The romance of his life, and other romances

s CD

CO

HANDBOUND
AT THE

UNIVERSITY OF
TORONTO PRESS

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE
AND OTHER ROMANCES

By MARY CHOLMONDELEY

NOTWITHSTANDING : A Novel.

MOTH AND RUST: together with
GEOFFREY'S WIFE and THE
PITFALL.

THE LOWEST RUNG: together
with THE HAND ON THE LATCH,
ST. LUKE'S SUMMER AND THE
UNDERSTUDY.

UNDER ONE ROOF: A Family
Record.

LONDON: JOHN MURRAY.

THE ROMANCE
OF HIS LIFE

AND OTHER ROMANCES

By MARY CHOLMONDELEY

Author of "Red Pottage."

LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET W.
1921

TO

PERCY LUBBOCK

Contents

PAGE

INTRODUCTION - n

THE ROMANCE OF His LIFE 25

THE DARK COTTAGE - 55

THE GHOST OF A CHANCE - 83

THE GOLDFISH - 109

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES - 146

HER MURDERER ----- 173

VOTES FOR MEN - - 200

THE END OF THE DREAM - - - 216

Introduction
IN PRAISE OF A SUFFOLK COTTAGE

MOST of these stories were written in a cottage
in Suffolk.

For aught I know to the contrary there may
be other habitable dwellings in that beloved
country of grey skies and tidal rivers, and cool
sea breezes. There certainly are other houses
in our own village, some larger, some smaller
than mine, where pleasant neighbours manage
to eat and sleep, and to eke out their existence.
But, of course, though they try to hide it, they
must all be consumed with envy of me, for a
cottage to equal mine I have never yet come
across, nor do I believe in its existence.

Everyone has a so-called cottage nowadays.
But fourteen years ago when I fell desperately
in love with mine they were not yet the rage.
The fashion was only beginning.

Now we all know that it is a parlous affair to
fall in love in middle age. Christina Rossetti
goes out of her way to warn us against these
dangerous grey haired attachments.

She says :

" Keep love for youth, and violets for the spring."

I had often read those beautiful lines and
thought how true they were, but I paid no more

12 INTRODUCTION

attention to their prudent advice the moment
my emotions were stirred than a tourist does
to the word "Private" on a gate.

It amazes me to recall that the bewitching
object of my affections had actually stood,
forlorn, dishevelled, and untenanted, for more
than a year before I set my heart upon it, and
the owner good naturedly gave me a long lease
of it.

Millionaires would tumble over each other to
secure it now. This paper is written partly in
order to make millionaires uneasy, for I have a
theory, no, more than a theory, a conviction
that they seldom obtain the pick of the things
that make life delightful.

Do you remember how the ex-Kaiser, even
in his palmy days, never could get hot buttered
toast unless his daughter's English governess
made it for him, and later on chronicled the fact
for the British public.

There are indications that a few millionaires
and crowned heads have dimly felt for some time
past the need of cottages, but Royalty has not
yet got any nearer to one than that distressful
eyesore at Kew with tall windows, which I
believe Queen Caroline built, and which Queen
Victoria bequeathed to the nation as "a thing
of beauty."

One of the many advantages of a cottage is
that the front door always stands open unless it is

INTRODUCTION 13

wet, and as the Home Ruler and I sit at breakfast
in the tiny raftered hall we see the children
running to school, and the cows coming up the
lane, and Mrs. A's washing wending its way
towards her in a wheelbarrow, and Mrs. M's pony
and cart en route for Woodbridge. That admir-
able pony brings us up from the station, and
returns there for our heavy luggage, it fetches
groceries, it snatches "prime joints" from haughty
butchers. It is, as someone has truly said, "our
only link with the outer world."

The village life flows like a little stream in
front of us as we sip our coffee at our small round
mahogany table with a mug of flaming Siberian
wallflower on it, the exact shade of the orange
curtains. Of course if you have orange curtains
you are bound to grow flowers of the same colour.

The passers by also see us, but that is a sight
to which they are as well accustomed as to the
village pump, the stocks at the Church gate,
or any other samples of "still life." They take
no more heed of us than the five young robins,
who fly down from the nest in the honeysuckle
over the porch, and bicker on the foot scraper.

The black beam that stretches low over our
heads across the little room has a carved angel
at each end, brought by the Home Ruler in pre-
war days from Belgium ; and, in the middle of
the beam, is a hook from which at night a lantern
is suspended, found in a curiosity shop in Kent.

i4 INTRODUCTION

My nephew, aged seven, watched me as I
cautiously bought it, and whispered to his
mother :

"Why does Aunt Mary buy the lantern when,
for thirty shillings, she could get a model
engine?"

"Well, you see she does not want a model
engine, and she does want a lantern, and it is
not wrong of her to buy it as she has earned the
money."

Shrill amazement of nephew.

"What! Aunt Mary earned thirty shillings!
How she must have sweated to make as much
as that ! "

I must tell you that our cottage was once two
cottages. That is why it looks so long and pretty
from the lane, pushing back the roses from its
eyes as it peers at you over its wooden fence.
Consequently we have two green front doors
exactly alike, and each approached by a short
brick path edged with clipped box. Each path
has its own little green wooden gate. One of
these doors has had a panel taken out by the
Home Ruler, and a wire grating stretched over
the opening, as she has converted the passage
within into a larder.

Now, would you believe it ? Chauffeurs, after
drawing up magnificent motors in front of the
house, actually go and beat upon the larder door,
when, if they would only look through the iron

INTRODUCTION 15

grating, they would see a leg of mutton hanging
up within an inch of their noses — that is in
pre-war days : of course now only sixpenny
worth of bones, and a morsel of liver.

And all the time we are waiting to admit our
guests at the other door, the open door, the hall
door, the front door, with an old brass
knocker on it, and an electric bell, and a glimpse
within of a table laid for luncheon, with an orange
table cloth — to match the curtains 1

I have no patience with chauffeurs. They
observe nothing.

That reminds me that a friend of ours, with
that same chauffeur, was driving swiftly in her
car the other day, and ran into a butcher's boy
on his bicycle. As I have already remarked,
chauffeurs never recognize meat when they see
it unless it is on a plate. The boy was knocked
over. My friend saw the overturned bicycle in
the ditch ; and a string of sausages festooned
on the hedge, together with a piece of ribs of
beef, and a pound of liver caught on a sweet-
briar, and imagined that they were the scattered
internal fittings of the butcher's boy, until he
crawled out from under the car uninjured. She
did not recover from the shock for several
days.

To return to the cottage. I am not going to
pretend that it had no drawbacks. There were
painful surprises, especially in the honeymoon

16 INTRODUCTION

period of my affections. Most young couples, if
they were honest, which they never are, would
admit that they emerged stunned, if not partially
paralysed, from the strain of the first weeks of
wedded life. I was stunned, but I remembered
it was the common lot and took courage. Yes,
there were painful surprises. Ants marched up
in their cohorts between the bricks in the pantry
floor. When we enquired into this phenomenon,
behold 1 there was no floor. For a moment I
was as "dumbfounded" as the bridegroom who
discovers a plait of hair on his bride's dressing
table. The bricks were laid in noble simplicity
on Mother Earth, no doubt as in the huts of our
forefathers, in the days when they painted
themselves with wode, and skirmished with bows
and arrows. I had to steel my heart against
further discoveries. Rats raced in batallions in
the walls at night. Plaster and enoniious spiders
dropped (not, of course in collusion) from the
ceilings in the dark. Upper floors gave signs of
collapse. Two rooms which had real floors, when
thrown into one, broke our hearts by unexpect-
edly revealing different levels. That really was
not playing fair.

Frogs, large, active, shiny Suffolk frogs had a
passion for leaping in at the drawing room
windows in wet weather. The frogs are my
department, for the Home Ruler, who fears
neither God nor man, hides her face in her hands
and groans when the frogs bound in across the
matting; and I, moi qui vous parle, I pursue them

INTRODUCTION 17

with the duster, which, in every well organised
cottage, is in the left hand drawer of the writing
table.

The great great grandchildren of the original
jumpers, jump in to this day, in spite of the
severity with which they and their ancestors
from one generation to another have been
gathered up in dusters, and cast forth straddling
and gasping on to the lawn. Frogs seem as
unteachable as chauffeurs 1

Very early in the day we realised that in the
principal bedroom a rich penetrating aroma of
roast hare made its presence felt the moment the
window was shut. Why this was so I do not
know. The room was not over the kitchen. We
have never had a hare roasted on the premises
during all the years we have lived in that delect-
able place. We have never even partaken of
jugged hare within its walls. But the fact
remains : when the window is shut the hare
steals back into the room. Perhaps it is a
ghost 1 I !

I never thought of that till this moment. I
feel as if I had read somewhere about a ghost
which always heralds its approach by a smell of
musk. And then I remember also hearing about
an old woman who after her death wanted
dreadfully to tell her descendants that she had
hidden the lost family jewels in the chimney.
But though she tried with all her might to warn

r8 INTRODUCTION

them she never got any nearer to it than by
appearing as a bloodhound at intervals. Every-
one who saw her was terrified, and the jewels
remained in the chimney.

Is it possible that I have not taken this aroma
of roast hare sufficiently seriously ! Perhaps it
is a portent. Perhaps it is an imperfect
manifestation — like the bloodhound — of some-
one on the other side who is trying to confide
in me.

Yes, we sustained shocks not a few, but there
was in store for us at any rate one beautiful
surprise which made up for them all.

One bedroom (the one with the hare in it,
worse luck) possessed an oak floor, fastened with
the original oak pins. It had likewise a Tudor
door, but the rest of the chamber was common-
place with oddly bulging walls, covered with a
garish flowery wallpaper.

We stripped it off. There was another under-
neath it. There always is. We stripped that
off, then another, and another, and yet another.
(The reader will begin to think the roast hare is
not so mysterious after all.)

We got down at last to that incredibly ugly
paper which in my childhood adorned every
cottage bedroom I visited in my native Shrop-
shire. Do you know it, reader, a realistic imita-
ton of brickwork ? It seems to have spread
itself over Suffolk as well as the Midlands.

INTRODUCTION 19

After stripping off seven papers the beautiful
upright beams revealed themselves, and the
central arch, all in black oak like the floor.

We whitewashed the plaster between the
beams, scratched the beams themselves till they
were restored to their natural colour, and rejoiced
exceedingly. We rejoice to this day.

But the hare is still there.

Our cottage is on the edge of a little wood.
Great forest trees stand like sentinels within a
stone's throw of the house. In front of the draw-
ing room windows is a tiny oasis of mown lawn,
bounded by a low wall clambered over by humps
of jasmine and montana, and that loveliest of
single roses scinica anemone. The low wall
divides the mown grass from the rough broken
ground which slopes upwards behind it till it
loses itself among the tree trunks. Here tall
families of pink and white foxgloves and great
yellow lupins jostle each other, and it is all
the Home Ruler can do to keep the peace between
them, and to persuade them to abide in their
respective places between stretches of shining
ground ivy and blue periwinkle ; all dappled and
checkered by the shadows of the over- arching trees.

If you walk down that narrow path between
the leaning twisted hollies you come suddenly
upon an opening in the thicket, and a paved path
leads you into another little garden.

This also has its bodyguard of oaks and
poplars on the one side, and on the other the high

20 INTRODUCTION

hedge dividing it from the lane, over which tilt
the red roofs of the cottages.

Within the enclosure a family of giant docks
spread themselves in the long grass, and ancient
fruit trees sprawl on their hands and knees, each
with a rose tree climbing over its ungainliness,
making a low inner barrier between the tall
trees, and the little low-lying burnished garden
in the midst. Here ranged and grouped colonies
of rejoicing plants follow each other into flower in
an ordered sequence, all understood and cherished
by the earth-ingrained hands of the Home Ruler.

Some few disappointments there are, but many
successes. Wire worm may get in. Cuttings
may "damp off." Brompton stocks may not
always "go through the winter." But the flowers
respond in that blessed little place. They do
their best, for the best has been done for them.
If it is essential to their well being that their feet
should be shaded from the sun, their feet are
shaded, by some well-bred low growing plant
in front of them, which does not interfere
with them. If they need the morning sun they
are placed where its rays can pour upon them.

It[is a garden of vivid noonday sunshine, when
we sit and bask among the rock pinks on the
central bit of brickwork ; and of long velvet
afternoon shadows : a garden of quiet conversa-
tion, and peaceful intercourse, and of endless,
endless loving labour in sun and rain.

I contribute the quiet conversation, and the
Home Ruler contributes the loving labour ; and,

INTRODUCTION 21

while we thus each do our share, the manifold
voices of the village reach us through the tall
hedge : the cries of the children playing by the
bridge, the thin complaint of the goats, the jingle
of harness, and the thud of ponderous slow step-
ing hoofs, the whistle of the lad sitting sideways
on the leading horse ; all the paisible rumeur of
the pleasant communal life of which we are a part.

Our village is not really called Riff. It has a
beautiful and ancient name, which I shall not
disclose, but I don't mind telling you that it is
close to Mouse Hold,1 a hamlet in the boggy
meadows beyond the Deben ; and not so very
far from Gobblecock Hall. Of course if you are
not Suffolk born and bred you will think I am
trying to be humourous and that I have invented
this interesting old English name. I can only
say. Look in any good map of Suffolk. You will
find Gobblecock Hall on it near the coast. Riff
is only a few miles from Kesgrave Church, where
you can still see the tombstone of the gipsy
queen in the churchyard. The father of one of the
oldest inhabitants of Riff witnessed the immense
concourse of gipsies who attended the funeral.
Riff is within an easy walk of Boulge, where
Fitzgerald lies under his little Persian rose tree,
covered in summer with tiny yellow roses. You
see how central Riff is. And, if you cross the
Deben, and walk steadily up the low hill to that
broomy, gorsy, breezy upland, Bromswell Heath,

1 Probably originally Morass Hold.

22 INTRODUCTION

then you stand on the very spot where, a little
over a hundred years ago, British troops were
encamped to await Napoleon. And a few years
ago our soldiers assembled there once more to
resist the invasion which Kitchener at any rate
expected, and which it now seems evident
Germany intended.

We in Riff learned the meaning of war early
in the day. Which of us will forget the first
Zeppelin raid, and later on the sight of torn,
desolated Woodbridge the day after it was
bombed : the terrified blanched faces peeping
out from the burst doorways, the broken smoking
buildings, the high piles of shredded matchwood
that had been houses yesterday, the blank
incredulous faces of friends and neighbours. No
doubt our faces were as incredulous as those we
saw around us. It seemed as if it could not,
could not be ! We had seen photographs of
similar havoc in Belgium and France, but
Woodbridge ! our own Woodbridge, that pleasant
shopping town on its tidal river with the wild
swans on it. It could not be ! But so it was.

Yes, the war reached us early, and it left us
late. Riff suffered as every other village in Great
Britain suffered. Our ruddy cheerful lads went
out one after another. Twenty-two came back
no more.

As the years passed we became inured to raids.
Nevertheless, just as we remember the first, so

INTRODUCTION 23

all of us at Riff remember the last in the small
hours of Sunday morning, June i7th, 1917.

I was awakened as often before, by what
seemed at first a distant thunderstorm, at about
3 o'clock in the morning.

I got up and went downstairs in the dark. By
this time the bombs were falling nearer and
nearer. As I felt my way down the narrow stair-
case it seemed as if the trembling walls were no
stronger than paper. The cottage shook and
shook as in a palsy, and C. and E. and I took
refuge in the garden. M. kept watch in the lane.
It was, as far as I could see, pitch dark, but their
younger eyes descried, though mine did not, the
wounded Zeppelin lumber heavily over us inland,
throwing out its bombs. Our ears were deafened
by the sharp rat-tat-tat of the machine guns, and
by our own frantic anti-aircraft fire. In that
pandemonium we stood, how long I know not,
unaware that a neighbour's garden was being
liberally plastered by our own shrapnel. Then,
for the second time, the stricken airship blundered
over us, this time in the direction of the sea.

When it had passed overhead we groped our
way through the cottage, and came out on its
eastern side. A mild light met our eyes. The
dawn was at hand. It trembled, flushed and
stainless as the heart of a wild rose, behind the
black clustered roofs of the village, and the low
church tower.

And above the roofs, some miles away, out-
lined against the sky, hung the crippled Zeppelin,

24 INTRODUCTION

motionless, tilted. We watched it fascinated.
Slowly we saw it right itself, and begin to move.
It headed towards the coast, but it could only
flee into its worst enemy — the dawn. It travelled,
it dwindled. The sea haze began to enfold it.
The clamour of our gun fire suddenly ceased. It
toiled like a wounded sea bird towards its only
hope — the sea.

As we watched it fierce wings whirred unseen
overhead. Our aeroplanes had taken up the
chase.

The Zeppelin travelled, travelled.

What was that ?

A spark of light appeared upon it. It stretched,
it leaped into a great flame. The long body of
the Zeppelin was seen to be alight from end to
end.

Then rose simultaneously from every throat in
Riff a shout of triumph, the shrill cries of the
children joining with the voices of the elders.

And, after that one cry, silence fell upon us, as
we watched that towering furnace of flame,
freighted with agony, sink slowly to the earth.
At last it sank out of sight, leaving a pillar of
smoke to mark its passing.

So windless was the air that the smoke re-
mained like some solemn upraised finger pointing
from earth to heaven.

No one stirred. No one spoke. The light grew.
And, in the silence of our awed hearts, a cuckoo
near at hand began calling gently to the new day,
coming up in peace out of the shining east.

t
The Romance of His Life

I HAVE always believed that the exact moment
when the devil entered into Barrett was four
forty-five p.m. on a certain June afternoon, when
he and I were standing at Parker's door in the

court at s. He says himself that he was as

pure as snow till that instant, and that if the
entente cordiale between himself and that very
interesting and stimulating personality had not
been established he is convinced he would either
have died young of excessive virtue, or have
become a missionary. I don't know about that.
I only know the consequences of the entente aged
me. But then Barrett says I was born middle-
aged like Maitland himself, the hero of this
romance, if so it can be called. Barrett calls it a
romance. I call it — I don't know what to call
it, but it covers me with shame whenever I think
of it.

Barrett says that shame is a very wholesome
discipline, a great eye-opener and brain stretcher,
and one he has unfortunately never had the
benefit of, so he feels it a duty to act so as to
make the experience probable in the near future.

25

26 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

On this particular afternoon we had both just
bicycled back together from lunching with
Parker's aunt at Ely, and she had given me a
great bunch of yellow roses for Parker and a
melon, and we were to drop them at Parker's.
And here we were at Parker's, and apparently
he was out or asleep, and not to be waked by
Barrett's best cat-call. And as we stood at his
door, Barrett clutching the melon, I found the
roses were not in my hand. Where on earth had
I put them down ? At Maitland's door, perhaps,
where we had run up expecting to find him, or at
Bradley 's, where we had stopped a moment.
Neither of us could remember.

I was just going back for them when whom
should we see coming sailing across the court in
cap and gown but old Maitland in his best
attitude, chin up, book in hand, signet ring
showing.

Parker's aunt used to chaff us for calling him
old, and said we thought everyone of forty-five
was tottering on the brink of the tomb. And so
they mostly are, I think, if they are Dons. I
have heard other men who have gone down say
that you leave them tottering, and you come back
ten years later and there they are, still tottering.

Barrett said Maitland did everything as if his
portrait was being taken doing it, and that his
effect on others was never absent from his mind.
I don't know about that, but certainly in his

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE 27

talk he was always trying to impress on us his
own aspect of himself.

If it was a fine morning and he wished to be
thought to be enjoying it, he would rub his hands
and say there was not a happier creature on
God's earth than himself. He pined to be
thought unconventional, and after drawing our
attention to some microscopic delinquency, he
would regret that there had been no fairy god-
mother at hand at his christening to endow him
with a proper deference for social conventions.
If he gave a small donation to any college scheme
the success of which was not absolutely assured,
he would shake his head and say : "I know very
well that all you youngsters laugh in your sleeve
at the way I lead forlorn hopes, but it is a matter
of temperament. I can't help it."

The personal reminiscences with which his
conversation was liberally strewed were in-
geniously calculated to place him in a picturesque
light. Parker's aunt says that stout men are
more in need of a picturesque light than thin
ones. Maitland certainly was stout and short,
with a thick face and no neck, and a perfectly
round head, set on his shoulders like an ill-
balanced orange, or William Tell's apple. We
should never have noticed what he looked like
if it had not been for his illusion that he was
irresistible to the opposite sex ; at least, he was
always adroitly letting drop things which showed,

tS THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

if you put two and two together, and he never
made the sum very difficult — what ravages he
inadvertently made in feminine bosoms, how
careful he was, how careful he had learnt to be
not to raise expectations. He was always
pathetically anxious to impress on us that he
had given a good deal of pain. But whether it
was really an hallucination on his part that he
was hopelessly adored by women, or whether the
hallucination consisted in the belief that he had
succeeded in convincing his little college world
of his powers of fascination, I cannot tell you. I
don't pretend to know everything like Barrett.

Parker's aunt told Parker in confidence, who
told Barrett and me in confidence, that she had
once, on his own suggestion, asked Maitland to
tea, but had never repeated the invitation,
though he told her repeatedly that he frequently
passed her door on the way to the cathedral,
because he had hinted to mutual friends that a
devoted friendship was, alas ! all he felt able to
give in that quarter, but was not what was
desired by that charming lady.

And now here was Maitland advancing towards
us with one of Parker's aunt's yellow roses in his
buttonhole.

We both instantly realised what had happened.
I had left the roses at his door by mistake. How
gratified she would be when she heard of it !
I giggled.

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE 29

"Don't say a word about them, "hissed Barrett,
her fervent admirer, as Maitland came up to us.

"Won't you both come in to tea," he said
genially. "Parker's out."

We left Parker's melon on his doorstep to
chaperon itself, and turned back with him. And
sure enough, on his table was the bunch of roses.

"Glorious, aren't they ? " said Maitland, wav-
ing his signet ring toward them.

I do believe he had asked us in because of them.
He loved cheap effects.

We both looked at them in silence.

"The odd thing is that they were left here
without a line or a card or anything while I was
out."

"Then you don't know who sent them," said
Barrett, casting a warning glance at me.

"Well, yes and no. I don't actually know for
certain, but I think I can guess. I fancy I know
my own faults as well as most men, and I flatter
myself I am not a coxcomb, but still — "

I giggled again. I should be disappointed in
Parker, who was on very easy terms with his
aunt if he did not score off her before she was
much older.

"You are not, I hope, expecting me or even

poor Jones (Jones is me) to be so credulous as to

believe a man sent them," said Barrett severely.

When Maitland was in what Barrett call his

'conquering hero mood" he did not resent these

3o THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

impertinences, at least not from Barrett. "If
you are, I must remind you that there are limits
as to what even little things like us can swallow."

"Barrett, you are incorrigible. Cherchez la
femme," said Maitland with evident gratification,
counting spoonfuls of tea into the teapot. He
often said he liked keeping in touch with the
young life of the University. "One, two, three,
and one for the pot. Just so ! I don't set up
to be a lady-killer, but — "

"Oh ! oh ! " from Barrett.

"I'm a confirmed old bachelor, a grumpy,
surly recluse wedded to my pipe, but for all that
I have eyes in my head. I know a pretty woman
from a plain one, I hope, even though I don't
personally want to "domesticate the recording
angel."1

"She'll land you yet unless you look out," said
Barrett with decision. "I foresee that I shall be
supporting your faltering footsteps to the altar
in a month's time. She'll want a month to get
her clothes. Is the day fixed yet ? "

"What nonsense you talk. I never met such
a sentimentalist as you, Barrett. I assure you I
don't even know her name. But it has not been
possible for me to help observing that a lady, a
very exquisite young lady, has done me the
honour to attend all my lectures, and to listen

1 1 thought the recording angel funny at the time until Barrett
told me afterwards that it was cribbed from Rhoda Broughton.

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE 31

with the most rapt attention to my poor words.
And last time, only yesterday, I noted the fact,
ahem ! that she wore a rose, a yellow rose, pre-
sumably plucked from the same tree as these."

There were, I suppose, in our near vicinity,
about a hundred and fifty yellow rose trees in
bloom at that moment. Barrett must have
known that. Nevertheless, he nodded his head
and said gravely :

"That proves it."

On looking over these pages he affirms that
this and not earlier was the precise moment when
the devil entered into him, supplying, as he
says, a long felt though unrealised want.

"I seldom look at my audience when I am
lecturing," continued Maitland. "I am too
much engrossed with my subject. But I could
not help noticing her absorbed attention, so
different from that of most women. Why they
come to lectures I don't know."

"I think I have seen the person you mean,"
said Barrett, in a perfectly level voice. "I don't
know who she is, but I saw her waiting under an
archway after chapel last Sunday evening. I
noticed her because of her extreme good looks.
She was evidently watching for someone. When
the congregation had all passed out she turned
away."

"I should have liked to thank her," said
Maitland regretfully. "It seems so churlish,

32 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

so boorish, not to say a word. You have no
idea who she was ? "

"None," said Barrett.

Shortly afterwards we took our leave, but not
until Maitland had been reminded by the lady's
appearance of a certain charming woman of
whom he had seen a good deal at one time in
years gone by, who, womanlike, had been unable
to understand the claims which the intellectual
life make on a man, and who had, in consequence,
believed him cold and quarrelled with him to his
great regret, because it was impossible for him
to dance attendance on her as she expected, and
as he would gladly have done had he been a man
of leisure. Having warned us young tyros against
the danger of frankness in all dealings with
women, and how often it had got him into hot
water with the sex, he bade us good evening.

As we came out we saw across the court that
the melon had been taken in, so judged that
Parker had returned. He had. We were so
tickled by the way Maitland had accounted for
the roses that we quite forgot to score off Parker
about them, and actually told him what Maitland
supposed.

Barrett then suggested that we should at once
form a committee to deliberate on the situation.
Parker and I did not quite see why a committee
was necessary to laugh at old Maitland, but we
agreed.

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE 33

"Did you really see the woman he means, or
were you only pulling Maitland's leg ? " I asked.

"I saw her all right," retorted Barrett. "Don't
you remember, Parker, how I nudged you when
she passed ,."

Parker nodded.

"She was such a picture that I asked who she
was, and found she was a high school mistress,
the niece of old Cooper, the vet. She is going to
be married to a schoolmaster, and go out to
Canada with him. I don't mind owning I was
rather smitten myself, or I should not have taken
the trouble."

"She has left Cambridge," said Parker slowly.
"When I got out of the train half-an-hour ago
she was getting in. Cooper was seeing her off."

"Oh, don't— don't tell poor old Maitland," I
broke in. "Let him go on holding out his chest
and thinking she sent him the roses. It won't
matter to her, if she is off to Canada, and never
coming back any more. And it will do him such
a lot of good."

"I don't mean to tell him — immediately,"
said Barrett ominously. "I think with you he
ought to have his romance. Now I know she is
safely gone forever, though I don't mind owning
it gives me a twinge to think she is throwing
herself away on a schoolmaster : but as she
really can't come back and raise a dust, gentle-
men, I lay a proposal before the committee, that

34 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

the lady who sent the roses should follow them
up with a little note."

The committee agreed unanimously, and we
decided, at least Barrett decided, that he should
compose the letter, and Parker, who was rather
good at a feigned handwriting, should copy it
out.

Parker and I wanted Barrett to make the letter
rather warm, and saying something compli-
mentary about Maitland's appearance, but
Barrett would not hear of it. I did not see
where the fun came in if it was just an ordinary
note, but Barrett was adamant. He said he had
an eye on the future.

He put his head in his hands, and thought a
lot and then scribbled no end, and then tore it up,
and finally produced the stupidest little common-
place letter you ever saw with simply nothing
in it, saying how much she had profited by his
lectures and rot of that kind. I was dreadfully
disappointed, for I had always thought Barrett
as clever as he could stick. He said it was an
awful grind for him to be commonplace even for
a moment, and that by rights I ought to have
composed the letter, but that it was no more use
expecting anything subtle from me than a
Limerick from an archbishop.

He proceeded to read it aloud.

"But how is he to know it is the person who
sent him the roses ? " said Parker, "and how is

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE 35

he to answer if she does not give him an address ?
Hang it all. He ought to be able to answer.
Give the poor devil a chance."

"He shall be given every chance," said Barrett.
"But don't you two prize idiots see that we
can't give a real name and address because he
would certainly go there ? "

"Not a bit of it. He's as lazy as a pig. He
never goes anywhere. He says he hasn't time.
He's been seccotined into his armchair for the
last ten years."

"I tell you he would go on all fours from here
to Ely if he thought there was the chance of a
woman looking at him when he got there."

"Then how is he to answer ? " said Parker, who
always had to have everything explained to him.

"I am just coming to that. I don't say any-
thing in the note about the roses, you observe.
I am far too maidenly. But I just add one tiny
postscript :

"If you do not regard this little note as an un-
warrantable intrusion, please wear one of my roses on
Sunday morning at chapel, even if it is faded, as a sign
that you have forgiven my presumption in writing these
few lines."

"That's not bad," said Parker suddenly.

"Now," said Barrett, tossing the sheet over to
him, "you copy that out in a fist that you can
stick to, because it will be the first of a long
correspondence."

"We've not settled her name yet," I suggested.

36 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"Maud," said Barrett with decision. "What
else could it be ? "

The letter was written on an unstamped sheet
of paper, was carefully directed — not quite
correctly. Barrett insisted on that, and posted
it himself.

The following Sunday we were all in our places
early, and sure enough, Maitland, who came in
more like a conquering hero than ever, was
wearing a faded yellow rose in his buttonhole.
He touched it in an absent manner once or twice
during the service, and sat with his profile
sedulously turned toward the congregation. He
was not quite so bad profile because it did not
show the bulging of his cheeks. As he came out
he looked about him furtively, almost shyly.
He evidently feared she was not there. Barrett
and I joined him, and engaged him in conversa-
tion (though we had some difficulty in dragging
him from the chapel), in the course of which he
mentioned that he had intended to go to his
sister at Newmarket for Sunday, but a press of
work had obliged him to give up his visit at the
last moment.

Poor Maitland 1 When he left us that morning,
and Barrett and I looked at each other, I felt
a qualm of pity for him, I knew how ruthless
Barrett was, and that he was doomed.

But if I realised Barrett's ruthlessness, I had
not realised his cunning. His next move was

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE 37

masterly, though I did not think so at the time.
He was as cautious and calculating as if his life
depended on it. He got some note-paper with a
little silver M. on a blue lozenge on it and wrote
another note. He was going to Farnham for a
few days to stay with his eldest brother, who was
quartered there. And in this note Maud —
Maitland's Maud as we now called her — diffi-
dently ventured to ask for elucidation on one or
two points of the lectures which had proved too
abstruse for her feminine intellect. She showed
considerable intelligence for a woman, and real
knowledge of the lectures — I did that part — and
suggested that as her letters, if addressed to her,
were apt to go to her maiden aunt of the same
name with whom she was staying, and who was
a very old-fashioned person, totally opposed to
the higher education of women — that if he was
so good as to find time to answer her questions
it would be best to direct to her at the Post
Office, Farnham, under her initials M.M., where
she could easily send for them.

I betted a pound to a penny that Maitland
would not rise to this bait, and Barrett took it.
I told him you could see the hook through the
worm. Parker was uneasy, even when Barrett,
had explained to him that it was impossible for
us to get into trouble in the matter.

"You always say that, "said Parker, with har-
rowing experiences in the back-ground of his mind.

38 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"Well, I say it again. I know your powers
of obtruding yourself on the notice of the authori-
ties, but how do even you propose to wedge
yourself into a scrape on this occasion ? With
all your gifts in that line you simply can't do it."

Parker ruminated.

"Ought we to—"

"Ought we to what ? "

"To pull his leg to such an extent ? Isn't it
taking rather a — rather a — er responsibility ? "

"Responsibility sits as lightly on me as dew
upon the rose," said Barrett. "You copy out
that."

Parker copied it out and Barrett went off to
Farnham. A few days later he re-appeared. I
was smoking in Parker's room when he came in.

He sat down under the lamp, drew a fat letter
from his waistcoat pocket, and read it aloud to
us. It was Maitland's answer.

It really was a ghastly letter, the kind of
literary preachy rot which you read in a book,
which I never thought people really wrote, not
even people like Maitland, who seem to live in a
world of shams. It was improving and patronis-
ing and treacly, and full of information, partly
about the lectures, but mostly about himself.
He came out in a very majestic light you may
be sure of that. And at the end he begged her
not to hesitate to write to him again if he could
be of the least use to her, that busy as he

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE 39

undoubtedly was, his college work never seemed
in his eyes as important as real human needs.

"He's cribbed that out of a book," interrupted
Parker. "Newby the tutor in 'Belchamber,'
who is a most awful prig, says those very words."

"Prigs all say the same things," said Barrett
airily. "If Maitland read 'Belchamber,' he
would think Newby was a caricature of him.
He'd never believe that he was plagiarising
Newby. The cream of the letter is still to come,"
and he went on reading.

Maitland patted the higher education of
women on the head, and half hinted at a meeting,
and then withdrew it again, saying that some of
the difficulties in her mind, which he recognised
to be one of a high order, might be more easily
eliminated verbally, and that he should be at
Farnham during the vacation, but that he
feared his stay would be brief, and his time was
hopelessly bespoken beforehand, etc., etc.

"He might be an Adonis," said Parker.
"He'll be coy and virginal next."

"He'll be a lot of things before long," said
Barrett grimly. "Get out your inkpot, Parker.
I'm going to have another shy at him."

"You're not going to suggest a meeting ! For
goodness sake, Barrett, be careful. You will be
saying Jones must dress up as a woman next."

"Well, if he does, I won't," I said. "I simply
won't."

40 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

I had taken a good many parts in University
plays.

"The sight of Jones as a female would make any
man's gorge rise," said Barrett contemptuously.
"I know I had to shut my eyes when I made love
to him at 'The Footlights ' last year. I never
knew two such victims of hysteria as you and
Jones. Suggest a meeting ! Maud suggest a
meeting ! What do you know of women ! I
tell you two moral lepers, unfit to tie the shoe-
string of a pure woman like Maud, that it takes a
Galahad like me to deal with a situation of this
kind. What you've got to remember is that
I'm not trying to entangle him."

Cries of "Oh 1 Oh ! " from the Committee.

"I mean Maud isn't. I am, but that's another
thing. You two wretched, whited sepulchres
haven't got hold of the true inwardness of Maud's
character. Your gross, assignating minds don't
apprehend her. Maud is just one of those golden-
haired, white-handed angels who go through life
girthing up a man's ideals ; who exist only in the
imagination of elderly men like Maitland, who
has never seen a woman in his life, and who does
not know that unless they are imbeciles they
draw the line at drivel like that letter. Bless
her ! She's not going to suggest a meeting.
He'll do that and enjoy doing it. Can't you see
Maitland in his new role of ruthless pursuer — the
relentless male ? No more easy conquests for

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE 41

him, sitting in his college chair, mowing them
all down like a Maxim as far as — Ely. He's
got to work this time. I tell you two miserable
poltroons that this is going to make a man of
Maitland. He's been an old woman long
enough."

"All I can say is," said Parker, ignoring the
allusion to Ely," that if the Almighty hasn't a
sense of humour you will find yourself in a tight
place some day, Barrett."

My pen fails me to record the diabolical manner
in which Barrett played with his victim. It
would have been like a cat and mouse if you can
imagine the mouse throwing his chest out and
fancying himself all the time. Barrett inveigled
Maitland into going to Farnham, and accounted
somehow for Maud's . non-appearance at the
interview coyly deprecated by Maud, and conse-
quently hotly demanded by Maitland. He
actually made him shave off his moustache.
Parker and I lost heavily on that. We each bet
a fiver that Barrett would never get it off. It
was a beastly moustache which would have made
any decent woman ill to look at. It did not
turn up at the ends like Barrett's elder brother's,
but grew over his mouth like hart's tongue
hanging over a well. You could see his teeth
through it. Horrible it was. But you can't
help how your hair grows, so I'm not blaming
Maitland, and it was better gone. But we never

42

thought Barrett would have done it. I must
own my opinion of him rose.

And he kept it up all through the long vacation
with a pertinacity I should never have given him
credit for. He took an artistic pride in it, and
the letters were first rate. I did not think so at
first ; I thought them rather washy until I saw
how they took. Barrett said what Maitland
needed was a milk and water diet. He seemed
to know exactly the kind of letter that would
fetch a timid old bachelor. But it was not all
"beer and skittles" for Barrett. He sorely wanted
to make Maud stand up to him once or twice,
and put her foot through his mild platitudes.
He wrote one or two capital letters in a kind of
rage, but he always groaned and tore them up
afterward.

"If Maud has any character whatever," he
sometimes said, "if she shows the least sign
of seeing him except as he shows himself to
her, if she has any interest in life beyond his
lectures, he will feel she is not suited to him,
and he will give his bridle-reins — I mean his
waterproof spats — a shake, and adieu for ever-
more."

Barrett eventually lured Maitland into deep
water, long past the bathing machine of adieu
iorevermore, as he called it. When he was too
cock-o-hoop, we reminded him that, after all, he
was only one of a committee, and that he had

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE 43

been immensely helped by the young woman
herself. She really looked such a saint, and as
innocent as a pigeon's egg.

But Barrett stuck to it that her appearance
ought, on the contrary, to have warned Maitland
off, and that he was an infernal ass to think such
an exquisite creature as that would give a second
thought to a stout old bachelor of forty-five,
looking exactly like a cod that had lain too long
on the slab. I could not see that Maitland was so
very like a cod, but there was a vindictiveness
about Barrett's description of him that I really
think must have been caused by his romantic
admiration of Parker's aunt, and his disgust at
the slight that he felt had been put upon her.
She married again the following year Barrett's
elder brother's Colonel.

Barrett hustled Maitland about till he got
almost thin. He snap-shotted him waiting for
his Maud at Charing Cross station. And he did
not make her write half as often as you would
think. But he somehow egged Maitland on
until, by the middle of the vacation, he had
worked him up into such a state that Barrett
had to send Maud into a rest cure for her health,
so as to get a little rest himself.

When we met at Cambridge in October he had
collected such a lot of material, such priceless
letters, and several good photographs of Mait-
land's back, that he said he thought we were

44 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

almost in a position to discover to him exactly
how he stood.

He threw down his last letter, and as Parker
and I read them, any lurking pity we felt for
him as having fallen into Barrett's clutches,
evaporated.

They showed Maitland at his worst. It was
obviously that he was tepidly in love with Maud,
or rather that he was anxious she should be in
love with him. He said voluntarily all the
things that torture ought not to have been able
to wring out of him. He told her the story of
the woman who had quarrelled with him because
he did not dance attendance on her, and several
other incidents which meant, if they meant
anything, that there was something in his per-
sonality, hidden from his own seaching self-
examination, which was deadly to the peace of
mind of the opposite sex. He was very humble
about it. He did not understand it, but there
it was. He said that he had from boyhood lived
an austere, intellectual life, which he humbly
hoped had not been without effect on the tone
of the college, that he had never met so far any
one whom he could love.

"That's colossal," said Parker, suddenly,
striking the letter. "Never met any one he
could love. He'll never better that."

But Maitland went one better. He said he
still hoped that some day, etc., etc., that he now

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE 45

saw with great self-condemnation that if his
life had been altruistic in some ways, it had been
egotistic in others, as in preferring his own inde-
pendence to the mutual services of affection ;
that he must confess to his shame that he had
received more than his share of love, and that
he had not given out enough.

"He's determined she shall know how irresist-
ible he is," said Barrett. "I had no idea these
early Victorian methods of self-advertisement
were still in vogue even among the most elderly
Dons."

"Hang it all !" blurted out Parker, reddening.
"The matter has gone beyond a joke. We
haven't any right to see his jnind without its
clothes on. You always say the nude is beauti-
ful. But really — Maitland undraped — viewed
through a key-hole, sets my teeth on edge."

"Undraped ? you prude," said Barrett.
"What are you talking about ? Maitland is
clothed up to his eyes in his own illusions. "He's
padded out all round with them back and
front to such an extent that you can't see the least
vestige of the human form divine. Personally,
I don't think he has one. I don't believe he is
a man at all, but just a globular mass of conceit
and unpublished matter, swathed in a college
gown. The thing that revolts me is the way he
postures before her. 'Malvolio and his garters
isn't in it with Maitland. Good Lord I Supposing

46 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

she were a real live woman ! What a mercy
for him that it's only us, that it's all strictly
en famille. I always have said that it's better
to keep women out of love affairs."

"How did you answer this?" said Parker,
pushing the last letter from him in disgust.

"I let him see at last — a little."

"That it was all a joke ? "

"No. That I — that Maud, I mean — cared.
She did not say much. She never does. She
mostly sticks to flowers and sunsets, but she
gave a little hint of it, and threw in at the same
time that she was very much out of health and
going abroad."

"That'll put him off. He'll back out. He
would hate to have a delicate wife. He might
have to look after her, instead of her waiting
hand and foot on him."

"We shall see," said Barrett. "Her last letter
was posted at Dover."

"Well, mind! It's got to be the last," said
Parker decisively. "I had not realised you had
been playing the devil to such an extent as this.
I had a sort of idea that you were only one of a
committee. And what a frightful lot of trouble
you must have taken. I suppose Maud was
always moving about so that he could never
nail her."

"Always, just where I was going, too, by a
curious coincidence. And her old aunt is a

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE 47

regular tartar ; I don't suppose there ever was
such a typical female guardian outside a penny
novelette. But she is turning out a trump now
about taking Maud abroad, I will say that for
her. They remain at Dover a week. I've
arranged for it. I knew you two would wish
me to feel myself quite untrammelled, and,
indeed, I wish it myself. Then we'll hand him
the whole series, and see how he takes it ; and
tell him we've shown it to a few of his most
intimate friends first, and your aunt, Parker —
she'll nearly die of it — and that they are all of
opinion that it's the best thing he has done since
his paper on Bacchylides."

Neither of us answered. In spite of myself I
was sorry for Maitland.

A few days later Barrett came to my rooms.
We knocked on the floor for Parker, and he came
up.

Then he put down a letter on the table and we
read it in silence.

It was just what we expected, an enigmatic,
self-protecting effusion. Maitland was hedging.
He had evidently been put off by Maud's illness,
and talked a great deal about friendship being
the crown of life, and how she must think of
nothing but the care of her health, etc., etc. ;
and he on his side must not be selfish and trouble
her with too many letters, etc.

"Brute," said Parker.

48 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"There's another," said Barrett.

"You don't mean to say you wrote again.
There's not been time."

"No. He wrote again. He doesn't seem to
have been perfectly satisfied with the chivalry
of the letter you've just read. He's always great
on chivalry, you know. And it certainly would
be hard to make that last letter dovetail in with
his previous utterances on a man's instinct to
guard and protect the opposite sex."

Barrett threw down a bulky letter and — may
God forgive us — Parker and I read it together
under the lamp.

"I can't go on," said Parker after a few
minutes.

"You must," said Barrett savagely.

We read it through from the first word to the
last, and as we read Parker's face became as
grave as Barrett's.

It is an awful thing when a poseur ceases to
pose, when an egoist becomes a human being.
But this is what had befallen Maitland. The
thing had happened which one would have
thought could not possibly happen. He had
fallen in love.

I can't put in the whole of his letter here.
Indeed, I don't remember it very clearly. But I
shall not forget the gist of it while I live.

After he had despatched his other letter he
told her the scales of egotism had suddenly

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE 49

dropped from his eyes, and he had realised that
he loved for the first time, and that he could not
face life without her, and that the thought that
he might lose her, had possibly already lost her by
his own fault, was unendurable to him. For in
the new light in which now all was bathed he
realised the meanness of his previous letter, of his
whole intercourse with her : that he had never
for a moment been truthful with her : that he
had attitudinised before her in order to impress
her : that he had always taken the ground that
he was difficult to please, and that many women
had paid court to him, but that it was all
chimerical. No woman had ever cared for him
except his mother, and a little nursery governess
when he was a lad. During the last twenty
years he had made faint, half-hearted attempts
to ingratiate himself with attractive women : and
when the attempts failed, as they always had
failed, he had had the meanness to revenge
himself by implying that his withdrawal had
been caused by their wish to give him more than
the friendship he craved. He had said over and
over again that he valued his independence too
much to marry, but it was not true. He did not
value it a bit. He had been pining to get married
for years and years. He saw now that to say
that kind of thing was only to say in other words
that he had never lived. He had not. He had
only talked about living. He abased himself

50 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

before her with a kind of passion. He told her
that he did not see how any woman, and she
least of all, could bring herself to care for a man
of his age and appearance, even if he had been
simple and humble and sincere, much less one
who had taken trouble to show himself so ignoble,
so petty, so self-engrossed, so arrogant. But the
fact remained that he loved her ; she had un-
consciously taught him to abhor himself, and
he only loved her the more, he worshipped her,
well or ill, kind or unkind, whether she could
return it or not.

We stared at each other in a ghastly silence. I
expected some ribald remark from Barrett, but
he made none.

"What's to be done ? " said Parker at last.

"There's one thing that can't be done," said
Barrett, and I was astonished to see him so
changed, "and that is to show the thing up. It's
not to be thought of."

We both nodded.

"I said it would make a man of him, but I
never in my wildest moments thought it really
would," continued Barrett. "It's my fault.
You two fellows said I should go too far."

We assured him that we were all three equally
guilty.

. "The point is, what's to be done ? " repeated
Parker.

"I've thought it over," said Barrett, putting

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE 51

the letter carefully in his pocket, "and I've come
to the conclusion it must go on. I have not the
heart to undeceive him. And I don't suppose
you two will want to be more down on him than
I am."

"If it goes on he'll find out," I groaned.

"He mustn't be allowed to find out," said
Barrett. "He simply mustn't. I've got to
insure that. I dragged the poor devil in, and
I've got to get him out."

"How will you do it ? "

"Kill her. There's nothing for it but that.
Fortunately she was ill in the vacation. He's
uneasy about her health now, I put her in a rest
cure, if you remember, when he became too
pertinacious, and I was yachting."

"He'll feel her death," said Parker. "It's hard
luck on him."

"Suggest something better then," snapped
Barrett.

But though we thought over the matter until
late into the night we could think of nothing
better. Barrett, who seemed to have mislaid all
his impudent self-confidence, departed at last
saying he would see to it.

"Who would have thought it," said Parker to
me as I followed him to lock him out. "And so
Maitland is a live man, after all." We stood and
looked across the court to Maitland 's windows,
who was still burning the midnight oil.

52 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"You don't think he'll ever get wind of this,"
I said.

"You may trust Barrett," Parker replied.
"Good-night."

Barrett proved trustworthy. He and Parker
laid their heads together, and it was finally
decided that Maud's aunt should write Maitland
a letter from Paris describing her sudden death,
and how she had enjoined on her aunt to break
it to Maitland, and to send him the little ring she
always wore. After much cogitation they decided
that Maud should send him a death-bed message,
in which she was to own that she loved him.
Barrett thought it would comfort him immensely
if she had loved him at first sight, so he put it in.
And though he was frightfully short of money he
went up to London and got a very nice little ring
with a forget-me-not in turquoises on it, for the
same amount he had won off us about Maitland 's
moustache. I think he was glad as it was blood
money in a way (if you can call a moustache
blood) that it should go back to Maitland.

The old aunt's letter was a masterpiece. At
any other time Barrett's artistic sense would have
revelled in it, but he was out of spirits, and only
carried the matter through by a kind of dogged-
ness. The letter was prim and stilted, but
humane, and the writer was obviously a little
hurt by the late discovery that her dear niece
had concealed anything from her. She returned

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE 53

all the letters which she said her niece had
evidently treasured, and said that she was
returning heartbroken to her house in Pimlico
the same day, and would, of course, see him if he
wished it, but she supposed that one so busy as
Maitland would hardly be able to spare the time.
The letter was obviously written under the
supposition that the address in Pimlico was
familiar to him. It was signed in full. Yours
faithfully, Maud Markham.

Barrett got a friend whom he could rely on to
post the packet on his way through Paris.

I don't know how Maitland took the news. I
don't know what he can have thought of his
grisly letters when he saw them again. But I do
know that he knocked up and had to go away.

There is one thing I admire about Barrett.
He did not pretend he did not feel Maitland 's
illness, though I believe it was only gout. He
did not pretend he was not ashamed of himself.
He never would allow that we were equally
guilty. And when Maitland came back rather
thinner and graver, we all noticed that he treated
him with respect. And he never jeered at him
again. Maitland regained his old self-com-
placency in time and was dreadfully mysterious
and Maitlandish about the whole affair. I have
seen Barrett wince when he made vague allu-
sions to the responsibility of being the object of a
great passion, and the discipline of suffering.

54 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

But he had suffered in a way. He really had.
And when the Bursar's wife died Maitland was
genuinely kind. He shot off lots of platitudes
of course ; but on previous occasions when he
had said he had been stirred to the depths he only
meant to the depth of a comfortable arm-chair.
Now it was platitudes and actions mixed. He
actually heaved himself out of his armchair, and
exerted himself on behalf of the poor, dreary
little bounder, took him walks, and sat with him
in an evening — his sacred evenings. To think of
Maitland putting himself out for anyone ! It
seemed a miracle.

After a time it was obvious that the incident
had added a new dignity and happiness to his
life. He settled down so to speak, into being an
old bachelor, and grew a beard, and did not worry
about women any more. He felt he had had his
romance.

I don't know how it was, but we all three felt
a kind of lurking respect for him after what had
happened. You would have thought that what
we knew must have killed such a feeling, especially
as it wasn't there before. But it didn't. On
the contrary. And Maitland felt the change,
and simply froze on to us three. He liked us all,
but Barrett best.

The Dark Cottage

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed

Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.

Edmund Waller.

PART I

1915

JOHN DAMER was troubled for his country and
his wife and his child.

At first he had been all patriotism and good
cheer. "It will be a short war and a bloody one.
The Russians will be in Berlin by Christmas.
We shall sweep the German flag from the seas.
We are bound to win."

He had stood up in his place in the House and
had said something of that kind, and had been
cheered.

But that was a year ago.

Now the iron had entered into England's soul,
and into his soul. He had long since volunteered,
and he was going to France to-morrow after an
arduous training. He had come home to say
good-bye.

He might never come back. He might never
see his Catherine, his beautiful young wife, again,

55

56 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

or his son Michael, that minute, bald, amazing
new comer with the waving clenched fists, and
the pink soles as soft as Catherine's cheek.

And as John Darner, that extremely able
successful wealthy man of thirty, sat on the
wooden bench in the clearing he suddenly
realised that) for the first time in his life, he was
profoundly unhappy.

How often he had come up here by the steep
path through the wood, as a child, as a lad, as a
man, and had cast himself down on the heather,
and had looked out across that wonderful
panorama of upland and lowland, with its
scattered villages and old churches, and the wide
band of the river taking its slow curving course
among the level pastures and broad water
meadows.

That river had given him the power to instal
electric light in his home, the dignified Eliza-
bethan house, standing in its level gardens, below
the hill. He could look down on its twisted
chimneys and ivied walls as he sat. How
determined his father had been against such an
innovation as electric light, but he had put it in
after the old man's death. There was enough
water power to have lit forty houses as large as
his.

Far away in the haze lay the city where his
factories were. Their great chimneys were
visible even at this distance belching forth smoke,

THE DARK COTTAGE 57

which, etherealised by distance, hung like a blue
cloud over the city. He liked to look at it.
That low lying cloud reminded him of his great
prosperity. And all the coal he used for the
furnaces came from his own coal fields.

But who would take care of all the business he
had built up if he fell in this accursed war ? Who
would comfort Catherine, and who would bring
up his son when he grew beyond his mother's
control ?

Yet this was England, spread out before his
eyes, England in peril calling to him her son who
dumbly loved her, to come to her aid.

His eyes filled with tears, and he did not see
his wife till she was close beside him, standing
in a thin white gown, holding her hat by a long
black ribbon, the sunshine on her amber hair.

She was pale, and her very beauty seemed
veiled by grief.

She sat down by him, and smiled valiantly at
him. Presently she said gently.

"Perhaps in years to come, John, you and I
shall sit together on this bench as old people, and
Michael will be very kind, but rather critical of us,
as quite behind the times."

And then had come the parting, the crossing,
the first sound as of distant thunder ; and then
interminable days of monotony ; and mud, and
lack of sleep, and noise unceasing ; and a certain
gun which blew out the candle in his dug-out

58 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

every time it fired — and then \ a rending of the
whole world, and himself standing in the midst
of entire chaos and overthrow, with blood running
down his face.

"I'm done for," he said, as he fell forward into
an abyss of darkness and silence, beyond the roar
of the guns.

PART II
1965

It was fifty years later.

Michael's wife, Serena, was waiting for her
husband. The gallery in which she sat was full
of memorials of the past. The walls were
covered with portraits of Darners. Michael's
grandfather in a blue frock coat and light grey
trousers. Michael's father, John Darner, ruddy
and determined in tweeds, with a favourite dog.
Michael himself, not so ruddy, nor so determined,
in white smock and blue stockings. Michael's
mother, beautiful and austere in her robe of
office.

Presently an aeroplane droned overhead, which
she knew meant the departure of the great Indian
doctor, and a moment later Michael came slowly
down the landing steps in the garden, and
entered the gallery.

THE DARK COTTAGE 59

"The operation has been entirely successful,"
he said.

They looked gravely at each other.

"It seems incredible," she said.

"He said it was a simple case, that all through
those years while Father was unconscious the
skull had been slowly drawing together and
mending itself, that he only released a slight
lesion in the brain. He has gone back to Luck-
now for an urgent case, but he says he will look
in again in a couple of days time if I let him know
there is an adverse symptom. He said he felt
sure all would go well, but that we must guard
him from sudden shocks, and break to him very
gradually that it is fifty years since he was hit
at Ypres."

"He'll wake up in his own room where he has
lain so long," said Serena.

"Has the nurse changed yet ? "

"Yes. We made up the uniform from the old
illustrated papers. Blue gown, white cap and a
red cross on the arm."

"We had better get into our things, too," said
Michael nervously.

"The blue serge suit is on your bed, and a
collar and a tie. I found them in the oak chest.
They must have been forgotten."

"And you ? "

"I will wear your Mother's gown which she
wore at your christening. She kept it all her life. ' '

60 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

A few minutes later Michael, uneasy in a serge
suit which was too tight for him, and his wife
in a short grey gown entered the sick room and
sat down one on each side of the bed. The nurse,
excited and self-conscious in her unfamiliar
attire, withdrew to the window.

The old, old man on the bed stirred uneasily,
and his white beard quivered. His wide eyes
looked vacantly at his son, as they had looked at
him all Michael's life. Serena, with a hand that
trembled a little, poured a few drops into a spoon,
and put them into the half-open lips.

Then they held their breath and watched.

John Darner frowned. A bewildered look
came into his vacant eyes, and he closed them.
And he, who had spoken no word for fifty years,
said in a thin quavering voice :

"The guns have ceased."

He opened his eyes suddenly. They wandered
to the light, and fell upon the nurse near the
window.

"I am in hospital," he said.

"No. You are in your own home," said
Michael, laying his hand on the ancient wrinkled
hand.

The dim sunken eyes turned slowly in the
direction of the voice.

"Father," said the old man looking full at
Michael. "Father ! well, you do look blooming."

The colour rushed to Michael's face. He had

THE DARK COTTAGE 61

expected complications, and had prepared num-
berless phrases in his mind to meet imaginary
dilemmas. But he had never thought of this.

"Not Father," said Serena intervening. "You
are forgetting. Father died before you married,
and you put up that beautiful monument to him
in the Church."

"So I did," said the old man, testily. "So I
did, but he is exactly like him all the same, only
Father never wore his clothes too tight for him
and a made up tie — never."

Michael, the best dressed man of his day, was
bereft of speech.

"You're a little confused still," said Serena.
"You were wounded in the head at Ypres. You
have been ill a long time."

There was a silence.

"I remember," said John Darner at last.
"Have they taken the Ridge ? "

"Yes, long ago."

"Long ago ? Oh ! can it be — is it possible ?
Have we ? " — the old man reared himself suddenly
in bed, and raised two thin gnarled arms. "Have
we — won the war ? "

"Yes," said Michael, as Serena put her arms
round his father, and laid him back on his
pillow. "We have won the war."

John Darner lay back panting, trembling from
head to foot.

"Thank God," he said, and in his sunken

62 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

lashless eyes two tears gathered, and ran down
the grey furrows of his cheeks, and lost themselves
in his long white beard.

They gave him the sedative which the doctor
had left ready for him, and when he had sunk
back into unconsciousness, they stole out of the
room.

They went back to the picture gallery looking
on the gardens, and Michael gazed long at the
portrait of his grandfather in the blue frock coat.

"Am I so like him ? " he said with a sort of
sob.

"Very like."

He sat down and hid his face in his hands.

"Poor soul," he said. "Poor soul. He's up
against it. Do you know I had almost forgotten
we had 'won the war' as he called it. There have
been so many worse conflicts since that act of
supreme German folly and wickedness."

"Not what he would call wars," said Serena.
"He only means battles with soldiers in uniforms,
and trenches and guns."

"How on earth are we to break to him that his
wife is dead, and that I am his son, and that he is
eighty years of age, and that Jack is his grand-
son."

"It must come to him gradually."

"In the meanwhile I shall take off these vile
clothes and get back into my own. Serena, what
can a made-up tie be, and why is it wrong ? "

THE DARK COTTAGE 63

Michael tore off his tie and looked resentfully
at it at arm's length. "It is just like the pictures,
it seems correct, and it fastens all right with a
hook and eye."

"It is the first time your taste in dress has
been questioned, and naturally it pricks," said
Serena smiling at her husband. "It is lucky
Jack did not hear it."

"I don't know who Jack inherits his slovenli-
ness and his clumsiness from," said Michael.
"Why on earth can't he sit on his smock without
crumpling it. I can. He may be a great
intellect, I think he is ; he takes after my mother,
there is no doubt, but he can't fold his cloak on
his shoulder, he can't help a woman into her
aeroplane, and he is so careless that he can't
alight in London on a roof without coming down
either on the sky doorway, or the sky-light. He
has broken so many sky-lights and jammed so
many roof doors that nowadays he actually goes
to ground and sneaks up in the lift."

Serena was accustomed to these outbursts of
irritation. They meant that her nervous, highly
strung Michael was perturbed about something
else. In this case the something else was not
far to seek. He recurred to it at once.

"Will Father ever understand about Jack and
Catherine ? Will he ever in his extreme old age
understand about anything? "

"His mind is still thirty," said Serena. "The

64 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

Iceland brain specialist said that as well as Ali
Khan, and all the other doctors. That is where
they say the danger lies, and where the tragedy
lies."

"But how are we to meet it," said Michael
walking up and down. Presently he stopped in
front of his wife and said as one who has solved a
problem !

"I think on the whole I had better leave the
matter of breaking things to Father entirely in
your hands. It will come better from you than
from me."

And the pictures of the various wives of the
various ancestors heard once more the familiar
phrase, to which their wifely ears had been so
well accustomed in their day from the lips of
their lords, when anything uncomfortable had

to be done.

* » *

So Michael left it to Serena, and in the weeks
which followed she guided her father-in-law,
with the endless tenderness of a mother teaching
a child to walk, round some very sharp corners,
which nearly cost him his life, which, so deeply
was her heart wrung for him, she almost hoped
would cost him his life.

With a courage that never failed him, and
which awed her, he learned slowly that he was
eighty years of age, that his wife had died ten
years ago, at sixty, that Michael was his son,

THE DARK COTTAGE 65

and that he had a very clever grandson called
John after him, one of the ablest delegates of the
National Congress, and a grand-daughter called
Catherine. She tried to tell him how they had
lost a few months earlier their eldest son, Jasper,
one of the pioneers of a new movement which was
costing as many lives as flight had cost England
fifty years earlier.

"He failed to materialise at the appointed
spot," said Serena, "I sometimes wonder whether
his Indian instructor kept back something
essential. The Indians have known for genera-
tions how to disintegrate and materialise again in
another place, but it does not come easy to our
Western blood. Jasper went away, but he never
came back."

John Darner looked incredulously at Serena,
and she saw that he had not understood. She

never spoke of it again.

* * #

As the days passed John, fearful always of
some new pang, nevertheless asked many ques-
tions of Serena when he was alone with her.

"Tell me about my wife. She was just twenty
when I left her."

She grieved for you with her whole heart."

"Did she — marry again? I would rather.
know if she did. She would have been right to
do so in order to have someone to help her to
bring up Michael."

66 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"She never married again. How could she
when you were alive, and in the house."

"I forgot."

"She hoped to the last you would be com-
pletely restored. All the greatest doctors in the
world were called in, and they assured her it was
only a question of time. Wonderful discoveries
had been made in the Great War as to wounds
in the head. But they only gradually learnt to
apply them. And the years passed and passed."

"It would have been kinder to let me die."

"Did doctors let people die when you were
young ? "

John shook his head.

"They are the same now," she said.

"And I suppose Catherine spent her life here,
caring for her child, and me, and the poor. She
loved the poor."

"She cared for you and Michael, and she
worked ceaselessly for the cause of the oppressed.
She battled for it. She went into Parliament
as it was called in those days, as soon as the age
for women members was lowered from thirty to
twenty-one. She strove for the restriction of
the White Slave Traffic, and for safeguarding
children from the great disease. Some terrible
evils were abated by her determined advocacy.
But she always said she did not meet the same
opposition the first women doctors did a hundred
years ago, or as Florence Nightingale had to

THE DARK COTTAGE 67

conquer when she set out to improve the condi-
tion of the soldier in hospital and in barracks,
and to reduce the barbarities of the workhouses."

"I should have thought she would have been
better employed in her own home, that she
would have been wiser to leave these difficult
subjects, especially the White Slave Traffic — to
men."

"They had been left to men for a long time,"

said Serena.

# * *

The day came when he was wheeled out into the
garden in the old mahogany wheel chair which
his father had used in the last years of his life.

Serena was sitting beside him. When was
she not beside him ! Michael, at a little distance,
was talking to two of the gardeners.

"Why do Michael and the gardeners wear
smock frocks and blue stockings ? "

"It is so comfortable for one thing, and for
another it is the old national peasant dress. We
naturally all wish to be dressed alike nowadays,
at any rate when we are in the country, just as
the Scotch have always done."

"I remember," said John, "when I was a small
child a splendid old man of ninety, Richard
Hallmark, who used to come to church in a smock
frock and blue worsted stockings and a tall
black hat. His grown-up grandsons in bowler
hats and ill-made coats and trousers looked

68 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

contemptible beside him, but I believe they
were ashamed of him."

His dim eyes scanned the familiar lawns and
terraces of the gardens that had once been his,
and the wide pasture lands beyond.

It was all as it had been in his day. Never-
theless he seemed to miss something.

"The rooks," he said at last. "I don't hear
them. What has become of the rookery in the
elms ? "

"They've gone," she said. "Ten years ago.
Michael felt it dreadfully. Even now he can
hardly speak of it. I hope, Father, you will
never reproach him about it."

"Did he shoot them ? " asked the old man in a
hollow voice.

"No, no. He loved them, just as you did, but
when he installed the Power Station he put it
behind the elm wood to screen it from the house,
and he did not remember, no one remembered,
the rookery. You see rooks build higher than
any other birds, and that was not taken into
account in the radiation. At first everything
seemed all right. The old birds did not appear
to notice it. Even the smallest birds could pass
through the current it was so slight. But when
the spring came it proved too much for the
fledgelings. They died as they were hatched out
in the nest. Then the old birds made the most
fearful outcry, and left the place."

THE DARK COTTAGE 69

"There has always been a rookery at Marcham,"
said John, his voice shaking with anger. "I
suppose I shall hear of Michael shooting the faxes
next."

Serena did not answer. She looked blankly

at him.

# # *

Presently John asked that his chair might be
wheeled up the steep path through the wood to
the little clearing at the top. Michael eagerly
offered to draw the chair himself, but John
refused. He had been distant towards his son
since he had heard about the rookery.

Serena, with the help of a gardener, conveyed
him gently to the heathery knoll, just breaking
into purple.

John looked out once more with deep emotion
at the familiar spot in the golden stillness of the
September afternoon.

"I sat here with my wife the last afternoon
before I went to the front," he said in his reedy
old man's voice. "The heather was out as it is
now."

His eyes turned to the peaceful landscape, the
wooded uplands, the river, the clustered villages,
and far away the city and the tall chimneys of his
factories. As he looked he gave a gasp, and his
jaw fell.

"The factories aren't working," he said.

"Yes, dear, indeed they are."

70 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"They're not. Not a sign of smoke. It used
to hang like a curtain over the city."

"Or like a shroud," said Serena looking fixedly
at him. "It hung over the grimy overworked
mothers, and the poor grimy fledglings of
children in the little huddled houses. The
factories consume their own smoke now."

"There was a law to that effect in my time,"
said John," but nobody obeyed it."

"No one," she agreed. "No one."

As he looked it seemed as if a cloud of dust rose
from the factories, and eddied in the air. As it
drew near it resembled a swarm of bees.

"What on earth is that ? " he asked.

"It is the work people going home to the garden
city behind the hill. It would not do for them
to live near the factories, would it ? The ground
is marshy. There are five or six streams there.
And the gas from the factories has killed all the
trees. What was not good for trees could not be
good for children."

"They all lived there in my time. It was
handy for work. There was always a great
demand for houses. I know I had to build more."

Serena's eyes fell.

The flight of aeroplanes passed almost over-
head followed by two enormous airships waddling
along like monstrous sausages.

"Are those Zeppelins ? "

"They are aero busses built on the German

THE DARK COTTAGE 71

models. They superseded the ground electrics a
few years ago. Those two are to carry back the
workers who are more or less deficient, and can't
be trusted to fly an aeroplane ; the kind of
people who used to be shut up in asylums. They
can do sufficient work under supervision to pay
for their own maintenance. We group with them
the hysterical and the melancholy, and people
who can't take the initiative, and those who suffer
from inertia and tend to become blood suckers
and to live on the energies of others. Their
numbers grow fewer every year."
* * *

Serena and Michael talked long about his
father that night.

"But surely he must have seen it was a crime
to house his factory hands like that."

"He didn't seem to. You see he compared
well with many employers. He doesn't know —
how could he, that his generation let us in. We
paid their bill. All the wickedness and the
suffering of the great black winter had their root
in the blindness and self-seeking of his generation
and the one before him."

"He's never been the same to me since he
found I killed the rookery. What's a rookery
to a thousand children reared in a smoky swamp.
What will he think of me when he hears that I
stalked and shot the last fox in the county ? "

"He must not hear it. We must guard him,"

72 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

said Serena, "and I pray that his life may not be
long. It can't be, I think, and we have been
warned that any sudden shock will kill him. I
wish he could have a joyful shock and die of it,
but there aren't any joyful shocks left for him in
this world I am afraid."

"Have you explained to him that his grand-
children are coming home to-morrow from the
Rocky Mountains ? "

"I have told him that they are coming, but not
that they have been in the Rockies. He might
think it rather far to go for a fortnight's fishing."

"Serena, what on earth will Father make of
Jack. Jack is so dreadfully well-informed. I
hardly dare open my mouth in his presence.
Jack says he is looking forward to meeting his
grandfather, and realising what he calls his
feudal point of view."

"Jack only means by that expounding to his
grandfather his own point of view. I don't
think your Father will take to him, but he will
love Catherine ; she is so like your Mother, and

she never wants to realise any point of view."

* * *

Jack arrived first with his servant and a large
hamper of fish. The air lorry followed with the
tents and the fishing tackle and the mastiffs.

"But where is Catherine," asked Michael, as
Jack came in pulling off his leather helmet and
goggles.

THE DARK COTTAGE 73

Jack grinned and said with a spice of malice :

"Catherine fell into the sea."

"She didn't ! " said Serena. "That's the
second time. How tiresome. She always has
a cold on her chest if she gets wet."

"Where did you leave her? " asked Michael.

"In mid-Atlantic. We kept to the highway.
It was her own fault. I warned her not to loop
the loop with that old barge of hers, but she
would try and do it. She was fastened in all
right. I saw to that, but her stuff was loose,
and you should have seen all her fish and kettles
and the electric cooker shooting out one after
another into the deep. It was in trying to grab
something that she lost control, and fell, barge
and all after her crockery into the sea. I
circled round — that is why I am a quarter-of-an-
hour late — till I sighted one of the patrol toddling
up, old Granny Queen Elizabeth it was. Catherine
wirelessed to me that she was all right, and
would start again as soon as she was dry and
had had a cigarette, so I came on."

Catherine arrived an hour later, full of apologies
about the lost crockery, and the electric cooker,
and was at once put into a hot bath by her

mother and sent to bed.

# * #

After the arrival of his grandchildren John
spent more and more of his time in the clearing
in the wood. He shrank instinctively from the

74 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

sense of movement and life in the house, and his
sole prop, Serena, seemed unable to be so con-
stantly with him as before.

He was never tired of gazing at the gracious
lines of the landscape. Perhaps he loved that
particular place because he had sat there with
his wife on their last afternoon together, perhaps
also because, in a world where all seemed changed,
that alone, save for the cloud on the horizon, was
unchanged. He was at home there.

Jack took a deep and inquisitive interest in
his grandfather which made him often stroll up
the hill to smoke a pipe on the bench near him.
Sometimes John pretended to be asleep when he
heard his grandson's whistle on the path below
him. He was bewildered by this handsome,
quick-witted, cocksure, bearded young man who
it seemed was already at twenty-three a promis-
ing Fatigue Eliminator, and might presently
become a Simplyfier. His grand - daughter,
Catherine, he had not yet seen, as she was in
quarantine owing to a cold, and the Catarrh
Inspector had only to-day pronounced her free
from infection.

"You sleep a great deal, Grandfather," said
Jack, coming so suddenly into view that John
had not time to close his eyes. "Don't you find
so much sleep tends to retard cerebral activity? "

"I don't happen to possess cerebral, or any
other form of activity," said John, coldly.

THE DARK COTTAGE 75

"Do you mean you wish er — to resume the
reins ? Father and I were talking of it last
night. Everything he has is yours, you know,
by law."

John shook his head, and looked at his power-
less hands.

"Reins are not for me," he said.

"Well, in my opinion, grandfather," said
Jack, with approval, not wholly devoid of
patronage, "you're right. A great deal of water
has passed under the bridge since your day."

"This clearing in the wood is the same," John
said. "That is why I like it, and my old home
looks just the same — from here."

There was a moment's silence while Jack lit
his pipe.

John suddenly said, "I put in the electric light.
My father never would hear of it, but I did it."

He thought it was just as well that his magnifi-
cent grandson should know that he had done
something when he held the reins.

"That is one of the many things I have been
wishing to discuss with you, grandfather. You
installed electric light in the house and stables
and garage, but there was power enough to light
a town. While you were doing it, why didn't
you light the church and the village as well ? "

"I never thought of it."

"But it must have made you very uncomfort-
able to feel you had not shared the benefit of it

76 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

with the community. The village lies at your
very gates. You must have hated the feeling
that you had lit yourself up, and left them in
the dark. It was essential, absolutely essential
for your workers' well-being that they should
have light. Even in your day the more intelli-
gent among the agricultural labourers were
beginning to migrate to the towns. We only
got them back by better conditions in lighting
and housing, and facilities for movement and
amusement."

"Electric light in cottages was unheard of in
my time," said John. "It never entered my
head."

"Just so," said Jack. "That seems so odd,
so incomprehensible to us unless we can seize
the feudal point of view. You confirm the
classics on the subject. I have questioned
numbers of very old men who were in their
prime before the war like you, grandfather, but
I have not found their opinions as definite as
yours, because they have insensibly got all their
edges worn off so to speak by lifelong contact
with the two younger generations. Your unique
experience is most interesting. Never entered
your head. There you have the feudal system
in a nutshell. No sense of communal life at all.
I'll make a note of it — I'm compiling a treatise
on the subject. You were against female suff-
rage, too, I remember. I've been reading up

THE DARK COTTAGE 77

your record. You voted several times against
it."

"I did. I consider woman's sphere is in the
home."

"Just so. That was the point of view, and
there is a lot to say for it considering the hash
women made of power when first they got it,
though not so enormous a hash as the Labour
Party. You know, I suppose, we've had three
Labour Governments since the great war ? "

"I always prophesied a Labour Government
would come, and I feared it. I knew they had
not sufficient education to rule. No conception
of foreign policy."

"Not an atom. I agree with you. Not a
scrap. Thirty years ago most of our rulers
hadn't an idea where India was, or why we must
complete the trans-African railway in case we
lost control of the Suez Canal. They actually
opposed it. They nearly piloted the Ship of
State on to the rocks."

John frowned.

"Now what I want to know is," said Jack,
extending two long blue stockinged legs, and
enjoying himself immensely, " why instead of
opposing female suffrage you did not combine
to place the franchise on an educational basis,
irrespective of sex ; the grant of the vote to be
dependant on passing certain examinations,
mainly in history and geography. Or, if you

78 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

were resolved to delay as much as possible the
entrance of women into politics, why didn't you
give better national education. You did neither.
You let loose a horde of entirely ignorant and
irresponsible men and women out of your national
schools. You say you foresaw that a Labour
Government was inevitable, but you don't seem
to have made any preparation, or taken any
precaution to insure its efficiency when it did
come."

John was silent.

"They were also hostile men and women,"
continued the young man. "That was the
worst of it. Were you at Lille when you were
fighting in France^?"

"No."

"Well, the East Lancashires were. They
were all miners, and the thing that interested
them most was the devastated mines, ruined by
the Germans in their retreat. And they saw
the remains of the bath houses at the pit heads.
Those baths had been there before the war.
Every miner could go back clean to his own
home, instead of having to wash in his own
kitchen. Grandfather, you owned coal-mines.
Why didn't you and the other coal-owners put
up baths at the pit heads ? You would have
liked it if you had been a miner. And just think
what it would have saved your wife. The Eng-
lish miners got them by threats after they had

THE DARK COTTAGE 79

seen the wrecks of them in France. But why
didn't the English coal-owners copy French
methods, if they hadn't the imagination to think
them out for themselves ? Why did they only
concede when they could not help it ? Reforms
were wrung out of the governing class in your
day by threats and strikes. That is what, for
nearly thirty years, ruined our class with Labour
when it came into power. Why didn't your
generation foresee that ? "

"We didn't see the danger," said John, "as
you see it. Everyone can be wise after the
event."

"Just so. But if you couldn't foresee the
danger, why didn't you see at the time the
justice of their claims, men like you, grandfather,
who fought for justice for the smaller nations?
It seems to me, the national characteristic of the
upper classes fifty years ago must have been
opposition to all change, a tendency to ignore
symptoms which really were danger signals, and
an undeveloped sense of justice. . . ., which
only acted in certain grooves. The result was
the uneducated came into power, embittered,
without a shred of confidence in the disinterested-
ness of the educated. The Commonwealth — '

"The what ? "

"The Commonwealth — you used to call it the
Empire — nearly went upon the rocks."

Jack'slyoung face became awed and stern and

8o THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

aged, as John had seen men's faces become when
they charged through the mud in the dawn.

"I was in Liverpool," Jack said, "all through
the Black Winter. It needn't have been. It
never, never need have been if there had been
justice and sympathy in England for Labour
forty years before. But there was not. So they
paid us back in our own coin. We had no justice
from them. My God 1 I can't blame them."

Serena, coming quietly up the path, saw the
two men looking fixedly at each other, both
pallid in the soft sunshine. The same shadow
of suffering seemed to have fallen on the beautiful
young face, and on the old one.

"You must not talk any more," she said to
John, casting a reproachful glance at her son.
"You are over-tired."

Jack took the hint, kissed his mother's hand,
and walked slowly away. He was deeply moved.

John shivered. A deathlike coldness was
creeping over him, was laying an icy hand upon
his heart. He turned to his sole comforter,
Serena, watching him with limpid grieved eyes.

"Your grand-daughter, Catherine, is coming
up to see you in a few minutes," she said, trying
as always to guard him against surprise. "How
cold your hands are, Father. I could not let her
see you till she had been disinfected after her
chill for fear she might give it to you."

He was not listening.

THE DARK COTTAGE 81

"Serena," he said feebly. "The world is not
my world any longer. I am a stranger and a
sojourner in it. All my landmarks are swept
away. I wish I could be swept away, too."

Serena took his cold hands in hers, and held
them to her breast.

"Father," she said, "unless you and countless
others, all the best men of your time had given
your lives for your country, we should have no
country to-day. You bled for us, you kept it
for us, for your son, and your son's son : and we
all honour and thank you for what you have
done for us."

John Darner's eyes looked full at her in a great
humility.

"I see now," he said, in his thin quavering
voice, "that I only died for my country. I did
not live for her. I took things more or less as I
found them. I was blind, blind, blind."

She would fain have lied to him, but her voice
failed her.

He looked piercingly at her.

"Did the others — all those who never fought —
there were so many who did not fight — and
those who fought and came back — did they live
for her, did they try to make a different England,
to make her free and happy — after the war ? "

' ' Some did, ' ' said Serena, ' ' but only a minority. ' '

She saw his eyes fix suddenly. His face be-
came transfigured.

82 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"She's coming up the path," he said, in an
awed whisper. "Catherine is coming."

Serena followed his rapt gaze and saw her
daughter coming towards them in a white gown,
her hat hanging by a ribbon in her hand, the
sunshine upon her amber hair.

"Catherine," said the old man, "Catherine,
you have come to me at last. You said we should
sit here together when I was old. You've come
at last."

And he, who for fifty years had not walked a
step, without help, raised himself to his full
height, and went to meet her with outstretched
arms.

They caught him before he fell, and one on
each side of him supported him back to the
bench.

He sank down upon it, blue to the lips. Serena
laid the trembling white head upon her daughter's
breast. The bewildered young girl put her arms
gently round him in silence.

John Darner sighed once in supreme content,
and then — breathed no more.

The Ghost of a Chance

" Yes, but the years run circling fleeter,

Ever they pass me — I watch, I wait —
Ever I dream, and awake to meet her ;
She cometh never, or comes too late."

Sir Alfred Lyatt.

"THE thing I don't understand about you," I
said, "is why you have never married. Your
love affairs seem to consist in ruining other
people's. I was on the verge of getting married
myself years ago when you lounged in and spoilt
my chance. But when you had done for me you
did not come forward yourself, you backed out.
I believe, if the truth were known, you have
backed out over and over again."

Sinclair did. not answer. He frowned and
looked sulkily at me with lustreless eyes. He
was out of health, and out of spirits, and ill at
ease.

The large, luxurious room, with its dim oriental
carpets and its shaded lights, and its wonderful
array of Indian pictures and its two exquisite
rose-red lacquer cabinets, had a great charm for
me who lived in small lodgings in the city near
my work. But it seemed to hold little pleasure
for him. I sometimes doubted whether any-
thing held much pleasure for him. He had just

83

84 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

returned from China. The great packing cases
piled one above another in the hall were no
doubt full of marvellous acquisitions, china,
embroideries, rugs. But he did not seem to care
to unpack them.

"Did I really spoil your marriage? " he said
listlessly. He looked old and haggard and
leaden-coloured, and it was difficult to believe
he was the magnificent personage who had
diverted Mildred's eyes from me ten years
before.

"Don't pretend you didn't know it at the time,"
I retorted.

His behaviour had been outrageous, and I,
with my snub nose and crab-like gait, had been
cast aside. I could not blame her. He was
like a prince in a fairy tale. I never blamed her.
She knows that now ; in short, she knows
everything.

"No, my pepper pot, I won't pretend I didn't
know it. But I thought — I had a strong impres-
sion— I was mistaken, of course, but I thought
that—"

"That what ? "

His face altered.

"That it was she," he said below his breath.

I stared at him uncomprehending.

"She looked like it," he went on more to him-
self than to me. "She had a sweet face. I
thought it might be she. But it was not."

THE GHOST OF A CHANCE 85

Silence fell on us.

At last I said :

"Perhaps you will be interested to hear that
she and I have made it up."

"I am," he said, and his dull eyes lightened,
"if you are sure she is the right woman ; really
sure, I mean."

"I've known that for eleven years," I said,
"but the difficulty has been to get the same idea
firmly into her head. At any rate, it's in now.
I've tattooed it on every square inch of her
mind, so to speak. If I had been let alone she
would have been my downtrodden, ill-used wife,
and I should have been squandering her money
for the last ten years. I shall have to hammer
her twice a day and get heavily into debt to make
up for lost time. Why don't you marry yourself,
Sinclair ? That is what you want, though you
don't know it ; what I want, what we all want,
someone to bully, something weaker than our-
selves to trample on."

"Don't I know it ! " he said. "I know it well
enough. But how am I to find her ? "

"Marry Lady Valenes. I'm sure you've made
trouble and scandal enough in that quarter.
Now old Valenes is dead you ought to marry
her ; and she's more beautiful than ever. I saw
her at the opera last night."

Sinclair stared straight in front of him with his
long hands on his knees. His face, thickened

86 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

and coarsened, fell easily into lines of fatigue and
ill temper.

"What is the use of Lady Valenes to me ? "
he said savagely. "What is the use of any
woman in the world, except the right one ? "

"Well, you acted as if she was the right one
when her poor jealous old husband was alive.
It's just like you to think she won't do now he is
dead and she is free."

He was silent again.

I was somewhat mollified by the remembrance
that I had got Mildred, the most elusive and
difficult of women, firmly under my thumb at
last, and I said :

"The truth is, you don't know what love is,
you haven't got it in you to care a pin about
anyone except yourself, or you would have
married years ago. Who do you think you're in
love with now ? "

"The same woman," he said wearily, "always
the same."

"Then marry her and have done with it, and
turn this wretched museum into a home."

"I can't find her."

"What is her name ? "

"I don't know."

"Just seen her once, I suppose," I retorted.
"A perfect profile sailing past in a carriage under
a lace parasol. And you think that's love.
Little you know."

THE GHOST OF A CHANCE 87

I expanded my chest. Since I had come to
terms with Mildred, some thirty hours before—
and I had had a very uphill fight of it before she
gave in — I felt that I was an expert in these
matters.

"Chipps," said Sinclair. (Chipps is not my
name, but it has stuck to me ever since I was at
school.) "Chipps, the truth is, we are in the
same boat."

My old wound gave a sudden twinge.

"No," I said. "No. We aren't. I'm not
taking any water exercise with you, so you
needn't think it. Mildred and I are walking on
the towing-path arm in arm, and I don't approve
of boating for her because I don't like it myself.
So she remains on dry land with me. In the
same boat, indeed ! "

"I meant, we were both in love," he said with
the ghost of a smile, "if your corkscrew advances
towards matrimony can be called love. I did not
mean that we were in love with the same woman. ' '

"I don't care if you are now. I did care
damnably once, but I don't mind a bit now. Do
your worst."

"The conquering hero, and no mistake," Sinclair
said, looking at me with something almost like
affection, and he put out his hand. "Good luck
to you, old turkey cock."

I shook his hand harder than I intended, quite
warmly, in fact.

88 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

' ' Why don 't you marry too ? " I said . "It would
make all the difference to you, as it has to me."

We seemed suddenly very near to each other,
as we had been in the old days ; nearer than we
had ever been since he had made trouble between
Mildred and me.

He looked at me with a kind of forlorn envy.

"I cannot find her," he said again.

The words fell into the silence of the large,
dimly lighted room.

And perhaps because we had been at school
together, perhaps because I had no longer a
grudge against him, perhaps because I was not
quite so repellent to confidences as heretofore,
and he was conscious of some undefinable change
in me, Sinclair said his say.

"I fell in and out of love fairly often when I
was young," he said. "You've seen me do it.
But at the back of my mind there was always a
deep-rooted conviction that I was only playing
at it, and the real thing was to come, that there
was the one woman waiting somewhere for me.
I wasn't in any hurry for her. I supposed she
would turn up at the right moment. But the
years passed. I reached thirty. As I got older
I began to have sudden horrible fits of depression
that she wasn't coming after all. They did not
last, but they became more severe as I gradually
realised that I could not really live without her,
that I was only marking time till she came.

THE GHOST OF A CHANCE 89

"And one summer night, or rather morning,
ten years ago, something happened. You need
not believe it unless you like, Chipps. It's all
one to me whether you do or you don't. I came
home from a ball, and I found among my letters
one dictated by my young sister saying she was
very ill and wishing to see me. She was always
ill, poor little thing, and always wanting to see
me. She was consumptive, and she lived in the
summer months with her nurse in a shooting-box
high up on the Yorkshire moors, the most in-
accessible place, but she liked it, and the doctor
approved of it . I used to go and see her there when
I had time. But that was not often. I had made
provision for her comfort, but I seldom saw her.

"I laid the letter down, and wondered whether
I ought to go. I did not want to leave London
at that moment. I had been dancing all night
with Mildred, and was very much 4pris with
her. Then I saw there was a postscript in the
same handwriting, no doubt that of the nurse.
"Miss Sinclair is more ill than she is aware."

"That settled it. I must go. Once before I
had been warned her condition was serious, and
had hurried up to Yorkshire to find her almost as
usual. But, nevertheless, I supposed I ought to
go. I felt irritated with the poor little thing.
But as my other sister Anna was married and out
in India, I was the only relation she had left in
England. I decided to go.

go THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"In that case it was not worth while to go to
bed. I sat down by the open window, and watched
the dawn come up behind Westminster. And
as I sat with the letter in my hand a disgust
of my life took hold of me. It looked suddenly
empty and vain and self-seeking, and cumbered
with worldly squalid interests and joyless amuse-
ments. And where was the one woman of whom
I had had obscure hints from time to time ?
Other women came and went. But she who was
essential to me, who became more essential to
my well-being with every year — she never came.
I felt an intense need of her, a passionate desire
to find her, to seek her out. But where ?

"And as I sat there I felt in my inmost soul a
faint thrill, a vibration that gradually flooded my
whole being,and then slowly ebbed away. And
something within me, something passionate
surrendered myself to it, and was borne away
upon it as by an outgoing tide. It ebbed
farther and farther. And I floated farther and
farther away with it in a golden mist. And in a
wonderful place of peace I saw a young girl
sitting alone in the dawn. I could not see her
face, but I recognised her. She was the one
woman in the world for me, my mate found at
last. And I was consumed in an agony of long-
ing. And I ran to her, and fell on my knees at
her feet, and hid my face in her gown. And she
bent over me, and raised me in her arms and

THE GHOST OF A CHANCE 91

held my head against her breast. And she said,
"Do not be distressed, I love you, and all is
well."

"And we spoke together in whispers, and my

agitation died away. I did not see her face, but

I did not need to. I knew her as I had never

known anyone before. I had found her at last.

"I had never guessed, I had never dreamed,

I had never read in any book that anything could

be so beautiful. It was beyond all words. It

was more wonderful than dawn at sea. I leaned

my head against her and cried for joy. And she

soothed me as a mother soothes her child. But

she was crying too, crying for sheer joy. I felt

her tears on my face. She needed me as I

needed her. That was the most wonderful of all,

her need of me. We had been drawn to each

other from the ends of the earth, and we were

safe in each other's arms at last.

"And then gradually, imperceptibly, a change
came. The same tide which had brought me to
her feet began to draw me away again, and
sudden terror seized me that I was going to lose
her. I clung convulsively to her, but my arms
were no longer round her. We were apart,
stretching out our hands to each other. Her
figure was growing dimmer and dimmer in a
golden mist. In an agony I cried to her.
'Where shall I find you ? Tell me how to reach
you ? ' And she laughed, and her voice came

92 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

serene and reassuring. 'We shall meet. You
are on your way to me. You will find me on the
high road.' "

And we were parted from each other, and I
came slowly back over immense distances and
moving waveless tides of space ; back to this
room, and the dawn coming up behind the tower
of Westminster.

"You awoke in fact," I sard.

"No. I had not been asleep. I returned.
And an immense peace enveloped me. But
gradually that too, ebbed away as I began to
realise that I had not seen her face. She was in
the world, she was waiting for me. Thank God
that was no delusion. But which of all the
thousands of women in the crowd was she ?
How was I to know her ? 'You are on your way
to me, you will find me on the high road.' That
was what she had said, and it flashed through my
mind that she might be Mildred. 'You are on
your way to me.' I was to motor Mildred to
Burnham Beeches that very afternoon. I had
arranged to take her there before I had received
the letter about my sister. Chipps, I dare say
you will think me heartless, perhaps you often
have, but I simply dared not start off to York-
shire that morning, even if my sister was danger-
ously ill. I had a feeling that my whole future
was at stake, that I must see Mildred again, that
nothing must come between her and me. I went

THE GHOST OF A CHANCE 93

with her to Burnham Beeches. We spent the
afternoon together."

"I have not forgotten that fact," I said.

"And I found I was mistaken," he said. "She
knew nothing. The same evening I went to
Yorkshire, but I did not find my sister. She had
died suddenly that afternoon."

"You would have been in time to see her if you
had let Mildred alone," I said brutally.

He did not answer for a long time.

"For ten years I looked for her, now in one
person now in another, but I could not find her.
I tried to go to her again in that waking dream,
but I could not find the way. I could not
discover any clue to her. For ten years she made
no sign. At last I supposed she was dead, and I
gave her up.

"That was last autumn. Gout had been in-
creasing on me, and I had been up to Strathpeffer
to take the waters there. And my other sister
Anna, now a widow, pressed me to stay a few
days with her at the little house on the moors
where my younger sister had lived, and which I
allowed Anna to use as her home as she was
extremely poor. The air was bracing and I
needed bracing, so I went, dropping down from
Strathpeffer by easy stages in my motor. I was
glad I went. The heat was great, but on those
uplands there was always a fresh air stirring.
Anna, who had hardly seen me for years, made

94 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

much of me, and though she had no doubt become
rather eccentric since her husband's death, that
did not matter much on a Yorkshire moor. I
spent some happy days with her, and it turned
out to be fortunate that I had come, for on the
third afternoon of my visit, she had found out —
she found out everything — that an old servant of
mine, the son of my foster mother, had got into
difficulties, and was being sold up next day at a
distant farm. She urged me to motor over very
early in the morning and stop the sale and put
him on his legs again. I rather liked the idea of
a thirty mile drive across the moors before the
sun was up, and I agreed to go. I had no
objection to acting Providence and pleasing
Anna at the same time.

"I shall never forget that afternoon. We had
tea together in the verandah, overlooking the
great expanse of the heathered, purple moors.
And the thunder which had hung round us all
day rolled nearer and nearer. The moors looked
bruised and dark under the heavy sky. The
long white road grew whiter and whiter. My
sister left me to shut all the windows, and I
lay in my long deck chair and looked at the
road.

"And as I looked the words came back to my
mind. 'You will find me on the high road.'
Lies ! Lies ! Ten years I had been seeking her.
I should never find her. And far, far away on

THE GHOST OF A CHANCE 95

the empty highway I saw a woman coming. My
heart beat suddenly, but I remembered that I
had been deceived a hundred times, and this was
no doubt but one more deception. I watched
her draw nearer and nearer. She came lightly
along towards the house under the livid sky with
the heather on each side of her. She had a little
knapsack on her shoulder. And as she drew
near the breathless stillness before the storm was
broken by a sheet of lightning and a clap of
thunder. My sister rushed up and dragged the
chairs farther back. Then her eye caught sight
of the tall grey figure now close below us on the
road. A few great drops fell.

"Anna ran down to the gate and called to the
woman to take shelter. She walked swiftly
towards us, and then ran with my sister up the
steps, just as the storm broke.

" ' Magnificent,' she said, easing her shoulder
of the strap of her knapsack while her eyes
followed the driving rain cloud. "How kind of
you to call me in. There is not another house
within miles.

"She was a very beautiful woman of about
thirty, with a small head and a clear-cut grave
face. Her dark, parted hair had a little grey in
it on the temples. She smoothed it with slender,
capable, tanned hands. She had tea with us,
my sister welcoming her as if she were her dearest
friend. That was Anna all over.

05 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

The thunderstorm passed, but not the rain.
It descended in sheets.

"The stranger looked at it now and then, and at
last rose and put out her hand for her knapsack.

" 'I must be going,' she said.

"But Anna would not hear of it. There was
not another house within miles. She insisted
on her stopping the night. A room was got
ready, and presently we all three sat down to a
nondescript meal which poor Anna believed to be
dinner.

"I was attracted by our guest, but not more
than I had often been before by other women.
She had great beauty, but I had seen many
beautiful women during the last twenty years.
She was gay, and I like gaiety. And she had
the look of alertness and perfect health which
often accompanies a happy temperament. She
and Anna talked incessantly, at least, Anna did.
I did not join in much. My cure had left me
languid. When we had finished our meal we
found the rain had ceased, and the moon shone
high in heaven over a world of mist. The moors
were gone. The billows of mist drifted slowly
past us like noiseless waves upon a great sea.
The house and terraced gaiden rose above it like
a solitary island. The night was hot and airless,
and we sat out on the verandah, and talked of
many things.

"Of course, Anna is eccentric. There is no

THE GHOST OF A CHANCE 97

doubt about it. But the worst of her is that her
form of eccentricity is infectious. She is ex-
tremely impulsive and confidential, and others
follow suit if they are with her. I have known
her once (at a luncheon party of eight people
whom she had never met before) say, as a matter
of course, that she remembered a previous
existence, and sleeping seven in a bed in an
underground cellar. I was horrified, but no one
else was. And a grave man beside her, a
minister, told her that when first he went to
Madeira he remembered living there in a little
Portuguese cottage with a row of sugar canes in
front of it. He said he recognised the cottage the
moment he saw it, and said to himself, 'At any
rate, I am happier now than I was then.' A
sort of barrier seemed always to go down in
Anna's presence. People momentarily lost their
fear of each other, and said things which I have
no doubt they regretted afterwards.

"I need hardly say that as Anna looked at the
moonlight and the mist she became recklessly
indiscreet. I could not stop her. I did not try.
I shut my eyes, and pretended to be asleep.
And she actually told this entire stranger all
about her first meeting with her late husband,
which it seemed had taken place on an expedition
to Nepal. Anna was always wandering over
the globe with Lamas, or sailing on inflated pig-
skins with wild Indians, or things of that kind.

98 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

I had only known the bare fact of her marriage
with a distinguished but impecunious soldier
who had died some years later, and I was amazed
what a dramatic story she made of her first
encounter with him on the mountains of Nepal,
and how his coolies had all run away, and she
let him join on to her party. And how they
walked together for three days through a land
of rose-coloured rhododendrons ; without even
knowing each other's name, and how she cooked
their meals at the doors of the little mud rest-
houses. There was something very lovable after
all in the way Anna told it. I realised for the
first time that she, too, had lived, that she had
been touched by the sacred flame, and that it
was natural to her to speak of her great happi-
ness, the memory of which dwelt continually
with her.

"I saw through my half-closed eyes the strange
woman's hand laid for a moment on Anna's hand.

" 'You were very fortunate,' she said gently.

" 'Was I ? ' said Anna. 'I suppose everyone
else is the same. We all see that light once in
our lives, don't we ? I am sure you have too.'

" 'I am unmarried,' said the stranger, 'and
thirty years of age, and nothing of that kind has
ever happened to me. I was once engaged to
be married for a short time. But I had to break
it off. It was no good. I suppose,' she said,
with a low laugh, 'that the reason we are both

THE GHOST OF A CHANCE 99

talking so frankly is because we are entire
strangers to each other.'

" 'I do believe the world would go all right,
and that we should all be happy if only we did
not know each other,' said Anna earnestly.

"I felt sure the stranger would think her mad,
but she answered tranquilly :

" 'There are two ways of living absolutely
happily with our fellow creatures, I think. When
you know nothing about them and have no tie
to them, and when you know them through and
through. But on the long road between where
all the half-way houses are, there seems to be a
lot of trouble and misunderstanding and dis-
appointment."

" 'We can never know anyone through and
through until we love them,' said Anna.

" 'No,' said the stranger, 'Love alone can teach
that. Even I know that, I who have never seen
love except once — in a dream.'

" 'Tell me about it,' said Anna.

" 'I have never spoken of it,' she said with the
same tranquillity ; her face as I took one glance
at it serene and happy in the moonlight, 'except
to my sister. And it is curious that I should
speak of it here ; for it was in this house it
happened to me.'

" 'You have been here before ? ' said Anna.

" 'Yes. Ten years ago. That was why I
went out of my way on my walking tour to-day

ioo THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

just to look at the little place again. I stayed a
month here, and I helped a friend of mine who
is now dead, a trained nurse, to nurse a Miss
Sinclair who was dying here.'

" 'We are her brother and sister,' said Anna.

" 'I thought it possible when I saw you on the
verandah. You are both like her in a way. My
friend, who was in charge, was over-taxed, and
I came down to help her. Two nurses were
necessary, but she did not like to complain, and
the family seemed rather inaccessible. Miss
Sinclair liked me, and I did the night work till
she died. I left directly she was gone.'

" 'My brother was too late,' said Anna.

" 'Yes/ she said. 'I was grieved for him. I
added a postscript unknown to her, to her last
letter to him which I wrote at her dictation.
My postscript would have alarmed him and
brought him at once. But the letter must have
been delayed in the post. The last night before
the end I was sitting here on the verandah. I had
just been relieved, and I ought to have gone to
bed, but I came and sat here instead and watched
the dawn come up, 'like thunder,' behind the
moors. And as I sat I became very still, as if I
were waiting in a great peace. And gradually I
became conscious as at an immense distance of
someone in trouble. I was not asleep, and I was
not fully awake. And from a long, long way off
a man came swiftly to me, and threw himself on

THE GHOST OF A CHANCE 101

his knees at my feet, and hid his face in my gown.
He was greatly agitated, but I was not. And I
wasn't surprised either. I raised him in my
arms, and held him to my breast, and said, "Do
not be distressed, for I love you, and all is well."
It was quite true. I did love him absolutely,
boundlessly, as I love him still. And gradually
his agitation died away, and he rested in my
arms, and ecstasy such as I had never thought
possible enfolded us both. We both cried for
sheer joy, and for having found each other. It
was beyond anything I had ever dreamed. It
was as beautiful as the dawn.'

" 'It was the dawn,' said Anna.

" 'If it was the dawn, the day it spoke of never
came/ said the stranger quietly, 'and presently
we were parted from each other, and he began to
be frightened again. And he called to me, 'Tell
me how to find you,' and I laughed, for I saw
he could not miss me. I saw the way open
between him and me. Such a short little way,
and so clear. I said, 'You are on your way to
me now. You will find me on the high road.'
It was such a plain road, that even a blind man
could not miss it. And we were parted from each
other and I came back to the other dawn, the
outer dawn. For days and weeks I walked like
one in a dream. I felt so sure of him, I would
have staked my life upon his coming — that is
ten years ago — but he never came.'

102 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"Chipps, I thought the two women must have
heard the mad hammering of my heart. She
was there before me in the moonlight, found at
last — my beautiful, inaccessible mate. And she
was free, and we loved each other as no one had
loved since the world began. I could neither
speak nor move. Though it was joy, it was the
sharpest pain I had ever known. I did not know
how to bear it.

" 'My dear, he will come still,' said Anna.

" 'Will he ? ' said the stranger, and she shook
her head. She rose and stood in the moonlight,
a tall, noble figure. And for the first time there
was a shade of sadness on her serene, happy face.

" 'I saw the road so clear/ she said, 'but I am
afraid he has somehow missed it. I have an
intuition that he will not come now, that he is
lost.'

"Sitting far back in the shadow, I looked long
at her, at my wonderful dream came true ; and I
swore that I would never lose sight of her again
once found. I would take no risks ; I would
bind her to me with hooks of steel.

"And then, in a few minutes, it was bedtime,
and Anna aroused me, and she and her guest
went off together hand in hand. I dragged
myself to my room, too. I was shaking from
head to foot, and Brown, my valet, said 'You
aren't fit, sir, to start at six in the morning.'

"I had clean forgotten that I had arranged to

THE GHOST OF A CHANCE 103

drive early across the moors to stop the sale of
my foster brother's farm. It was impossible to
go now. I might come back in the afternoon and
find my lady flown. There was no telegraph
office within miles ; I must think of some other
plan. It was too late to countermand the motor,
which put up several miles away. So I told
Brown to send it back when it arrived at six, and
to tell the chauffeur to bring it round again at
eleven. Then, perhaps, my lady would deign
to drive with me, and I might have speech with
her.

" 'On the high road ' — that was where she had
said we should meet. Yes, when we were on the
high road alone together, I would prove to her
that I was her lover. I would boldly claim her.
She would never repulse me, for she needed me as
I needed her.

"I did not sleep that night. It seemed so
impossible, so amazing, that we had met at last.
I felt transformed, younger than I had ever been.
Waves of joy passed over me, and yet I was
frightened, too. There was a sort of warning
voice at the back of my mind telling me that I
should lose her yet. But that was nonsense.
My nerves were shaken. I could not lose her
again. I would see to that.

"Very early, long before six, I heard Anna
stirring. I remembered with compunction that
she had only one servant, and that she had said

x*4 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

she would get up and cook my breakfast for me
herself before I started. Anna was an excellent
cook. I heard her rattling the kitchen grate and
singing as she laid the breakfast and presently
there were two voices, Anna's and another.
I knew it was the voice of my lady. I felt
unable to lie still any longer, and when the
motor came round at six I was already half
dressed. There was a momentary turmoil,
and an opening and shutting of doors, and
then the motor went away again. I finished
dressing and went into the garden into the
soft September sunshine. There was no one
about. I went back to the house and found
the servant clearing away a meal and relaying
the table for me. I asked her where her mistress
was, and she said she had gone in the motor with
the other lady and had left a note for me. Sure
enough, there was a scrawl stuck up on the
mantelpiece.

"'So sorry you are not well enough to start, but
don't worry your kind heart about it. I have gone in
your place and will arrange everything. Take care
of yourself, and don't wait luncheon.'

"I got through the morning as best I could.
I was abominably tired after my sleepless night
and getting up so early, and a horrible anxiety
grew and grew in me as the hours passed and
Anna did not return. I had luncheon alone, and
still no Anna. Could there have been an accident

THE GHOST OF A CHANCE 103

I thought of my careful chauffeur and my new
Daimler. Nothing ever happened to Anna, but I
could not tolerate the idea of any risk to my
lady. At last I heard the motor, and Anna came
rushing in.

'"It's all right,' she cried joyfully. 'Brian's
farm is saved, and he and his old mother can't
thank you enough. I told them both it was all
your doing, and you had sent me as you were not
well enough to go yourself. Brown told me how
poorly you were. And it was only a hundred and
fifty pounds, after all. I gave my cheque for it,
as I didn't like to wake you for a blank one. They
were almost paralysed with surprise. They
could hardly thank me — I mean you — at first.
Old Nancy cried, poor old darling, and called
down blessings on you.'

" 'Did your guest enjoy the drive ? ' I said at
last.

" 'She did,' said Anna. 'And, oh ! how I
wished you had been well enough to be driving
with her instead of me. The world was all sky.
Such a pageant I had never seen — such vistas
and fastnesses and citadels of light. She said
she should remember it always.'

" 'She is not tired, I hope ? ' I said.

" 'Tired 1 She said she was never tired. She
said she would have walked the whole way if
there had been time ; but of course she was
delayed by last night's storm. So she was glad of

io6 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

the lift, and I dropped her at the cross roads above
Riffle station. That was a splendid woman,
Gerald.'

"I turned cold.

" 'Do you mean to say she's gone ? '

" 'Yes. She sails for South America on
Tuesday. I forget why she said she was going.

"And what was her name ? '

" 'I haven't an idea.'

" 'Anna, you don't mean to say you let her go
without finding out her name and address ? '

" 'I never thought of such a thing. She never
asked any questions about me, and I didn't ask
any about her. Why should I ? What does
her name matter ? '

Sinclair groaned.

"I lost her absolutely just when I thought I
was sure of her," he said. "She walked into my
life and she walked out of it again, leaving
no trace. I haven't had the ghost of a
chance."

"Perhaps you will meet her again," I said at
last, somewhat lamely. "She may turn up
suddenly, just when you least expect her."

He shook his head.

"I shall never find her," he said. "She's gone
for ever, I know it. She knew it. Lost ! Lost !
Lost I "

And the shadowed room echoed the word
"Lost ! "

THE GHOST OF A CHANCE 107

I told the whole story to Mildred next day. I
dare say I ought not to have done, but I did.

"Poor Mr. Sinclair," she said softly when I had
finished.

"Do you think he's off his head ? " I said.
"It sounds perfectly ridiculous, a sort of cracked
hallucination."

"Oh, no. It's all true," said Mildred, in the
same matter-of-fact tone as if she had said the
fire was out. Women are curious creatures.
The story evidently did not strike her as at all
peculiar.

"What a pity he did not stick to the high road,"
she said.

"What high road, in Heaven's name ? " I
asked.

"Why, his duty, of course. Don't you see, it
was there she was sitting waiting for him. It led
him straight to her. She saw that, and that he
couldn't miss her. He had only got to take the
train to his sister when she was dying and he
would have found his lady there. That was what
she meant when she said the road was open
between them. But he went down a side track
to flirt with me and lost his chance. And the
second time, if he had only stuck to going to the
rescue of his foster brother, he could have given
her a lift in his motor as Anna did, and have made
himself known to her."

"What a preposterously goody-goody idea 1

io8 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

I don't believe it for a moment. Here have I
been doing my duty for the last ten years, toiling
and moiling and snarling at everybody, and it
never led me to you that I can see."

"It might have done," said Mildred, "if you
hadn't been entirely compacted of pride and
uncharitableness. I made a mistake ten years
ago, and was horribly sorry for it, but you never
gave me a chance of setting it right till last
Tuesday."

"I never thought I had the ghost of a chance
till last Tuesday," I said. "Upon my honour I
didn't. The first moment I saw it I simply
pounced on it."

"Pounced on it, did you ? " said Mildred scorn-
fully. "And poor me, with hardly a rag of self-
respect left from laying it in your way over and
over again for you to pounce on. Men are all
alike ; all as blind as bats. I'm sure I don't
know why we trouble our heads about them with
their silly ghosts and chances and pouncings."

The Goldfish

A Favourite has no Friends.

IT was my first professional visit to the Robin-
sons. I had been called in to prescribe for
Arthur Robinson, a nervous, emaciated young
man, whom I found extended on a black satin
sofa, in a purple silk dressing gown embroidered
with life-sized hydrangeas. The sofa and the
dressing gown shrieked aloud his artistic tempera-
ment.

He had a bronchial cold, and my visit was, as
he said, purely precautionary. He kept me a
long time recounting his symptoms, and assuring
me that he was absolutely fearless, and then
dragged himself to his feet and led me into the
magnificent studio his mother had built for him,
where his sketches were arranged on easels, and
where we found his wife, a pale, dark-eyed young
creature cleaning his brushes.

He appeared — like most egotistic people — to
be greatly in need of a listener, and he poured
forth his views on art, and the form his own
message to the world would probably take. I
am unfortunately quite inartistic, but I gave him
my^attention. I was in no hurry, for at that time

109

no THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

the one perpetual anxiety that dogged my waking
hours was that I had not enough patients.

At last I remembered that I ought not to
appear to have time to spare, and his wife took
me downstairs to the drawing-room, where his
mother was awaiting us, a large, fair woman, with
a kindly foolish face.

I saw at once that I was in for another interview
as long as the first.

Mrs. Robinson did not wait for me to give an
opinion on her son's condition. She pressed me
to be perfectly frank, and, before I could open
my mouth to reply, poured forth a stream of
information on what was evidently her only
theme — Arthur's health.

"I said the day before yesterday — didn't I
Blanche. ' Arthur, you have got a cold.' And
he said, so like him — 'No Mother, I haven't.'
That is Arthur all over. Isn't it, Blanche ? "

Blanche made no response. She sat motion-
less, gazing at her mother-in-law with half absent
eyes, as if she were trying — and failing — to give
her whole attention to the matter in hand.

"Then I said in my joking way, 'Arthur, I can't
have you starting a cold, and giving it to me and
Blanche.' We don'f want any presents of that
kind. Do we Blanche ? "

Blanche made no reply. Perhaps experience
had taught her that it was a waste of energy.

"So I said, 'with your tendency to bronchitis

THE GOLDFISH in

I shall send for Doctor Giles, and it will be a good
opportunity to make his acquaintance now that
our dear Doctor Whittington has retired.' '

It went on a long time, Mrs. Robinson beaming
indiscriminately on me and her daughter-in-law.

At last, when she was deeply involved in
Arthur's teething, I murmured a few words and
stood up to go.

"You will promise faithfully, won't you, to
look in again to-morrow."

I said that a telephone message would summon
me at any moment. As I held out my hand I
heard a loud splash.

"Now, Dr. Giles, you are wondering what that
is," said Mrs. Robinson gleefully.

I looked round and saw at the further end of
the immense be-mirrored double drawing-room
a grove of begonias, and heard a faint trickle of
water.

"It's an aquarium," said Mrs. Robinson
triumphantly, and she looked archly at me.
"Shall we tell Dr. Giles about it, Blanche ? "

"It has a goldfish in it," said Blanche, opening
her lips for the first time.

"That was the splash you heard," continued
Mrs. Robinson, as if she were imparting a secret.
"That splash was made by the goldfish."

I gave up any thought I may have had of
paying other professional calls that morning, and
allowed Mrs. Robinson to lead me to the aquarium.

THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

As aquariums in back drawing-rooms go it was
a very superior aquarium, designed especially
for the house, so Mrs. Robinson informed me, by

a very superior young man at Maple's quite a

gentleman.

The aquarium had gravel upon its shallow
bottom, and large pointed shells strewed upon
the gravel. The water trickled in through a
narrow grating on one side, and trickled out
through another on the other side. An array of
flowering begonias arranged round the irregularly
shaped basin, gave the whole what Maple's young
man had pronounced to be "a natural aspect,"
and effectually hid the two gratings while afford-
ing an unimpeded view of the shells, and the
inmate.

In the shallow water, motionless, save for his
opening and shutting gills, and a faint movement
of his tail, was poised a large obese goldfish.

I looked at him through the gilt wire-netting
stretched across the basin a few inches above the
surface of the water, and it seemed as if he looked
at me.

I wondered with vague repugnance how anyone
could regard him as a pet. To me he was wholly
repulsive, swollen, unhealthy looking.

"He knows me," said Mrs. Robinson, with a
rain attempt at modesty. "He has taken a
fancy to me. Cupboard love I'm afraid, Dr.
Giles. You see I feed him everyday. He just

THE GOLDFISH 113

swims about or stays still if I am near, like I am
now, and he can see me. But if I am some way
off and he can't see me he tries to jump out to
get to me. He never tries to jump when I am
near him. I call him Goldy, Dr. Giles, and I'm
just as fond of him as he is of me. Isn't it
touching that a dumb creature should have such
affection ? If it were a dog or a cat of course I
could understand it, and I once heard of a wolf
that was loving, but I have always supposed till
now that fishes were cold by nature. I daresay,
dear Dr. Whittington told you about him ? No !
Well I am surprised, for he took such an interest
in Goldy. It was Dr. Whittington who made
me put the wire-netting over the aquarium. He
said ' Some day that poor fellow will jump out
in your absence to try and get to you, and you
will find him dead on the carpet.' So we put
the wire-netting across."

<( He jumps," said the young girl gazing intently
at the goldfish. "When we sit playing cards in
the evening he jumps again and again. But the
wire always throws him back."

I looked for the first time at Mrs. Robinson's
daughter-in-law ; her colourless young face bent
over the aquarium with an expression of horror.
And as I looked the luncheon bell rang, and with it
arose a clamour of invitation from Mrs. Robinson
that I should stay for the meal. Pot luck ! Quite
informal ! etc., etc., but I wrenched myself away.

If

H4 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

A few days later I called on my predecessor,
Dr. Whittington, and found him sitting in his
garden at East Sheen. He was, as always,
communicative and genial, but it was evident
that his interest in his late patients had migrated
to his roses.

Mrs. Robinson is an egregious goose, my dear
Giles, as you must have already perceived, but
she is a goose that lays golden eggs. You simply
can't go too often to please them. I went nearly
every day, and they constantly asked me to
dinner. They have an excellent cook."

"They adored you," I said.

"They did ; and some great writer has said
somewhere that we must pay the penalty for
our deepest affections . I — ahem ! exacted the
penalty ; you see part of the results in my
Malmaisons, and I advise you to follow in my
footsteps. They are made of money."

"They look it."

"And they are, if I may say so, a private
preserve. They know nobody. I always thought
that everybody knew somebody, at any rate
every one who is wealthy, but they don't seem
to know a soul. If you dine there you'll meet a
High Church parson whom they sit under, or the
family solicitor, or a servile female imbecile who
was Arthur's governess, and laughs at every-
thing he says — no one else."

"Didn't he go to school ? "

THE GOLDFISH 115

"Never. His mother said it would break his
spirit. I've attended him from his birth. A
very costly affair that was to Mrs. Robinson, for
I had to live in the house for weeks, in order to
help to usher in young Robinson, and at the
same time usher out old Robinson, noisily dying
of locomotor ataxia, and drink on the ground
floor. I've since come to the conclusion that she
never was legally his wife, and that is why they
know no one, and don't seem to make any effort
socially. She had all the money, there's no
doubt of that, and she wasn't by any means in
her first youth. I rather think he must have
been a bigamist or something large hearted of that
kind. Perhaps like Henry the Eighth he suffered
from a want of concentration of the domestic
affections."

"And what is the son like, a malade imaginaire?
I've never seen anything like his dressing gowns
except in futurist pictures."

"A malade imaginaire ! Good Lord ! no.
Where are your professional eyes ? Arthur is
his father's son, that is what is the matter with
him. Abnormal irritability and inertia, and a
tendency to dessimated sclerosis. He may have
talent, I'm no judge of that ; but he'll never do
anything. No sticking power. He's doomed.
If ever any one was born under an unlucky star
that poor lad was. He began to cause a good
deal of anxiety when he was about twenty, made

n6 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

a determined attempt to go to the devil : women,
drink, drugs. In short, it looked at one moment
as if he would be his father over again without
his father's vitality. His mother was in despair.
I said to her, ' My good woman find him a wife ;
a pretty young wife who will exert a good influence
over him and keep him straight.''

"Apparently she followed your advice."
"She did. It was the only chance for him, and
not a chance worth betting on even then. I've
often wondered how she found the girl. She
makes no end of a pet of her. She's a warm-
hearted old thing. She ought to have had a
dozen children, and a score of grandchildren.
Introduce your wife and family to her, Giles.
She'll take to them at once. She's fond of all
young people. She's wrapped up in her son and
daughter-in-law and — "

"Her goldfish? " I suggested.
"Her goldfish," assented Dr. Whittington,
witfi a grin. "What an ass she is. She actually
believes the brute tries to jump out of the
aquarium to get to her."

"You encouraged her in that belief."
"My dear Giles," said my predecessor drily,
"I have indicated to you the path your feet should
assiduously tread as regards the Robinsons.
Now come and look at my Blush Ramblers."

Dr. Whittington was right. The Robinson
family was a gold mine, It is not for me to say

THE GOLDFISH 117

whether I resorted to a pick and shovel as he had
done, or whether, resisting temptation, I held
the balance even between my duty, and the
natural cupidity of a man with an imperceptible
income, and three small children. At any rate I
saw a great deal of the Robinsons.

Arthur was a most interesting case, to which I
brought a deep professional interest. Perhaps
also I was touched by his youth and good looks,
and felt compassion for the heavy handicap
which life had laid upon him. I strained every
nerve to help him. Dr. Whittington had
been an old-fashioned somewhat narrow-minded
practitioner close on seventy. I was a young man,
fresh from walking the hospitals. I used modern
methods, and they were at first attended with
marked success. Mrs. Robinson was at my
feet. She regarded me, as did Arthur, as a heaven-
born genius. She openly blessed the day that
had seen the retirement of Dr. Whittington. She
transferred her adoration from him to me as
easily as a book is transferred from one table to
another. She called on my wife; and instantly
enfolded her and the children in her capacious
affections, and showered on us cream-cheeses,
perambulators, rocking-chairs, special brands of
marmalade, " The Souls' Awakening " in a plush
and gilt frame, chocolate horses and dogs, eider-
down quilts and her favourite selection from the
works of Marie Corelli and Ella Wheeler- Wilcox.

ti8 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

I began to think that Dr. Whittington had not
put such an exorbitant price on the practise as I
had at first surmised.

I fought with all my strength for Arthur, and
it was many months before I allowed myself to
realise that I was waging a losing battle. I had
unlimited funds at my disposal, the Robinson
purse had apparently no bottom to it. My word
was law. What I ordered Mrs. Robinson ob-
sequiously carried out. Nevertheless, at last
I had to own to myself that I was vanquished.
Arthur was doomed, as Dr. Whittington had
said, and certain sinister symptoms were making
themselves more and more apparent. His temper
always moody and irritable, was becoming morose,
vindictive, with sudden outbursts of foolish
mirth. The outposts were being driven in one
after another. I saw with profound discourage-
ment that in time — perhaps not for a long time
if I could fend it off — his malady would reach the
brain.

I encouraged him to be much in the open air.
I planned expeditions by motor to Epping Forest,
to Virginia Water, on which his young wife
accompanied him. She was constantly with
him, walked with him, drove with him, played
patience with him, painted with him, or rather
watched him paint until the trembling of his
hand obliged him to lay down his brush. I
hardly exchanged a word with her from one

THE GOLDFISH 119

week's end to another. She seemed a dutiful,
docile, lifeless sort of person, without any of the
spontaneity and gaiety of youth. Mrs. Robinson
owned to me that fond as she was of her daughter-
in-law, her companionship had not done all she
hoped for her son.

"So absent-minded, Dr. Giles, so silent, never
keeps the ball rolling at meals ; the very reverse
of chatty, I do assure you. I don't know what's
coming to young people now-a-days. In my
youth," etc., etc.

Gradually I conceived a slight dislike to
Blanche. She seemed colourless, lethargic, one
of those people who without vitality themselves,
sap that of others, and expect to be dragged
through life by the energy of those with whom
they live. It was perfectly obvious that fat and
foolish Mrs. Robinson was the only person in the
house with any energy whatever.

Presently the whole family had influenza.
Then for the first time I saw Blanche alone. She
was laid up with the malady at the same time as
her husband and mother-in-law. I went to her
room, to see how she did, and found her in bed.

She looked very small and young and wan, in
an immense gilt four poster with a magnificent
satin quilt.

I reassured her as to her husband's condition,
and then asked her a few questions about herself,
and told her that she would soon be well again.

120 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

She gave polite answers, but again I had that
first impression of her that she was making an
effort to keep her attention from wandering, that
she felt no interest in what I was saying.

"Have you an amusing book to pass the
time ? " I asked.

She looked at a pile on the table near her.

"Perhaps your eyes are too tired to read ? "

"No," she said, "I had forgotten they were
there. I don't care for reading."

Her eyes left the books and travelled back to
the other end of the large ornate room, over-
filled with richly gilt Empire furniture.

I turned and followed her rapt gaze.

There were half-a-dozen yellow chrysanthe-
mums in a dull green jar on a Buhl chiffonier.
The slanting November sunshine fell on them,
and threw against the wrhite wall a shadow of
them. It was a shadow transfigured, intricate
yet vague, mysterious, beautiful exceedingly.

I should never have noticed it if she had not
looked at it with such intentness. For a moment
I saw it with her eyes. I was touched ; I hardly
knew why. All the apathy was gone from her
face. There was passion in it. She looked
entirely exhausted, and yet it was the first time
I had seen her really alive.

The sunshine went out suddenly, and she
sighed.

"You may get up to-morrow, and go

THE GOLDFISH 121

downstairs," I said. "It is dull for you alone up
here."

"I like being here," she said.

Was she, like so many women, " contrairy ? "
Always opposing the suggestions of others, never
willing to fall in with family arrangements.

"Don't you want to see the goldfish? I
hazarded, speaking as if to a child. "He must
be lonely now Mrs. Robinson is laid up. And
who will give him his crumbs."

"No, I don't want to see him," she said
passionately. "I never look at him if I can
help it. Oh Dr. Giles, every one seems to
shut their eyes who comes into this house —
everyone — but don't you see how dreadful it
is to be a prisoner."

She looked at me with timid despairing eyes,
which yet had a flicker of hope in them. I patted
her hand gently, and found she still had a little
fever.

"But he gets plenty of crumbs," I said sooth-
ingly, " and it is a nice aquarium with freshwater
running through all the time. I think he is a
very lucky goldfish."

She looked fixedly at me, and the faint colour
in her cheeks faded, the imploring look vanished
from her eyes.

She leaned back among her lace pillows.

"That is what Mrs. Robinson says," she said
with a quivering lip, and I perceived that I was

122 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

relegated to the same category in her mind as
her mother-in-law.

She withdrew her thin hand and retreated
once more behind the frail bastion of silence
from which she had looked out at me for all
these months ; from which she had for one
moment emerged, only to creep back to its for-
lorn shelter.

A few days later Mrs. Robinson was convales-
cent, sitting up in bed in a garish cap festooned
with cherry-coloured ribbons, and a silk wadded
jacket to match. I questioned her about her
daughter-in-law, in whom for the first time I
felt interested. It needed no acumen on my
part to draw forth the whole of Blanche's short
history. One slight question was all that was
necessary to turn on the cock of Mrs. Robinson's
confidences. The stream gushed forth at once,
it overflowed, it could hardly be turned off again.
I was drenched.

"How long has Blanche been married ? Two
years, Dr. Giles. She's just nineteen. That's
her age — nineteen. Seventeen and three days
when she married. Such a romance. She was
seventeen and Arthur was twenty-two. Five
years difference. Just right, and you never saw
two young people so much in love with each
other. And such a beautiful couple. It was a
love match. Made in heaven. Just like his
father and me over again. That is what I said

THE GOLDFISH 123

to them. I said on their wedding day : 'Well,
I hope you will be as happy as your father and I
were.' "

There was not much information to be retrieved
from Mrs. Robinson's gushings, but in the course
of the next few days I hooked up out of a flood
of extraneous matter a few facts which had
apparently escaped her notice.

Blanche it seemed was the niece of a former
Senior Curate of St. Botolph's. "A splendid
preacher, Dr. Giles, and a real churchman, high
mass and confession, and incense, just the
priest for St. Botolph's, a dedicated celibate and
vegetarian — such a saintly example to us all."

It appeared obvious to me, though not to Mrs.
Robinson, that the vegetarian celebate had been
embarrassed as to what to do with his niece, when
at the age of seventeen she had been suddenly
left on his hands owing to the inconvenient death
of her widowed mother. Evidently Blanche
had not had a farthing.

"But he was such a wide-minded man. Of
course he wanted dear Blanche to lead the highest
life, and to dedicate herself as he had done, and
to go into a sisterhood. But she cried all the
time when he explained it to her, and said she
could not paint in a sisterhood. And she didn't
seem to fancy illuminating missals, or church
embroidery, just what he had thought she
would like. He was always thinking what

124 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

would make her happy. And then it turned out
there was some question of expense as well which
he had not foreseen, so he gave up the idea. And
just at that time I had a lot of trouble with
Arthur — with drink — between you and me. It
was such a hot summer. I am convinced it was
the heat that started it ; too much whiskey in the
soda water — and other things as well. Arthur
was got hold of and led away. And Dr. Whit-
tington advised me to find a nice young wife for
him. And I told Mr. Copton — that was the
priest's name, all about it — I always told him
everything, and he was most kind, and interested,
and so understanding, and he agreed a good
wife was just what Arthur wanted, and marriage
was an honourable estate, those were his very
words. And Arthur was fond of painting, and
Blanche was fond of painting too, simply devoted
to it, and they had lessons together in a private
studio and — "

It went on and on for ever.

"And her uncle gave her away. He was quite
distressed that he could not afford a trousseau,
for he was Rector Designate of Saint Oressa's at
Liverpool, but I told him not to trouble about
that. I gave her everything just as if she had
been my own child. I spent hundreds on her
trousseau, and she was married in my Brussels
lace veil that I wore at my own wedding. I just
took to her as my own child from the first. And

THE GOLDFISH 125

would you believe it before he went away on his
honeymoon, Arthur brought me the goldfish to
keep me company. In a bowl it was. Such a
quaint idea, wasn't it, so like Arthur. They
are my two pets, Blanche and Goldy."

I am not an artistic person, but even I was
beginning to have doubts about Arthur's talent.
It seemed somehow unnatural that he was
always having his work enlarged by a third or a
fifth, or both. Every picture he had painted,
before his hands trembled too much to hold a
brush, was faithfully copied and enlarged by his
wife. She reproduced his dreary compositions
with amazing exactitude, working for hours
together in a corner of his studio, while he lay
pallid, with half-closed eyes on the black satin
sofa, watching her.

I had always taken for granted they were a
devoted couple. Mrs. Robinson was always
saying so, and it was obvious that Arthur never
willingly allowed his wife out of his sight.

However, one morning I came into the studio
when there was trouble between them. I saw
at once it was one of his worst days.

He was standing before an enlargement of one
of his pictures livid with anger.

"How often am I to to tell you that a copy
must be exact," he stammered in his disjointed
staccato speech. "If you quote a line of poetry
do you alter one of the words ? If I trust you tq

126 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

reproduce a picture surely you know you are not
at liberty to change it."

She was as pale as he was. She looked
dully at him, and then at her own canvas on the
easel.

"I forgot," she said, in a suffocated voice.

I looked at the original and the copy, and even
my stolid heart beat a little quicker.

The original represented a young girl — his wife
had evidently sat for him — playing on a harp,
while a man listened, leaning against a table,
with a bowl of chrysanthemums upon it.

The copy was much larger than the original,
and its wooden smugness was faithfully repro-
duced. The faulty drawing of the two figures
seemed to have been accentuated by doubling its
size. It was an amazingly exact reproduction,
except in one particular. In Blanche's copy
she had made the shadow of the chrysanthemums
fall upon the wall. It was a wonderful, a
mysterious shadow, / had seen it before.

"I hadn't indicated the slightest shadow,"
Arthur continued. "There is no sunshine in the
room. You have deliberately falsified my com-
position."

"I did it without thinking," said Blanche
shivering. "It is a mistake."

"A mistake," he said sullenly. "Your heart
isn't in your work, that is the truth. You don't
really care to help me to find my true expression."

THE GOLDFISH 127

And he took the canvas from the easel and tore
it in two.

Did he half know, did some voice in the
back of his twisted brain cry out to him that
his part of the picture was hopelessly mediocre
and out of drawing, that the only value it
possessed was the shadow of the chrysanthe-
mums ? Was there jealousy in his rage ? Who
shall say !

I butted in at this point, and made a pretext
for sending Blanche out of the room.

"Now, my dear fellow," I said confidentially,
"don't in future try to associate your wife with
your art. It is quite beyond her. Women, sir,
have no artistic feeling. The home, dress,
amusement that is their department. ' Occupy
till I come,' might well have been said of feminine
talent. It does occupy — till — ahem ! we arrive.
When a woman is happily married like your wife
she doesn't care a fig for anything else. Let her
share your lighter moments, your walks and
drives, allow her to solace your leisure. The
bow, sir, must not be always at full stretch. But
promise me you won't allow her to copy any more
of your pictures."

"Never again," said Arthur sepulchrally,
stretched face downwards on the satin sofa.

I picked up the two pieces of torn canvas. A
sudden idea seized me.

"And now," I said, "I shall say a few words of

128 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

reprimand to Mrs. Robinson. You need not
fear that I shall be too severe with her."

Arthur made no movement, and I left him,
and after taking the torn picture to my car I
climbed to the top of the house where I suspected
I should find Blanche.

Her mother-in-law had reluctantly given her
leave to use an attic lumber room, and, amid a
litter of old trunks and derelict furniture and
cardboard boxes, she had made a little clearing
near the window, where she worked feverishly
at her painting in her rare leisure.

I had seen the room once when I had helped
the nurse to carry down a screen put away there,
and suddenly needed in one of Arthur's many
illnesses. I had been touched by the evident
attempt to make some sort of refuge in that large
house, where there were several empty rooms on
the lower floors, but — perhaps — no privacy.

I quickly found that Mrs. Robinson tacitly
disapproved of Blanche working in the attic.
Her kind face became almost hard when she
spoke of the hours her daughter-in-law spent
there, when her sick husband wanted her down-
stairs.

I tapped at the door, but there was no answer,
and I went in. Blanche was sitting near the
window on a leather trunk.

I expected to find her distressed, but her eyes,
a? they were raised to meet mine, were

THE GOLDFISH 129

untroubled. An uncomprehending calm dwelt in
them. I saw that she had already forgotten
her husband's anger in her complete absorption
in something else.

For the first time it struck me that her mental
condition was not quite normal. Had she then
no memory ; or did she continually revert, as
soon as she was left to herself to some world of
her own imagination, where her harassed, be-
wildered soul was refreshed ? I remembered the
look I had often seen in her face, the piteous
expression of one anxiously endeavouring and
failing to fix her attention.

She was giving the whole of it now to a picture
on a low easel before her. I drew near and looked
at it also.

It was a portrait of the goldfish. It was really
exactly like him with his eye turned up on the
look out for crumbs. He was outlined against a
charming assortment of foreign shells, strewn
artistically on a zinc floor. The aquarium was
encircled by a pretty little grove of cowslips and
primroses, which gave the picture a cheerful
and pleasing aspect.

"It is lovely," I said.

"He is a lucky goldfish, isn't he ? " she said
apathetically.

I pondered long that night over Blanche. I
reproached myself that I had not perceived earlier
that she was overwrought. When I came to

130 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

think of it her life was deeply overshadowed by
her husband's illness. Was it possible that she
was the more talented of the two, and that it was
not congenial to her to spend so much of her
time docilely copying Arthur's pictures? I had
never thought of that before. I knew nothing
about art myself, but I could find out. I was
becoming much more occupied by this time, and
one of my patients was the celebrated artist, M.,
whose slow death I was trying to make as painless
as possible.

A day or two later I laid before him the picture
Arthur had torn in two.

I can still see M. sitting in his arm-chair in the
ragged dressing gown which he wore day and
night, unshaved, wrinkled, sixty.

He threw the larger half of the canvas on the
floor, and held the piece containing the chry-
santhemums and their shadow in his thin shaking
talon of a hand, moving it now nearer now further
away from his half blind blood-shot eyes.

I began to explain that only the chrysanthe-
mums were by the wife of the painter of the
picture, but he brushed me aside.

"She can see," he said at last. "And she's
honest. I was honest once. She can't always
say all she sees — who can — but she sees every-
thing. Bring me something more of hers."

Reader, after immense cogitation I decided
to take him two of Arthur's compositions, the

THE GOLDFISH 131

couple which after hours of agitated vacillation
he considered to be his best. They were all
spread out in his studio, and I had to assist in
his decision. He had on several occasions —
knowing I attended the great man — hinted to me
that he should like M. to see his work and advise
him upon it, but I had never taken the hint.
Mrs. Robinson was only surprised that he had
not pressed to see her son's pictures earlier.
She and Arthur evidently thought I had kept
them from the famous painter's notice until now,
as, indeed, I had.

"And I must take something of yours too," I
said kindly to Blanche as she put the two selected
works of art into a magnificent portfolio.

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Robinson. "Blanche
paints sweetly too, but mostly copies. She's a
wonderful hand at copying."

"I have nothing," said Blanche, "except the
goldfish."

"Then I must take him," I said. This was
regarded as a great joke by Arthur and his
mother, and they could hardly believe I was in
earnest until I sent Blanche for it.

"It's Goldy to the very life," said Mrs. Robin-
son fondly, "and the shells and everything exact.
Such a beautiful home for him."

Arthur looked gloomily at the little picture,
and for a moment I thought he would forbid my
taking it, but I wrapped it up with decision, put

i3* THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

it in the portfolio with the others, and departed.

I found M. as usual in his armchair in his
studio, leaning back livid and breathless, en-
deavouring so he whispered "to get forward with
his dying."

I assured him he was getting forward at a
great pace.

"Not quick enough for me, Giles," he said,
"and you won't help me out, d— - you."

I put the goldfish on a chair in front of him.
He looked at it for some moments without seeing
it, and then reared himself slowly in his chair.

He began to speak in his broken husky voice,
and for an instant I thought he had gone mad.

"Ha ! " he said, leaning forward towards the
picture. "You're portrayed, sir. Your un-
sympathetic personality, your unhealthy spots,
your dorsal redness, and your abdominal pallor,
your sullen eye turned upwards to your captors
and their crumbs, all these are rendered writh lynx-
eyed fidelity. Privacy is not for you. Like
Marie Antoinette, you are always in the full view
of your gaolers."

He paused to take breath.

"This is England, a free country where we lock
into tiny prisons for our amusement the swiftest
of God's creatures, birds, squirrels, rabbits, mice,
fishes. You are silhouetted against a background
of incongruous foreign shells strewn on a zinc
floor : the nightmare of a mad conchologist.

THE GOLDFISH 133

What tenderness, what beauty in the cowslips
and primroses which encircle your prison and
almost hide the iron grating — but not quite.
The rapture of Spring is in them. They bloom,
they bloom, every bud is opening. The contrast
between their joyous immobility and your en-
forced immobility is complete. Nothing remains
to. you, to you once swift, once beautiful, once
free, nothing remains to you in your corpulent
despair except — the pleasures of the table."

M. leaned back exhausted, trembling a little.

"It is certainly a work of the imagination,"
I hazarded, "if you can read all that into it."

"Giles, my good fellow, confine yourself to your
own sphere, how to keep in life against my will
and all laws of humanity my miserable worn out
carcase. That is not a work of the imagination.
It is the work of close and passionate observation,
observation so close, and of such integrity that
it fears nothing, evades nothing. It is tre-
mendous."

There was a moment's silence. I was a little
hurt. I knew I was ignorant about art, but after
all I had brought the picture to M.'s notice.

"How old is she?"

"Nineteen."

"I've never had a pupil, but if I could live a
few months longer I would take her. I suppose
she's starving. I nearly starved at her age. I'll
give her a hundred for it, and I'll see to its future.

134 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

Send her round here to-morrow morning." He
scrawled and flung me a cheque for a hundred
guineas.

"Now, understand," I said, "I will bring the
girl to see you to-morrow on one condition only,
that you buy her husband's ' Last Farewell/
and 'The dawn of love' for fifty pounds each.
They are in this portfolio — and ' The Goldfish '
by his wife for five. Is that a bargain? "

"If you say so it is. You always get your own
way. I suppose he's jealous of her."

"He's just beginning to be, and he doesn't do
things by halves."

Perhaps the happiest moment of poor Arthur's
tawdry inflamed existence was when I told him
that the great M. had bought his pictures. The
latent suspicion and smouldering animosity died
out of his eyes. He became radiant, boyish, for
the moment sane. Perhaps he had looked like
that before the shadow fell. Blanche, too, was
suffused with delight. Mrs. Robinson, hurrying
in with an armful of lilac orchids, was over-
joyed. She burst forth in loud jubilation, not
unlike the screeches of the London "syrens"
when they herald the coming in of the New Year.
She it seemed had always known, always seen
her boy's genius. He would get into the
Academy now, from which jealousy had so long
kept him out. He would be hung on the line.
He would be recognised. He would be as great

THE GOLDFISH 133

as M. himself, greater, for she and others among
her friends had never fancied his pictures. They
had not the lofty moral tone of Arthur's.

I produced the cheque.

"One hundred pounds for Arthur," I said, "and
five pounds for the goldfish."

Blanche started violently and looked in-
credulously at me.

Arthur's jaw dropped. Then he said patron-
izingly, "Well done, Blanche," and leaned back
pallid and exhausted on the satin couch.

"I must see him," he said over and over again
as his mother laid a warm rug over his knees, and
his wife put a cushion behind his head. "He
could tell me things, tricks of the trade. Art is
all a trick."

"He found no fault with your work," I said,
"but — don't be discouraged, Blanche — he did
criticise yours. He said you could not put down
all you saw."

"What have I always told you, Blanche ? "
said Arthur solemnly. "You put down what
you don't see. Look at that shadow where I
had not put one."

"He is really too ill to see anyone, but he will
speak to Blanche for a few minutes." I turned
to her. "You must not mind if he is severe. He
is a drastic critic. Would you like to put on your
hat and come with me? I am going on to him
now."

136 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

I had some difficulty in getting her out of the
house. Mrs. Robinson wanted to come too.
Arthur was determined that she should wait till
he was better, and they could go together. But
I had long since established my authority in that
household. I had my way.

Blanche asked no questions as we drove along.
She did not seem the least surprised that the
greatest painter of his day had bought her
husband's pictures. Was she lacking in in-
telligence ? Was there some tiny screw loose in
her mind ?

M. had not made a toilet as I half expected he
would. When we came in he was standing with
his back to us, leaning against the mantelpiece,
his unshaved chin on his hands. His horrible
old dressing gown, stained with paint, and show-
ing numerous large patches of hostile colours,
clung to him more tightly than ever. His
decrepidness struck me afresh. He looked what,
indeed, he was, an old and depraved man,
repulsive, formidable — unwashed — a complex
wreck, dying indomitably on his feet.

"And so you can do things like that," he said,
turning towards Blanche a face contracted with
pain, and pointing a lean finger at the goldfish,
and the chrysanthemum shadow, propped side
by side on the mantel piece.

"Yes."

"Where were you taught ? "

THE GOLDFISH 137

She mentioned the school where she had
studied.

"Why did you leave it ? "

"Because Mother died, and I had not any
money to go on with my education."

"And so you married for a home I suppose,"
he snarled, showing his black teeth, "for silken
gowns and delicate fare and costly furs such as
you are wearing now."

She did not answer.

"You had better have gone on the streets and
stuck to your painting."

Blanche's dark eyes met the painter's horrible
leer without flinching.

"I wish I had," she said.

They had both forgotten me. They were
intent upon each other.

And she who never spoke about herself said
to this stranger :

"I married because I did not want to go into a
sisterhood, and because Arthur said he under-
stood what I felt about painting, and that he felt
the same, and that when we were married we
would both study under S., and I was grateful
to him, and I thought I loved him. But S. would
not take him and wanted to take me. And Arthur
was dreadfully angry, and would not let me go
without him. And the years passed, hundreds
and hundreds of years, and Arthur changed to
me. And he has to be humoured. And now —

I3« THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

I copy his pictures. I enlarge them. Some-
times I decrease them, but not often. He likes
to watch me doing them. He does not care for
me to be doing anything else."

There was a long silence.

They stood looking at each other, and it
seemed as if the sword that had pierced her soul
pierced his also.

"Leave all and follow me," said the painter at
last. "That is the voice of art, as well as of
Jesus of Nazareth. That is the law. There is
no middle course. You have not left all, you
have not followed. You have dallied and
faltered and betrayed your gift. You have
denied your Lord. And your sin has found you
out. You are miserable ; you deserve to be
miserable."

She made no answer.

"But you are at the end of your tether. I
know what I know. You can't go on. You are
nineteen and your life is unendurable to you.
You are touching the fringe of despair. Break
away from your life before it breaks you. Shake
its dust from off your feet. Forsake all and find
peace in following your art."

"You might as well say to the goldfish, jump
out," said Blanche, white to the lips, pointing
to the picture.

"I do say to him, 'Jump out.' Leap in the
dark, and risk dying on a vulgar Axminster

THE GOLDFISH 139

carpet, and being trodden into it, rather than
pine in prison on sponge cake."

"Yes," said Blanche fiercely, "but there is the
wire netting. It's not in the picture, but you
know it's there. He jumps and jumps. Haven't
I said so in the picture ! And it throws him
back. You know that. I was like him once. I
used to jump, but I always fell back. I don't
jump any more now."

And then, without any warning, she burst into
a paroxysm of tears.

For a moment I stared at her stupified, and
then slipped out of the room to fetch a glass of
water.

When I came back M. was sunk down in his
armchair, and she was crouching on the ground
before him almost beside herself, holding him
by the feet.

"Let me live with you," she gasped half
distraught. "Arthur hates me, and I'm fright-
ened of him. He's mad, mad, mad, only
Dr. Giles pretends he isn't, and Mrs. Robinson
pretends ; everything in that dreadful house is
pretence, nothing real anywhere. Let me live
with you. Then he'll divorce me, and you needn't
marry me. I don't want to be married. I
won't be any trouble to you. No pretty clothes,
no amusements, no expense. I don't want
anything except a little time to myself, to
paint."

140 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"You poor soul," said the painter faintly, and
in his harsh voice was an infinite compassion.

"Help me to jump out," she shrieked, clinging
to him.

"My child," he said. "I cannot help you. I
am dying. I could not live long enough even
to blacken your name. I have failed others in
the past whom I might have succoured. Now I
fail you as I failed them. There is no help in
me."

He closed his eyes, but nevertheless two very
small tears crept from beneath the wrinkled lids,
and stood in the furrows of his cheeks.

She trembled and then rose slowly to her
feet, and obediently took the glass of water which
I proffered to her. She drank a little, and then
placed the glass carefully on the table and drew
on her gloves. I saw that she had withdrawn
once more after a terrible bid for freedom into
her fortress of reserve. She was once more the
impassive, colourless creature whom I had seen
almost daily for a year without knowing in the
least until to-day what she really was.

"I ought to be going back now," she said to
me.

"I will take you home," I said.

She went slowly up to M. and stood before him.
I had never seen her look so beautiful.

The old man looked at her fixedly.

**! made up my mind," she said, "after I spoke

THE GOLDFISH 141

to Dr. Giles that I would never try to jump out
any more, but you see I did."

"Forgive me," he said brokenly, holding out a
shaking hand.

"It's not your fault," she said, clasping his
hand in both of hers. "You are good, and you
understand. You are the only person I have
ever met who would help me if you could. But
no one can help me. No one."

And very reverently, very tenderly, she kissed
his leaden hand and laid it down upon his
knee.

As I took Blanche home I said to her :

"And when did you appeal to me, and when
did I repulse you ? "

"When I spoke to you about Goldy and you
weren't sorry, you did not mind a bit. You only
said he was a lucky goldfish."

"And what in Heaven's name had that to do
with you ? "

She looked scornfully at me as if she were not
going to be entrapped into speaking again.

I saw that she had — so to speak — ruled me out
of her life. Perhaps when I first came to that
unhappy house nearly a year ago she had looked
to me as a possible helper, had weighed me in the
balance, and had found me wanting.

I was cut to the heart, for deep down, at the
bottom of my mind I saw at last, that I had failed
her.

142 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

She might be, she probably was, slightly
deranged, but, nevertheless, she had timidly,
obscurely sought my aid, and had found no help
in me.

M. died the following evening, after trying to
die throughout the whole day. I never left him
until, at last, late at night, he laid down his
courage, having no further need of it, and reached
the end of his ordeal.

Next morning after breakfast I went as usual
to the Robinson's house, and, accoiding to
custom, was shown into the drawing-room. Now
that M. was out of his agony my mind reverted to
Blanche. My wife and children were going to the
seaside, and my wife had eagerly agreed to take
Blanche with her, if she could be spared.

"But they won't let her go," said the little
woman.

"They must if I say it's necessary," I said with
professional dignity. I wondered as I waited in
the immense Robinson drawing-room how best I
could introduce the subject. Half involuntarily
I approached the aquarium. As I drew near my
foot caught on something slippery and stiff. I
looked down, and saw it was the dead body of the
goldfish on the carpet. I picked it up, and was
staring at it when Mrs. Robinson came in. She
gave a cry wnen she saw it, and wrung her hands.

"Put him back in the water," she shrieked.
"He may be still alive."

THE GOLDFISH 143

I put him back into his cell, but it had no
longer any power over that poor captive. "Goldy"
floated grotesque and upside down on the surface
of the water. His release had come.

"He must have jumped out to get to me when
I was not there," sobbed Mrs. Robinson, the easy
tears coursing down her fat cheeks. "My poor
faithful loving little pet. But someone has taken
the wire off the aquarium. Who could have been
so wicked ? Downright cruel I call it."

The wire, true enough, had been unhooked,
and was laid among the hyacinths on the water's
edge.

"Where is Blanche?" I asked. "I want to
talk to you about her. I do not think she is well,
and I should advise—

"That was just what I was going to tell 3'ou
when I came in and saw that poor little darling
dead in your hand. I am dreadfully worried
about Blanche. She has been out all night.
She hasn't come in yet."

"Out all night ? " A vague trouble seized me.

"Yes," said Mrs. Robinson, "all night. Would
you have thought it possible ? But between you
and me it's not the first time. Once long ago,
just before you came to us, she did just the same.
She — actually — ran away : ran away fromi her
husband and me, and her beautiful home, though
we had done everything in the world to make her
happy. She went to her uncle at Liverpool,

144 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

who never liked her. He telegraphed to us at
once, and he brought her back next day. He
spoke to her most beautifully, and left her with
us. She seemed quite dazed at first, but she got
round it and became as usual, always very silent
and dull. Not the companion for Arthur. No
brightness or gaiety. Blanche has been a great
disappointment to me, tho' I've never shown
it, and I'm not one to bear malice, I've always
made a pet of her. But between you and me,
Dr. Giles, Arthur is convinced that she is not
quite right in her head, and that she ought to be
shut up."

"But she is shut up now," I said involuntarily.

She stared at me amazed.

A servant brought in a telegram.

"I telegraphed to her uncle first thing this
morning," said Mrs. Robinson, "to ask if she was
with him. Now we shall hear what he says."

She opened the envelope and spread out the
contents.

"She's not with him," she said. "Then Dr.
Giles, where is she? Where can she be?"

Later in the day we knew that Blanche had
taken refuge in the Serpentine.

The two pets had fled together. She had made
the way of escape easy for her weaker brother.

It was early in May. There was the usual
crush at the Academy. I elbowed my way

THE GOLDFISH 145

through the crowd to look at Serjeant's majestic
portait of M. Near it on the line hung the
picture of the goldfish.

A long-haired student and a little boy were
staring at it.

"Mummy," said the child, running to a beauti-
fully dressed slender woman looking at the
Serjeant, "I want a goldfish, too."

"Well, darling, you shall have one," she said,
and, turning to the young man who accompanied
her, she added, "You never saw a child so fond
of animals as Cedric."

The Stars in their Courses

I WAS always somewhat amazed when I came to
think of it, but I hardly ever did think of it, that
my cousin, Jimmy Cross, should have married
Gertrude Bingham. There seemed no reason
for such a desperate step on his part. But if one
is going to be taken aback by the alliances of one's
friends and relations one would journey through
life in a continual state of astonishment, and the
marriage service especially exhorts the married
"not to be afraid with any amazement," which
shows that that is the natural emotion evoked
by contemplation of the holy estate, and that it
is our duty not to give way to it.

I said there seemed no reason for the lethargic
Jimmy to take this step, especially as he had been
married before, and had enjoyed a serene widow-
hood for some years. But what I forgot was
that he never did take any step at all in either
marriage. He just sat still.

The first time his Mother arranged everything,
and the result, if dull, was not actually un-
pleasant.

The second time Gertrude Bingham took all
146

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES 147

the necessary steps with precision and determi-
nation. Now and then it certainly seemed as if
he would take alarm and run away, but he did
not. He remained seated.

It is as impossible for a man rooted in inertia
to achieve a marriage which implies an effort,
as it is for him to evade a marriage, the avoidance
of which requires an effort. He remains re-
cumbent both when he ought to pursue and
when he ought to fly. He is the prey of energetic
kidnappers.

Gertrude was a great astrologer and conversed
in astrological terms, which I repeat, but which I
don't pretend to understand. She told me (after
the wedding) that when she discovered that
Jimmy's moon in the house of marriage was semi-,
sextile to her Venus she had known from the first
that their union was inevitable. I think Jimmy
felt it so too, and that it was no use struggling.
To put it mildly, she placed no obstacles in the
way of this inevitable union, and it took place
amid a general chorus of rather sarcastic ap-
proval from both families.

What a mother Gertrude would make to Joan,
Jimmy's rather spoilt girl of twelve, what a wife
to Jimmy himself, what an excellent influence
in the parish, what an energetic addition to our
sleepy neighbourhood. We were told we were
going to be stirred up. I never met the second
Mrs. Cross till Jimmy brought her down as a

148 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

bride to call on me in my cottage near his park
gates. She at once inspired me with all the
terror which very well-dressed people with
exactly the right hair and earrings always arouse
in me. She was good-looking, upright, had
perfect health and teeth and circulation, did
breathing exercises, had always just finished the
book of the moment, and was ready with an
opinion on it, not a considered opinion — but an
opinion. During her first call I discovered that
she had, for many years, held strong views about
the necessity of school life for only children, and
was already on the look-out for a seminary for
Joan.

"It is in her horoscope," she said to me, as we
walked in my orchard garden, too much en-
grossed with Joan's future to notice my wonder-
ful yellow lupins. "Her Mercury and ruling
planet are in Aquarius, and that means the
companionship of her own age. I shall not delay
a day in finding the best school that England
can produce."

I need hardly say that such an establishment
protruded itself on to Mrs. Cross's notice, with
the greatest celerity, and thither the long-legged
nail-biting, pimply, round - shouldered Joan
repaired, and became a reformed character, with
a clear complexion and a back almost as flat as
her step-mother's.

"Wonderful woman," Jimmy used to say

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES 149

somewhat ruefully to me, sitting on the low stone
wall which divides my little velvet lawn from my
bit of woodland . ' ' Gertrude has been the making
of Joan."

"And of you, too, my dear Jimmy," I re-
marked.

He sighed.

It was perfectly true. She had been the
making of him, just as she had been the making
of the Manor garden, of the boot and shoe club,
the boys' carving class, the Confirmation candi-
dates' reading class, the mothers' working
parties, the coal club, the Church members'
lending library. The only misgiving that re-
mained in one's mind after she had been the
making of all these things was that it seemed a
pity that they were all so obviously machine-
made, turned out to pattern.

Personally, I should have preferred that they
should have been treated less conventionally, or
let alone. My own course and Jimmy's would,
of course, have been to have left them alone.
We left everything alone. But Gertrude always
had a ready-made scheme for everything and
everybody. She even had a scheme of salvation
into which the Deity was believed to be com-
pressed. I did not mind much the industrious
efforts she expended on Jimmy, who was now
an inattentive Magistrate and member of the
County Council, and wobbly chairman of his own

150 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

Parish Council, writing an entirely illegible hand,
which perhaps did not matter much as he never
answered letters. But I felt acutely distressed
when she reconstructed the rambling old Manor
garden entirely. All its former pleasant charac-
teristics were wrenched out of it. It was drawn
and quartered, and then put together anew in
compartments. It contained everything ; a
Japanese garden, a rock garden, a herb garden,
a sunk garden, a wilderness, a rose garden, a
pergola, three pergolas, just as the village now
contained, a boot club, a coal club, a — but I
think I have said that before.

In the course of time she presented Jimmy with
two most remarkable children, at least she said
they were remarkable : and from their horo-
scopes I gathered the boy would probably become
a prime minister, and the girl a musical genius.
We don't actually know yet what form their
greatness will take, for as I write this they are
still greedy, healthy children, who come out in
plum-pudding rash regularly at Christmas.

I knew her well by the time the garden had
been given its coup de grace, and I told her after
I had been dragged all over it that she had a
constructive mind. (I have never been a par-
ticularly truthful person, but my career as
a liar dates from Jimmy's marriage with
Gertrude.)

My remark pleased her. She smiled graciously

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES 151

and said, "Ah, I had not got Mars rising in
Capricorn for nothing when I was born."

As we became more intimate she insisted on
drawing out my horoscope, and after a week of
intense mental activity produced a sort of cart
wheel on paper at which I looked with respectful
misgiving.

"I hope it does not say anything about my
living anywhere except here," I said anxiously.

I had long had a fear at the back of my mind
that she might need my cottage for some benevo-
lent scheme. Jimmy, who had always been
fond of me, had let it to me at a nominal rent in
his easygoing widower days, because the mild
climate suited my rheumatism, and my society
suited him. Round the cottage had gradually
sprung up what many, though not Gertrude,
considered a beautiful garden.

"No travelling at all," she said, "no movement
of any kind. And I am afraid, Anne, I can't hold
out the slightest hope of a marriage for you."

"Since I turned forty I had begun to fear I
might remain unwedded," I remarked.

"No sign of marriage," she said, exploring the
cart wheel, "and there must have been con-
siderable lethargy in the past when openings of
this kind did occur. Your Venus seems for many
years to have been in square to Neptune, and
that wrould tend to make these chances slip away
from you."

152 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"I endeavoured to pounce on them," I said
humbly. "My dear mother's advice to me as to
matrimony was 'clutch while you can' — I assure
you I left no stone unturned."

"In that case you probably turned the wrong
ones," she said judicially. "And I am sorry to
tell you that I don't see any good fortune coming
to you either, and rather bad health. In short,
you will have a severe illness next spring. March
especially will be a bad month for you. Your
Moon will be going through Virgo, the sign of
sickness.

It generally was. I don't mean my moon,
but March. I rarely got through the winter
without an attack of rheumatism at the end of it.

All in a moment, as it seemed to me, after a
few springs and autumns and attacks of rheu-
matism, Gertrude's two children were leaving the
nursery, and Joan was returning home from
school to be introduced into society. Gertrude
began to look round for a governess who would
also be a companion for Joan. I helped her to
find one. It was a case of nepotism. I recom-
mended my own niece, Dulcibella, who had just
returned from the completion of her education
at Dresden. Dulcibella 's impecunious parents
had, of course, both died and left her to battle
with life — and me, alone, her only heritage being
a wild rose prettiness and dark eyes like an
Alderney calf's.

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES 153

She was well educated. I had been able to
achieve that owing to the cheap rate at which I
lived, thanks to Jimmy. But I had thoroughly
made up my mind that I was not going to have
her twirling her thumbs under my roof. She was
close on eighteen, and must now earn her own
living.

She was staying with me on a visit when
Gertrude told me of her requirements. Gertrude's
two stout children were at that moment sitting
on the lawn blowing soap bubbles with Dulci-
bella. Jimmy had been engaged in the same
pursuit as his offspring five minutes earlier, but
had departed. Gertrude looked at the group
critically.

"Your niece does not look strong," she said
dubiously.

"She isn't."

"Or energetic."

"She's not."

"Is she really firm with children ? "

"I should not think so, but you are a better
judge of character than I am."

Conscience pricked as I said the words, but I
had become inured to its prickings.

"I have, of course, studied human nature,"
she said slowly, still looking at the pretty group
on the lawn.

I have not yet met a fellow creature who does
not think he has studied human nature. Yet

154 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

how few turn the pages of that open book. And
out of that few the greatest number scan it
upside down.

"I could make a truer estimate," she con-
tinued, "if I drew out her horoscope. I go by
that more than by my own fallible judgment. I
may err, but I have never known astrology to fail."

Dulcie was duly engaged as governess on
approval for three months, on the strength of her
horoscope. Before she went to the Manor House I
made a few remarks to her to which she listened
decorously, her eyes reverently fixed on my face.

"You will leave witn me that remarkably
pretty lilac muslin you appeared in yesterday —
and the sun-bonnet. You will make yourself
look as like a district visitor as possible, thick
where you ought to be thin, and thin where you
ought to be thick. Don't cry, Dulcie. I am
endeavouring to help you. Be thankful you
have an aunt like me. Who educated you ? "

"You did." Sob. Sob.

"Well, now I am finishing your education.
You want to earn your living, I suppose. You
know that I only have a small annuity, that I
have not a farthing to leave you."

"Yes, yes, Aunt Anne."

"WTell, then, don't look prettier than that
square Joan, and don't let the wave in your hair
show."

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES 155

The Alderney calf eyes brimmed anew with
tears. Dulcie drooped her pin of a head. Like
that defunct noodle, her mother, she lived solely
for clothes and poetry and the admiration of the
uncorseted sex. She had come into the world a
little late. She conformed to the best Victorian
ideals, but there are men still lurking in secluded
rural districts if one could but find them, to whom
her cheap appeal might be irresistible.. I had
hopes she might secure a husband if she took a
country engagement. I proceeded with my
discourse. It spread over Jimmy as well. I did
not bid her pure eyes look into depths of depravity
but I did make her understand that Mrs. Cross
was becoming rather stout and middle-aged,
and that if Mr. Cross blew soap bubbles in the
schoolroom too frequently, she, Dulcie, might
find that her French accent was not good enough
for her young charges.

Dulcie has not the faintest gleam of humour,
but she is docility itself.

She appeared next day staid, flat-figured,
almost unpretty, her wonderful hair smoothed
closely over her small ears.

I blessed her, and said as a parting word :

"Take an interest in astrology."

And then the gardener wheeled her luggage
on the barrow to the Manor, and Dulcie crept
timidly behind it to her first situation.

In order that this tragic story, for it is a

156 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

tragedy, should not expand into a novel, I will
say at once that she was a complete success.
That was because she did exactly as I told her.
As a rule, very silly people never will do what
they are told. But in that one point Dulcie
was no fool.

She was lamentably weak with the children.
She had no art of teaching. She did not en-
courage Joan to preserve a burnished mind, but
she took to astrology like a duck to water. From
the first she was deeply interested in it, and
believed in it with flawless credulity.

"Dulcie," said Gertrude with approval, "has
a very alert mind for one so young. Joan has,
never taken the faintest interest in astrology,
but Dulcie shows an intelligent grasp of the
subject. She studies it while the children are
preparing their syntax. You, yourself, Anne,
have never in all these years mastered even the
elements of the science. I don't believe you
know what an aspect means."

"I don't pretend to a powerful mind."

"Your difficulty is the inertia that belongs to a
low vitality," said Gertrude, "and I rather think
that is what is the matter with Joan. She
hardly opens a book. She has not an idea
beyond her chickens. She spends hours among
her coops."

" Dulcie 's horoscope," continued Gertrude after
a pause, "shows a marked expansion in her

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES 157

immediate future. The wider life which she has
entered upon under our roof is no doubt the
beginning of it. I feel it my duty to help her in
every way I can."

"Dear Gertrude," I said. "Thank you. My
poor motherless child, for whom I can do but
little has found a powerful friend in you."

Conscience jabbed me as with a knitting needle,
but I paid no more attention to it than the
Spartan boy to his fox.

"There is certainly a love affair in her near
future," continued Gertrude affably. "She says
that astrologically she can't see any such thing
for several years to come, but I know better. I
found him under Uranus, transiting her Venus.
She is an extremely intelligent pupil, but she is
certainly obstinate. She won't see it. But she
can see Joan's engagement and marriage quite
clearly. We both see that. But I am convinced
Dulcie has an opportunity of marrying as well as
Joan. Her moon will shortly be going through
the fifth house, the house of lovers which speaks
for itself. I wondered whether it might possibly
be Mr. Wilson. Most respectable — you know —
Mr. Benson's pupil. He's always coming over
on one pretext or another, to play tennis or see
Joan's chickens. I saw him walking back
through the park with Dulcie and the children
the other day."

I pretended to be horrified.

158 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"I will speak to her," I mumbled, "most
reprehensible."

"I beg you will do nothing of the kind," said
Gertrude with asperity. "The world moves on,
my dear Anne, while you sit dreaming in your
cottage ; and if you can't raise a finger to help
your own niece then don't try to nullify the
benevolent activities of those who can."

"Of course, Gertrude, if you look at it in that
way. But a governess ! "

"I do look at it in that way; and allow me to
tell you, Anne, that you dress her abominably,
and I have advised her to revolt. And her hair !
I spoke to her about it yesterday, and she said
you liked her to plaster it down like that. The
child has beautiful hair, very like mine at her age.
It needs releasing. It is not necessary that she
should imitate your severe coiffure."

"Oh ! Gertrude, I always brush my own hair
back, and surely it is not too much to ask of my
brother's only child who owes everything to me
to — " I became tearful.

"It is too much to ask. You are an egoist,
Anne. The poor child looked quite frightened
when I spoke to her yesterday. You mean well,
but you have repressed her. I intend, on the
contrary, to draw her out, to widen her narrowed,
pinched existence." Gertrude had said the same
of Jimmy when she married him. Everyone
had a pinched existence till she dawned on them,

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES 159

though it would have been difficult to say who
had dared to pinch Jimmy.

Next day Dulcie came down half frightened,
wholly delighted, to confer with me.

"My dear," I said. "Do exactly what kind
Mrs. Cross wishes about your hair and dress and
general deportment. I can't explain, it would
take too long, and when I had explained you
would not understand. You may now take back
with you the lilac gown and the sun-bonnet.
And, by the way, what is this Mr. Wilson like
who is always coming over ? "

"Very, very nice" — with fervour.

"And, handsome? "

"Very, very handsome."

"H'm 1 Now, Dulcie, no nonsense such as
you ladled out to me about Herr Miiller, the
music master at Dresden. You needn't cry.
That is all past and forgotten. But I want a
plain answer. Does this very handsome man
care about chickens ? "

"Yes, yes, Aunt Anne. He has taken several
prizes ? "

"Does he come to see you, or Joan ? "

Dulcie cogitated.

"At first it was Joan," she said.

Light broke in on me. That serpent Gertrude I
She did not think the poultry fancier good
enough for the stolid Joan, but quite good
enough for my exquisite Dulcibella.

160 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"I must go back now," said Dulcie. "I'm
dining down because Mr. Cross likes a game of
patience in the evening. It keeps him from
falling asleep. Mr. Wilson is staying to dinner.
I'm going to wear my amber muslin, and Mr.
Vavasour is coming to stay. We've seen a good
deal of him lately. Mrs. Cross says he has had
a very overshadowed life with his old mother,
and she wants to help him to a wider sphere."

I pricked up my ears.

"Is he Vavasour, of Harlington ? "

"Yes, that's his home, near Lee on the Solent."

"But surely he is quite an infant."

"I don't know what you mean by an infant,
Aunt Anne. He is two years older than me, and
he simply loves poetry."

"And is he as nice as Mr. Wilson ? "

"Very, very nice."

Further lights were bursting in. The illumi-
nation momentarily staggered me.

"H'm. Dulcie, you will now attend to what
I tell you."

"Yes, yes, Aunt Anne. I always do."

"Now, mind you don't make eyes at Mr.
Wilson, who is Joan's friend. That is what
horrid little cats of girls do, not what I expect ot
you. Chickens draw people together in a way,
ahem I you don't understand, but — you will
later on."

"Like poetry does ? " Dulcie hazarded.

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES 161

"Just like poetry. And one thing more. Don't
speak to Mr. Vavasour unless he speaks to you."

"No, no, Aunt Anne. I never do."

Once again I must compress. As the summer
advanced, Gertrude, nose down in full cry on the
track, unfolded to me a project which only
needed my co-operation.

I reminded her that I never co-operated, but
she paid no attention, and said she wished to
send the children with Joan and Dulcie to the
seaside for a month, while she watched over
Jimmy during his annual visit to Harrogate.
The children required a change.

I agreed.

She had thought of Lee on the Solent. (You
will remember, reader, that Mr. Vavasour's
place was near Lee.)

"Why Lee ? " I said, pretending surprise.
"Expensive and only ten miles away. No real
change of climate. Send them to Felixstowe or
Scarborough."

But Gertrude's mind was made up. She
poured forth batches of adequate reasons. It
must be Lee. Would I accompany the party
as their guest ? Joan and Dulcie were rather too
young to go into lodgings alone.

I saw at once that, under the circumstances,
Lee was no place for me. I might get into hot
water. I, so free now, might become entangled
in the affairs of others, and might be blamed later

i6a THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

on. I might find myself acting with duplicity
or, to be more exact, I might be found out to be
doing so.

I declined with regretful gratitude. If it had
been Felixstowe or Scarborough I would have
taken charge with pleasure, but I always had
rheumatism at Lee. Rheumatism was a very
capricious ailment.

"It is, indeed," said Gertrude coldly.

"Send your old governess," I suggested, "the
ancient Miss Jones who lives at Banff. You
have her here every summer for a month. Kill
two birds with one stone. Let her have her
annual outing at Lee instead of here."

Gertrude was undeniably struck by my sugges-
tion, though she found fault with it. As she
began to come round to it I then raised objec-
tions to it. I reminded her that Miss Jones was
as blind as a bat : that when she accompanied
them to Scotland the year before she had mis-
taken the footman bathing for a salmon leaping.
But Gertrude was of the opinion that Miss Jones's
shortsightedness was no real drawback.

The expedition started, and I actually produced
five pounds for Dulcie to spend on seaside attire.
I considered it a good investment.

Before Gertrude departed with Jimmy for
Harrogate she volunteered with a meaning smile
that she understood Mr. Wilson bicycled over
frequently to Lee.

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES 163

"Ten miles is nothing," I said, "to a high
principled poultry fancier."

"Now you know," she said archly, "why I did
not wish to remove Dulcie to a great distance at
this critical moment in her young life. I hear
from Miss Jones, who writes daily, that there are
shrimping expeditions and picnics with the
children, strolls by moonlight without them."

Reader, I did not oblige that serpent to dis-
gorge the fact that moonlight strolls are not taken
by two women and one man. I knew as well as
possible that Miss Jones had received a hint to
give these two young men every opportunity.
I thanked Providence that I had not got into
that galore. I had been saved by the fixed
principle of a life time to avoid action of any
kind.

I had hardly begun to enjoy the month of
solitude when it was over, and Gertrude and
Jimmy returned from Harrogate, he very limp
and depressed, as always after his cure, and sure
that it had done him more harm than good.

The two girls came back from the Solent look-
ing the picture of health ; even Joan was almost
pretty, beaming under her tan. Dulcibella, who
did not tan, was ravishing. The children were a
rich brown pink apparently all over, and the
ancient Miss Jones was a jet-beaded mass of
bridling gratitude and self-importance.

Then, of course, the storm burst.

164 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

You and I, reader, know exactly what had
happened. Dulcie had got engaged to Mr.
Vavasour, and Joan to Mr. Wilson.

Dulcie came skimming down in the dusk the
first evening to announce the event to me, her
soft cheek pressed to mine. She said she wanted
me to be the first to know.

And Gertrude had said I could do nothing for
her!

She told me that at that very moment the
blissful Joan was announcing her own betrothal
to her parents.

Next morning Jimmy came down to see me.
He generally gravitated to me if anything went
wrong.

"We are in a hat up at the house," he said.
"Joan has actually engaged herself to that oaf,
Wilson. Infernal cheek on his part, I call it."

"You have had him hanging about for months,"
I said, "I expect he and Joan thought you
approved."

"They did. They do. But that doesn't make
it any better. Of course I said I would not allow
it, and Joan was amazed and cried all night, and
Gertrude is in a state of such nervous tension
you can't go near her, and poor old Jones, who
came back preening herself, is bathed in tears—
and Gertrude says I have got to speak to Wilson
at once. She always says things have got to be
done at once."

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES 165

He groaned, and sat down heavily on my low
wall, crushing a branch of verbena.

"It's not as if I hadn't warned Gertrude," he
went on. "I said to her several times 'I'm
always catching my foot against Wilson/ and
yet she would have him about the place. She
as good as told me she thought he and Dulcie
might make a match of it. But it's my opinion
Dulcie never so much as looked at him. I told
Gertrude so, but she only smiled, and said I was
to leave it to her, and that it was in those con-
founded stars that Dulcie would marry almost
at once. This is what her beastly stars hare
brought us to."

"She did tell me there was an early marriage
for Joan, too, in her horoscope," I hazarded.

"Well, we had had thoughts, I mean Gertrude
had, that young Vavasour came over oftener
than he need. He's rather a bent lily, but of
course he's an uncommonly good match* I
should not have thought there was anything in
it, myself, but Gertrude kept rubbing it in. That
is why they went to Lee."

"You don't say so I "

"Yes, I do say so. But look how it has turned
out."

" I think I ought to tell you — I'm so astonished
that even now I don't know how to believe it —
I only heard of it last night, — that Dulcie has
accepted Mr. Vavasour."

166 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

For a moment Jimmy stared at me, and then
he burst into shouts of laughter.

"Well done, Anne 1 " he said, rolling on my
poor verbena. "Well done, Dulcie. That little
slyboots. Thirty thousand a year. What a
score. Who would have thought it, Anne !
You look so remote and unworldly in your grey
hair, stitching away at your woolwork picture.
But you've outwitted Gertrude. Well, I don't
care what she says. I'm glad of any luck
happening to Dulcie. She is not fit to struggle
for herself in this hard world. But Gertrude
will never forgive you, Anne. You may make
up your mind to that."

" But what have I done ? " I bleated.
"Nothing. I'm as innocent as an unlaid

egg."

"You may be, but she will never forgive you
all the same," said Jimmy slowly rising, and
brushing traces of verbena from his person.
"Stupid people never forgive, and they always
avenge themselves by brute force."

Old Miss Jones, bewildered and tearful, toddled
down to see me, boring me to death with plans
for leaving Banff and settling in Bournemouth
with a married niece. Joan rushed down,
boisterously happy, and confident that her
father would give in ; Jimmy, weakening daily,
came down. Mr. Wilson called, modest and
hopeful ; Dulcie, and the children came down,

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES 167

Mr. Vavasour, a stooping youth, with starling
eyes, and an intense manner, motored over.

But Gertrude never came.

I consoled myself with Mr. Vavasour. There
was no doubt he was in love with Dulcie, and
I surmised that in the future, if she could not
dominate him, his aunt by marriage might be
able to do so. I can't say whether Dulcie cared
much about him, but I told her firmly that she
was very much in love, and she said, "Yes, yes,
Aunt Anne."

That was what was so endearing about Dulcie.

She was so obliging ; always ready to run
upstairs for my spectacles, or to marry anybody.

One evening, when she was dining with me,
she proceeded to draw out her Ronald's horo-
scope.

She was evidently extraordinarily well up in
the subject.

"I will ask, Mrs. Cross," she said at last, after
much knitting of white brows, " but I should
say Ronald was certainly not going to marry at
all at this moment with Mercury and Jupiter
in opposition. But then I said the same about
myself, and about your going on a long journey.
I should have thought some great change was
inevitable with your sun now sesquiquadrate
to Uranus in Cancer. But Mrs. Cross said I
was absolutely mistaken about both. She was
very emphatic."

168 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"You don't mean to say you believe a single
word of it," I said, amazed.

"Oh, yes, Aunt Anne, of course I do. Why,
don't you remember you yourself advised me to
study it. I'm sure it's all true, only it's difficult
to disentangle."

Jimmy came down next day, and a more
crestfallen man I have never seen. I was
dividing my white pinks, and he collapsed on a
bench, and looked at me.

"You've given in about Mr. Wilson," I said
drily.

"I have. Gertrude came round to it quite
suddenly last night."

"Bear up," I said "They will probably be
very happy."

"I don't find I mind much now it's decided
on. And between ourselves Gertrude and Joan
did not hit it off too well. I used to get a bit
rattled between the two of them. It will be
more peaceful when Joan is married."

' ' Then I don 't see why you look so woe-begone . ' '

Jimmy shifted on his bench.

"Anne," he said solemnly, "you made the
great mistake of your life when you refused me."

"You could not expect me to leave a brand
new kitchen boiler for you. I told you that at
the time."

"We should have suited each other," went on
Jimmy, drearily, ignoring manlike, my reasons

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES 169

for celibacy. "We are both," he paused and
then added with dignity, "contemplatives by
nature. We should have sat down in two arm-
chairs for life. I should never have been a
magistrate, and a chairman of a cursed Parish
Council. I should just have been happy."

"I have been happy," I said, "I am happy."

"You have had a beautiful life : one long
siesta. That is so like you. You have fetched
it off and I've missed it. Just as Gertrude has
missed this match for Joan, and you have
fetched it off for Dulcie. If I had married you
you would never have wanted me to exert
myself. That was why my higher nature turned
to you like a sunflower to the sun. You ought
to have taken me. After all, you are the only
woman I have ever proposed to," said the twice
married man.

"I thought as much," I said, pulling my white
pinks apart.

"You might have known," he said darkly, and
a glint of malice momentarily shone in his kindly
eyes, "that trouble would some day overtake
you for your wicked selfishness in refusing me."

I did not notice what he was saying so much
as that alien expression in my old friend's face.
I stared at him.

"I'm putty in Gertrude's hands," he continued
solemnly, "as I should have been in yours. It's
no kind of use saying I ought not to be putty.

170 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

I know I ought not, but putty I am. You don't
know what marriage is like. No peace unless you
give in entirely — no terms — no half-way house,
no nothing except unconditional surrender."

I had never heard Jimmy speak like this before.
I put in a layer of pinks, and then looked at him
again.

There were tears in his eyes.

"My dear old soul," he burst out, "I can't
help it, I cannot help it. She insisted on my
coming down and telling you myself. She said
it must come from me, as my own idea, and I'm
not to mention her at all. The truth is — she has
decided — and nothing will move her — that it will
be best if Joan and Bobby Wilson lived quite
near us for a time as they are both so young —
in fact — " his voice became hoarse — "in this
cottage."

"My cottage ! " I said. "Here ! "

He nodded.

For a moment I could neither see nor hear.
My brain reeled. I clutched at something which
turned out to be Jimmy's hand.

"My own little house," I gasped. "My garden,
made with my own hands. The only place my
rheumatism — " I choked.

"Don't take on so, Anne," but it was Jimmy
who was crying, not I, "I'll find something else for
you. Miss Jones is leaving Banff. You shall
have her house rent free. I hate it all just as

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES 171

much as you. It makes me sick to think of
chicken hutches on your lawn ; but, but — you
shouldn't have outwitted Gertrude."

"She told me there was no movement, no
journey of any kind in my horoscope," I groaned.

"She says she made a mistake, and that she
sees now there is a long journey. Dulcie told her
so some time ago, but she would not hear of it.
But now she has worked it out again, and she
says Dulcie was right after all. You are plum
in the thick of Uranian upheavals."

"And is Dulcie 's marriage a mistake, too ? "

"She said nothing about that. But, between
ourselves, Anne, though I'm not an astrologer, I
should not count on it too much, for I've been
making a few enquiries about Vavasour, and I
find he has been engaged four times already.
It's a sort of habit with him to get engaged, and
his mother never opposes him, but she has a sort
of habit of gently getting him out of it — every
time."

All this took place several years ago. I live in
the suburbs of Banff now in Miss Jones's old
house. As there is no garden that kind Jimmy
has built me a little conservatory sticking like a
blister to the unattached wall of my semi-
detached villa. He sends me a hamper of
vegetables every week, and Joan presents me

172 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

with a couple of chickens now and then, reared
on my lawn.

They come in handy when Dulcie and her
Wilhelm are staying with me. Herr Miiller has
an appointment in Aberdeen now. They are
dreadfully poor, and a little Miiller arrives every
year, but Dulcie is as happy as she is incompetent
and impecunious. She adds to their small
muddled away income by giving lessons in
astrology. I have learned the rudiments of the
science, in order when I stay with her to help her
with her pupils. But I never stay long as I have
rheumatism as severely in Aberdeen as in Banff.

Her Murderer

"THE truth is, I shall have to murder her ! " said
Mark gloomily. "I see no way out of it."

"I could not be really happy with a husband
whose hands were red with gore," I remarked.
"I'm super-sensitive, I know. I can't help it. I
was made so. If you murder her, I warn you I
shall throw you over. And where would you be
then ? "

"Exactly where I am now, as far as marrying
you is concerned. You may throw me over as
much as you like. I shan't turn a hair."

He had not many hairs left to turn, and perhaps
he remembered that fact, and that I held nothing
sacred, for he hurried on in an aggrieved tone :

"You never give me credit for any imagination.
I'm not going to spill her blood. I'm much too
tidy. I've thought it all out. I shall take you
and her on a picnic to the New Forest, and trot
you both about till you're nearly famished. And
then for luncheon I shall produce a tin of potted
lobster. I shall choose it very carefully with a
bulging tin. Potted lobster is deadly when the
tin bulges. And as the luncheon will be at my
expense, she will eat more than usual. She will
'partake heartily,' as the newspapers will say

173

174 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

afterwards ; at least, as I hope they will have
occasion to say. And then directly the meal is
over the lobster will begin to do its duty, and
swell inside her, and she'll begin struggling among
the picnic things. I shan't be there. I shall
have gone for a little stroll. You will support
her in her last moments. I don't mind helping
with the funeral. I'd do that willingly."

I laughed, but I was near to tears.

"How long have we been engaged ? " asked
Mark.

"Twelve years. You know that as well as I do."

"Well, as far as I can see, we shall be still
affianced in twenty years' time. Aunt Pussy
will see us all out."

"We may toddle to the altar yet," I said
hysterically, "when you are about eighty and I
am seventy. And I shall give you a bath-chair,
and you will present the bridesmaids, who must
not be a day younger than myself, with rubber
hot-water bottles. Rubber will be cheap again
by then."

He came back, and sat down by me.

"It's damnable ! " he said.

"It is," I replied.

"And it isn't as if the little ass couldn't afford
it ! " he broke out, after a moment. "She can't
have less than thirty thousand a year, and she
lives on one. And it will all come to you when
she dies. And it's rolling up, and rolling up, and

HER MURDERER 175

the years pass and pass. Our case is desperate.
Janet, can't you say something to her ? Can't
you make a great appeal to her ? Can't you get
hold of someone who has an influence over her,
and appeal to them ? "

I did not think it necessary to answer. He
knew I had tried everything years ago.

It had been thought a wonderful thing for me
when Aunt Pussy, my godmother, adopted me
when I was fourteen. We were a large family,
and I was the only delicate one, not fitted, so my
parents thought, to "fend for myself" in this
rough world. And I had always liked Aunt
Pussy, and she me. And she promised my father,
on his impecunious death-bed, that she would
take charge of me and educate me. She further
gratuitously and solemnly promised that she
would leave me all her money. Her all was not
much, a few hundreds a year. But that was a
great deal to people like ourselves. She was our
one rich relation, and it was felt that I was
provided for, which eventually caused an es-
trangement between me and my brothers and
sisters, who had to work for their living ; while
I always had pretty clothes and a little — a very
little — pocket-money, and did nothing in the
way of work except arrange flowers, and write a
few notes, and comb out Aunt Pussy's Flossy,
being careful to keep the parting even down the
middle of his back,

176 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

My sisters became workers, and they also
became ardent Suffragists, which would have
shocked my father dreadfully if he had been
alive, for he was of opinion that woman's proper
sphere is the home, though, of course, if you have
not got a home or any money it seems rathei
difficult for women to remain in their sphere.

I, being provided for, remained perfectly
womanly, of the type that the Anti-Suffrage
League, and the sterner sex especially, admire.
I took care of my appearance, I dressed charm-
ingly on the very small allowance which Aunt
Pussy doled out to me, I was an adept at all the
little details which make a home pleasant, I
never wanted to do anything except to marry
Mark.

For across the even tenor of our lives, in a
little villa in Kensington, as even as the parting
down Flossie's back, presently came two great
events. Aunt Pussy inherited an enormous
fortune, and the following year, I being then
twenty, fell in love with Mark and accepted him.
I can't tell you whether he, poor dear, was quite
disinterested at first. It was, of course, known
that I should inherit all my aunt's money. He
was rather above me in the social scale. I have
sometimes thought that his old painted, gambling
Jezebel of a mother prodded him in my direction.

But if he was not disinterested at first, he
became so. We were two perfectly ordinary

HER MURDERER 177

young people. But we were meant for each
other, and we both knew it.

We never for a moment thought there would be
any real difficulty in the way of our marriage.
Aunt Pussy was, of course, exasperatingly
niggardly, but she was now very wealthy, and
she approved of Mark, partly because he was not
without means. He was an only child with a
little of his own, and with expectations from his
mother. He had had a sunstroke in Uganda,
which had forced him to give up his profession,
but he was independent of it. Aunt Pussy,
however, though she was most kind and senti-
mental about us, could not at first be induced to
say anything definite about money.

When, after a few months, I began to grow
pale and thin, she went so far as to say that she
would give me an allowance equal to his income.
I fancy even that concession cost her nights of
agony. If he could make up five hundred a year
she would make up the same.

Was this the moment, I ask you, for his wicked
old mother to gamble herself into disgrace and
bankruptcy ? My poor Mark came, swearing
horribly, to her assistance. But when he had
done so, and had given her a pittance to live on,
there was nothing left for himself.

Even then neither of us thought it mattered
much. Aunt Pussy would surely come round.
But we had not reckoned on the effect that a large

M

178 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

fortune can make on a miserly temperament.
She clutched at the fact that Mark was penniless
as a reason to withdraw her previous promise.
She would not part with a penny. She did not
want to part with me. She put us off with one
pretext after another. After several years of
irritation and anger and exasperation, we dis-
covered what we ought to have known from the
first, that nothing would induce her to give up
anything in her life-time, though she was much
too religious to break her promise to my father.
She intended to leave me everything. But she
was not going to part with sixpence as long as she
could hold on to it.

We tried to move her, but she was not to be
moved. On looking back I see now that she was
more eccentric than we realised at the time. In
the course of twelve years Mark and I went
through all the vicissitudes that two common-
place people deeply in love do go through if they
can't marry.

We became desperate. We decided to part.
We urged each other to marry someone else.
We conjured each other to feel perfectly free. We
doubted each other. He swore. I wept. He
tried to leave me and he couldn't. I did not try.
I knew itUvas no use. We each had opportunities
of marrying advantageously if we could only
have disentangled ourselves from each other.
I learned what jealousy can be of a woman,

HER MURDERER 179

younger and better looking, and sweeter-tem-
pered and with thicker hair than myself.

He asseverated with fury that he was never
jealous of me. If that was so, his outrageous
behaviour to his own cousin, a rich and blameless
widower in search of a wife, was inexplicable.
And now, after twelve years, we had reached a
point where we could only laugh. There was
nothing else to be done. He was growing stout,
and I was growing lean. If only middle-aged
men could grow thin, and poor middle-aged
women a little plump, life would be easier for
them. But we reversed it. Aunt Pussy alone
seemed untouched by time. Even Mark's opti-
mistic eye could never detect any sign of "break-
ing up" about her.

And throughout those dreary years we had one
supreme consolation, and a very painful consola-
tion it was. We loved each other.

"It's damnable!" said Mark again. "Well,
if I'm not to murder her, if you're going to thwart
me in every little wish just as if we were married
already, I don't see what there is to be done.
I've inquired about a post obit."

"Oh, Mark 1 "

"It's no use saying 'Oh, Mark' ! I tell you I've
inquired about a post obit, and if you ha a grain
of affection for me you would have done the same
yourself years ago. But it seems you can't
raise money on a promise which may be broken,

i8o THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

As I said before, there is no way out of it except
by bloodshed. I shall have to murder her, and
then you can marry me or not as you like. You
will like, safe enough, if I am handy with the
remains."

The door opened, and Aunt Pussy hurried in.
She was always in a hurry. We did not start
away from each other, but remained stolidly
seated side by side on the horsehair dining-room
sofa with anger in our hearts against her. She
had never given me a sitting-room. I always had
to interview Mark in the dining-room with a
plate of oranges on the sideboard, like a heroine
in "The Quiver."

Aunt Pussy was: a small, dried-up woman of
between fifty and sixty, with a furtive eye and a
perpetually moving mouth, who looked as if she
had been pinched out of shape by someone with
a false sense of humour and no reverence. She
was dressed in every shade of old black — rusty
black, green black, brown black, spotted black,
figured black, plain black. Mark got up slowly,
and held out his hand.

"How do you do, Mark ? " she said nervously.
"I will own I'm somewhat surprised to see you
here," ignoring his hand, and taking some figs
out of a string bag, and placing them on an
empty plate (the one that ought to have had
oranges in it) on the sideboard. "I have brought
you some figs, Janet ; you said you liked them.

HER MURDERER 181

I thought it was agreed that until Mark had some
reasonable prospect of being able to support a
wife his visits here had better cease."

"I never agreed," said Mark, "I was always
for their continuing. I've been against a long
engagement from the first."

"Well, in any case, you must have a cup of tea
now }7ou are here," continued Aunt Pussy, taking
off her worn gloves, which I had mended for her
till the fingers were mere stumps. "Ring the
bell, Janet. We will have tea in here as there
isn't a fire in the drawing-room."

She put down more parcels on the table, and
then her face changed.

"My bag ! " she gasped, and collapsed into
a chair like one felled by emotion. "My
bag ! "

We looked everywhere. Mark explored the
hall and the umbrella-stand. No handbag was
to be seen.

"I knew something would happen if the month
began with a Friday ! " moaned Aunt Pussy.

"Had it a great deal in it ? " I asked.

"Twenty pounds 1 " said Aunt Pussy, as if it
were the savings of a lifetime. "I had drawn
twenty pounds to pay the monthly books." And
she became the colour of lead.

I flew for her salts, and made tea quickly, and
presently she recovered sufficiently to drink it.
But her hand shook.

182 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"Twenty pounds ! " she repeated, below her
breath.

We questioned her as to where she last re-
membered using the bag, and at length elicited
the information that she had no recollection of
its society after visiting Brown and Prodgers,
the great shop in Baskaville Road, where she
recalled eating a meat lozenge, drawn from its
recesses. Mark offered to go round there at once,
and see if it had been found.

"I've never lost anything before," she said
when he had gone, "but I felt this morning that
some misfortune was going to happen. There
was a black cat on the leads when I looked out.
As sure as fate, if I see a black cat something goes
wrong. Last time I saw one, two of my handker-
chiefs were missing from the •wash."

As Aunt Pussy bought her handkerchiefs in
the sales for less than sixpence each, I felt that
the black cat made himself rather cheap.

Mark returned with the cheering news that a
bag had been found at Brown and Prodgers, and
one of the principal shopwalkers had taken charge
of it. And if Aunt Pussy would call in person
to-morrow, and accurately describe its contents,
it would be returned to her.

Aunt Pussy was so much relieved that she
actually smiled on him, and offered him a second
cup of tea. But next morning at breakfast I
saw at once that something was gravely amiss.

HER MURDERER 183

Had she slept ?

Yes.

Had she seen the black cat ?

No.

"The truth is, Janet," she said, "I have had a
most terrible dream. I feel sure it was a warning,
and I really don't know whether I ought to call for
it or not."

"Call for what ? "

"The bag."

"Was the dream about the bag ? "

"What else could it be about ? I took one of
my little bromides last night, for I knew I had
not a chance of sleep after the agitation of the
day. And I fell asleep at once. And I dreamed
that it was morning, and I was in my outdoor
things going to Brown and Prodgers for the bag.
And the black cat walked all the way before me
with its tail up. But it did not come in. And
when I got there I told a shopwalker who was
standing near the door what I had come about.
He was a tall, dark man with a sort of down look.
He bowed and said, 'Follow me, madam.' And
I followed him. And we went through the—
ahem ! the gentlemen's underclothing, which I
make a point of never going through, I always go
round by the artificial flowers, until we came to a
glass door near the lift. And he unlocked the
door and I went in, and there on the table lay
my bag. I was so delighted I ran to take it.

184 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

But he stopped me, and I saw then what an evil-
looking man he was. And he said, 'Look well at
this bag, madam. Do you recognise it as yours ?'
And I looked and I said I did. There was the
place where you had mended the handle.

"Then he took it up, and put it in my hand,
and said, 'Look well at the contents, madam, and
verify that they are all there.'

"So I looked at them, and they were all there,
the tradesmen's books and everything. And I
counted the money and it came right. The only
thing I could not be sure about was the number
of the meat lozenges. I thought one might have
been stolen.

"Then when I had finished he said, 'Look well
at me, madam, for I am your murderer.' And
I was so terrified that I dropped the bag and woke
with a scream. Now, Janet, don't you think it
would be flying in the face of Providence to go
there this morning ? Dreams like that are not
sent for nothing."

"Well, perhaps it would be better not," I said
maliciously, for I knew very well that Aunt Pussy
would risk any form of death rather than lose
twenty pounds.

"I thought perhaps you would not mind getting
it for me. The danger would not be the same
for you."

"I should not mind in the least, but they will
only give it up to you."

HER MURDERER 185

Aunt Pussy's superstition struggled with her
miserliness throughout her frugal breakfast.
Need I say her miserliness won. Had it ever
sustained one defeat in all her life 1 But she
remained agitated and nervous to an extreme
degree. I offered to go with her, but she felt that
was not protection enough. So I telephoned to
Mark, and presently he arrived and Aunt Pussy
solemnly recapitulated her dream, and we all
three set out together, she walking a little ahead,
evidently on the look-out for the black cat.

Mark whispered to me that the portent about
the black cat was being verified for us, not her,
and that the shopwalker was evidently a very
decent fellow, and that if he did his duty by us
he should certainly ask him to be best man at
our wedding. He had not made up his mind
how deep his mourning ought to be for a
murdered aunt-in-law, and was, to use his own
expression, still poised like a humming-bird
between a grey silk tie and a black one with a
white spot, when we reached the shop.

It was early, and there were very few customers
about. A tall dark man was walking up and
down. Aunt Pussy instantly clutched my arm,
and whispered, "It's him ! "

He saw us looking at him, and came up to us, a
melancholy downcast, unprepossessing-looking
man. As Aunt Pussy could only stare at him,
Mark, who had spoken to him the day before,

i86 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

told him the lady had come to identify the bag lost
on the previous afternoon. The man bowed to
Aunt Pussy, and said, "Follow me, madam,"
and we followed him through several depart-
ments.

"Gentlemen's outfitting I " hissed Aunt Pussy
suddenly in my ear, pointing with a trembling
finger at a line of striped and tasselled pyjamas
which she had avoided for many years.

Presently we came to a glass door, and the
man took a key from his pocket, opened the door,
and ushered us in. And there on a small table
lay a bag — the bag — Aunt Pussy's bag, with the
mended handle. She groaned.

The man fixed his eyes on her and said :

"Look well at this bag, madam. Do you
recognise it as yours ? "

"I do," said Aunt Pussy, as inaudibly as a
bride at the altar.

He then asked her what the contents were, and
she described them categorically. He then took
up the bag, put it into her hand, and said, "Look
well at the contents, madam, and verify that they
are all there."

They were all there. As Aunt Pussy was too
paralysed to utter another word I said so for her.

There was a long pause. The man looked
searchingly from one to the other of us, and sighed.
If he expected a tip he was disappointed. After
a moment he moved towards Aunt Pussy to open

HER MURDERER 187

the door behind her. As he did so she gave a
faint scream, and subsided on the floor in a swoon.

When we had resuscitated and conveyed her
home, and Mark had gone, she said in a hollow
voice :

"Wasn't it enough to make anybody faint ? "

I said cheerfully that I did not see any cause
for alarm ; that the man no doubt always used
exactly the same formula whenever lost property
had to be identified.

"But why should he have said just at the last
moment, 'Look well at me, madam, I am your
murderer ? '

"Dear Aunt Pussy, of course he never said any
such thing ! "

"He did ! I heard him ! That was why I
fainted."

It was in vain I assured her that she was
mistaken. She only became hysterical and said
I was deceiving her ; that she saw I had heard it,
too. She had been eccentric before, but from
this time onwards she became even more so.
She would not deal at Brown and Prodgers any
more. She would not even pass the shop. She
became more penurious than ever.

We could hardly persuade servants to stay
with us so rigid was she about the dripping. It
was all I could do to obtain the necessary money
for our economical housekeeping. As the lease
of our house was drawing to a close, she decided

i88 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

to move into a flat, thinking it might be cheaper.
But when it was all arranged and the lease
signed, she refused to go in, because the man
who met us there with a selection of wallpapers
was, she averred, the same man whom she
always spoke of as her murderer.

And I believe she was right. I thought I
recognised him myself. I asked him if he had
not formerly been at Brown and Prodgers, and
he replied that he had ; but was now employed
by Whisk and Blake. After this encounter
nothing would induce Aunt Puss}' to enter her
new home. She had to pay heavily for her
changeableness, but she only wrung her hands
and paid up. The poor little woman had a
hunted look. She evidently thought she had
had a great escape.

Mark, who did not grow more rational with
increasing years, said that this was obviously the
psychological moment for us to marry, and drew
a vivid picture of the group at the altar — the
blushing bridegroom and determined bride, and
how when Aunt Pussy saw her murderer step
forward as the best man, with a gardenia in his
buttonhole, she would die of shock on the spot.
And after handsomely remunerating our bene-
factor, he and I should whisk away in a superb
motor, with a gross of shilling cigars on an
expensive honeymoon.

Six months passed, and there was no talk of

HER MURDERER 189

any honeymoons. And then the lease of our
house came to an end, and Aunt Pussy, having
refused to allow any other house or flat to be
taken, she was forced to warehouse her furniture,
and we had recourse to the miseries of hotel life.
Needless to say, we did not go to a quiet resi-
dential hotel, but to one of those monster build-
ings glued on to a railway station, where the
inmates come and go every day.

Strangely enough, the galvanised activity of
hotel existence pleased Aunt Pussy. She called
it "seeing life." She even made timid advances
to other old ladies, knitting and dozing in the
airless seclusion of the ladies' drawing-room, for,
of course, we had no sitting-room. I saw plainly
enough that we should live in those two small
adjoining bedrooms under the roof, looking into
a tiled air-shaft, for the remainder of Aunt
Pussy's life.

Three months we lived there, and then at the
cheapest time in the year, when the hotel was
half empty and the heat of our rooms appalling,
she consented to move for a short time into the
two rooms exactly below ours, which looked on
the comparatively balmy open of the August
thoroughfare, and had a balcony.

I had realised by this time that Aunt Pussy
was no longer responsible for her long cruelty
to Mark and me, and my old affection for her
revived somewhat with her pathetic dependence

igo THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

on me. She could hardly bear me out of her
sight.

A certain Mrs. Curtis, a benevolent old
Australian widow, living in rooms next ours on
this lower floor, showed us great kindness. She
grasped at once what Aunt Pussy wras, and she
would sit with her by the hour, enabling me to
go out in the air. She took me for drives. She
soon discovered there was a Mark in the back-
ground, and often asked us to dine at her table,
and invited him too.

She was said to be enormously wealthy, and
she certainly wore a few wonderful jewels, but
she was always shabbily dressed. Aunt Pussy
became very fond of her, and must have been a
great trial to her, running in and out of her
rooms at all hours. She gave us tea in her sitting-
room next door to us, and this gave Aunt Pussy
special satisfaction, as we, having no sitting-
room, could not possibly, as she constantly
averred, return the civility.

Towards the end of September the hotel began
to fill again, and the prices of the lower rooms
were raised. So we moved back to our old
quarters, and Mrs. Curtis, who had a noisy
bedroom, took for herself and her son the two we
had vacated. Her son was expected, and I have
never forgotten her face of joy when she received
a telegram from him during dinner saying he had
reached Calais, and should arrive next morning.

HER MURDERER 191

We were dining early, for the kind old woman
was taking Mark and me to the play. The play
was delightful, and he and I, sitting together
laughing at it, forgot our troubles, forgot that our
youth was irretrievably gone, and that we were no
nearer happiness than we had been thirteen years
before. Our little friend in her weird black gown,
with her thin fingers covered with large diamonds
clutching an opera glass, looked at us with
pained benevolence.

Mark saw us back to the door of our hotel, and
after he was gone Mrs. Curtis took my arm as we
mounted the steps and said gently :

"You and that nice absurd man must keep
your courage up. I waited seventeen years for
my husband, and when it was over it was only
like a day."

The night porter appeared at the lift door, and
we got in. He stood with his back to me, and I
did not look at him till he said : "What floor ? "
The servants knew us so well that I was surprised
at the question, and glanced at him. It was
Aunt Pussy's murderer. I recognised him in-
stantly, and I will own my first thought was one
of self-congratulation.

"Now we shall leave this horrible place," I
thought. "She will never stay another day if he
is here."

But my second thought was for her. She
might go clean out of her mind if she were

192 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

suddenly confronted with him. What would it
be best to do ?

When he had put down Mrs. Curtis at Floor 7,
and we were rumbling towards Floor 8, he
volunteered, as we bumped with violence against
the roof that he was new to the work. I asked
him what hours he came on and went off at. He
said, "Heleven p.hem. to hate hay-hem." He
did not recognise me — as, indeed, why should he ?
— but he looked more downcast and villainous
than ever. It was evident that life had not gone
well with him since he had been foreman at
Brown and Prodgers.

"Lady's son from Horsetralia just arrived,"
he remarked conversationally, jerking his thumb
towards the lower landing. "Took 'im up 'arf
an hour ago."

I was surprised that Mr. Curtis should have
already arrived, but in another moment I forgot
all about it, for the first object that met my eyes
as I opened my door was Aunt Pussy in a state
of great agitation, sitting fully dressed on my
bed. It seemed that after we had started for the
play she had stood a moment in the hall looking
after us, and she had seen her murderer pass,
and not only had he passed, but he had exchanged
a few words with the hall porter airing himself
on the hotel steps.

"We must leave. We must leave to-morrow,
Janet," she repeated, in an agony of terror. "I

HER MURDERER 193

know he'll get in and kill me. That's why he
spoke to the porter. Let's go and live at
Margate. No, not Margate ; it's too public.
But I saw a little house at Southwold once ;
tumbling down it was, with no road up to it.
Such a horrid place ! We might go and live
there. No one would ever think I should go
there. Promise me you will take me away from
London to-morrow, Janet."

I promised, I realised that we must go at once,
and I calculated that if Aunt Pussy, who always
breakfasted in her room, only left it at ten o'clock
to enter a cab to take her to the station it was
impossible she should run across the new night
porter, who went off duty several hours earlier.
She must never know that he was actually in the
house.

I tried to calm her, but dawn was already in the
sky, or rather reflected on the tiles of our air-
shaft, before she fell asleep, and I could go to my
room and try to do the same.

I did it so effectually that it was nearly ten
o'clock before I went down to breakfast, leaving
Aunt Pussy still slumbering.

While I drank my coffee I looked out the trains
for Southwold, and noted down the name of a
quiet hotel there, and then went to the manager's
office to give up our rooms. When I got there a
tired, angry young man, with a little bag, was
interviewing the manager, who was eyeing him

N

i94 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

doubtfully, while a few paces away the hall
porter, all gold braid and hair-oil and turned-out
feet, was watching the scene.

"Surely Mrs. Curtis told you she was expecting
me, her son," he was saying as I came up.

"Yes, sir," said the manager, civil but sus-
picious. "No doubt, sir. Mrs. Curtis said as
you were expected this morning, but, begging
your pardon, you arrived last night, sir. Mr.
Gregory Curtis arrived last night just after I
retired for the evening."

"Impossible," said the young man, impatiently.
"There is some mistake. Take me to Mrs.
Curtis 's room at once."

The manager hesitated.

"This certainly is Mr. Gregory Curtis," I said,
coming forward. "He is exactly like the photo-
graph of her son which stands on Mrs. Curtis 's
table, and which I have seen scores of times."

The young man looked gratefully at me.
And then, in a flash, as it were, we all took
alarm.

"Then who did you take up to my mother's
rooms last night ? " said her son. "And who
took him up ? "

"Not me, sir," said the hall porter promptly.
"I was off duty. Clarke, the new night porter,
must have took him up."

"Where is Clarke ? " asked the manager,
seizing down a key from a peg on the wall.

HER MURDERER 195

"Gone to bed, sir. Not been gone five
minutes."

"Bring him to me at once. And take this
gentleman and me up in the lift first."

"This lady also," said Gregory, indicating me.

A horrible sense of guilt was stealing over me.
Why hadn't I waited to see the fragile little old
woman safely into her rooms ?

The manager and Gregory did not speak. I
dared not look at them. The lift came to a
standstill, and in a moment the manager was out
of it, and fitting his master key into the lock of
No. 10, almost knocking over a can of hot water
on the mat. The door opened, and we all went in.

The room was dark, and as the manager went
hastily forward to draw the curtain his foot struck
against something and he drew back with an
exclamation. I, who was nearest the door, turned
on the electric light.

Mrs. Curtis was lying with outstretched arms
on her face on the floor. Her widow's cap had
fallen off, revealing on the crown of the head a
dark stain. Her small hands, waxen white, were
spread out as if in mild deprecation. There were
no rings on them. The despatch box on the
dressing table had been broken open, and the
jewel cases lay scattered on the floor.

After a moment of stupor, Gregory and I
raised the little figure and laid it on the bed. It
was obvious that there was nothing to be done.

196 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

As we did so the door opened and the day porter
dragged in the new lift man, holding him strongly
by the arm.

They both looked at the dead woman on the
bed. And then the lift man began to shake as
with an ague, and his face became as ashen as
hers.

"You saw her last alive," said the manager,
"and you took up the party to her room last
night."

The lift man was speechless. The drops stood
on his forehead. He looked the image of guilt.

And as we stood staring at him Aunt Pussy
ambled in in her dressing-gown, with her comb
in her hand, having probably left something in
the room she had only yesterday vacated.

Her eyes fell first on the dead body, and then
on the lift man.

I expected her to scream or faint, but she did
neither. She seemed frozen. Then she raised a
steady comb and pointed it at the lift man.

"He is her murderer," she said solemnly. "He
meant to murder me. He told me so a year ago.
He has followed me here to do it. But he did not
know I had changed my rooms, and he has killed
her instead."

I don't know what happened after that, for I
was entirely taken up with Aunt Pussy. I put
my hand over her mouth, and hustled her back
to her rooms.

HER MURDERER 197

"He will be hanged now," she said over and
over again throughout that awful day. "He is
certain to be hanged, and when he is really dead
I shall feel safe. Then I shall take a house, and
you shall have a motor, and anything you like,
Janet. He's in prison now, isn't he ? "

"Yes, poor creature. He is under arrest. A
policeman has taken him away."

"Safe in prison now, and hanged very soon.
I shan't be easy otherwise. And then I shall
sleep peacefully in my bed."

She was better than she had been for the last
year. She ate and slept, and seemed to have
taken a new lease of life. She was absolutely
callous about Mrs. Curtis 's death, and suggested
that half-a-guinea was quite enough to give for a
wreath.

"If you're thinking of the number of times she
gave us tea," she said, "it could not possibly,
with tea as cheap as it is now — Harrod's own
only one and seven — come to more than eight and
six." And she opened her "Daily Mail" and
pored over it. She had of late ceased to take in
any paper, but now she took in the "Daily Mail"
and the "Evening Standard," and read the
police news with avidity, looking for the trial
of "her murderer."

Mark and I went to the funeral, and he was
very low all the way home. He was really dis-
tressed about Mrs. Curtis and Gregory, but of

198 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

course he would not allow it, and accounted for
his depression by saying that he had been attend-
ing the wrong funeral. He said he did not
actually blame Clarke (the lift man), for he had
shown good intentions, but the man was evidently
a procrastinator and a bungler, who had deceived
the confidence he (Mark) had reposed in him,
and on whom no one could place reliance. Such
men, he averred, were better hanged and out of
the way.

When I got back to our rooms I found Aunt
Pussy leaning back in her armchair near the
window, with the "Evening Standard" spread
out on her knee. A large heading caught my
eye :

"SENSATIONAL ARREST OF THE

MURDERER OF MRS. CURTIS."

" RELEASE OF CLARKE."

It had caught Aunt Pussy's eye too. And her
sheer terror had been too much for her. She
would never be frightened any more. She had
had her last shock. She was dead.

A month later Mark came to see me in the
evening. We did not seem to have much to say
to each other, perhaps because we were to be
married next day. But I presently discovered
that he was suffering from a suppressed com-
munication.

HER MURDERER 199

"Out with it," I said. "You've got a wife and
five small children at Peckham. There is still
time to counter-order the motor and the wedding
and the shilling cigars and — me."

He took no notice.

"I've seen Clarke," he said. "Poor devil !
They won't have him back at the hotel, think
he's unlucky, a sort of Jonah. His face certainly
isn't his fortune, is it ? And I hope you won't
mind, Janet, I — "

"You've asked him to be best man instead of
Gregory ? "

"Well, no, I haven't. But I was sorry for him,
and I gave him fifty pounds. Your money of
course. I felt we owed him something for bring-
ing us together. For you know, in a way, he
really has, though he has been some time about
it."

Votes for Men*

Two hundred years hence, possibly less.

EUGENIA, Prime Minister, is sitting at her writing
table in her library. She is a tall, fine looking
woman of thirty, rather untidy and worn in
appearance.

EUGENIA [to herself, taking up a paper}. There
is no doubt that we must carry through this
bill or the future of the country will be
jeopardized.

HENRY [outside']. May I come in ?

EUGENIA. Do come in, dearest.

HENRY [a tall, athletic man of thirty, faultlessly
dressed, a contrast to her dusty untidiness']. I
thought I could see the procession best from
here. [Goes to windows and opens them.} It
is in sight now. They are coming down the
wind at a great pace.

EUGENIA [slightly bored]. What procession ?

HENRY. Why the Men's Reinfranchisement
League, of course. You know, Eugenia, you
promised to interview a deputation of them at
5 o'clock, and they determined to have a mass
meeting first.

* First Published in 1909.
200

VOTES FOR MEN 201

EUGENIA. So they did. I had forgotten. I
wish they would not pester me so. Really, the
government has other things to attend to than
Male Suffrage at times like this.

[The procession sails past the windows in
planes decked with the orange and white
colours of the league. The occupants pre-
serve a dead silence, saluting EUGENIA
gravely as they pass. From the streets far
below rises a confused hubbub of men's
voices shouting ' ' Votes for men 1 ' '

HENRY. How stately the clergy look, Eugenia 1
Why, there are the two Archbishops in their
robes heading the whole procession, and look
at the bevy of Bishops in their lawn sleeves in
the great Pullman air car behind. What
splandid men. And here come the clergy in
their academic gowns by the hundred, in open
trucks.

EUGENIA. I must say it is admirably organised,
and no brawling.

HENRY. Why should they brawl ? I believe
you are disappointed that they don't. They
are all saluting you, Eugenia, as they pass.
They won't take any notice of me, of course,
because it is known I am the President of the
Anti-Suffrage League. The doctors are pass-
ing now. How magnificent they look in their
robes I What numbers of them ! It makes
me proud I am a man. And now come the
lawyers in crowds in their wigs and gowns.

202 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

EUGENIA. Every profession seems to be repre-
sented, but of course I am well aware that it
is not the real wish of the men of England to
obtain the vote. The suffragists must do
something to convince me that the bulk of
England's thoughtful and intelligent men are
not opposed to it before I move in the matter.

HENRY. I often wonder what would convince
you, Eugenia, or what they could do that they
have not done. These must be the authors
and artists and journalists, and quite a number
of women with them. Do you notice that ?
Look, that is Hobson the poet, and Bagg the
millionaire novelist, each in their own Swallow
planes. How they dart along. I should like
to have a Swallow, Eugenia. And are all
those great lumbering tumbrils of men journal-
ists ?

EUGENIA. No doubt.

HENRY. It is very impressive. I wish they did
not pass so fast, but the wind is high. Here
come all the trades with the Lord Mayor of
London in front ! What hordes and hordes of
them ! The procession is at least a mile long.
And I suppose those are miners and agri-
cultural labourers, last of all, trying to keep
up in those old Wilbur Wrights and Zeppelins.
I did not know there were any left except in
museums.

[The procession passes out of sight. EUGENIA
sighs.

VOTES FOR MEN 203

HENRY. Demonstrations like this make a man
think, Eugenia. I really can't see, though you
often tell me I do, why men should not have
votes. They used to have them. You your-
self say that there is no real inequality between
the sexes. The more I think of it the more I
feel I ought to retire from being President of
the Anti-Suffrage League. And all the men
on it are old enough to be my father. The
young men are nearly all in the opposite camp.
I sometimes wish I was there too.

EUGENIA. Henry !

HENRY. Now don't, Eugenia, make any mistake
I abhor the "brawling brotherhood" as much
as you do. I was quite ashamed for my sex
when I saw that bellowing brute riveted to the
balcony of your plane the other day, shouting
"Votes for men."

EUGENIA [coldly]. That sort of conduct puts
back the cause of men's reinfranchisement by
fifty years. It shows how unsuited the sex is
to be trusted with the vote. Imagine that sort
of hysterical screaming in the House itself.

HENRY. But ought the cause to be judged by
the folly of a few howling dervishes ? Some-
times it really seems, Eugenia, as if women
were determined to regard the brawling
brotherhood as if it represented the men who
seek for the vote. And yet the sad part is that
these brawlers have done more in two years to
advance the cause than their more orderly

204 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

brothers have achieved in twenty. For years
past I have heard quiet suffragists say that all
their efforts have been like knocking in a
padded room. They can't make themselves
heard. Women smiled and said the moment
was not opportune. The press gave garbled
accounts of their sayings and doings.

EUGENIA. Your simile is unfortunate. No one
wants to emancipate the only persons who are
confined in padded rooms.

HENRY. Not if they are unjustly confined ?

EUGENIA [with immense patience]. Dear Henry,
must we really go over this old ground again ?
Men used to have votes as we all know. In the
earliest days of all, of course, both men and
women had them. The ancient records prove
that beyond question, and that women pre-
sented themselves with men at the hustings.
Then women were practically disfranchised,
and for hundreds of years men ruled alone,
though it was not until near the reign of
Victoria the First that by the interpolation of
the word "male" before "persons" in the
Reform Act of 1832 women were legally dis-
franchised. Men were disfranchised almost as
suddenly in the reign of Man-hating Mary the
Second of blessed memory.

HENRY. I know, I know, but. . . .

EUGENIA [whose oratorical instincts are not ex-
hausted by her public life]. You must remember
I would have you all — I mean I would have

VOTES FOR MEN 205

you, Henry, remember that men were only
disfranchised after the general election of 2009.
It was the wish of the country. We must bow
to that.

HENRY. You mean it was the wish of the women
of the country, who were a million stronger
numerically than men.

EUGENIA. It was the wish of the majority,
including many thousands of enlightened men,
my grandfather among them, who saw the
danger to their country involved in continued
male suffrage. After all, Henry, it was men
who were guilty of the disaster of adult
suffrage. Women never asked for it — they
were deeply opposed to it. They only de-
manded the suffrage on the same terms that
men had it in Edward the Seventh's time.
Adult suffrage was the last important enact-
ment of men, and one which ought to prove to
you, considering the incalculable harm it did,
that men, in spite of their admirable qualities,
are not sufficiently far-sighted to be trusted
with a vote. Adult suffrage lost us India. It
all but lost us our Colonies, for the corner-men
and wastrels and unemployed who momentarily
became our rulers saw no use for them. The
only good result of adult suffrage was that
women, by the happy chance of their numerical
majority, and with the help of Mary the Man-
hater, were able to combine, to outvote the
men and so to seize the reins and abolish it.
HENRY. And abolish us too.

206 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

EUGENIA. It was an extraordinary coup d'dtat,
the one good result of the disaster of adult
suffrage. It was a bloodless revolution, but
the most amazing in the annals of history.
And it saved the country.

HENRY. I do not deny it. But you can't get
away from the fact that men did give women
the vote originally. And now men have lost it
themselves. Why should not women give it
back to men — I mean, of course, only to those
who have the same qualifications as to property
as women voters have ? After all it was by
reason of our physical force that we were
entitled to rule, at least men always said so.
Over and over again they said so in the House,
and that women can't be soldiers and sailors
and special constables as we can. And our
physical force remains the greater to this day.

EUGENIA. We do everything to encourage it.

HENRY. Without us, Eugenia, you would have
no army, no navy, no miners. We do the work
of the world. We guard and police the nation,
and yet we are not entitled to a hearing.

EUGENIA. Your ignorance of the force that rules
the world is assumed for rhetorical purposes.

HENRY. I suppose you will say brain ought to
rule. Well, some of us are just as able as some
of you. Look at our great electricians, our
shipbuilders, our inventors, our astronomers,
our poets, nearly all are men. Shakespeare
was a man.

VOTES FOR MEN 207

EUGENIA \sententiously]. There was a day, and a
very short day it was, when it was said that
brain ought to rule. Brain did make the
attempt, but it could no more rule this planet
than brute force could continue to do so. You
know, and I know, and every schoolgirl
knows, that what rules the birth-rate rules the
world.

HENRY [for whom this sentiment has evidently the
horrid familiarity of the senna of his childhood].
It used not to be so.

EUGENIA. It is so now. It is no use arguing ;
it is merely hysteria to combat the basic fact
that the sex which controls the birth-rate
must by nature rule the nation which it creates.
This is not a question with which law can deal,
for nature has decided it.

[HENRY preserves a paralysed silence.

EUGENIA [with benignant dignity}. I am all for
the equality of the sexes within certain limits,
the limits imposed by nature. But the long
and the short of it is, to put it bluntly, no man,
my dear Henry, can give birth to a child, and
until he can he will be ineligible by the laws of
nature, not by any woman-made edict, to
govern, and the less he talks about it the
better. Sensible men and older men know
that and hold their tongues, and women
respect their silence. Man has his sphere,
and a very important and useful sphere in
life it is. The defence of the nation is

208 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

entrusted to him. Where should we be without
our trusty soldiers and sailors, and, as you
have just reminded me, our admirable police
force ? Where physical strength comes in
men are paramount. When I think of all the
work men are doing in the world I assure you,
Henry, my respect and admiration for them
knows no bounds. But if they step outside
their own sphere of labour, then —

HENRY. But if only you would look into the
old records, as I have been doing, you would
see that Lord Curzon and Lord James and
Lord Cromer, and many others employed
these same arguments in order to withhold
the suffrage from women.

EUGENIA. I dare say.

HENRY. And there is another thing which
does not seem to me to be fair. Men are so
ridiculed if they are suffragists. Punchinello,
always draws them as obese disappointed old
bachelors, and there are many earnest young
married men among the ranks of the suffragists.
Look at the procession which has just passed.
Our best men were in it. And to look at
Punchinello, or to listen to the speeches in the
House you would think that the men who
want the vote are mostly repulsive old bache-
lors stung by the neglect of women. Why
only last week the member for Maidenhead,
Mrs. Colthorpe it was got up and said that if
only this " brawling brotherhood " of single
gentlemen, who had missed domestic bliss,

VOTES FOR MEN 209

could find wives they would not trouble their
heads about reinfranchisement.

EUGENIA. There is no doubt there is an element
of sex resentment in the movement, dear
Henry. That is why I have always congratu-
lated myself on the fact that, you, as my
husband, were opposed to it.

HENRY. Personally I can't imagine now that
women have the upper hand why they don't
keep up their number numerically. It is
their only safeguard against our one day
regaining the vote. It was their numerical
majority plus adult suffrage which suddenly
put them in the position to disfranchise men.
And yet women are allowing their number
to decline and decline until really for all prac-
tical purposes there seems ^.to be about two
men to every woman.

EUGENIA. The laws of nature render out position
infinitely stronger than that of men ever was.
We mounted by the ladder of adult suffrage,
but we kicked it down immediately after-
wards. It will never be revived. Men had
no tremors about the large surplusage of
women as long as they were without votes.
Why should we have any now about the sur-
plusage of men ?

HENRY. Then there is another point. You
talk so much about the importance of the
physique of the race, and I agree with all my
heart. But there are so few women to marry

210 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

nowadays, and women show such a marked
disinclination towards marriage till their youth
is quite over, that half the men I know can't
get wives at all. And those who do, have
almost no power of selection left to them, and
are forced to put up with ill-developed, sickly,
peevish, or ugly women past their first bloom
rather than remain unmarried and childless.

EUGENIA. The subject is under consideration
at this moment, but when the position was
reversed in Edward the Seventh's time, and
there were not enough men to go round,
women were in the same plight, and men said
nothing then about the deterioration of the
race. They did not even make drunkards'
marriages a penal offence. • Drunkards and
drug-takers, and men dried up by nicotine
constantly married and had children in those
days.

HENRY. I can't think the situation was as
difficult for women as it is now for men. I
was at Oxford last week, and do you know that
during the last forty years only five per cent,
of the male Dons and Professors have been
able to find mates. Women won't look at
them.

EUGENIA. In the nineteenth century, when first
women went to Universities and became
highly educated, only four per cent, of them
afterwards married, and then to school-
masters.

HENRY. And I assure you the amount of

VOTES FOR MEN 211

hysteria and quarrelling among the older Dons
is lamentable.

EUGENIA. I appointed a committee which
reported to me on the subject last year, and I
gathered that the present Dons are not more
hysterical than they were in Victorian days,
when they forfeited their fellowships on
marriage. You must remember, Henry, that
from the earliest times men and women have
always hated anything "blue " in the opposite
sex. Female blue stockings were seldom
attractive to men in bygone days. And
nowadays women are naturally inclined to
marry young men, and healthy and athletic
men, rather than sedentary old male blue
stockings. It is most fortunate for the race
that is is so.

HENRY [with a sigh]. Well, all the "blue" women
can marry nowadays.

EUGENIA. Yes, thank heaven, all women can
marry nowadays. What women must have
endured in the eighteenth and early part of
the nineteenth century makes me shudder.
For if they did not marry they were never
spared the ridicule or the contemptuous com-
passion of men. It seems incredible, looking
back, to realise that large families of daughters
were kept idle and unhappy at home, after
their youth was over, not allowed to take up
any profession, only to be turned callously
adrift in their middle age at their father's
death, with a pittance on which they could

212 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

barely live. And yet these things were done
by educated and kindly men who professed to
care for the interests of women, and were
personally fond of their daughters. Over and
over again in the biographies of notable women
of the Victorian and Edward the Seventh's
time one comes across instances of the way in
which men of the country-squire type kept
their daughters at home uneducated till they
were beyond the age when they could take up
a profession, and then left them to poverty.
They did not even insure their lives for each
child as we do now. Surely, Henry, it is
obvious that women have done one thing
admirably. The large reduction which they
have effected in their own numbers has almost
eliminated the superfluous, incompetent, un-
happy women who found it so difficult to
obtain a livelihood a hundred years ago, and
has replaced them by an extra million compe-
tent, educated, fairly contented men who are
all necessary to the State, who are encouraged,
almost forced into various professions.

HENRY. Not contented, Eugenia.

EUGENIA. More contented, because actively
employed, than if they were wandering aim-
lessly in the country lanes of their father's
estates as thousands of intelligent uneducated
women were doing a hundred years ago, kept
ferociously at home by the will of the parent
who held the purse-strings.

HENRY. I rather wish I had lived in those good

VOTES FOR MEN 213

old times, when the lanes were full of pretty
women.

EUGENIA. But you, at any rate, Henry, had a
large choice. I was much afraid at one time
that you would never ask me.

HENRY. Ah ! But then I was a great heir, and
all heirs have a wide choice. Not that I had
any choice at all. I had the good luck to be
accepted by the only woman I ever cared a
pin about, and the only one I was sure was
disinterested.

EUGENIA. Dearest !

HENRY [tentatively]. And yet our marriage falls
short of an ideal one, my Eugenia.

EUGENIA [apologetically]. Dear Henry, I know
it does, but as soon as I cease to be Prime
Minister I will do my duty to the country, and,
what I think much more of, by you. What is
a home without children ? Besides, I must
set an example. When you came in I was
framing a bill to meet the alarming decline of
the birth-rate. Unless something is done the
nation will become extinct. The results of
this tendency among women to marry later
and later are disastrous.

HENRY. And what is your bill, Eugenia ?

EUGENIA. That every healthy married woman
or female celibate over twenty-five and under
forty, members of the government excepted,
must do her duty to the State by bringing into
the world —

214 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

HENRY. Celibate ! Bringing into the world !
Eugenia ! and I thought the sanctity of
marriage and home life were among your
deepest convictions. Just think how you have
upheld them to — men.

EUGENIA. Patriotism must come first. By
bringing into the world three children, a girl
and two boys. If her income is insufficient to
rear them, the State will take charge of them.
One extra boy is needed to supply the wastage
of accidents in practical work, and in case of
war. I shall stand or fall by this bill, for unless
the women of England can be aroused to do
their duty — unless there is general conscription
to motherhood, as in Germany, England will
certainly become a second-class power.

HENRY. Perhaps when there are two men to
every woman we shall be strong enough to force
women to do justice to us.

EUGENIA. Men never did justice to us when
they had the upper hand.

HENRY. They did not. And I think the truth
lies there. Those who have the upper hand
cannot be just to those who are in their power.
They don't intend to be unfair, but they seem
unable to give their attention to the rights of
those who cannot enforce them. Men were
unintentionally unjust to women for hundreds
of years. They kept them down. Now women
are unjust to us. Yes, Eugenia, you are.
You keep us down. It seems to be an

VOTES FOR MEN 215

inevitable part of the rdle of "top dog," and
perhaps it is no use discussing it. If you don't
want your plane, would you mind if I borrow
it ? I promised to meet Carlyon at four above
the Florence Nightingale column in Anne
Hyde's park, and it is nearly four now.

EUGENIA. Good-bye, Henry. Do take my
plane. And I trust there will be no more
doubt in your dear head as to your Presidency
of the Anti-Suffrage League.

HENRY. None. I realise these wrigglings of the
under dog are unseemly, and only disturb the
equanimity and good-will of the "top dog."
Good-bye, Eugenia.

The End of the Dream

THE first time I saw Essie was a few weeks before
her marriage with my brother Ted. I knew
beforehand that she would certainly be very
pretty for the simple reason that Ted would
never have been attracted by a plain woman.
For him plain women did not exist, except as
cooks, governesses, caretakers and charwomen.

Ted is the best fellow in the world, and when
he brought her to see me I instantly realised why
he had chosen her ; but I found myself wondering
why she had chosen him — she was charming,
lovely, shy, very young and diffident, and with
the serenest temperament I have ever seen. She
was evidently fond of him, and grateful to him.
Later on I learned — from her, never from him—
the distress and anxiety from which he had
released her and her mother. There was a dis-
reputable brother, and other entanglements, and
complicated money difficulties.

Ted simply swooped down, and rescued her,
and ordered her to marry him, which she did.

"She is a cut above me, Essie is," he used to say
rubbing his hands, and looking at her with joyful

216

THE END OF THE DREAM 217

pride. It was true. Essie looked among us like
a race horse among cart horses. She belonged,
not by birth, but by breeding to a higher social
plane than that on which we Hopkinses had our
boisterous being. I was resentfully on the alert
to detect the least sign of arrogance on her part.
I expected it. But gradually the sleepless sus-
picion of the great middle class to which Ted and
I belonged was lulled to rest. I had to own to
myself that Essie was a simple, humble, and
rather timid creature.

I went to stay with them a few months after
their marriage in their new home in Kensington.
Ted was outrageously happy, and she seemed well
content, amused by him, rather in the same way
that a child is amused by a large dog.

He had actually suggested before he met
Essie that I should keep house for him, but I told
him I preferred to call my soul my own. Essie
apparently did not want to call anything her
own. She let him have his way in everything,
and it was a benevolent and sensible way, but it
had evidently never struck him that she might
have tastes and wishes even if she did not put
them forward. He was absolutely autocratic,
and without imagination.

Before they had been married a month he had
prevailed on her to wear woollen stockings instead
of silk ones, because he always wore woollen
socks himself.

2i8 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

He chose the wallpapers of the house without
any reference to her, though of course she
accompanied him everywhere. He chose the
chintzes for the drawing-room, and the curtains,
and very good useful materials they were, not
ugly, but of a garish cheerfulness. Indeed, he
furnished the whole house without a qualm, and
made it absolutely conventional. It is strange
how very conventional people press towards the
mark, how they struggle to be conventional,
when it is only necessary to drift to become so.

Ted exerted himself, and Essie laughed, and
said she liked what he liked. If she had not been
so very pretty her self-effacement would have
seemed rather insipid, but somehow she was not
insipid. She liked to see him happy in his own
prosaic efficient inartistic way, and I don't think
she had it in her power to oppose him if she had
wanted to, or indeed anyone. She was by nature
yielding, a quality which men like Ted always
find adorable.

I remember an American once watching Ted
disporting himself on the balcony, pushing aside
all Essie's tubs of flowering tulips to make room
for a dreadful striped hammock.

"The thing I can't understand about you En-
glish women," said the visitor to Essie, " is why
you treat your men as if they were household pets."

"What an excellent description of an English
husband," said Essie. "That is just what he is."

THE END OF THE DREAM 219

"What's that ? What's that ? " said Ted,
rushing in from the balcony, but as he never
waited for an answer Essie seldom troubled to
give him one.

Perhaps I should never have known Essie if I
had not fallen ill in her house. Ted and she were
kindness itself, but as I slowly climbed the hill of
convalescence I saw less of him and more of her.
He was constantly away, transacting business in
various places, and I must own a blessed calm
fell upon the house when the front door slammed,
and he was creating a lucrative turmoil elsewhere.
The weather was hot, and we sat out evening
after evening in the square garden. Gradually,
very gradually, a suspicion had arisen in my mind
that there was another Essie whose existence
Ted and I had so far never guessed. I saw that
she did — perhaps by instinct — what wise women
sometimes do of set purpose. She gave to others
what they wanted from her, not necessarily the
best she had to give. Ted had received from her
exactly what he hoped and desired, and — he was
happy.

The evening came when I made a sudden
demand on her sympathy. In the quiet darkness of
the square garden I told her of a certain agonising
experience of my own which in one year had
pushed me from youth into middle age, and had
turned me not to stone, but into a rolling stone.

"I imagined it was something of that kind that

220 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

was the matter with you," she said in her gentle
rather toneless voice.

"You guessed it," I said amazed. I had
thought I was a closed book to the whole world.
"You never spoke of your idea to Ted ? "

"Never. Why should I ? "

There was a long silence.

The noise of Kensington High Street reached
us like the growl of some tired animal. An owl
came across from Holland Park and alighted in a
tree near us.

"You should have married him," said Essie at
last.

"Married him ! " I exclaimed, "but you don't
understand." And I went over the whole
dreadful story again — at full length. Love affairs
are never condensed. If they are told at all they
are recounted in full.

"I don't see that any of those things matter,"
she said when I had finished, or rather when I
paused.

"Where is he now ? "

"In Turkistan, I believe."

"Why not go to Turkistan ? " She spoke as
if it were just round the corner.

"Turkistan ! "

"Well, it's somewhere on the map, I suppose.
What does it matter where it is."

"And perhaps when I got there I might find
he had set up a harem of Turkistan women."

THE END OF THE DREAM 221

"You might."

"Or that he had long since left for America."

"Just so."

"Or that he did not want me."

"All these things are possible."

The owl began to call through the dusk, and,
not far away, somewhere in the square a gentle
lady owl's voice answered him.

"There are things," said Essie, "which one can
measure, and it is easy to know how to act about
them, and whether it is worth while to act at all.
Most things one can measure, but there are in life
just a few things, a very few, which one cannot
measure, or put a value on, or pay a certain price
for, and no more, because they are on a plane
where foot-rules and weighing machines and
money do not exist. Love is one of these things.
When we begin to weigh how much we will give
to love, what we are willing to sacrifice for it, we
are trying to drag it down to a mercantile basis
and to lay it on the table of the money changers
on which things are bought and sold, and
bartered and equivalent value given."

"You think I don't love him," I said, cut to the
quick.

"I am sure," said Essie, "that you don't love
him yet, but I think you are on the road. Who
was it who said

"The ways of love are harder
Than thoroughfares of stones."

222 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

Whoever it was, he knew what he was talking
about. You have found the thoroughfare stony,
and you rebel and are angry, very angry, and
desert your fellow traveller. He, poor man, did
not make the road. I expect he is just as angry
and foot-sore as you are."

"He was a year ago. I don't know what he is
now. It is a year since he wrote."

Essie knitted in silence.

At last I said desperately :

"I have told you everything. Do you think
it's possible he still cares for me ? "

Essie waited a long minute before answering.

"I don't know," she said, and then added,
"but I think you will presently go to Turkistan
and find out."

Reader, I went to Turkistan, and was married
there, and lived there and in Anatolia for many
happy years. But that is another story. I did
not start on that voyage of discovery till several
months after that conversation. I had battered
myself to pieces against the prison bars of my
misery, and health ruthlessly driven away was
slow to return.

As I lived with Ted and Essie I became aware
that he was becoming enormously successful in
money matters. There were mysterious expedi-
tions, buyings and sellings of properties, which
necessitated sudden journeys. Immense trans-
actions passed through his competent hands, and

THE END OF THE DREAM 223

presently the possibility of a country house was
spoken of. He talked mysteriously of a wonderful
old manor house in Essex, which he had come upon
entirely by chance, which would presently come
into the market, and which might be acquired
much below its value, so anxious was the
owner — a foreign bigwig — to part with it at once.

Ted prosed away about this house from teatime
till bedtime. Essie listened dutifully, but it
was I who asked all the questions.

Ted hurried away next morning, not to return
for several days, one of which he hoped to spend
in Essex.

"You don't seem much interested about the
country house," I said at tea time. I was
slightly irritated by the indifference which seemed
to enwrap Essie's whole existence.

"Don't you care about it ? It must be
beautiful from Ted's account."

"If he likes it I shall like it."

"What a model wife you are. Have you no
wishes of your own, no tastes of your own, Essie?"

She looked at me with tranquil eyes.

"I think Ted is happy," she said, "and I am so
glad the children are both exactly like him."

"Yes, but—"

"There is no but in my case. Ted rescued me
from an evil entanglement and eased my mother's
life. And he set his kind heart on marrying me
I told him I could not give him much, but he did

224 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

not mind. I don't think men like Ted under-
stand that there is anything more that — that
might be given ; which makes a very wonderful
happiness when it is given. Our marriage was
on the buying and selling plane. We each put
out our wares. I saw very well that he would be
impossible — for me at least — to live with unless
I gave way to him entirely. Dear Ted is a
benevolent tyrant. He would become a bully
if he were opposed, and bullies are generally
miserable. I don't oppose him. I think he is
content with his bargain, and as fond of me as a
man can be of a lay figure. My impression is
that he regards me as a model wife."

"He does, he does. He is absolutely, blissfully
happy."

"He would be just as happy with another
woman," said Essie, "if she were almost in-
animate. It was a comfort to me to remember
that when I nearly died three years ago."

"Yes, Ted is all right," I said, "but how about
you ? I used to think you were absolutely
characterless, and humdrum, but I know better
now. Don't you — miss anything ? "

"No," said Essie, "nothing. You see," she
added tranquilly with the faintest spice of malice,
"I lead a double life."

I gasped, staring at her open-mouthed, horror-
stricken. She ignored my crass imbecility, and
went on quietly :

THE END OF THE DREAM 225

" I don't know when it began, but I suppose
when I was about five years old. I found my
way to the enchanted forest, and I went there
in my dreams every night."

"In your dreams ! " I stuttered, enormously
reassured, and idiotically hoping that she had
not noticed my hideous lapse.

"In my dreams. I had an unhappy childhood,
but I never was unhappy any more after I learned
the way through the forest. Directly I fell asleep
I saw the track among the tree trunks, and then
after a few minutes I reached the wonderful
glade and the lake, and the little islands. One
of the islands had a temple on it. I fed the
swans upon the lake. I twined garlands of
flowers. I climbed the trees, and looked into the
nests. I swung from tree to tree, and I swam
from island to island. I made a little pipe out of
a reed from the lake, and blew music out of it.
And the rabbits peeped out of their holes to
listen, and the squirrels came hand by hand
along the boughs, and the great kites with their
golden eyes came whirling down. Even the little
moles came up out of the ground to listen.

I gazed at her, astonished. ^

"I did not wear any clothes," said Essie, "and
I used to lie on the moss in the sun. It is
delicious to lie on moss, warm moss in the sun.
Once when I was a small child I asked my
governess when those happy days would come

226 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

back when we should wear no clothes, and she
told me I was very naughty. I never spoke to
her of the dream forest again. She did not
understand any more than you did the first
moment. I think the natural instinct of the
British mind if it does not understand is to look
about for a lurking impropriety. I saw other
children sometimes, but never close at hand.
They went to the temple singing, garlanded and
gay, but when I tried to join them I passed
through them. They never took any notice
of me."

"Were you a ghost ? "

"I think not. I imagine I am an old old soul
who has often been in this world before, and by
some strange accident I have torn a corner of the
veil that hides our past lives from us, and in my
dreams I became once more a child as I had
really been once, hundreds and hundreds of
years ago, perhaps in Greece or Italy."

"And do you still have that dream every
night ? "

"Not for many years past. I lost my way to
the forest for several years, until I was again in
great trouble. That was when — then one night
when I had cried myself to sleep I saw the same
track through the thicket, and I found the forest
again. Oh ! how I rejoiced ! And in the middle
of the forest was a garden and a wonderful old
house, standing on a terrace. And there was no

THE END OF THE DREAM 227

lake any more. It was a different place alto-
gether, in England no doubt. And the house
door was open. It was a low arched door with a
coat of arms carved in stone over it. And I
went in. And as I entered all care left me, and I
was happy again, as I was among the islands in
the lake. I can't tell you why I was so happy.
I have sometimes asked myself, but it is a ques-
tion I can't answer. It seemed my real home.
I have gone back there every night since I was
seventeen, and I know the house by heart. There
is only one room I shrink from, though it is one
of the most beautiful in the house. It is a small
octagonal panelled room leading out of the
-banqueting hall where the minstrels gallery is.
It looks on to the bowling green, and one large
picture hangs in it, over the carved mantelpiece.
A Vandyck I think it must be. It is a portrait
of a cavalier with long curls holding his plumed
hat in his hand."

"Did you meet people in the house ? "
"No, not at first, not for several years, but I
did not miss them. I did not want companion-
ship ; I felt that I was with friends, and that was
enough. I wanted the repose, and the beauty
and the peace which I always found there. I
steeped myself in peace, and brought it back with
me to help me through the day. The night was
never long enough for me. And I always came
back, rested, and refreshed, and content, oh ! so

228 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

deeply content. I am a very lucky person,
Beatrice."

"It explains you at last," I said. "You have
always been to me an enigma, during the five
years I have known you."

"The explanation was too simple for you."

"Do you call it simple ? I don't. I should
hardly be able to believe it if it were not you who
had told me. And the house was always
empty ? You never saw anyone there ? "

"It was never empty, but I could not see the
people who lived in it. I could see nothing
clearly, and I had no desire to pry or search. I
was often conscious of someone near me, who
loved me and whom I loved. And I could hear
music sometimes, and sweet voices singing, but
I could never find the room where the music was.
But then I did not try to find it. Sometimes when
I looked out of the windows I could see a dim figure
walking up and down the terrace, but not often."

"Was it a man or a woman ? "

"A man."

"And you never went out to the bowling green
and spoke to him ? "

"I never thought of such a thing. I never
even saw his face till — till that Christmas I was so
ill with pneumonia. Then I fled to the house,
and for the first time I could find no rest in it.
And I went into the octagonal room, and sat
down near the window and leaned my forehead

THE END OF THE DREAM 229

against the glass. My head was burning hot,
and the glass was hot too. Everything was hot.
And there was a great dreadful noise of music.
And suddenly it seemed as if I went deeper into
the life of the house, where the light was clearer.
It was as if a thin veil were withdrawn from
everything. And the heat and the pain were
withdrawn with the veil. And I was light and
cool, and at ease once more. And the music was
like a rippling brook. And he came into the
room. I saw him quite clearly at last. And oh !
Beatrice, he was the cavalier of the picture,
dressed in blue satin with a sword. And he stood
before me with his plumed hat in his hand.

And as I looked at him a gentle current infi-
nitely strong seemed to take me. I floated like
a leaf upon it. I think, Beatrice, it was the
current of death. I felt it was bearing me
nearer and nearer to him and to my real life, and
leaving further and further behind my absurd
little huddled life here in Kensington, which always
has seemed rather like a station waitingroom.

We neither of us spoke, but we understood each
other, and we loved each other. We had long
loved each other. I saw that. And presently
he knelt down at my feet and kissed my hands.
Doesn't that sound commonplace, like a cheap
novelette? but it wasn't. It wasn't . . . and
then as we looked at each other the gentle sus-
taining current seemed to fail beneath me. I

230 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

struggled, but it was no use. It ebbed slowly
away from me, leaving me stranded on an aching
shore alone, in the dark, where I could not
breathe or move. And I heard our doctor say,
"she is going." But I wasn't going. I had
nearly, nearly gone, and I was coming back.
And then there was a great turmoil round me,
and I came back in agony into my own room and
my own bed, and found the doctor and nurse
beside me giving me oxygen, and poor Ted as
white as a sheet standing at the foot of the bed.
. . . They forced me to — to stay. I had to take
up life again."

And for the first time in all the years I had
known her Essie was shaken with sudden weeping.

"That was three years ago," she said brokenly.

For a time we sat in silence hand in hand.

"And do you still go back there ? "

"Every night."

"And you meet him ? "

"Yes and no. I am sometimes aware of his
presence, but I never see him clearly as I did that
once. I think at that moment I was able to see
him because I was so near death that I was very
close to those on the other side of death. My
spirit had almost freed itself from the body, so I
became visible to him and he to me. I have
studied the pictures of Charles the First's time,
and his dress was exactly of that date, almost the
same as that well-known picture — I think it is

THE END OF THE DREAM 231

Charles the First — of a man with his hand on his
hip, standing beside a white horse. Do you think
it is wrong of me to have a ghostly lover, who
must have lived nearly three hundred years ago ? "

"Not wrong, but strange. It is a little like
"The Brushwood Boy," and "^Eeter Ibbetson,"
and Stella Benson's "This is the end." I
suppose we have all been on this earth before,
but the cup of Lethe is well mixed for most of us,
and we have no memory of previous lives. But
you have not drunk the cup to the dregs, and
somehow you have made a hole in the curtain of
oblivion in two places. Through one of those
holes you saw one of your many childhoods,
probably in Greece, a couple of thousand years
ago. Through the other hole you saw, in com-
paratively modern times your early womanhood.
Perhaps you married your beautiful cavalier
with the curls."

"No," said Essie with decision, "I have never
been married to him, or lived in his house. It is my
home, but I have never lived there. I knownothing
about him except that we love each other, and
that some day we shall really meet, not in a dream. ' '

"In the Elysian fields? "

"Yes, in the Elysian fields."

At this moment the front door slammed, and
Ted banged up the stairs, and rushed in. If I had
not known him I should have said he was drunk.

He was wildly excited, he was crimson. He

232 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

careered round the room waving his arms, and
then plumped on to the sofa, and stretched out
his short legs in front of him.

"I've bought it. I've got it," he shouted.
"Do you hear ? I've bought it dirt cheap. The
young ass is in such a hurry, and he's apparently
so wealthy he doesn't care. And two hundred
acres of timber writh it. Such timber. Such
walnut, and chestnut and oak. The timber alone
is worth the money, I've got it. It's mine."

"The house in Essex? "

''Kenstone Manor, in Essex. It's a nailer.
It's a — a — an old world residence. It has no
central heating, no bathrooms, no electric light,
obsolete drainage and the floors are giving way.
I shall have to put in everything, but I shall do
it without spending a penny. I shall do it by
the timber, and it's nine miles from a station,
that's partly why no one wanted it. But the
railroad is coming. No one knows that yet
except a few of us, but it will be there in five
years, with a station on the property. Then I
shall sell all the land within easy reach of the
station in small building lots for villas. I shall
make a pile."

Ted's round eyes became solemn. He was
gazing into the future, leaning forward, a stout
hand on each stout knee.

"Teddy shall go to Eton," he said, "and I shall
put him in the Guards."

THE END OF THE DREAM 233

A week later Ted took us down by motor to see
Kenstone. It was too far for us to return the
same day, so he engaged rooms for us in the
village inn. His "buyer" was to meet him, and
advise him as to what part of the contents of the
house he should offer to take over by private
treaty before the sale.

On a gleaming day in late September we sped
along the lovely Essex lanes, between the pale
harvested fields.

"There's the forest," shouted Ted, leaning
back from his seat in front, and pointing to a long
ridge of trees which seemed to stretch to the low
horizon beyond the open fields.

"When we're over the bridge we're on the —
the property," yelled Ted.

We lurched over the bridge, and presently the
forest came along the water's edge to meet us,
and we turned sharply through an open gateway
into a private road.

Such trees I had never seen. They stood in
stately groups of birch and oak and pine with
broad glades of grass and yellowing bracken
between them.

"Ancient deer park once," shouted Ted.
"Shall be again."

Essie paid little attention to him. We had
made a very early start, and she was tired.
She leaned back in the car with half closed
eyes.

234 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

The trees retreated on each side of the road,
and the wonderful old house came suddenly into
sight, standing above its long terrace with its
stone balustrade.

Ted gave a sort of yelp.

"OhEssie!" I cried. "Look— look! It's perfect."

She gazed languidly for a moment, and then
she sat up suddenly, and her face changed. She
stared wildly at the house, and put out her hands
as if to ward it off.

The car sped up to the arched doorway, with its
coat of arms cut in grey stone, and Ted leaped
out and rushed up the low steps to the bell.

"Not here ! Not here ! " gasped Essie, cling-
ing to the car. "I can't live here." She was
trembling violently.

"Dear Essie," I said amazed, "we can't remain
in the car. Pull yourself together, and even if
you don't like the place don't hurt Ted's feelings
by showing it."

She looked at me like one dazed, and inured to
obedience got out, and we followed Ted into the
house. We found ourselves in a large square
hall. She groaned and leaned against the
wall.

"I can't bear it," she whispered to me. "It's
no use, I can't bear it."

"A glass of water, quick," I said to Ted, who
turned beaming to us expecting a chorus of
admiration. "Essie is overtired."

THE END OF THE DREAM 235

"What is the matter ? " I said to her as he
hurried away. "What's wrong with this exqui-
site place ? "

"It's the house I come to at night," she said
brokenly. "The dream house. I knew it directly
I saw it. Look! There's the minstrels' gallery."

I could only stare at her amazed.

Kind Ted hurried back, splashing an overfull
tumbler of water as he came, on the polished oak
floor.

She sipped a little, but her hands shook so
much that I had to hold the glass for her.

"Cheero, old girl," said Ted, patting her cheek,
but Essie did not cheero.

"The lady ought to lie down," said the old
woman who had opened the door to us. "There's
a sofy in the morning-room."

I supported Essie into an octagonal room
leading out of the great hall, and laid her on a
spacious divan of dim red damask.

"Leave her alone with me for a bit," I said to
Ted. "She is overwrought. We made a very
early start."

"I seem to have gone blind," she whispered
when Ted had departed. "Everything is black."

"You turned faint. You will be all right in a
few minutes."

"Shall I ? Would you mind telling me,
Beatrice, is there — is there a picture over the
fireplace ? "

236 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"Yes."

"What kind of picture ? "

"It is a life-size portrait of a young cavalier
with curls, in blue satin, holding his hat in his
hand."

"I knew it," she groaned.

There was a long silence.

"I can't bear it," she said. "You may say
that is silly, Beatrice, but all the same I can't.
My life will break in two. If Ted lives here — I
shall have nowhere to go."

"I don't think it silly, dear, but I don't under-
stand. This is your old home where you lived
nearly three hundred years ago, and to which you
have so often come back in your dreams. Now
you are coming back to it as your home once
more. It seems to me a beautiful and romantic
thing to have happened, and after the first
surprise surely it must seem the same to you.
You have always been so happy here."

"I can see a little now," she said. "Where is
the glass of water ? "

She sat up and drank a little, and then dabbed
some of the water on her forehead.

"I'm all right now," she said, pushing back
her wet hair.

"Don't move. Rest a little ; you have had a
shock."

She did not seem to hear me. She rose slowly
to her feet, and stood in front of the picture.

THE END OF THE DREAM 237

"Yes," she said to the cavalier. "It's you,
only not quite you either. You are not really as
handsome as that you know, and you have a
firmer mouth and darker brows."

The cavalier smiled at her from the wall : a
somewhat insipid supercilious face I thought, but
a wonderful portrait.

The old caretaker came back.

"The gentleman said you'd be the better for
something to eat," she said, "and that you would
take it in the hall."

Through the open door I saw the chauffeur
unstrapping the baskets from Fortnum and
Mason.

"Whose portrait is that ? " said Essie.

"Henry Vavasour Kenstone," said the old
woman in a parrot voice. "Equerry to our
martyred King, by Vandyck. You will observe
the jewelled sword and the gloves sewed with
pearls. The sword and the gloves are preserved
in the banqueting 'all in a glass case."

Essie turned away from the picture, and sat
down feebly by the window.

The clinking of plates, and Ted's cheerful
voice reached us, and the drawing of a cork.

"Our Mr. Rupert, the present owner, favours
the picture," said the woman proudly in her
natural voice, "and when he come of age three
years ago last Christmas there was a grand fancy
ball and 'e was dressed exackerly to match the

238 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

picture, with a curled wig and all. And 'e wore
the actual sword, and the very gloves, at least 'e
'eld 'em in 'is 'and. They was too stiff to put on.
'E did look a picture. And 'is mother being
Spanish 'ad a lace shawl on 'er 'ead, a duchess she
was in 'er own right, and she might a been a queen
to look at her. I watched the dancing from the
gallery, me having been nurse in the family,
and a beautiful sight it was."

Essie's dark eyes were fixed intently on the
garrulous old servant.

"Three years ago last Christmas," she said
sharply. "Are you sure of that ? "

"And wouldn't I be sure that took 'im from
the month ma'am, but 'e don't look so like the
picture when 'e ain't dressed to match, and with-
out the yaller wig," and she wandered out of the
room, evidently more interested in the luncheon
preparations than in us.

Ted hurried in. When was he not in a hurry ?

"Luncheon, luncheon," he said. "Don't wait
for me, Essie. Rather too long a drive for my
little woman. Give her a glass of port, Beatrice.
I have to see Rodwell about the roof. Shan't be
half a mo. He's got to catch his train. Mr.
Kenstone, the Duke, I mean, will be here in
ten minutes. If he turns up before I'm back
give him a snack. They've sent enough for
ten."

We did not go in to luncheon.

THE END OF THE DREAM 239

Essie sank down on the divan. I sat down by
her, and put my arms round her. She leaned
her head against my shoulder.

"You heard what that woman said," she
whispered. "You see he did not live hundreds
of years ago as I thought. The dress deceived
me. He's alive now. He's twenty-four."

My heart ached for her, but I could find no
word to comfort her in her mysterious trouble.

As we looked out together through the narrow
latticed windows the lines came into my mind :

casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn."

It seemed to me that poor Essie was indeed
a captive in some "faery land forlorn," and that
invisible perilous seas were foaming round her
casement windows.

She gave a slight shudder, and started up.

A man was walking slowly up and down the
bowling green.

"It is he," she said. "I've seen him walk
there a hundred times."

She watched the tall dignified figure pace up
and down, and then turned her eyes from him
to me. They were wide, and the pupils dilated.

"Beatrice," she said solemnly, "I must not
meet that man. He must not see me, for his
sake, and for mine. All his life long he must go

on thinking as he does now, that I am

a dream."

240 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"The old woman says he starts for Spain to-
day."

Ted's roundabout figure was suddenly seen
trundling out across the grass towards the distant
pacing figure.

"Who is that? " said Essie frowning.

"Who is that? Why, it's Ted of course."

"And who is Ted ? "

Who is Ted ? " I echoed staring at her.
'What on earth do you mean ? "

She seemed to make a great mental effort.

"Yes," she said. "Yes. It is Ted. My
husband. I forgot. You see I've never seen
him here before."

"You will soon grow accustomed to seeing
him here," I said cheerfully.

She shook her head.

The two men met, and moved together to-
wards the house.

Essie looked round her in sudden panic.

"I can't stay here," she said. "It's a trap.
Where can I go? "

Her eyes searched the room. There was no
other door in it. She looked at the narrow
latticed' windows. Her eyes came back to me
with sheer terror in them, such as I have seen
in a snared wild animal.

"You must stay here," I said, "if you don't
want to meet him. They will reach the open
door into the garden long before you could cross

THE END OF THE DREAM 241

the hall. Stay quietly where you are, and I
will tell Ted you are unwell, and are resting."

The two men were already in the hall. I went
out to them, closing the door resolutely behind
me.

Rupert Maria Wenceslao di Soto, Duke of
Urrutia, was a tall grave young man of few
words, with close cropped hair and a lean clean
shaven face.

Ted introduced him to me, and then pressed
him to have some luncheon. The long table
down the banqueting hall shewed an array of
which Fortnum and Mason might justly have
been proud.

The Duke was all courtesy and thanks, but
had already lunched. His car would be here
in ten minutes to take him to London. If
agreeable to Mr. Hopkins he would say one word
on business. He had called to modify his
agent's letter about the mantelpieces. He was
willing to sell them all as agreed at a valuation,
except one.

"Which one ? " asked Ted, instantly changing
from the exuberant host into the cautious busi-
ness man.

"The one in the south parlour," said the Duke,
waving his hand towards the door of the room
in which was Essie. "I desire to make it clear,
as my agent has not done so, that everything
in that room I intend to take with me, so that

242 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

in my future home in the Pyrenees there may
be one chamber exactly the same as my late
mother's room in my old home here."

The explanation quite bowled over Ted. The
business man gave way to the man of sentiment,

"Most creditable, I'm sure. Filial piety,
most creditable. I don't recall the mantlepiece
in question, but of course as your Grace wishes
to keep it, I agree at once. Between gentlemen,
no difficulties, everything open to arrangement,
amicable settlement."

The old woman, dissolved in tears, interrupted
Ted's eloquence to tell "Mr. Rupert" that his car
was at the door.

The Duke led her gently out of the hall, his
hand on her shoulder, and then came back.

' ' I will detain you no longer from your luncheon, ' '
he said. "With your permission I will spend a
few moments in my mother's chamber. It has
many beautiful associations for me. I should
like to see it once more before I leave for Spain."

Ted hastened towards the door, but I barred
the way.

"Dear Ted," I said, "Essie is very ill. No one
must go in."

"No one go in ! " said Ted flushing darkly.
"I am astonished at you, Beatrice. The Duke
wishes to see his mother's room once more, on
bidding farewell to his ancestral home, and you
take upon yourself to forbid it."

THE END OF THE DREAM 243

"My sister-in-law is ill," I said, addressing the
Duke, "it would distress her if a stranger were
to go in suddenly."

"I understand perfectly, Madam," he said
coldly, and made as if to take his leave.

"Stop," said Ted, purple in the face. "My
wife is unwell. She is overtired, but she is the
kindest, most tender-hearted woman in the
world. It would cut her to the heart if she found
out afterwards she had prevented your Grace's
seeing this room for the last time. Wait one
moment, while I go in and explain it to her, and
help her to walk a few steps to the settle
here."

And Ted, with a furious glance at me, pushed
past me, and went into the room.

"It would be a great kindness to my sister,
who is very nervous," I said to the Duke, "if you
would wait a moment in the garden."

He instantly went towards the open door into
the garden. Then I darted after Ted. Between
us we would hurry Essie into one of the many
other rooms that opened into the hall.

She was standing by the window frantically
endeavouring to break the lattice of the central
casement, which was a little larger than the others.

There was blood on her hand.

Ted was speaking, but she cut him short.

"Not in here," she said passionately. "I
won't have it. He mustn't come in here."

244 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"He must come in if I say so," said Ted. The
colour had left his face. I had seen him angry
before now, but never so angry as this.

"No," said Essie, "he must not."

She came and stood before her husband.

"Haven't I been a good wife to you these five
years past," she said. "Haven't I done my
best to make you happy ? Haven't I obeyed
you in everything, everything, everything — till
now?"

He stared at her open-mouthed. She had
never opposed him before.

She fell on her knees before him, and clasped
his feet with her bleeding hands.

"If you love me," she said, "send him away.
I refuse to see him."

"You are hysterical," said Ted, "or else you're
stark staring mad. I've spoilt you and given
way to you till you think you can make any kind
of fool of me. Get up at once, and cease this play
acting, and come into the hall."

"He's in the garden," I broke in. "You can
pass through the hall, Essie."

She rose to her feet, and her vehemence dropped
from her. Her eyes were rivetted on Ted. She
paid no heed to what I said. She had no atten-
tion to give to anything but her husband.

"I will not come out," she said, and she sat
down again on the divan.

"Then by — he shall come in," said Ted, and

THE END OF THE DREAM 245

before I could stop him he strode to the door,
calling loudly to the Duke to enter.

There was a moment's pause, in which we
heard a step cross the hall. Then the Duke
came in, and Ted introduced him to Essie. She
bowed slightly, but he did not. He stared at
her, transfixed, overwhelmed.

At that moment the discreet voice of Mr.
Rodwell was heard in the doorway.

"Can I have one last word, Mr. Hopkins ? A
matter of some importance."

"Yes, yes," said Ted darting to the door,
thankful to escape. As he left the room he said
to me, "Take Essie at once into the hall. At
once, do you hear ? "

He might as well have said, "Take her to the
moon."

The Duke and Essie gazed at each other with
awed intentness. There was sheer amazement
on his face, blank despair on hers. They were
entirely absorbed in each other. As I stood in
the background I felt as if I were a ghost, that no
word of mine could reach their world.
At last he spoke, stammering a little.
"Madam, on the night of my coming of age I
left the dancers, and came in here, and behold !
you were sitting on that divan, all in white."
"Yes," said Essie.

"We saw each other for the first time," he said,
trembling exceedingly.

246 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

"Yes."

"And I knelt at your feet."

"Yes."

A suffocating compassion overcame me. It
was unendurable to pry upon them, oblivious as
they were of my presence. I left the room.

"He will go out of her life in five minutes," I
said to myself, "never to return. Poor souls.
Poor souls. Let them have their say."

I had never seen Romance before, much less
such a fantastic romance as this, in a faery land
as forlorn as this. My heart ached for them.

Presently I heard Ted's voice in the distance
shouting a last message to the departing Rodwell,
and I went back to the octagonal room.

He was kneeling at her feet, her pale hands held
in his, and his face bowed down upon them.

"You must go," she said faintly.

He shuddered.

"You must go," she repeated. "To me you
can only be a picture. To you I am only a
dream."

"Yes, it is time to go," I said suddenly in a
hoarse voice. I obliged them to look at me, to
listen to me.

Slowly he released her hands, and got upon his
feet. He was like a man in a trance.

"Go ! Go ! " I said sharply. Something
urgent in my voice seemed to reach his shrouded
faculties.

THE END OF THE DREAM 247

He looked in bewildered despair at Essie.

"Go!" she repeated with agonised entreaty,
paler than I had ever seen a living creature.

Still like a man in a trance he walked slowly
from the room, passing Ted in the doorway
without seeing him. In the silence that followed
we heard his motor start and whirl away.

"He's gone," said Essie, and she fainted.

We had considerable difficulty in bringing her
round, and, angry as I was with Ted, I could not
help being sorry for him when for some long
moments it seemed as if Essie had closed her
eyes on this world for good.

But Ted, who always knew what to do in an
emergency, tore her back by sheer force from the
refuge to which she had fled, and presently her
mournful eyes opened and recognised us once
more. We took her back in the motor to the
village inn, and I put her to bed.

Rest, warmth, silence, nourishment, these were
all I could give her. Instinctively I felt that the
presence of the remorseful distressed Ted was
unendurable to her, and I would not allow him to
come into her room, or to sit up with her as he
was anxious to do.

I took his place in an armchair at her bedside,
having administered to her a sedative which I
fortunately had with me, and was profoundly
thankful when her even breathing shewed me
that she was asleep.

248 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

I have known — who has not? — interminable
nights, and nights when I dreaded the morning,
but I think the worst of them was easier to bear
than the night I kept watch beside Essie.

She was stricken. I could see no happiness for
her in her future life, and I loved her. And I
loved poor blundering Ted also. I grieved for
them both. And I was sorry for the Duke too.

When the dawn was creeping ghostlike into the
room and the night-light was tottering in its
saucer, Essie stirred and woke. She lay a long
time looking at me, an unfathomable trouble in
her eyes.

"Beatrice," she said at last, "I could not find
the way back."

"Where, dearest ? "

"To the house. I tried and tried, but it was
no use. It is lost, lost, lost. Everything is lost."

I did not answer. I tried to put my trust in
Time, and in the thought that she would presently
see her children in its rooms and playing in its
gardens, and would realise that Kenstone was in
a new sense her home, though not in the old one.

I brought her breakfast to her in her room, and
then, in spite of my entreaties, she got up and
dressed and came downstairs. But when a
chastened and humble Ted timidly approached
her to ask whether she would like to see the house
once more before returning to London in a few
hours time, she shook her head and averted her

THE END OF THE DREAM 249

eyes. It was evident to me that she was deter-
mined never to set foot in it again.

He did not insist, and she was obviously
relieved when he left the room. He signed to
me to follow him and then told me that he had
just received a letter from the Duke asking him to
accept the Vandyck in the octagonal room as a
present, as on second thoughts he felt it belonged
to the house and ought to remain there. The
Duke had not started after all, as his ship had
been delayed one day. He wrote from the house
close at hand where he had been staying till his
departure.

"It's worth thousands," said Ted. "Thousands.
These bigwigs are queer customers. What an
awful fool he is to part with it just out of senti-
ment. But of course I shall never sell it. It shall
be an heirloom. I've told him so," and Ted
thrust the letter into his pocket and hurried away.

Our rooms were airless, and Essie allowed me
to establish her in a wicker armchair under a
chestnut tree in the old-fashioned inn garden
still brave with Michaelmas daisies and purple
asters. The gleaming autumn morning had a
touch of frost in it. I wrapped her fur motor
cloak round her, and put her little hat on her head.
She remained passive in my hands in a kind of
stupor. Perhaps that might be the effect of the
sedative I told myself. But I knew it was not so.

Essie was drinking her cup of anguish to the

250 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

dregs. She did not rebel against it. She
accepted her fate with dumb docility. She was
not bearing it. She was not capable of an effort
of any kind. She underwent it in silence.

I told her to try to sleep again, and she smiled
wanly at me and obediently closed her eyes. As
I went into the house to snatch an hour's rest and
pack I turned and looked back at her motionless
figure sunk down in her chair, her little grey face,
pinched and thin like a squirrel's against the
garish hotel cushion, her nerveless hands lying
half open, palm upwards on her knee.

A faint breeze stirred, and from the yellow
tree a few large fronded leaves of amber and
crimson eddied slowly down, and settled, one on
her breast and the others in the grass at her feet.
She saw them not. She heeded them not. She
heeded nothing. Her two worlds had clashed
together, and the impact had broken both. They
lay in ruins round her.

And so I looked for the last time on Essie.

Reader, I thought I could write this story to the
end, but the pen shakes in my hand. The horror
of it rushes back upon me. Ted's surprise at
hearing that the Duke had gone to Essie in the
garden, and that he had persuaded her to drive
with him to London. Then his growing anxiety
and continually reiterated conviction that we
should find her in London, his uncomprehending

THE END OF THE DREAM 251

fury when we reached London and — she was not
there. And then at last his tardy realisation and
desolation.

I did what little I could to blunt the edge of his
suffering when the first fever fit of rage was past.

"Dear Ted, she did not like the house. She
told me she could not live in it."

"But she would have liked it when I had gutted
it. I should have transformed it entirely.
Electric light, bathrooms, central heating, radi-
ators, dinner lift, luggage lift," Ted's voice broke
down, and struggled on in a strangled whisper.
"Inglenooks, cosy corners, speaking tubes, tele-
phone, large French windows to the floor. She
would not have known it again."

He hid his face in his hands.

I almost wished the paroxysms of anger back
again.

"Oh ! Beatrice, to leave me for another man
when we were so happy together, because of a
house ; and an entire stranger, whom she did not
want even to speak to, whom she was positively
rude to. It could not have been our little tiff,
could it ? She must have been mad."

"You have hit on the truth," I said. "She
was mad, quite mad. And mad people always
turn against those whom they — love best."

It is all a long time ago. I married a year
later, and a year later still Ted married again, a

252 THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE

sensible good-humoured woman, and was just
as happy as he had been with Essie, happier even.
In time he forgot her, but I did not. She had
sailed away across "perilous seas." She had
passed beyond my ken. I could only hold her
memory dear. And at last she became to me,
what for so many years she had been to her lover
— a dream.

W. HEKFER & SONS LTD., CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND.

BINDING SECT.

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UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY