so. I
shall play it very well to-morrow."

" Or next year," said Karl, still grim, but inwardly
full of laughter. " By the way, there was no ' dog'
motive in the Lady Sunningdale composition."

" You can't have been attending," said Martin.
" Suez Canal came in twice, and Sahara three times,
with shrill barks. Yes, please, another cutlet."

Karl watched him eat it. The process took about five
seconds.

"You didn't taste that," he remarked.

"No; it was needed elsewhere," said Martin. "But
I'm sure it was very good."

Karl lingered over the bouquet of his Burgundy.

" It is a strange thing," he said, " that mankind are
so gross as to confuse the sense of taste with greedi-
ness. No, my dear boy, I am not at this moment
attacking you. But there is no organ, even that of
the ear, in this wonderful body of ours so fine as that
of taste. Yet to most people the sight of a man deeply
appreciating his dinner conveys a feeling of greedi-
ness. But I always respect such a man. He has a
sense more than most people."

" But isn't it greedy?" asked Martin.

Karl became deeply impressive.

"It is no more greedy," he said, "to catch the

244 THE CHALLONERS

flavour of an olive or an oyster than to catch the
tone of a 'cello."

" Ah, that would be like encoring a song in an opera
— a most detestable habit — and hearing it over and
over again. No artist desires that. Fancy hearing
Wotan's Abschied twice. That would be greedy. The
art of dining, like most arts, is frightfully neglected in
England."

Martin laughed.

" I have been here, I suppose, a dozen times," he
said, " and every time you give me some surprise. I
had no idea you gave two thoughts as to what you
ate."

" That was hasty of you. True, of all the senses, I
put the ear first. That is personal predilection. But
all the senses really are equal; there is no shadow of
reason for supposing that one is more elevated than
another. True, some can be more easily misused than
others, taste more particularly. But all are subtle gate-
ways to the soul."

They had finished dinner and Karl pushed back his
chair.

" Take an instance," he said. " Take incense. Does
not that smell excite and inspire the devotional sense?
Does not the smell of frangipanni — an unedurable
odour — suggest a sort of hot-house sensualism? Does
not the smell of a frosty November morning bring
the sense of cleanness into the very marrow of your
bones?"

Martin snifTed experimentally.

" Ah, I know that," he said. " And the leaves on the
beech-trees are red, and the grass underfoot a little
crisp with frost. Oh, how good ! But what then ?"

THE CHALLONERS 245

Karl was watching him closely. It was his con-
scious object now and always to make Martin think,
to excite anything in him that could touch his sense
for beauty. He had found that this half-serious, half-
flippant method was the easiest means of approach, —
for Martin was but a boy. Discussions in an earnest,
conscious German spirit both bored and alarmed him.
This fact, had his father grasped it, might in years
past have helped matters.

" Why, everything," he replied. " Each sense can
be expressed in terms of another. Take magenta in
colour, — it is frangipanni in smell ; in sound it is —
what shall we say? — an Anglican chant of some sort;
in taste it is the vague brown sauce in which a bad cook
hides his horrors."

Martin laughed again, with the keen pleasure of
youth in all things experimental.

" Yes, that is true," he said. " How do you go on?
Take a fine colour, — vermilion."

" The blind man said it must be like the sound of a
trumpet," said Karl ; " and the blind man at that mo-
ment saw. Brandy also for taste is red. So is am-
monia,— a pistol to your nostrils."

Martin dabbed his cigarette on to his dessert plate.

" Yes, yes," he cried, " and C major is red. And
F sharp is blue, — electric blue, like the grotto at Ca-
pri "

He stopped suddenly.

" Am I talking nonsense ?" he asked. " If so, it is
your fault. You encourage me. You meant to. And
what do you mean me to get from it?"

Karl turned directly towards him.

" I mean you to think," he said. " To frame your

246 THE CHALLONERS

life wholly for beauty in whatever form you see it. It
is everywhere, be assured of that; and if your eye sees
it, store it up like a honey-bee, and bring it home. If
your mouth feels it, bring it home. If you smell the
autumn morning, bring that home, too. It all makes
music."

He pushed his plate aside and leaned forward to-
wards Martin.

" All is food for you," he said. " It is only in that
way, by harvesting every grain of corn you see, that
you can be great. A lot of harvesting is done un-
consciously. Supplement that by conscious harvesting.
You may learn perfectly all the harmony and counter-
point that can be learned, you may learn to play things
impossible, but all that is no good by itself. You
can already play, — I am not flattering you, but the re-
verse,— if you practise a little, all the printed music
ever written, as far as notes go. That is no good
either. But — if I had not seen this when first I heard
you play, I should never have wasted ten minutes of
my time on you — you can do more than that. You
can, if you are very alert, quite untiring, very critical,
and always ready to catch beauty in whatever form
it may present itself, you can do more than this. At
least I believe so."

He got up from his seat and leaned his hands on the
boy's shoulders as he sat by the table.

" Ah, Martin, don't disappoint me," he said, " or,
being old, I shall die of it. Drink from every spring
but one, and drink deep."

Martin turned in his chair and faced him.

"Do I know what spring vou mean?" he asked.
"Love?"

THE CHALLONERS 247

Karl looked at him with a sort of wonder.

" No, I did not mean that," he said.

He drew a long breath.

" My God, if that had been granted to me," he said,
" I too might have been great. But I never fell in
love. Oh, I am successful; I know I understand; I
am the only person, perhaps, who does know what is
missing in me. It is that. But missing that, I never,
no, not once, parodied what I did not know. Parody,
parody !" he repeated.

Martin looked at him with that direct, lucid gaze
Karl knew so well, level beneath the straight line of
his eyebrows. His smooth, brown cheeks were a little
flushed with some emotion he could not have put a
name to. Slight injury was there, that Karl could
possibly have supposed him bestial, the rest was clean
modesty.

" I am not beastly," he said, " if you mean that."

" I did mean that," he said. " And I beg your
pardon."

Martin stood up.

" I think you had no right to suppose that," he said.

" No, I had none. I did not suppose it. I warned
you, though."

A tenderness such as he had never known rose like
a blush into his old bones, tenderness for this supreme
talent that had been placed in his hands.

" I only warned you," he said. " I looked for
burglars under your bed, just because — because it is
a boy like you that this stupid world tries to spoil.
Aye, and it will try to spoil you. Women will make
love to you. They will fall in love with you, too."

Again he paused.

248 THE CHALLONERS

" Things will be made poisonously pleasant for
you," he said. " You can without effort capture bril-
liant success. But remember all that you get without
effort is not, from the point of view of art, conceivably
worth anything. Remember also that nothing fine
ever grew out of what is horrible. More than that,
what is horrible sterilizes the soil, — that soil is you.
You will never get any more if you spoil it or let it
get sour or rancid. Horror gets rooted there, it de-
vours all that might have been good, all that might
have been of the best."

There was a long silence. Then Karl stepped back
and rang the bell. To Martin the silvery tinkle
sounded remote. He certainly was thinking now.

" Well, I have done," said Karl. " Excuse the —
the Nonconformist conscience."

Martin got up.

" I don't see how one can care — really care — for
music and live grossly," he said. " Yet people appear
to manage it. And mawkishness makes me feel sick,"
he added with apparent irrelevance.

But Karl understood.

" Somebody has been trying to pet him," he thought
to himself.

They went upstairs to the music-room, and Martin
stood before the fire a few moments smoking in silence.

" I like this room," he said. " It makes me feel
clean, like the November morning. I say, how is it
that so many people, men and women alike, only think
about one subject? Surely it is extraordinarily stupid
of them, when there are so many jolly things in the
world."

" Ah, if the world was not full of extraordinarily

THE CHALLONERS 249

stupid people," remarked Karl, " it would be an en-
chanting place."

" Oh, it's enchanting as it is," cried Martin, throw-
ing off his preoccupation. " May I begin again at
once? I want to get through a lot of work to-night.
Heavens, there's a barrel-organ playing ' Cavalleria.'
Frank is going to introduce a bill next session, he says,
putting ' Cavalleria' in public on the same footing as
obscene language in public. He says it comes to the
same thing."

Stella Plympton about this time was giving a cer-
tain amount of anxiety to her parents. The amount, it
is true, was not very great, because her father was a
happily constituted man who was really incapable of
feeling great anxiety except about large sums of money.
Consequently, since the extremely large sums of money,
all of which he had made, were most admirably in-
vested, his life was fairly free from care. His wife
also was quite as fortunate, her complexion was the
only thing capable of moving her really deeply, and
as she had lately found a new masseuse who was quite
wonderful and obliterated lines with the same soft
completeness with which bread-crumb removes the
marks of lead-pencil, she also, for the present, stood
outside the zone of serious trouble.

Between them they occupied, just now, the apex of
social as well as most other successes in London, and
were a very typically modern couple. Sir Reginald
Plympton had in early life invented an oil-cloth of so
eminent an excellence that in its manufacture and
exploitation he had been too busy to really master the
English aspirate, which still bothered him. But to

250 THE CHALLONERS

make up for this he had carefully cultivated his aspira-
tions, and had (entirely owing to oil-cloth), while not
yet sixty, amassed a colossal fortune, married the
daughter of an impecunious duke, won the Derby,
and now stood perched on the topmost rung of the
ladder of English society. He had a yacht, which
never went for long cruises, but always anchored for
the night in some harbour. Being a bad sailor, he left
it, if there was a chance of bad weather, before it
weighed anchor in the morning, and joined it again
on the ensuing evening. Similarly he sat in his wife's
opera-box during intervals between the acts, and left
his place on the rising of the curtain. He was already
a baronet and an M.P., and his peer's coronet, so to
speak, was now being lined.

Yet care, though only like a little draught, just
stirred the warm air of Lady Monica's drawing-room
and made the palm-trees rattle. She had often talked
the matter over with her husband, who had no very
practical suggestion to make. He would stand before
her, very square and squat, with his hands in his
pockets, rattling money in the one and keys in the
other, and say:

" Well, my lady, you give 'er a good talkin' to. Tell
'er to be a good girl, and be sensible. And now I must
be off."

For the fact was that Stella was now nearly twenty-
three. She had refused several very suitable offers,
and her mother, extremely anxious, as all good mothers
should be, to get her married, had lately begun to be
afraid that she was " being silly." This in her vocabu-
lary meant that Stella was in love with somebody
(Lady Monica thought she knew with whom) and

THE CHALLONERS 251

was not clever enough to make him propose to her.
What added enormity to her '' silhness" was the fact
that he was extremely eligible. Lady Monica had no
sympathy with this sort of thing; she had never been
silly herself, and her own sentimental history had been
that some twenty-four years ago she had wooed, pro-
posed to, and wedded her Reginald without any fuss
whatever or any delay. She was a woman with a
great deal of hard, useful common sense; she always
knew exactly what she wanted, and almost always got
it. Her only weakness, in fact (with the discovery of
the new masseuse, her complexion had become a posi-
tive source of strength), was for feeble flirtations with
young men of the age which she herself wished to
look. These never came to anything at all ; and when
the young man in question married somebody perfectly
different, she told all her friends that she had made
him. She had during the last week or two, since the
session had brought them to London, done a little
vicarious love-making to Martin on Stella's account,
and enjoyed it on her own. She was a perfectly honest
woman, and only played with fire as a child plays with
matches, lighting them and blowing them out, and she
never really set fire to herself, and quite certainly
never even scorched anybody else.

But anxiety, like a draught, had reached her with
regard to Stella's future, and the next evening, when
Lady Sunningdale happened to be giving a menagerie-
party, she determined to have a few words with her,
for she was looked upon as a sort of book of reference
with regard to the twins. The menagerie-party was
so called because for a week beforehand Lady Sun-
ningdale drove about London a good deal and screamed

252 THE CHALLONEES

an invitation to everybody she saw in the streets. The
hons only were fed ; the meaner animals and those
lions only observed too late to ask to dinner came in
afterwards.

Lady Monica and Stella belonged to this second
category, and Lady Siinningdale hailed them with
effusion.

'' Dearest Monica, so glad to see you," she cried.
" All sorts of people are here, whom I'm sure I don't
know by sight, and I've just revoked at Bridge
(double no trumps, too; isn't it too dreadful!), and
Suez Canal tried to bite the Prime Minister. Wasn't it
naughty ? But, you see, Suez is a Radical, — though he
shouldn't bring politics into private life. Stella, I
haven't seen you for years. Yes ; IMartin's going to
play, of course. Have you heard his tune which imi-
tates me talking in a very large hat ? Simply heavenly ;
exactly like. Even Sunningdale awoke the other even-
ing when he played it, and asked me what I was say-
ing. How are you, Frank? No sign of relenting
on the part of the obdurate father ? How dreadful !
Yes. Dearest Monica, how well you are looking, and
how young! ("New masseuse/' she thought to her-
self. " I must worm it out.") Do let us go and sit
down. I'm sure everybody has come. Oh, there is the
Spanish Ambassador. He killed his own father, you
know, — shot him dead on the staircase, thinking he
was a burglar, and came into all that immense property
at the age of nineteen ! How picturesque, was It not,
and such a very Spanish thing to do! Such a good
shot, too. How are you, sefior? Yes; they are play-
ing Bridge in the next room. And they say there is
sure to be a dissolution in the autumn."

THE CHALLONERS 253

Lady Sunningdale poured out this spate of useful
information in her usual manner, addressing her re-
marks indiscriminately to any one who happened to
be near, and Lady Monica waited till the flood showed
some sign of abating. She had a vague contempt for
Lady Sunningdale's '* methods," concidering that she
diffused herself too much. She never caught hold of
anything and held tight till everybody else who wanted
it let go from sheer fatigue, which was a favourite
method of her own. On the other hand. Lady Sun-
ningdale certainly managed to pick up a great many
bright objects as she went along, even though she did
drop them again almost immediately.

" Do come away and talk to me, Violet," said Lady
Monica, when for a moment there was silence. " I
came here entirely to have a confabulation with
you."

" Yes, dear, by all means. I have heard nothing in-
teresting for weeks except the things I've made up
and told in confidence to somebody, which have eventu-
ally come round to me again, also in confidence.
What's it all about?"

As soon as they had found a corner. Lady Monica,
as her custom was, went quite straight to the point.

" It's about Stella," she said. " Violet, I am afraid
Stella is being silly."

"How, dear? Stella always seems to me so sen-
sible. Such a lovely neck, too ; quite like yours. Look,
there is poor Harry Bentham. A lion bit his arm off,
or was it South Africa?"

Lady Sunningdale cast a roving eye in his direction,
kissed the tips of her fingers, and motioned him not to
come to her. Lady Monica waited without the least

254 THE CHALLONERS

impatience till she had quite finished. Then she went
on, exactly where she had left off.

" Well, it's your dreadfully fascinating Martin Chal-
loner," she said ; " and I'm sure I don't wonder. My
dear, really such terribly attractive people ought to be
shut up, not allowed to run about loose. They do too
much damage."

" Well, dear, Stella is only like all the rest of us,"
said Lady Sunningdale. " You remember how we all
ran after the twins last summer."

" I know ; we all got quite out of breath. But Stella
is running still. Now, do you think, you know him
so well, that he gives two thoughts to her? They are
great friends, they are often together, but if it is all to
come to nothing, I shall stop it at once. Stella has no
time to waste."

Lady Sunningdale considered this a moment. She
knew all about Monica's little flirtations with Martin;
so also did he, and had imitated her, for Lady Sun-
ningdale's benefit, with deadly accuracy. But she was
too good-natured to spoil sport just because Stella's
mother had been a shade too sprightly for her years.
Besides, she meant to say a word or two about that
later on, a word that would rankle afterwards.

" My dear, I can't really tell whether Martin ever
thinks about her or not," she said. " He is so ex-
traordinary; he is simply a boy yet in many ways,
and he plays at life as a boy plays at some absurd game,
absorbed in it, but still considering it a game. Then
suddenly he goes and does something deadly serious,
like joining the Roman Church. Practically, also, you
must remember that he thinks almost entirely about
one thing, — his music. That child sits down and plays

THE CHALLONERS 255

with the experience and the feehng and the fingers
which, as Karl Rusoff says, have never yet been known
to exist in a boy. He is hke radium, something quite
new. We've got to learn about it before we can say
what it will do in given circumstances. It burns, and
it is unconsumed. So like Martin ! But Karl says he
is changing, growing up. I can't help feeling it's
rather a pity. Yes. Of course he can't be a bachelor
all his life; that is impermissible. But Karl always
says, ' I implore you to leave him alone. Don't force
him; don't even suggest things to him. He will find
his way so long as nobody shews it him.' Karl is de-
voted to him, — just like a beautiful old hen in spectacles
with one chicken."

But Lady Monica had not the smallest intention of
talking about Karl, and led the conversation firmly
back.

" Well, Violet, will you try to find out?" she asked.

Lady Sunningdale's eye and attention wandered.

" Ah, there is Sunningdale," she said. " Does he
not look lost? He always looks like that at a men-
agerie. Yes, I will try to sound Martin, if you like.
I must make him confide in me somehow, and be
rather tender, and he will probably tell me, though he
will certainly imitate me and my tendencies afterwards.
He imitates people who take an interest in him— that
is his phrase — too beautifully. I roared," — Lady Sun-
ningdale cast a quick, sideways glance at her friend, — •
" simply roared at some imitation he gave the other
day of a somewhat elderly woman who took an interest
in him. Yes. Poor Suez Canal ! He loves parties ;
but one can't let him bite everybody indiscriminately.
Let us come back, dear Monica, and make the twin

256 THE CHALLONERS

play. There he is sitting with Stella. He asked me
particularly if she was coming. They are probably
talking about golf or something dreadful. Stella is
devoted to it, is she not ? Yes. That's the game where
you make runs, is it not ? I shall have to sound Martin
very carefully. He is so quick. Sunningdale, please
take Martin firmly by the arm, and if he tries to bite,
by the scruff of the neck, and put him down at the
piano. No, dear Monica, you can tell nothing by his
face. He always looks absorbed and excited like that.
If he was talking to you he would look just the same."
That also was premeditated and vicious, just in case
poor Monica's little love-making, which Martin had
imitated so divinely, had not been wholly vicarious.
If it had, her remark would pass unnoticed, if it had
not — but there was no need to consider whether it had
or not, for poor Monica had turned quite red at the
mention of Martin's imitation of the elderly woman
who took an interest in him.

CHAPTER XI

Martin had been among the Hons who were fed to-
night at Lady Sunningdale's, and had eaten of rich
and sHghtly indeterminate food, for his hostess's vague-
ness and vohibiHty, like Karl's love of form, found ex-
pression in the dinner. Afterwards he had taken up
a strategic position near the head of the stairs when the
meaner animals or belated lions began to arrive, in
order to watch and wait for Stella's entrance. Then
as soon as her mother and Lady Sunningdale had re-
tired into their corner, he had annexed her — with her
complete assent — and plunged into discussions about
affairs not in the least private. Had her mother over-
heard, she would, with her strong, practical common
sense, have ordered the conversation to cease at once,
so wanting in the right sort of intimacy would she have
found it. And in so doing she would have made one
of those mistakes which are so often and so inevitably
committed by people of great common sense but no
imagination, who cannot allow for the possible pres-
ence of romance in pursuits which they themselves
consider prosaic. Had Martin been talking to her
daughter about music, she would have considered that
sufficiently promising to allow developments, for that
was a thing very real to him, — his heart spoke. As it
was, she would have considered that the conversation
held not a germ of that disease of which she longed
that Martin should sicken.

Lady Sunningdale, far less superficial really than

17 257

258 THE CHALLONERS

the other, not knowing that ahnost everything under
the sun was rich with childish romance in Martin's
eyes, had hazarded the suggestion that they were talk-
ing about golf. This was practically correct, because
they were talking about skating, and the two to her
were indistinguishable, — she supposed you got runs at
each, — being objectless exercises for the body. The
moment you hunted or shot or played any game you
entered that bracket. All these things were of the
same genre, and quite unintelligible.

" But I can't get my shoulders round," said Stella.
" It is no earthly use telling me that I must. They
won't go. Can you understand the meaning of those
three simple words, or shall I try to express it dif-
ferently? And if I try to make them get round I fall
down."

Martin frowned.

" Stella, you are really stupid about it," he said, —
they had long ago fallen into Christian names. " For
the hundredth time you have to consider your foot as
fixed. Then pivot round, head first, — then "

Stella nodded.

" Yes, I understand that," she said. " It is always
head first with me, — on the ice."

" You're not being serious," said Martin ; " and if
you can't be serious about a game you can't be serious
about anything. That is a universal truth. I dis-
covered it. What do you suppose matters to me most
in my life ? Music ? Not at all. Get along with you,
you silly thing. But, oh, if any one would teach me to
do back brackets not rather clean, but quite clean. I
dreamed I did one once, and I awoke sobbing loudly
from sheer happiness. I would sign a pledge never to

THE CHALLONERS 259

touch tobacco or a piano again, if I could do that.
That's my real state of mind. Now, will you skate to-
morrow at Prince's? I can be there at ten for an
hour."

" Considering I am always there at half-past nine,"
remarked Stella, " I don't think you need ask. And
yet you say I am not serious. Oh, Martin, why is it
that one really only wants to do the things one can't
do?"

" You can if you want enough," said he. " The
deuce is that one can't always want enough."

" I don't believe that," said she promptly, — Lady
Monica would have stayed her devastating hand, if she
had heard this, — " I want lots of things as much as I
possibly can."

" But perhaps even that isn't enough. What, for in-
stance?"

Stella could not help a momentary lifting of her eyes
to his.

" Why, to skate, silly," she said. " Yes, I'll be there
by ten, and so be punctual. I will consider my foot
whatever you wish, and I'll fall down as often as you
think necessary. But don't be unkind at once when you
pick me up, and tell me I was too much on my heel,
or anything of that sort. Wait till the first agony is
over. I attend best when the pain is beginning to pass
off."

" Well, I only tell you to save trouble in the future,"
said he.

" I know, but give me a moment. Do you care about
the future much, by the way? I don't. Give me the
immediate present. To think much about the future
is a sign of age. No one begins to care about the future

260 THE CHALLONERS

until he is too old to have any. Besides, it implies that
the present has ceased to be absorbing."

Martin pondered this.

" Oh, no ; I don't think that is so at all."

Stella laughed.

" You never, by any chance, agree with a word I
say," she remarked.

" Well, you haven't agreed with me since August,"
he said. " I made a note of it. But that is why we
have no stupid pauses. All conversation runs dry in
two minutes if one agrees with the other person. But
what you say about age really isn't so. Look at Karl
Rusoff or Lady Sunningdale. They both live intensely
in the present."

" Ah, you are shallow," she said. " Years have got
nothing whatever to do with age. That is the most
superficial view. People of ninety die young, people of
twenty die of senile decay."

Martin stretched his trouser over his crossed knee.

" I am a hundred and eleven," he said, " and whiles
— don't you hate the Scotch — and whiles I am about
twelve in an Eton collar."

" Yes, loathe them, laddie. Hoots ! That is what is
so maddening about you. Half the time I think I am
talking to my great-uncle, and the rest of it to my
little nephew up from the country."

" Is he a nice boy?" asked Martin. " Or do you like
your great-uncle best?"

" I don't like either at all, thank you. You are
always being far too wise or far too young. As a
man of a hundred, how can you play silly games with
such enthusiasm? And as a boy of twelve, how can
you play the piano as you do ?"

THE CHALLONERS 2G1

" It is because I am so extremely gifted," said
Martin, so gravely and naturally that for an appre-
ciable moment she stared.

" Ah ! Don't you find it an awful bore?" she asked.

" Dreadful. I can't really take any pleasure in any-
thing, owing to the sense of responsibility which my
talents bring to me."

Stella broke down and laughed. At gravity he al-
ways beat her completely. At which period in their
conversation Lord Sunningdale did as he was ordered,
and, taking him firmly by the arm, led him to the piano.

Karl was always most assiduous in his attendance
at houses where Martin played, and he was here to-
night. His object was certainly not to flatter or en-
courage his pupil, for often and often, when Martin
had played in his presence the night before, he found
but a growling reception waiting for him at his next
lesson.

" You played well enough for them," Karl would
say ; " I grant you that. Any bungling would do for
them. But to play ' well enough for them' is damna-
tion."

" But it did/' Martin would argue. " I did not want
to play at all ; but one can't say no. At least I can't. I
was not playing for you."

" Then you should not have played at all. If you
play often enough in a second-rate manner, you will
soon become second-rate."

But to-night Martin never suggested the second-rate
even to his exacting master. In a sort of boyish pro-
testation at the strictures he had undergone last night
concerning the last of the Noveletten, he played it

262 THE CHALLONERS

again now. Certainly to-night there was no note of
stodginess there ; the varied, crisp, masterful moods of
the music rang extraordinarily true. Half way
through Karl turned to Lady Sunningdale, who was
sitting next him.

" How has he spent his day?" he asked, suddenly.

" Skating, I think. He skated all morning, and was
late for lunch, and he went back to Prince's afterwards.
He is terribly idle, is he not? Pray don't interrupt,
Monsieur Rusoff. I never can feel as if I hear a note
at all unless I hear them all. Who said that? You,
I think. So true. And have you heard his piece on
me? He must play it. Delicious this is, isn't it? I
learned it when I was a child. Tum-tum. There is
the tune again."

" But with whom did he skate, my dear lady?" asked
Karl. There had been a good many notes missed by
now.

Lady Sunningdale gasped.

" Oh, Monsieur Rusoff, how clever of you !" she
said. " You are really clairvoyant. So is my maid, —
the one like a murderess. Do you know her ? No ; how
should you. Martin was skating with Stella Plympton.
And that is important, is it? Don't tell her mother.
She is such a fool, and also she has been trying to
pump me. You see, it was I who brought them to-
gether. So suitable. I feel dreadfully respon-
sible "

At this point the Novelette ended, and Lady Sun-
ningdale clapped her hands in a perfunctory manner.

" Too heavenly, monster," she said. " Now play
Tum-te-tum. Yes, that one. And is he really going
to marry her?" she continued to Karl. " I love being

THE CHALLONERS 263

pumped, if I know it. Dear Monica, she pumps like
a fire-engine. There is no possibihty of mistake. Now,
while he is playing this, do tell me all you know."

" My dear lady, you are building on no foundation,"
said Karl. " All I know is that he played that to me
last night, and played it abominably. To-night he has
played it — well, you have heard. And, psychologically,
I should like to know what has occurred in the in-
terval."

" Was his playing of it just now very wonderful?"
she asked.

" Yes ; one might venture to say that. And as he
has been skating all day, presumably he has not thought
much about it. His thinking perhaps has been done for
him. And who is Stella Plympton? Wife or maid?"

Lady Sunningdale gave a little shriek of laughter.
Really people who lived out of the world were much
more amusing than those who lived in it. Those who
lived in it, it is true, always believed the worst in the
absence of definite knowledge; the others, however,
made far more startling suggestions.

" Next but two on your right," she whispered.
" Dear Monica will have a fit if Stella turns out to be
already married."

Karl's eyes wandered slowly to the right, looking
pointedly at many things first, at the cornice of the
ceiling, at Martin's profile, at the slumber of Lord
Sunningdale. Then they swept quickly by Stella.

She sat there absorbed and radiant, her face flushed
with some secret, delicate joy as she watched and
listened, hardly knowing whether eyes or ears de-
manded her attention most. Certainly the music and
the musician between them held her in a spell.

264 THE CHALLONERS

" She is looking quite her best," whispered Lady
Sunningdale. " How interesting ! They have mil-
Hons, you know — oil-cake, or was it oil-cloth? Oil-
something, anyhow, which sounds so rich, and she is
the only child. The father is quite impossible, not an
' h,' though every one crowds there. One always does
if there are millions. So vulgar of one. Dear Monica,
We were almost brought up together."

Karl turned round to her.

" Dear Lady Sunningdale," he said, " you are really
quite premature if you build anything on what I have
said. He played admirably to-night what he played
abominably last night. That is absolutely all I know.
I should be so sorry if I had suggested anything to
you which proved to be without any sort of founda-
tion."

There certainly seemed to be some new power in
Martin's playing to-night ; but new power had con-
stantly shewn itself there during the last month or two,
for, as Karl said, he had been growing. To-night,
however, he was conscious of it himself, and even as he
played, he knew that fresh light of some kind, some
fresh spring of inspiration, was his. His hand and
his brain were too busy as he played to let him be
more than conscious of it. Where it came from, what
it was, he could not guess this moment ; but as he
struck the last chords the tension relaxed, and he knew.
Then, looking up, he saw Stella sitting near him, lean-
ing forward, her beautiful mouth a little open. That
glorious white column of her neck supported her head
like the stem of a flower, — no garden flower, but some-
thing wonderful and wild. There were rows of faces

THE CHALLONERS 265

behind her, to each side of her, — she was one in a
crowd only ; but as his eyes caught her gaze, the crowd
fell away, became misty to him, vanished as a breath
vanishes in a frosty air, and she only, that one face
bending a little towards him, remained.

For a long moment their eyes dwelt on each other;
neither smiled, for the occasion was too grave for that,
and they two for all they knew, were alone, in Para-
dise or in the desert, it was all one. The gay crowd,
the applause that merged into a crescendo of renewed
conversation, lights, glitter, men and women, were for
that one moment obliterated, for in his soul Love had
leaped to birth, — no puny weakling, prematurely
warped and disfigured by evil practices and parodies of
itself, but clean and full-grown it sprang towards her,
knowing, seeing that its welcome was already assured.
Then the real world, so strangely unreal in comparison
to that world in which for a moment their souls had
mingled and embraced, reeled into existence again, and
Martin rose from the piano, for she had risen, too, and
had turned to some phantom on her right that appeared
to speak to her.

Lady Sunningdale beckoned and screamed to
him.

"Martin," she cried, "you are too deevey! Mon-
sieur Rusoff is really almost — didn't you say almost —
satisfied with the way you played that. And you
learned all that exquisite thing — I used to play it years
ago — while you were skating to-day, because he says
you played it too abominably last night. Really, if I
thought I could play it like that to-morrow evening I
would go and skate all day. Now, don't waste time,
but play something more instantly."

266 THE CHALLONERS

" Oh, please, Lady Sunningdale, I would rather
not,'' said he. " I really don't think I could play any
more to-night. I really am — I don't know what —
tired."

Lady Sunningdale looked at his brilliant, vigorous
face.

" Martin, I don't believe you will ever learn to tell
a decent, passible lie," she said. " Why not tell me you
had got cancer. Oh, there's Suez Canal come back.
Naughty! Monsieur Rusoff, won't you tell him that
he must. Just a scale or two. I adore scales, so satis-
factory, are they not — so expected — as if it was a
music-lesson. No? How tiresome of you."

Karl laid his hand on Martin's arm.

" No, my dear lady," he said. " He's never to play
except when he wants to. But if you really want a
little more music, and I "

" Ah, but how enchanting of you. Monsieur Rusoff
is going to play. Surely, dear Monica, you will wait.
You are not going yet?"

" Desolated, Violet, but Stella says she feels a little
faint. The hot room, I suppose. She is waiting for
me outside. How deliciously you play, Mr. Challoner.
I suppose you practise a great deal. Won't you come
some day and "

She broke off, for Martin had simply turned his back
on her, and was firmly edging his way through the
crowd to the door. Then Lady Monica's maternal in-
stinct positively leaped to a conclusion, and Martin's
rudeness was completely forgiven.

" But I can't resist waiting to hear Monsieur Ru-
soff," she said. " I thought he never played at private
houses. How clever of you, dear Violet. I wonder if

THE CHALLONERS 267

you could get him to play for me. Stella will sit down
and wait for me, no doubt."

But before Karl struck the first chord, Martin had
won (not to say pushed) his way through the hushed
crowd, and found Stella sitting outside in the other
drawing-room. Every one had flocked in to hear the
music, and they were alone.

His foot was noiseless on the thick carpet, and he
was but a yard or two from her when she raised her
eyes and saw him. Then with a little choking cry, only
half articulate, he came close to her. All the excite-
ment and fire in which his life was passed was cold
ashes compared to this moment, and his heart thumped
riotously against his chest. Twice he tried to speak,
but his trembling lips would not form the words, and
she waited, her eyes still fixed on his. Then suddenly
he threw his arms out.

" It is no good trying," he said. " But I love you!
I — I love you !"

Oh, the clumsy, bald statement! But Life and
Death meant less than that word.

" Oh, Martin," she said, " I have waited — I — I
don't know what I am saying."

"Waited?" he asked, and his eyes glowed like hot
coals.

Then he laughed.

" And you never told me," he said. " If it was not
you, I should never forgive you. And if it was not
you, I should not care."

" Isn't that nonsense?" she asked.

"Yes, probably. Who cares? Stella! Oh, my
star!"

He flung his arms round her.

268 THE CHALLONERS

" My star, my star," he cried again.

For one moment she could not but yield to him.

" Yes, yes," she whispered; " but Martin, Martin,"
and her mouth wreathed into laughter, " it is an even-
ing party. You must not; you must not."

He paused like a man dying of drought from whose
lips the cup of water had been taken away.

" Party," he cried; " what party? It is you and I,
that is all."

This was all unknown to her. She had loved him,
the boy with the extraordinary eyes, the boy who
played so magnificently, who laughed so much. But
now there was roused something more than these.
The piano-player was gone, he did not laugh, his eyes
had never quite glowed like that, and there was in his
face something she had never seen yet. The woman
had awakened the man ; this was his first full moment
of consciousness. And, like all women for the first
time face to face with the lover and the beloved, she
was afraid. She had not till now seen his full fire.

" I am frightened," she cried. *' What have we
done?"

But his answer came back like an echo to what she
had not said, but what was behind her words.

" Frightened?" he said. " Oh, Stella, not of me, not
of the real me?"

She gave a little laugh, still mysteriously nervous.

" You were a stranger," she said. " I never saw
you before."

Martin gave a great, happy sigh.

" You are quite right," he said, and the authentic
fire leaped to and fro between their eyes. " I was
never this before. But you are not frightened now?"

THE CHALLONERS 269

This time her eyes did not waver from his.
" No, Martin," she said.

But there was no more privacy possible here. Stella
had been quite right ; there was a party going on, and
at the moment a great burst of applause signified the
end of Karl Rusoff' s performance. Stella started.

" There. I told you so," she said. " Now take me
to my mother ; she will be waiting for me."

Martin frowned.

" Cannot she wait?" he asked. " I too have never
seen the real you before."

" No, dear, we must go. There is to-morrow, all
the to-morrows."

" And to think that it has only been yesterday until
this evening," he said. " There is Lady Monica, look-
ing for you."

Lady Monica had a practised eye. She kept every-
thing she had in excellent practise ; there was nothing
rusty about her.

" Stella dear, I've been looking for you," she said.
" Are you better? Has Mr. Challoner been taking care
of you?"

That was sufficient.

" Stella says I may," said he.

Lady Monica checked her exclamation of " Thank
God!' as being a shade too business-like.

" Ah, dear Mr. Martin," she said. " How nice, how
very, very nice! Stella, my dearest. How secret you
have been. Come, darling, we must go. I can't talk
to either of you in this crowd. But how nice! We
shall see you to-morrow ? Come to lunch, quite, quite
quietly."

270 THE CHALLONERS

Stella looked at him.

" Yes, do, Martin," she said. " I will take you back
after our skate."

" Ah, I had forgotten," he said.

She laughed divinely.

" But I had not. And you will be kind to me, as I
asked you?" she added.

He dwelt on his answer.

" I kind — to you?" he said.

CHAPTER XII

It was a March day of glorious windy brightness, a
day that atones and amends with prodigal, open-handed
generosity for all the fogs and chilly darknesses of
autumn and winter. Heavy rain had fallen during the
night before, cold, chilly rain, but an hour before morn-
ing it had ceased, and a great warm, boisterous wind
came humming up from the southwest. Like some
celestial house-clearer it swept the clouds from the
face of the sky, and an hour of ivory starlight and set-
ting moon ushered in the day.

That same wind had awakened Helen with the sound
of the tapping, struggling blind drawn over her open
window, and with eyes suffused with sleep she had
got out of bed to quiet the rattling calico by the simple
process of rolling it up. And having rolled it up, she
stood for a moment at the window, her hair stirred by
the wind, drinking in the soft cool breath of the huge
night that blew her night-dress close to her skin. The
clean smell of rain was in the air, but the sky was all
clear, and to the east behind the tower of Chartries
church the nameless dove-coloured hue of coming
dawn was beginning to make dim the stars. Then she
went back to bed with a vague but certain sense that
some change had come — winter was over ; in her very
bones she felt that.

Gloriously did the morning fulfil her expectations.
White fleecy clouds, high in the heavens, bowled along

271

272 THE CHALLONERS

the blue, their shadows racing beneath them across the
brown grass of the downs ; the wind, warm and preg-
nant with spring, drove boisterously out of the west,
and the sun flooded all that lived in a bath of light.
Round the elms in the church-yard there had been
wrought that yearly miracle, that mist of green leaf
hovering round the trees, and paler and more delicate
it hung round the slim purple-twigged birches in the
woods that climbed up the hillside beyond to Chartries.
Here after breakfast her path lay, for she had a parish
errand to an outlying hamlet beyond, and with eye and
ear and nostril and open mouth she breathed and was
bathed in the revivification of spring. That morning,
so it seemed to her, all the birds in the world sang to-
gether,— thrushes bubbled with the noise of chuckling
water and delicious repeated phrases of melody, as if to
show, brave musicians, that the " first fine careless rap-
ture" is perfectly easy to recapture, if you happen to
know the way of the thing; blackbirds with liquid
throat and tawny bill scudded through the bushes;
above swifts chided in swooping companies, and finches
and sparrows poured out staccato notes. One bird
alone was silent, for the nightingale waited till sum-
mer should come and love.

That filled the ear. For the eye there were blue dis-
tances, blue shadows of racing clouds, the sun, and
more near the budding trees, and in the dingle below
the woods of Chartries a million daffodils. Helen had
forgotten that they were there, waiting for her, and
she came on them suddenly, and stood quite still a
moment with a long pause of pure and complete de-
light. The place was carpeted with them; they all
danced and shone and sang together like the morning

THE CHALLONERS 273

stars. And as she looked her eyes grew dim with
happy tears.

" Dear God," she said, " thank you so much."
Yes, indeed, it was spring; and as she walked on
she repeated the word over and over again to herself,
finding a magic in it. It was everywhere : the sky and
the sun were full of it, it burst in those myriad blos-
soms from the dark, wholesome soil ; it was spring
that set this good wind blowing, it bubbled and
chuckled in the chalk-stream, with its waving weeds
and bright glimmering beds of pebbles. Above all,
it was in her own heart on this glorious morning, till
she thought it must almost burst, too, so overflowing
was it with sheer, unreasoning happiness.

Indeed, Martin had been quite right when he had
told Karl how happy she was, and though she did not
reason to herself about it, the cause was abundantly
clear. For the last six months she had lived at home,
through days and weeks of ever-recurring difficulties,
and with each, as it presented itself, she had dealt
smilingly, patiently. She had made up her mind on
her visit to Cambridge that her duty was clear and
obvious, nothing striking nor picturesque was in the
least required, she was neither going to renounce her
future happiness, nor, on the other hand, to throw all
else aside and grasp at it. No heroic knot-cutting
measures of any kind were indicated, except the quiet,
unobtrusive heroism of taking up again, quite simply,
quietly, and naturally, all the straightforward, familiar
little duties of her home life which again and again she
had found so tedious. Nor had they been in them-
selves less tedious. Only here was the difference, —
she had ceased to look upon them from any point of

274 THE CHALLONERS

view except one, namely, that it was quite distinctly
her business to do them. That she had found to be
sufficient; it was enough day by day to get through
with them without expenditure of thought as to
whether they were distasteful or not, and her work,
her daily bread, had somehow been sweet and whole-
some and nourishing. Truly, it, as Karl had said,
Martin had been growing out of knowledge, his twin
also would be scarcely recognisable.

And bread, bread of the soul, had come to her;
her table had been laid in the wilderness, and hap-
piness, royal inward happiness of a very fine and
unselfish sort, in the midst of a thousand things which
made for unhappiness, had blossomed in her. A
thousand times she had been tempted to say, " It is
doing no good. Why should I put off what is waiting
for me when my renunciation does not help father
in any way?" But a thousand times she had just not
said it; and now, at the end of these difficult months,
she could without egoism look back and see what
infinite good had been done. That her father should
in any way alter his own convictions about her mar-
riage she had never expected; but what had been
gained was that he saw now, and consciously saw, that
she was in the very simplest language " being good."

But it had been difficult enough for all concerned,
except perhaps for Aunt Clara, who was scarcely
capable of emotion, and often Helen's heart had bled
for her father. It had been most terrible of all when
Martin had joined the Roman Church. His letter to
his father — Helen winced when she thought of it now
— had arrived on Sunday morning, and he had found
it on the breakfast-table when he had come back from

THE CHALLONERS 275

the early celebration. It was a manly, straightforward
letter enough, stating that he had not yet gone over,
but had practically determined to. If his father wished
he would come down to Chartries, and talk it over
with him, and give to his advice and counsel the very
fullest possible consideration. And at the end he ex-
pressed very bluntly and sincerely, as was his way, the
sorrow and the pain that he knew the news would
cause his father.

The sheet fell from his hand, and Helen, who was
making tea, looked up. She saw the colour rise in
her father's face; the arteries in his neck and temples
swelled into cords, and his eyes with pupils contracted
to pin-pricks looked for the moment like the eyes of a
madman. Then he spoke, his voice vibrating with
suppressed furious anger.

" Martin is going to join the Roman Church," he
said. " From the day he does so, Helen, never speak
to me of him again. He is dead to me, remember."

That was a week before Christmas, and for more
than a month after that Martin's name had literally
hardly crossed his father's lips. The boy had come
down to stay with his uncle once, but Mr. Challoner
had absolutely refused to see him. He had even
wished Helen not to ; but on this occasion, for the only
time during all that long winter, she had quietly but
quite firmly disobeyed him. It was then first, too, as
one looking down from barren rocks of a mountain-
range, that she saw, though still far off, the harvest
that was ripening in these long, patient months of her
living here with her father. Before going to Chartries
she had thought best to go into his study and tell him
that she was doing so.

276 THE CHALLONERS

" I am going to see Martin," she said, wondering
and very nervous as to how her father would take it.
" And I wanted to tell you, father, before I went, that
I was going."

Mr. Challoner was writing his sermon, but on her
words his pen paused ; then he looked up at her.

" Very well, dear," he said. " You know my feeling
about it ; but it is a thing in which you must do as you
think right. And, Helen," again he paused, and his
eyes wandered away from her and were bent on his
paper, " tell me, when you come back, how the lad
looks, if he seems well."

She came closer to him. This was the first sign he
had shown that he recognised Martin's existence.

" Ah, father, come with me," she said.

But he shook his head.

" No, dear; no, dear," he said, and went on with his
work.

But, on this March morning of windy brightness,
what gave the comhle to her happiness was the talk —
the first intimate one for all these weeks — which she
had had with her father the night before. She had
gone to her room as usual after prayers, but finding
there some parish-work, concerning outdoor relief,
which she ought to have done and taken to him the
day before, she sat up for nearly a couple of hours,
until she had finished it. Then with the papers in her
hand she went down to his study.

" I am so sorry, father," she said. " You told me you
wanted these yesterday, and I absolutely forgot to do
them. They are finished now."

He looked up in surprise.

" Why, Helen/' he said, " it is after twelve. You

THE CHALLONERS 277

ought to have been in bed long ago. Have you been
sitting up to do them ?"

She smiled at him.

" Why, yes," she said.

He took them from her.

" You have been a very good daughter to me, dear,"
he said.

He paused, but Helen said nothing, for his tone
shewed an unfinished sentence. And the pause was
long; it was not at all easy for him to say what fol-
lowed.

" And I have been often and often very difficult
and very hard all these months," he said. '' But will
you do your best to forget that? Will you try to for-
give me?"

She went close to him, very much moved, and laid
her hand on his shoulder.

" Ah, don't cut me to the heart," she said.

" But promise me, if you can," he said.

Yes, it was true; he had often been difficult and
hard. And she answered him.

" Yes, dear father," she said. " I promise you that
with my whole heart. And in turn, when May comes,
will you try not to think too hardly of me. I have
tried to be good."

She sat down by his side, looking rather wistfully
at him.

" I have been wanting to talk to you often before
about that," he said, " so let me say once and for all
what is in my mind. I disagree with you, as you
know, vitally, essentially, and I believe that God tells
me to disagree. But now I believe also, dear, — and
this your goodness and your sweet patience all these

278 THE CHALLONERS

months has taught me, — that God tells you to do as
you are going to. How that is I do not understand.
Perhaps that doesn't matter so much as I used to
think. But He fulfils Himself in many ways. And
there, too, I have very often thought that He had to
fulfil Himself in my way. It is you who have made
me see that, I think."

Helen raised shining eyes to his.

" You have made me very happy," she said.

"And what have you done for me? There were
certain days, dear, during this winter which I do not
see how I could have got through without you."

Here was an opportunity for which Helen had often
sought.

"Martin?" she asked. "Oh, father, I wonder if
you want Martin as much as I do."

The strength and the tenderness died out of his face,
leaving it both helpless and hard.

" I can't see him," he said, quickly ; " I dare not.
Some day, perhaps; but if I saw him now I should
say — I could not, I know, help saying — what I feel.
If that would do any good, I would say it ; but it would
do none. I should only — I should only frighten him,"
he said, with an accent infinitely pathetic.

She left him then without more words, for all this
winter she had been learning every day and all day
long the divine and human gospel of patience in deal-
ing with people, — the patience that teaches us not to
pull buds open, however desirable it may be that the
flower should unfold, that is content to do its best
with them, and wait for results without the desire
even that they should come quickly. Till this evening,

THE CHALLONERS 279

as has been said, Martin's name had scarcely been
mentioned by his father, and it was something, after
this bitterness of long silence, that he should be able to
say " Not yet, not now." Pity also, pity with hands of
healing, had entered at last into that stern, upright,
God-fearing soul, filtering its way like water through
dry and stony soil ; a very exiguous trickle it might be,
but cool, liquid, refreshing. How hardly it had won
its way there Helen but guessed dimly, he alone knew.
For day had succeeded day, and week week, and all
day and all week he had wrestled blindly, hopelessly
with the misery that Martin had brought on him, un-
able for all his efforts to find any possible justifying
cause for what he had done, which seemed to him as
wanton and as wicked as violent crime. To his Puri-
tan mind, Martin's reason, — namely, the craving for
and the necessity of beauty and poetry in religion was
as unintelligible as a page in an unknow^n language;
not knowing at all what that craving meant, any more
than he knew what homicidal mania meant to a maniac,
he could not in any degree whatever feel or appreciate
its force. And for the sake of this his son had left the
mother-church, and embraced the heresies, the abomi-
nations, the idolatries of Rome. Such was his sober,
literal view : the Roman Church was idolatrous, and
for idolaters was the doom appointed, revealed by God,
believed by him. And there stood Martin.

For weeks nothing had come to sweeten the bitter-
ness of these dark waters; his suffering was as unin-
telligible to him as is pain to a dumb animal ; he
could not guess what it could possibly mean. That
fierce anguish, like a flame, had burned up for a time
in its withering breath all human affection; he had

280 THE CHALLONERS

hated Martin for what he had done. Shocking as that
was, he knew it to be true, and his hate seemed some-
how justified. There were things, there were actions
and passions which he was bound to hate ; and so fiUed
was he witli this conviction, that human affection,
human love could find at first no place in his mind ; it
was turned out, evicted. But now, like a dog beaten
and driven from the house, it was beginning, so Helen
thought, to creep noiselessly, stealthily homeward
again. So she was content; she did not even want
to hurry it.

And this morning spring was here, too, and the
daffodils danced.

From the dance of daffodils the slope rose steeply
upward through the hanging woods of Chartries, and
her path lay by the bushes in which last summer
Frank had found the trapped hare. Here, as always,
she Avent slowly, telling over in her mind, like the
beads of a rosary, the history of those hours. Then
raising her eyes, she saw him, Frank, standing a little
way up the path, looking at her.

Involuntarily her heart leaped to him, and, holding
out both hands, she quickened her step, as if running to
him. That first movement she could no more help
than she could help the fresh blood springing to her
cheeks. But at once almost she recollected herself and
paused.

" Ah, Frank," she cried, " you shouldn't have come
here. You know you shouldn't."

He came no nearer.

" No, my darling," he said ; " but I couldn't help it-
It is not your fault ; you have not broken your promise.

THE CHALLONERS 281

I only had to see you, just see you. I think it was the
spring that made me do it. I am with your uncle for
just one night. See, there is this for you from Mar-
tin."

He held out a note for her, standing a little aside,
so that the path was clear for her to pass on her way.
But, as their fingers met, she lingered and hung on
her step, still not looking at him. She tried, she tried
her best to pass on, but she could not ; her eyelids swept
upward and she looked at him. Then which of them
moved first neither knew, but next moment his arms
were round her, and he kissed her. And, alas! her
struggle to get free was very faint; her tongue pro-
tested, but not very earnestly.

" Ah, let me go, let me go," it said.

" I can't. Helen, it was here that "

" I know," she said. " I come here every day. I
knew I should meet you here some day. And this of
all days, the first of spring. Oh, Frank, let me go.
I love you: is not that enough? And it is not for
long now."

" No, my darling, it is not long now."

" And — and it has been so long. And I have
wanted you so much."

She disengaged herself quietly from his arms, but
in a way that made it impossible for him to hold her.

" Good-bye," she said. " You ought never to have
come. And — oh, my darling — I thank you so for
coming."

For one infinitesimal moment she looked at him
again, then with her quick, light step she went on
up the path with Martin's letter in her hand and never
looked back. She did not pause till she reached the

282 THE CHALLONERS

top of the wood, but as she walked she Hstened for
and longed for, and yet dreaded, to hear footsteps
behind. But none came, she had made her meaning
too clear for that (and how she wished she had been
less explicit), and having arrived at the top, she
slackened her pace and opened Martin's letter. It was
very short, a couple of lines only, announcing his en-
gagement to Stella and asking her to tell his father.
And with that spring was complete.

Upward again lay her path ; no more among
trees and sheltered places, but high over the broad
swell of the short-turfed downs, where shadows of
clouds ran glorious races. Something in the huge
view and the large sky chimed in wonderful harmony
to the girl's mood; all was so big, so untainted, so
full of light. Beneath her foot the dead autumn turf
still stretched in brown tufts and patches, but spring-
ing up in between were the myriad shoots of the young
grass, and even since yesterday, she thought, the tone
of the colour was changed. Till to-day all had been
grey and brown, all still pointed backward, winter-
wards ; but this morning it was different, and the mil-
lion sprouting lives shouted, " Look forward, look for-
ward ! For, lo, the winter is past and the time of the
singing-bird has come." " Ah, song of songs," she
thought, " indeed it is so."

Martin ! There were no words into which she could
put what she felt, any more than the pervading sun-
hght could be put into words. It was there, a great,
huge, exultant presence that flooded everything. Ah,
the beloved twin! Why, it was only a few years ago
that he was in Eton jackets and broad white collars
and sang treble. And she? Well, yes, she was in

THE CHALLONERS 283

short frocks about the same time. Yet had not she,
half an hour ago, down in the wood below her, where
the young leaves hung like a green mist around the
purple branches of the birch, felt a loving arm round
her and kisses on her face. Oh, it was very wrong
of Frank. No, not wrong of him, — he would have
stood aside, he did stand aside to let her pass. It
was very wrong of her. But at that moment she could
not pass by, — it was as if her power of movement had
been paralysed. Yet she was not in the least degree
ashamed of herself, and she looked forward with a cer-
tain secret glee to telling her father, — for that had to
be done, — for so by speaking of it she would live it
over again. " No, that was not all," she said to herself,
rehearsing question and answer, " He kissed me."

Sunlight, and larks invisible, and the shadows of
clouds that coursed over the downs. And some dis-
tance off a tall figure, moving towards her rapidly, a
figure she easily recognised. They came nearer and
met. Her hat was in her hand, her hair tossed over
her forehead, and there was spring and the sure prom-
ise of summer in her face. And in her father's, too,
there was something of that infused joy. His hand
held a little bunch of primroses, which he had plucked
as he walked.

They met without words, but with smiles, the un-
conscious smile that the morning had made.

" Well, Helen ?" said he. " You look, indeed you
look like the morning."

He came close to her and with his neat precision
put the primroses into her hat.

" You ought to pin them," he said. " They will
fall out."

284 THE CHALLONERS

She laughed.

" Ah, nothing can fall out to-day," she said. " Don't
you feel it, father? Spring, spring — and — oh, the
daffodils. And I have news."

Then her face sobered suddenly.

" Two pieces of news," she said, smiling again, un-
able not to be gay. " The first is of Martin : he is
engaged to be married. He asked me to tell you.
Stella Plympton, whom you met here. He wrote me
just a line, asking me to tell you."

Her instinct was right to repeat that. Sharp as a
knife, a father's jealousy had pierced him. He should
have been told first; whatever his disagreements with
Martin, he, his father, ought to have been told first.
But that passed in a moment.

" Martin?" he said, gently. " The boy?"

" Yes ; I thought of it like that. But he is really —
oh, ever so old. As old as I am."

Mr. Challoner's face relaxed.

"I had forgotten," he said; "an immense age.
What next, Helen?"

She looked up at him.

"Is that all you have to say?" she asked, feeling
suddenly chilly and disappointed.

" You think I am hard, Helen," he said. " I try
to be. But what next ?"

Yes, it was chilly on these upland downs. She put
her hat on.

" Just this," she said. " I met Frank half an hour
ago. He gave me Martin's note. I did not expect
to see him. As far as I am concerned it was quite
accidental. I had no idea he was here. I had promised
you not to see him. That I could not help."

THE CHALLONERS 285

She stopped, drew a long breath, and went on.

" I suppose I could have helped the rest," she said.
" I suppose it was that I did not choose to help it. He
stood aside for me to pass. But — ^but I did not pass.
I went to him. I let him kiss me. He stood there
with me. I thought I could not help it. Indeed, I
thought that."

For a moment Mr. Challoner's hardness, his in-
voluntary condemnation of weakness of any sort, of
failure to keep a promise, returned to him, mixed with
a very ugly thing, suspicion.

" And is this the first time you have seen or spoken
to him or had any communication with him?" he
asked.

Helen raised her eyes to him in quiet surprise. No
trace of resentment or sense of injustice was in her
voice.

" Yes, of course," she said. " I should have told
you otherwise."

He looked at the sweet, patient face, struggling for
a moment with this worse self of his, which yet was so
upright, so devoted.

" I know you would," he said at last. " I don't
know why I asked you that."

Helen laughed.

" Nor do I," she said.

" You and he have been very patient, Helen," he
said.

" Yes, till this morning I think we have," she said.
" But to-day, perhaps, the spring was too strong for
us both. Is it not in your blood this morning, father?
It is in mine."

He smiled at her gravely.

286 THE CHALLONERS

" And a very suitable thing," he said. " And sum-
mer comes next for you. For you and Martin."

" Yes, Martin too," she said, with an appeal in her
eyes. " Oh, father, can't we be all happy together
again? We used to be."

Mr. Challoner stood silent a moment, a sort of
aching longing for all he had always missed in Mar-
tin and a dim, bitter regret for all his own missed
opportunities of making the most of the human
relation between himself and his son rising suddenly
within him. And he spoke with a terrible quiet sin-
cerity.

" I don't think Martin used ever to be happy with
me," he said. " Once he told me he was not happy
at home. I don't think that he ever was. It was per-
haps the fault of both of us, but it was certainly mine.
I should have done somehow differently. I think we
never understood each other. Nor can I understand
him now. It is sad. I cannot reconcile what he has
done "

He broke off again.

" There, dear, you must be getting on your way,"
he said, " and I must be getting home."

But she detained him a moment more.

"Won't you give me a little hope?" she said. "I
thought last night that perhaps, perhaps soon — and
this news this morning "

But her father disengaged her hand.

" I shall, of course, write to him," he said, " and
congratulate him. She is a very charming girl. I
think Martin is most fortunate."

" Martin is very charming, too, remember," said
she.

THE CHALLONERS 287

Mr. Challoner walked swiftly homewards after
Helen had left him, feeling strangely and deeply
moved by the news. He felt somehow that his children
were his children no longer; all the responsibility for
them had passed into other hands, and they them-
selves, light-heartedly, eagerly, were now taking on
themselves the responsibility for others. He had
thought of them always as a boy and a girl, each bound
to obedience to his will, dependent on him, without
any real, individual existence of their own. But within
the last year first one and now the other was passing
out of his reach. Helen first and then Martin had
acted for themselves in direct defiance not only of
his wish, but of that which was the mainspring and
motive of his life. She, it is true, by these months
of quiet, normal life at home had made a great change
in him; her disobedience to him personally had van-
ished from his mind, and, as he had told her last night,
though he believed no less strongly than before that
his conviction with regard to her marriage was the
will of God for him, he believed also, though he could
not understand how, that she, too, was acting con-
sonantly to that same will. But with regard to Martin,
however he looked at his conduct, or whatever possible
interpretation he tried to put on it, he could not see
light. He was trivial, superficial, not in earnest about
religious matters, just as he had been in the rest of
his education. Nothing, except music, which Mr.
Challoner could not frankly bring himself to regard as
anything but a mere aesthetic fringe, a mere ornament
of life, had ever touched him deeply. He had no depth,
no seriousness. And now that boy, that child, was
going to be married, to take upon himself with the

288 THE CHALLONERS

same light-hearted insouciance all the responsibilities
of a husband and a father.

How strange that they were twins ! Helen develop-
ing every day in patience, dutifulness, love ; and Martin,
still thoughtless, bent only on the personal gratification
of his musical tastes, and willing, so Mr. Challoner
bitterly put it to himself, to leave the English Church,
the mother of his faith, for the sake of a hymn-tune !
He would write to him, as he had said, but even now
he could not see him. For he knew himself well, and
recognised, though he scarcely wished to cure his own
impatience, his anger at one who seemed to him to
be going wrong wilfully. On a point like this he could
make no concession, for any concession implied a fail-
ure of loyalty on his own part to his creed.

He had by this time entered the woods round
Chartries, where the path was wet and a little slippery
under the trees, causing him to abate the briskness
of his pace. How different, how utterly different
Helen had proved herself. If only she could see the
question of her marriage as he saw it, how would his
whole heart rise up in thankfulness. For though he
admitted here that both he and she might be right,
he was still full of disquietude and anxiety about it.
Then suddenly, turning a corner, he found himself
face to face with her lover.

For a moment neither spoke. To Frank it seemed
that if words even of commonplace greeting were to
pass between them it must be for Mr. Challoner to
make the beginning, while to the elder man the sudden
shock of seeing him inevitably awakened again, for
the moment, the horror and bitterness of their last inter-
view. Under that his mouth was compressed and

THE CHALLONERS 289

tightened, a gleam almost of elemental enmity shone in
his eyes, and it seemed to himself that he would pass
by Frank with averted head. But then over that,
veiling and softening it, there rose all that he had been
learning this winter, all that Helen had been teaching
him, and as he came close to Frank he paused. Then,
with an effort that cost the proud man something,
he put his lesson into practice, and held out his hand.
And the strength and the big loveableness of the man
was offered with it, whole-heartedly.

" We shook hands last time we met. Lord York-
shire," he said. " Will you not let me shake hands
with you again?"

That done, that effort made, the rest was easier, for
all that was generous and sympathetic in Frank re-
sponded.

" Thank you," he said, simply. " And I am not
exaggerating, Mr. Challoner, when I tell you that I
know nothing in the world that could have happened
to me which could give me so much pleasure as this."

Mr. Challoner still retained his hand.

" Do you know, you are a very good fellow ?" he
said. " You are very generous to me. So has Helen
been. I cannot tell you what she has been to me all
this winter. And I thank you very much for letting
her be with me, for not urging her otherwise. You
have made it all as easy for her as you can. You
have been very unselfish, both of you. And I have
been making it very difficult for her."

Frank was a good deal moved. There was a very
noble and a pathetic sincerity about this.

'' I think you wrong yourself," he said. " I am
sure you wrong yourself. We have all tried to —

19

290 THE CHALLONERS

well, to do our best. And we all three of us know
that."

But Mr. Challoner had more to say.

" I ask your forgiveness," he said, simply, and his
voice trembled a little.

" Ah, don't do that," said Frank.

They stood there together a moment longer, under
the flecked sunlight filtering through the trees, sud-
denly brought close again, just as they had been in
that dreadful hour when Helen's weakness made them
forget all else. But now the reconciliation went far
deeper than it had gone before. Then they had joined
hands in ministering to the physical suffering of one
they both loved, but now they joined hands over an
appreciation not of weakness but of strength. The
bond between them was no longer a thing that could
easily break. Poles apart as they still were, that golden
thread could scarcely be snapped.

" I met Helen just now," said Mr. Challoner at
length. " She told me she had seen you, dear girl.
She told me also the news from my son. Are you
busy? Will you walk with me a little way?"

Frank turned at once, and they went on down the
steep path towards the rectory.

" Have you seen Martin lately ?" asked his father.

" Yes ; I see him constantly in London."

" Then can you tell me about him ? What is he ?
That is the thing I puzzle and pray over. He joined
the Roman Church, as you know, at Christmas. I
don't think anything ever pained me more. But I
should be very glad to know if he is in earnest about
it. Or does he take it as he takes everything else?
Do you understand it?"

THE CHALLONERS 291

" Yes, I think I do," said Frank, and paused a mo-
ment. '' It is this. Martin demands beauty in all that
is real to him. That is the ruling instinct in his nature.
And, in matters of religion, the Roman Church seemed
to him to supply that more than the church he left."

"And it was for that he threw it over?" said Mr.
Challoner. " And without regret or struggle even?"

" He regretted very sincerely the pain it would give
you," said Frank.

Mr. Challoner waved this aside.

" That does not matter," he said. " But otherwise
without a regret?"

Frank let his silence unmistakably answer that be-
fore he went on.

" I know you will excuse me," he said, " but I don't
think you quite realise what Martin is or how the
artistic instincts dominate him. Till he fell in love, I
don't think he ever had any very poignant emotion
apart from them."

Mr. Challoner's face got even more grave.

" Simply, then," he said, " he puts them above the
love of God. I do not understand how a Christian
can do that. And I do not want to understand it,"
he added.

They had reached the rectory, and Mr. Challoner
paused on the terrace walk.

" Is he a good boy?" he asked, suddenly.

" Morally? Yes, I am sure of it."

" How do you know that ?" asked his father.

" Because I know his opinion about immorality.
He feels very strongly that it must l)lunt the artistic
sense."

Mr. Challoner winced as if in sudden pain.

292 THE CHALLONERS

"Ah," he cried, "is that all? Dear God, is that
all?"

" The result in the way of conduct is identical,"
said Frank, quietly.

" Yes, yes; but are we not taught that works with-
out faith are dead ? Ah, I beg your pardon ; indeed I
do, my dear fellow. I spoke without thinking. I
was thinking only of my poor Martin. Pray, forgive
me. And is he happy, do you think?"

" Yes, quite extraordinarily happy. He has fallen in
love, too, with the same white ardour that he brings
to everything which appeals to him."

Mr. Challoner considered this a moment, and then
faced Frank.

" I want your opinion. Lord Yorkshire," he said.
" Do you think that any good purpose would be served
by my seeing Martin? I ask you for your candid
opinion — whatever it is or implies."

" I think it depends entirely on yourself," said
Frank.

" You mean, — ah, pray tell me quite straight out.
I shall be very grateful."

Frank looked at him with real pity. What he was
going to say seemed very cruel, but it seemed true.

" I mean this, Mr. Challoner," he said, " that if you
are quite certain that the sight of Martin, or the pos-
sible issues into which talk may lead you, will not
again embitter you against him, you had far better see
him. Why not? There is all to be gained. But if
your reconciliation cannot be complete, if there is a
chance of your getting angry with him, and — frighten-
ing him — you had better not. You asked me to tell you
straight."

THE CHALLONERS 293

"You think he is afraid of me? Has he told
you?"

" I cannot help knowing it. If he has told me,
you must take my word for it that he has not told
me in any disloyal way. And if I have hurt you, I am
very sorry."

" No, I thank you for telling me," said Mr. Chal-
loner. " I think you are right. I am afraid it is better
I should not see him yet."

He smiled rather sadly.

" I am afraid I have a great deal to learn yet," he
said. " I must take myself in hand. But I dream
about him, Lord Yorkshire, so often. And always
almost in my dreams I say things to him that frighten
him. Sometimes, it is true, we are great friends.
Those are beautiful nights, and I thank God for them.
I so long to see his dear face again."

" Those beautiful nights must find fulfilment in
many beautiful days," said Frank.

" Yes ; I hope that it is still possible. He was such
a bright little fellow when he was small. Always
quick, always laughing. I had many plans for him. I
think all my life I have been rather too ready to push
other people into places I think suitable."

They had come to the far end of the terrace again,
when from inside the vicarage the gong sounded for
lunch. Frank's back was towards the house, but the
vicar, looking up, saw Helen, still hatless, coming to-
wards them across the lawn. And all the happiness of
the morning, when she saw these two together, all the
spirit of spring, quivered and concentrated itself into
one rose-coloured point of joy. That was the best

294 THE CHALLONERS

moment to her in all the days of spring that were yet
to come.

" You will stay to lunch, Lord Yorkshire?" said he.

" Thanks, so much ; but I am afraid I ought to get
back to Chartries. I said I would be back."

Mr. Challoner waited till Helen was close to them.

" Perhaps if Helen adds her voice to mine," he said.

He turned quickly and saw her. And there was no
need of words, but once more the three stood together,
hands clasped. This time the vicar did not go back
alone to his empty room.

CHAPTER XIII

Martin was seated alone with Stella in the draw-
ing-room of her mother's house, eating muffins,
thoughtfully but rather rapidly, while she poured
out tea.

" Fancy," he said, " it is only a week ago since —
since the party at Lady Sunningdale's, since I knew."

" Knew what ?" asked Stella, quite unnecessarily.

" Ah, I only know one thing now. I think I have
forgotten everything else."

" Say it then," said she.

"That I love you? Are you not tired of hearing
me say that yet?"

She smiled, brought him his tea, and sat on the
arm of his chair.

" I can't believe that a woman can ever be tired of
hearing that, if the right man says it. Oh, Martin,
how lucky it was you, and that it was I !"

Martin put his teacup down, having drunk with
amazing speed.

" Why, who else could it have been?" he said; " how
could it have been otherwise?"

" No, I suppose not. Yet you didn't know, as you
call it, for a long time. Supposing you had gone on not
knowing?"

He leaned back in his chair looking at her, his black
eyes shining in the firelight.

" And when I did know, I frightened you," he said.

295

296 THE CHALLONERS

" Yes, a little. But I loved it. You see, I had never
seen you really in earnest before, except when you
wrere playing. You always put everything you had or
were into that."

" I know. That is what Karl Rusoff told me. He
told me to experience all I could, because it would all
go to make me play. He calls it spiritual alchemy, like
when you put a plant in the earth and water it, the
earth and the water are somehow turned into the blos-
som of that plant while another plant would turn them
into a different flower. In fact, darling, you are going
to come out of the ends of my fingers, whereas if I
were a great Greek scholar you would become iambics."

He looked at her and his smile deepened into gravity.

" Oh, Stella, Stella," he said, " did the world ever
hold anything like you?"

She leaned back till her face was close to his and put
her arm round his neck.

" Yes, yes ; do that with me !'' she said, " absorb
me, let me become part of you. Indeed, I want no
other existence at all. Do you know the Persian
legend, how the lover knocked at the door of his be-
loved, and the beloved said, ' Who is that ?' and he
replied, 'It is I.' And the one inside said, ' There is
not room for two.' Then he went away again, and
came back after a year, and knocked again. And again
from inside the voice said, ' Who is that ?' But this
time he said, ' It is thou.' So the door was opened
and he went in."

" That is beautiful," said Martin. " But, my word,
fancy being able to become music. And suppose one
happened to become a song by Gounod. Only that isn't
music," he added.

THE CHALLONERS 297

Stella felt somehow suddenly chilled.

" Promise me I shan't become a song by Gounod,"
she said.

Martin looked at her in silence a moment. She had
risen rather abruptly from her position and was again
sitting upright on the arm of his chair.

"And what do I become?" he asked. "What do
you make of me? It is thou, remember."

Something that for the last three days had hung
mist-like in Stella's mind suddenly congealed, crystal-
lised, became definite.

" I don't want you to become anything," she said.
" But I want you to Be. I want you to be entirely
yourself. I want you to get below your own surface,
to dive into yourself, to find pearls. And then to let
me wear them."

" You mean I am shallow ?"

" No, dear, I mean nothing of the kind. But, oh,
Martin, don't misunderstand me. All you have got
from life, all you have gained, all you are you treat as
fuel — you have said it — to burn in the furnace of your
one passion — music."

Martin admitted this with a reservation.

" That was true," he said, " till just a week ago."

Stella rose from her place; sitting close to him, like
that, she could not say what she meant to say. Per-
sonal magnetism, her love for that beautiful face,
prevented her. So she went to the hearth-rug, under
pretence of poking the fire, and stood there with her
back to it, facing liim. Then she spoke more quickly,
with a certain vibration in her voice.

" And this last week," she said, " a new and won-
derful piece of music was discovered by you. Yes, I

298 THE CHALLONERS

put myself as high as that. But am I more than that?
Am I really?"

Martin's forehead wrinkled slightly. Had it not
been Stella who asked him this he would have said the
question was unreasonable. But before he could reply
she went on.

" Ah, dearest," she said. " I asked you just now to
absorb me, to make me you. But I will not flow out
of your finger-tips. Oh, I know you only said that in
jest, but in jest sometimes one strikes very near to
truth. Have you thought what you are to me, and
what, if I am anything, I must be to you. Some-
thing absolutely indispensable, your life, no less. Now,
supposing chords and harmonies were dumb to you
forever, what would be left of you? Tell me that."

Martin's expression grew puzzled. It was as if she
asked him some preposterous riddle without answer.
How could he compare the two?

" How can I tell ?" he said. " I suppose I should
somehow and sometime adjust myself to it, though I
haven't the slightest idea how. I can't imagine life,
consciousness, without them."

"And if I went out of your life?" she asked, un-
wisely, but longing for some convincing answer.

In reply Martin got up and went close to her.

" You have often called me a fool," he said, " and
you have often called me a child. I am both when you
ask me things like that. But this foolish child speaks
to you, so listen. He does not know what it all means,
but he loves you. He knows no other word except
that. Is that not enough? If not, what is?"

Then once again the mastery of man overcame her.
She wanted him* so much, more than any answer to

THE CHALLONERS 299

her questions. The subtleties into which she had tried
to draw him he brushed aside; her woman's brain,
her woman's desire to hear him say that she was all,
had spun them deftly enough, but he blundered
through them somehow, like a bumblebee through a
spider's web, and came booming out on the other side.
Theoretically, anyhow, if he had been a woman, they
must have caught him, he must have struggled with
them, felt their entanglement. As it was, she had
failed. Probably he labelled her fine spinnings " silly"
in his own mind. But he proceeded through them —
still frowning a little.

" You ask me impossible riddles," he said. " You
might as well ask me whether you would sooner tie
your mother to the stake and burn her or me. My
darling, there is no sense in such things. Surely one
can be simple about love, just because it is so big. I
know I love you, that is enough for me. I told you
that I know nothing else. That is sober truth. But I
cannot weigh things in balances. And, what is more,
I won't. Now kiss me; no, properly."

It must therefore be inferred that he got his way
in this matter, for when, two minutes later, Lady Sun-
ningdale made her untimely appearance, the two were
again seated, Stella this time in the chair and Martin
on the arm.

" But famishing," she said. " Yes, tea, please, dear
Stella. Martin, you monster, I haven't seen you for
days. Why I haven't taken to drink I don't know,
over all the dreadful things that have been happening.
Would you believe it, — Sahara had two puppies ; but
she couldn't bear them, so she ate one and starved the
other. Well, it's all over, but nobody in the house has

300 THE CHALLONERS

had a wink of sleep for the last week. And so you
are going to give a concert at last, Martin. I shan't
come. I hate my private property being made public."

" But charity," said Martin.

" My dear, I know perfectly well what charity and
St. James's Hall means. It means guinea tickets.
Charity should begin at home, not at St. James's Hall.
However, I daresay you will appropriate all the pro-
ceeds. So near the Circus, too. Really, Piccadilly Cir-
cus is too fascinating. I should like to have a house
in the very centre of it, with a glass gallery all round,
and really see life. Yes, one more piece of mufifin, —
not for myself, but for Suez Canal. Suez Canal is so
lonely, poor darling, without Sahara; but there is
muffin quand nieme. Naughty ! I'm sure the servants
feed him. And so everybody is to be married in May.
Fancy the Bear coming round like that — even Bears
will turn — about Helen and Frank. Apparently, they
are quite inseparable, — the Bear and Frank I mean,
and tie each other's bootlaces, and are converting each
other to Christianity and Atheism respectively. Bears
and buns! Frank is a bun, and the Bear has decided
it is worth climbing up a pole to get him. I think it
is a mistake to have said that. Besides, it is absolutely
untrue. The Bear wouldn't climb a yard to marry
Helen to the Czar. How terrible Russia must be,
with everything ending in ' owsky' ! I tried to flirt
with the Bear myself, and had no success of any kind
whatever. Dear Suez! No Sahara. The world is a
desert without Sahara. But mayn't I tempt you with
a small piece of bun with sugar on the top? How
depressing marriages are!"

Lady Sunningdale sighed heavily.

THE CHALLONERS 301

"What is the matter?" asked Stella, sympatheti-
cally.

" I don't know. Dearest, that Louis XVI. clock is
too beautiful. I wish I were a millionaire. Yes. I
think I am depressed because everything is going ex-
actly as I planned it. There is nothing so tiresome as
success. You two children sitting there, Frank and
Helen, all my own ideas, and all going precisely as I
wished. You are my idea, too, Martin, a figment of
my brain. I invented you. And you are going pre-
cisely as I wished. Every one says nobody ever played
the least like you. But the Bear is still in a rage with
you, is he not? That is so English. English people
are always in a rage about something, the state of the
weather, or France, or their children. I never get in
a rage. I have no time for that sort of thing. Stella
dearest, I think it will have to be you to go down to
Chartries next, and induce the Bear to be propitiated.
Heavens, how dreadful it must be to have a very
strong sense of duty! It must be like toast-crumbs
in your bed, after you have breakfasted there, when
one can't lie comfortable for five minutes together."

" No, I am the next," said Martin. " I shall be
staying with my uncle at Easter, and shall try to see
my father then. I daresay it will do no good."

"Do you really care?" asked Lady Sunningdale.
" I really don't see why you should. He is unreason-
able. I shouldn't worry."

Stella turned to Martin with a certain air of ex-
pectancy.

" Yes, I do care," he said; " I care horribly. I care
every day. I hate being on bad terms with any one.
I hate anger and resentment," he added, with a little

302 THE CHALLONERS

quiet air of dignity, for he had not wholly liked Lady
Sunningdale's remarks.

" That was one of Nature's most extraordinary con-
juring tricks," she said. "People talk of heredity;
but put all the fathers of England in a row, and ask
any one to pick out Martin's. The better they know
either of you, by so much the more Vv^ill they pick out
Mr. Challoner last of all !"

Martin got up.

"Ah, don't let's talk about it," he said; "it is not
agreeable. I wish I could laugh about it like you, but
I can't."

Then, with a quick intuition, he turned to Stella.

" One can't do any good by talking about it, can
one?" he asked.

Something still jarred on the girl, due partly to their
talk before Lady Sunningdale came in.

" You have admirable common sense," she said.

Lady Sunningdale caught on to this with her usual
quickness. She knew for certain from Stella's tone that
something had gone just a shade wrong between them.

" And you find it rather trying, do you not, dearest
Stella?" she said. "Of course, Martin is the most
trying person in the world; and if it wasn't for his
ten fingers he would be absolutely intolerable. He is
a boy of about twelve, with dreadful streaks of com-
mon sense worthy of a man of fifty who has left all
his illusions behind him. Yes, monster, that is you !"

Martin raised his eyebrows, his excellent temper
slightly ruffled for the moment.

" Indeed, I didn't recognise it," he said.

" Dear Martin, don't be pompous. You didn't
recognise it because it wasn't flattering. They say we

THE CHALLONERS 303

women are vain, but compared to men Some

women are vain of their appearance, it is true, and
usually without sufficient cause, but all men are vain of
every attribute that God has or has not endowed them
with. Remember that, Stella, and if you want to lead a
quiet life, lay on flattery with a spade. They are in-
satiable. Personally I don't flatter Sunningdale, be-
cause I don't in the least want a quiet life. Tranquility
is so frightfully aging and makes one like an oyster."

Martin had recovered his serenity.

" When I am dead," he remarked, " you will be
sorry for what you have said. But why this sudden
attack on me?"

" When you are dead you will see how right I was.
But the attack — well, chiefly because you haven't pro-
voked it. That is so tiresome of you. You could see I
wanted to quarrel, and you wouldn't say anything I
could lay hold of. If I want to sit down, politeness
ordains that you should give me a chair. If you see
I want to quarrel, politeness ordains that you should
give me a pretext. It is the worst possible manners
not to. My nerves are all on edge. When that is the
case, the only thing to do is to quiet them by being
rude to other people. Dearest Stella, you look too
lovely this afternoon. Why you want to throw your-
self away on Martin I can't think !"

" But you said just now it was your idea," said
Stella.

" I know it was, and a very foolish one. I never
imagined you would take it seriously. Besides, you
know perfectly well that whenever a thing happens
that pleases me, I always say it is my own idea. My
darling, did I tread on you. How foolish of you to lie

304 THE CHALLONERS

there. And when you are all happily settled for, what
am I to do next?"

The clock struck and Martin looked up.

" Gracious, I am late," he said. " Karl was to give
me a lesson at six. You must say good-bye to me
next, Lady Sunningdale."

Stella got up, too.

" I'll see you safely out of the house," she said, and
left the room with him. Then, having closed the door,
she paused, taking hold of the kppel of his coat.

"Martin, you're not vexed with me?" she asked.

" No; why? I thought you were vexed with me."

" No, dear. I was vexed with myself, I think, and
so I was horrid to you. But, my dearest, give me all
you can of yourself. I want so much, just because it is
you!"

Martin's eyes kindled and glowed.

" It is all yours," he said. " You know that. I wish
there was more of it. And there is more since — since
a week ago."

" Then I am content," she said, " and that means
a great deal. I think I was rather jealous of pianos
generally. And you forgive me? Yes?

Lady Sunningdale, though often irrelevant from
sheer irrelevancy, was also sometimes irrelevant on
purpose, using preposterous conversation, as Bismarck
used truth, as a valuable instrument to secure definite
ends. Just now, for instance, her attack on Martin
had purpose at its back, for she had seen quite dis-
tinctly that something had gone wrong between him
and Stella, and had made the diversion in order to
prevent the topic of friction, whatever it was, being
subjected to further rubbing. Providence had lent

THE CHALLONERS 305

aid to her benevolent scheme, sending Martin off to his
music-lesson and leaving Stella alone with her. In
fact, her request to be told what she should do next
needed no answer at all, for she knew quite well that
what she would do next was to get Stella to confide in
her and tell her all that had happened. She was a great
believer in talking things out; the important point,
however, was not that the principals should talk things
out, which was, indeed, worse than useless, but that
they should severally talk it out with somebody else.
She wondered, and indeed rather hoped, that Martin
might simultaneously talk it out with Karl, for, as she
had had occasion to observe before, Martin's music-
lesson consisted chiefly of discussion on character.

Stella returned in a moment, and Lady Sunning-
dale was irrelevant no longer. She only took a pre-
liminary circuit or two in the manner of a homing
pigeon before it takes the straight, unswerving line.

" Martin is simply absorbed in the thought of his
concert," she said. " And he is going to play just all
the things that make me laugh and cry. Personally, I
shall go with five handkerchiefs and a copy of some
English comic paper. The handkerchiefs are for the
tears I shall shed, and the comic paper is to check my
laughter when he plays the Paganini Variations. Dear
Stella, how very wise of you to marry a genius. You
will never be dull. But it is rather bold, too. Oh,
please take Suez Canal out of the grate; he is trying
to commit suicide, I think, because Sahara is not here.
Yes. Geniuses are so unexpected and violent. It
must be like marrying somebody who keeps several
full-sized flashes of lightning about him, and also a
large lump of damp clay. You never know which

20

306 THE CHALLONERS

you will put your hand on, and they are both so dread-
fully disconcerting."

Stella picked Suez Canal out of the grate. Ap-
parently he was putting ashes on his head as a sign of
mourning, and she dusted him carefully before re-
plying.

" I am disconcerted," she said.

Lady Sunningdale never pressed for a confidence.
" To show that you want a thing," she once said,
" usually means that you are grudgingly given half of
it. But if you firmly turn your back on it, it is hurled
at you." She turned her back now, using irrelevance
again.

'' It is nearly three years since I was disconcerted,"
she said, " and the terrible thing is that I quite forget
what disconcerted me. I think it must have been
Sunningdale. Do you know he spoke in the House
of Lords the other day on one side, and then voted
on the other. His reason was that he felt his own
remarks to be so feeble that he was sure there was
more to be said on the other side. But I believe he
merely forgot. Yes. That marble fireplace is so good.
Surely it must be Adams's."

This was completely efficacious.

" Shall I bore you, if I talk to you ?" asked Stella.

" No, dearest Stella. I love being talked to. What
is it?"

" It is Martin," said she.

The back view had done its part. Lady Sunning-
dale turned completely round again.

" Dearest Stella," she said, " pray put out the elec-
tric light. It is rather strong in my eyes. Yes, Mar-
tin now !"

THE CHALLONERS 307

Stella felt as she turned out the light that this was
exactly what she wished. In the dim flickering fire-
light her thoughts, drawn to the surface, became
articulate more easily.

" He is just what you say," she said. " You touch
him, and never know whether it is going to be light-
ning or clay. The lightning does not disconcert me.
But, dear Lady Sunningdale, the clay does!"

Lady Sunningdale was really immensely interested.
She had her own methods of getting the girl to rum-
mage in the dark corners of her mind and bring out all
that was there, and she pursued them now.

" Clay is not really disconcerting," she said ; " it is
only the possibility of clay when you expect lightning.
My own darling Sunningdale is entirely clay. Of
course there is clay in Martin; there is in everybody.
How have you managed to come across it? Because
he has singularly little."

" Music is his lightning," said Stella.

"Do you mean that the rest is clay?" asked Lady
Sunningdale.

There was a pause, and Stella turned out an ex-
tremely dark corner in her mind, something really quite
below the stairs.

"What if I am?" she asked.

" Then, dearest Stella, you have only yourself to
thank. He did not think you clay anyhow a week ago.
Else, why should he have asked you to marry him?
Or do you mean that Martin has changed since then ?"

Again Stella paused.

" I must say it more simply," she said. " Look at it
in this way. What if Martin is music? if everything
else to him is secondary to that?"

308 THE CHALLONERS

" Then he would have asked the complete works of
Chopin to marry him," remarked Lady Sunningdale.
" But, as far as I know, he didn't. It occurs to me
that he asked you. And I know, I can feel it, that
he is devoted to you, really in love with you. Only
don't, for Heaven's sake, let your mind dwell for a
moment on the relative positions that you and music
hold to him."

" I have done worse than that," said Stella. " I
have asked him what relative positions we hold. I
did so to-day."

" My dear, how insane! What did he say?"

" He told me not to talk nonsense. But is it non-
sense :

Lady Sunningdale drew a little nearer to the fire.
All her kindliness, all her good nature, and what was
perhaps even more important, all her tact and finesse,
was enlisted on behalf of these two. She recognised
to herself that there was here in all probability only
one of those tiny misunderstandings which must occur
between a man and a woman who are now for the
first time really learning each other. At the same time
it seemed to her quite important, if possible, to thor-
oughly dust, clean out, and disinfect this dark little
mental corner in Stella, for it might easily contain the
germ of a misunderstanding that would be by no means
trivial.

" Yes, it is nonsense," she said, decidedly. " It is
poisonous, suicidal nonsense. You are exactly like the
Bear. You don't seem to grasp any more than the
Bear does what music means to Martin. It means,
in one word, ' God.' It is his religion, — and, good
gracious, supposing he was a bishop and you were

THE CHALLONEES 309

going to marry him, you would not, I hope, be jealous
of his religion. And in music Martin is a very big
bishop, indeed ! But in other respects — you forget this
too — he is simply a child. I can't imagine what Martin
will be like when he is middle-aged. It is impossible to
think of him as middle-aged. Martin and middle age
are not compatible terms. True, Karl says he has been
having a good many birthdays lately. I, too, think
he has, but he has, so to speak, made saints' days of
them all, and dedicated them to his religion. All but
one, that is to say."

"And that one?" asked Stella.

" He had a birthday when he fell in love with you.
That is yours; he has given you that. My dear, he
adores you. When you come into the room his face
is lit. Only, for Heaven's sake, don't worry him and
question him about his soul and his depth and the
exact way in which he loves you. If you insist, he
will try to answer you, and his answers will be dread-
fully disappointing to you, because he doesn't know
anything about it. To question him is like — it is like
looking at light through a prism or a spectroscope,
splitting it up into rays, when instead you might be
sitting in the sun. Dear me, how very precise and
definite I am becoming. I mean exactly that — I hope
I am not going to be ill."

Stella laughed.

" Dear Lady Sunningdale, I hope not," she said.
" In any case, tell me some more first."

" My dear, I can't talk sense to order. You must
collect the extremely valuable grains of gold in my
conversation for yourself out of the extraordinary
mass of quite valueless material."

310 THE CHALLONERS

" But he is disconcerting," began Stella again,

" Ah, yes, but so quite certainly are you to him.
Heaven, how dull it would be if other people never
disconcerted one. But I don't think Martin, though I
am sure he must often find you disconcerting, would
ever say so."

Stella flushed slightly.

" Is that a reproof?" she asked, gently.

" It certainly is, if it occurs to you that it may be,
so pray, pray, don't deserve it again. Where is Suez?
Oh, there. And don't allow yourself, ever allow your-
self to think ' What a pity there is an occasional lump
of clay.' For, indeed, there is so much lightning. If
there wasn't a little clay, I really think Martin would
explode, go off in spontaneous combustion. My dear,
hours and hours of every day pass for Martin at a
pressure of which stupid people like you and I have no
conception. He recuperates by restful intervals, by
being a mere boy with huge animal spirits. You may
thank your stars he does not recuperate by being
vicious or sulky. Most geniuses are morose and very
few are quite sane. Martin is quite sane, and even the
Bear, who takes the gloomiest possible view of hin\
couldn't call him morose. Go down on your knees,
my dear, and be thankful."

Stella was silent a moment. Then another corner
was turned out.

"And there is no doubt about his genius?" she
asked, at length.

" But what is the matter with you ?" asked Lady
Sunningdale. " You will ask me next if I am quite
sure he hasn't got false teeth. Dearest Stella, do drop
this exacting, questioning attitude once and for all. I

THE CHALLONERS 311

know almost everybody has an occasional attack of it,
but I am sure you will pardon me, it is just that which
makes people odious. It turns them sour. For
Heaven's sake, don't turn sour. Suez Canal is in the
grate again. Oh, naughty ! Thank you, dearest. Yes,
sour. Take things on broad, indulgent lines. He loves
you. That, on the whole, you believe to be a true
statement of the case. Well, then, surely that is good
enough. Don't say, ' Does his love measure six feet
in height, or is it only five foot eleven and three quar-
ters.' In fact, open the windows."

Stella took this very attentively and very gravely.

" Dear Lady Sunningdale," she said, " I am very
grateful. I think you have done me good. I had a
little attack of indigestion in my mind. Do you know,
I never thought that you "

" You never thought that I could think,'' said she,
" and I'm sure I don't wonder. But I can think when
I choose. Just now the object of my thought is to
stop you thinking. Leave psychological questions
alone when you are dealing with Martin. Just open
your mouth, shut your eyes, and see what Martin will
give you, as we used to say when children. You are a
most fortunate girl. Heavens, fancy having Martin
in love with one !"

There was the ring of absolute sincerity about this,
so true and distinct that Stella wondered. She won-
dered still more when, on looking at the other's face,
she saw that Lady Sunningdale's eyes were full of
tears, which she openly mopped up with a square two
inches of lace.

" Yes, real tears," she said ; " tears of extreme
middle age, my dear. What are they made of?

312 THE CHALLONERS

Water, I suppose, with just a little jealousy and a
little youth still left in them, and adoration for genius
and love of beauty. In fact, they are the most com-
plicated tears I ever heard of; one or two like that
from each eye and then it is over. Dearest Stella, you
are such a fool. One is always a fool till one is middle-
aged, and then one is young no longer. That is the
tragedy of growing old. It is almost impossible to be
mature and young simultaneously. You are a fool
because you don't know what a priceless, perfect gift
has been given you, — Martin's love. I envy you in-
tolerably ; I gnash my teeth with rage. Don't misunder-
stand me. I don't want him in the least to fall in
love with me; and, to reassure you, I may say that
even to my amorous eye there does not appear to be
the very slightest chance of it. But I gnash my teeth
because I am not young like you, so that he might
fall in love with me, and at the same time wise like
myself, so that I should know what to do with
him.''

" Ah, tell me that ; do tell me how to manage, how
to behave," said Stella.

" I can't. That is just it. There is another tragedy
in this mismanaged world, that nobody can teach any
one else anything that is worth knowing. You can't
teach me how to look young ; I can't teach you how to
be wise, how to appreciate, how not to worry. But
Martin's mind is like a cut diamond : it absorbs what-
ever light — blue, green, red — is thrown into it, and
turns it by its own magic into inapproachable colour.
That colour is seen in his music. Oh, I have watched
you often this last week. You worry him and puzzle
him, and I'm sure I don't wonder, if you ask him the

THE CHALLONERS 313

relative places of music and you in his mind. Do you
not see how stupid that is? Answer me."

Stella smiled.

'' Oh, don't rub it in," she said. " Yes, it is idiotic."

" My dear, you are so gentle that I feel a brute!"

" Please be a brute, then, just five minutes more,"
said Stella.

" Very good. Do not take up this absurd position
and say, ' I am your goddess, what incense have you
got to burn before me this morning? Ah, that is the
second-quality incense! I thought so. How could
you ?' Be much bigger than that. Suez ! Recollect
who it is who has paid you this incomparable compli-
ment of saying he wishes to see your face opposite him
at breakfast for the rest of his life, every day, every
day. Go to Karl Rusoff and ask him where he places
Martin, if you do not believe me about his genius.
And when he has told you, hire the Albert Hall, fill it
with people, and tell them what Karl says. Then wait
a couple of years, hire the Albert Hall again, and re-
peat again what Karl told you. And every single
person in the hall will say, ' Why, of course. We
knew that.' "

Stella was silent a moment.

" Then, must I burn incense before him?" she asked.
" The very best incense. I should love to do that !"

Lady Sunningdale restrained a movement of im-
patience.

" My dear, you are the one person in the world who
must not burn incense," she said. " An incense-burn-
ing wife is like dram-drinking to a man. You are to
be his wife. That means a good deal. But you are to
be his comrade. That means much more. He and

314 THE CHALLONERS

Helen! Why he did not get Helen to come and live
with him, and — well, not marry at all, I don't know.
Perhaps Frank would object. Men are all so selfish."

" Do you mean he has chosen badly?" asked Stella.

" No, dear ; and it is silly to say that. What I meant
was that I wonder why he wanted to marry at all,
why a nature like that has need of anybody else. If I
was like Martin, I should never see a soul, but con-
template my own wonderfulness. However, he did
want somebody else. And he chose you, you fortunate
girl."

" I ought to be very happy, then?" she asked.

" Ah, I don't say that. Perhaps you will be divinely,
ecstatically discontented. Happiness is rather a bovine
quality, I always think. It implies not wanting. Any
one with imagination must always want. Yes. Dear
me, I came here to say something, and I forget what —
I have said a good deal, but not it. Dearest Stella, do
you forgive me? At least, for my own creature com-
fort, I want you to forgive me ; but essentially I don't
care, as I know I am right."

" No, I don't forgive you," said the girl, " but I
thank you."

Lady Sunningdale struggled to her feet out of her
very low chair.

" That is sweet of you. Yes, Suez, my darling, we
are going home to din-din and Sahara. Ah, I re-
member. I want you and your mother to join us at
Cannes for a fortnight at Easter. Sunningdale's villa
is really quite comfortable, and you can look at the
Mediterranean and meditate. Ask her to send me a
line about it, but come yourself in any case. The
Southern sun always melts my brains, and liquid wis-

THE CHALLONERS 315

dom flows from my lips in practically unlimited quan-
tities. Why don't we all live at Cannes, among the
palms and that sort of thing. If you can't come, I
shall ask Martin; but I don't mean to have you to-
gether. You will be quite enough together afterwards.
Dear me, how screaming Martin will be as the master
of a house ! Good-bye, darling Stella. Yes, pray, turn
up the lights, otherwise I shall crash my way through
priceless furniture and tread on Suez Canal."

CHAPTER XIV

Karl Rusoff had experienced a good deal of in-
ward anxiety, which he was very careful to keep en-
tirely to himself, for several days before Martin's con-
cert, for the thought of it, as the day got near, had
agitated and excited the latter to the point of making
him lose his sleep and his appetite. Though Karl
knew quite well that an artist does his best, as a rule,
under the spell of excitement, more, that any notable
achievement can hardly be compassed without it, yet in
the present case Martin himself was naturally so
highly strung and his excitement had become acute so
many hours before he was to make his appearance
that his master could not help silently wondering
whether he could stand the strain of it till the day
came. At other times again Karl, knowing Martin's
serene, splendid health, found consolation in telling
himself that the tighter and more tense his nerves got
the more wonderful would his playing be. Even
during the last week or two he had made such an
enormous advance in his general grasp that Karl knew
that he himself would be bitterly disappointed if this
extraordinary youth did not on his very first appear-
ance legitimately and justifiably take musical London
by storm. At the same time he knew that he himself
would give a very deep sigh of relief when Martin had
got through, say, the first three minutes of his recital.
That safely past, he was sure that the mere feel of the
316

THE CHALLONERS 317

familiar notes would occupy him to the exclusion of all
agitation.

Only a quarter of an hour before he was to come on
to the platform Karl was with him in the artist's room,
trying to occupy his mind in talk, but watching him
with ever-increasing nervousness, as he walked up and
down like a caged animal between door and window.
Once Martin took out a cigarette, bit the end off as if
it were a cigar, and threw it away. Then he asked a
question, paid not the slightest attention to the answer,
and finally sat down on the edge of the table. His face
was flushed, his eyes very bright ; had not it been that
Karl knew how excited he was, he would have thought
he was ill.

" I shall break down," he said. " Look at my hands;
look how they tremble. I can't keep them still. I
could no more play a series of octaves than I could fly.
It would be like the ' Tremolo' stop on Chartries
organ."

" My dear boy, I have told you that that does not
matter in the slightest degree," said Karl. " The mo-
ment you touch the notes that will cease absolutely.
Why, even now my hands always tremble before I
begin!"

Martin apparently was not listening.

" And I have not the remotest notion how the
* £tudes Symphoniques' begin," he said.

Karl tried to laugh, but he was not very success-
ful. As a matter of fact he was quite as nervous as
Martin.

" That's a great pity," he said, " as you open with it.
I don't know either."

But Martin did not smile.

318 THE CHALLONERS

" What will you do if I break down?" he said; " if
I can't begin? It is more than possible."

" I shall hiss ; I shall boo ; I shall demand the re-
turn of my money," said he.

But Martin still remained perfectly grave.

" Ah, don't," he said; " the others may boo if they
like, and I shan't mind — much. But I couldn't stand
it if you did."

" Did you drink a good, stiff glass of whiskey-and-
soda for lunch, as I told you to?" demanded Karl.

" I tried to, but I should have been dead drunk if
I had gone on. So what will you do if I break down?"
he asked again. " You told me, but I have forgotten."

Karl rose from his chair.

" I shall break my heart, Martin," he said.

Then he spoke to him quickly, peremptorily, seeing
he was really on the verge of hysterics.

" We've had quite enough of this nonsense, my dear
boy," he said. " If you give me any more of it, I
shall lose my temper with you. You are not going to
break down, I forbid you, and you are to do as I tell
you. You are going to play your very best, — better
than you have ever played before. Now I must get to
my place. Give them five minutes law before you ap-
pear, and as soon as I see the top of your black head
coming up the stairs I shall have all the doors closed
till the end of the fitudes. We'll have no interruptions ;
they are frightfully distracting. You know where I
shall be sitting, don't you ? Bow twice, right and left,
walk straight to the piano, and begin instantly, with-
out playing any fluffy arpeggios. It is going to be a
great day for you. And for me."

Martin looked despairingly round.

THE CHALLONERS 319

" Don't leave me, don't leave me," he said. " Can't
you sit by me?"

"And hold your hand? Ah, this is altogether
childish !"

For the first time the shadow of a smile crossed
Martin's face.

" I know it is," he said. " I can just, just see that.
I think I had better try to be a little man for a change."

The hall was crammed to overflowing, as if some
pianist of world-wide fame w^as to make his appear-
ance, and not a young man who had never performed
in public before. Several causes had contributed to
this, the first and most important being that Mr. Mar-
tin Challoner was actually a pupil of Karl Rusoff's,
who for years had never consented to teach. Further-
more, Karl Rusoff had the very highest opinion of him,
— exaggeratedly high perhaps, since he was his pupil,
— and had not only allowed, but wished him to give a
concert. Surely, then, he would run no risks ; Martin
Challoner must have some merit. In addition, no
English pianist of more than mediocre powers had
appeared for years, and patriotism called. Finally, for
the last fortnight Lady Sunningdale had worn her
coachman to a shadow and her horses to skin and
bones, so incessantly and unintermittently had she
driven about, first of all to the houses of her intimates,
then of her ordinary friends, and lastly of the merest
acquaintances, practically insisting that they should all
appear. Karl Rusoff had done what he could to dis-
courage this, but his efforts were totally void of effect,
for Lady Sunningdale had told him that it was her
" duty" to do her best for Martin. She seldom used

320 THE CHALLONERS

the word " duty," but when she did, it might be defined
as anything she was irrevocably determined to do, from
which no argument could move her.

So for the first time Martin found himself in that
unspeakable position of being alone on the shore of a
sea of faces, the owners of which had paid money in
anticipation of the pleasure he had undertaken to pro-
vide for them. Opposite him, a few yards off only,
but looking misty and unreal, was the Steinway Grand,
and he found himself wondering what on earth it was
for. When he remembered, he felt towards it as a con-
demned man may feel when he sees the execution shed,
at a few minutes before eight. Then he bowed in
answer to a very fair reception, and walked straight
to the piano. He glanced at his programme, and saw
he had to begin with Schumann's " fitudes Sympho-
niques." He sat down, waited a moment for silence,
and began.

He played one bar only and then stopped. He had
not the very faintest idea of how it went on, and in a
sort of mild despair — he felt as if his powers of feel-
ing were packed in cotton wool — looked down to
where Karl was sitting in the third row. Those great
grey eyes were fixed on him with an expression of
supreme appeal; he could see the master's hands
clutching convulsively at the back of the seat in front
of him. And at that sight, at the sight of the agony
Karl was in, Martin was able for one moment to forget
himself and all the bewildering crowd of faces. So,
fighting against the paralysis that was on him, no
longer for his own sake, but for Karl's, he again
turned to the piano.

But still he could think of nothing, nothing; he

THE CHALLONERS 321

could not even remember the first bar that he had
played just now, and he bit his lip with his teeth till the
blood came, saying to himself, " It will break his heart ;
it will break his heart." The numb, dulled sense was
gone, in that half-minute he endured an agony of
years.

Then, quite suddenly, like the passage of the sun
from behind some black cloud, all came back to him,
and he sat still a moment longer, in sheer happiness.
At the concentrated thought of what Karl was suffer-
ing, his nervousness, his paralysis of mind went en-
tirely from him, and with complete certainty, with the
assured knowledge, too, that he was going to play his
very best, he began again.

At the end of the slow Thema he paused, looked
up at Karl and smiled nearly to laughing-point at him,
pushed back the plume of hair that drooped over his
forehead, and — played. And at that smile and at the
gesture that was frequent with him, Karl gave one im-
mense sigh of relief that Martin could hear. But now
it meant nothing to him : he was busy.

Martin's face, during those few horrible moments,
had grown absolutely colourless, so that Karl had
thought, and almost wished — for so the public shame
would be lessened and people would be compassionate
— that he was going to faint. For when for the
second time Martin had turned to the piano and still
could not begin, he believed for that moment that the
boy could not ])ull himself together; that unless he
fainted he would simply have to walk off the platform
again. But now the colour came back, slowly at first,
then, with sudden flushes, the dead apathy of his face
changed, and began to live again. Soon his mouth

21

322 THE CHALLONERS

parted slightly, as if wondering at the magic of the
music which blossomed like roses underneath his fly-
ing fingers. Once or twice between the variations
he brushed back his hair again; once he looked up
at Karl, with the brilliant glance his master knew and
loved, asking with his eyes, " Will that do? Will that
do for yonf" before he went on interpreting to the
breathless crowd the noble joy which must have filled
the composer as he wrote. Full of artistic triumph as
Karl's life had been, never before had it mounted and
soared so high as now, when not he, but his pupil, held
the hall enchained.

And in that moment his own ambitions, which he
had so splendidly realised for so long, dropped dead.
He and Martin, he knew now, were master and pupil
no longer ; it was the master's turn — and with what
solemn joy he did it — to sit and learn, to hear — and
he longed for a myriad ears — what was possible, for
even Martin had never played like that before. Even
admiration was dead; there was no room for any-
thing except listening. Admiration, wonder, delight,
laughter of joy might come when the last note had
sounded, but at present to listen was enough.

Martin held the last chord long. Then he took both
hands off, as if the keys were hot, and rose, facing the
hall. For him, too, just then, personal ambition was
dead; he had played, as David played before Saul, in
order to drive from his master's face the demon of
agony that he had seen there. And he looked not at
Stella, not at Lady Sunningdale, not at Frank and
Helen, nor did his eyes wander over the crowded rows,
but straight at Karl, while the hall grew louder and
louder, till the air was thick with sound, still asking

THE CHALLONERS 323

him, "Did I play it well?" And when Karl nodded
to him, he was content, and bowed in front of him
and to right and left, thinking " How kind they all
are!" He caught Stella's eye and smiled, Frank's,
Helen's, Lady Sunningdale's. Then he sat down at
the piano again.

But it was quite impossible to begin, and for his
own amusement ( for now, it must be confessed, he was
enjoying himself quite enormously), he struck an
octave rather sharply and heard not the faintest vibra-
tion from the strings above the uproar. So he rose
again, bowed again, and still bowed, and bowed still,
till he felt like a Chinese mandarin, and knew every-
body must think so, too. Then he sat down and waited
till the phlegmatic English public had said " thank
you" enough.

A ten minutes' interval had been put down on the
programme, and tea was waiting for him in the room
below. But he forgot all about it, and went straight
through. The recital was carefully chosen not to be
too long, and in the ordinary course of events the
audience would have been streaming out into the street
again after an hour and a half. But they refused to
stream ; Martin gave one encore, and after a pause a
second, but he was still wildly recalled. Once before
in the summer he and Helen had sent " London" mad
about them ; this afternoon he did it alone. .And, at
last, in a despair that was wholly delightful, as the
hush fell on the house again, when he sat down for
the fourth time, he played " God save the King"
solemnly through, and his audience laughed and de-
parted.

Lady Sunningdale found that she had burst her left-

324 THE CHALLONERS

hand glove and lost her right-foot shoe when she
came to take stock of what had happened, as Martin
finally retired after " God save the King." Karl was
sitting next her.

" Don't speak to me, anybody," she said, " because
there is nothing whatever to say. That is Martin. I
knew it all along. Yes, a shoe, so tiresome, I don't
know how it happens. Thank you. Monsieur Rusoff.
Stella dear, we start from Victoria to-morrow morn-
ing, not Charing Cross. What did I tell you when
we talked last? Do you not see? That is Martin. If
any one speaks to me, I shall slap him in the face and
burst into floods of tears. I should like to see that
darling for one moment, just to tell him that he has
not been altogether a failure. Which is the way? I
suppose he is drinking porter now, is he not? or is it
only singers who do that? Eight o'clock, Stella.
Quarter to eight, Frank, because you are always late.
Dearest Helen, how is the Bear? Yet Martin has
only got eight fingers and two thumbs like the rest of
us. And was it not too thrilling at the beginning? I
knew exactly how he felt. It was pure toss-up for
just one moment whether he would be able to play at
all or send us empty away like the " Magnificat."
Through this door, isn't it?"

Karl Rusoff showed her the way through the short
passage into the room where two hours ago he had
sat with Martin on the verge of hysterics. But now
a great shout of boyish laughter hailed them, and Mar-
tin went up to Karl, both hands outstretched.

" Ah, it was you who pulled me through," he
said. " I couldn't have begun otherwise. But it hurt
you so dreadfully. I — I felt it hurt you. And shall

THE CHALLONERS 325

I ever play like that again? I never played like it
before!"

Karl looked at him a moment without speaking.
Then he raised the boy's hands to his lips and kissed
them.

" I mean that," he said. " Ah, Martin, how I mean
that !"

Martin stood quite still. Had such a thing ever sug-
gested itself as possible to him he would have felt
ready to sink into the earth with sheer embarrassment.
But now, when the unimagined, the impossible had
happened, he felt no embarrassment at all.

" You did it all," he said, simply. " Thank you a
hundred thousand times."

Then the pendulum swung back again, and he was
a boy himself, and boyishly delighted with success.

" Oh, I enjoyed it all so," he said. " After that first
terrible minute, I just revelled in it. Can't I give an-
other concert this evening?"

Here Lady Sunningdale broke in, —

" You not only can, but you must, after dinner," she
said. " Martin, you played really nicely to-day. I am
going to begin to practise to-morrow morning. Scales.
No, not to-morrow morning, because I shall be other-
wise engaged on the English Channel. Why can't they
run a large steam-roller over the sea between Dover
and Calais? Nobody can tell me. However, I'm told
it is rather healthy than otherwise. My dear, red
velvet sofas, tin basins, Stella, and I. Also Suez
Canal. Sahara is not yet in a fit state. It is too
terrible. Eight o'clock to-night, Martin. And I shall
never forgive you for this afternoon. You gave me the
worst five minutes I ever had."

326 THE CHALLONERS

" I tried to make up for it," said he.

Lady Sunningdale turned quickly back in the door-
way.

" I adored you," she said. " And next time I shall
wear large eights. Perhaps they will not burst quite
so soon."

Martin turned a thirsty eye on Karl when she had
gone.

" And can I have my whiskey-and-soda now ?" he
asked. " I want it frightfully."

Then quite suddenly his face changed, as if a lamp
had been put out. He looked tired, worn out.

" And I have such a headache," he said. " I think
I have had it two days, but was too excited to think
about it. It went away altogether when I was playing.
But it has come back in force !"

Karl rang the bell.

" Yes ; you want a good rest," he said ; " you are
tired without knowing it ; you have been living on
your nerves the last day or two. But anything worth
doing is worth being tired over. Dear boy, I hope
your headache is not really bad. Anyhow, you have
done the thing worth doing. Don't go out to-night.
Go back home, and go to bed early."

Martin shook his head, smiling.

" Ah, I won't give up nn hour of to-day for fifty
headaches," he said. " Besides, Stella and Lady Sun-
ningdale leave to-morrow. My father was not at the
concert, I suppose?"

" No; not that I know of."

" I sent him a ticket, although I thought he would
not come. He does not even approve of my wasting
my time at the piano," he added, with an irritability to

THE CHALLONERS 327

which this horrible stabbing pain in his head con-
tributed.

He drank his whiskey-and-soda with feverish thirst.

" And I had better have left that unsaid," he re-
marked. " Now I shall go home, I think, and sleep
off my headache before dinner. But I must just look
at the platform once more."

He ran up the steps, and looked round the empty
hall. The lights were being extinguished, and gang-
way carpets being rolled up. The Steinway Grand
still stood there, and he felt somehow as if he were
saying good-bye to it.

" Well, that is done," he said to himself.

Lady Sunningdale and Stella left London for the
Riviera next morning, and later in the day Martin
went down to his uncle's at Chartries, and Helen back
home to the vicarage. The reaction from the excite-
ment of the last few days had left him, naturally
enough, rather indolent and tired, and also, naturally
enough, rather irritable and disposed — not to put too
fine a point on it — to be cross. He found the railway
carriage insufferably hot, and pulled down a window ;
that, however, made it draughty, and he changed his
seat, and sat with his back to the engine. This
was no good, because for some unexplained reason
it made him feel ill, and changing back once more,
he fell into a heavy sleep that lasted till they got to
their station. Even then the stopping of the train did
not arouse him, and Helen had to shake and poke him
into consciousness, for which kind office she got
growled at.

But he had come to Chartries with the definite object

328 THE CHALLONERS

of seeing his father, and while Helen's luggage was
being put into the pony-cart from the vicarage the
two talked this over.

" It's no use putting it off," he said, " so will you
tell father that unless I hear from him to stop me, I
will come over to-morrow afternoon to see him. And
I hope," he added, with his usual candour, " that my
temper will be a little improved by then. Lord, how
cross I feel! And this time yesterday I was in the
middle of it all."

Helen looked at him a moment rather anxiously.

"You're all right, aren't you, Martin?" she said;
"not ill?"

" 111? No. But I'm all on edge and I've got two
headaches. It's rather cold waiting here. I think I'll
walk on and let the carriage catch me up. Good-bye,
Helen; see you to-morrow."

Martin woke next morning, after long, heavy sleep,
with the same sense of lassitude and tiredness which
had oppressed him all the day before and the same
headache lying like a hot metallic lump inside his head,
pressing the back of his eyes. The man who called
him had brought him a couple of letters and a note
from his father, which had been sent over from the
vicarage. He opened this first.

" My Dear Martin, — Helen has given me your message, that
you wish to see me. I have thought about it very carefully, and
I w^ish to tell you quite candidly the conclusion I have come to.

" You know what I felt about your going over to the Roman
Church; I feel that all still, and as strongly as ever. You have
deliberately left your own church, and for reasons, as far as I
can understand, which are frivolous and unessential. And I am
afraid — I know in fact — that if I saw you I should, without being

THE CHALLONERS 329

able to help myself, express to you what I feel. Now, I do not
think this would do any good, it would only widen the gulf be-
tween us; and one of the great aims of my life now is to do the
opposite. I do not suppose my opinion will ever change, it cannot,
in fact, but in time I shall, I suppose, get more used to what has
happened, and shall be able to see you without bitterness. At
present I am unwilling to tear open a wound which may be be-
ginning to heal. But all this is to me still so keen a daily and
hourly pain that I feel sure we should be wiser not to meet yet.
But Hele-, of course, is quite free to come and see you, and you
to come and see her.

" It gives me great pain to write this. But I cannot separate
you from what you have done.

" I am rejoiced to hear from her of the great success of your
concert. Personally, as you know, I have no educated taste in
music, but I gather that your master is satisfied both with your
progress and your industry, which is more important than success.

" My dear boy, I wish I could see you ; I wish I could trust

myself !

" Your affectionate father,

" Sidney Challoner.

" P.S. — Your Aunt Clara, I am sorry to say, is in bed witt a

sharp attack of influenza."

Martin read this through twice before he got up;
then he dressed, his cold bath making him shiver, and
went downstairs. The sight of his own face in the
looking-glass, as he brushed his hair, was somehow
rather a shock to him; it did not look exactly ill, but
it was unfamiliar, it looked like the face of somebody
else. His uncle was not yet down, and he strolled
out on to the terrace, waiting for him, into the warm,
windy sunshine of the April morning. But here again
he had the same impression of unfamiliarity : the sun
did not feel to him the same, nor did the sunshine look
the same, — both light and colour had an odd dream-like
unreality about them. It was as if some curious, hard

330 THE CHALLONERS

barrier had been put up between his sense of percep-
tion and that which he perceived. Then, with a feeHng
of rehef, he remembered his father's postscript. Prob-
ably he had influenza, too.

That explanation, or the divine freshness of the
morning, made him feel rather better, and half-laugh-
ing at himself for his vague fear that there was some-
thing really wrong with him, he went indoors again.
People were coming to stay at Chartries that afternoon,
but this morning he and his uncle were alone. Lord
Flintshire was already seated at breakfast when he
came in.

He gave him his father's letter to read, unconscious
that his uncle looked rather closely at him as he en-
tered, being also struck by a curious drawn look in
his face, but he said nothing on the subject, and read
the letter through.

" I think your father is wrong about it," he said,
" and if you approve, I will tell him so. There is
surely no need to enter into theological discussion.
You want just to see him and shake hands with him."

Martin had taken some fish, but gave it up as a bad
job, and drank tea instead.

" Yes, just that," he said. " I hate being on bad
terms with anybody, especially him."

Lord Flintshire looked at him again.

" The boy's ill," he said to himself. Then aloud, —
" Well, let us walk over after breakfast, if you feel
inclined. You can see Helen while I go in and talk
to your father. You don't look particularly fit this
morning, Martin. Anything wrong?"

" I feel beastly," said Martin, with directness. " I
shouldn't wonder if I had got influenza, too."

THE CHALLONERS 331

" Are you sure you feel up to coming over ? Yes,
your father mentions that Clara has got it. If the
doctor is there, he might just have a look at you. Or,
if 3'ou don't feel up to coming, I would send him
back here."

Martin pulled himself together. The tea had made
him feel quite distinctly better.

" Oh, no, I'm quite up to it," he said. " Probably
the doctor will tell me to go for a long walk and eat a
big dinner. And I should like to see my father as
soon as possible, and get it over. It will all be easier
after that."

His uncle got up.

'' Shall we start in half an hour, then? We shall
be sure to catch him before he goes out. Cigarette?"

" No, I think not, thanks," said Martin.

Their way lay down through the woods where Helen
and Frank had met a month ago, and the gracious in-
fluence of springtime had gone steadily forward with
the great yearly miracle of the renewal of life. The
green that had then hung mist-like round the trees was
now formed and definite leaf, exquisitely tender and
clear, and in this early morning hour shining with the
moisture and dews of night. Daffodils still lingered in
sheltered places and the delicate wood-anemone flushed
faintly in the thickets. Below the chalk-stream, where
Martin last summer had spent that hour of self-revela-
tion, was brimful from bank to bank of hurrying trans-
lucent water, which combed the subaqueous weeds
and turned to topazes the yellow pebbles and into heaps
of pearl the beds of chalk that flashed beneath the
water. But this morning he was heavy-eyed and

332 THE CHALLONERS

clogged of brain; he felt that somebody else was see-
ing these things, that somebody else was putting foot
in front of foot, while he himself had dwindled to a
mere pin-point set in the centre of a great lump of
hot metal which filled his head. Sometimes this body
that was once his felt sudden flushes of heat, some-
times it shivered for no reason. Then, after an in-
terminable walk, so it seemed to him, they turned
through the church-yard and went up the gravel path
that ran to join the carriage sweep in front of the
vicarage door. And, in spite of all, it was with a
wonderful sense of coming home that Martin saw the
gre)^ creeper-covered walls again, the long box-hedge,
and the croquet-lawn wet and shining with dew in
the sun.

" I'll wait out here while you see my father," said
he. " Perhaps you would tell Helen I am here." And
he sat down all of a heap on a garden seat.

This tired, spiritless boy was so utterly unlike Mar-
tin that his uncle felt suddenly anxious.

"Are you feeling bad, Martin?" he asked. "Do
you feel faint? Hadn't you better come indoors?"

" Oh, no. I shall be better when I've rested a
minute. But my head aches so. Lord, it gets worse
every minute."

Lord Flintshire left him and went straight to Mr.
Challoner's study, where he was at work.

" Good-morning, Sidney," he said. " I have come
over with Martin, who wants to see you. I also want
you to see him; but we can talk of that afterwards.
Now, is the doctor in the house? Martin is not at all
well. He looks to me very ill. He "

But at that word there was no longer any thought

THE CHALLONERS 333

of " talking of that afterwards." All that was human
and tender, all that was loving, all that there was of
" father" in Mr. Challoner sprang to that call.

"Dear lad, where is he?" he said. "Yes; the
doctor is with Clara now. He will be out in a minute.
But where is Martin? I must go to him."

Lord Flintshire just laid his hand on his brother's
shoulder.

" I knew you would, Sidney," he said. " He is out-
side by the front door."

Martin had dropped heavily on to the garden seat,
and sat there with his eyes closed. That lump of hot
metal in his head had grown larger and hotter ; he felt
as if something must burst. And he was so terribly
tired ; his walk had not done him the least good. Then
he heard quick steps behind him on the gravel, but
simply could not be troubled to look round. And then
came his father's voice.

" My dearest lad," he said, " come indoors at once."

Martin sat up with a jerk, and some chord of old
memory twanged on the surface of his brain.

"You're not angry with me, father?" he said, ner-
vously.

Mr. Challoner bit his lip to stifle the exclamation
of pain that rose bitterly within him.

" Angry?" he said. " What put that into your dear
old head? There, Martin, take my arm, and lean on
me. Come inside out of the wind. There, old boy,
steadily ; there's plenty of time. I hope we shan't have
you down with influenza, too. But it's the luckiest
thing in the world. The doctor is here now with your
aunt, and he shall have a look at you."

But it needed all Mr. Challoncr's courage to get

334 THE CHALLONEES

through with this cheerful chattering. Martin looked
terribly ill to him. But he got him into his study,
arranged the cushions on the sofa he so seldom used
himself, and made him lie down.

" Ah, that's better," said Martin. " Thanks, thanks
ever so much, father."

He held out his hand to his father, who pressed it,
and his voice trembled a little as he answered.

" God bless you, my dear lad, for wanting to come
and see me," he said. " Now, is there anything you
want? I shall send Dr. Thaxter to you as soon as he
leaves your aunt."

Dr. Thaxter was a merry, rosy-faced little man
with a manner so reassuring that one felt quite well
directly, and in a few minutes he came bustling into
the room.

" Ah, Mr. Challoner," he said, " your father tells
me you are a bit knocked up. Not uncommon in this
spring weather. Quite right to lie down. There, put
that under your tongue, and don't bite it."

He adjusted the thermometer and went chattering
on.

" And you've walked over from Chartries with your
uncle, have you? Fine place that, and a fine healthy
situation. Of course, you only came down yesterday.
I saw the account of your concert in the paper. Ah,
I wish I had been there. Now, I think we've given
the thermometer long enough. Thank you. And you

feel rather "

The little doctor stopped suddenly in the middle of
his sentence when he saw what was recorded on it.
" You have a headache, I think your father said."
" I have nothing else, I think," said Martin.

THE CHALLONERS 335

Dr. Thaxter drew a chair close to the sofa, and
sat down, looking at him very closely.

" Ah, yes; that is to be expected with a little fever.
You are rather feverish. Now, when did you begin to
feel ill? When did you first feel a headache? Try
to tell me all about it."

" Oh, five days ago now. No, six, I think. I don't
think I felt anything else, except that everything
seemed rather queer all the time."

He made a movement to sit up, but the doctor gently
pressed him back again.

" Better not sit up," he said. " You'll be far more
comfortable lying down. And you can tell me nothing
else? Just a bad headache."

"Am I ill?" asked Martin, suddenly. "Really ill,
I mean? What's the matter with me?"

" My dear Mr. Challoner, I can't possibly tell you,
because I don't know. And when one doesn't know,
one takes precautions against anything that it may con-
ceivably be. Perhaps it is influenza. If it is, it's a
pretty sharp attack. I wonder at your being able to
walk over this morning. Now, will you promise me
to lie quite still while I just go and talk to your
father and settle with him what we shall do with you."

The little doctor went quietly out of the room and
across the hall to the drawing-room. Helen, her
father, and Lord Flintshire were all there. He did
not look quite so brisk and cheerful as he had done
before he saw Martin.

" He has a very high temperature," he said ; " much
higher than I like. Tt may, of course, be an attack of
influenza. I have seen cases of it with temperatures
higher than that. But he must be nursed as if some-

336 THE CHALLONERS

thing more serious was the matter. He has probably
had a temperature for nearly a week."

Mr. Challoner turned to him almost fiercely.

"What is it?" he said.

" It may be several things. Perhaps I can tell you
when I have seen him again, when we have got him
to bed. Now, there is a good spare-room in this
house?"

"Yes; his own," said Helen.

" Very well; he must be moved there, just as he is,
without getting up. If you and Lord Flintshire will
help me, we will do it at once. And is there a room
where a nurse can sleep?"

Helen took a step nearer him.

" Is it typhoid?" she asked.

" I am afraid it may be. It looks very like it."

CHAPTER XV

It was very early, only a little after six, and the sun
had risen on a day exquisite, warm, and windless. In
Martin's room the big window had been open all
night, and all night the blind had not once rattled or
stirred, while the lamp on the table near it burned
steady without a flicker. But though it had been light
for nearly an hour, the nurse had only this moment
put out the lamp, for she had been alert, quick, and
watchful, unable to leave his bedside for a moment for
the last four hours.

He had been very restless, attempting again and
again to sit up in bed, and it had needed not only all
her care but all her strength to keep him lying down.
All night long, too, that terrible uncontrollable twitch-
ing of the muscles of leg and arm had gone on in-
cessantly, and again and again, for ten minutes or
more at a stretch, she had kept one arm with steady
pressure over those poor, jumping knees, while she
held the other ready to prevent his getting up. It had
been all she could do, in fact, to manage him alone,
but she had been unwilling, except at the last extremity,
to rouse Nurse James from the next room, for she
had had a terribly tiring day yesterday with him.
Yesterday, too, a second doctor had come down from
London. The case was extremely grave, but all that
could be done was being done.

Martin was lying rather more quiet just now, and
Nurse Baker had moved from the bed to put out the

22 337

338 THE CHALLONERS

lamp and draw the blind up a little. His eyes were
wide open, staring at the ceiling, and he was talking in
a high, meaningless drone.

" No, Karl, I can't do it," he was saying. " I don't
see it like that. I know I shall break down, because I
haven't the slightest idea of how it begins, and I can't
leave out the beginning. And father is angry with
me, and when he is angry he frightens me. Hasn't
Stella come to see me? I had such a headache, you
know; like a great piece of hot iron, you know, right
inside my head. They took off the top of my head
to put it there. I'm frightened of him when he's like
that. Where's Stella ? No ; Lady Sunningdale was in
the bird of para — para — parachute — I don't know, in
that hat anyhow, you fool with Sahara. That's what
made it so hot, and I can't endure English chants. Oh,
father, don't, don't. It isn't my fault."

His voice rose to a scream, and the nurse came
quickly back to the bedside, just in time to prevent
him rising.

The door opened gently, and Helen came in in her
dressing-gown. And the terrible drone began again.

" And when we're married, Helen and Frank shall
come and stay with us, and I'll play to them, if it gets
cooler. But father mustn't know ; he mustn't come.
Karl is the loud pedal you see, and the music-stool,
and I'm only the black notes. I hope they won't play
me much, as I'm all out of tune with the iron. And
all those faces are there, a sea of them, and I'm all
alone. If I break down father will be angry!"

He turned his head sideways on the pillow, closed
his eyes, and was silent for a little. Helen, with
quivering lip, was looking at that dear face, so thin

THE CHALLONERS 339

and hollow, so untidy and unshaven, with unspeak-
able love and longing. Then the nurse left the bed
and came to her. Helen did not ask if he was better.

" Can I help you in anything?" she said.

" No, dear Miss Helen, thank you. I think he will
be quieter for a little now. But I should like Dr.
Thaxter to be sent for at once, please. Yes, he is
very ill. He is as ill as he can be. There, there, my
dear!"

Helen clasped her hands together a moment, holding
them out towards Martin with a dumb, beseeching ges-
ture, as if imploring him.

" And I am so strong," she said. " Why can't I
give him some of my strength ! It is cruel."

" Ah, if one only could do that," said Nurse
Baker. "But he is not suffering; he is quite un-
conscious."

" May my father come in to see him a moment?"
asked the girl.

" No ; much better not. He does not know what
he is saying, but he keeps on saying what you have
heard. Now, will you send somebody for the doctor?
There are certain things I don't like about his looks.
And then come back, dear, if you like. He never
says a word his sister should not hear."

Helen advanced to the side of the bed a moment,
and just touched Martin's hand, which lay outside the
bedclothes. She could not speak, but just nodded to
the nurse and went away.

She sent word to the stables that the cart was to go
at once to fetch Dr. Thaxter, and then went to her
father's study, where he was waiting for her.

He was kneeling by his table, as he had knelt for

340 THE CHALLONERS

the last half -hour, but rose when she entered, and
they stood together, hands clasped, a moment.

" No, dear father, he is no better," she said. " He
— he is very ill, indeed. And Nurse Baker thinks you
had better not go in."

Mr. Challoner looked at her with that dreadful dry-
eyed despair that she had seen on his face so often
during this last week.

" Does he still talk about me?" he asked.

Helen laid her hands on his shoulders.

"Yes, father," she said; "but he does not know
what he is saying. Indeed, he does not. He talks
all sorts of nonsense. He has no idea what he says."

" Ah, Helen, that is just it," he moaned. " The
poor lad speaks instinctively; he says what has be-
come a habit of thought. Oh, my God, my God !"

Helen knew her impotence to help him.

" I have sent for Dr. Thaxter," she said. " Nurse
Baker wanted him to come at once. And, father, there
is another thing, which I have only just thought of.
If Dr. Thaxter thinks — if he thinks that, we ought to
send for a Roman priest."

Mr. Challoner's face changed suddenly.

"No," he said, in a harsh whisper; "no Roman
priest shall enter the house."

" Ah, but he must, he must," said Helen. " Think
a moment. If Martin was conscious, you know he
would wish it, and you would send for one."

Mr. Challoner did not reply for a moment ; then he
lifted his hands with a helpless gesture.

" And it is Easter morning," he said.

Somehow that cut at the girl's heart more than any-
thing.

THE CHALLONERS 341

" Yes, dear father," she said at length ; " and is not
that — whatever happens — enough for us all? Who-
ever we are, Frank, Martin, you, I, that is where we
meet."

Then for the first time since that day, now nearly a
fortnight ago, when Martin had sat down dead tired
on the seat by the front door, the blessed relief of tears
came to his father, and he wept long, silently, a man's
hard, painful tears. And with those tears the upright
hardness of him, the God-fearing, God-loving narrow-
ness went from him. The bitter frosts of his nature
melted, they were dissolved.

" Oh, Helen, if he lives," he said at length.

" Ah, yes, dear father, or if he dies. Even if he
dies, dear."

She took his hands, holding them tightly.

" Oh, help me to remember that," she whispered; " I
shall need all the help you can give me. We shall want
— we shall want all the help we can get — both of us.
We will give it each other. And Stella "

" You telegraphed to her?"

" Yes; she cannot get here till to-morrow!"

Then the girl gave way.

" To-morrow," she said ; " and it is only just to-day.
Father, father, I can't bear it. I can't."

But the strength she had given him so often during
this last week was ready again to help her.

" Yes, dear Helen," he said, speaking quite calmly
again. " We can both bear whatever is to be. God
does not send us anything that we are not capable of
bearing, and of bearing without liitterness and with-
out complaint. And whether it is life or death with
our dear Martin, it is all life. We believe that, do we

342 THE CHALLONEKS

not ? Let us hold on to that, for it sustains the sorrows
of all the world. There is nothing so sure as that. It
is the Rock of Ages, Helen."

There was the sound of wheels on the gravel outside.

" That will be the doctor, dear," said he; " will you
go and meet him, and — and the cart must wait if he
thinks a priest should be sent for."

She got up at once.

" Yes, father," she said.

Helen went out into the hall. Dr. Thaxter had just
come in, and at the same moment Nurse Baker hurried
downstairs.

" Come up at once, please, doctor," she said. " He
— he came to himself a few minutes ago, after being
delirious all night. I took his temperature. It is nor-
mal, just about normal."

Helen's face suddenly brightened.

" He is better, then?" she said.

Nurse Baker turned to her, as the doctor took off
his coat, with infinite compassion in her kind, brown
eyes.

" No, dear Miss Helen," she said. " He is — ah, I
need not explain to you. But it is very bad. It is —
you must be very brave, my dear. Go to your father."

She gave her a quick little kiss, and followed the
doctor upstairs. Helen went back into the study.

" Something has happened," she said. " I had no
time to speak to Dr. Thaxter. They will send for us,
dear. I think — I think that is what nurse meant."

It was now about seven of the morning, and the
sun about an hour above the horizon streamed glori-
ously into the room. It shone on the table, the sofa,

THE CHALLONERS 343

on the big chair where Helen and Martin as little
children used to sit together, looking at Bible pictures.
And she sat down in that chair now. The big things
had been said between her father and her, and as they
waited now both turned to little memories of the past.

" Martin used to sit by me," she said.

" Yes ; and then you grew too big. After that you
used each to have a chair, one on each side of me."

" And we did our lessons there," said Helen. Then
she stopped suddenly, for there was a foot on the stairs.

Nurse Baker came in.

" You must both come," she said.

The blind was drawn up in Martin's room, and the
same wonderful sun flooded the room, and outside
many thrushes were singing. There was but little ap-
paratus of medicine there, — it was just a boy's clean
room : cricket bats and racquets stood in one corner,
on the table there was a heap of music, school-books
were in the bookcase by the door. And on the bed
lay Martin. His eyes were still open, but they were
blind and unseeing no more, and he turned them
wearily to the door when Helen and his father entered.
But when he saw them, they brightened a little. The
doctor had stood back from the bed. Nurse Baker was
by him. Then Martin spoke.

" It is nice to be in my own room again," he said in
a voice just audible. " Oh, good-morning, Helen ;
good-morning, father. I have had horrible dreams,
father. I dreamed you were angry with me. How
silly. You are not angry?"

Mr. Challoner came up to the bed, and knelt there,
his arm resting on the blanket.

344 THE CHALLONERS

" No, dear lad," he said. " I am not; indeed, I am
not."

Martin shifted his position a httle.

" I'm glad," he said, " because I'm so tired. Helen,
I played well, really well, did I?"

" Yes, Martin ; Karl Rusoff said — he said nobody
ever played better."

And she was silent because she could not say any
more just then.

"And what is to-day?" asked Martin at length.

" It is Easter Sunday, dear Martin," said his
father.

Martin half raised his head.

" I ought to be at Mass," he said, " but I can't. It
doesn't matter, does it, if one can't?"

His father came a little closer yet.

" No, dear boy," he said. " It is Mass everywhere
this morning. He was crucified, and this morning He
rose again. That is all the world holds, and the heaven
of heavens."

" Yes, all," said the boy. " And to-day "

The whisper in which he had spoken died, and Dr.
Thaxter took a step towards the bed, looked at him
a moment, and then went back again.

For a minute or two Martin lay there quite still ;
then he put out his two hands on each side of the
bed, one towards Helen, one to his father.

" I am awfully tired," he said, " and I can't talk.
But I can listen still. Is Stella here?"

" No, Martin," said Helen ; " but she is coming as
quickly as she can."

" Ah ! Father, say something, something that you
and I both know and Hke."

THE CHALLONERS 345

Mr. Challoner gently kissed the boy's hand; then
he raised his head and spoke.

" The King of Love my Shepherd is,
Whose Goodness faileth never ;
I nothing lack if I am His,
And He is mine for ever."

Helen was on the other side of the bed, and as her
father's voice faltered and stopped, she looked up.

"Shall father and I say it together, Martin?" she
asked.

" Yes, together," said he.

So sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes
both repeated the beautiful words. But just before
the last verse Martin raised his head a little, looking
straight in front of him. Then his father began :

" And so through all the length of days
Thy goodness faileth never "

He paused, for he saw that look in dying eyes, those
eyes that were so dear to him, which means that the
great event is there, that the great, white presence has
entered. Helen had seen, too.

Then Martin raised himself a little further and
spoke no longer in a whisper, —

" Good Shepherd, may I sing Thy praise,
Within Thy courts for ever."

Then he sank down again, withdrew his hand from
his father's, and put it on the pillow. Then he laid his
face on it, as was his custom, and fell asleep.

PIGS IN CLOVER

BY "FRANK DANBY"

8vo. Decorated cloth, $1.50.

" By far the most powerful and searching
piece of fiction of the year." — The Bookman.

" Has a vigor like that Charles Reade used
to show." — Buffalo Coimnei'-ciaL

"A powerful society and political romance
which is still more powerful as a novel of
character." — Bi^ooklyn Eagle.

"The most effective realistic novel of a
decade." — Professor Guy Carleton Lee.

"The book is written with insight, sincerity
of purpose, and rugged virility." — The New
York Co77imercial Advertiser .

"One of the most powerful and sustained
stories read in many months." — Dr. Harry
Thurston Peck.

"A novel of unusual power, brilliant, and
full of insiofht into character. It is a book
to read." — Detroit Free Press.

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA

THE ISSUE

By GEORGE MORGAN

With frontispiece and five drawings by GEORGE A. WILUAMS
12mo. Cloth, $1.50

"By long odds the most striking literary event of the
year." — Philadelp]iia North American.

" 'The Issue' is one of the best novels of its period."
— Baltimore Sun.

' ' Mr. Morgan has lifted the battlefields of the South
from their provincial setting and marked them on the great
war map of the world." — JVew York Evening Post.

" It has a wide sweep. It is full of vigorous movement,
of vivid, stirring pictures. Its turns and phrases are sur-
prising, startling. It will gratify and satisfy the reader." —

New York Sun.

"A remarkably clear, just, and at the same time enter-
taining pen-picture of the most momentous period in Ameri-
can history. A book to make one think. It is one of the
most substantial and worthy efforts of the year. The most
striking work of its type extant. Here is a novel of Ameri-
can life that is really worth while." — Philadelphia Record.

' ' Such novels as ' The Issue' are rare upon any theme.
. . . Superior to ' The Crisis' ... a work that must have
cost tremendous toil, a masterpiece. " — Pittsburgh Gazette.

' ' Will stand prominently forth as the strongest book that
the season has given us. A book that is dramatic, pictur-
esque, and is yet realistic. ' ' — Philadelphia Ledger.

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA

A SEQUENCE IN HEARTS

BY MARY MOSS.

Atithor of ^^ Fruit Out of Season," ^' Julian Meldohla.^'
i2mo. Decorated cloth, $1.50.

" Miss Moss sees life as a sunny comedy
and tells of it with cheerful relish. The
characters are all human. The story is
sparkling with vivacity and good humor."
— Pittsbiivo' Commercial Gazette.

" The characters are well drawn and there is
plenty of humor and a great deal of satire fur-
nished by Cousin Romola," — Worcester Spy.

"A love story of to-day marked by un-
usually clever character drawing and a fund
of quiet humor and sharp satire." — Trento7i
Times.

"A cleverly written and thoroughly inter-
esting story of the present day." — Chicago
Tribune.

"The book is full of vivid touches, showing
a shrewd analysis of character, a fine kind of
humor as an underdrift, and a cheerful tone
brightens up the tragic atmosphere." — Syra-
cuse Herald.

" Decidedly clever, and well worth reading."
— N. Y. Mail and Express.

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA

At the Time Appointed

By A. MAYNARD BARBOUR
Colored Frontispiece by Marchand - - Postpaid, S1.5O

The Washington Post.

"A good mystery that stimulates the imagination and
excites the deepest interest."

Doylestown Intelligencer.

" A volume that once started will be read through to the
the end. It has thrills galore, unexpected situations,
mysteries enough — in fact, it's the real thing."

St. Paul Dispatch.

"A study in character, and a very unusual, original
love story."

Pittsburg Dispatch.

" A stirring and dramatic love story."

By same Author

That Mainwaring' Affair

Illustrated. Postpaid. gl.SO

New York Life.

" Possibly in a detective story the main object is to thrill.
If so, ' That Mainwaring Affair' is all right. The thrill
is there, full measure, pressed down and running over."

New York Town Topics.

" The book that reminds one of Anna Katherine Green
in her palmiest days. . . . Keeps the reader on the
alert, defies the efforts of those who read backwards,
deserves the applause of all who like mystery."

Denver News.

"The reader will be a good guesser, indeed, if he solves
this mystery before the author does it for him. A pleas-
ant love interest runs through the pages."

Publishers : J. B. Lippiivcott Company : piiiudeiphia

/

Jack

Raymond.

By E. L. VOYNICH.

i2nio. Cloth, $1.50; paper, 50 cents.

" The strongest novel that the present season has proc •'
Pall Mall Gazette, London.

"Wonderful and terrible; wonderful in its intellet?Q
terrible for the intensity of feeling effects." — Boston Cotir

"One of the uniquely interesting stories of the -if<f
World, New York.

Sister
Teres;^

By GEORGE MOORE

i2mo. Cloth, $1.50; paper, 50

"A psychological study of extraordinary
fineness of George Moore's literary methods." —

' ' Absorbing to the end as a narrative, ' Si
remarkable exhibit of finished thought and skil'

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY,

T^^c JNTILLED FIELD

^ "^ By GEORGE MOORE

Vioore is ranked as the most conspicuous of serious workers
Ge/ld of fiction in Great Britain to-day. This new volume
^^ /the most natural as well as some of the most intense and
c/iWe of its author' s work.

i2mo. Cloth, $1.50.

k\^r-heel baron

novel of North Carolina life, by

^^SHIPPIE CLARKE PELTON

\ ^y has to do with a gallant and brave German
•^ ovS as a stranger into the little settlement. It is a
S^^ tii^he same time a love story which deal" with
0° d conditions.

\mo. Cloth, $1.50.

sv^

OF LIFE

}k THOMPSON

\nd society life of to-day, in a
^K. plogical vein.

^o^*-^ ,g^^prise and appeal with singular
9.^° which exists in all of us. It is
\society life.
^$1.50.

V ^- -

PHILADELPHIA

University of California

SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388

Return this material to the library

from which it was borrowed.

Form L-9
20m-l,'42(8319)

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT

^f

UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

AA 000 380 345 9

♦""^s

University of C

Southern Rej

Library Fac

■■^ggs#agfeai8asa8iigjgM;a