The Project Gutenberg EBook of This Freedom, by A. S. M. Hutchinson
#2 in our series by A. S. M. Hutchinson

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.

This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.

Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.


**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**

*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****


Title: This Freedom

Author: A. S. M. Hutchinson

Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6415]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on December 8, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THIS FREEDOM ***




Produced by Carrie Fellman and Charles Aldarondo




THIS FREEDOM

BY

A. S. M. HUTCHINSON

"With a great sum obtained I this freedom."--ACTS xxii, 28.






CONTENTS





PART ONE--HOUSE OF MEN

PART TWO--HOUSE OF WOMEN

PART THREE--HOUSE OF CHILDREN

PART FOUR--HOUSE OF CARDS






PART ONE--HOUSE OF MEN

CHAPTER I





Rosalie's earliest apprehension of the world was of a mysterious
and extraordinary world that revolved entirely about her father
and that entirely and completely belonged to her father. Under her
father, all males had proprietory rights in the world and dominion
over it; no females owned any part of the world or could do anything
with it. All the males in this world--her father, and Robert and
Harold her brothers, and all the other boys and men one sometimes
saw--did mysterious and extraordinary things; and all the females
in this world--her mother, and Anna and Flora and Hilda her sisters,
and Ellen the cook and Gertrude the maid--did ordinary and unexciting
and generally rather tiresome things. All the males were like story
books to Rosalie: you never knew what they were going to do next;
and all the females were like lesson books: they just went on and
on and on.

Rosalie always stared at men when she saw them. Extraordinary and
wonderful creatures who could do what they liked and were always
doing mysterious and wonderful things, especially and above all
her father.

Being with her father was like being with a magician or like watching
a conjuror on the stage. You never knew what he was going to do
next. Whatever he suddenly did was never surprising in the sense of
being startling, for (this cannot be emphasised too much) nothing
her father did was ever surprising to Rosalie; but it was surprising
in the sense of being absorbingly wonderful and enthralling. Even
better than reading when she first began to read, and far better
than anything in the world before the mysteries in books were
discoverable, Rosalie liked to sit and stare at her father and
think how wonderful he was and wonder what extraordinary thing he
would do next. Everything belonged to him. The whole of life was
ordered with a view to what he would think about it. The whole
of life was continually thrown off its balance and whirled into
the most entrancing convulsions by sudden activities of this most
wonderful man.

Entrancing convulsions! Wonderful, wonderful father with a bull
after him! Why, that was her very earliest recollection of him!
That showed you how wonderful he was! Father, seen for the first
time (as it were) flying before a bull! Bounding wildly across a
field towards her with a bull after him! Wonderful father! Did her
mother ever rush along in front of a bull? Never. Was it possible
to imagine any of the women she knew rushing before a bull? It
was not possible. To see a woman rushing before a bull would have
alarmed Rosalie for she would have felt it was unnatural; but for
her father to be bounding wildly along in front of a bull seemed
to her perfectly natural and ordinary and she was not in the least
alarmed; only, as always, enthralled.

Her father, while Rosalie watched him, was not in great danger. He
came ballooning along towards Rosalie, not running as ordinarily
fit and efficient men run, but progressing by a series of enormous
leaps and bounds, arms and legs spread-eagling, and at each leap
and bound always seeming to Rosalie to spring as high in the air
as he sprung forward over the ground. It would not have surprised
Rosalie, who was then about four, to see one of these stupendous
leaps continue in a whirling flight through mid-air and her father
come hurtling over the gate and drop with an enormous plunk at
her feet like a huge dead bird, as a partridge once had come plunk
over the hedge and out of the sky when she was in a lane adjacent
to a shooting party. It would not have surprised her in the least.
Nothing her father did ever surprised Rosalie. The world was his
and the fulness thereof, and he did what he liked with it.

Arrived, however, from the bull, not as a ballooning bird out of the
sky, but as a headlong avalanche over the gate, Rosalie's father
tottered to a felled tree trunk, and sat there heaving, and groaned
aloud, "Infernal parish; hateful parish; forsaken parish!"

Rosalie, wonderingly regarding him, said, "Mother says dinner is
waiting for you, father."

Her mother and her sisters and the servants and the entire female
establishment of the universe seemed to Rosalie always to be
waiting for something from her father, or for her father himself,
or waiting for or upon some male other than her father. That was
another of the leading principles that Rosalie first came to know
in her world. Not only were the males, paramountly her father, able
to do what they liked and always doing wonderful and mysterious
things, but everything that the females did either had some relation
to a male or was directly for, about, or on behalf of a male.

Getting Robert off to school in the morning, for instance. That
was another early picture.

There would be Robert, eating; and there was the entire female
population of the rectory feverishly attending upon Robert while
he ate. Six females, intensely and as if their lives depended upon
it, occupied with one male. Three girls--Anna about sixteen, Flora
fourteen, Hilda twelve--and three grown women, all exhaustingly
occupied in pushing out of the house one heavy and obstinate male
aged about ten! Rosalie used to stand and watch entranced. How
wonderful he was! Where did he go to when at last he was pushed
off? What happened to him? What did he do?

There he is, eating; there they are, ministering. Entrancing and
mysterious spectacle!

Robert, very solid and heavy and very heated and agitated, would
be seated at the table shoving porridge into himself against the
clock. One of his legs, unnaturally flexed backward and outward, is
in the possession of Rosalie's mother who is on her knees mending
a hole in his stocking. The other leg, similarly contorted, is on
the lap of Ellen the cook, who with very violent tugs, as if she
were lashing a box, is lacing a boot on to it. Behind Robert is
Anna, who is pressing his head down with one hand and washing the
back of his neck with the other. In front of him across the table
is Hilda, staring before her with bemused eyes and moving lips and
rapidly counting on drumming fingers. Hilda is doing his sums for
him. Beside him on his right side, apparently engaged in throttling
him, is Gertrude the maid. Gertrude the maid is trying to tear off
him a grimed collar and put on him a clean collar. Facing Gertrude
on his other side is Flora. Flora is bawling his history in his
ear.

Everybody is working for Robert; everybody is working at top speed
for him, and everybody is loudly soliciting his attention.

"Oh, do give over wriggling, master Robert!" (The boot-fastener.)

"'Simon de Montford, Hubert de Burgh, and Peter de Roche.' Well,
say it then, you dreadful little idiot!" (The history crammer.)

"Oh, master Robert, do please keep up!" (The collar fastener.)

"Keep down, will you!" (The neck washer.)

"Four sixes are twenty-four and six you carried thirty!" (The
arithmetician.)

"Robert, you must turn your foot further round!" (The stocking-darner.)

"'The Barons were now incensed. The Barons were now incensed. The
Barons were now incensed.' Say it, you ghastly little stupid!"

"Do they make you do these by fractions or by decimals?... Well,
what do you know, then?"

Entrancing spectacle!

Now the discovery is by everybody simultaneously made and
simultaneously announced that Robert is already later in starting
than he has ever been (he always was) and immediately Rosalie
would become witness of the last and most violent skirmish in this
devoted attendance. Everybody rushes around hunting for things and
pushing them on to Robert and pushing Robert, festooned with them,
towards the door. Where was his cap? Where was his satchel? Where
was his lunch? Where were his books? Who had seen his atlas? Who
had seen his pencil box? Who had seen his gymnasium belt? Was his
bicycle ready? Was his coat on his bicycle? Was that button on his
coat?

With these alarums at their height and the excursions attendant on
them at their busiest, another splendid male would enter the room
and immediately there was, as Rosalie always saw, a transference
of attendance to him and a violent altercation between him and
the first splendid male. This new splendid male is Rosalie's other
brother, Harold. Harold was eighteen and him also the entire female
population of the rectory combined to push out of the rectory every
morning. Harold was due to be pushed off half an hour later than
Robert, and as he was a greater and more splendid male than Robert
(though infinitely lesser than her father) so the place to which
he was pushed off was far more mysterious and enthralling than the
place to which Robert was pushed off. A school Rosalie could dimly
understand. But a bank! Why Harold should go to sit on a bank all
day, and why he should ride on a bicycle to Ashborough to find a
bank when there were banks all around the rectory, and even in the
garden itself, Rosalie never could imagine. Mysterious Harold! Anna
had told her that men kept money in banks; but Rosalie had never
found money in a bank though she had looked; yet banks--of all
extraordinary places--were where men chose to put their money!
Mysterious men! And Harold could find these banks and find this money
though he never took a trowel or a spade and was always shiningly
clean with a very high collar and very long cuffs. Wonderful,
wonderful Harold!

Robert was due to be pushed off half an hour before Harold was
due to be pushed off, but he never was; the two splendid creatures
always clashed and there was always between them, because they
clashed, a violent scene which Rosalie would not have missed for
worlds. A meeting of two males, so utterly unlike a meeting of two
females, was invariably of the most entrancingly noisy or violent
description. When ladies came to the rectory to see her mother they
sat in the drawing-room and sipped tea and spoke in thin voices;
but when men came to see her father and went into the study, there
was very loud talking and often a row. Yes, and once in the village
street, Rosalie had seen two men stand up and thump one another
with their fists and fall down and get up and thump again. When
two women, her sisters or others, quarrelled, they only shrilled,
and went on and on shrilling. It was impossible to imagine the
collision of two women producing anything so exciting and splendid
as invariably was produced by the collision of two males.

As now----

In comes Harold in great heat and hurry (as men always were) with
his splendid button boots in one hand and an immense pair of shining
cuffs in the other hand.

"Haven't you gone yet, you lazy young brute?"

"No, I haven't, you lazy old brute!"

Agitated feminine cries of "Robert! Robert! You are not to speak
to Harold like that."

"Well, he spoke to me like that."

"Yes, and I'll do a jolly sight more than speak to you in a minute
if you don't get out of it. Get out of it, do you hear?"

"Shan't!"

"Robert! Robert! Harold! Harold!"

"Well, get him out of it, or he'll be sorry for it. Why is he always
here when I'm supposed to be having my breakfast? Not a thing ready,
as usual. Look here, where I'm supposed to sit--flannel and soap!
That's washing his filthy neck, I suppose. Filthy young brute! Why
don't you wash your neck, pig?"

"Why do you wear girl's boots with buttons, pig?"

Commotion. Enthralling commotion. Half the female assemblage hustle
the splendid creature Robert out of the door and down the hall and
on to his bicycle; half the female assemblage cover his retreat
and block the dash after him of the still more splendid Harold;
all the female assemblage, battle having been prevented and one
splendid male despatched, combine to minister to the requirements
of the second splendid male now demanding attention.

Busy scene. Enthralling spectacle. There he is, eating; shoving
sausages into himself against the clock just as Robert had shovelled
porridge into himself against the clock. One ministrant is sewing
a button on to his boot, another with blotting paper and hot iron
is removing a stain from his coat, divested for the purpose; one
is pouring out his coffee, another is cutting his bread, a third is
watching for his newspaper by the postman. And suddenly he whirls
everything into a whirlpool just as men, if Rosalie watches them
long enough, always whirl everything into a whirlpool.

"Oh, my goodness, the pump!"

Chorus, "The pump?"

"The bicycle pump! Has that young brute taken the bicycle pump?"

"Yes, he took it. I saw it."

Commotion.

"Catch him across the field! Catch him across the field! Where
are my boots? Where the devil are my boots? Well, never mind the
infernal button. How am I going to get to the bank with a flat tyre?
Can't some one catch him across the field instead of all standing
there staring?"

Away they go! Rosalie, seeking a good place for the glorious
spectacle, is knocked over in the stampede for the door. Nobody
minds Rosalie. Rosalie doesn't mind--anything to see this entrancing
sight! Away they go, flying over the meadow, shouting, scrambling,
falling. Out after them plunges Harold, shirt-sleeved, one boot half
on, hobbling, leaping, bawling. Glorious to watch him! He outruns
them all; he outbellows them all. Of course he does. He is a man.
He is one of those splendid, wonderful, mysterious creatures to
whom, subject only to Rosalie's father, the entire world belongs.
Look at him, bounding, bawling! Wonderful, wonderful Harold!

But Robert is wonderful too. If it had been Anna or Flora or Hilda
gone off with the pump, she would have been easily caught. Not
Robert. Wonderful and mysterious Robert, wonderfully and mysteriously
pedalling at incredible speed, is not caught. The hunt dejectedly
trails back. The business of pushing Harold out of the house is
devotedly resumed.

And again--enthralling spectacle--just as the reign of Robert was
terminated by the accession of Harold, so the dominion of Harold
is overthrown by the accession of father. Harold is crowded about
with ministrants. Nobody can leave him for a minute. Rosalie's
father appears. Everybody leaves Harold simultaneously, abruptly,
and as if by magic. Rosalie's father appears. Everybody disappears.
Wonderful father! Everybody melts away: but Harold does not melt
away. Courageous Harold! Everybody melts; only Harold is left,
and Rosalie watching; and immediately, as always, the magnificent
males clash with sound and fury.

Rosalie's father scowls upon Harold and delivers his morning
greeting. No "Good morning, dear," as her mother would have said.
"Aren't you gone yet?" like a bark from a kennel.

"Just going."

Wonderful father! A moment before there had been not the remotest
sign of Harold ever going. Now Harold is very anxious to go. He is
very anxious to go but, like Robert, he will not abandon the field
without defiance of the authority next above his own. While he
collects his things he whistles. Rosalie shudders (but deliciously
as one in old Rome watching the gladiators).

"Do you see the clock, sir?"

"Yes."

"Well, quicken yourself, sir. Quicken yourself."

"The clock's fast."

"It is not fast, sir. And let me add that the clock with which you
could keep time of a morning, or of any hour in the day, would have
to be an uncommonly slow clock."

Harold with elaborate unconcern adjusts his trouser clips. "I should
have thought that was more a matter for the Bank to complain of,
if necessary. I may be wrong, of course----"

"You may be wrong, sir, because in my experience you almost invariably
are wrong and never more so than when you lad-di-dah that you are
right. You may be wrong, but let me tell you what you may not be.
You may not be impertinent to me, sir. You may not lad-di-dah me,
sir."

"Father, I really do not see why at my age I should be hounded out
of the house like this every morning."

"You are hounded out, as you elegantly express it, because morning
after morning, owing to your disgustingly slothful habits, you
clash with me, sir. My breakfast is delayed because you clash with
me, and the house is delayed because you clash with me, and the
whole parish is delayed because you clash with me."

"Perhaps you're not aware that Robert clashes with me."

"Dash Robert! Are you going or are you not going?"

He goes.

"Bring back the paper."

He brings it back.

Wonderful father!

Rosalie's father gives a tug at the bell cord that would have
dislocated the neck of a horse. The cord comes away in his hand.
He hurls it across the room.

Glorious father!

There was a most frightful storm one night and Rosalie, in Anna's
bed with Flora crowded in also and Hilda shivering in her nightgown
beside them, too young to be frightened but with her sister's
fright beginning to communicate itself to her, said, "Ask father
to go and stop it."

"Fool!" cried Flora. "How could father stop the storm?"

Why not?






CHAPTER II





Flora's sharp and astounding reply to that question of Rosalie's
was recalled by Rosalie, with hurt surprise at Flora's sharpness
and ignorance, when, shortly afterwards, she found in a book a man
who could, and actually did, stop a storm. This was a man called
Prospero in a book called "The Tempest."

She was never--that Rosalie--the conventional wonder-child of
fiction who reads before ten all that its author probably never
read before thirty; but she could read when she was six and she
read widely and curiously, choosing her entertainment, from her
father's bookshelves, solely by the method of reading every book
that had pictures.

There was but one picture to "The Tempest," a frontispiece, but it
sufficed, and at the period when Rosalie believed the ownership of
the world to be vested in her father and under him in all males,
"The Tempest," because it reflected that condition, was the greatest
joy of all the joys the bookshelves discovered to her. She read it
over and over again. It presented life exactly as life presented
itself to the round eyes of Rosalie: all males doing always noisy
and violent and important and enthralling things, with Prospero,
her father, by far the most important of all; and women scarcely
appearing and doing only what the men told them to do. Miranda's
appearances in the story were indifferently skipped by Rosalie;
the noisy action and language in the wreck, and the noisy action
and language of the drunkards in the wood were what she liked, and
all the magic arts of Prospero were what she thoroughly appreciated
and understood. That was life as she knew it.

Rosalie's father, when Rosalie thought the world belonged to him
and revolved about him, was tall and cleanshaven and of complexion
a dark and burning red. When he was excited or angry his face used
to burn as the embers in the study fire burned when Rosalie pressed
the bellows against them. He had thick black eyebrows and a most
powerful nose. His nose jutted from his face like a projection
from a cliff beneath a clump of bushes. He had been at Cambridge
and he was most ferociously fond of Cambridge. One of the most
fearful scenes Rosalie ever witnessed was on one boat-race day when
Harold appeared with a piece of Oxford ribbon in his buttonhole. It
was at breakfast, the family for some reason or other most unusually
all taking breakfast together. Rosalie's father first jocularly
bantered Harold on his choice of colour, and everybody--anxious as
always to please and placate the owner of the world--laughed with
father against Harold. But Harold did not laugh. Harold smouldered
resentment and defiance, and out of his smouldering began to maintain
"from what chaps had said" that Oxford was altogether and in every
way a much better place than Cambridge. In every branch of athletics
there were better athletes, growled Harold, at Oxford.

Rosalie has been watching the embers in her father's face glowing
to dark-red heat. Everybody had been watching them except Harold
who, though addressing his father, had been mumbling "what chaps
had said" to his plate.

"Athletes!" cried Rosalie's father suddenly in a very terrible
voice. "Athletes! And what about scholars, sir?"

Harold informed his plate that he wasn't talking about scholars.

Rosalie's father raised a marmalade jar and thumped it down upon
the table so that it cracked. "Then what the dickens right have
you to talk at all, sir? How dare you try to compare Oxford with
Cambridge when you know no more about either than you know of
Jupiter or Mars? Athletes!" He went off into record of University
contests, cricket scores, running times, football scores, as if
his whole life had been devoted to collecting them. They all showed
Cambridge first and Oxford beaten and he hurled each one at Harold's
head with a thundering, "What about that, sir?" after it. He leapt
to scholarship and reeled off scholarships and scholars and schools,
and professors and endowments and prize men, as if he had been an
educational year-book gifted with speech and with particularly loud
and violent speech. He spoke of the colleges of Cambridge, and with
every college and every particular glory of every college demanded
of the unfortunate Harold, "What have you got in Oxford against
that, sir?"

It was awful. It was far more frightening than the night of the
storm. Nobody ate. Nobody drank. Everybody shuddered and tried
by every means to avoid catching father's rolling eye and thereby
attracting the direct blast of the tempest. Rosalie, who of course,
being a completely negligible quantity in the rectory, is not
included in the everybody, simply stared, more awed and enthralled
than ever before. And with much reason. As he declaimed of the glories
of the colleges of Cambridge there was perceptible in her father's
voice a most curious crack or break. It became more noticeable
and more frequent. He suddenly and most astoundingly cried out,
"Cambridge! Cambridge!" and threw his arms out before him on the
table, and buried his head on them, and sobbed out, "Cambridge! My
youth! My youth! My God, my God, my youth!"

Somehow or other they all slipped out of the room and left him
there,--all except Rosalie who remained in her high chair staring
upon her father, and upon his shoulders that heaved up and down,
and upon the coffee from an overturned cup that oozed slowly along
the tablecloth.

Extraordinary father!

Rosalie's father had been a wrangler and one of the brilliant men
of his year at Cambridge. All manner of brilliance was expected
for him and of him. He unexpectedly went into the Church and as
unexpectedly married.

His bride was the daughter of a clergyman, a widower, who kept a
small private school in Devonshire. She helped her father to run
the school (an impoverished business which, begun exclusively for
the "sons of gentlemen," had slid down into paying court to tradesmen
in order to get the sons of tradesmen) and she maintained him in
the very indifferent health he suffered. Harold Aubyn, the brilliant
wrangler with the brilliant future, who had begun his brilliance by
unexpectedly entering the Church, and continued it by unexpectedly
marrying while on a holiday in the little Devonshire town where he had
gone to ponder his future (a little unbalanced by the unpremeditated
plunge into Holy Orders) further continued his brilliance by
unexpectedly finding himself the assistant master in his father-in-law's
second-rate and failing school. The daughter would not leave her
father; the suitor would not leave his darling; the brilliant young
wrangler who at Cambridge used to dream of waking to find himself
famous awoke instead to find himself six years buried in a now
third-rate and moribund school in a moribund Devonshire town. He
had a father-in-law now permanent invalid, bedridden. He had four
children and another, Robert, on the way.

It was his father-in-law's death that awoke him; and he awoke
characteristically. The old man dead! Come, that was one burden
lifted, one shackle removed! The school finally went smash at the
same time. Never mind! Another burden gone! Another shackle lifted!
Dash the school! How he hated the school! How he loathed and
detested the lumping boys! How he loathed and abominated teaching
them simple arithmetic (he the wrangler!) and history that was
a string of dates, and geography that was a string of capes and
bays, and Latin as far as the conjugations (he the wrangler!) how
he loathed and abominated it! Now a fresh start! Hurrah!

That was like Rosalie's father--in those days. That way blew the
cold fit and the hot fit--then.

The magnificent fresh start after the magnificent escape from the
morass of the moribund father-in-law and the moribund school and
the moribund Devonshire town proved to be but a stagger down into
morass heavier and more devastating of ambition. He always jumped
blindly and wildly into things. Blindly and wildly into the
Church, blindly and wildly into marriage, blindly and wildly into
the school, blindly and wildly, one might say, into fatherhood on
a lavish scale. Blindly and wildly--the magnificent fresh start--into
the rectory in which Rosalie was born.

It was "a bit in the wilds" (of Suffolk); "a bit of a tight
fit" (L200 a year) and a bit or two or three other drawbacks; but
it was thousands of miles from Devonshire and from the school and
schooling, that was the great thing; and it was a jolly big rectory
with a ripping big garden; and above all and beyond everything it
was just going to be a jumping-off place while he looked around for
something suitable to his talents and while he got in touch again
with his old friends of the brilliant years.

It was just going to be a jumping-off place, but he never jumped off
from it; a place from which to look around for something suitable,
but instead he sunk in it up to his chin; a place from which to
get in touch again with his friends of the brilliant years, but
his friends were all doing brilliant things and much too busy at
their brilliance to open up with one who had missed fire.

The parish of St. Mary's, Ibbotsfield, had an enormous rectory,
falling to pieces; an enormous church, crumbling away; an enormous
area, purely agricultural; and a cure of a very few hundred
agricultural souls, enormously-scattered. Years and years before,
prior to railways, prior to mechanical reapers and thrashers, and
prior to everything that took men to cities or whirled them and
their produce farther in an hour than they ever could have gone in
a week, Ibbotsfield and its surrounding villages and hamlets were
a reproach to the moral conditions of the day in that they had no
sufficiently enormous church. Well-intentioned persons removed this
reproach, adding in their zeal an enormous rectory; and the time
they chose for their beneficent and lavish action was precisely
the time when Ibbotsfield, through its principal land-owners, was
stoutly rejecting the monstrous idea of encouraging a stinking,
roaring, dangerous railway in their direction, and combining together
by all means in their power to keep the roaring, dangerous atrocity
as far away from them as possible.

It thus, and by like influences, happened that, whereas
one generation of the devoutly intentioned sat stolidly under the
reproach of an enormous and thickly populated area without a church,
later generations with the same stolidity sat under the reproach
of an enormous church, an enormous rectory and an infinitesimal
stipend, in an area which a man might walk all day without meeting
any other man.

But the devout of the day, not having to live in this rectory or
preach in this church or laboriously trudge about this area, did
not unduly worry themselves with this reproach.

That was (in his turn) the lookout of the Rev. Harold Aubyn--also
his outlook.

He is to be imagined, in those days when Rosalie first came to know
him and to think of him as Prospero, as a terribly lonely man. He
stalked fatiguingly about the countryside in search of his parishioners,
and his parishioners were suspicious of him and disliked his fierce,
thrusting nose, and he returned from them embittered with them and
hating them. He genuinely longed to be friendly with them and on
terms of Hail, fellow, well met, with them; but they exasperated him
because they could not meet him either on his own quick intellectual
level or upon his own quick and very sensitive emotional level.
They could not respond to his humour and they could not respond,
in the way he thought they ought to respond, to his sympathy.

He once found a man--a farm labourer--who in conversation disclosed
a surprising interest in the traces of early and mediaeval habitation
of the country. The discovery delighted him. In the catalogue of
a secondhand bookseller of Ipswich he noticed the "Excursions in
the County of Suffolk," two volumes for three shillings, and he
wrote and had them posted to the man. For days he eagerly looked
in the post for the grateful and delighted letter that in similar
circumstances he himself would have written. He composed in his mind
the phrases of the letter and warmed in spirit over anticipation
of reading them. No letter arrived.

When he came into the rectory from visiting he was always asking,
"Has that man Bolas from Hailsham called?" Bolas never called. He
furiously began to loathe Bolas. He was furious with himself for
having "lowered himself" to Bolas. Bolas in his ignorance no doubt
thought the books were a cheap charity of cast-off lumber. Uncouth
clod! Stupid clod! Uncouth parish! Hateful, loathsome parish!
For weeks he kept away from Hailsham and the possible vicinity of
Bolas. One day he met him. Bolas passed with no more than a "Good
day, Mr. Aubyn." He could have killed the man. He swung round and
pushed his dark face and jutty nose into the face of Bolas. "Did
you ever get some books I sent you?"

"Ou, ay, to be sure, they books----"

He rushed with savage strides away from the man. All the way home
he savagely said to himself, aloud, keeping time to it with his
feet, "Uncouth clod, ill-mannered clod, horrible, hateful place!
Uncouth clods, hateful clods, horrible, hateful place!"

That was his attitude to his parishioners. They could not come up
to the level of his sensibilities; he could not get down to the
level of theirs.

With the few gentle families that composed the society of Ibbotsfield
he was little better accommodated. They led contented, well-ordered
lives, busy about their gardens, busy about their duties, busy
about their amusements. His life was ill-ordered and he was never
busy about anything: he was always either neglecting what had to
be done or doing it, late, with a ferocious and exhausting energy
that caused him to groan over it and detest it while he did it.
In the general level of his life he was below the standard of his
neighbours and knew that he was below it; in the sudden bounds and
flights of his intellect and of his imagination he was immeasurably
above the intel-lects of his neighbours and knew that he was
immeasurably above them. Therefore, and in both moods, he commonly
hated and despised them. "Fools, fools! Unread, pompous, petty!"

At the rectory, among his family, he seemed to himself to be
surrounded by incompetent women and herds of children.

He was a terribly lonely man when Rosalie first came to know him
and thought of him as Prospero. He is to be imagined in those days
as a fierce, flying, futile figure scudding about on the face of
the parish and in the vast gaunt spaces of the rectory, with his
burning face and his jutting nose, trying to get away from people,
hungering to meet sympathetic people; trying to get way from
himself, hungering after the things that his self had lost. In his
young manhood he was known for moods of intense reserve alternated
by fits of tremendous gaiety and boisterous high spirits. ("A
fresh start! Hurrah!" when release from the school came. "What does
anything matter? Now we're really off at last! Hurrah! Hurrah!")
In his set manhood, when Rosalie knew him, there were substituted
for the fits of boisterous spirits, paroxysms of violent outburst
against his lot. "Infernal parish! Hateful parish! Forsaken parish!"
after the ignominy of flight before the bull. "Blow the dinner!
Dash the dinner! Blow the dinner!" after wrestling a soggy steak
from his pocket and hurling it half a mile through the air. These
and that single but terrible occasion of "Cambridge! Cambridge! My
youth! My God, my God, my youth!"

A terribly lonely man.






CHAPTER III





The Aubyn family occupied only a portion of the enormous rectory.
There was a whole floor upstairs, and there were several rooms on
the ground and first floors, that were never used, were unfurnished
except for odds and ends of lumber left behind by the previous
vicar, and were never entered. Rosalie once explored them all,
systematically though very fearfully, and also very excitedly. She
was searching for some one, for two people.

In the household she knew her father and her mother, her brothers
and sisters and the servants; but there were two mysterious
inhabitants of whom she often heard but whom she never saw and
never could find. It used to frighten her sometimes, lying awake at
night, or creeping about the house of an evening, to think of those
two mysterious people hidden away somewhere and perhaps likely to
pounce on her out of the dark. What did they eat? Where did they
live? What did they do? What were they?

One of these two eerie and invisible people was heard of from
her father. Several times Rosalie had heard him, when talking to
persons not of the family, speak of "my wife." The other eerie and
invisible creature was heard of from her mother: "My husband."

Where were they? Of all the mysterious things which Rosalie used to
wonder over in those days, this undiscoverable "wife" and "husband"
were the most mysterious of all, and more mysterious than ever after
that day on which, walking on tiptoe for fear of coming upon them
suddenly, holding her breath and pausing in fearful apprehension
before entering the untenanted rooms upstairs, she explored the
whole house in search of them. She got to know all sorts of little
odds and ends about them; that the wife felt the cold very much,
for instance, for she had heard her father say so; and that the
husband did not like mutton, for her mother told that to Mr. Grant
the butcher: and she was often hot on their tracks for she had heard
her father say, "My wife is upstairs" and had rushed upstairs and
searched; and her mother say, "My husband is in the garden," and had
run into the garden and hunted. But all these clues only deepened
the mystery. They were never to be found.

It was mysterious.

Then one day the wife (she heard) fell ill, and through her great
concern about that--for she was profoundly interested in these
people and used to feel awfully sorry for them, hidden away like
that perhaps with no fire and nothing to eat but mutton--the mystery
was explained.

With the family she was going towards church one Sunday morning and
she heard her father tell a lady that "my wife" was not very well
that morning and couldn't come. Rosalie during the service prayed
very earnestly for the wife's recovery and took the opportunity of
praying also that she might be permitted to see the wife "if she
is not very frightening, O Lord, and the husband too, if possible,
for Jesus Christ's sake, amen."

And at lunch, having thought of nothing else all the morning, there
was suddenly shot out of her the question, "Father, is your wife
any better now?"

Rosalie commonly never spoke at all at meals; and as to speaking
to her father, though it is obvious she must have had some sort
of intercourse with him, this famous question (a standing joke in
the house for years) was the single direct speech of those early
years she ever could remember. She spoke to her father when she
was bidden to speak in the form of messages, generally about meals
being ready, or relative to shopping commissions he had been asked
to execute; but he was far too wonderful, powerful and mysterious
for conversation with him on her own initiative. "Father, is your
wife any better now?" stood out in her later recollection, alone
and lonelily startling.

There was from all the company an astounded stare and astounded
gasp; all the table sitting with astounded eyes, forks suspended
in mid-air, mouths half open in astonishment, and Rosalie sitting
in her high chair wonderingly regarding their wonderment. What were
they staring at?

There was then an enormous howl of laughter, led by Rosalie's
father, and repeated, and louder than before, because it was so
very unusual for the family to be laughing in accord with father.
Gertrude, the maid, fled hysterically from the room and laughter
howled back from the kitchen.

Rosalie's father said, "You'd better go and ask your mother." Her
mother had stayed in bed that day with a chill.

Robert "undid" Rosalie--a wooden rod with a fixed knob at one
end went through the arms of her high chair and was fastened by a
removable knob at the other end--and Rosalie slid down very gravely,
and with their laughter still echoing trod upstairs to her mother's
bedside and related what she had been told to ask, and, on inquiry,
why she had asked it. "I only said 'Father, is your wife any better
now?'" and on further inquiry explained her long searching after
the undiscoverable pair.

Rosalie's mother laughed also then, but had a sudden wetness in her
eyes. She put her arms about Rosalie and pressed her to her bosom
and cried, "Oh, my poor darling!" and explained the tremendous
mystery. Wife and husband, Rosalie's mother explained, were the
names used by other people for her father and her mother. A man
and a woman loved one another very, very dearly ("as I loved your
dear father") and then they lived together in a dear house of their
own and then God gave them dear little children of their own to
live with them, said Rosalie's mother.

This thoroughly satisfied Rosalie and completely entranced her,
especially about the presentation of the dear little children. She
would have supposed that naturally it thoroughly satisfied Anna and
Harold and Flora and the others; and the point of interest rests
here, that Rosalie's mother also believed that this explanation
of marriage and procreation completely satisfied Anna at sixteen
and Harold in the Bank at eighteen. She never gave them any other
explanation of the phenomenon of birth; and it is to be supposed
that, just as she instructed them that God sent the dear little
children, so she believed that God, at the right time, in some
mysterious way, communicated the matter to them in greater detail.
Years and years afterwards, Flora told Rosalie that when Rosalie
was born all the children were sent away to stay with a neighbour
and not allowed to return till Rosalie's mother, downstairs, was
able to show them the dear little sister that God had surprisingly
delivered at the house, as it were in a parcel.

One is given pain by a state of affairs so monstrous; but one suffers
that pain proudly because one belongs, proudly, to a day in which
nothing but stark truth may go from mother to child, not even fairy
stories, not even Bible stories. Rosalie's mother is gone and her
kind is no more, and in the graces and the manners of this day's
generation one perceives, proudly, the inestimable benefits of
the passing of her kind. Lamentable specimen of her kind, she had
no interests other than her home and her husband and her children
and the pleasures and the treasures and the friends of her husband
and her children. She belonged to that dark age when duty towards
others was the guiding principle of moral life; she came only to
the threshold of this enlightened age in which duty to oneself is
known to be the paramount and first and last consideration of life
as it should be lived.

Rosalie's mother, whose name had been Anna Escott, kept at the
bottom of a drawer five most exquisite little miniatures. They were
in a case of faded blue plush, and they had been in that case and
at the bottom of one drawer or another ever since the girl Anna
Escott, aged twenty, had placed them in the case, then exquisitely
blue and new and soft, and given up painting miniatures forever, in
order to devote her whole time to looking after her invalid father
and the failing preparatory school that was his livelihood.

Rosalie was herself nearly thirty when she first saw the miniatures. She
was come back to the rectory from the pursuits that then occupied
her to visit, rather impatiently and rather vexedly, her mother
on what proved to be her death bed. She was tidying her mother's
drawers, impatient with the amazing collection of rubbish they
contained and hating herself for being impatient, while her mother,
on the bed, patiently watched her; and she came upon the case and
opened it and stared in astonishment and admiration at the beauty
of the five miniatures.

She asked her mother and her mother told her she had painted them.
"I used to do that when I was a girl," said Rosalie's mother.

All Rosalie's impatience was drowned and utterly engulfed in a
most dreadful flood of emotion. She set down the case on the bed
and flung herself on her knees beside her mother and clasped her
arms about her.

"Oh, mother, mother! Oh, beloved little mother!" But that is out
of its place.

Yes, that girl Anna Escott, who had an exquisite talent, and all
sorts of fond dreams of its development, gave it up wholly and
entirely and forever when her mother died and her father said, "I
would like you, Anna dear, to give up your painting and come and
look after me and the school now."

Anna said, "Of course I will, Papa. It's my duty. Of course I will."

Girls did that, and parents and husbands asked them to do that, in
the days when Rosalie's mother was a girl.

Rosalie's mother gave away everything, first to her father, then
to her husband, then to her children. She believed the whole of the
Bible, literally, as it is written, from the first word of Genesis
to the last word of Revelations. She taught it as literal, final
and initial truth to all her children, and one knows how wickedly
wrong it is now considered to teach children that the Bible-stories
are true. She taught them the whole of the Bible from books called
"Line Upon Line," and "The Child's Bible," and in stories of her
own making, and from the Bible itself. Regrettably, the ignorantly
imposed-upon children loved it! Till each child was eight she
taught them everything at her knee. All the nursery rhymes, and
all the Bible, and reading out of "Step by Step," and then "Reading
Without Tears," and then, in advancing series, the "Royal Readers,"
and writing, first holding their hands, and then--first in pencil
and afterwards with pens having three huge blobs to teach you how
to place your fingers properly--in copybooks graded from enormous
lines which had brick-red covers to astoundingly narrow little lines
enclosing pious and moral maxims which had severe grey covers; and
the multiplication tables and then simple arithmetic; and General
Knowledge out of "The Child's Guide to Knowledge," which asked
you "What is sago?" and required you to reply by heart, "Sago is
a dried, granulated substance prepared from the pith of several
different palms." "Where are these palms found?" "These palms are
found in the East Indies."

Likewise history out of Mrs. Markham and "Little Arthur"; also,
at a ridiculously early age, how to tell the time and how to know
the coinage of the realm and its values; also, whether girl or boy,
the making of kettle-holders by threading brightly coloured wools
through little squares of canvas; also very many pieces of poetry:
"Oft had I heard of Lucy Grey," and "It was the Schooner Hesperus"
and hymns--also learnt by heart and sung while Rosalie's mother
played the piano--"We are but little children weak," and "Gentle
Jesus, meek and mild."

All these things were taught at her knee to each child in turn by
Rosalie's mother, and each was taught out of the self-same books,
miraculously preserved by Rosalie's mother; the backs of most of
them carefully stitched and re-stitched, and marked all through
by the dates of each child's daily lesson, written in pencil by
Rosalie's mother. The dates ranged from 1869 when Harold was being
taught and when the books were fresh and clean, and Rosalie's
mother fresh and ardent with her first-born, to 1884, when Rosalie
was being taught, and the books very old and thumbed and most
terribly crowded with pencil marks, and Rosalie's mother no longer
fresh but rather worn, but teaching as fondly and earnestly as
ever, because it was her duty. Literally at the knee of Rosalie's
mother these things were taught. On her knee with one of her arms
about you for the Bible teaching; and standing at her knee, hands
behind you, for the teaching of most of the rest. Yes, that was
the early education, and the manner of the education, of Rosalie
and of her brothers and sisters, and one perceives with indignation
the spectacle of a mother wasting her time like that and wasting
her children's time like that.

Rosalie's mother did everything in the house and she was always
doing something in the house--for somebody else. She never rested
and she was always worried. Her brows were always wrinkled with
the feverish concentration of one anxiously doing one thing while
anxiously thinking of another thing waiting to be done. She had a
driven and a hunted look.

Now Rosalie's father had a driving and a hunting look.

Rosalie's father in his youth threw away everything. Rosalie's mother
throughout the whole of her life gave away everything. Rosalie's
father was a tragic figure dwelling in a house of bondage; but he
was at least a tragic king, ruling his house and venting his griefs
upon his house. Rosalie's mother was a tragic figure and she was a
tragic slave in the house of bondage. The life of Rosalie's father
was a tragedy, but a tragedy in some measure relieved because he
knew it was a tragedy and could wave his arms and shout and smash
things and hurl beefsteaks through the air because of the tragedy
of it. But the life of Rosalie's mother was an infinitely deeper
tragedy because she never knew or suspected that it was a tragedy.

Still, that is so often the difference between the tragedy of a
woman and the tragedy of a man.






CHAPTER IV





The very great difference between her father and her mother
maintained in Rosalie that early perception of the wondrousness of
her father. She loved her mother, but in the atmosphere surrounding
her mother there was often flurry and worry and there was nothing
whatever in her mother to mystify and entrance by sudden and violent
eruptions of the miraculous. She did not love her father for he
was entirely too remote and awe-ful for love, but he entranced her
with his marvellousness. This maintained in her also her perception
of the altogether greater superiority of all males over all females.

Rosalie came into her family rather like a new little girl first
entering a boarding school. When she was about four, and first
beginning to realise herself, the next in age to her was Robert,
who not only was at the immense distance of ten, but was of the
male sex and therefore had a controlling interest in the world. Then
was Hilda who was twelve, then Flora fourteen, then Anna towering
away in sixteen, and then Harold utterly removed in the enormous
heights of eighteen, second only to Rosalie's father in ownership
of the world and often awfully disputing that supreme ownership.

So they were all immeasurably older than Rosalie; and they were
not only immeasurably older but, which counted for much more, they
all had their fixed and recognised places in their world just as
girls of several terms' experience have their recognised places in
their school, and for Rosalie there seemed to be no place at all,
just as for new girls there is no place. Her brothers and sisters
all had their fixed and recognised places, their interests, their
occupations, their friendships: they all knew their own places and
each other's places; they had learnt to respect and admit each
other's places; they knew the weight of one another's hand in
those places; they were accustomed to one another; they tolerated
one another.

It was all very strange and wonderful and mysterious to Rosalie.

She was, as it were, pitchforked into this established and regulated
order and to find a place for her was like trying to fit a new
spoke into a revolving wheel. It cannot be done; and with Rosalie
it could not be done. The established wheel went on revolving in
its established orbit and the new spoke, which was Rosalie, lay
outside and watched it revolve. Intrusions within the circumference
of the wheel commonly resulted in a sharp knock from one of the
spokes. No one was in any degree unkind to Rosalie, but there was
no proper place for her and everybody's will was in authority over
her will. She rather got in the way. To be with her was not to
enjoy her company or to enjoy battle with her and the putting of
her company to flight. To be with her was to have to look after
her, and in the community of the rectory, every member, when Rosalie
came, was fully occupied in look-ing after itself and defending
itself from the predatory excursions of any other member.

What happened was that in time, just as a slight and negligible
body cannot be in the sphere of a powerful motion without being
affected by it, so Rosalie began to move sympathetically to the
wheel but on her own axis. She moved round with the wheel but she
was not of the wheel and she never became really incorporated with
the wheel. The spokes were revolving with incredible rapidity when
she first, began to notice them and they always remained relatively
faster. There she was, sitting and watching and wondering; and the
twig grows as it is bent or as it is left to bend. She looked on
and absorbed things; and the first and by far the deepest of her
settled perceptions was that, though she was subject to all powers,
all girls and women were themselves subject to the power of all
boys and men.

Up to the age of eighteen, six years represents an enormous gulf in
the relative ages of brothers and sisters. You have only to figure
it out in the case of Rosalie to realise how far behind she was
always left, and why, though one of a family of six, she occupied
a position outside the group and was a watcher of them rather than
a sharer with them. She was four when Robert the next above her
was ten, which is a baby against a sturdy and well-developed giant;
when she was eight Robert was fourteen, which is a greater gulf
than the first; when she was twelve Robert was eighteen which,
from eighteen's point of view, is as the difference between an aged
man and an infant; and when she was sixteen Robert was twenty-two,
which is a schoolgirl against one of the oldest and most experienced
periods of life. She came in as a new little girl in a big school;
when she had been there eight years--counting from four, when first
she was conscious of arrival--she was still relatively the same:
there she was, twelve, with Robert eighteen and the others twenty,
twenty-two, twenty-four and twenty-six.

But there she is at eight when she had had four years' experience
from the day of first seeing her father leaping before the bull
and thinking it was perfectly natural that he should leap before
the bull. She had learnt a tremendous lot in that second four years.
She knew at eight that the world did not belong to her father and
that on that night of the storm Flora was right to call her a fool
for believing that he could stop the storm. She knew he was not
nearly so wonderful as she used to think he was; but he was still
enormously wonderful and, which she thought rather curious, she
began to see that he rather liked showing her how wonderful he was.
He could sharpen a pencil wonderfully, and he could eat a herring
wonderfully. The thing discovered was that he was very proud of
how wonderfully he could sharpen a pencil or eat a herring. Strange
father!

"Who sharpened that pencil? Your mother? H'nf! I should think so!
No woman can sharpen a pencil. Now look at me. Watch. I hold it
in my left hand, see? Arm supported against my body. Now look how
I cut at it. Bold, strong strokes, see? No niggling at it as if
a mouse was nibbling it; long, bold sweeps, slashes. See! Look at
that. Ah, drat! That's because I was holding it down for you to
see. Watch again. There! There, that's the way to sharpen a pencil.
Look at that. Do you see that long, firm point? See how clean and
long those strokes are? That's the way to sharpen a pencil. Show
that to your mother."

He was as pleased with himself and as proud as if he had turned
the pencil into gold.

Funny father!

Or how to eat a herring.

"Herrings! Well, a herring is one of the most delicious fish,
if it's eaten properly. There's a right way to eat a herring and
a wrong way. Now watch me and I'll show you how to eat a herring.
Rosalie, watch."

"Rosalie, dear," (from her mother) "watch while your father shows
you how to eat a herring."

All eyes on father demonstrating how to eat a herring!

And Rosalie used to notice this about the watching eyes. Her
mother's eyes--most anxiously and nervously upon the operation, as
if watching a thing she would soon be called upon to perform and
would not be able to perform; the eyes of Robert (14) sulkily;
of Flora (18) admiringly (it was getting to be a complaint in the
family circle that Flora "sucked up" to father); the eyes of Anna
(20) wearily; the eyes of Harold (22) contemptuously.

The herrings (a very frequent dish at the rectory, so much cheaper
than meat) came headless to the table. First father nipped off the
tail with a firm, neat stroke. Then he deftly slit the herring down
the stomach. It fell into two exact perfectly divided halves. Then
he lifted out the backbone, not one scrap of flesh adhering to it,
and laid it on the side of his plate. Then four firm pressures of
his knife and the little lateral bones were exactly removed and
exactly laid on the backbone. Next a precise insertion of his fork
and out came the silvery strip known to Rosalie as "the swimming
thing" and was laid in its turn upon the bones, exactly, neatly,
as if it were a game of spillikins. "Now pepper. Plenty of pepper
for the roe, you see. There. Now."

And in about six mouthfuls father's plate would be as clean as when
it was brought in, decorated rather than marred by the exquisitely
neat pile of the backbone, the tail, the little bones, and the
silvery swimming thing. "There! Delicious! That's the way to eat
a herring"; and he would direct a glance at the plate of Rosalie's
mother. Rosalie's mother made a herring into the most frightful
mess it was possible to imagine. She spent the whole of her time in
removing bones from her mouth; and her plate, when she was half-way
though, looked to contain the mangled remains of about two dozen
herrings. "Very few women know how to eat a herring," Rosalie's
father would say.

Wonderful father! How to sharpen a pencil, how to eat a herring,
how to do up a parcel, how to undo a parcel, how to cut your finger
nails, how to sit with regard to the light when you wrote or read,
how to tie a knot, how to untie a knot. Clever father, natty father!

Yes, still enormously wonderful father; but also rather strangely
proud of being wonderful father. Rosalie now was constantly being
struck by that. It began to give her rather a funny sensation.
She couldn't describe the sensation or interpret it, but it was a
feeling, when father was glowing with pride over one of these things
he did so wonderfully well--a feeling of being rather uncomfortable,
shy, ashamed--something like that. She contracted the habit when
father beamed and glowed and looked around for applause of giving
a sudden little blink.

And it was the same in regard to Robert and the same in regard to
Harold. Robert at the height of his exhibitions of his wonderfulness
caused the funny feeling and the blink in her; and Harold at the
height of his exhibitions of his wonderfulness caused the funny
feeling and the blink in her. And the wonderfulness of Robert was
always being shown off by Robert, and the wonderfulness of Harold
was always being shown off by Harold. Men liked showing off how
wonderful they were....

When Rosalie was about nine, she one day was permitted to have
Lily Waters in to tea with her. Lily Waters was the Doctor's little
girl, also nine. For a great treat they had tea together out of
Rosalie's doll's tea service in the room called the schoolroom.
Robert came home unusually early from school and came into the
schoolroom and began to do wonderful things before the two little
girls. He spoke in a very loud voice while he did them. He stood on
a footstool on his head and clapped his boots together. He held his
breath for seventy-five seconds by the clock. He took off his coat
and made Lily and Rosalie tie a piece of string around his biceps
and then he jerked up his arm and snapped the string. Wonderful
Robert! Lily screamed with delight and clapped her hands, and the
more she screamed and clapped, the louder Robert talked. He did
still more wonderful things. He held a cork to the flame of a match
and then blacked his nose and blacked a moustache with the cork.
He did a most frightfully daring and dangerous thing. He produced
the stump of a cigarette from his pocket and lit it and blew
smoke through his nose. Wonderful Robert! Lily went into ecstasies
of delight. Rosalie also went into ecstasies but also strongly
experienced that funny feeling. While Robert held his breath till
his eyes bulged and till his face was crimson, and while he danced
about with his nose blacked, and while he held the cigarette in
his fingers and puffed smoke through his nose--while he did these
things Rosalie glanced at Lily (squealing) and felt that funny
feeling of being rather shy, uncomfortable, ashamed; something like
that; and blinked. Wonderful though Robert was, she felt somehow
rather glad when at last he went.

And just the same with Harold. At supper one night, Rosalie's father
not being present, Harold talked and talked and talked about a call
he had paid at the house of some ladies in Ashborough. Wonderful
Harold, to pay a call all by himself! It appeared that he had been
the only man there, and when Rosalie's mother said, "I wonder you
didn't feel shy, Harold," he said with a funny sort of "Haw" sound
in his voice, "Not in the least. Haw! Why on earth should I feel
shy? Haw." He had evidently very much entertained the party. The
more he talked about it the more Rosalie noticed the funny "Haw."
"They must have been very glad you came," Rosalie's mother said.

Harold put the first and second fingers of his right hand on his
collar and gave it a pull up. "I rather--haw--think they were,"
Harold said. "Haw."

Rosalie gave that blink.

Years afterwards, when she was grown up, a grown man boastfully
said something in her presence, and in a flash were recalled father
dissecting a herring, Robert holding his breath till he nearly burst,
Harold hitching up his collar and with the "haw" sound saying, "I
rather think they were." In a flash those childhood scenes, and
instantly with them interpretation of the funny feeling and the
blink that they had caused: they had been the rooting in her of a
new perception added to the impregnably rooted impression of the
wonder and power of men,--the perception that men knew they were
wonderful and powerful and liked to show off how wonderful and
powerful they were.

They were superior creatures but they were apt to be rather
make-you-blinky creatures; that was the new perception.

On the day after her eighth birthday, the birthday itself being a
treat and a holiday, Rosalie began to do lessons with Hilda. Hilda,
at sixteen, had "finished her education" as had Anna and Flora at
the same age. Harold, who had been a boarder at a Grammar School,
had stayed there till he was eighteen; and Robert, ultimately,
continued at Helmsbury Grammar School till he was eighteen. It was
apparent--and it was another manifestation of the greater importance
of males--that boys had more education to finish, or were permitted
longer to finish it, than girls.

The school at which Anna, Flora and Hilda thus in the eight years
between leaving their mother's knee at eight and completing their
education at sixteen, learnt everything it was possible to know,
was kept by two very thin ladies called (ungrammatically) the
Miss Pockets. The Miss Pockets were daughters of the former vicar
of St. Mary's and inhabitant of the rectory, and on their father
dying and Mr. Aubyn coming, they established themselves in a prim
villa near-by and did what they called "took in pupils." They were
very thin, they had very long thin noses, they were always very
cold, and from the sharp end of the long thin nose of the elder Miss
Pocket there always depended, much fascinating Rosalie, a shining
bead of moisture.

Rosalie's chief recollection of the Miss Pockets was of being
constantly met by them as she approached the age of eight, and of
them always, on these occasions, fondling icy hands about her neck
and saying to her father or her mother, "And when will our new
little pupil be coming to us?"

But no direct reply was ever given to this question, either by
Rosalie's mother, who was always made to look uncomfortable when
it was asked by the Miss Pockets, or by Rosalie's father who always
seemed to jut out his nose at it and make the Miss Pockets look
thinner and colder than ever.

On the morning of her eighth birthday, Rosalie received from the
Miss Pockets by post an illuminated text provided with a piece of
red cord for hanging on the wall and inquiring, rather abruptly,

"Who Hath Believed Our Report?"

Rosalie thought at first this was a plaintive question directly
from the Miss Pockets in their capacity as school-teachers and
therefore as licensed makers of reports; but immediately afterwards
saw "Isaiah" printed under it in discreet characters--

"Who Hath Believed our Report?

--Isaiah."

and concluded that it was Isaiah who had believed it. On the back
was written in the tall, thin handwriting of the Miss Pockets, "To
our dear little pupil Rosalie, on her eighth birthday, from Agnes
and Lydia Pocket."

In the afternoon, the Miss Pockets called at the rectory and there
was evidently some high mystery about their visit. Rosalie was in
the study looking for a drawing pin wherewith to affix her illuminated
card to the wall. Hilda ran in. "The Miss Pockets. Where's father?
Come out," and Rosalie was hurriedly run out and shut into the
dining-room, leaving the vindication of Isaiah in the matter of
the report on the table. Opening the door to a chink, Rosalie saw
the Miss Pockets, shivering, the permanent decoration on the nose
of the elder Miss Pocket very conspicuous and agitatedly swinging,
ushered into the study, and presently her father follow his jutty
nose into the study after them, and very shortly after that the
Miss Pockets driven out as it were by the jutty nose and looking
thinner and colder than ever before. Miss Lydia Pocket, who had
lost the appendage to her nose and looked curiously undressed and
indelicate without it, was saying feebly, "But it was understood.
We always thought it was understood."

They shuddered away; and when Rosalie went into the study immediately
afterwards to recover her card, there was upon the word Isaiah, as
though somebody had literally thrown doubt upon his belief of the
report, a large damp spot.

On the following day, Rosalie began lessons with Hilda.






CHAPTER V





The lessons with Hilda period lasted till Rosalie was twelve. "Take
her off your mother's hands. That's what you've left school for,"
was her father's instruction to Hilda; and so there was Rosalie,
put out from her mother's knee to the schoolroom like a small new
ship out from the haven to the bay; and there was that small mind
of hers come in to the company of Hilda and of Flora and of Anna
with the obsession that men were infinitely more important and
much more wonderful than women. She knew now that the world did
not belong to men in the literal sense, but belonged, as her mother
had instructed her, to God; but she knew with the abundant evidence
of all that went on about her that everything in the world was done
for men and that women were largely occupied in doing it; and she
knew, from the same testimony, that men were much more interesting
to watch than women, rather in the way that dogs were much more
interesting than cats. Men, like dogs, were much more satisfactory:
that was it. Her mind was throwing out feelers towards the wonders
of the world and this was the feeler that was most developed. She
came to her sisters very highly sensitive to the difference between
men and women. And her sisters showed her the difference.

Anna was twenty then. Anna had "finished her education" four years
ago. She had left school "to help your mother in the house"; and
when Flora, two years later, finished her education and left school
for the same purpose, she found Anna grooved in the business of
helping her mother in the house and she was not in the least anxious
to help Anna out of the grooves and herself become imbedded in
them.

This annoyed Anna.

Rosalie used to hear Anna say to Flora a dozen times a day, "I
really don't see why you should be the one to do nothing but amuse
yourself all day long. I really don't."

Flora used to say, "Well, you've always done it"--whatever the duty
in dispute might be--"so why on earth should I?"

Then either Anna's face would give a twitch and she would walk out
of the room, or her face would get very red and there would be a
row.

Or sometimes Flora to Anna's "I really don't see why--" would say
enticingly, "Don't you?"

"No, I don't."

"Then ask the Pope," and Flora would give a mocking laugh and run
away out of the reach of Anna's fury.

The sting in this was that Anna was suspected of having Roman
Catholic tendencies.

Flora was very pretty and had a gay, bold way. Anna was not
pretty. She had a great habit of compressing her lips, especially
in encounters with Flora, and somehow her face gave the impression
that her lips always were compressed. That was the expression it
normally had; it was only when Rosalie saw Anna actually compress
her lips that she realised they had not been compressed before.
It was as though she was always annoyed about something and then,
when she compressed her lips, a little more annoyed than usual. She
had also a permanent affliction which much puzzled Rosalie. Young
men friends of Harold's frequently called at the rectory, and one
afternoon, when two of them called, Anna was the only one at home
to entertain them (except Rosalie). Flora and Hilda rushed into
the drawing-room, directly they came in, and shortly afterwards
Rosalie saw Anna come out. Anna stood in the hall quite a long
time with her lips compressed, and then went into the dining-room
and sat down, but almost at once got up again and went back into
the drawing-room, and Rosalie heard Flora call out, "You can't join
in now, Anna. You can't join in now. We're in the middle of it."
Shrieks of laughter were going on. When the young men went, Flora
and Hilda, who had their hats on, walked away with them. Anna was
left at the door. When the girls came back Anna said to Flora, "I
do think you might have told me you'd arranged to go with them to
see it."

Flora said, "Oh, darling, I thought the Pope had told you."

They had the worst row Rosalie had ever heard them have. Anna did
not come down to supper. After supper, when Rosalie was in the
room with only Harold and her father and mother, her mother spoke
of the scene there had been between Anna and Flora and it was
then that Rosalie heard for the first time of Anna's most strange
affliction. Harold said, "Of course, the fact of the matter is that
ever since Flora left school, Anna's had her nose put out of joint."

Rosalie felt most awfully sorry for Anna. Often after that she used
to stare at Anna's nose and the more so because there was nothing
visible the matter with it. Anna's nose was a singularly long
and straight nose; now if it had been Flora's nose that was out
of joint!--for Flora's nose turned up in a very odd way. Rosalie
slept in Anna's room and that same night, Anna's disjointed nose
and every other part of her face and head being covered with the
clothes when Rosalie went up to bed, Rosalie, unable to sleep for
curiosity and sympathy, got out of bed and lit the candle and went
across to look at Anna's nose, and very gently felt it with her
finger. Absolutely nothing amiss to be seen or felt! But the lashes
of Anna's eyes were wet and there were stains of tears upon the
upper side of the mysterious nose. It was true, then, for obviously
it hurt. And yet no sign!

Rosalie got back into bed feeling of her own nose rather anxiously.

Rosalie used formerly to sleep in Hilda's room and Flora with Anna,
but she was changed one day by her sisters (without being consulted
or given any reason) and the new arrangement was continued. Anna
was very devotional. She used to say enormously long prayers night
and morning. She prayed in the middle of the night also, Rosalie
used to think at first, awakened and hearing her voice, but later
found out that Anna was talking in her sleep, a thing that was
mysterious to Rosalie and frightening. The room of Flora and Hilda,
adjoined Anna's and often at night, when Rosalie was awakened by
Anna undressing and lay watching her at her immense prayers, the
chattering voices of Flora and Hilda could be heard through the
wall and shrieks of high laughter. At that, Anna's shoulders used
to shudder beneath her nightgown and she used to twist herself lower
on her knees. For some reason this also used rather to frighten
Rosalie.

Sometimes, but very seldom, Flora and Hilda used to quarrel;
sometimes, and more often, Hilda and Anna; nearly every day, as it
seemed to Rosalie, Anna and Flora. Rosalie got to dislike these
quarrels very much. They went on and on and on; that was the
disturbing unpleasantness of them. The parties to them would sit
in a room and simply keep it up forever, not arguing all the time,
but between long pauses suddenly coming out with things at one
another; or they wouldn't speak to one another sometimes for days
together, and all sorts of small enterprises of Rosalie's were
interfered with by these ruptures of relations. Innumerable things
in Rosalie's life seemed to her to depend on the mutual good will
of two quarrellers; many books, some old toys, walks, combined games
with Carlo who was Anna's and Rover who was Flora's; innumerable
delights with such seemed to be unexpectedly stopped because of
"Oh, no, if you prefer to be with Anna you can stay with Anna";
or, "Oh, no. If you like Flora's paints so much you can use Flora's
brushes; these are my brushes." A quarrel would in any case produce
a strained atmosphere in which everything became unnatural and this
strained atmosphere went on and on and on.

And the thing that Rosalie noticed was the complete difference between
these quarrels of her sisters and the quarrels between Harold and
Robert. Robert was rising between the years of fourteen and eighteen
in those days and Harold between twenty-two and twenty-six. Most
violent quarrels sometimes sprung up between them but they were
physically violent, that was the point, and after swift and appalling
fury, and terrible kicks from Robert and horrifying thumps from Harold
they were astonishingly soon over and done with and forgotten. On
one awful day, Rosalie saw Robert and Harold rolling on the floor
together. Robert bumped Harold's head three most frightful bumps
on the floor and said between his teeth, "There! There! There!"
Harold twisted himself up and hurled Robert half across the room
and then rushed at him and punched him with punches that made Robert
go, "Ur! Ur! Ur!"

Rosalie, at her age, ought to have cried with grief and dismay or
to have run away screaming; but instead she only watched with awe.
With terrified awe, as with the terrified awe that an encounter of
tigers or of elephants at the Zoo might arouse; but with awe and
no sort of grief as her sole emotion. Men were different. There it
was again! They did these fearful things, and these fearful things
were much more satisfactory to behold, not nearly so disturbing
and aggravating to watch, as the interminable bickerings of the
quarrels of her sisters.

Her brothers' quarrels were entirely different in all their aspects.
In the quarrels of her sisters, one or the other invariably cried
if the bickering went far enough. These two men, though Robert
especially might have been excused for bellowing, just solidly and
only, with fearful gasps, thumped and clutched and strove. Not a
tear! Her sisters' quarrels were always carried by one or the other
to her mother or her father. How extraordinarily different Robert
and Harold! Their sole anxiety was that neither father nor mother
should be told! If any one threatened to tell, the two, sinking
their private heat, would immediately band together against
the talebearer. Extraordinary men! To that particularly ferocious
struggle that has been described, Anna and Hilda had been attracted
by the din, when Robert, overpowered, was receiving terrible
chastisement, and with cries and prayers had somehow separated
them. Behold, the very first coherent thing these two men did was,
while they still panted and glared upon one another, to unite in
a mutual threat.

"And look out you don't go telling father or mother," panted Harold
to the girls.

"Yes, mind you jolly well don't," panted Robert.

Anna said she certainly would.

Both the extraordinary creatures unitedly rounded on Anna. It might
have been thought that the battle had been, not between them, but
between them and the sisters who had saved them one from another.
Astounding men!

And most astounding of all to Rosalie was that at supper, little
more than an hour later, Harold and Robert presented themselves as
on exceptionally good terms of friendship. They talked and laughed
together. They had a long exchange of views about some football teams.
Harold laid down the law about the principle of four three-quarters
in Rugby football instead of three and Robert listened as to an
oracle. They had not been so friendly for weeks. And an hour before-!
Yes, men were different.

And Rosalie found that her sisters, too, knew how different and how
superior men were. Flora and Hilda seemed to Rosalie always to be
talking about men. Flora used to come into the schoolroom while
Rosalie was at her lessons and talk to Hilda. Rosalie was very fond
of her lessons and Hilda was an uncommonly good teacher and took a
great interest in leading Rosalie along the paths she had herself
so recently followed. But directly Flora came in, Hilda's interest
was entirely diverted to what Flora had to say and to what she had
to say to Flora, and it was always about men,--boys or men. Rosalie
would at once be put to learning passages or working out exercises
and Flora and Hilda would go over to the window and talk. They
talked mostly in whispers with their heads close together; they
laughed a good deal; they showed one another letters. Often they
came over to the table and wrote letters. And they used to look up
from their whisperings and say, "Go on with your lessons, Rosalie."

But it was very difficult to go on while they whispered and laughed
and it was also very troublesome to have Hilda's most interesting
explanations suddenly cut short by the entrance of Flora. Rosalie
began to have the habit of saying "Oh, dear!" and going "Tchk!" with
her tongue when Flora came in. Also restlessly to say "Oh, dear!"
and go "Tchk!" when the whisperings and the laughing about men went
on and distracted her attention while she tried to do her exercises.

A new aspect of men began to grow out of this. Rosalie began to
feel rather aggrieved against boys and ten. They interfered.

And this went further. Just as boys and men spoilt lessons so they
began to spoil walks. While Hilda attended the Miss Pockets' school
and Rosalie was taught by her mother, it was always her mother with
whom Rosalie took walks. Anna "never cared to go out" and Flora,
whose position in the house was more like that of Harold and Robert,
did much as she liked, and "dragging Rosalie about for walks"
as she expressed it, was not one of the things she liked. Rosalie
therefore went out with her mother until Hilda took her off her
mother's hands, when the taking off included not only education but
exercise. At the beginning, Hilda showed herself as enthusiastic
and as entertaining a walker as she was teacher. She was ready
for jolly scrambles through woods and over fields, she was as keen
as Rosalie on damming little watercourses, and exploring woodland
tracts, and other similar delights, and she had a most splendid
knowledge of the names of plants and flowers and birds and insects
and delighted to tell them to Rosalie. Rosalie had loved the walks
with her mother, always holding her dear hand, but she loved much
more, though in a different way, the walks with Hilda.

Then men began, in Rosalie's private phrase, to "ruin" the walks.

First Flora took to joining the walks and she and Hilda talked and
talked together and always, as it seemed, about men, and Rosalie
just trailed along with them, their heads miles above hers and their
conversation equally out of her reach. But even that was not so bad
as it became. At least there were only her sisters and sometimes
they did talk to her, or sometimes one or other would break off
from their chatter and cry "Oh, poor Rosalie! We've not been taking
the least notice of you, have we? Now, what would you like to do?"
And perhaps they would run races, or perhaps explore, or perhaps
tell her a story, and Rosalie's spirits would come bursting out
from their dulness and all would be splendid.

Not so when on the walks men, from being talked of, began to be
met.

There were at Robert's Grammar School certain young men who were
in no way connected with the school but were the "private pupils"
of the headmaster and were reading for the universities. One day
Hilda started for the walk in her church hat and Flora also in her
church hat and her church gloves. They walked very fast; Rosalie
could hardly keep up. And then at a corner of a lane they suddenly
started to walk very slowly indeed, and suddenly again at a stile,
two of these young men were met.

The young men raised their hats much farther than Rosalie had ever
seen a man raise his hat and one of them said, "Well, you have come
then?"

Flora said, "Well, we just happened to be strolling along this
way." Then she said, "You needn't imagine we came to see you!"
which Rosalie thought very rude; but the young men seemed to like
it and all of them laughed a great deal.

Presently they all started to walk together, Hilda and Flora in
the middle and one of the young men on either side. The walk lasted
much later than the walks usually lasted and the whole way Rosalie
trailed along behind; and on the whole afternoon the only words
addressed to Rosalie by her sisters came just as, the young men
hav-ing taken their leave a mile away, they were turning in at the
rectory gate. Flora then said, "Rosalie, darling, don't tell mother
or father or any one that we met any one." And Hilda said, "Yes,
remember, Rosalie, you're not to say anything about that."

After that, the young men were met, and the four walked, and Rosalie
trailed, nearly every day.

One of these young men was called Mr. Chalton and the other Mr. Ricks.
Like all men, and even more so, they were splendid and wonderful.
They had silver cigarette cases and smoked a lot, and they wore
most handsome waistcoats and ties, and some of their conversation
that came back to Rosalie, trailing behind, was of very wonderful
and exciting things they had done or were going to do. Mr. Holland,
the headmaster of the Grammar School, was the terror of Robert's
life, but it appeared that Mr. Chalton and Mr. Ricks were not in
the least afraid of Mr. Holland, and they talked a great deal of
what they would do to him if he ever tried to interfere with them
and a great deal of what they did do in the way of utterly disregarding
him. They were undeniably splendid and wonderful, but they utterly
ruined Rosalie's walks and they greatly intensified Rosalie's new
feelings towards men and boys,--that men and boys were a great
nuisance and spoilt things.

Time went along. Other young men were met. In the holidays, quite
a number of young men came for their vacations to their homes in
Ibbotsfield and the surrounding district. Certain of these, unlike
the Grammar School private pupils, called openly at the rectory on
one pretext or another, but they were nevertheless also met secretly
by Flora and Hilda, ruined the walks precisely as Messrs. Chalton
and Ricks had first ruined them, and were on no account to be
mentioned by Rosalie to her father or mother.

The reason for this secrecy was never explained to Rosalie and
the secrecy oppressed Rosalie. It took not only the form of being
a thing she was not able to tell to her mother, and Rosalie was in
the habit of telling everything she did to her mother, but it took
also the form of mysterious and vaguely alarming perils during the
walks. An immense watchfulness was kept up against chance encounters
with people. One of the party would often cry, "Look! Who's this?"
and the young men would separate from the girls and appear as if
they were walking by themselves. Sometimes they would break right
away and run off and not be met again. Very often Rosalie would be
sent on ahead to a turning and told to come back at once if anybody
was to be seen and then would be examined as to who the person
was. Sometimes she was posted to keep watch while the girls and
the young men slipped off somewhere, over a gate or into a barn.
She got to know by sometimes rushing in with warnings that Flora
and Hilda on these occasions smoked the young men's cigarettes.
Then when they got home, they would rush up to their room and wash
their teeth and put scent on themselves. And invariably when the
young men took their leave at the end of a walk there would be long
and close whisperings in which were always to be heard the words,
"Well, say you were--" or "Look here, we'll say we were--" and
generally, "Go away, Rosalie. There's nothing for you to listen
to."

It all had the effect of making Rosalie feel unhappy and rather
frightened. She sometimes asked, "Why mustn't I say anything to
mother?" She was always told, and only told, "Because father doesn't
like us meeting men."

No reason why father should not like them meeting men was ever
given, and Rosalie, ceaselessly disturbed by the concealment, could
never imagine what the reason could be. There could be no reason
that she could imagine; and she was thus immensely taken aback when
one evening at supper her father made a most surprising statement:
"The girls have no chance of ever meeting men in this infernal
place."

Amazing!

Rosalie's father had been abusing Ibbotsfield and everything that
pertained to Ibbotsfield. Some question of expenses had started him.
He was storming in his wild way, addressing himself to Rosalie's
mother but haranguing at large to all, everybody sitting in
silence and with oppressed faces, avoiding looking at one another
and avoiding especially the eyes of father. They were literally
ground down with poverty, Rosalie's father was saying. He didn't
know what was going to happen to them all. "It's all this place,
this infernal, buried-alive place. The girls ought to be moving
about and seeing people. How can they? Very well. My mind's made up.
There's my brother Tom in India. He could have one of the girls.
There's your sister Mrs. Pounce in London. She's Rosalie's godmother.
What's she ever done for Rosalie? Very well. My mind's made up.
I shall write to Tom and I shall write to Belle. I shall tell them
how we are situated. It's humiliating to have to tell them but
what's humiliation? I'm accustomed to humiliation. Ever since we
came here, I have eaten the bread and drunk the water of humiliation.
Now the children are growing up to share it. What can they do in
this loathsome and forsaken and miserable place? What chance have
the girls got? Can you tell me that?"

He glared at Rosalie's mother. It was clear that he regarded her
as to blame. Rosalie thought that her dear mother must be to blame.
Her mother looked so beaten and frightened. There was glistening in
her eyes. Rosalie's heart felt utterly desolated for her mother.
She wished like anything she could say something for her dear
mother. Then most amazingly the chance to say something came.

"Can you tell me that?" cried Rosalie's father. "What chance have
the girls of ever meeting men in this infernal place?"

Rosalie burst out, "Oh, but father, nearly every day--"

"Rosalie, don't interrupt!" cried Flora very sharply.

"Rosalie, be quiet!" cried Hilda.

Father glared and then went on and on.

It was the beginning of a chain of most startling upheavals. It was
also, and the upheavals were also, a new manifestation to Rosalie
of the all-importance of men. After supper, in the first place, Flora
and Hilda, taking Rosalie very severely to task for her perilous
outburst, explained to her that the men they met were not the kind
of men that father meant they ought to meet. It was necessary,
it was essential, they explained, for every girl to meet men she
could marry. That was what every girl had to do. Men--surely you
understand that, Rosalie--had all the money and everything and met
girls and asked them to marry. Those men sometimes met on walks,
you little stupid, were too young and had no money yet. "There,
that's enough," they explained. "Anyhow, we shan't be meeting them
much more. One of us is probably going to India; you heard what
father said, didn't you?... Well, of course you can't understand
properly. You will when you're grown up. Surely that's quite enough
for you to understand at present.... How can a woman live if she
doesn't marry, stupid? She must have money to live and it is men
who have the money.... Well, of course they do because they earn
it; look at Harold; and Robert will have money when he's a little
older.... Well, how can women? Now, I said that's enough and it is
enough."

It was enough and most satisfactorily enough for one purpose. It
was the first explanation of men as a race apart from women that
Rosalie had ever received and it precisely bore out all that she
had conceived about them. It affirmed her perception of the wonder
and greatness of men as compared with women. It intensified that
perception.

Wonderful men! Marvellous and most fortunate men!

And then the chain of most startling upheavals began. Father wrote
to Uncle Tom in India. Father wrote to Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce,
in London. What he wrote was not to be known by Rosalie, outside
the rectory wheel. The others knew, for father, with enormous
pride at his wonderful epistolatory style in his voice, was heard
reading the letter to them. But the others, of course, knew also
what Rosalie never realised, the grinding poverty of the rectory.
She knew no other life than the herrings, the makeshifts, and the
general shabbiness of the rectory. It was not till long afterwards
that, looking back, she realised the pinching and the screwing that
served--almost--to make ends meet.

So father wrote. India was far, London was near. Aunt Belle's reply
came while the letter to Uncle Tom was still upon the sea. Such a
reply! Wonderful father to win such a reply from Aunt Belle! "You
see what it is to be able to write a telling and forceful letter!"
cried father. Such an exciting reply! Aunt Belle was coming on a
visit "to talk it over and see what she could do."

Aunt Belle came.






CHAPTER VI





Oh, a red carpet, a red carpet for Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce,
to come into the story! And if at the end of the red carpet there
could be an "At Home" in the splendid drawing-room of Aunt Belle,
Mrs. Pyke Pounce, at Pilchester Square, Notting Hill, an At Home
with about sixty-five ladies crammed into it, all of them wives of
most successful and well-off men, mostly retired from the Indian
Army and the Indian Civil Service, and all of them chattering
ecstatically, and nibbling, and pluming themselves, and tinkling
their teacups, and Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, enthroned in their
midst, and owning everything and seeming to own her five and sixty
guests, and chattering and nibbling and pluming and tinkling more
ecstatically than any; and then if there could come into them
beautiful cousin Laetitia (when about fifteen) with sleek black
hair beautifully ribboned behind, and with pale, fine brow, and
wearing the sweetest white frock, and if she could move delightfully
about among her mother's guests, and then play the sweetest little
trifle on the pianoforte to the delighted murmurs of the five and
sixty guests of her mother ("She's under Pflunk. The great Pflunk!");
and then if there could come in from the City Uncle Pyke, Colonel
Pyke Pounce, R.E., (retired) now director of several highly
important companies, and if Uncle Pyke, Colonel Pyke Pounce, R.E.,
could stand on the hearthrug with his massy jowl and his determined
stomach, and grunt, and rattle the money in his pockets, and grunt
again; and if then there could come in the new parlour maid of
Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, with her tallness and her deftness
and her slight, very slight, insolence of air, and all the five
and sixty gazing upon her as haughty but envious patricians gazing
upon a slave, and when she had gone swishing out if Aunt Belle,
Mrs. Pyke Pounce, could tell all the sixty and five of her tallness,
her deftness and her slight, very slight, insolence of manner----

Oh, if there could be this and these and a fine red carpet, how
exactly and how fittingly would Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, step
upon the scene!

"Dear thing!" That was Rosalie's portrait and thought of her in long
after years. Dear thing! The drawing-room of her crowded triumphs
is now the shabby drawing-room of a second-rate boarding house;
the jolly horse bus she used so commandingly to stop in the Holland
Park Avenue and so regally to enter (whip-waving driver, cap-touching
conductor) long has given place to a thundering motor saloon that
stops wheresoever it listeth and wherein Aunt Belles and old-clothes
women fight to hang by a strap.

Dear thing! Her ownership of five and sixty guests is exchanged
for ownership of not more than seven and fifty inches of cold earth
in Brompton Cemetery. She is passed and Uncle Pyke, Colonel Pyke
Pounce, R.E., is grunted past to lay himself beside her. They are
passed. Up-reared upon her and upon him is a stupendous granite
chunk (in a way not unlike Uncle Pyke on his hearthrug) erected by
their sorrowing daughter. She is passed; she came into Rosalie's
life and Rosalie crossed her life and she never forgave Rosalie.

Dear thing! Lie lightly on her, stones!

She came to the rectory "to talk it over and see what can be done"
for a week's visit, and she stepped out of the cab, all the family
assembled to greet her, a new and most surprising figure such as
Rosalie had never seen before. She was dressed in startling fashions
of a most wonderful richness, and she had immense plumes in her
hat that nodded when she moved and trembled when she stood still,
and she was herself either always nodding with glittering animation
or straightening her back and quivering as if straining at a leash
and just about to burst it and go off. She was like Rosalie's
mother and yet not a bit like her. She was older and yet terribly
brisker and stronger. Those were the days when frosted Christmas
cards were of the artistic marvels of the age, and Aunt Belle
beside Rosalie's mother somehow made Rosalie think of a frosted
card beside one of the plain cards. When Rosalie's mother was in
a room you often might not know she was there; but when Aunt Belle
was in a room there seemed to be no one there except Aunt Belle.
She began to talk, in a voice as high as the house, while she was
still descending from the cab on her arrival, and the only time
Rosalie ever saw her not talking was during service in Church on
Sunday, when she was alternately glittering or whispering or else
bending down so extraordinarily low that Rosalie thought she was
going to lie prone upon the floor.

Dear thing! She was so kind to Rosalie and so kind to them all, and
yet----And yet they all, except Rosalie who was too small (then)
to appreciate the resented quality in Aunt Belle's kindness, and
Rosalie's mother who was too gentle to resent anything, and yet
they all, save Rosalie and her mother, loathed and abominated Aunt
Belle. It was her way of doing things. She gave kind gifts, but
it was the way she gave them. She admired everything and everybody
in the rectory, but it was the way she admired. She said most kind
and affectionate things, but it was her way of saying them.

"Why, how very nice indeed!" That was her insistent comment
upon everything in the rectory. But the tone was, "How very nice
indeed--for you."

That was the trouble. That was what made Harold (who at twenty-six
was getting very like his father) hurl about a thousand miles over
the garden wall the three apples Aunt Belle gave him as his share
of the "very best apples from the Army and Navy Stores" which she
brought down with other "goodies" for "the dear children"; and
made, him grit his teeth after she had been in the house two days
and cry, "Dash her! Poor relations; that's how she treats us! I'm
dashed if I'm a poor relation. I'm earning three pound ten a week
at the Bank and I bet that appalling old Uncle Pyke didn't get it
or anything like it at my age!"

Dear thing! "She meant it kindly." That was the sweet apologetic
excuse with which Rosalie's mother followed the track of the storms
Aunt Belle aroused and with which she sought to abate them. "She
means it kindly. She means it kindly, dear."

It should be Aunt Belle's epitaph. It ought to be graven upon that
granite chunk in Brompton Cemetery. "She meant it kindly!"

Issuing from the cab, Aunt Belle began by kissing Rosalie's mother
in a most astonishing series of kisses that whizzed from cheek to
cheek so that it was a miracle to Rosalie that the two noses did
not collide and her dear mother's be knocked right off; and then
most enthusiastically kissed all the family, applying to each
the phrase with which she began on Harold "Well, well, so this is
Harold!" (As if it were the most astounding and unexpected thing
in the world that it was Harold.) "So this is Harold! Why, what a
great big clever fellow, and what a comfort to your dear mother,
I am sure!" And then gazed rapturously upon the house and said to
Rosalie's mother and to them all, "Well, well, what a very, very
nice house, to be sure!"

("For you!")

She meant it kindly. Her manner of talking about herself and
about her possessions was not that of bragging or of conscious
superiority; it was, to the whole rectory family, and to all
poorer than herself wherever she met them, that of one entertaining
a party of children--of a kind lady telling stories to a group of
round-eyed infants. When she first had tea on the afternoon of her
arrival, she gazed upon the silver teapot as it was carried in
and exclaimed, "Well, well, what a very, very handsome teapot! And
hot-water jug to match! How very, very nice! Now how ever do you
think I keep my water hot at tea? I have a very nice service all
in silver gilt! It looks just like gold! And there's a kettle to
match with a spirit flame under it. The maid brings in the kettle
boiling and we just light the spirit with a match and there it is
gently boiling all the time!"

Dusk drew in and the lamps were lit. "Lamps!" ecstatically exclaimed
Aunt Belle! "How nice! And Hilda keeps the lamps clean, does she?
What a dear, helpful girl and how very, very bright and nice they
are! Now what do you think? In my house, everywhere, even in the
kitchen, we've got this new electric light! Your kind uncle Pyke
had it put in for me. Installed, as they call it. Now, just fancy,
all you have is a little brass knob by each door, and you just touch
a little switch, and there's your light! No matches, no trouble,
just click! and there you are. Of course it was very expensive, but
your Uncle Pyke insisted upon my having it. He always will insist
upon my having everything of the best."

Dear thing! The echo of her ceaseless tongue brings her exactly to
life again--glittering, chattering, pluming, presenting, praising--her
servants! her house! her parties! her friends! her daughter! her
husband!--Oh, yes, a red carpet! a red carpet for Aunt Belle, Mrs.
Pyke Pounce, to come into the story, and so (at the end of her
visit) into Rosalie's life like this:

"And Rosalie is going away to school! To a boarding school in
London where there will be ever so many very nice playmates of her
own age, and such romps, and such good wholesome food, and such
nice, kind, clever mistresses! Why, what a lucky, lucky girl! There,
Rosalie, what do you think of that? You are my godchild, and I and
your kind uncle Pyke are going to send you to school and pay for
your education because of course we are well off and can afford
it and your dear mother and father can't. There! Now isn't that
delightful? Come and give me a nice kiss then. The dear child!"

Tremendous moment! Supernal upheaval! First and greatest upheaval
of the chain of upheavals! Rosalie was to go away to school!

That was at the rectory breakfast table on the last morning of
the visit, and that was Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, coming into
Rosalie's life. "Come and give me a kiss then"; that was kind,
kind Aunt Belle, inviting acknowledgment of her kindness and the
kindness of Uncle Pyke (with a cheque) and the kindness of Cousin
Laetitia (with a box of beautiful cast-off clothes that would do
beautifully for Rosalie's school outfit). "The dear child!" That
was Aunt Belle's acknowledgment of Rosalie's most dutiful and most
affectionate and most delighted kiss. (Most amazed and excited and
rather fearful Rosalie! Going to school! Going away to a boarding
school in London!)

"The dear child!" Such a warm and loving kiss from Rosalie! And
time was to prove it the kiss of Judas! Yes, in a few years, "I've
done everything for you!" Aunt Belle was to cry. "Everything! And
this is the return I get!"






CHAPTER VII





Next, in its turn, and exactly a fortnight before the beginning
of the term at which Rosalie was to join the boarding school in
London, came the letter from Uncle Tom in India, and with it the
beginning of the second upheaval in the chain of upheavals.

All of this upheaval was very bewildering to Rosalie. She never
understood it properly. At the beginning it had nothing at all to
do with Anna, and yet Anna from the very first reading of Uncle
Tom's letter--All that Rosalie understood of it was this.

First the letter came. Tremendous excitement! Father in wild
excitement, Flora and Hilda in frantic excitement, everyone in
highest excitement. Father read the letter aloud at breakfast to
Rosalie's mother and to the girls. Such a splendid letter, said
father. Really, Tom was a splendid fellow, said father. He had
wronged Tom. He had thought Tom selfish in his wealthy indifference.
By Jove, Tom wasn't. "By Jove, the way Tom wrote almost brought
tears to your eyes. Listen to this. Listen, mother. Listen, you
girls."

Uncle Tom, said the letter, would by all means, old man, have one
of the girls. He'd no idea that things were so bad with you. Poor
old man! Why didn't you tell us before? He was sending home a small
draft to Field and Company, his bankers, to help towards the girl's
outfit and her passage money. "'Which girl shall you send?' you
ask. Well, it's no good asking us, old man. You must decide that
for yourselves. She'll be abundantly welcome, whichever it is, and
we can promise her a jolly good time. We are at Simla most of the
year. If you want my advice which girl to send, send the pretti--"

Father stopped reading.

Rosalie was staring at Anna. Anna's face, which had been pale,
suddenly went crimson. The suddenness and the violence of it was
extraordinary. One moment she had been pale. In the next, she was
burning red. It was exactly as if a crimson paint had suddenly been
dashed over the whole of her face. It was extraordinary. Whatever
was it? That nose of hers, perhaps? a sudden frightful twinge like
Rosalie once had had a sudden most awful jump in a tooth? But Anna
didn't say anything and no one but Rosalie seemed to notice it. They
were all intent upon father. So intent! Flora's eyes were simply
shining!

And Flora's eyes soon after that were shining more than ever. She
was wild with excitement. Rosalie heard the news just before tea.
Flora was going to India to Uncle Tom!

"Oh," cried Flora, "I'm so excited I simply don't know what to
do with myself!" It was all arranged. Father had settled it. She
was to go in about six weeks' time. Very shortly she was to go up
to London with father and buy heaps of clothes and all sorts of
things. They were going to stay at a hotel. "Not with Aunt Belle,
thank goodness!" said Flora. "At a hotel! Fancy that!" Mother
wasn't going and Flora was glad mother wasn't going. She would have
a much better time with father. Father had decided everything. He
had decided that mother couldn't leave him in the rectory with all
the housekeeping to look after, and the change would do him good,
and Aunt Belle would be able to help with the shopping. They were
going to see some theatres and all kinds of things and were going
to have a most splendid time and then, soon afterwards--India! "Oh
I shall go mad with excitement in a minute!" cried Flora.

The next thing was in the evening. Rosalie, searching for her
mother to ask her something, could not find her. She went into her
mother's bedroom and there was the most surprising thing. There
was Anna on her knees by her mother and her head on her mother's
lap and Anna was sobbing; and she was crying in her sobs, "But it's
my right! I'm the eldest. It's my right!"

Rosalie stood there, unnoticed, amazed. Whatever was it?

Rosalie's mother stroked Anna's head and spoke very softly, "My
darling! My darling!" She said, "My darling, your father has decided.
Your father knows best. Men always know best, my darling."

"It's my right, mother. It's my right. It's always Flora. Oh, why
should it always be Flora?"

"Dear Anna. Poor Anna. You must be reasonable, dear Anna. We women
must always be reasonable. Don't you see that your father thinks
of me? He thinks my eldest girl--my dear eldest girl--ought to stay
at home to look after her mother. It's on my account, dear Anna.
He thinks of me."

"Oh, mother, what's the good of telling me that? A lot he thinks
of you or ever has! Why is he going up to London with Flora when
it's your place to go? A lot he thinks of you! You say we must
be reasonable. You can be. You've been unselfish all your life. I
can't be. Not in this. I've never had a pleasure in my life; I've
never had a chance; I've never had anything done for me. Ever since
I can remember it's always been Flora, Flora, Flora. Now there's
this. I'm getting on, mother. I'm nearly twenty-four. What have I
got to look forward to? Flora's younger, Flora's different. She'll
have lots of chances of enjoying herself. This is my right. It's
my right, mother."

"My dear Anna. My eldest girl. My first dear, sweet girlie. How
could I do without you? How happy we've been. How happy we will
be."

Rosalie crept away.

After a time, Flora and her father went away on the great visit
to London. They were to be away over two Sundays. A clergyman was
coming from Ashborough to take service at the church. Rosalie's
father went off in spirits as high and youthful as the spirits
of Flora. For days before he was quite a different man. Everybody
was asked to choose a present which he would bring back. Everybody
chose with much excitement and chaffing except Anna, who said she
could not think of anything. At meals, father kept on saying how
he wished he could regularly make a point of getting up to town
for a bit, it made all the difference being able to get away from
this infernal place for a bit. When herrings were on the table,
he actually came round and did her herring for Rosalie's mother
and Rosalie's mother was able to eat the whole of it and said how
delicious it was and how clever father was.

It was all splendid. Rosalie had never known such a jolly spirit in
the house. The only thing that spoilt Rosalie's happiness in the new
jolly spirit was the nights in Anna's room. Anna was most frightening
to Rosalie. She prayed now longer than ever, her shoulders moving
beneath her nightgown as if she was shuddering all the time she
prayed. And at night she talked more than ever in her sleep; also
she used to get out of bed at night and walk about the room and
talk aloud to herself. It was frightening.

Then Flora and father were in London and tremendous long letters
came from Flora to her mother and to all: they were buying heaps
of dresses and underclothes and white drill coats and skirts and
a riding habit and goodness knows what all. "A regular trousseau!"
wrote Flora with about seventeen marks of exclamation after the
word. And all they were seeing--they had been to the Lyceum Theatre
and seen Mr. Henry Irving and Miss Ellen Terry and to the Savoy and
seen "The Mikado." Every moment of the day was taken up and half
the night. Oh, this was a change from Ibbotsfield!

Anna would never listen to the letters. When they were read out,
she either would put her fingers in her ears or go out of the
room. And yet, curiously, she often later in the day would say in
a funny constricted voice, "Let me see Flora's letter. Give it to
me, will you please?" And would take it away and read it by herself.

Anna was stranger and stranger in her manner and in her behaviour
at night. Rosalie came quite to dread the nights. Anna began to
pray out loud. She used to pray over and over again the same thing:
"It's not that I'm jealous, O Lord. O purge my heart of jealousy.
It is that I see what could be and what ought to be for me and what
never will be for me. I've nothing to look forward to, nothing,
nothing, nothing, nothing. It is hard for women. O God, thou knowest
how hard it is for women."

It was frightening.

Then came the second Sunday of the absence in London. In the night
of Saturday, Rosalie was again awakened by the sounds of Anna and
again heard her praying and again heard "It is hard for women. O
God, thou knowest how hard it is for women."

She had heard it so often! Anna seemed to have stopped praying.
There was a light in the room and Rosalie saw that Anna, on her
knees, had her head and arms thrown forward on the bed more as
if she were asleep than praying. "It is hard for women." Rosalie
had heard Anna say that so often. And she was going to be a woman
one day. And she had always known that men were the important and
wonderful people of the world. Now Anna said that for women it was
hard and that God knew it was hard. Why? She peered across again.
Anna certainly had done her prayers. She said, "Anna. Anna. Why is
it hard for women?"

Anna started to her knees and turned her body round. "Rosalie! Why
are you awake? You've no right to be awake."

"No, but I am. I woke up. Anna, why is it hard for women?"

"You weren't meant to hear. You couldn't understand."

"But I would like to know, Anna."

Anna got up and came across to Rosalie's bed; and by her manner,
and by her voice, and by the tall white figure she was, frightened
Rosalie. She said, "Go to sleep. You can sleep. Why don't you when
you can? One day perhaps you'll be like me and can't."

It reminded Rosalie of "Sleep on now and take your rest" in the
Bible, and frightened her. Anna said, "It's hard for women because
men can do what they like but women can't." She turned away. She
stood still and said with her back to Rosalie, "I've got a longing
here." Her hands were clasped and she brought them up and struck
them against her breast with a thud. "And I always have had and
I always will have. Here. Burning. Aching. And when you've got a
longing like that you must--you must--" Then she said very violently,
"I hate men. I hate them. I hate them." Then she went very quickly
to the candlestick on the dressing table and fumbled with it to
blow it out, and it fell on the ground and broke and the room was
black.

The next day was Sunday. Anna said she would not go to Church as
she had a headache. Rosalie had been invited to spend the day with
the little girl of Colonel and Mrs. Measures and she had lunch and
tea there and then came home. The path from the gate to the house
was bounded by a thick hedge. On the right was the rectory paddock
and through the hedge Rosalie saw that something very strange
was going on in the paddock. Away in the corner where there was a
little copse with a pond in the middle was a crowd of people, some
men from the village and her mother and Robert and some others.
Whatever was it? While she peered, Harold came running out of the
group towards the house. His coat was off, and his waistcoat; and
his shirt and trousers looked funny and he ran funnily. He came
near Rosalie and she saw that he was dripping wet. Had he fallen
in the pond? Then two men came round from the back of the house
carrying something, and Harold ran to them and they all ran with
the thing to the pond. It looked like the door of the shed they
were carrying. Rosalie scrambled through the hedge and ran towards
the pond. Some one called out "Here's Rosalie." Hilda came out from
among the people and waved her arms and called out, "Go back! Go
back! You're not to come here, Rosalie! You're not to come here!"
Rosalie stood still.

People were stooping. They had the door on the ground and Harold and
a man were stooping and walking backwards over the door, carrying
something. Presently there was more stooping, and then Harold and
Robert and three men were carrying the door between them and walking
as if the door were very heavy. Whatever was happening? Hilda came
running to Rosalie. She was crying. "Rosalie, you're to keep away.
You're not to come into the house yet. I'll tell you when you can
come. Go and stay in the garden till I tell you."

Rosalie wandered about by the drive. Whatever was the matter?
Robert appeared with his bicycle. Harold came out after him. "Go
to Ashborough station with it, you understand. See the station
master. Tell him it must be sent off at once. Tell him what has
happened." Robert was sniffling and nodding. Away went Robert,
bending over the handle bar of his bicycle, riding furiously.

Evening began to come on. Rosalie was wandering at the back by the
stables when Hilda came out through the kitchen door. "Rosalie,
I've been looking for you. Rosalie, Anna is--dead."

They went in through the kitchen. On the big kitchen clothes rail
before the fire were clothes of Anna's. They were muddy and sopping
wet and steam was rising off them.

Rosalie ran to her mother to cry.

"Ran to her mother to cry." That's a thing not to pass over without a
stop. Lucky, lucky Rosalie to have one to whom to take her grief!
You can imagine her small heart's twistings by those days of
sorrow, of terrifying and mysterious and dreadful things that the
child never could clearly have understood; of grief, of mourning;
of atmosphere most eerie made of whispers, of tiptoe treading, of
shrouded windows, of conversations, as of conspirators, shut off
with "Not in front of Rosalie." "Hush, not now. Here's Rosalie."

Yes, twisting stuff that; but in that "ran to her mother to cry"
something that much more dreadfully twists the heart than those.
Those were for Rosalie--they are for all--but frets upon the
sands of time that each most kind expunging day, flowing from dawn
to sunset like a tide, heals and obliterates. There are no common
griefs, and death's a common grief, that can be drawn above that
tide's highwater mark. But there's that sentence: "Rosalie ran to
her mother to cry." That's of the aching voids of life, deep-seated
like a cancer, that no tide reaches. That twists the heart to hear
it because--O happy Rosalie!--the aching thing in life is not having
where you can take your weariness. Your successes, your triumphs,
there are a hundred eyes to shine with yours in those. Oh, it is the
defeats you want where to tell--some one you can take the defeats
to, the failures, the lost things; the lamps that are gone out, the
hopes that are ashes, the springs that spring no more, the secret
sordid things that eat you up, that hedge you all about, that draw
you down. Those! To have some one to tell those to! Yes, there's
a thought that comes with living: Let who may receive a man's
triumphs; to whom a soul can take its defeats, that one has the
imprint of Godhood. They walk near God.

Awfully frightening days followed for Rosalie. There wasn't a room
that wasn't dark and frightening with all the blinds down, and
wasn't a voice that wasn't dark and frightening, all in whispers;
and then came this that closed them and that was like a finger
pressed right down on Rosalie.

There was that Rosalie in the church at the funeral service. She
sat at the inner end of the pew with Hilda beside her. The coffin
had stood before the altar all night, with the lamps lit all night,
and Rosalie believed her father had stayed with it all night. He
was struck right down by what had happened, Rosalie's father. She
had heard him, when Anna lay on the bed, and he crouched beside
her, crying out loud, "I hated my lot! O God, I was blind to this
my child that shared my lot!"

Well, there was that Rosalie in the pew beside Hilda, and while she
waited for her father to begin (ever and ever so long he was upon
his knees at the altar, his back to them) while she waited she
turned back the leaves of her prayer book from the burial service
and noticed with a curious interest the correctness of the order
in which the special services came. There, in its order, was the
complete record of life. Rosalie must have had an imagination and
she must have had budding then what was a strong characteristic of
her afterwards,--a very orderly mind. She appreciated the correctness
of the order of the services and she turned them over one by one
and could imagine it, like a story: that record of a life. First the
service of Baptism; you were born and baptised. Then the Catechism;
you were a child and learnt your catechism. Then the Order of
Confirmation; you were getting older and were confirmed. Then the
marriage service; you were married. Then the Order for the Visitation
of the Sick: you were growing old and you were ill. Then the Burial
Service; you died. Born, brought up, growing up, married, ill, dead.
Yes, it was like a story. Rosalie turned on. The next service was
called The Churching of Women. It was new to Rosalie. She had never
noticed it before. "Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of
His goodness to give you safe deliverance..." Rosalie had heard the
word deliverance used in the Bible in connection with death. She
thought this must be a service special to the burial of a woman--of
Anna. She read the small print. "The woman at the usual time after
her delivery shall come into the church decently apparelled...."
Decently apparelled? Anna was in one of those nightgowns in which
Rosalie so often had seen her praying. "... and there shall kneel
down in some convenient place." Kneel down? How could she?...

There came upon the book while Rosalie pondered it the long,
black-gloved forefinger of Hilda. It turned back the thin leaves
to the burial service and then pushed over one or two of the thin
leaves and indicated certain places. Then Hilda's new black hat
was touching her own new black hat, and Hilda whispered, "Where it
says 'brother' and 'his' father will say 'sister' and 'her.' It's
written for men, do you see?"

Always for men! Even in the prayer book!

And it was because of men that Anna had drowned herself in the
pond. Over and over again Rosalie had thought of that, wondering
upon it, shuddering at the thought of men because of it. How she
came to know that Anna had not died as ordinary people die, but had
drowned herself in the pond she never could remember. No one told
her. Rosalie was twelve then but the others were all so much older,
and were so accustomed to treating Rosalie as so very much younger,
that the pain and mystery of poor Anna's death was outstandingly of
the class of things that were kept within the established wheel of
the rectory by "Not in front of Rosalie," or "Hush, here's Rosalie."

The effect was that when Rosalie somehow found out, she felt it to
be a guilty knowledge. She was not supposed to know and she felt
she ought not to have known. And sharing, but secretly, the others'
knowledge that Anna had drowned herself in the pond, she supposed
that they equally shared with her her knowledge of why poor Anna
had drowned herself in the pond--because of men. She overheard many
conversations that assured her in this belief. "Some man we knew
nothing about," the conversation used to say. "What else could it
have been? Hush, here's Rosalie." And again, after they had all
been out of the house to attend what was called the inquest, "You
heard what the coroner said--that there was almost invariably
something to do with a man in these cases. Poor Anna! Poor darling
Anna. If she had only told us. What else could it have been? Harold,
hush! Not in front of Rosalie!"

Of course it was nothing else. It was that. It was men. Anna had
said so. "I hate men. I hate them." Yes, men had done this to Anna.

Her mind went violently, as it were with a violent clutch of both
her hands, as of one in horrible dark, clutching at means of light,
to the thought that next week she was to be away at school--to be
right away and in the safe middle of lots and lots of girls, and
only girls. She had a frightening, a shuddering, at the thought of
men who caused these terrible things to be done, who mysteriously
and horribly somehow had done this thing to Anna.

The long, black finger poked at the page again. "There. 'This our
brother.' Father will say 'This our sister.' Do you see, Rosalie?
This our sister."

A shower of tears sprang out of Rosalie's eyes and pattered upon
the page.

She wiped them. She set her teeth. A new and most awful concern
possessed her. 'This our sister.' Would father remember? When he
came to brother would he remember to say sister? And when 'his'
would he remember to say 'her?' She searched for the places. A
most frightful agitation seized her that father would forget. What
would happen if he forgot?

And at the very first place father did forget!

They were come from the church to the grave. They were grouped about
that most terrible and frightening pit. Rosalie was clutching her
mother's dear hand, and in her other hand held her prayer book.
There it was, the first place for the change. Brokenly her father's
voice came out upon the air, and at his very first word--the fatal
word--Rosalie caught her breath in sharp and agonized dismay.

"Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is
full of misery...."

She called out--she could not help it--"Father!"

Her mother's hand, squeezing hers, restrained her.

The broken voice went on "... cometh up and is cut down like a
flower."

She heaved relief. No one had noticed it. It was all right. No one
else had heard the terrible mistake. It was all right. But it was
very wrong. Above all other places this was the place that should
have been changed. Woman... that is full of misery. How could it
ever be Man? Anna, in almost her last words, had said it. "It is
hard for women" and that God knew it was hard for them--"O God,
thou knowest how hard it is for women."

In the next week she went away to school.






PART TWO--HOUSE OF WOMEN

CHAPTER I





What anybody can have nobody wants; but what only one person can
have there's a queue to get.

This is an elementary principle of the frailty of human nature,
and knowledge of it, and experience of its mighty truth, used to
cause, during the three holiday periods of the year, a standing
advertisement to appear on the front page of the Morning Post.

"High-class Ladies' School for the Daughters of Gentlemen of the
Professions has UNEXPECTED VACANCY for ONE ONLY pupil at reduced
terms--Mrs. Impact, Oakwood House School, St. John's Wood, London."

ONE ONLY pupil! That was the magic touch.

The very first words addressed to Rosalie by a fellow boarder at
Oakwood House were from a short, sharp-featured girl of her own
age, which then was twelve, who said to her sharply, "You're a One
Only. I can see you are. Aren't you a One Only?"

"Well, I'm by myself," said Rosalie, not understanding but most
anxious to say the right thing.

"Stupid, you're not," said the sharp girl, "because I'm with you.
Did your mother see the advertisement in the Morning Post? The
advertisement of this school?"

It happened that Rosalie knew her mother had seen it for Aunt
Belle had shown it to her and to them all. "One of the very best
schools," Aunt Belle had said. "You see, it's only quite by chance
there was a vacancy."

"Yes, she did," said Rosalie.

"She's the cat's grandmother," said the sharp girl. "Never say
'she' for a person's name. Well, if your mother saw the advertisement
then you are a One Only at reduced terms, and I knew you were
directly I saw you. Now, tell me. Don't blink--unless of course
you're an idiot; all idiots blink. Tell me. Was that dress made
for you or was it cut down?"

"It was my cousin Laetitia's," said Rosalie.

"Of course it was," returned the sharp girl very triumphantly.
"Every One Only's clothes are cut down for her. Poopers! Do you
know what a pooper is? A pooper is half a poop and half a pauper.
Every One Only's a pooper. Well, now you know what you are. You
see that girl over there. Do you know what she is?"

Rosalie said she did not.

"She's a Red Indian."

"Is she?" said Rosalie, much surprised, for the girl did not look
in the least like a Red Indian.

"Ask her," said the sharp girl. "Do you know what I am?"

Rosalie shook her head.

"Answer," said the sharp girl.

"No, I don't," said Rosalie.

"I'm a Sultan," said the sharp girl. "All the nice girls are Sultans
and the school belongs to them. Do I look nice?"

"Very," said Rosalie, though she did not think so.

"Then why didn't you know I was a Sultan? The school belongs to
the Sultans. The One Onlys and the Red Indians are interlopers,
especially the One Onlys. Always shudder when you see a Sultan.
Shudder now."

Rosalie wriggled her shoulders.

"Again, poop."

Rosalie repeated the wriggle.

"Vanish, poop," said the sharp girl, and herself sprung away with
mysterious crouching bounds, her head thrust forward, looking very
like Gagool, the witch, in King Solomon's Mines; and was seen by
Rosalie to pounce upon another small girl who was probably a One
Only and, from her forlorn aspect, certainly a sad and desolated
new.

One Onlys, Red Indians, Sultans. They were the three castes into
which the girls divided themselves: One Onlys the poopers brought
by the advertisement; Red Indians the daughters of parents resident
in India; Sultans the proud creatures who paid full fees and took
their title from the nickname of the headmistress--the Sultana.
This Oakwood House School in which Rosalie now found herself was
one of those very big old houses with a spacious, walled-in garden
that probably was occupied in the Fifties somewhere, when St.
John's Wood was out in the country, by a wealthy old City merchant
who rode in to business two or three times a week, never dreaming
that one day London was going to stretch miles beyond St. John's
Wood, and his imposing residence go dropping down the scale of
fashion eventually to become a school for young ladies who on their
crocodile walks would huddle, giggling, along the kerbstone while
the dangerous traffic roared up and down the Maida Vale highway.

Those crocodiles! There was a news agent's shop just opposite
where the crocodile used to cross when it went out every morning,
and one of the great excitements of the walk was to get around the
corner and see what the newspaper bills had to tell. There were
about forty girls at the school--a crocodile twenty files long--and
on the days of sensational events the news from the placards used
to come flashing back in emotional little screams from the head
of the crocodile, gazing with goggling eyes, to the tail of the
crocodile pressing deliriously up behind. "The Maybrick Case";
"Jack the Ripper Again"; "Death of the Duke of Clarence"; "Loss of
H.M.S. Victoria"; Rosalie never afterwards could hear those terrific
things referred to without recalling instantly the convulsions of
the crocodile and experiencing within her own bosom the tumults
that contributed their share to the convulsions. She was in the
writhing tail of the crocodile when "Jack the Ripper Again" caused
it almost to swoon, and she was in its weeping head when "Death
of the Duke of Clarence" and "Loss of H.M.S. Victoria" struck its
orderly coils into a tangled and hysterical knot.

Mrs. Impact, who kept this school, was a massive and frightening
figure of doom who wore always upon her head, and was suspected of
sleeping in, a strange erection having the appearance of a straw
beehive. She was called the Sultana and her appearance and her
habits seemed to Rosalie precisely the appearance and habits that
would belong to a sultana. The Sultana appeared virtually never
among the girls. The direction of the discipline and education of
the pupils was in the hands of the chief of the Sultana's staff of
badly paid and much intimidated mistresses. This chief of staff, by
name Miss Ough, but called the Vizier, appeared from and disappeared
into the quarters occupied by the Sultana, and was popularly supposed
to be kept there in a dungeon. If you were near the door through
which the Vizier passed from public gaze there was unquestionably to
be heard shortly afterwards a metallic clank. This was the portal
of the Vizier's dungeon being closed upon her and was very shuddering
to hear. The Vizier, moreover, like one long incarcerated, was
skeletonized of form, cadaverous and sallow of countenance, and
grew upon her face, as all right prisoners in royal custody grow,
a thick covering of greyish down.

A second known inhabitant of the Sultana's quarters was Mr. Ponders,
her butler, who sometimes slid into the classrooms in a very eerie
way with messages and whom Rosalie came to know strangely well; a
third, but he did not exactly live in the awful regions, was the
Sultana's husband. The Sultana's husband lived in two rooms over
the stable. From the front classroom windows he was to be seen
every morning disappearing through the front gates at about eleven
o'clock; very shiny top hat; very tight tail coat; very tight grey
trousers; very tight yellow gloves; very tight grey-yellow moustache;
very tight pasty face; curiously constricted, jerky gait as though
his boots, too, were very tight. Precisely the sort of chronic,
half-tipsy hanger-on one used to see in billiard rooms or eating
cloves in West End bars. By association of ideas with the orientalism
of Sultana he was called by the girls the Bashibazook.

Junior to Miss Ough, the vizier, were four or five other mistresses,
all known by nicknames. Children are exactly like savages in their
horrible sharpness at picking out physical peculiarities and
labelling by them. One would imagine these governesses, judged
by their nicknames, a deplorable collection of oddities. Actually
they must have been a presentable enough and a capable enough set
of spinsters, though sicklied o'er by the pale cast of indifferent
personalities, indifferently housed, indifferently fed, indifferently
paid; all anaemic, all without any prospects whatsoever, all dominated
by and domineered over by the masterful personality of the Sultana.

Only one of them contributed to the life of Rosalie and this was
"Keggo," Miss Keggs, who taught mathematics. This Keggo was rather
like Anna in appearance, Rosalie thought, and was most popular of
all the mistresses with the girls, partly because of her bright
moments in which she was a human creature and an entertaining
creature; partly because of her curiously supine periods in which
she would be utterly listless, allow her class to do anything they
liked provided they kept perfectly quiet, and would make no attempt
whatsoever to correct idleness or to impart the lesson of the hour.
Miss Keggs had been known to knock over the inkpot on her desk and
sit and watch the ink dripping in a pool on to the floor without
making the least attempt even to upstand the vessel. No one knew
why Keggo had these moods. But it was known that for her to come
into class looking rather flushed was a sign foreshadowing them.

She appeared to take a fancy to Rosalie from the first, and Rosalie
to her, probably by reason of the fancied resemblance to Anna. She
invited Rosalie to her room and Rosalie loved to go there because
the One Onlys were in a very weak and humble minority in Rosalie's
first term and were rather hunted by the Sultans who were then
particularly strong in numbers and rich in apparel, in pocket money,
and in friends. The poor little One Onlys led rather abashed lives
and they had no chance at all around the playroom fire where the
Sultans stretched their elegant legs and warmed their shapely toes.

One evening in her first few weeks Rosalie had to take an exercise
up to Miss Keggs, and Miss Keggs's room was warm, and Miss Keggs
like Anna, and Rosalie lingered and was invited to linger; after
that Rosalie sought and invented reasons for going up to Miss Keggs's
room and Miss Keggs would nearly always say, "Well, you may stay
a little, Rosalie, as you're here."

Miss Keggs's room was right at the top of the house where were also
the servants' room and the room shared by Miss Downer and Miss
Frost. It was a long, narrow room with sloping ceiling and the
window high up in the ceiling. In the winter it was warmed with
a small oil stove which smelt terribly when you first went in but
to the smell of which you almost at once got accustomed. It was
curious to Rosalie that even in summer when there was no oil stove
there was nearly always a very strong smell in Miss Keggs's room.
Miss Keggs used eau de Cologne for bathing her forehead and temples
on account of the very bad headaches from which she said she suffered
and the smell was like eau de Cologne but with an unpleasantly
harsh strong tang in it, like bad eau de Cologne, Rosalie used to
think. However, you almost at once got accustomed to that also. These
headaches of Miss Keggs were a symptom of the very bad health from
which she suffered, and on the occasions of Rosalie's visits to
her room Miss Keggs was very communicative about her ill health. It
was the reason, she told Rosalie, why, alone of all the mistresses,
she had a room to herself instead of sharing one. The Sultana had
granted her that privilege, provided she would use this remote and
rather poky attic, because it was so essential she should be quiet
and undisturbed.

"Don't you have any medicine, Miss Keggs?" said the small Rosalie,
in one part genuinely sympathetic and in the other eager to discuss
anything that would prolong her stay by the warm oil stove.

"Nothing does me any good," said Miss Keggs wearily. After a minute
she added, "But I really am feeling very bad to-night. Mr. Ponders
very kindly gives me some medicine that relieves my bad attacks.
I wonder, Rosalie, if you could find your way down to Mr. Ponders
and give him this medicine bottle and ask him if he could very
kindly oblige me with a little of my medicine?"

"Oh, I'm sure I could, Miss Keggs," cried Rosalie, delighted at
the opportunity of doing a service.

Miss Keggs became extraordinarily animated with the feverish
animation of one who, having made up her mind after hesitation,
furiously tramples hesitation under foot.

"Go right downstairs," directed Miss Keggs, "right down below the
hall into the basement. You know the basement stairs?" She proceeded
with her directions, detailing them most exactly. She accompanied
Rosalie to the door and when Rosalie was a little down the passage
sharply called her back. "And, Rosalie! If you should meet any
one--if you should meet any one, on no account say where you are
going or where you have been. On no account. If it should be known
how ill I continue to be, I might be sent away. They might think
I am not strong enough to continue my work here. Say you have lost
your way if you should be met. You are a new little girl and it is
easy to lose your way in this big, rambling house. Keep the bottle
in your pocket and remember, Rosalie, on no account to tell. On no
account." And so dismissed her.

A creepy business, going down to interview Mr. Ponders! The Sultana's
butler was only seen by the girls on momentous and thrilling
occasions. He opened the hall door when new little girls arrived
with their mothers, and he would sometimes appear in a classroom
and walk thrillingly to the mistress and thrillingly whisper. This
always meant that for some fortunate girl a parent or an aunt had
arrived and that the presence of the fortunate girl was desired
by the Sultana. He was a shortish, dingy man with a considerable
moustache. As he walked between the desks to deliver his message,
his eyes were always glancing from side to side as though furtively
in search of something, and always as he left the room he would
stand a moment with his hand on the door as though meditating some
statement and then suddenly de-termining to disappear without making
it. A rather mysterious and thrilling man.

Come into the basement, Rosalie walked as bid along the passage,
then to the right and then past two doors to the third, whereon
she tapped gently, and when a man's voice said "Come in," quaked
rather, and went in. The walls of Mr. Ponders' room were completely
surrounded by narrow shelves. Beneath the shelves were the closed
doors of low cupboards and on the shelves were ranged many glasses,
china and silverware. At one end beneath the window was a sink with
two taps, both dripping. On the right-hand side was a fire before
which in a wicker armchair sat Mr. Ponders smoking a pipe and
reading a newspaper.

"What do you want?" inquired Mr. Ponders.

Rosalie said, "If you please, Mr. Ponders, Miss Keggs is not feeling
at all well and would you be so very kind as to give her some of
her medicine, please?"

Mr. Ponders rose and regarded Rosalie from the hearthrug. "So it's
going to be you coming for the medicine now, is it?" he said. He
looked rather a mean little man, standing there; not thrilling as
when he appeared in the schoolrooms for there was an unpleasing
familiarity in his air, but still decidedly mysterious, for though
he smiled and looked snakily at Rosalie, he still glanced from side
to side as though furtively looking for something and he still,
before committing himself to an action, paused as though meditating
a statement and then suddenly performed the action as though he
had made up his mind not to speak--yet.

"You're Rosalie, aren't you?" inquired Ponders, putting his hands
in his pockets and stretching out his stomach like one much at his
ease. "Rosalie Aubyn. You come with your Auntie. What's your Pa?"

"A clergyman, Mr. Ponders."

"Oh, he's a clergyman, is he?" Mr. Ponders's eyes slid from side to
side, rather as if he had somewhere in the room some confirmation
or some refutation of Rosalie's statement that he could produce if
he could catch sight of it, and continued thus to slide with the
same suggestion while he playfully put Rosalie through a further
examination relative to her "Auntie," her "Ma" and her brothers
and sisters. He appeared then to be meditating a question of some
other order but instead suddenly straightened himself, withdrew
his hands from his pockets and said, "Well, you'd better be running
along with the medicine."

He took from Rosalie the bottle Miss Keggs had given her and from
his pockets a bunch of keys. In the lock of one of his cupboards
he fitted a key, paused a meditative moment, then with a decisive
action opened the cupboard and from a tall black bottle very
carefully and steadily filled the medicine bottle. The medicine was
dark red. It first ran in a fine dark red cloud around the inner
shoulders and sides of the bottle and then plunged in a steady
stream direct from the larger receptacle to the smaller.

Rosalie, watching, was moved to say, "How well you pour it, Mr.
Ponders."

"I've poured a tidy drop in my time," said Mr. Ponders, completing
the operation and corking the medicine bottle. He held it towards
Rosalie, paused in his mysteriously deliberative way, and then
suddenly handed it to her. "And a tidy fair drop for Miss Keggs
at that," he added. He went to the door, again paused as though
uncertain whether to open it, then opened it for Rosalie to pass
out. "Good night," said Mr. Ponders.

Lucky Mr. Ponders to have for his own a cosy room like that--men,
always for some reason, with the best of everything again! Unpleasing
Mr. Ponders to look at you like that and to speak to you like
that--men, always horrible again! Rosalie, thus thinking, made
a swift and unobserved climb to the attics. Miss Keggs must have
heard her coming. The door was pulled sharply from Rosalie's hand
and there was Miss Keggs and the bottle almost snatched away from
Rosalie. "How long you've been! But you've got it! And no one saw
you?" Miss Keggs went very swiftly to the washstand and took up a
small tumbler. Clear that she wanted her medicine very badly. She
toppled in the contents of the bottle, its neck clinking against
the glass, the dark red medicine splashing and some spilling, so
differently from Mr. Ponders's performance of a far more difficult
operation, and with the bottle still in her hand held the glass to
her lips and drank deeply.

Yet there was a funny thing about the draught. It seemed to Rosalie
that Miss Keggs with that eager draught yet did not swallow at once
but only filled her mouth to its capacity. She then swallowed very
slowly and with movements of her cheeks as though she was sucking
down the medicine and tasting it in every portion of her mouth.
Colour came into her cheeks. The medicine certainly appeared to do
her immense good.

Miss Keggs's friendliness towards Rosalie was settled and
established from that night. Thereafter it became a very regular
thing for Rosalie to visit the room of Miss Keggs of an evening;
and at intervals, sometimes twice a week, sometimes not three times
in a month, to descend to the den of Mr. Ponders for the dark-red
medicine which did Miss Keggs so much good and which she always
took in that peculiar sucking way from a full mouth, one would be
so long sometimes in swallowing a mouthful, beginning a sentence
and then drinking and then all that time in swallowing before she
completed the sentence, that she several times, by way of apology,
ex-plained the reason to Rosalie. "I have to swallow it very slowly
like that," explained Miss Keggs, "because that's the way for it
to do me good. It's my doctor's orders."

"It seems a business," was Rosalie's comment.

"Yes, it is a business," Miss Keggs agreed.

Rosalie added, "How very lucky it is, Miss Keggs, that Mr. Ponders
keeps your medicine."

"Yes, it's certainly very lucky," Miss Keggs agreed.

The effect of her medicine was always to make her very complaisant.






CHAPTER II





One seeks to give only the things in Rosalie's life that contributed
to her record, as time judges a record. Of her years at Oakwood House,
so far as Oakwood House itself is concerned, only that friendship
with Miss Keggs thus contributed. The rest does not matter and
may be passed. Rosalie was happy there. It naturally was all very
strange at first but she soon shook down and found her place and
formed friendships. The thing to notice is this--that even in the
strangeness of her first few weeks the place was actively felt by
her to be a haven. There is to be recalled that aching desire of
hers, when poor Anna lay dead, to get right away from men: men who
(though still pre-eminently wonderful) caused her by their showing
off to blink and have a, funny feeling; and by their distasteful
presence spoilt her walks and her lessons; and by the frightening
things they did had brought that frightening death to Anna. Thus
had accumulated that aching desire to get right away from men and
be only amongst girls; and the feeling remained most lively in
Rosalie at the Sultana's, and intensified. Those men! She used to
see the Bashibazook and shudder at him; and Mr. Ponders and shudder
at him; and sometimes Uncle Pyke, and because of ways he had, feel
quite sick to be near him. Men still were wonderful. The Bashibazook,
Mr. Ponders, Uncle Pyke, Uncle Pyke's friends--all were infinitely
superior and did what they pleased; but, oh, not nice, frightening.
It was safe and nice to be only with girls. Girls were in heaps
of ways extraordinarily silly and unsatisfactory. Men though not
nice, unquestionably did everything better and could do things.
Unquestionably theirs was the best time in life. Unquestionably
they were to be envied. But--not nice, frightening.

It was like that that her ideas at Oakwood House were shaping.

And all this time, most important and much contributory to the life
of Rosalie--Aunt Belle. Tremendous occasions in those years were
the visits to the Sultana's of Aunt Belle. Frequently on a Saturday,
kind Aunt Belle used to call at Oakwood House for Rosalie and take
her to a tea shop for tea. Beautiful cousin Laetitia would accompany
her, and kind Aunt Belle would always invite Rosalie to bring with
her another little One Only. Kind, kind Aunt Belle! Aunt Belle
used to sit by in the tea shop, affectionate and loquacious as
ever, while the two schoolgirls stuffed themselves with cakes (not
beautiful Laetitia who just nicely sipped a cup of tea and nicely
smiled at the two gross appetites) and always kind Aunt Belle
brought a small hamper of sweets and cake and apples--"The very best
goodies from the Army and Navy Stores, dear child. They know us so
well at the Army and Navy Stores. Your Uncle Pyke has a standing
deposit account there. We can go in without a penny in our pockets
and buy anything we please. Fancy that, dear child!" And always
half a crown for Rosalie, as kind Aunt Belle was leaving.

Once in every term, also, Rosalie spent a week-end at the magnificent
house in Pilchester Square. Such luxuries! Fire in her bedroom and
palatial late dinner! Breakfast in bed on Sunday morning ("Just
to let you lie as a little change from school, dear child.") and
Laetitia's maid to do her hair! Rosalie immensely im-pressed and
Aunt Belle immensely gratified at Rosalie's awe and appreciation
and gratitude.

A curious manifestation there was of Aunt Belle's attitude in this
regard. On that famous visit to the rectory she had treated every
one like children. Here, in her own house, while Rosalie was still
a child, twelve, thirteen and fourteen, she was treated by Aunt
Belle and shown off to by her much as if she were a grown-up woman.
About her servants, and about prices, and about dress, and about
her dinner parties, Aunt Belle chattered to Rosalie; and about
Uncle Pyke, what he liked, and what he didn't like, and what he
did in the City, and what he did at his club, and about her hosts
of friends and their matrimonial experiences, Aunt Belle chattered
to her, confiding in her and telling her all kinds of things she but
dimly understood precisely as if she were a grown-up young woman.

Then as Rosalie grew older, sixteen, seventeen and getting on for
eighteen, was reversion by Aunt Belle to the rectory manner. The
child had been treated as a young woman; the budding maiden was
treated precisely as if she were a small child or a small savage
to be entertained by mere sight of the wonders all about her in
Pilchester Square and by having them explained to her in words of
one syllable.

"There, Rosalie," (Rosalie at seventeen) "do you know you're eating
with a solid silver spoon! Feel the weight of it! Balance it in your
hand, dear child. We usually only use this service for our dinner
parties and your uncle Pyke keeps it locked up and carries the key
about with him. Show Rosalie the key, Pyke. But I got it out for
you to-day because I knew you would like to see real solid silver
plate. Dear child!"

Dear thing! Lightly on her, you Brompton Cemetery stones!

Uncle Pyke never would produce the key or whatever he might be
asked to show. Uncle Pyke would grunt and go on with his soup with
enormous noise as though having a bath in it. Uncle Pyke never spoke
at all to Rosalie on these week-end visits except, always, to put
her through examination on what she was learning at school. Rosalie,
though horribly frightened of Uncle Pyke, always had pretty ready
answers to the examination--she did uncommonly well at school--but
there never was from Uncle Pyke any other mark of appreciation
than a grunt. A grunt! Those Pyke-ish, piggish men! The outstanding
characteristic Rosalie came to see in Uncle Pyke and in the other
husbands (his cronies) of Aunt Belle's friends was that they thought
about nothing else but their food, their wine and their cigars.
They disliked having about them anybody who interfered with their
enjoyment of their food, their wine and their cigars. They were
affectionately regarded by their wives as tame, necessary bears
to be fed and warmed and used to sit at the head of the table and
awe the servants. That was what Rosalie saw in them--and shuddered
at in them. Hogs!

Cousin Laetitia all this time was living at home, attending a very
exclusive and expensive day school. Only twelve girls at beautiful
Laetitia's school and more masters and mistresses than pupils--mostly
"visiting" masters--Italian, French, painting, singing, music,
dancing. Laetitia was about two years older than Rosalie. Very
pretty in an elegant, delicate fashion, and growing up decidedly
beautiful in a sheltered, hothouse, Rossetti type of beauty. Always
very affectionate to Rosalie and glad to see her; not patronising
in the way she might have been patronising and yet, as the two grew
older, patronising in a conscious effort to dissemble a conscious
superiority.

Rosalie never could remember how early in their acquaintance it
was she first understood that the great aim of Laetitia's life,
and the great aim of Aunt Belle's life for Laetitia, was to "make
a good match"; but she seemed to have known it ever since she first
heard of Laetitia, certainly at a point of her childhood when too
young exactly to understand what "good match" meant. Later on,
when Laetitia had left school and was within sight of putting up
her hair, "good match" was openly spoken of by Aunt Belle in her
crowded drawing-room or alone in company of the two girls and Uncle
Pyke.

"And soon dear Laetitia will be making a good match, a splendid
match"; and beautiful Laetitia would faintly colour and faintly
smile.

There began to come to Rosalie, growing older, an acute and an odd
feeling of the physical and mental difference between herself and
beautiful Laetitia--a feeling in Laetitia's company that she was a
boy, a young man, in the company of one most pronouncedly a young
woman. Rosalie was always very plainly dressed by comparison with
Laetitia; her voice was much clearer and sharper, her air very
vigorous against an air very langorous. Her hands used to feel
extraordinarily big when she sat with Laetitia and her wrists
extraordinarily bare. She would glance down at her lap sometimes
and could have felt a sense of surprise not to see trousers on her
legs.

That was how, as they grew older, Rosalie often felt with Laetitia.

Her last term came. She was nearly eighteen. She was going to earn
her own living. That was decided. Exactly how was not decided; but
Rosalie had decided it. There was an idea that she should remain
at the Sultana's as a junior teacher, but that was not Rosalie's
idea.

"Oh, don't be a schoolmistress, Rosalie," Keggo had said when
Rosalie told of the suggestion (propounded, through the Sultana,
by Miss Ough and warmly endorsed by Aunt Belle and grunted upon by
Uncle Pyke). "Oh, Rosalie, don't be one of us. Don't you see how
we are just drifting, drifting? Don't do anything where you'll just
drift, Rosalie."

"No, I'm not going to drift, Keggo," said Rosalie. (Miss Keggs,
in the little room, had been "Keggo" a long time then.) "I'm not
going to drift. I'm going to have a man's career. I'm going into
business! Keggo, that's the mystery of that book I'm always reading
that you're always asking me about: 'Lombard Street'--Bagehot's
'Lombard Street.' Oh, Keggo, thrilling."

She began to tell Keggo her stupendous enterprise....

There is in the study of man nothing more curious or more interesting
than the natural bent of an individual mind. An arrow shot to the
north and another from the same bow to the south spring not apart
more swiftly or more opposedly than the minds of two children
brought up from one mother in the same nursery. The natural bent
of each impels it. Art this one, science that; to Joe adventure,
to Tom a bookish habit. Rosalie's natural bent declared itself in
"figures"; in the operations, as she discovered them, of commerce;
in the mysterious powers, as they appealed to her, developed
in countinghouses and exerted by countinghouses. The romance of
commerce! A mind double-edged, with inquisitiveness the one edge
and acquisitiveness the other (as certainly Rosalie's) is a sword
double-edged that will cut through the tough shell and into the
lively heart of anything. No more is required than to give the
young mind a glimpse of the lively heart that is there. Rosalie's
young mind was already beating with half-fledged wings against the
shell about that side of life wherein, in her experience, (of her
brothers, of Uncle Pyke, of Uncle Pyke's friends) men did the things
that earned them livelihood and gave them independence. Along, by
happy chance, buried in dust in the rectory study and found one
holiday, came "Lombard Street" and Bagehot, and that was the book
and Bagehot was the man to give pinions to those fledgling wings.
She saw romance, and thrusted for it, in the business of countinghouses.
It was fascinating to her beyond anything the discovery that money
was not, as she had always supposed, a thing that you took with
one hand and paid away, and lost, with the other. Not at all! It
was a thing that, properly handled, you never lost. Enthralling!
Thrilling! You invested it and it returned to you; you expended
it and propped it up with fascinating things called sinking funds,
and, although you had spent it, there it was coming back to you
again! It was the most mysterious and wonderful commodity in the
world. She got hold of that and she went on from that.

The romance of business! That ships should go out across the seas with
one cargo and sell it, not, in effect, for money, but for another
and an entirely different cargo; that cheques passing between
countries, and cheques circulating about the United Kingdom, should
be traded off one against the other in magic conjuring palaces
called Clearing Houses with the result that thousands of little
streams merged into few great rivers and only differences need be
paid; that money (heart and driving-force of all the mysteries)
should have within itself the mysterious and astounding quality of
ceaselessly reduplicating itself--"the only thing in the world,"
as Rosalie quaintly put it to Miss Keggs--"the only thing m the
world that people, business people, will take care of for you without
charging you for storage or for trouble"--that these mysterious and
extraordinary things should be thrilled Rosalie as the mysterious
and extraordinary things of science or of nature or the mysterious
and beautiful things of art or of literature or of music will thrill
another.

That natural bent of her mind! That Bagehot that ministered to
her natural bent! Fascinated by Banks, fascinated by the Exchange,
fascinated by the Pool of London, where, obedient to the behests
of the counting-houses, floated the wealth that the countinghouses
made, fascinated by these was Rosalie as maidens of her years
commonly are fascinated by palaces, by the Tower and by the Abbey.
Remember, it is not what their eyes see that fascinates these
romantic young misses. A dolt can see the Tower walls and see no
more than crumbling bricks and stone. It is what their minds see
that fascinates the ardent creatures. Well, Rosalie's mind saw
strange romance in countinghouses.

That Bagehot!

And then must be picked up--and were with time picked up--others
of the magic man's enchantments. "Literary Studies," but she passed
over that, the burning subject was not there. "Economic Studies";
it much was there. "International Coinage." She read that! It approached
the subject of a Universal Money and her thought was, "Why, what
a splendid idea to have one coinage that would go everywhere!" And
then, opening a new field, and yet a connected field and a field
profoundly engrossing to her, "The English Constitution." How laws
came; how laws worked; the mysteriousness (her word) within the
Council chambers that produced governance as the mysteriousness
within the countinghouses produced wealth! The mysterious quality
within precedent and necessity and change that reproduced itself
in laws as the mysterious quality within money caused money to
reproduce itself in wealth; the romance of governance.

It was like that that her interests were shaping.

It was very easy, it was utterly delightful, to tell all this to
Keggo. It was not at all easy, it was very terrible, to tell it
before Uncle Pyke. It was appalling, it was terrific, to break to
the house in Notting Hill that she desired to earn her living, not
as a teacher, but in business--like men.

It was at dinner at the glittering table in the splendid dining-room
of the magnificent house in Notting Hill, Rosalie there on the
half-term week-end of her last term, that the frightful thing was
done. At dinner: Uncle Pyke Pounce bathing in his soup; beautiful
Laetitia elegantly toying with hers; Aunt Belle beaming over her
solid silver spoon at Rosalie. "Try that soup, dear child. It's
delicious. My cook makes such delicious soups. Lady Houldsworth
Hopper--Sir Humbo Houldsworth Hopper, you know he's in the India
Office, you must have heard of him--was dining with us last week
and said she had never tasted such delicious soup. It was the same
as this. I asked cook specially to make it for you. Now next term,
when you are one of the mistresses at Oakwood House and living at
their table and you have soup, you'll be able to say--for you must
speak up when you are with them, dear child, and not be shy--you'll
be able to tell them what delicious soup you always get at your
Uncle Colonel Pyke Pounce's. Be sure to mention your Uncle by name,
Colonel Pyke Pounce, R.E., not just 'my uncle,' and that he was a
great deal in India where he was entirely responsible for the laying
of the Puttapong Railway and received an illuminated address from
the Rajah of Puttapongpoo, such a fine old fellow, not being allowed
of course to take a present, which you have seen many times hanging
in his study in his fine house in Pilchester Square, Notting Hill
(some of them are sure to have heard of Pilchester Square, though
never visited there, of course); your uncle will show you the address
again after dinner; that will be nice, won't it, dear? Won't you,
Pyke?"

(F-r-r-r-r-r-rup! from the splendid holder of the illuminated
address from the Rajah of Puttapongpoo, bathing in his soup.)

"Be sure to speak up for yourself like that, dear child, and let
them know who you are and that though you are poor and have to
earn your living, you have wealthy relations (though of course we
are only comfortably off and do not pretend to be rich) and are
not at all like ordinary governesses. Be sure to, dear. There; now
you've finished that soup and wasn't it delicious, just? You will
have another helping, I know you will. A second helping of soup
is not usual, dear, and Laetitia or any one at any of our parties
would never take it, but it's quite different for you, and I do
love to see you enjoy the nice food I get for you. More soup for
Miss Aubyn, Parker."

Now for it!

"Aunt, I won't have any more soup. I won't really. It was delicious.
Delicious, but really no more. Really. Aunt.... About the governesses
there and being one of them. I wanted to say... Aunt, I don't want
to be a pupil-teacher. Aunt..."

Fr-r-r-r-rup! Frr-r-roosh! Woosh! Fr-r-r-roosh!

It is the holder of the illuminated address from the Rajah of
Puttapongpoo most terribly and fear-strikingly struggling up out
of his soup. "Don't want to be a pupil teacher? Wat d'ye mean? Wat
d'ye mean?"

"Why, Rosalie, darling!" It is the exquisitely beautiful daughter of
the holder of the illuminated address from the Rajah of Puttapongpoo.

"Never mind them, Rosalie. The dear child! Why, how crimson she
is. Let the dear child speak. What is it, dear child?" It is kind
Aunt Belle.

"Aunt Belle. Aunt Belle, I don't want to earn my living like that.
I want to earn it like--like a man. I want to--well, it's hard to
explain--to go to an office like a man--and have my pay every week,
like a man--and have a chance to get on like men, like a man. I
want to go into the City if I possibly could, or start in some way
like going into the City. I know it sounds awful--telling it to
you--but girls are doing it, a few. They're just secretaries and
clerks, of course. They're just nothing, of course. But, oh, it's
something, and I do want it so. To have office hours and a--a
desk--and a--an employer and be--be like men. I don't mean, I
don't mean a bit, imitate men like all that talk there is now about
imitating men. I hate women in stiff collars and shirts and ties
and mannishness like that; and indeed I hate--I dislike men--I
can't stand them, not in that way, if you understand what I mean--"

".Rosalie!" (Laetitia.)

"Oh, Laetitia, oh, Aunt Belle, I'm only saying that to show I don't
mean I want to be--. It is so fearfully difficult to explain, this.
But Aunt, you do see what I am trying to mean. It's just a man's
work that I mean because I'd love it and because I don't see why--.
And it's just that particular kind of work--in the City. Because
I believe, I do believe, I would be sharp and good at that work.
Figures and things. I love that. I'm quick at that, very quick.
And I've read heaps about it--about business I mean--about--"

Uncle Pyke Pounce. Uncle Pyke Pounce, holding his breath because he
is holding his exasperation as one holds one's breath in performance
of a delicate task. Uncle Pyke Pounce crimson, purply blotched,
infuriated, kept from his food, blowing up at last at the parlour-maid:
"Bring in the next course! Bring in the next course! Watyer staring
at? Watyer waiting for? Watyer listening to? Rubbish. Pack of
rubbish."

The parlour-maid flies out on the gust of the explosion. Rosalie
finishes her sentence while the gust inflates again.

"Read heaps about it--about business--about trade and finance and
that. It fascinates me."

The gust explodes at her.

"Wat d'yer mean read about it? Read about what?"

"Uncle, about money, about finance and things. I know it's
extraordinary I should like such things. But I do. I can't tell
why. It's like--like a romance to me, all about money and how it
is made and managed. There's a book I found in father's study at
home. 'Lombard Street' by Bagehot. That's all about it, isn't it?
I can't tell you how I have read it and reread it."

"Never heard of it. 'Lombard Street?' Bagehot? Who's Bagehot?"

"I think he was a banker, Uncle."

"I think he was a fool!"

It comes out of the red and swollen face of the holder of the
illuminated address from the Rajah of Puttapongpoo like a plum-stone
spat at her across the table. Rosalie blinked. These beastly men!
Violent, vulgar, fat, rude beasts! Uncle Pyke the worst of them!
But she came back bravely from her flinch. "If he wasn't a banker,
he knew all about banking. Oh, that's what I would be more than
anything--that's what I do want to be--a banker--in a bank!"

The holder of the illuminated address from the Rajah of Puttapongpoo
as if, having expectorated the plum-stone, he desired to expectorate
also the taste thereof, spat out an obscene sound of contempt and
disgust. "Fah! I say the man, whoever he was, was a fool. And I
say this, Miss. I don't often speak sharply, but I say that I think
I know another fool--a little fool--at this table. Pah! Enough of
it! What's this? Trout?"

Aunt Belle to the rescue! If Uncle Pyke and Aunt Belle had kept
house in Seven Dials instead of Notting Hill, Uncle Pyke would
have beaten Aunt Belle and Aunt Belle would have taken the blows
without flinching and then have wheedled Uncle Pyke with drops of
gin. As it was, Uncle Pyke was merely boorish or torpidly savage
towards Aunt Belle and Aunt Belle's way with him--as with all
combative men--was to rally him with a kind of boisterous chaff
and to discharge it at him as an urchin with an armful of snowballs
fearfully discharges them at an old gentleman in a silk hat: backing
away, that is to say, before an advance and advancing before a
retreat. Uncle Pyke usually retreated, either to eat or sleep.

Aunt Belle had blinked, as Rosalie had blinked, at that horrible
epithet "Little fool!" across the table. The lips that uttered
it were immediately stuffed with trout and Aunt Belle immediately
rushed in in her rallying way to the rescue. "Why, you great, big
stupid Uncle Pyke!" cried Aunt Belle vivaciously. "It's you who
don't know what you're talking about, you unkind old thing, you.
Why, many, many girls, quite nice girls, are going into business
now and being secretaries and things and doing very, very well
indeed. Why, I declare it would do you good to have a lady secretary
yourself in that big, dusty office of yours in the City, never
dusted from one year's end to another, I'm sure! Laetitia, wouldn't
it do your father good, the cross, grumpy old thing? Give your
master some more of the sauce, Parker. Isn't that trout delicate
and nice, Pyke? Trout for a pike! And I'm sure very like a nasty,
savage old pike the way you tried to gobble up poor Rosalie, the
dear child. Now, Rosalie, dear child, I think that's a very, very
good idea of yours to go into business. I think it's a splendid
idea, and more and more quite nice girls will soon be doing it. Now
we'll just see what we can do and we'll make that cross old uncle
help and ask all his cross old friends in the City, just to punish
him. A young Lady Clerk, or a young Lady Secretary! Now I think
that's the very, very thing for you. Just the thing, and a dear,
clever child to think of it. Yes!"

Kind, kind Aunt Belle! Victory through Aunt Belle! Accomplishment!
A career like a man! Aunt Belle had said it and Aunt Belle would
do it! A career like a man! Oh, ecstatic joy! "Lombard Street" had
been brought with her in her week-end suitcase. Directly she could
get to bed she rushed up to it and took it out and read, and read.
It was all underlined. She underlined it more that happy, happy
night!

Ah, never underline a book till you are forty. Never memorialise
what you were, your lovely innocence, your generous heart, your
ardent hopes, lest the memorial be found one day by what you have
become. Rosalie, finding that "Lombard Street," unearthed from
lumber, in long after years, turned over the pages and from the
pages ghosts rushed up and filled the room, and filled the air,
and filled her heart, and filled her eyes; and she rent the book
across its perished binding and pushed it from her with both her
hands on to the fire and on to the flames in the fire.






CHAPTER III





Incredibly soon, so stealthy swift is time, came this last term of
Rosalie's at the Sultana's. Time does not play an open game. It's
of the cloak and dagger sort. It stalks and pounces. Rosalie was
astonished to think she was leaving; and now the time had come she
was sorry to be going. Not very sorry; very excited; but having
just enough regret to realise, on looking back, that she had been
very happy at school and to realise, actively, happiness in this
last term. One knows what it is. It's always like that. One always
was happy; one so seldom is. Happiness to be realised needs faint
perception of sadness as needs the egg the touch of salt to manifest
its flavour. Flashes of entertainment may enliven the most wretched
of us; but that's pleasure; that's not happiness. One comes to
know the only true and ideal happiness is happiness tinctured with
faintest, vaguest hint of tears. It is peace; and who knows peace
that has not come to it through storm, or knoweth storm ahead, or
in storm past hath not lost one that would have shared this peace?

So that girl's last term was (in her words) "tremendously jolly."
She was just eighteen, and she was leaving, and responsive to this
the harness of the school was drawn off her as at the paddock gate
the headstall from a colt. She was out of lessons. She did some
teaching of the younger girls. She was on terms with the mistresses.
She had the run of Keggo's room.

Such talks in Keggo's room.... She was out from the cove of
childhood; she was into the bay of youth; breasting towards the
sea of womanhood (that sea that's sailed by stars and by no chart);
and she was encountering tides that come to young mariners to perplex
them and Keggo could talk about such things with the experience
that so enraptures young mariners and of which young mariners are
at the same time so confidently contemptuous, so superiorly sceptical.
Nearer to press the simile, youth at the feet of experience is as
one, experienced, climbing a mountain with the young thing panting
behind. "Go on! Go on!" pants the growing young thing. "This is
ripping. Go on. Show the way. But I don't want your hand. I can
do it easily by myself--better." And one evening while Rosalie
stumblingly explained, and eagerly received, and sceptically doubted,
"But look here, Keggo," she cried, and stopped and blushed, abashed
at her use of the nickname.

Miss Keggs laughed. "Don't mind, Rosalie. Call me Keggo. I like
it. It's much more friendly. I'm very fond of you, Rosalie."

They were by the oil stove, Miss Keggs in her wicker armchair,
Rosalie on the floor, her back propped against Miss Keggs's knees.
One of Miss Keggs's hands was on Rosalie's shoulder and she moved
it to touch the girl's face. "Are you fond of me, Rosalie?"

Rosalie turned towards her and spoke impulsively. "Oh, awfully--Keggo."

The woman stooped and kissed the growing young thing, hugging her
strongly, pressing her lips upon the lips of Rosalie with a great
intensity. "Oh, I shall be sorry when you go, Rosalie."

"We can still be friends, Keggo dear."

Miss Keggs shook her head. "Ships that pass in the night."

"O Keggo!"

Miss Keggs smiled, a wintry smile. "O Rosalie!" she mimicked. She
sighed. "Oh, my dear, it's true--true! Don't you remember how the
lines go--


  'Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing;
  Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness.'


Just remember that in a few years. You'll hail again perhaps.
'O Keggo!' Or I--it is more likely--wilt hail 'O Rosalie!' Just
remember it then." Her hand came down to Rosalie and Rosalie took
it. It was so cold; and on her face a strained and beaten look as
though hand and face belonged to one that stood most chilled and
storm-beat upon the bridge, peering through the storm. Her fingers
made no motion responsive to Rosalie's warm touch. She said strangely,
as though it was to herself she spoke, "Does it mean anything to
you, Rosalie, a vision like that? Can you see a black and violent
night and a ship going by full speed, and one labouring, and through
the wind and the blackness a hail.--and gone, and the wreck left
foundering?"

Ah, that most generous and quickly moved and loving-Rosalie--then!
How she twisted to her knees and stretched her arms about that
poor Keggo, sitting there--so drooped! How readily into her eyes
her young and warm and ardent sympathies pressed the tears, their
flowers! How warm her words? How warmly spoken! "O Keggo! Keggo,
dear! Keggo, why do you talk like that? How can you? After all
the kindness you've shown me, accusing me that I'll forget and not
mind. Keggo, you shan't. You mustn't."

Then Keggo responded, catching her arms about Rosalie and straining
Rosalie to her as though here was some cable to hold against the
driving sea. "O Rosalie!"

And after a little Rosalie said, "You won't again say I ever shall
forget, or hail and pass by. Oh, that was cruel, Keggo!"

Keggo was gently crying. "Natural. Natural."

"Unnatural. Horrible. And you? Why do you say such things about
yourself? You didn't mean it? It's nothing? How can you ever be a
wreck, foundering?"

Keggo dried her eyes and by her voice seemed to put those things right
away. "No, nothing. Of course not. Darling girl, only this--you're
young--young and so of course you are going by full sail as young
things do. Full sail! O happy ship! Rosalie, go on telling. Go on
asking. I love it, Rosalie."

She was always "Keggo" after that; and the things that Rosalie told
and asked!

Such things! It is to be seen that now there were bursting into
blossom out of bud within that Rosalie those seeds planted in
her by the extraordinary ideas of her childhood. About men. First
and always predominating, about men as compared with women--their
wonder, their power, their importance, their infinite superiority;
then about men in their relations with women--their rather grand
and noisy ways that made Rosalie blink; their interfering presence
that spoilt lessons and spoilt walks; those sinister attributes of
theirs, arising somehow out of their freedom to do as they liked
in the world, that somehow left the world very hard for women.
Grotesque ideas, but masterful ideas, masterfully shaping the child
mind wherein they germinated; burrowing in clutchy roots; pressing
up in strong young saplings. Agreed the child is father of the man,
but much more the girl is mother of the woman. It is the man's part
to sow and ride away; conception is the woman's office and that
which she receives she tends to cherish and incorporate within
her. Of her body that function is her glory; of her mind it is her
millstone. Man always rides away, a tent dweller and an Arab, with
a horse and with the plains about him; woman is a dweller in a city
with a wall, a house dweller, storing her possessions about her in
her house, abiding with them, not to be sundered from them.

So with that Rosalie. Those childhood ideas of hers were grotesque
ideas but she had received them into her house and they remained
with her, shorn of their grotesqueness, as garish furniture may
be upholstered in a new pattern, but tincturing her life as the
appointments of a room will influence the mood of one that sits
therein. Father owned the world--all males had proprietorship in the
world under father--all men were worshipful and giants and genii.
That was the established perception and those its earliest images. The
perception remained, deepening, changing only in hue, as a viscid
liquid solidifies and darkens in a vessel over the fire. It remained,
persisted. Time but steadied the focus as the wise oculist, seeking
for his patient the perfect image, drops lenses in the frame through
which the vision chart is viewed. In a little the perfect image is
found. There was that Rosalie, come to maidenhood, come to the dizzy
edge of leaving school, with the perfect image of her persistent
obsession; with the belief no longer that men were magicians
having the world for their washpot and women for their footstool,
but unquestionably that they "had a better time" than women and
that they secured this "better time" by virtue of their independence.

"And, Keggo," (she is explaining it) "I'm going to be like that.
I'm going to be what a man can be. Why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't
a woman?" She paused and then went on. "Why, that's the thing that's
been with me all my life, ever since I can remember. I've always
known that men were the creatures. Always. Since I was so high. Oh,
I used to have the most ridiculous ideas about them. You'd scream,
Keggo. And I've always had the same attitude towards them--towards
them as contrasted with women, I mean. First awe, then envy, then,
since I've been growing up here, just as having a desirable position
in life, as having the desirable position in life, independence,
a career, work, freedom, a goal--yes, and a goal that's always
and always a little bit in front of you, always something better.
That's the thing. That's the thing, Keggo. Just look at the other
side. Take a case in point. Take my painful cousin, Laetitia, sweet
but in lots of ways very painful. What's her goal? A good match!
A good match! Did you ever hear anything so futile and sickening?
Sickening in itself, but I'll tell you what's really sickening
about it--why, that she'll get it--get her goal and then it's done,
over, finished, won. Settle down then and get fat. Oh, I don't want
a goal I can win. I want a goal I can't win. One that's always just
in front."

She suddenly realised the intensity of her voice and laughed and
shook her head sideways and back. She had just recently put her hair
up and it still felt funny and tight and the laugh and the shake
eased away the tightness of voice and of hair. She said thoughtfully,
"You know, I believe I'm rather like a man in many ways, in points
of view. It's through always thinking them better, I daresay. The
ideas I've had about them!" and she laughed again. She said slowly,
"Though mind you, Keggo, they are better in many ways. They can get
away from things. They don't stick about on one thing. And they're
violent, not fussing. When they're angry they bawl and hit and it's
over and they forget it. They don't just nag on and on. Oh, yes,
they're better."

She extended her palms to the oil flame, and watching the
X-ray-like effects of the light and shadow upon her fingers, she
added indifferently, as one idly letting drop a remark requiring
no comment, negligently with the voice of one saying "Tomorrow is
Tuesday," or "It's mutton today,"--"Of course they're beasts," she
added.

"Of course they're beasts." It was the adjusted image to which she
had brought that other perception of men which, running parallel
with the perception of their superior position, had permeated her
childhood years.






CHAPTER IV





She's left the school! She's living in the splendid house in
Pilchester Square looking for a post!

She's found a post! She's private secretary to Mr. Simcox!

She's left the splendid house in Pilchester Square! She's living an
independent life! She's going to Mr. Simcox's office, her office,
every day, just like a man! She's living on her own salary in a
boarding house in Bayswater!

What jumps! One clutches, as at flying papers in a whirlwind, at
a stable moment in which to pin her down and describe her as she
jumps. One can't. The thing's too breathless. It's a maelstrom.
It's an earthquake. It's a deluge. It's a boiling pot. It's youth.
What it must be to live it! One thing pouring on to another so that
it's impossible anywhere to pick hold of a bit that isn't changing
into something else even as it is examined. That's youth all over.
Always and all the time all change. What it must be to live it!

What it must be! Why, when youth comes bursting out of tutelage
there's not a stable thing beneath its feet nor above its head
a sky that stays the same for two hours together! Every stride's
a stepping-stone that tilts and throws you; every dawn a sudden
midnight even while it breaks, and every night a blinding brilliance
when it's darkest. New faces, new places, new dresses, new dishes;
new foes, new friends; new tasks, new triumphs; never a pause,
never a platform; every day a year and every year a day--not life
on a firm round world but life in the heart of a whirling avalanche.
How youth can live it! And all the time, all the time while poor,
dear youth is hurtling through it, there's age, instead of streaming
sympathy like oil upon those boiling waters, standing in slippered
safety, in buttoned dignity, in obese repose, bawling at tumbling
youth, "Why can't you settle down! Why can't you settle down! Why
do you behave like that? Why can't you do as I do? Why can't you be
like your wise and sober Uncle Forty? Or like your good and earnest
Auntie Fifty? Why can't you behave like your pious grandmother?
Why can't you imitate your noble grandfather? Oh, grrrr-r, why
can't you, you impious, unnatural, ill-mannered, irresponsive,
irresponsible exasperating young nuisance, you!" Is it any wonder
poor youth bawls back, or feels and behaves like bawling back, "How
to goodness can I behave like my infernal uncle or my maddening
aunt when I'm whirling along head over heels in the middle of a
roaring avalanche?"

Oh, poor youth, that all have lived but none remembers!

One clings, faut au mieux, to the intention to tell of her life only
the things in her life that contributed to her record, as records
are judged. There shall be enormous omissions. They shall be excused
by vital insertions.

She shall be glimpsed, first, in the splendid house in Pilchester
Square, in the desperate business that getting a place for a woman
in a business house was when women were in business houses far
more rare than are silk hats in the City in 1922. It was desperate.
Uncle Pyke and Uncle Pyke's friends were the only channel of
opportunity; and Uncle Pyke and Uncle Pyke's friends refused to
be a channel of opportunity. They had never heard of such a thing
and they desired to bathe in their soup and smack over their wine
and not be troubled with such a thing.

Aunt Belle rallied them and baited them and told them they were "great
big grumpy things"; and Aunt Belle, in her crowded drawing-room,
loved talking about the search for work and did talk about it. "Has
to earn her own living," Aunt Belle would chatter, "and is going
into business! Oh, yes, ever so many girls who have to earn their
own living are going into business now. She'll wear a nice tailormade
coat and skirt and carry a little satchel and flick about on the
tops of buses, in the City at nine and out again at six and a nice
plain wholesome lunch with a glass of milk in a tea shop. Oh, it's
wonderful what girls who have to earn their own living do nowadays.
Quite right, you know. Quite right, (for them). Come over here,
Rosalie. Come over here, dear child, and tell Mrs. Roodle-Hoops
what you are going to do. The dear child!"

But nothing done.

Just that glimpse and then comes Mr. Simcox.

Mr. Simcox was first met by Rosalie while walking with Aunt Belle
and beautiful cousin Laetitia in the Cromwell Road. He came along
carrying a letter in his hand with the obvious air of one who will
forget to post it if he puts it in his pocket and probably will
forget to do so in any case. He was as obviously "a man of about
fifty-six" that curiously precise figure, neither a ten nor a
five, always used for men who look as Mr. Simcox looked and always
continued to look while Rosalie knew him, and probably always had
looked. Men of "about fifty-six"--one never says "about thirty-six"
or "about sixty-six"; it would be "about thirty-five" or "about
seventy"--men of "about fifty-six" are almost certainly born at
that age and with that appearance and they seem to continue in it
to their graves.

Mr. Simcox was like that, and was short and had two little bunchy
grey whiskers, and wore always a pepper and salt jacket suit,
unbuttoned, the pockets of which always bulged and the skirts of
which, containing the pockets, always swayed and flapped. When he
talked he was always talking--if that is understood--and when he
was busy he was always frantically busy and looking at the clock
or at his watch as if it were going to explode at a certain rapidly
approaching hour and he must at all costs be through with what he
was doing before it did explode. He talked in very rapid jerks,
always seeming to be about to come to rest and then instantaneously
bounding off again, rather like a man bounding along stepping-stones,
red-hot stepping-stones that each time burnt his feet and set him
flying off again.

He had been in the Bombay house of a firm of indigo merchants
and there had known Aunt Belle and Uncle Pyke. He had retired and
settled in London and he now came very briskly up to Aunt Belle,
to Rosalie and to beautiful Laetitia, greeting them and bursting
into full stream of chatter while he was yet some distance away;
and, having been introduced to Rosalie and snatched at her hand
precisely as if doing so while shooting in midair between one red-hot
stepping-stone and the next, whizzed presently to "I really came
out to post a letter" and flapped the letter in the air as if it
were a bothersome thing stuck to his fingers and refusing absolutely
to be stuffed into a post-box.

"Why, there's a pillar-box just there; you've just passed it,"
cried Rosalie.

"Why, so there is!" exclaimed Mr. Simcox, jumping round to stare
at the pillar-box as if it had stretched out an arm and given him
a sudden punch in the back, and then spinning towards Rosalie and
staring at her rather as if he suspected her of having put the
pillar-box there while he was not looking; and while Mr. Simcox
was so exclaiming and so doing Rosalie had said, "Do let me just
post it for you. Do let me," and had snapped the obstinate letter
from his fingers, and posted it and was back again smiling at Mr.
Simcox, whom she rather liked and who reminded her very much of a
jack-in-the-box.

Indeed with his quick ways, his shortness, his bushy little grey
whiskers and his pepper and salt suit with its flapping pockets,
Mr. Simcox was very like one of those funny little jack-in-the-boxes
they used to sell. He said to her, regarding her with very apparent
pleasure and esteem, "Well, that's very nice of you. That really
is very nice of you. And it's most wonderful. It is indeed. Do you
know, I must have walked more than a mile looking for a letter-box
and I daresay I should have walked another mile and then forgotten
it and taken the letter home again." He addressed Aunt Belle: "It's
a most astonishing thing, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, but I cannot post a
letter. I positively cannot post a single letter. When I say single,
I do not mean I can post no letter at all. No, no. Far from it.
I mean I can post no letter singly, by itself, solus. My daily
correspondence, my office batch, I take out in a bundle, perhaps in
a table basket. That is simple. But a single letter--as you see, a
clever young lady like this has to find a box for me or I might carry
the thing for days together. Astonishing that, you know. Astonishing,
annoying, and mind you, sometimes serious and embarrassing."

"Why, you busy, busy person, you!" cried Aunt Belle with her
customary air towards a man of shaking her finger at him. "You
very busy person! Fancy a basket full of correspondence! Why what
a heap you must have!"

Mr. Simcox said he had indeed a heap. "Sometimes I think more than
I can manage."

"Indeed," agreed Aunt Belle, "you don't seem to have much time to
spare. Why, I haven't seen you in my drawing-room for quite a month
("You busy little creature, you," expressed without being stated).
I expect you're getting very rich and disagreeable." ("You rich
little rascal, you!")

Mr. Simcox declared that as to that his business wasn't one to get
rich at. "In no sense. Oh, no, in no sense. It keeps me occupied.
It gives me an interest. That's all. No more than that." As to Mrs.
Pyke Pounce's delightful drawing-room, most certainly he had been
there less than a month ago and most certainly he would present
himself again on the very next opportunity. To-morrow, was it? He
would without fail present himself there tomorrow, "and I hope,"
said Mr. Simcox, taking his leave, "I hope I may have the pleasure
of seeing my postmistress there again." He smiled very cordially at
Rosalie and went flapping away up the street at the pace and with
the air, not of one who had come out to post a letter and had posted
it, but of one who had come out to post a letter, had dropped it,
and was flying back to look for it.

"Oh, isn't he an ugly little monster!" cried Aunt Belle, resuming
the walk.

"But I think he's nice," said Rosalie. "What is his business, Aunt
Belle?"

Aunt Belle hadn't an idea. "He's an agent," said Aunt Belle, "but
an agent for what I'm sure I don't know. He's a very mysterious,
fussy, funny little person. We knew him in Bombay where he had a
very good position, but he retired and what he does now I'm sure
I can't say. But he's very busy. You heard him say how busy he is.
Rosalie, he might know of something for you. We'll ask him, dear
child. The funny, ugly little monster! We'll ask him. He might
help."

He did help. A very short while afterwards, Rosalie received the
appointment of Private Secretary to Mr. Simcox; twenty-five shillings
a week; one pound five shillings a week! Office hours ten to five!
Saturdays ten to one! Holiday a fortnight a year! A man's work! A
man's weekly salary! A man's office hours! The ecstasy of it! The
ecstasy!

The matter with Mr. Simcox was that, in India a man of affairs,
in England he found himself a man of no affairs and a man who had
"lost touch." On a leave from the Bombay house of the indigo firm
he had been prevailed upon by his mother and his maiden sister
to remain at home and look after them and he had done it and gone
on doing it, and they had died and he had never married, and he
had now no relatives, and by this and by that (as he told Rosalie
early in her installation) he had dropped out of friendships and,
as he expressed it "lost touch." He owned and occupied one of those
enormous houses in Bayswater. It had been his mother's and he lived
on in it after her death and the death of his sister, alone with a
housekeeper. The housekeeper resided in the vast catacombs of the
basement of the enormous house; Mr. Simcox resided in the immense
reception rooms, miles above, of the first floor; the three suites
above him, scowling gloomily across a square at the twin mausoleums
opposite, were unoccupied and un-visited; on the first floor Mr.
Simcox had his office. The business done in this office, which
Rosalie was now to assist, and why it was done, was in this wise
and was thus explained to Rosalie.

Mr. Simcox, more than ever dropped out and more than ever having
lost touch after the deaths of his sister and mother, found himself
irked more than anything else by the absence of correspondence.
He had been accustomed in India to a big receipt of letters--a big
dhak, as he called it, using the Hindustani word--now he received
no letters at all; and he told Rosalie that when you are in the
habit of getting a regular daily post, its gradual falling off and
then its complete cessation is one of the most melancholy things
that can befall a man. A nice bunch of letters in the morning, he
said, is like a cold bath to a young man, a stimulant and an appetiser;
and a similar packet by the night delivery is an entertainment to
look forward to from sunset till it arrives and the finest possible
digestive upon which to go to bed. Mr. Simcox found himself cut off
from both these necessities of a congenial life and it depressed
him beyond conception. Dressing in the morning he would hear the
postman come splendidly rat tatting along the square and would
hold his breath for that glorious thunder to come echoing up from
his own front door--and it never did. Only the sound of the footsteps
came, hurrying past--always.

Set to his solitary dinner in the evening, again would come along
that glorious, reverberating music, and again Mr. Simcox would
hold his breath as it approached and again--! Oh, particularly in
the winter, it was awful, Mr. Simcox told Rosalie. Awful; she wouldn't
believe how awful it was. In the winter, in the dark nights, there
is, Mr. Simcox said, about the sound of the postman banging along
the doors something that is the sheer essence of all the mystery,
and all the poetry, and all the life, and all the comfort, and all
the light and all the warmth in the world. Often on winter nights
Mr. Simcox would get up quickly from the table (He couldn't help
it) and go tiptoe (Why tiptoe? He didn't know. You had to. It was
the mystery and the aching atmosphere of the thing) tiptoe across
the room to the window, and draw an inch of the heavy curtain and
peer out into the darkness and towards the music. There would be
the little round gleam of the postman's lantern, bobbing along as
he hurried. And flick! it was gone into a doorway, and rat-tat,
flick, and there it was again--coming! Flick, rat-tat! Flick,
flick, rat-tat! Coming, coming! Growing larger, growing brighter,
growing louder! Next door now. They always get it next door. Flick,
rat-tat! What a crasher! You can feel it echo! Flick! Now then!
Now then! How it gleams! He's stopped! He's looking at his letters!
He's coming in! He is--ah, he's passed; he's gone; it's over;
nothing... nothing for here.... Rat-tat! That's next door. The party
wall shakes. The lustres on the mantelpiece shake. Mr. Simcox's
hands shake. He sits down, pushes his plate away....

It is absurd; it is ridiculous, of course it is; but it was pathetic,
it was moving, as it was received from Mr. Simcox by that young
and most warm-hearted Rosalie. Her eyes positively were caused to
blink as she listened. She had an exact vision of that funny little
jack-in-the-box figure up from the table and tiptoeing across the
enormous dining room in his little pepper and salt suit with the
pockets swaying, not flapping, as he trod along, and opening that
inch of the heavy curtain and pressing out his gaze through the
black window pane, and watching the gleam and the flick and then
the crash and the gleam again, and then holding his breath and
hearing his heart go thump, and then dropping the curtain, and
back again, with his hands shaking a little and hearing the lustres
tinkle....

Yes, very moving to that Rosalie in her youth and warmth. She had
actually to touch her nose (high up, between her eyes) with her
handkerchief and she said, "Oh, Mr. Simcox.... Yes, and then what?"

"Then what? Ah! 'Then what' is this." They were seated in Mr.
Simcox's great office on the ground floor. The office of a man
of many affairs. A very large writing table furnished with every
conceivable facility for writing, not only note papers and envelopes
racked up in half a dozen sizes, but sealing waxes in several
hues, labels, string, "In" basket, "Out" basket, "Pending Decision"
basket, all sorts of pens, all sorts of pencils, wafers, clips,
scales, letter weights, rulers--the table obviously of a man to
whom correspondence was a devotional, an engrossing, an exact art,
and an art practised on an expansive, an impressive, and a lordly
scale. There were also in the office a very large plain table on
which were spread newspapers, a basket containing clippings from
newspapers, an immense blue chalk for marking newspapers and a very
long, also a very short, pair of scissors for cutting out clippings
from newspapers. A range of filing cabinets stood against one wall;
a library of directories and catalogues occupied shelves against
another wall.

"'Then what' is this," said Mr. Simcox, indicating these impressive
appointments of the room with a wave of his hand. "You ask me 'then
what?' 'Then what' is all this. 'Then what' has grown now to be
you. I'll tell you."

It was this--the oddest, most eccentric notion (not that Rosalie
it thought so). Mr. Simcox, cut off from letters, had determined
that he must get letters. He would get letters. If the postman
would not come of himself (so to speak) then he must be forced to
come. And Mr. Simcox set about forcing him to come by answering
advertisements. Not employment advertisements; no; the advertisements
to which Mr. Simcox re-plied were the advertisements that offered
to send you something for nothing--that implored you to permit them
to send you something for nothing. They are common objects of the
periodical press. Every paper is stuffed with them. "Write for free
samples." "Catalogues." "Trial packet sent post free on application."
"Write for our beautifully illustrated art brochure." "Descriptive
booklet by return." "Write for full particulars." "Free sample bottle
sufficient for seven days' trial." "Approval gladly. Postpaid."
"Plans and particulars of the sole agents." "Superbly printed art
volume on receipt of postcard."

The advertisement columns of every paper are stuffed with them
and soon the letter-box of Mr. Simcox was stuffed with them. The
postman who never stopped at Mr. Simcox's house now never missed
Mr. Simcox's house. He went on a lighter and a brisker man after
having dealt with Mr. Simcox's house. The agitation with which his
approach was heard was now exchanged for a superb confidence as his
approach was heard. The deliveries that for Mr. Simcox had never
been deliveries were now, not deliveries, but avalanches. They
roared into the letter-box of Mr. Simcox. They cascaded upon the
floor of the hall of Mr. Simcox.

A mail thus composed does not perhaps sound interesting. Mr. Simcox,
once he had got into the full swing of the thing, discovered it to
be profoundly and exhaustively interesting. It possessed in the highest
degree the two primary essentials of a really good mail,--surprise
and variety. There would always be two or three fascinating little
parcels, there would always be two or three handsome packets, there
would always be two or three imposing looking letters. No common
correspondence could possibly have had the number of attractively
boxed gifts, the amount of handsomely printed literary and il-lustrated
matter, and certainly not the unfailing persistency of flow, that
constituted the correspondence of Mr. Simcox.

The mine once discovered proved to be a mine inexhaustible and
containing lodes or galleries of new and unsuspected wealth. Mr.
Simcox took in but two daily papers, and two penny weekly papers,
and they might well have sufficed. But an appetite whetted and an
eye opened they did not suffice. There thundered from the Bayswater
free library a positive babel of cries from advertisers in the score
of journals there displayed, howling for Mr. Simcox graciously to
permit them to contribute their toll to his letter-box; and there
were at the news agents periodicals catering for every specialised
class of the community and falling over themselves to put before
Mr. Simcox the full range of the mysteries, the luxuries and
the necessities of every trade and profession and pursuit, from
shipbuilding to cycling and from ironmongery to the ownership of
castles, moors, steam yachts and salmon fisheries.

Mr. Simcox, entirely happy, one of the busiest men that might be found
in the metropolis, struck out new lines. Hitherto he had received
his correspondence interestedly and pleasurably but passively. He
began to take it up actively and sharply. He began to write back,
either graciously approving or very sharply criticising his samples,
his specimens and his free trials; and the advertisers responded
voluminously, either abjectly with regret and enclosing further
samples for Mr. Simcox's esteemed trial, or abjectly with delight
and soliciting the very great favour of utilising Mr. Simcox's
esteemed letter for publicity purposes. This, however, Mr. Simcox,
courteously but firmly, invariably refused to permit.

The engagement of Rosalie was a development of Mr. Simcox's hobby as
natural as the development of any other hobby from rabbit breeding
to china collecting. The craze intensifies, the scope is enlarged. To
have a secretary made Mr. Simcox's mail and the work that produced
his mail even more real than already it had become to him. Following
up the personal touch that had been discovered by the criticism of
samples, Mr. Simcox had opened up a line that produced the personal
touch in most intimate degree: personal touch with schools and
with insurance companies. He created for himself sons, daughters,
nephews, nieces, wards. He endowed them, severally, with ages,
with backwardness, with brilliancy, with robustness, with delicacy,
with qualities that were immature and required development, with
absence of qualities that were desirable and required implanting,
with unfortunate tendency to qualities that were undesirable and
needed repression and nipping in the bud. He placed these children,
thus handicapped or endowed, before the principals of selected
schools; he desired that terms and full particulars might be placed
before him to assist him in the anxious task of right selection.
They were placed before him. "Your backward nephew Robin" (to take
a single example) engaged the personal attention of preparatory
schoolmasters from Devonshire to Cumberland and from Norfolk to
Carnarvon. Similarly with insurance companies. Again dependents and
friends were created, by the dozen, by Mr. Simcox. Male and female
created he them, cumbered with all imaginable risks, and darkly
brooding upon all manner of contingencies; and male and female,
cumbered and perplexed, they were studied and advised upon by
insurance companies earnest beyond measure to show Mr. Simcox what
astounding and unparalleled benefits could be obtained for them.

At the time when Rosalie joined him, Mr. Simcox's attention was in
much greatest proportion devoted to this development of his pursuit.
Under the instruction of a friend, long since dropped out and
lost, who had held a considerable position in a leading assurance
company, he had acquired a sound working knowledge of the principles
and mysteries of insurance. The subject had greatly interested
him. In the phrase he used to Rosalie he had "taken it up"; and in
the phrase that so often sequels and rounds off a thing suddenly
"taken up" he had suddenly "dropped it." He now, by way of the new
development of his correspondence, approached it again. It received
him as a former habitation receives a returned native. Mr. Simcox
(if the metaphor may be pursued) roamed all about the familiar
rooms and corridors of the house of the principles and mysteries
of insurance. His knowledge of its possibilities enabled him to
develop an astonishing ingenuity in creating cases ripe and yearning
for the benefits of provision against contingencies, and as he very
easily was able to prove to Rosalie, and found immense delight in
proving, he had under his finger, that is to say in his exquisitely
arranged filing cabinets, also in his head, a range of insurance
companies' literature which enabled him to work out for any conceivable
case the most suitable office or offices and the finest possible
cover for his risks. "Different companies specialize," said Mr.
Simcox, "in different classes of risk. A man should no more walk
into one of the leading offices just because it happens to be one
of the leading offices and there take out his policy or policies
than he should walk into and take for occupation the first vacant
house he sees, merely because it is, as a house, a good house. It
may be a most excellent house but it may not be in the least the
house most suitable to his requirements."

Rosalie nodded intelligently. "But how is a man to find out, Mr.
Simcox?"

"Why, I suppose only by going round to every company and choosing the
best, just as I make out and send around these cases of mine. But
of course no one does that--the trouble for one thing, and ignorance
for another, and inability to realise their real requirements and
to state them clearly if they do realise them for a third. That's
what it is."

Rosalie's intelligent nodding had not ceased. She had a trick, when
Mr. Simcox was explaining things to her, of maintaining, with eyes
fixed widely upon him, a slow, affirmative movement of her head
rather as though she were some engine, and her head the dial,
absorbing power from a flow of energy. The dial never indicated
repletion. Mr. Simcox delighted to talk to Rosalie, to watch
that grave movement of her head, and to hear the short occasional
"Why's?" and comments that came like little spurts or quivers as
of the engine in initial throbbings pulsing the power it stored.

She was absorbing power. The months were going on. The earlier
initiation into Mr. Simcox's business might have had a tinge of
disappointment were it not that, whatever the nature of her work,
manifestly work it was, paid for, with regular hours, with an office
to attend, such as a man might do. The tinge of disappointment, if
she had suffered it, would have stung out of the thought: Where,
in this manufactured correspondence, in this pretence at a business
which was in fact no business at all, where in all this was Lombard
Street? Where the romance and mystery of finance? Where the touch
with the power that was made in countinghouses and with the exercise
of the power exerted from those countinghouses?

But it happened for Rosalie, first, that this thought could not
come because she was too busy with the glorious novelty of being
in an office and learning office ways; then, when the novelty
had worn, that it could not come because a new and a real element
arrived to nullify it. In the early days there was no realisation
of sham because there was the real business, to herself, of learning
business methods and the whole theory and practice of office
routine. She could have had no better instructor than Mr. Simcox,
she could have had no better training than the handling, the sorting
and the filing of his curious and various correspondence. She had
become an efficient and a singularly apt and keen office clerk
when, more leisured because she had mastered her duties, she might
first have had time for realisation that Lombard Street was not
here nor all the romance and mystery with which she had invested
the power of countinghouses within a thousand miles of this house
of most elaborate pretence. And then, at once to prevent that
realisation and to dissipate its cause, came Lombard Street to her
in Mr. Simcox's new absorption in (to her) the mysteries and the
romance and the astounding possibilities of the business of insurance.
How the mammoth companies, whose names soon were as household words
to Rosalie, accumulated their enormous funds and invested them;
how, while provisioning for to-day, they must calculate against
liabilities falling due in a to-morrow generations ahead; how they
would put their money into property the leases of which would fall
in and the estate become marketable again perhaps a hundred years
hence, when officers of the company yet unborn would be looking to
the prudence of those now reigning to maintain the inflowing tide;
how risks were calculated and vital statistics and chances and
averages studied--all this, delightedly and delightfully narrated
by Mr. Simcox (watching that gravely nodding head and those wide
intelligent eyes) was sheer fascination to the mind that had found
romance and mystery in "Lombard Street" as commonly romance and
mystery are found in poetry and music.

Then one day she took a step towards applying the fascination that
she found.

It was the day of the conversation that has been recorded. How,
Rosalie had asked, was the seeker after insurance to find the
policies best suited to his case? Rosalie had asked; and had been
told--he must go round but he never does; he must know what there
is to be had but he never does know; he must realise exactly what
he really wants but he never does realise it; and if he does realise
it he must be able to state it clearly but he never can state it
clearly.

Mr. Simcox, detailing this, permitted himself an amused contempt.
The public were ignoramuses, mere children; they knew nothing
whatever about insurance.

Rosalie said in a voice consonant with the grave measure of her
nods: "Of course, if it was a man, as you said, looking for a house,
he'd go to an agent. A house agent would tell him of houses best
suited to his needs that he could choose between. Well, there are
insurance agents. You've told me about them."

"Ah, but not the same thing, not the same thing," corrected Mr.
Simcox. "An insurance agent, the ordinary insurance agent, is agent
for a particular company. He only knows what his own company can
do and he only wants his own company to do it. That's no good to
the kind of man in the position we're speaking of. He wants some
one who can tell him what all the companies will do for him. Some
one who can hear his case, analyse it, put it before him in the
right light and advise him the best way of placing it. That's what
he wants. Exactly the same as these letters I send out--as you and
I send out, I should say. Why, I've had practical examples of it.
There was a young fellow I met at your aunt's house. There've been
three or four cases of it for that matter but this happens to be
some one you know--"

He proceeded to tell her of a visitor at Aunt Belle's, a young man
home on leave from the Indian army and recently married, with whom
he had got into conversation on the subject of insurance and had
most ably helped. The young man had a certain policy in view. Mr.
Sim-cox had put an infinitely better before him. "If he had come
to me before his marriage when he was first taking out a policy in
his wife's favour, I could have saved him and gained her hundreds,
literally hundreds," said Mr. Simcox. "He'd made a most awful mess
of the business. As it was I helped him very considerably. He was
very grateful, devilish grateful. He went straight to an agent of
the office I recommended and did it."

"There must be hundreds like him that would be grateful," said
Rosalie.

"Thousands," said Mr. Simcox. "Tens of thousands. Every single soul
who insures, you may say."

"Who got the commission?" said Rosalie.

"The agent, of course," said Mr. Simcox.

"Oh," said Rosalie.

"Why?" said Mr. Simcox.

"Nothing," said Rosalie. "Only 'oh '."






CHAPTER V





There's much virtue in an If, says Touchstone; and there's much
virtue in an "Oh"--a wise, a thoughtful, a speculative, a discerning
"Oh" such as that "Oh" pronounced by Rosalie to Mr. Simcox's
information that agents, and not he, drew the commissions for the
insurance policies which, out of his knowledge and experience, he
had advised. There followed from that "Oh" its plain outcome: her
suggestion to Mr. Simcox of why not make a business, a real business,
of expert advice upon insurance, and (out of the make-believe
intercourse with schools) a business, a real business, of expert
advice upon schools? And there shall follow also from that "Oh" a
sweeping use of the intention that has been mentioned to tell only
of her life that which contributed to her life. We'll fix her stage
from first to last, then see her walk upon it.

This was her stage: Her suggestion was adopted. It has, astonishingly
soon, astonishing success. Advice upon insurance, advice upon
schools, commissions from each, are found wonderfully to work in
together, each bringing clients to the other. Aunt Belle's swarms
of friends, their swarms of friends, the swarms of friends of
those swarms of friends, and so on, snowball fashion, are the first
nucleus of the thing. It succeeds. It grows. Real offices are taken.
"Simcox's." Advertisements, clerks, banking-accounts. Appearance of
Mr. Sturgiss, partner in Field and Company--"Field's"--the bankers
and agents. Field's is a private bank. Its business is principally
with persons resident in the East, soldiers, civil servants,
tea planters, East India merchants. Field's is in Lombard Street.
(Lombard Street!) Later Field's opens a West End office. Field's
is frequently asked to advise its clients and their wives on all
manner of domestic matters,--schools for their children, holiday
homes, homes for clients over on leave, insurance, investment,
whatnot, a hundred things. Comes to this Sturgiss, partner in
Field's, an idea of great possibilities in this advisory business
if developed as might be developed and run as might be run.
Tremendously attracted by Rosalie as the person for the job. Makes
her an offer. She declines it. Mr. Simcox's death. Sturgiss comes
along again. Ends in Rosalie going to Field's. Lombard Street! Room
of her own in the big offices. Glass partitioned. Huge mahogany
table. Huge mahogany desk. Field's open the West End office, in
Pall Mall. More convenient for wives of clients. Rosalie is moved
there. Manager of her own side of the business. The war comes.
Sturgiss goes out. Other important officers of the bank go out.
Her importance increases very much in other sides of the bank's
business than her own. Press scents her out and writes her up.
"The only woman banker." "Brilliant woman financier." Contributes
articles to the reviews. Very much a leading woman of her day. Very
much a most remarkable woman.

That's her stage. Thus she walked upon it:

The beginning part--that tumult of youth, those dizzy jumps that we
have seen her in--was frightfully exciting, frightfully absorbing.
She was so tremendously absorbed, so terrifically intent, so
tremendously eager, that the transition from the Sultana's to Aunt
Belle's, and the start with Mr. Simcox, and the transition from
Aunt Belle's to independence in the boarding house, was done with
scarcely a visit--and then a rather grudged and rather impatient
visit--to the rectory home.

No, the absorption was too profound for much of that: indeed, for
much of home in any form. Letters came from Rosalie's mother three
and four times a week. In the beginning, when fresh left school
and at Aunt Belle's, Rosalie always kissed the dear handwriting on
the envelope, and kissed the dear signature before returning the
letters to their envelopes; and she would sit up late at night
writing enormously long and passionately devoted letters in reply.
But she wasn't going back; she wasn't going down; no, not even for
a week-end, "my own darling and beloved little mother," until she
had found an employment and was established on her own feet, "just
like one of the boys." Then she would come, oh, wouldn't she just!
She would have an annual holiday, "just as men have," and she would
come down to the dear, beloved old rectory and she would give her
own sweet, adored little mother the most wonderful time she ever
could imagine!

Rosalie would sit up late at night writing these most loving letters,
pages and pages long; and her mother's letters (which always arrived
by the first post) she would carry about with her all day and read
again before answering.

And yet....

The fond intention in thus carrying them on her person instead of
bestowing them in her writing case was to read them a dozen times
in the opportunities the day would afford. And yet... Somehow it
was not done. The day of the receipt of the very first letter was
generous of such opportunities and at each of them the letter was
remembered... but not drawn forth. Rosalie did not attempt to analyse
why not. Her repression, each time, of the suggestion that the
letter should now be taken out and read again was not a deliberate
repression. She merely had a negative impulse towards the action and
accepted it; and so negligible was the transaction in her record
of her thoughts, so mere a cypher in the petty cash of the day's
ledger, that in the evening when, gone up to bed, the letter was
at last drawn out and kissed and read and answered, and then kissed
and read again, no smallest feeling of remorse was suffered by her
to reflect that the intended reading in the dozen opportunities of
the day had not been done.

And yet... Was it, perhaps, this mere acceptance of a negative
impulse, a cloud no bigger than the size of a man's hand upon the
horizon of her generous impulses? There is this to be admitted--that
the letters, accumulating, began to bulk inconveniently in her
writing case. What a lot dear mother wrote! Room might be made for
them by removing or destroying the letters from friends who had
left the Sultana's with her, but about those letters there was
a peculiar attraction; they were from other emancipated One Onlys
who watched with admiration the progress in her wonderful adventure
of brilliant, unconventional Rosalie, and it was nice thus to be
watched. Or room for her mother's letters might be made by removing
or destroying letters that began to amass directly touching her
desire for employment--from city friends of Uncle Pyke, from Mr.
Simcox. But, no, unutterably precious those! Unutterably precious,
too, of course, those accumulating bundles of letters from her
dear mother; but precious on a different plane: they belonged to
her heart; it was to her head, to the voice in her that cried "Live
your life--your life--yours!" that these others belonged.

She was tingling to that voice one night, turning over the employment
letters; and, tingling, put her mother's letters from her case to
her box.

Yes, upon the horizon of her generous impulses perhaps the tiniest
possible cloud. And then perhaps enlarging. You see, she was so very
full of her intentions, of her prospects. She had read somewhere
that the perfect letter to one absent from home was a letter stuffed
with home gossip,--who had been seen and who was doing what, and
what had been had for dinner yesterday and whence obtained. But she
did not subscribe to that view. She was from home and her mother's
letters were minutest record of the home life; but she began to
skip those portions to read "afterwards." One day the usual letter
was there at breakfast and she put it away unopened so as to have
"a really good, jolly read" of it "afterwards." In a little after
that she got the habit of always, and for the same reason (she told
herself) keeping the letters till the evening. One day she gave the
slightest possible twitch of her brows at seeing the very, very
familiar handwriting. She had had a letter only the previous day
and two running was not expected: more than that, this previous
letter had slightly vexed her by its iteration of the longing to
see her and by very many closely written lines of various little
troubles. She was a little impatient at the idea of a further edition
of it so soon. She forgot to open it that night. She remembered
it when she was in bed; but she was in bed then... When, next day,
she read the letter it was, again, an iteration of the longing to
see her and, again, more, much more, of the little troubles: the
residue was of the gossipy gossip that Rosalie already had formed
the habit of skipping till "afterwards." Altogether a vexatious
letter.

After that, when the letters were frequent, it was frequent for
Rosalie to greet the sight of them with just the swiftest, tiniest
little contraction of her brows. Nothing at all really. Meaning
virtually nothing and of itself absolutely nothing. Possessing
a significance only by contrast, as a fine shade in silk or wool
will not disclose a pronounced hue until contrasted with another.
The contrast here, to give the thing significance, was between
that swiftest, tiniest contraction of the brows at the sight of her
mother's letters and the eager spring to them, the quick snatching
up, and the impulsive pressing to her lips when first those letters
began to come. Likewise answering them, that had been an impulsive
outpouring and brimming over, now was a very slightly laboured
squeezing. The pen, before, had flooded love upon the page. Now
the pen halted, paused, and had to think of expressions that would
give pleasure.

The change did not happen at a blow. If it had, Rosalie would have
noticed it. It slipped imperceptibly from stage to stage and she
did not notice it.






CHAPTER VI





There was a thing she said about men once (in the boarding house
now) and often repeated. "They're very fond of saying women are
cats," she once said. "Fools! It's men that are the cat tribe:
tame cats, tabby cats, wild cats, Cheshire cats, tomcats and stray
cats! Aren't they just? And look at them--tame cats are miserable
creatures, tabby cats the sloppy creatures, wild cats ferocious
creatures, Cheshire cats fool creatures, tomcats disgusting
creatures, stray cats--on the whole the stray cats are the least
objectionable, they are bearable: at the right time and for a short
time."

This characterisation of men as Rosalie, in sequent development of
her attitude towards men, had come to regard them was delivered to
the girl with whom (for cheapness) her room in the boarding house
was shared. Rosalie went from Aunt Belle's to this boarding house
to assert and to achieve her greater independence. A man, Rosalie
debated, would have gone into bachelor rooms; but young women did
not go into bachelor rooms in those days and the singularity of
Rosalie's attitude towards life is rather well presented in the
fact that she never set herself against conventions inhibitory of
her sex merely because they were inhibitory of her sex. When the
years brought those violent scenes and emotions of what has been
called the suffragette campaign, Rosalie, who might have been
expected to be a militant of the militants, took no part nor even
interest in it whatever. She did not desire the privileges of men
merely because they were the privileges of men; she desired a status
which happened to be in the right of men and she went towards it
without seeking to change the established order of things, just as,
from one field desiring a flower in another field, she would have
gone to fetch it without changing her dress.

A man, anxious for full independence, would have gone into bachelor
rooms; but young women did not go into bachelor rooms. They achieved
their independence perfectly well, and far more cheaply, by going
into a boarding house. She therefore, very excitedly, went into a
boarding house.

There was no difficulty about leaving Aunt Belle's. Once Rosalie was
established in business with Mr. Simcox, tied to business hours,
and earning a weekly salary, she no longer occupied in Aunt Belle's
house the position of dependence which was in Aunt Belle's house
the first, and indeed the only, qualification for all who occupied
her house. Aunt Belle's guests had to be guests: wealthy guests who
could be entertained from early morning tea (beautifully served)
to bedtime and made graciously to admire; or if poor guests,
and particularly poor relations, guests who could be even more
impressed and were naturally much more enthusiastically delighted
and profoundly admiring. Rosalie, in business, could not be entertained
and did not sufficiently admire. She had to have a special early
breakfast; she disappeared; she was not in to lunch or tea; she
was not sufficiently impressed by what cook had prepared but had
rather too much to say about what she had been doing, at dinner;
and she excused herself away to early bed on the ground of fatigue
or of having certain books to study. Rosalie, in business, was not
a guest at all in Aunt Belle's sense of the word: indeed there came
an occasion--Rosalie twice in one week late for dinner--when Aunt
Belle said awfully, "My house is not a hotel, Rosalie. I cannot
have my nice house turned into a hotel."

It was the nearest thing to an unkind word ever spoken by Aunt
Belle to Rosalie, and it was so near that it brought Aunt Belle
up to Rosalie's bed that night--solicitude in a terrific dressing
gown of crimson silk--to express the hope that Rosalie was not
crying (she was not; she had been sound asleep) at anything Aunt
Belle "might have said." "But you see, dear child, there are the
servants to consider, all that delicious soup and all that most
tasty turbot au gratin to be kept warm for you, and there is your
kind Uncle Pyke to consider; men do not like their meals to be..."

The boarding house, which Rosalie, with qualms as to its reception
by Aunt Belle, had for some time been secretly meditating, came
easily after that. The boarding house had moreover for Aunt Belle
a double attraction. It not only removed Rosalie in her capacity
of one threatening to turn Aunt Belle's nice house into a hotel;
it also restored Rosalie in her capacity of overwhelmed, grateful
and admiring poor relation. Rosalie was now invited from the boarding
house just as previously she had been invited from the Sultana's;
the table and the appointments of Aunt Belle's house were now
lavishly displayed in contrast to the display and the table endured
by Rosalie at the boarding house; Aunt Belle was again supremely
happy in Rosalie and abundantly kind; dinner each Saturday night
was a standing invitation and frequently for these dinners Aunt
Belle arranged "a little dinner party for you, dear child, just
one or two really nice people that it is nice for you to meet and
that you can tell your friends at the boarding house about, dear
child."

Aunt Belle helped Rosalie to choose the boarding house and saw that
it was "nice." Nice people went there and the proprietress, Miss
Kentish, was nice. Miss Kentish had a grey, detachable fringe which
became, and re-mained, semi-detached immediately after breakfast,
and a mobile front tooth which came out surprisingly far when she
talked and went in with a sharp click when she stopped. She had for
newcomers a single conversational sentence--"My name is Kentish,
though funnily enough we come from Sussex"--and, for all purposes,
a single business principle, that of willingness "to come to an
arrangement." "I am afraid I cannot remedy your water not being hot
at eight o'clock," she would say to a boarder, "but I will gladly
come to an arrangement with you. Ten minutes to eight or ten minutes
past eight" (click). She would come to an arrangement on anything.
She became very fond of Rosalie in course of time and once told
her that though her duties never permitted her to attend church
she had "come to an arrangement" with the vicar and felt that she
had "come to an arrangement with Our Lord" (click). She came to
an arrangement with Rosalie in the matter of tariff, receiving her
and a Miss Salmon, who also sought arrangement, as "two friends
as one." This was two persons sharing a room at the tariff of a
person and a half. Living was very cheap in those days. Rosalie,
at the beginning, with Miss Salmon, paid 18/6 a week, and out of
the twenty-five shillings paid her, at first, every Friday by Mr.
Simcox there remained what seemed to Rosalie great wealth.

She set herself to save on it and her first purpose in thus saving
was to accumulate money on which she could draw so as to be able
to pay for a room private to herself. That would have taken some
time. Her successive increases in her earnings, as Mr. Simcox's
hobby developed into a business, brought privacy, and in time what
amounted to luxury, by much swifter process. Rosalie was a very
long time at the boarding house. From being two friends as one she
passed to a small remote room of her own, then to a larger and more
accessible room, then to a bed-sitting-room, finally to a very
delightful arrangement. There was on the second floor a fine roomy
apartment having a dressing-room opening out of it. Rosalie, by
then in much favour with Miss Kentish, not only secured the suite
but "came to an arrangement" with Miss Kentish by which the furniture
and fittings were removed from the rooms and Rosalie permitted to
fit, decorate and furnish them herself. Rosalie never knew happier
hours than in the furnishing of those two rooms into a little
kingdom of her own: she never in all her life knew days as happy
as the days there spent.

But at the beginning, two friends as one with Miss Salmon and first
contact with life from the angle presented by some twenty various
individuals met at meals and in the public rooms. Miss Salmon was
a pale, fussy creature with pince-nez in some mysterious way set
so far from her eyes that she always appeared to be running after
them as if to keep them balanced. Whenever anything of which she
did not approve was being said to Miss Salmon or was being done
before Miss Salmon, she maintained throughout it, moving about in
pursuit of her pince-nez, a rather loud, constant, tuneless humming.
When her moment came she would always begin "Well, now" and then
swallow forcibly as though the swallowing gave her pain. "Well,
now" (gulp). This introduction was always precedent to speech by
Miss Salmon, whether after humming or not. Rosalie frequently went
to Sunday church service with her and there was an occasion in
the Litany on which Miss Salmon, who either had been wandering or
sleeping, suddenly came to herself at the correct moment and said:
"Well, now"--(gulp)--"We beseech thee to hear us, O Lord."

Miss Salmon was employed as a daily nursery governess by a family
resident across the park who, not hav-ing room for her, had "come
to an arrangement" with Miss Kentish for her accommodation at
the boarding house; and with her fussiness, her nose pursuit, her
humming and her general ineptitude of habit and of thought, she
was as it were a fated companion for Rosalie; and it was the case
that all the other inmates of the boarding house were, in regard
to Rosalie, equally and in the same sense fated. Miss Salmon and
they were fated, or fatal, to Rosalie, in the sense that it would
have been well then for Rosalie, as always well for any developing
young thing, to have been among companions who drew upon her
sympathies and called for her consideration. The contrary was here
presented to her. She was ripe to be intolerant for she was very
full of purpose and purpose is a motive power of much impatience.
Miss Salmon, who would have made a saint impatient, made Rosalie,
who was not a saint, very impatient and the virus of this impatience
was that very soon Rosalie made no attempt to conceal it. It seemed
to Rosalie that whenever she projected any plan to Miss Salmon--as
to "do" a pit at a theatre--or any theory--as that men and not women
were manifestly the cat tribe--it seemed to her that Miss Salmon
always hummed with the maddening humming denotive of disapproval,
and always prefaced stupendously stubborn idiocy with the "Well,
now" and the gulp that alone were sufficient to drive enthusiasm
crazy.

"Mmmmm--mm. Mmm--mmmm--mm--mm," would go Miss Salmon, following her
pince-nez up and down the little bedroom. And then, the pince-nez
poised, "Well, now" (gulp).

And Rosalie came to cry, "Oh, never mind. Never mind, for goodness'
sake. I know exactly what you're going to say so what is the good
of saying it?" Miss Salmon nevertheless would say it, in full
measure, pressed down at intervals in solid lumps with reiterated
"Well, now" (gulp). And then Rosalie would hum to show she was not
listening and thus in time to the position that Rosalie, beyond the
ordinary changes of everyday conversation, took not the slightest
notice of Miss Salmon but busied herself in their room, or came
into it or went out of it, precisely as if Miss Salmon, who with
her gulps, her fussiness and her balancing was very much there,
was in fact not there at all. When Rosalie for the weekly dinner
at Aunt Belle's used to dress in the evening frock of Laetitia's
given her for the purpose by Aunt Belle, she used, at first, to say
to Miss Salmon, "There, how do I look, Gertrude? Can you see that
mend in the lace?"

"Well, now--" (gulp).

Very soon she was dressing (at the common dressing table) with no
more regard for Miss Salmon or for the continuous humming of Miss
Salmon (signification of Miss Salmon's disapproval of the monopolisation
of the dressing table) than if Miss Salmon had been an automaton
wound up to balance a pince-nez around the room, to hum, and at
intervals to gulp.

This was a small thing, but it was an important small thing. Rosalie
was entirely insensible to the opinions and the existence of Miss
Salmon, and it followed that she became entirely insensible to the
feelings of Miss Salmon. To begin by ignoring a person with whom
you are in daily contact is certainly to end by not caring at all
what happens to that person. It was the misfortune of Miss Salmon
to suffer periodically and acutely from biliousness (which she
called neuralgia). In an attack, she took instantly to her bed and
lay there flat on her back, absurdly and unnecessarily poising her
pince-nez, and looking, unquestionably, very unpleasant. Rosalie,--who
believed that Miss Salmon on these occasions had overeaten herself,
the attacks invariably coinciding with pork in winter and with a
fruit trifle known in the boarding house as "Kentish Delight" in
the summer, of both of which Miss Salmon was avowedly fond, was
at first warmly sympathetic and attentive on their occurrence,
anointing the fevered brows with eau-de-Cologne, nipping the
unnecessary pince-nez off the pallid nose, darkening the room, and
stealing about on tiptoe. In time her attitude came to be expressed
by her reception of the sight of Miss Salmon prone, stricken,
yellow, pince-nez, poising. "What, again?"

"Well, now----" (Gulp).

But Rosalie would be gone.

And it came to be the same with all the other fellow inmates
of the boarding house, alike the men and the women. Rosalie, in
a colloquialism of to-day not then coined, "had no use for them."
There was in none of them anything that aroused her esteem; there
was in each of them, in degree greater or less, much that provoked
her scorn. The result was as resulted from Miss Salmon--she did
not bother about them; and not bothering about them she suffered
an inhibition of her sympathies. To repeat the thing said, her
environment here was, as it were, fated or fatal. In her eagerness
for her career, her generous emotions were likely to be laid aside
and to wither; and the environment of the boarding house in no way
drew upon her sympathies.

This was not good for Rosalie.

Moreover, the community of the boarding house served Rosalie ill
on another point. She came there with all those grotesque ideas
of her childhood on the respective positions of men and women
precipitated through her older years to the perception given
to Keggo: women were this, women were that; in their commonest
characteristics they contrasted very badly with men; men did things
better than women; they had by far the better lot in life than women;
unquestionably men were the creatures; of course--off-handedly--they
were beasts. She came to the boarding house with these ideas and
the boarding house presented these ideas to her in living fact and
assured her in her ideas. She came there very susceptible to the
qualities she believed to be rooted with their sex in men and women
and she saw those qualities there at once. The boarding house might
have been all her ideas of women and of men taken away by an artist
and put into an exact picture. It was her words to Keggo in terms of
actual life. Its population, little varying, was always round about
twenty; the proportion in sex always in the region of fifteen women
to five men. The figures were always constant and the characters,
when they changed, seemed always to Rosalie to be constant; the
names changed, the personalities did not change. Even the faces did
not change: there are certain types of faces that either are produced
by permanent residence in boarding houses or that go instinctively
to boarding houses for their permanent residence. There is a
boarding-house mould. There would always be two husbands with wives
and three men without wives. The men were never spoken to by any
of the women but with a certain archness which Rosalie detested;
and they never spoke to the women but with a certain boisterousness,
a kind of rubbing together of the hands and a "Ha! What miserable
weather, Mrs. Keeley. How does it suit you? Ha!" which Rosalie
equally detested. It was as though the women, leading boarding-house
lives, knew that the men (who were never in to lunch and sometimes
absent from dinner) did not lead boarding-house lives but secret,
dashing and mysterious lives; and as though the men knew that they
lived secret, dashing and mysterious lives but condescended to the
women who lived only boarding-house lives; and the archness on the
one side and the boisterousness on the other implied tribute and
worthiness of tribute. This implication Rosalie also detested.

Men--as she now saw men and women--she dismissed; generally as "of
course they're beasts," severally and in the groups to which they
belonged, as cats--of the cat tribe--tame cats, wild cats, Cheshire
cats, tomcats and stray cats. But she dismissed them. That was
her attitude, as it developed, towards men. They had been, in her
regard, owners of the earth, possessing and having dominion over
the round world and all that therein is, as a stage magician owns
and dominates his stage; they had next been wonderful things but
apt to be troublesome and braggart things whose braggadocio caused
you to blink and have a funny feeling; they had then been sinister
and frightening things that caused poor Anna to say it was hard for
women; they became, at last, creatures that had the best of life,
that is to say the better time in life, not because they merited it,
but because it was theirs by tradition and they stepped into it, or
were put into it, as naturally as a man child is put into trousers;
and they had, when all was reckoned up, the better qualities--largeness,
tolerance, directness, explosiveness (as opposed to smouldering-ness)--not,
Rosalie thought, because they were males, but because they had the
position that males have, just as by the habit of command is given
to small boys in the Navy and very young men in the Army the air
and the poise of command.

Yes, certainly men were, as they had always been, the creatures;
but the eyes that formerly saw them as magicians, as by a savage
is seen only the mystery of the moving hands, the tick, and the
strike of a clock, now looked inside the case and saw the works.
No mystery. No exclusiveness of natural power. Nothing abnormal.
Men, on their estimable qualities and position, were what they were
merely because, as the works of a watch, thus and thus the wheels
were made to go round. Easy. Nothing in it. On the contrary. On
the contrary, men were the more despicable in that, dowered as by
tradition they were dowered, they yet were--what they were! The
eyes that had been caused to blink by Robert blowing smoke through
his nose and by Harold pulling up his collar and speaking with a
"haw!" sound, blinked from a contempt yet more profound (because
now known for contempt) at the exhibition, seen all about her, of
men's unlovely side. And she dismissed them. They did not attract
her in the smallest degree. All that they had in them to esteem,
whether of qualities or of position, they had--here was the parallel--in
common with drones in a hive. They had the best of everything; they
were blundering, blustering, noisy, careless, buccaneering owners
of the world, and to her--as all the roystering swarm to any
individual worker bee--to her, negligible. She was a worker bee,
busy, purposeful.

There is a special function belonging to drones in a hive. That
special function of men in regard to women was repellant to Rosalie.
All that pertained to it was repulsive to her. She loathed to think
of men in that capacity and she loathed to see women ensnared in
that regard by men. Beautiful cousin Laetitia and the "good match"
that obviously had been found for her: she detested seeing those
two together: it made her feel sick.

Men! By this and by that in passage of time she was in contact with
a good number and a good variety of men. There was the frequently
changing male contribution to the boarding-house community; there
were clients met in the development of her work at Simcox's;
there were the men of the circle of Uncle Pyke Pounce; there were
the men of the circle of cousin Laetitia, brought to the little
Saturday-dinner parties. A very fair average, a rather wider than
the normal average of contact with men; and she dismissed them.
They had not any attraction for her at all. If, rarely, she met
one whose superficial points were superficially attractive, his
contribution to her attitude to men was to make her blink (inwardly)
the more, albeit on a different note. That one so exceptionally
dowered should find pleasure in, for instance, dalliance of sex!
Contemptible! Oh, sickening and contemptible! One Harry Occleve, of
Laetitia's circle, so obviously "the good match," was outstandingly
such a case. It was thought upon him, scornful and disgusted
thought, that made her, walking back from one of the Saturday-evening
parties--he was always there--arrange her experiences with men
in that analogy between men and cats which, as related, had been
delivered to Miss Salmon.

Like a tame cat! She never had met a man she despised so much.
You'd think a man like that couldn't help but be above such things
as Cousin Laetitia and Aunt Belle made of him. "Occleve." The very
name that he owned had a nice sound; and he was brilliantly clever
and looked brilliantly clever. He was a barrister and Aunt Belle,
who was forever talking about him, had said that evening, just
before his arrival, that some famous counsel had declared of him
that he was unquestionably the most brilliant of the young men of
the day at the Bar. So he was talented, had a great future before
him, had a strong, most taking presence, a commanding air, a voice
of uncommon charm--and was in bonds to Laetitia! Looked sickly at
her! Mouthed fatuous nothings with her! Was obviously marked down
to be that "good match" that Laetitia was to make, and was content,
was eager, to be the tame cat of her languishing glances and of
Aunt Belle's excessive gushings! Was to be seen in a future not
distant mated with Laetitia and sharing with her an atmosphere of
milk and silk and babies and kisses! Tame cat! What an end to which
to bring such qualities! What a desecration of such qualities to
set them to win such an end! Tame cat!

But they all were cats of one kind or another. Yes, men are of the
cat tribe! Tabby cats--the soft, fattish kind, without any manlike
qualities, that seemed to be by far the greater proportion of all
the men one saw about in buses and in the streets and met in business;
tabby cats--sloppy, old-womanish creatures. Cheshire cats--the kind
that grinned out of vacuous minds and that never could speak to a
woman without grinning; the unattached men at the boarding house
invariably were of the Cheshire-cat cats. Tomcats--the beastly ones
with lecherous eyes that looked at you. "Of course they're beasts."
It had been a large experience of the tomcat cats that had made
her add that final summary of men to Keggo. The Bashibazook, once
or twice encountered in her last terms at the Sultana's, though never
spoken with, had looked at her in a horrible way, not understood,
but felt to be frightening and horrible; Mr. Ponders, on a dreadful
occasion after handing over the medicine for Miss Keggs, had horribly
said, "Well, now, wouldn't a kiss be nice? I think a nice kiss would
be very nice." She had managed to get away without being touched;
the nausea in her eyes perhaps had frightened him. It was nausea
she felt, not fear, a horrible physical sickness; and finally to
round off the "of course they're beasts" of men as then experienced
and now to fill up the schedule of tomcat cats the friends of
Uncle Pyke Pounce's circle and Uncle Pyke Pounce himself and the
men like the men of his circle--tomcats something past their prime
as lechers (but at a hint only more lecherous for that) but in the
full prime of their beastliness as guzzlers, who with guzzle eyes
eyed their food. She had come across a word in Carlyle's "French
Revolution" that instantly brought Uncle Pyke Pounce and his friends
to her mind and that always thereafter she applied to the elderly
tomcat encountered or passed in the street--"atrabilious." Atrabilious!
The very word! She looked it up in the dictionary, was disappointed
to find it did not mean exactly what she thought it meant, but gave
it her own meaning, and applied it to them. It sounded like them.
They had small beady eyes, set in yellow; no apparent eyelids either
above or below, just an unblinking eye set in a puffy face like a
currant in a slab of cold pudding that gloated or glared at everything
and everybody as if it was a thing to be devoured; guzzlers who
gloated upon their food and wallowed in their soup, always with little
streaks of red veins and blue veins in their faces. Atrabilious!
Tomcats!

Wild cats--the roamers, the untamed ones, the ones with cruel and
with wicked faces that made you not sick, but frightened; mostly
they were dressed in rough clothes, men hanging about the streets
who patently were thieves or worse, who looked at you and at once
looked all around as if to see if any were about that might protect
you; but often dressed in gentle dress and then with the cruel and
wicked look more cruel and more wicked, to make your shudder to
think of a woman having to belong to that.

Stray cats--on the whole the only really bearable ones; the lonely
ones that seemed to have lost something or to be lost, that seemed
to need looking after, that made you have a funny tender feeling
towards them, a wanting as it were to pick them up and carry them
home and be sharp with them because they couldn't take care of
themselves, and to be kind to them also because they couldn't take
care of themselves; yes, the only bearable ones: Mr. Simcox was
precisely one.

All cats, of the cat tribe. There wasn't one you couldn't place.
There wasn't one, save dear little Mr. Simcox and the stray cat
ones you sometimes saw, that was not in some trait contemptible.
The only thing to be said for them was that it was their nature.
They were created like that. You just shrugged your shoulders at
them and let them go at that, negligible entities. Active disgust
was only felt of them when one of their traits was manifested
directly towards you; or, much more, when the sight was given
of such a one as this Harry Occleve making such an exhibition of
himself and enjoying it, delighting in it, asking nothing better
than to be philandering with Laetitia, or escorting Laetitia, or
gazing at Laetitia. That did make you angry enough with a man to
hate a man. It was like seeing a good book--as it might be "Lombard
Street"--used to prop a table leg; or a jolly dog--as the dearest
Scotch terrier once brought to the boarding house--led for a walk
on a leash by an old maiden mistress and wearing a lapdog's flannel
coat with ribbon bows at the corner. Her aversion to Harry Occleve
was such that, in their rare passages together, she was almost
openly rude to him. It seemed there was even no physical quality
he had but he used it to abase himself or to make an exhibition
of himself. He had noticeably long, strong-looking arms, but the
sickening thing to see him once using those arms to hold silk for
Laetitia while she wound it! He had a striking face that she named,
from a line in Browning, a "marching" face--"one who never turned
his back but marched breast forward"--but to see that face bent
fatuously towards Laetitia! There radiated from the corners of
his eyes towards his temples those little lines that sailors often
have, "horizon tracks," she called them; but to see them deeply
marked while he mouthed earnest nothings with Laetitia! There was
an odd, nice smell about him, of peat, of tobacco, of soap, of
heather with the wind across it, of things like that most agreeably
mixed, and actually she had heard Laetitia say to him in the babyish
way she spoke to him, "You smoke too much. You do." And he, like
a moon calf: "Oh, you're not going to ask me to give up smoking,
are you?" And she with a trailing eye and hint of a blush, "Perhaps
I shall--some day." And he--a sigh! Positively a love-sick sigh
straight out of a novel! Ah, positively she could detest the man!
She came to discover it as an odd thing that, while commonly she
was entirely indifferent to men, always after a Saturday meeting
with Laetitia's Harry she had for quite a day or two an active
detestation of them.

But it was the women at the boarding house--to instance the boarding
house--the fifteen women, the immense, straggling army of women
as they looked to be, when they came trooping in to dinner or went
trailing out again, that had Rosalie's sharpest observation and
that best pointed her youthful estimates. Unlike men who had fallen
woefully from her childhood estimate of them, the women maintained
and intensified her early estimate of women. The women in the boarding
house showed Rosalie what women come to. A few were emphatically
old; the rest, with the single exception of Miss Salmon, were
emphatically not old; on the other hand they were emphatically not
young. They were at pains to let you see they were not old and the
pains they were at rather dreadfully (to Rosalie) emphasised the
fact that they were not young. The thing about them, the warning,
the proof that they exhibited of all Rosalie's ideas about the inferiority
of women, was that they were, in her phrase, derelicts--not wanted;
abandoned; homeless; or they would not be here. Yes, derelict; and
what was worse, derelict not in the sense of desuetude of powers
or of powers outworn, but with the suggestion of never having had
any powers, of having been always the mere vessels of another's
powers--some man's; and now, with that power withdrawn--the man,
whether father, brother, lover or husband, gone--derelict as a
ship, abandoned of crew, rudderless and dismasted, is derelict; as
an obscure habitation, cold of hearth, crazy of walls, abandoned
to decay, is derelict. She summed them all up as having arrived at
what they were precisely because in their earlier years they had
been what in her childhood she had supposed women to be: inferior
creatures at the disposal and for the benefit and service of men.
What a warning never to be that! There they were--manless. And
therefore derelict. And because derelict for such a reason, therefore
testimony to a social condition that was abominable, and because
seen to be abominable never, never herself should enfold. Never!
Manless. Husbandless. There they were, the straggling mob of
them,--deserted by husbands, semi-detached from husbands, relict
of husbands fallen out with a stitch in the side in the race for
husbands. Urh!

She was very young, Rosalie.

"Despised and rejected of men," she said to Miss Salmon, holding
forth in their bedroom on her subject. "That's what I call them.
Despised and rejected of men. Oh, don't hum louder than ever. It's
not irreverent to say that. It describes a condition, that's all,
and I'm using it because it describes this condition, their condition,
exactly. It does. You can hum; but it does. They've never done
anything, they've never meant to do anything, they've never tried
to do anything except hang round after some man. That's all. They've
either caught him and now lost him; or they've missed him and now
go on missing him. That's their lives. That's nearly any woman's
life. It's not going to be mine. If anything were wanted to make
the whole idea of marriage and all that repulsive to me--and nothing
is wanted--that would. Despised and rejected of men! I used to think
and to say I intended to be like a man and to do a man's work and
have a man's share. I tell you that even getting so close to a
man as that--I mean as close as intentional emulation of him--even
getting as close as that makes me feel sick now. It's my own life
I'm going to have, my own place, my own share; not modelled on any
one else's. If it were conceivable that I ever met a man I cared
tuppence about--but it isn't conceivable; that's a quality that's
been left clean out of me, thank goodness--but if it were conceivable,
what I'd offer would be just to share; to go on living my own way
and he his--Oh, your humming! I mean after marriage, of course; I
think this free-love business they talk about is even more detestable
than the lawful kind--just animalism. That's all I'd do. Me my
life; he his life; meeting, as equals, when it was convenient to
meet. I'd like to bring all these poets and people who write about
love into our dining-room to see those people. That'd teach them!

 Man's love is of his life a thing apart;
 'Tis woman's whole existence.

What an existence!"

"Well, now--" (gulp).






CHAPTER VII





"You have pretended to dislike and to despise men, but it was a
pretence to deceive me and you are a liar."

This was the astounding opening of an astounding letter, pages and
pages, to Rosalie from Miss Salmon. Pages and pages, having the
appearance, each one, of a battlefield or of a riot: a welter of
thick, black underscores strewn about like coffins or like corpses,
and a bristling pin-cushionful (black pins) of notes of exclamation
leaping about like war-dancing Zulus or staggering about like drunken
or like wounded men. A welter you had to pick your way through with
epithets rushing against you at every step like units of a surging
mob hounding and charging against an unfortunate pedestrian caught
in the trouble.

Miss Salmon had two months before introduced "a gentleman friend"
to the boarding house. He was a clerk in some big business firm.
His name was Upsmith and he bore upon a fattish face a troubled,
beseeching look, rather as though something internal and not to
be mentioned was severely incommoding him and might at any moment
become acute. Miss Salmon called him Boo, which Rosalie considered
grotesque but not unsuitable, and it was communicated to the boarding
house that the twain were at a mysterious point of affinity called,
not an engagement, but an understanding.

Rosalie had by this time taken the second step in her upward
progression of comfort in the boarding house. She had moved into
a separate room, leaving Miss Salmon to become half of another two
friends as one, and she and Miss Salmon therefore saw much less of
each other. But Rosalie still sat at the same table as Miss Salmon
at dinner and there Mr. Upsmith joined them.

The thing may be hurried along to its astounding conclusion in
the astounding letter. It was not in itself an event of any sort
of moment to Rosalie. She was in no way outraged by being called
a liar. There is no hurt at all in being called a liar when you
know you are not a liar. The accusation has sting only if you are
a liar; and indeed it is comforting evidence of some inner self
within us that only when we have ourselves debased that inner self
become we open to wounds from without. That citadel is never taken
by storm; only by treachery. No, the significance of the astounding
letter reposed in the fact that her reception of it opened to Rosalie
a glimpse of a quality rising beneath her to carry her forward as
a wave beneath a swimmer. It has been perceived in her but Rosalie
had not perceived it.

A great triumph and a great happiness swelled within Miss Salmon
with the arrival of Mr. Upsmith and with the circulation about the
boarding house that there was an understanding between herself and
Mr. Upsmith. Her humming took on a loud, defiant quality, as of
triumph; she pursued her pince-nez with a certain eagerness, as of
confidence of balance and certitude of capture. Her note and her
air seemed to say that she was Boo's and Boo hers and she gloried
in it with that exalted and yet something fearful glory that is to
be seen, pathetically, on the faces of very plain young women, or
of distinctly ageing young women, who have got a Boo but for whom
the Boos of this world are elusive to capture and slippery to hold.
The look is to be seen a dozen times on any Sunday afternoon when
the young couples are out.

At dinner time Miss Salmon would talk much to Boo in whispers and
then would look up and hum across at Rosalie in triumph, as of one
that knew things that Rosalie could not know and that had a thing
that Rosalie did not possess. Mr. Upsmith looked also much at Rosalie,
in no triumph, but in an apparent great excess of his unfortunate
complaint. He stared, troubled and beseeching, at her at meals,
and he stared, troubled and beseeching, at her when he encountered
her away from meals. The longer he sojourned in the boarding house
the more troubled and beseeching, when Rosalie happened to notice
him, did his fattish countenance appear to become. That was all.
There scarcely ever was exchanged between them even the courtesies
customary between dwellers beneath the same roof; they never, that
Rosalie could remember, were a minute alone together and yet on a
day in an August, Miss Salmon a week away on a month at the seaside
with the family to which she was nursery governess, Rosalie was
being told in the violent opening sentence of one letter that she
had pretended to despise and dislike men but had only done it to
deceive Miss Salmon and was a liar; and in the impassioned sentences
of another which had been enclosed and had fallen and to which
bewildered she stooped and then read, that the heart of Boo was
at her feet ("your proud, sweet little feet that I would kiss in
my adorance") that he had adored her ever since he had first set
eyes on her, that he treasured "like pearls before swine" every
encouragement she had given him from her divine eyes and from her
proud little lips, that he had had no sleep for a fortnight and
felt he would go mad unless he wrote these few lines (nine pages),
that he earned "good money," and that he was, in conclusion, to
which Rosalie amazedly skipped, "ever and ever and imperishably
always her imperishably adoring Boo."

Two days previously Rosalie had received, but not read, another
slightly mysterious letter. It had been in her receptacle in the
letter rack in the hall, addressed to her in an unfamiliar writing
and deposited by hand, not through the post. It had begun "Dear
Miss Salmon, re our friendship I have to inform you--" Rosalie
had turned to the end, "B. Upsmith." She had replaced it in its
envelope, written upon the envelope, "This is evidently for you,
but addressed to me, as you see--R." and had placed it in another
stamped wrapper to be forwarded by Miss Kentish. She had only thought
of it as in funny style for a love letter, proper no doubt to the
niceties of an "understanding." And what had happened was that
the vile, egregious, and infamous Boo, writing to break off one
understanding and establish another, had placed them in the wrong
envelopes. The outpourings of his bursting heart to Rosalie had
been received by Miss Salmon; the information "re our friendship"
had gone to Rosalie.

Of itself, as has been said, the whole incident was nothing at all
in the life of Rosalie. It came with the crash, but only startling
and quite harmless crash, of an unexpected clap of thunder, and it
passed as completely and as passively, doing no damage, leaving no
mark. Miss Salmon never returned to the boarding house; the vile,
egregious and infamous Boo haply incisively informed by Miss Salmon
of what he had done, incontinently, and without speech to Rosalie,
fled from the boarding house. They were gone, they were nothing to
Rosalie; the correspondence was destroyed, it was nothing to Rosalie.

But the significance of the matter was here. There was in Miss
Salmon's letter to Rosalie one paragraph that Rosalie read a second
time. She had received the letter when coming in just before dinner.
Not at all injured nor in any way discommoded by the hurtling
epithets, the terrific underscores intended to be as bludgeons,
or the leaping exclamatory notes set there for stabs, she had put
the thing away in a drawer and gone down to her meal. The passage
alluded to came more than once into her mind. When she was about
to get into bed that night she destroyed the letter, first reading
that paragraph, and only that, again. Sole in the violent welter
of those sheets it had no underscores nor any exclamations. It was
added as a postscript. It said:

"Well, now; Boo and I met the first time in a crowd watching a
horse that had fallen down. It kicked and I stepped back quickly
and trod on his foot. It made him put his hands on my arms and I
looked around to apologise and there was his dear face smiling at
me, although in great pain, for I had trodden on a corn he has;
and I knew at once it was the face I had looked for and longed for
all my life and had found at last; and I loved him from the first
and we went out of the crowd and talked. Well, now; I clung to him
in all our happy, happy months together, in a way you can never
understand, because I loved him, and because I am not the sort that
men like because I am only plain, and I knew that if ever he left
me I could never get another. Well, now; you have taken him away
from me. You could get dozens and dozens of men to love you, but
you have taken mine, and I never, never can get another."

The thoughts of Rosalie, not sequent, but going about and amounting
thusly, were thus: "That is very pathetic. That is horribly sad
and pathetic. Coming at the end like that and without any strokes
and flourishes, it is as if she was exhausted of her hate and
rage and just put out an utterly tired hand and set this here like
a sigh. That's pathetic, the mere look of it and that thought of
it. And then what she says. The dreadfully simple naivete of the
beginning of it. Staring at a fallen horse in the street. It's just
where they would be, both of them. They'd stand there for hours
and just stare and stare. And then she steps back on his foot and
there's 'his dear face' smiling at her; ah, it's pathetic, it's
poignant! I can see it absolutely. Yes, I can. As if I were in the
crowd around the horse, watching them. There they are, the horse
between us, and all the doltish, staring faces round about; and
their two dull and stupid faces; and as their eyes meet that sudden
look upon their foolish faces, as of irradiation out of heaven, that
would make a clown's face beautiful and cause the hardest heart to
twist. But it doesn't cause mine to twist. That's the odd thing.
I remember perfectly when a thing like that would have given me a
little blinky kind of feeling. I've always been awfully quick to
notice things like that. I've often seen them. Quite recently, so
little, I believe, as a year ago, things like that, things like
this, would have moved me a lot. They somehow do not now. That
frightful ending of hers: 'You could get dozens and dozens of men
to love you, but you have taken mine and I can never, never get
another.' That is most terribly pathetic. I think that is the most
poignant thing I have ever heard. Well, I can realise its utter
pathos; I can realise it but I cannot feel it. It does not move
me. 'And I never, never can get another.' It's frightful. I could
cry. But I do not a bit want to cry. I must have somehow changed. I
am not a bit sorry if I have changed. I would be sorry to go back
and be as, if I have changed, I must have been--sentimental. I have
changed. I believe I can look back and see it. About the time I
left the Sultana's, mother's letters, and keeping them and answering
them, began to be--yes they did begin to be a little, tiny bit of
a nuisance to me. Yes, it was beginning then, this. And I expect
earlier, if I worked it out. There's nothing in it to regret. It's
just a growing out of a thing. It's not, when I see a thing that's
pathetic, that I've grown blunt or blind and can't see it for
pathetic. It's just--I know what it is--it's just that it doesn't
appeal to me in the same way. It's like seeing a dish of most tempting
food in front of you, not that I ever remember my mouth, as they
say, watering at anything; but say strawberries and cream--I'm fond
of strawberries and cream--it's like seeing a dish of strawberries
and cream in front of you, and knowing it's good and knowing it's
delicious, and knowing you're awfully fond of it--and just not
being hungry; turning away and leaving it there, not because it's
not everything that it ought to be, but just because--you don't
want it. I should say that's how it is with me about these--these
pathetic things. I know they're pathetic. I don't want them."

That is how it was, how it had become, with Rosalie. That was just
her first recognition of it, as the swimmer, intent on his own
making of his progression, recognises not, till he has been borne
some distance by it, the current that also is carrying him along.

Visits home to the Rectory were further manifestations to her of
this arising symptom.

There were appeals that should have arisen to her out of her home;
and they did arise; and she recognised them; but they did not
appeal to her--not in the old way. She went home very rarely for
occasional week-ends, always for her annual holidays, always for
Christmas; and the discovery she made was that she liked her home
very much better when she was away from it than when she was in
it. When a visit was in prospect she desired her home, that is to
say her mother, most frightfully. But when the visit was in being
the joy she had promised herself she would spread somehow was not
at her command; the love she had yearned to show somehow was chilled
within her and not forthcoming. It was the tempting dish in a new
illustration--rushing eagerly to it, avid of its delights; coming
to it and finding, after all, one was not hungry.

Strange!

Her mother was ageing rapidly. She could have wept to see the
ageing signs; but somehow, seeing them, did not weep; was not moved;
received the impression but was not sensitive to it; felt the tug
but did not respond to the pull. Rather, indeed, was apt to be
a little impatient. Returned to London and to her engrossing work
and longed to be back with her mother; came back to her mother--and
was not hungry.

Strange!

Then she began to analyse the strangeness of it and found it
was not, after all, so strange; at least it was not a thing to be
distressed about, nor bearing conviction of unnatural qualities,
of hardness, of unkindness. There was a line she knew that came in
a verse:

    There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
    The earth, and every common thing
    To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light,
    The glory and the freshness of a dream.
    It is not now as it hath been of yore.
    Turn wheresoe'er I may
    By night or day,
    The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

"The things which I have seen I now can see no more." That was the
line. "The things which used to appeal to me now appeal no more--or
rather not quite in the same way. I think I used to be very sentimental.
It is stupid and useless to be sentimental. People must grow old.
There's nothing sad in that. It is natural. It is life. It is life
and one must accept life. The unnatural thing, the foolish and wrong
thing, is to remain a sentimental child for ever, with a child's
ready foolish tears at what are common, necessary facts of life.
I can be much kinder, much more really kind, by seeing things
clearly--and in their right perspective than by occluding them
with false compassions. I am always my dear, my darling mother's
devoted daughter, ever at her disposal, and she knows it and loves
me for it. When I am to her or to any friend but as ships that pass
in the night--Keggo's phrase--then let me take myself to task."

Keggo's phrase! Keggo was being intermittently seen at this time
and these thoughts of Rosalie's were very close to the occasion when
finally she lost sight of Keggo. It could be said like this--that
Keggo here made a contribution to Rosalie's life that passed Rosalie
on her way.

They had kept touch for quite a time after their separation as
governess and pupil. They then lost touch.

"Why, it must be more than a year!" cried Rosalie, suddenly encountering
Miss Keggs near the Marble Arch one evening and delightedly greeting
her. It was in the summer and Rosalie had gone out from the boarding
house after dinner for some fresh air in the park. She was enormously
glad to see Keggo again and carried her greeting straight on into
excuses for her share in their long sundering. "More than a year!
You know, the fact is, Keggo, that when I first left the Sultana's,
and for quite a time afterwards, I used to gush. I did! I was so
frightfully full of all I was doing and it was all so new and so
wonderful and I was so excited about it that it was sheer letting
off steam--gush--to write you reams and reams of letters about it
as I used to do. Then it got normal and the--the tumultuousness of
it wore off and I was just--I am, you know--just absolutely absorbed
in it and there was no more steam to let off; all the energy went
into the work, I suppose. So gradually, I suppose, without quite
realising it, I gave up writing. But, oh, if you knew how glad I
am to see you now!"

Miss Keggs to all this presented only a fixed smile. A smile
belongs much more to the eyes than to the lips. The lips, but not
the eyes, can counterfeit a smile. False coin is "uttered" as they
say in law; and the lips utter. Not so the eyes. All metal that the
mouth issues is to be tested there. The expression in Miss Keggs's
eyes was not at all in consonance with that of her mouth. The
expression of her eyes was rather oddly vacant as you may see on
the face of a person who is apparently attending to what you are
saying but really is listening to another conversation in the same
room. "Not listening" as it is called. "An absent look" as they
say.

Nevertheless she joined dove-tailed response to Rosalie's words.
"To tell you the truth," said Miss Keggs, speaking very slowly
and repeating the preamble. "To tell you the truth I wouldn't have
received your letters if you had written them."

"You wouldn't? Why not?"

"To tell you the truth--" there had been a pause before she first
spoke; a pause again before this reply and then again a beginning
with this phrase about which there was nothing odd in itself but
something odd in the manner of its use by Miss Keggs. "To tell you
the truth, I've left the school."

"Left the Sultana's!"

Miss Keggs nodded with slow inclinations, like grave bows, of her
head.

"Whatever for? Keggo, when, why?" And then Rosalie, impelled by some
apprehension that suddenly pressed her, put a quick hand on Keggo's
arm and cried sharply, "Keggo! There is something very strange
about you. What has happened to you? Something has happened. You
can't keep it from me."

But Keggo could. At that quick gesture of suspicion of Rosalie's,
animation sprung to meet it as a cat, at a sudden start, will leap
from profound slumber to a place of safety and to arched defence.
Miss Keggs, in their first exchanges, might have been as one
drowsily answering questions from a bed. She was suddenly, in her
instant casting away of her absent air, as that one flinging away
the bedclothes and leaping upright to the floor. What had she
been saying? She had been quite lost in something she was thinking
of when Rosalie came up. She scarcely had recollected her. She
had been very, very ill with "this influenza" and still was only
convalescent. Why, how very, very glad she was to see her dear
Rosalie again! And how Rosalie had developed!

"Why, Rosalie, you are beautiful! You are! And you don't blush or
simper to hear it! Yes, you are beautiful."

There was a little room in a street somewhere off the Harrow Road
that Miss Keggs now occupied. It was a forbidding street. It was one
of those derelict streets frequent in certain quarters of London,
in Holloway, in Kentish Town, in Kilburn and all over South London,
all about which life teems and roars but where, along their own
pavements, no life is. They are most characteristic of themselves,
these streets, when, as often to be seen, there is no soul along
them but a sad drab that is an itinerant singer that drifts along
wailing, at every few paces shuffling her body in complete turns to
scan the windows she has passed and the immediate windows on either
hand. She has no home and these are not homes to which she wails.
There is no flicker of life at any window. She's a sad drab, repulsive
within; and they are sad drabs, not nice within. At night, but not
before dusk, forlorn things flicker in and out of them like drab
ghosts had on the strings of a puppet show. By day there sometimes is
an old man crawling in or crawling out; sometimes a woman, always
with a parcel or a net bag, fleeting along, expressionless. The
high houses, all of one pattern, appear to have no pattern. They
are like dead walls and the place they enclose like a vault, and
the itinerant drab like a thing in drab cerements (they trail the
dust) that ought to be dead wailing for entrance to things, tombed
in those walls, that are dead. There is no life at all in these
streets. There is nothing active or positive. There is just passivity
and negation. There is just nothingness. They are not habitations,
which connote life; they are repositories, which connote desuetude.
They are the repositories of creatures, not that have done with
life, for the sheer fact of living acknowledges service to life,
but with whom life has done.

These came to be Rosalie's thoughts of this street--Limpen Street--but
they could not have been hers when she was first going there to
spend evenings with Miss Keggs, for it was in her earlier visits
there to Keggo that she cried there. When she could cry for pure
compassion for another she was still too--too ardent for Limpen
Street to be seen as it has been presented. From the first it
affected her disagreeably but she would have felt, then, a sympathy
for its state, and a belief that it could be aroused out of its
state, and a wish so to arouse it; and in her earlier visits she had
ardently this sympathy, but it was raised to a profound compassion;
this belief, but it was a conviction; and this wish, but it was a
resolution, in regard to Keggo.

For Keggo was drinking.

Keggo had been drinking for years and years and now Keggo had walled
herself away in Limpen Street to drink and drink, still secretly
with the sharp cunning of the secret drinker, but now with cunning
only necessary when of her own wish she met the world. At the
Sultana's, (only Mr. Ponders in her secret, and in her pay; "that
vile man" as, after the revelation, she always spoke of him to
Rosalie) at the Sultana's and in all her life of that period she
was, as it were, as one whose life is threatened, dwelling among
spies; that breastplate of her cunning never could be laid off then;
now, as one threatened, but secure in a castle, the breastplate
only was needed when sallies forth were made. There was at the
Sultana's the need of constant care to inhibit her cravings; there
now was none to save her--unless Rosalie did.

There is no need at all to tell all this and all that by which
Rosalie was led to this most terrible discovery and Keggo impelled
to her most painful revelation. There was deceit and its exposure;
lies and their crumpling in the hand; mystifications and their
sinister interpretations; contingencies and their ugly dissolutions.
These would be all beastly to tell. Beastly is a vile word but this
is a vile thing. There was about it all, all the time, a tainted
and unwholesome atmosphere. There was always in the little room in
Limpen Street that strange disagreeable smell of bad eau-de-Cologne
that always had hung about the little room at the Sultana's.

Beastly things....

But they were not felt to be beastly by Rosalie, then. They are
said here to be beastly, for they were beastly, only in excuse for
Rosalie afterwards. They only were to her, then, intensely sad,
most deeply pitiful, intensely increasing of her love for Keggo as
pure love is increased by seeing its object in tortures that may
not be helped because they will not be confessed. If only Keggo
would tell her! Once or twice she said to Keggo, speaking with an
entreaty that must have made obvious to Keggo her knowledge, "Keggo,
haven't you something to tell me; something that you'd like to tell
me?" The occasion was always when she was leaving after a visit
that had found Keggo very unwell, very dejected of spirits, and
that Keggo had at last terminated by saying, "I think perhaps you
had better go, Rosalie. I think perhaps I'd be better lying down."
But Keggo's answer always was, "Something to tell you? No, nothing
at all! What should I have to tell you?"

And then one day something said brought them very near to the matter
between them. Miss Keggs came nearer yet. She said, "The fact is,
Rosalie, I sometimes get so I simply cannot make an effort, the
smallest effort. I believe when I'm like that if a thousand pounds
were offered me for the going out and asking of it, and God knows
I want it badly enough, I simply could not make the effort to do
it. I'd simply let it pass and know that I was letting it pass and
not care. That's how it's got with me, how it is sometimes with
me, Rosalie."

Rosalie said with extraordinary emphasis, leaning forward on the
chair in which she sat facing Keggo. "Why is it, Keggo?"

If Keggo had answered, the thing would not have happened. Keggo did
not answer. She was sitting with her hands crossed, one palm upon
the other, and resting on her lap, her eyes to the ground. Quite
a long time passed. Rosalie said, "You're drinking, aren't you,
Keggo?"

"Yes, drinking, Rosalie."

"Oh, Keggo!"

It was then that Rosalie cried.






CHAPTER VIII





Sne cried. Her sympathies, though drying and slower now to be
aroused, still then were such that she could weep for pity. It is
a glimpse of her not to be seen again. There was she on her knees
by Keggo, and with her arms about Keggo's waist, and with her head
on Keggo's lap, crying for Keggo; and in the pauses of Keggo's
unfolding of her story entreating her, as one that cried responses
to a litany, "Don't mind, Keggo! Keggo, don't mind now! Dear Keggo,
poor Keggo, it's all right now."

And presently all the tale told: what Mr. Ponders' medicine was;
and all the humiliation suffered in keeping in with "that vile
man"; and that vile man's betrayal of her to the Sultana, and her
dismissal; and all the earlier dreadfulness of her first steps
down into her dreadful malady; and all the dreadful secrecy of all
those years; and all the horrible humiliation secretly to get her
poison; and all the horrible humiliations when her poison got. All
the dark tale of that presently told; and her head bowed down to
Rosalie's, and Rosalie's wet face against her face, and her face
also wet; and just her murmurs, murmured at intervals, as though
her heart that had discharged its grievous load ran slowly now,
slowly to rise and then to well with, "God bless you, Rosalie;
oh, Rosalie, God bless you"; and for a long time just seated thus,
cheek to cheek, hand to hand, heart to heart; weakness bound about
with strength, sorrow in pity's arms, travail in sanctuary....

It is desired that one should try to see that picture. Its
counterpart was not again in the life of Rosalie, hardening.

There were, after that, such happy evenings in Keggo's room. Keggo,
with one to help her, fighting for herself; Rosalie, with one to
help, elevated upon that high happiness that comes with fighting for
another. For a short time there seemed to be no lapses in Keggo's
struggle. When they came (as Rosalie knew afterwards) the practised
cunning of years of secrecy had no difficulty in concealing them
from the unsuspecting eyes of Rosalie. Ill that it was so! Rosalie
was harder when came the lapse that cunning could not hide. She did
not cry. Her eyes were hard. She said with thin lips, "Why, even
all this time you have been deceiving me!" the which egged on, in
that vile way in which exchanges of a quarrel are as knives sharpening
one against the other, Keggo's enflamed retort, "The more fool you!
Little fool!"

But at first, while the lapses were few and the cunning was equal
to them, only a closer friendship was set afoot between the woman
that was grown and the woman that was burgeoning, and there were
such very happy evenings in the room in Limpen Street. Such jolly
talks.

There was one talk that, forgotten with the very evening of its
passage, afterwards very strongly returned to Rosalie and abode
with her. It had in it rather vital things for Rosalie.

She loved to talk about her work with intelligent and sympathetic
Keggo, and she had been on this occasion expounding to her the
mysteries and interest of life insurance: in particular explaining
the "romance" of vital statistics; in particular, again, the curious
fact that, though women in the United Kingdom largely outnumbered
men, many more male children were born than female. The disproportion
"the other way about" in maturity, said Rosalie, was because the death
rate among men was much higher--due to risks of their occupations.
"A certain number of house painters," said Rosalie sagely, "fall
off ladders every year and are killed; women don't paint houses, so
they don't fall off ladders and get killed. Similarly on railways,
Keggo. The death rate among railway men is much higher in proportion,
over an average, than the rate in any other occupation. Porters
doing shunting, for instance, are always getting killed. Well,
women don't shunt trains so they don't get killed while shunting
trains, so there you are again, so to speak. The thing in a nutshell,
Keggo, is that, by contrast, men lead dangerous lives."

Keggo, who always was very alert in response, was here very long in
responding. Then she responded an extraordinary thing that Rosalie
afterwards remembered. She said slowly, "Oh, but Rosalie, it's very
dangerous to be a woman."

Rosalie questioned her.

Keggo said, "Rosalie, you've great ideas, and I think very shrewd
and very striking ideas, about the difference between men and women,
but there's this difference I think you haven't thought of--the
danger that women carry in themselves; right in them, here"--she
had a hand against her breast and she pressed it there--"born in
them, inerradicable, and that men have not. Men go into dangers but
they come out of them and go home to tea. That's what it is with
men, Rosalie. They can always get out. They can always come back.
They never belong to a thing, body and soul and heart and mind.
Rosalie, women do. That's their danger. That's why it is so very,
very dangerous being a woman. Women can't come back. They can't,
Rosalie. Look at me. They take to a thing and it becomes a craze,
it becomes an obsession, it becomes a drug. Look at me. They take
to a thing--anything; a poison like mine, or a pursuit like some
one else's, or an idea like some other's, or a--a career in life
like, like yours, Rosalie,--they take to it and go deep enough, and
they're its; they never will get away from it, they never, never
will be able to come out of it. Never."

She was extraordinarily vehement. It was embarrassing for Rosalie.
Rosalie desired to contest, as vehemently, these theories. She did
not believe them a bit. They were founded, she felt, on the tragedy
of Keggo's own case. Keggo was unfairly, though very naturally,
arguing from the particular to the general, from the personal to
the abstract. But how could she reply to Keggo, "Of course you say
that?"

She was silent; but she betrayed perhaps her thoughts in a gesture,
her difficulty in some expression of her face.

Keggo said very intensely, "But, Rosalie, if you only knew! With
me it's drink and you'll say--. But I say to you, Rosalie, never,
never let anything get the mastery of you. With me it's drink
and you'll say that is a matter altogether different, with which
parallels are not to be drawn. Oh, do not believe it, Rosalie. A
woman should in all things be desperately temperate--watchfully,
desperately temperate. A man--nearly every man--seems somehow
to have his life and all his interests in compartments. He can be
immersed in one while he is in it, and can get out of it and distribute
himself over his others and close it and forget it. Rosalie, a
woman can't. Men have hobbies. They don't have attachments; they
have detachments. They detach themselves and turn to a thing and
they detach themselves from it and turn back again. Rosalie, women
don't turn to a thing; they go to it. They don't have hobbies, they
have obsessions. They don't trifle, they plunge. They cannot sip,
they drain. It's in their bone. They never would have occupied the
place they do occupy if it were not that from the beginning they
have given themselves over, or they were given over, to mastery.
They are the weaker vessel. Rosalie, I tell you this, when a woman
gives herself, forgets moderation and gives herself to anything,
she is its captive for ever. She may think she can come back, but
she can't come back. For a woman there is no comeback. They don't
issue return tickets to women. For women there is only departure;
there is no return."

Rosalie said, "Keggo, I think I could argue, but I won't. But what
I can't imagine is the application of it in hundreds of cases--in
by far the great majority of cases. Take mine. You're not warning
me, are you? I don't see the possibility--"

Keggo said, "Darling, I'm not warning you and yet I am. I am warning
you because you are a woman; and because you are a woman you are
susceptible to danger. It's what I've said; it's what I would have
you remember for a day perhaps to come, that it is dangerous being
a woman. I'm not warning you, because there's nothing to--well,
but isn't there? You've got a theory of life and you are bent upon
a career in life. There's--"

Rosalie cried, "Well, but there you are, Keggo. No comeback, no
return tickets--well, I don't want to come back; I don't want a
return ticket."

"You might. You never know. Suppose you ever did?"

"But you can't suppose it. Why ever should I?"

"Suppose you wanted to marry?"

Rosalie laughed. The thing immediately lost reality. "Well, suppose
the incredible. Suppose I did. There'd be no comeback wanted there.
I could perfectly well marry and still keep my theory of life; I
could perfectly well marry and still keep on in my career--and most
certainly I would still keep on. Why, that is my theory of life,
as you call it, or a very outstanding principle of it. There's
nothing to me more detestable in the whole business than the idea
that because a woman marries she therefore must give up her work.
That's what is the reason the boarding house and every boarding
house and every home and street and city swarms with derelicts--with
derelict women--just because their lives are all planned as blind
alley occupations, marriage at the end of the alley, no need to do
anything, no need to be anything because it's only a blind alley
you're in. When you reach the end--you reach the end! That's it,
Keggo. You reach the end. You're a woman, therefore for you--the
end!"

She laughed again. She was returning Keggo's vehemence without
embarrassment upon the subject that had made return difficult. She
cried, "I've got you now, Keggo. I really have. You say they don't
issue return tickets to women. No. Perhaps they don't; but I'll
tell you where they book them all to--from the cradle to a terminus."

Keggo smiled and would have spoken. But Rosalie was pleased with
her adroit turning of metaphors. She repeated "To a terminus. Well,
I've booked beyond, Keggo." She laughed again. "And then the idea
of marriage for me! I've granted the preposterous just for the sake
of the argument and just to floor the argument. But you know, you
know perfectly well from all our talks, even so far back as at
the Sultana's, that it's simply too grotesque! Marriage, for me!
Why, if a million men came to me on their bended knees, each with
a million pounds on their backs you know perfectly well that I'd
just feel sick. Tame cats, tabby cats, tomcats, Cheshire cats, wild
cats, stray cats,--I'm not going to set up a cats' home. No thanks."

So Rosalie had the laugh of that evening.






CHAPTER IX





But this was not to continue. Keggo began to lapse; Rosalie began to
weary of helping Keggo. She had herself to think of. Those who go
down in life, whether by age or by misfortune, are prone, engulfed,
to cry to those ascending, "You could help me!" There is a correct
answer to this. It is, "I have done (or I do) a great deal for you.
I cannot do more. It is not fair to ask me to do more. I have a
duty to myself. I have myself to think of." Our generation endorses
this.

Rosalie had herself to think of. By stages that need not be
detailed, they are the common facts of life, the thing passes from
that picture of those two with Rosalie's strong young arms about
the other to a new picture, the last, between them.

The stages show Rosalie's enormous, ardent plans for the rescue
and rehabilitation of Keggo, and they show the projection and
the failure of the plans. They show work found for Keggo (through
Simcox's scholastic side) and lost and found again and again lost
and still again. They show Keggo's remorse and they show Rosalie's
forgiveness. They show it repeated and repeated. They show by
degrees the gradual, and then the rapid, staling of Rosalie's fond
sympathies. They show her finally, immersed in her own purposeful
interests, discovering to herself feelings in regard to Keggo on a
plane with feelings discovered to herself in regard to her mother.
It has been written: "Her mother was ageing rapidly. Rosalie could
have wept to see the ageing signs; but somehow, seeing them, did not
weep; was not moved; received the impression but was not sensitive
to it; felt the tug but did not respond to the pull. Rather, indeed,
was apt to be a little impatient." It is not necessary to expand.
Keggo was fast going downhill. Rosalie could have wept to see the
downhill signs; but somehow, seeing them, did not weep; was not
moved... rather, indeed... impatient. She had herself to think of.

Youth's an excuse for youth as childhood's an excuse for childishness.
Youth, still, like childhood, but unlike maturity, can be lost
in its emotions, absorbed in them to the exclusion of all else,
abandoned to them with all else pitched away as a swimmer discards
his every stitch and joyously plunges in the stream. Youth is not
accountable for its actions then: it is too happy or it is too sad.
One oughtn't to blame youth, immersed.

There was outstandingly one such day of absorption in delight, of
abandonment to ecstasy for Rosalie, and it was the day on which
she made her third advance in the social grade of Miss Kentish's
boarding house and moved into the two rooms en suite, furnished
and decorated by herself to her own taste. She awoke to this great
day, long anticipated; and with the vigorous action of throwing
off the clothes and jumping out of bed, she plunged into it and
was lost in it. The excitement and the elation of taking possession
of that enchanting, that significant apartment of her own! She was
excited; she was elated. Moving in was the cumulative excitement
of all the long-drawn, anxious excitements of peering round the
antique dealers and picking up the bits of furniture and of placing
them and moving them a shade to this side and then a shade to that
till was found the one and only exact position that suited them
and that they suited; and the terrible excitements of watching
the decorators at work, her scheme developing beneath their hands,
and the awful knowledge that now it was being done it was done for
good or bad--no altering it now!--and the agonizing excitements of
putting down the carpets--how can you tell exactly how a carpet is
going to look until you see it actually down upon its floor and
between its walls?--and the increasing excitement all the time
of the knowledge that everything was harmonising and was looking
just as in dreams of the ideal it had been made to look; and now
all ready! The bed-sitting-room slept in last night for the last
time; the two utterly perfect rooms and all that their possession
connoted, to be occupied that evening for the first time! Yes,
in all the tumultuous pride and engrossment of that, there was
no place--how could there be place?--for tiresome things of other
people's worlds, if such should offer.

And in this tremendous day there was stuff more tremendous yet. This
also was the day on whose evening was made the tremendous tribute
to her work and to her talent, the evening of the dazzling offer
that, like a door swung open on a treasure house, disclosed to her
new fields to which her career had brought her, new triumphs that
her career, in its stride, might make her own--the evening when
Mr. Sturgiss of Field's Bank leant across the dinner table in his
house (at his request only she and himself left in the room) and
said in his quiet voice, "Well, look here--to come to the point--the
reason I've got you up here to-night--it's this: we want you,
Field and Company, the Bank, we want you to join us. We want you
in Lombard Street."

Lombard Street!

Cumulative also was this thrill, for it had begun some few
days previously when Mr. Sturgiss, calling at Simcox's for a chat
with Mr. Simcox, an old friend, had come into her room and after
mysteriously fidgetting with business and conversational trifles,
had issued the invitation to dinner at his house at Cricklewood
in language mysteriously couched. "My wife would like to meet you,"
said Mr. Sturgiss. "She's heard a lot from me, and from Field, of what
an astonishingly clever young person we think you and she'd--she'd
like to meet you. And more than that." Mr. Sturgiss's halting
speech suddenly became direct and definitive like a flag that had
been fluttering suddenly streaming upon the breeze. "And more than
that. The fact is, there's a proposition I want to put up to you.
A proposition. We could go into it quietly and discuss it. I rather
think it would interest you. I'm sure it will. You'll come? Good.
I'm very glad. Very glad."

A proposition! From Mr. Sturgiss! Of Field and Company! What could
it be?

But Rosalie was not of the sort to tread the succeeding days on the
enchanted air of fond surmises. She told herself that the mysterious
proposition might be everything or might be nothing: the fact that
outstood was that she had brought her aspirations to this--that
a partner in a London bank recognised in her stuff sufficient to
invite her to a confidential meeting, there to go into something
with her "quietly together," to meet together over something
and "discuss it." She had determined to establish herself and she
was establishing herself. And was it not an omen propitious and
significant that this recognition of her parts was to fall on the
very day on which the exercise of those parts brought her into the
dignity and comfort of that delicious, that significant apartment
of her own?

This solid stuff, and no mere daydreams, was the delight absorbing
her and the ecstasy to which she was abandoned when that great
day came. In the morning she put the last of her possessions, the
equipment of her dressing table, into the new apartment; after the
day spent at Simcox's, she returned to dress for the first time
before the noble cheval glass purchased for the bedroom. She decided
to go up in a hat; it could be removed or not for dinner as Mrs.
Sturgiss might seem to indicate. She put on an evening bodice of
black silk and net with a simple skirt in keeping. She gave last
approving glances about the delightful rooms and set out, immersed
in eager happiness, for Cricklewood.

One of those old red buses that vied with the white Putney buses
as being the best horsed on the London routes took her there. Up
the Edgware Road; past the junction with the Harrow Road that led
to Keggo's street--she only had for it the thought that it was
weeks since she had seen Keggo, almost months; along broad Maida
Vale and past the turning that led to the Sultana's with the corner
where often the crocodile had huddled--and she was so engrossed
in her happy achievements that she passed it without thinking of
it. The bus terminated its journey at the foot of Shoot Up Hill.
Rosalie, called upon to alight, came out of her thoughts into her
surroundings. She realised that she must have passed Crocodile
Corner without noticing and the realisation caused her to give a
little note of amused indifference. The indifference was not directed
precisely at the Sultana's; it was at the idea, which came to her,
that, normally to human predilections, she ought to have given--ought
now to give--a sentimental thought to memories of the Sultana
years. Well, she did not. Funny! Yes, it was funny. As she sometimes
thought of her mother and of all her home ties; of Miss Salmon
and that cry of hers of never being able to find another lover; of
Keggo now so seldom seen and known to be going from bad to worse,--so
with memories of Crocodile Corner and the Sultana's, she could
see and appreciate the call of all these attachments, but somehow,
seeing and appreciating, did not respond to them. What a very
curious attitude! It was not unfeeling for she could feel. It was
not insensibility for she was sensitive to such things. Sensitive!
No, a better word than that. She was in such matters sensible. She
saw, as one should see, these things in their right perspective.
They were touching (as of her mother) or they were sad (as of Keggo)
or they were appealing (as the happy schoolgirl memories) but they
must not touch or sadden or appeal too closely. They must be estimated
in their degree and in their place; they must not be assumed, be
shouldered, be permitted to cumber. No good could be done to them
by encumbrance with them. That was the point. What good could it
do them? No good. Yes, that was sensible.

She abated, in these thoughts, nothing of the eagerness with which
she was living this great day--the day whose points of suspension
(on which it tumultuously revolved) were the taking over of the
significant apartment from which she had just come and the entering
upon the significant invitation to which now her feet were taking
her. These thoughts, this analysis of her attitude to sentimental
appeals, she tossed upon her eager happiness that was her being as
an airball tossed upon laughing breath that yet is used, breathing, to
support life. And she was aware that this was so. And she enjoyed
a flash of approval of herself that it could be so; it was admirable,
it was sensible, thus to be able to detach and look upon a portion
of her mind while her main mind deflected not a shade from its
occupation with the main chance. That faculty was perhaps the secret
of her success, the quality, that, in exercise, had brought her to
the significant apartment and to the significant invitation.

She was at the gate of Mr. Sturgiss's house and she most happily
passed up the short drive, ascended the steps and rang the bell.

Mr. Sturgiss's house was almost on the summit of Shoot Up Hill.
It was one of those houses standing a few miles along the main
thoroughfares out of London that, now in decay or displaced by busy
shops, packed villas, or monstrous flats, were then the distinctly
impressive residences of distinctly well-to-do business people. Mr.
Sturgiss was a distinctly well-to-do business person. The house,
double-fronted, had that third sitting-room which confers such an
immense superiority over houses of but two sitting-rooms--"Such a
convenience in so many ways" as those newly promoted from two to
three nowadays remark with languid triumph to visitors still immured
in two. Houses--new, two sitting-roomed houses--extended beyond
it and around it, and now stretch miles beyond and about, but Mrs.
Sturgiss told Rosalie that when they first came there they actually
had cows grazing and horses ploughing in fields adjoining their
garden.

Mrs. Sturgiss told Rosalie this while personally attending Rosalie's
removal of her hat (it was "no hat"; Rosalie felt so glad she
had come dressed for either indication) and Mrs. Sturgiss sighed
pleasantly as she said it. "Things are going ahead at such a pace
now!" said Mrs. Sturgiss. "It's all very different from what it used
to be. Why, the very fact of your coming here, not as my guest but
as my husband's, 'on business!' The idea of women being in business,
or even knowing anything about business, when I was a girl, why,
I can't tell you how, how positively shocking it would have been
considered."

Rosalie laughed. She liked Mrs. Sturgiss, who was motherly and
seemed to have her own dear mother's gentle ways--this personally
attending her in her bedroom, for instance. "Oh, there are getting
to be heaps of women in business now, Mrs. Sturgiss," she smiled.

Mrs. Sturgiss returned brightly, "Oh, I know it. I know it well."
She paused and her voice had a thoughtful note. "But even then....
Use the long mirror, my dear; the light is better. Even then, there
can be few as,--as much in it as you. You know, my husband has an
immense idea of your abilities. He has spoken of you so much. Do
you know, you are a great surprise to me, now I see you. I could
only imagine from all John's idea of you a rather terrible looking
blue-stocking, as we used to call the clever women." She came and
stood by Rosalie, regarding the image in the glass that Rosalie
regarded. She said simply, "But you are beautiful."

A very odd feeling, akin to tears--but for what on earth
tears?--quickened in Rosalie. She turned sharply from the mirror.
"I am quite ready now." She pretended she had not heard.

Mrs. Sturgiss said, "My dear, do you like it, being what you are?"

It was a great rescue for Rosalie to be able to spring away from
that odd feeling (in her bosom and in her throat) by swift animation.
"Oh, I love it. I simply love it. It is everything to me, everything
in the world!"

Mrs. Sturgiss opened the door. "No, you go first, my dear. But if
I had had a dear girl, such as you, I would have wished her to stay
with me at home."

She had made with her hand the gesture of her wish that Rosalie
should precede her from the room. Rosalie impulsively touched the
extended fingers. "But, Mrs. Sturgiss, don't you see, that's just
it, the idea there is now. If you had had a daughter and she had
stayed at home--well, let that go, while you were with her. But
when you died and left her, what would there be--don't you see
it?--what would there be for her then?"

Mrs. Sturgiss pressed the warm young hand. "But I would have left
her married, a dear wife and a dear mother."

"Oh, that!" cried Rosalie and her stronger personality carried off
the exchanges in a laugh. Mrs. Sturgiss thought the expression and
the tone meant, happily, that marriage might happen to any one,
in the market as much as in the home. Rosalie, with all the fierce
contempt that her "Oh, that!" conveyed to her secret self, was
ridden strongly away from emotionalism in the conversation. Her
thought as they went downstairs was, "If I were to instruct her in
the cat-men! Her horror!"

There was downstairs a surprise that was very annoying, but that
was made to produce compensations. An unexpected fourth person,
presuming--so Rosalie was given to understand--on a long standing,
indefinite invitation, had dropped in to dinner. She recognised him
directly they entered the drawing-room and could not stop the emblem
of a swift vexation about her mouth and in her eyes. He caught it,
she was sure; and she hoped he did. It was Harry Occleve--Laetitia's
futile slave! He had already informed his host that he knew her.
She greeted him with a mere touch of her hand, a touch made cold by
intent, and with "With a free evening off one would have expected
you would spend it with Laetitia," said disdainfully. It was a rude
and inept thing to say (in the tone she said it) for the feeble
creature, as she stigmatised him, had not yet screwed his fatuous
idolatry to the point of proposal of marriage. But she intended
it to be rude and to discomfort him and she was glad to see some
twinge at the flick pass across his face. She hated his presence
there. The presence of any man, in the capacity of a monkey to
entertain and to be entertained, was always, not to put too fine a
point upon it, repulsive to her. This man was of all men obnoxious to
her. When he approached her for their brief greeting (she turned
instantly away at its conclusion) she savoured immediately that odd,
nice smell there was about him, of mingled soap and peat and fresh
tobacco smoke and tweed; and that annoyed her. It was a reminder,
emanated from him and therefore not to be escaped, of a distinction
he had different from, and above common men. She always granted
him his distinction of looks, of air, of talent. It was why she
so much disdained him. To be dowered so well and so fatuously to
betray his dowry! Tame cat!

But she made him, through the meal, pay compensations for
his presence. At the table of Aunt Belle, in his presence she was
accustomed to sit largely silent. Beautiful Laetitia was there
the star; and while he mouthed and languished in that star's rays
Aunt Belle and Uncle Pyke, (stealing about him to capture him as a
farmer and his wife with mincing steps and tempting morsel towards
a fatted calf) fawned, flattered and deferred to him, he returning
it. There was no place for her, and she would have shuddered to
have held a place, in that society for mutual admiration. She sat
apart. She was very much the poor relation (Aunt Belle could not
comprehend her business success and Uncle Pyke would not admit it)
and especially odious to her was the Occleve's polite interest in
her direction when Aunt Belle, poor-relationing her, would turn
to her from coquettish raillery of him with, "Dear child, you're
eating nothing." He would smile towards her and, fatuously anxious
to please, offer some remark that might draw her into the conversation.
She never would be so drawn. She scarcely ever exchanged words
with him. She made herself to be unconscious of his presence. He
was so occupied with his adoration of Laetitia that to be insensible
of his presence was easy. When sometimes she glanced towards him
it was with the thought, "Fancy being one of the rising young men
at the Bar, being the rising young man--the Bar, with silk and
ermine and, why not? the Woolsack before you--and being that, doing
that! Fatted calf; dilly, dilly, come and be killed, goose; tame
cat!"

Here, at the table of Mr. Sturgiss, it was very different. Intolerable
that he should be here, but she was able to make him provide her
compensation for his presumption. For the first time in her life,
she found herself with sufficient interest in a man to enjoy, nay,
to seek, a triumph over him. And she had that triumph. She was
as certain as that she sat there that Mr. Sturgiss, in the period
before her arrival in the drawing-room, had been telling him of
her abilities and of his high regard for her. There was an interest
in his look at her across the table that assured her he had been
informed. There was, much more, a conviction within her, from
Mr. Sturgiss's manner and from his choice of subjects--confined
almost entirely and to the absolute exclusion of Mrs. Sturgiss to
the political situation and to markets, exchanges and the general
tendency in the City--and particularly from the openings in these
subjects with which continuously he presented her--a conviction arising
out of these that Mr. Sturgiss, proud of her, of his discovery of
her, was bent upon showing her off to his second guest, bent upon
proving to his second guest what unquestionably he had said to him
about her.

She most admirably responded. If she were indeed the subject of a
challenge she most admirably flattered her backer. She is not to
be imagined as a pundit excavating from within herself slabs of
profound wisdom, nor yet as a pupil astoundingly instructing her
masters, nor even as one of Mrs. Sturgiss's blue stockings, packed
with surprising lore. Rosalie was nothing so foolishly impossible,
but she displayed herself knowledgeable. She was profoundly interested
in the matters under notice and therefore (for it follows) she was
interesting in her contributions to them; she was fascinated--the
old fascination of "Lombard Street" and of "The English Constitution" now
intensified as desire intensifies by gratification--and therefore
she fascinated; she was never silly--Rosalie could not be silly--but
she was frequently in her remarks ingenuous, but her ingenuousness,
causing Mr. Sturgiss more than once to laugh delightedly (Occleve,
curiously grave, no doubt because surprised, did not laugh) was
born out of a shrewd touch towards the heart of the matter, as the
best schoolboy howlers are never the work of the dullard but of
him that has perceptions. Of her in her childhood it has been said
that she was never the wonder-child of fiction who at ten has read
all that its author probably had not read at thirty. So now of her
budding maturity she was not the wonder-woman of fiction, causing
by her brilliance her hearers, like Cortez's men, to stare at each
other with a wild surmise. No, nothing so unlikely. But she was
intelligent and she was ardent; and there are not boundaries to the
distance one may go with that equipment. She was admirable and she
felt that she was effective. She had a consciousness of confidence
amounting almost to a feeling of being tuned up and now let go; to
a feeling of power, as of inspiration. And this strange animation
that she had, came, she knew, from the triumph over that man, from
the feeling, stated grimly, that she was giving him one.

It is much more important, all that, than, when it came, the great
reason of the great invitation that had brought Rosalie to take part
in it. The great reason already has been disclosed--Mr. Sturgiss,
bending across the tablecloth, they two left alone, "Well, look
here--to come to the point--the reason why I've got you up here
tonight--it's this: we want you--Field and Company, the Bank,--we
want you to come to us--we want you in Lombard Street."

She was beautiful to see in her proud happiness at that. Startled
and tremulous, she was; like some lovely fawn burst from thicket
and at breathless poise upon the crest of unsuspected pastures;
within her eyes the cloud of dreams passing like veils upon the
gleam of her first ecstasy; upon her face, shadowed as she sinks
somewhat back, the tide of colour (her rosy joy) flooding above
her sudden pallor; her lips slightly parted; her hand that had been
plucking at the cloth caught to her bosom where her heart had leapt.

It may be left at that. It is enough; too much. What, in the
reconstruction of a life, are, in retrospect, its triumphs but
empty shards, drained and discarded, the litter of a picnic party
that has fed and passed along?

Mr. Sturgiss bent farther across the tablecloth, expanding his
proposal: She knew, said he, what he represented, what the firm
was. Field and Company. A private bank. Well, the days of private
banks were drawing in. These huge joint-stock leviathans swallowing
them up like pike among the troutlings. But not swallowing up Field
and Company! Not much! If the old private houses were tumbling into
the joint-stock maw, the greater the chances for those that stood
out and remained. The private banks were tumbling in because they
stood rooted in the old, solid, stolid banking business and the
leviathans came along and pounced while they dozed. There was no
dozing at Field's. They were very much awake. They were enterprising.

"Look at this very matter between us. The idea of bringing a woman
into a bank! Even old Field himself was startled at first. Why?
In America, women are entering banking seriously and successfully.
They're going to in England. At Field's. You." He wasn't proposing
to bring her in for fun or for a chance that might turn up, like
the man who picked up a dog biscuit from the road on the chance
that some one would give him a dog before it got mildewed; no, he
was bringing her in to develop an enterprise that should be the
parent of other and greater enterprises. Her knowledge of insurance,
her knowledge of schools, these, with her sex, on the one side of
the counter and all their clients--the Anglo-Indian crowd who were
the backbone of the business--on the other side of the counter.
Field's, for cash, and, while it was drawing, for advice, was
always the first port of call of the wives and the mothers home
from India, to say nothing of the husbands and the fathers,--"well,
Field's, you, shall be the fount of all that domestic advice that
is just what all those people, cut off from home, are constantly
and distractingly in need of." She didn't suppose, as it was, that
Field's did no more, for them than bank their money? Field's were
their agents. Field's saw that they booked their passages, and that
their baggage got aboard; and when they arrived this end or the
other, or when they broke their journeys coming or going, Field's
representatives were there to meet them and take over all their
baggage troubles for them. "Very well. Now Field's--you--are going
to look after their domestic troubles for them--find them rooms,
find them houses, find them schools for their children. When people
know what we can do for them, people will come to us to bank with
us because we can do it. When people come to us to bank with us--we
go ahead."

Mr. Sturgiss ended and drew back and looked at her. He lit a cigarette
and took a sip at his coffee. "We thought of offering you three--"
he set down his cup and looked at her again--"four hundred a year."

She declined the post. She was girlish, and delighted him, in her
expression of her enormous sense of the compliment he paid her; she
was a woman of uncommon purposefulness, and increased his admiration
for her by the directness and decision with which uncompromisingly
she said him no. She owed a loyalty which she could never fully pay
to Simcox's, to Mr. Simcox; that was the beginning and the end of
her refusal. Simcox's was her own, her idea, her child that daily
she saw growing and that daily absorbed her more: that was the
material that filled in and stiffened out the joints of her refusal.
"But if you knew how proud I am, Mr. Sturgiss! You don't mind my
refusing?"

He laughed and rose to take her to the drawing-room. "I don't mind
a bit. This is only what they call preliminary overtures. I shall
ask you again. We mean to have you."

Between the two rooms he said, "Yes, mean to. It's a big thing. I'm
certain of it. We shall keep it open for you. We shan't fill it."
He put his hand on the drawing-room door and opened it. "We can't."

She went in radiant.

She was on the red bus again, going home. She had stayed but the
briefest time after dinner. She was too elevated, too buoyant, too
possessed possibly to remain in company; excitedly desirous to be
alone with her excited thoughts,--especially to be alone with them
in that significant apartment of hers. Significant! Why upon the
very day of entering it had come this most triumphant sign of its
significance! Significant!...

She had a front seat on the outside of the omnibus. She gazed
before her along a path of night that the lamps jewelled in chains
of gold, and streamed along it her tumultuous thoughts, terrible
as an army with banners. It was very strange, and it vexed her,
robbing her of her proud consciousness of them, that there obtruded
among them, as one plucking at her skirt--as captain of them she
rode before them--the figure of Laetitia's Harry. Similarly he had
obtruded and been like to spoil the pleasure of her visit; but he
had been made to provide compensations and he obtruded now only in
rebirth of a passage with him that, rehearsed again, much pleased
her even while, annoyed, she cut him down.

Taking her leave, she had been seen from the threshold by Mr.
Sturgiss and by Laetitia's Harry. It was pitchy dark, emerging
from the brightness of the interior, and he had stepped with her
to conduct her to the gate. "It was an extraordinary coincidence,
meeting you here," he had said.

She did not reply. His voice was most strangely grave for an observation
so trite; he might have been speaking some deeply meditated thing,
profound, heavy with meaning, charged with fate. Fatuous! It was
extraordinary that there was not an action of his but aroused her
animosity. This vibrant gravity of tone--an organ used for a jig,
just as his gifts were used for his Laetitia moon-calfings--caused
newly a disturbance within her against him. She would have liked to
whistle or in some equal way to express indifference to his presence.

They were at the gate and he stooped to the latch and appeared to
have some trouble with it. "Sturgiss has been telling me what a
wonderful person you are."

Again that immense gravity of tone. She was astonished at the sudden
surge of her animosity that it caused within her. She had desired
to express indifference. She desired now to assail. She made a sneer
of her voice. "I should have thought you had ears for the wonder
of no one but Laetitia."

"Why do you say that?"

She felt her lip curl with her malevolence. "To see you raise your
eyes and hear you breathe 'Ah, Laetitia!'"

He opened the gate and she passed out, tingling.

It astounded her to find herself a hundred yards gone from the house,
nay, now upon the bus a mile and more away, recalling it, trembling
and with her breath quickened. It was as if she had been engaged
in a contest of wills, very fierce; nay, in a contest physical,
a wrestling. She had not known, she told herself, that it was
possible to hate so. That man! These men! She put her eye upon the
bus driver, strapped on his perch so near to her that she could
have touched him, and absurdly in her repugnance of his sex hated
him and shrank farther away from him.

It was enormously, sickeningly real to her, her repugnance. Even
on detached consideration of her ridiculous shrinking from the
bus driver she could not have laughed at it. People who had an
uncontrollable antipathy to cats did not laugh at the grotesque
puerilities to which it carried them. Nor she at her antipathy. "Of
course they're beasts." Yes, the right word! It was the beastliness
of sex that bottomed her loathing.

She could not have laughed; but she could and did with a conscious
intention of her will put that intruder on her animation finally
out of her mind. This very joyous uplifting of her spirit, was it
not because, in this world dominated by men, based for its fundamental
principle upon play of sex as commerce is based upon the principle
of barter, she was assured of position, of privilege, and of power
that raised her independent of such conventions and such laws?

She was her own! All her proud joys, her glad imaginings, her
delighted hopes, arose amain and anew, tuned to this cumulative
paean as a nourish of trumpets at the climax of a proclamation.
She was intoxicated on her happiness.

They were come to the lighted shops and the crowded pavements. The
bus drew up at the thronged corner adjacent to the divigation of
the Harrow Road and she leaned over and watched the scene, smilingly
(for sheer happiness) looking down upon it, as smilingly (for her
triumphant altitude) she felt that she looked down upon the world.
She would not have changed place with any life living or that could
be lived; she was so much abandoned to her happiness that she made
the intention she would sit up in her significant apartment all
that night, not to lose a moment of it. She grudged that even sleep
upon her happiness should intrude.

There came one in the traffic beneath her that caught her attention:
a woman whom people stood aside to let pass and turned to look upon
with grins; two or three urchins danced about the woman, pointing
at her and calling at her. Her dress was disordered, muddy all
up one side as if she had fallen; her face flushed; her hat awry;
her hair escaped and wisped about her eyes and on her shoulders.
She was drunk. An obscene and horrible spectacle, the mock of her
beholders. A horrible woman.

It was Keggo.

Rosalie caught her breath. She made to rise but did not rise. Keggo
stopped and lifted all around a vacant gaze. Her eyes met Rosalie's
straight above her. She lurched a step and stopped and swayed and
looked again, battling perhaps with hints within her fumy brain
of recognition. Rosalie made again to rise to go to her and again
did not rise. The bus moved forward. That wretched woman, making
as if to pursue her aroused be-fuddlement, turned about to follow
and came a few steps, lurching like a ship that foundered. The light
blazed down upon her upturned face. She lurched into some shadow
and, as wreckage swallowed up in the trough of the sea, her face
was gone.

Lurching... as a ship... that foundered. There was in Rosalie's
mind some dim memory struggling. Lurching... as a ship... in the
darkness... in the night. And her face... seen and gone... as a
ship... labouring... as a ship...

Ah!

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing; Only
a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness.

It came to Rosalie complete and word for word; and with perfect
clearness, as though she saw and sensed them, all its attendant
circumstances: the attic room at the Sultana's, the strange smell
mingled with the smell of the oil lamp, Keggo in the wicker chair,
she beside her, her head against Keggo's knee; and Keggo's voice
reciting the lines and her young, protesting, loving cry, "O Keggo!"

She saw it, sensed it, heard it--and stonily regarded it. A thing
to weep at, she knew it; but did not weep. A thing to stab her,
it ought to; but did not stab. What good could she do? Suppose she
had got up and gone down; suppose she now got up and went down and
went back? What good? All sentimentality that. Be sensible! If a
thousand pounds would do Keggo any good, and if she had a thousand
pounds, freely and gladly she would give the last penny of it. But
to get down, to have got down, what could she have done? Why should
she worry about her? Keggo had had her chance. Everybody had their
chance. She now had hers. Why should she...

She never saw Keggo again.






CHAPTER X





She had not good health in the week immediately following that
great day. She did not feel well. She did not look very well. Mr.
Simcox, profoundly sympathetic to every mood of her who was at
once his protege and his support, told her he thought she had been
overdoing it. She seized upon that excuse and tried to persuade
herself that perhaps she had; or, which amounted to the same thing,
that she was suffering from the revulsion of those huge excitements.
But she did not persuade herself. Her malaise, whatever it was,
was not of that kind. Its manifestations were not in lassitude or
sense of disability. They were in a curious dis-ease whose occasion
was not to be defined; in a consuming restlessness beneath whose
goad even the significant apartment had not power to charm and hold
her; in a certain feverishness whose exsiccative heat, leaving her
palms and temples cool (she sometimes felt them and had surprise)
caused inwardly a dry burning that made her long for quiet places.

She could not settle to anything. Her limbs, and they had their
way, desired not to rest; her mind, and it deposed her captaincy,
would cast no anchor.

Mr. Simcox, as the week drew on, suggested a weekend at home. It had
occurred to her, very attractively, but she had negatived it. Aunt
Belle (before the idea had come to her) had written an invitation
to one of the Saturday dinners in which she had "most particularly,
my dear child" desired her presence. Something most delightful was
going to happen and she must be there. She had accepted and she
later told herself she did not like to refuse. She knew, instantly
as she read, what was the identity of this delightful thing that
was to happen and she decided, with a sharp turn within her of some
emotion, that certainly she would be there. To whet her scorn! She
was thereafter much aggravated that her drifting mind, against her
wish, swayed constantly towards it sometimes with that same sharp
turn of that same emotion (nameless to her and without meaning)
always with aggravation of her restlessness, of her fever, of her
dis-ease. When came Mr. Simcox's suggestion of the week-end at
home she decided, as swiftly as she had first accepted, to revoke
her acceptance. She would not be there! She would not--waste her
scorn!

Impatient for movement, she that evening went to the splendid house
in Pilchester Square to tell her withdrawal. This most exasperating
dis-ease of hers! Now that she was come to change her mind she
did not want to change her mind. It was like going to the dentist
with an aching tooth. On his doorstep the tooth does not ache. Her
governance of herself was by her malaise so shaken that positively,
as she came into Aunt Belle's presence, she did not know whether she
was going to withdraw or to confirm her acceptance of the invitation.

Most comfortingly, Aunt Belle saved her the decision. "My dear
child! How unexpected! How opportune! I was just writing to you.
Our little dinner is put off! Sit here while I tell you. Now would
you like anything, dear child? A piece of cake? Some nice fruit? To
please me. Really, no? Well, now; our dinner that I so especially
wanted you for--did you guess?"

She began to tell.

She told what Rosalie had perfectly well known. The delightful
thing expected to happen was Harry Occleve's proposal of marriage
to darling Laetitia. There had been certain signs and portents.
They had come at last. Their meaning was perfectly clear. There
was not the least doubt that at the next meeting Harry would ask
Laetitia's hand. Not the shadow of a doubt! Aunt Belle knew all
the signs! Every woman of Aunt Belle's experience knew them, dear
child. So Harry had been asked for this dinner; a meaningly written
letter, dear child, to encourage him, the dear, poor fellow! And
had accepted, in terms so meaning too, the dear, devoted fellow.
Then--

"But, Aunt Belle--"

"Listen, dear child. Then he suddenly wrote saying he found he had
made a mistake--"

"Made a mistake!" The words went out from Rosalie in a small cry.

"Dear child, it is nothing. How sweet to be so concerned! It
is nothing, it is the best of signs. Made a mistake that he was
disengaged for Saturday. The dear, devoted fellow was so absurdly
vague about it. Unavoidable circumstances prevented him; that was
all; his writing and all the appearance of his letter so delightfully
distracted! How amused we were, your Uncle Pyke and I! How amused,
and how we felt for the dear, devoted fellow! Screwing up his
courage! How we remembered our own courtship! You should hear your
Uncle Pyke tell how he had to screw up his courage to propose to me
and how many times it failed him and he fled. Dear, child, you've
no idea how ridiculous these poor men are in their love! How
timorous! How they suffer! The dear, poor fellows. Your Uncle Pyke
wrote him at once a most kind and meaning letter--accepting his
unforeseen circumstances (he had to, of course) and positively
fixing him for Monday instead. 'Laetitia is expecting you,' your
Uncle Pyke wrote. The dear fellow! How happy it will make him! So
it is Monday, dear child. Monday, instead. We do so want you to
be there. I do so want you, and so does my darling, to be the first
to congratulate her. And you shall be a bridesmaid! Won't that be
nice? Kiss me, dear child. I shall never forget your sweet concern
before I told you his excuse meant nothing. Dear child, you look
startled yet."

There was only a faint voice that came to Rosalie's lips. "Really
nothing, Aunt Belle?"

"Dear child, nothing at all."

She went down to the Rectory on Saturday and found herself more
glad to be there and to be with her mother than she had ever been.
When she greeted her mother, "Kiss me again, dear, small mother,"
she cried and put her cheek against her mother's and held it there
some moments, rather fiercely and with her eyes closed, as though
there were in that contact some febrifuge that abated her inward
fever, some mooring whereto, adrift, her mind made fast.

What beset her? What was the matter with her? What worked within
her? Feverishly she inquired of herself, seeking to analyse her
case; but she could by no means inform herself; her case was not
within what diagnosis she could summon. What? Near as she could
get she had the feeling, nay, the wild longing, to get out: out
of what? She did not know. To get away: away from what? She could
not say.

She found in herself a great and an unusual tenderness towards the
home life. Only her mother and her father were now at home. Harold
was at a branch of his bank in Shanghai. Robert was in Canada.
Flora was in India, married, with two small children. Hilda was in
Devonshire, married to a doctor. These things had happened, these
flights been winged, and she had taken but the smallest interest
in them. She had had her own af-fairs. She had had herself to think
of. She had lost touch with her brothers and sisters. She scarcely
ever thought about them. Now she wanted very much to hear about
them. What news of them was there? How were they getting on? She
did want--she could fix that much of her state, or it presented
a relief for her state--she did want to feel that she belonged to
them and they to her. She noticed with a large whelming of pity how
very small her mother seemed to have grown She was always small,
but now--much smaller, fallen in, very fragile. She noticed with
a quick pang how all her father's violent blackness of hair, and
violent red of colouring, and violent glint of eye and violent
energy of gesture were faded, greyed, dimmed, devitalized to a hue
and to an air that was all one and lustreless, as if he had gone
in a pond covered, not with duckweed but with lichen, and had come
out, not dripping, but limp and shrouded head to foot in scaly
grey. Was it possible that all this had been so when she was last
here? She had not noticed it. She noticed that both her dear mother
and her father walked on the flat soles of their feet, and touched
articles of furniture as they trod, heavily, across the room. A
most frightful tenderness towards them possessed her. She wanted
like anything to show them devotion and, most frightfully, to
receive from them signs of devotion to her--to be able to feel she
was theirs, and they hers. She wanted it terribly.

But what else did she want? What? They gave her, all the home talk,
but soon it flagged and whatever in her desired satisfaction still
gnawed within her and was unsatisfied; she ministered to them and
they were pleased but they seemed very quickly tired; they had
their accustomed hours and habits, and whatever it was in her that
found relief in solicitude still tossed within her and was not
relieved. What beset her? What?

Monday came. She was at this dinner, this festival for the consummation
and celebration of the betrothal of beautiful Laetitia and Laetitia's
darling Harry. That sick dis-ease of hers had wonderfully vanished
when she came into the house, when she was hugged fit to crack her
to Aunt Belle's bosom with "Dear child! Dear child! He's just arrived!
He's with your uncle downstairs. Look at Laetitia! Lovely! Isn't
she lovely? Kiss me again, again, dear child!" When she was floated
to by Laetitia, exquisitely arrayed, pink and white, doll-faced,
doll-headed, squeaking with coquettish glee, "Rosalie! Darling!
Isn't this awful? Imagine it for me, Rosalie! It oughtn't to have
been planned like this, ought it? Do tell darling mamma it ought
not to have been! I'm trembling. Wouldn't you be?"

Yes, gone that sick dis-ease. How at this spectacle suffer dis-ease,
or any other disturbance of the emotions save only disgust, contempt
at such a horrid preparation for such a horrid rite. Excited
responsiveness to their most friendly excitation was not needed in
her for it was not expected. "The shy, quiet thing you always are,
dear child," Aunt Belle often used to say to her and said now. (And
within the week was to beat her breast in that same drawing-room
and cry with an exceeding bitter cry, "Shy! We thought her shy!
Sly! Sly! Sly to the tips of her fingers, the wicked girl!")

So she need respond with no more than her normal quiet smile, her
normal tone, in their presence, of poor-relation deference and
awe. So behind that mask could curl her lip and shudder in the
refinements of her views at this most horrid preparation for this
most horrid rite. And did. That dis-ease strangely fled, there came
to her the swift belief that here, and she had not known it!--was
that dis-ease's cause. It was the anticipation of this exhibition
of all the things she hated most, of the most glaring presentiment
of outrage of all her strongest principles. This Laetitia, embodiment
of useless woman-hood, launching herself on that disgusting dependence
on a man that soon would strand her among the derelicts; and that
Laetitia's Harry, that might have been a man among men, coming to
the apotheosis of his languishing to--oh, wreathed, fatted calf
with gilded horns!

Yes, it was this had vexed her so; and suddenly informed of the
seat of her injury she turned upon it disgust and scorn such as
never before had she felt (and she, had felt it always) for the
whole order of things for which it stood. She felt her very blood
run acid, causing her to twist, in her acid contempt for the subservience
of women, and most of all for that Laetitia's subservience, floated
on that ghastly coquetry like a shifting cargo that in the first
gale will capsize the ship; she felt her very temples throb, and
almost thought they must be heard, in her fierce detestation of
all the masculinity of men and most of all--yes, with a flash of
eye she could not stay and hoped that he could see--that fatuous
Harry's masculinity.

He came into the room--looked pale--poor calf!--and went, with a
nervous halt in his walk--sick fool!--to his Laetitia; and looked
across at Rosalie and made a half-step to her; and she thought with
all her force, to send it to him, her last words to him: that most
malevolent, "to see you raise your eyes and hear you breathe, 'Ah,
Laetitia'"; and surely sent it, for on that half-step towards her
he stopped, hesitated, and turned and engaged Laetitia again.

She had told herself, leaving the Sturgiss's house that night a
week ago, that she had not believed it possible to hate a man so.
Now! Why that was not hate; that, compared with the inimity that
now consumed her, was a mere chill indifference. And it had made
her tremble! She was rigid now. Stiff with hate! He personified
for her all in life against which she was in rebellion, all in life
that her soul abhorred; and while, in the moments before dinner,
grunting Uncle Pyke and rallying Aunt Belle and coquetting Laetitia
crowded about him, leaving her alone and far apart, she, for the
reason that it gave to her hate, and for the example that stood
before her eyes, reviewed again her theories of life and again
pledged herself in their support....

"Dinner is served." That group went laughing to the door, she
followed. "No, no, my boy. Don't stand on ceremony. Pass along as
we come. Why, hang it, man, we regard you as one of the family!
Ha! ha! haw!" Down the stairs in a body, she following. There is,
from their conversation, something the wreathed calf is to get from
his coat to bring to show them, a letter or a token or something.
The dining-room is to the front on the ground floor. The coats
hang in the hall, a narrow passage there, that runs back to Uncle
Pyke's study. They are down. "Shall I get it now?" "Yes, bring it
along; bring it along, my boy." "And Rosalie" (Aunt Belle), "my
fan, dear child. Dear child, I left it on the table in Uncle Pyke's
den. You will? Dear child!"

They pass in. The gilded calf turns from them for what it is he is
to fetch from his coat; she slips by him to the study and takes up
the fan and comes with it again.

It is dim in the passage. A condition on which generous Uncle Pyke
years before installed this wonderful electric light that you flick
on and flick off as you require it was that it should always be
flicked off when you did not require it. Now as Rosalie came from
the study the passage was lit only by the shaft of light that
gleamed from the dining-room door; its only sound Aunt Belle's
noisy chatter from the waiting table.

He was fumbling at the coats, standing there sharply outlined against
the stream of light, his face cut on it in a perfect silhouette.
She had to pass him. That hateful he. She was seized with a fit of
that same trembling that had shaken her after the passage between
them at the gate on Shoot Up Hill. It shook her now, dreadfully.
Her knees trembled. She felt faint. Awful to hate so! She was
quite close, almost touching him. It was necessary he should move,
forward or back, to give her room. But he did not move. His hands,
outstretched before him on the coats, and sharp against the light,
appeared to her to be shaking; but that was the hallucination of
this frightful trembling that possessed her. She tried to say, "If
you please--," but, dreadfully, had no voice; but made some sound;
and he, most slowly, drew back. It was before him that she had to
pass.

She advanced; and felt, as if she saw it, the intensity of the gaze
of his eyes upon her; and saw, as if the place were light and her
look not averted, his "marching" face and those lines radiating
to his temples (horizon tracks) where the faint touch of greyness
was; and suddenly had upon her senses, with an extraordinary pungency,
causing them to swim, that odd, nice smell there was about him of
mingled peat and soap and fresh tobacco, of tweed and heather and
the sea.

She caught her breath...

The thing's too poignant for the words a man has.

She was caught in his arms, terribly enfolding her. He was crying
in her ears, passionately, triumphantly, "Rosalie! Rosalie!" She
was in his arms. Those long, strong arms of his were round her;
and she was caught against his heart, her face upturned to his,
his face against her own; and she was swooning, falling through
incredible spaces, drowning in incredible seas, sinking through
incredible blackness; and in her ears his voice, coming to her in
her extremity like the beat of a wing in the night, like the first
pulsing roll of music enormously remote, "Rosalie! Rosalie!"

The thing's too poignant for the words one has. This girl's extremity
was very great, not to be set in words. Words cannot bring to earth
that which, ethereal, defies our comprehension as life and death
defy it and, like life and death, to our comprehension only sublimely
IS. Words only can say her spirit, bursting from bondage, streamed
up to cleave to his; how tell the anguish, how the ecstasy? Words
only can say her spirit, like a live part of her drawn out of her,
seemed to be rushing upwards from her body to her lips; words cannot
tell the anguish that was bliss, the rapture that was pain. Only
can say that she was in his arms, her heart to his, his lips against
her own, and cannot tell--

But also it is to be accounted to her for her extremity that herein
all her life's habit was delivered over by her to betrayal.






CHAPTER XI





He was saying, "We must go in. Can you go in?" She breathed, "I
can."

That dinner! That after-dinner in the drawing-room upstairs! It is
a nightmare to be imagined, not to be described. Imagine walking
from the darkness and the frightful secret of the passage into the
blazing dazzle and the glittering eyes of the resplendent dinner
party! They, in Harry's absence, have been exchanging the last
private nods and flashes. "Soon! Soon!" they have been nodding to
one another. Uncle Pyke, licking his chops anticipatorily of his
bath in his soup, has been licking them also in relish of working
off his daughter in this excellent match; Aunt Belle, kind, kind
Aunt Belle, with a last satisfied eye about the appointments of the
table, has patted her Laetitia's hand and conveyed to her, "Soon,
soon, darling; soon, soon!" Beautiful Laetitia has given a gentle,
glad squeeze to the patting hand and smiled a lovely, happy,
certain smile. "Soon! Soon!" has gone the jolly signal--and it is
not going to be soon, nor late; it is never, never going to happen;
and worse than never happen!

Worse than never happen! That's it. That is the awful knowledge
of awful guilt with which Rosalie sits there and freezes in guilty
agony at every pause in the conversation and could scream to
notice how the pauses grow longer and longer, more frequent and
more frequent yet. There's a frightful constraint, a chilly, creepy
dreadfulness steals about the party. They go upstairs--Aunt Belle
and Rosalie and beautiful Laetitia--and the constraint goes with
them. They sit and stare and hardly a word said. Something's up!
What's up? What's the matter with everything? Why is everything
hanging like this! What's up? And the men come in--Uncle Pyke
swollen with food, swollen with indigestion, swollen with baffled
perplexity and ferocious irritation; and Harry--she dare not look
at Harry--and the thing is worse, the awfulness more awful. Glances
go shooting round the awful silences--Uncle Pyke's atrabilious eye
in the burning fiery furnace of his swollen face is a stupendous
note of interrogation directed upon Aunt Belle; Aunt Belle's
eyebrows arch to scalp and appear likely to disappear into her
scalp and remain there in the effort to express, "I don't know! I
can't imagine!"; Laetitia--Laetitia's eyes upon her mother are as
a spaniel's upon one devouring meat at table.

Frightfulness more frightful, awfulness more awful; in Rosalie
almost now beyond control the desire to scream, or to burst into
tears or wildly into laughter. Then she knows herself upon her feet
and hears her voice: "Aunt Belle. I must go, I think. I think I am
very tired to-night."

They suffer her to go.

That's all a nightmare; but, when the door is closed upon them,
like a nightmare gone. She was alone upon the staircase and then
down in the hall--by those coats!--and, as though no ghastly interval
had been, the amazing and beloved moment was returned to her. Out
of a nightmare into a dream! She stood in her dream a moment--two
moments--three--by the hall door. Who till that evening never had
thought of love, astonishingly was invested with all love's darling
cunning. She felt somehow he would see her again before she left;
and love's dear cunning told her right. He came swiftly down the
stairs. She never knew on what pretext he had left the room. He
came to her. Love loves these snatched moments and always makes
them snatched to breathlessness. She opened the door and must be
gone. She said to him, speaking first, "Oh, we were vile in there!
How vile we were!"

It was, the intimacy and the abruptness of it, the perfect
comprehension that their thoughts were shared, as if they had known
and loved for years.

He caught her hand. "My conspirator! My secret-sharer!"

She gave him her heart in her eyes.

He said, "To-morrow, I will come to you."

She disengaged her hand.

He gave a swift look all about and caught her in his arms. "You
must tell me, my Rosalie. Tell me."

She breathed, "You knew, before I knew, that I loved you."

When she was home and got to her room she undressed, suffering her
clothes to lie as they slipped from her. She got into bed, moving
there and then lying there as one in trance.

Cataclysm! All she had been, all she had determined--all, all gone;
all nothing, surrendered all. At a touch, in a moment, without a
cry, without a shot, without a stroke, all her life's habit swept
away. All she had been, all she'd designed, all she had built
within herself and walled about herself, all she had scorned, all
that with a violent antipathy she had shuddered from or with curled
lip spurned away,--all, all betrayed, breached, mined, calamitously
riven, tumultously sundered, burst away.

She turned her face to the pillow and began to cry--most frightfully.

It was very terrible for Rosalie.






PART THREE--HOUSE OF CHILDREN

CHAPTER I





There's none so sick as, brought to bed, that robust he that ever
has scorned sickness; nor any sinner like a saint suddenly gone
from saintliness to sin; and there can be no love like love suddenly
leapt from repression into being.

Rosalie, that had abhorred the very name of love, now finding love
was quite consumed by love. She loved him so! Even to herself she
never could express how tremendous a thing to her their love was.
She used deliberately to call it to her mind (as the new, rapt
possessor of a jewel going specially to the case to peep and gloat
again) and when she called it up like that, or when, in the midst
of occupation, her mind secretly opened a door and she turned and
saw it there, a surge, physically felt, passed through her, and
she would nearly gasp, her breath taken by this new, this rapturous
element, as the bather's at his first plunge in the cold, the
splendid sea.

She loved him so! She looked at him with eyes, not of an inexperienced
girl blinded by love, but of one cynically familiar with the traits
of common men, intolerantly prejudiced, sharply susceptible to
every note or motion of displeasing quality; and her eyes told her
heart, and what is much more told her mind, that nothing but sheer
perfection was here. Harry was brilliantly talented, Harry was in
face and form one that took the eye among a hundred men. But she
had known all that and freely granted him all that before. What she
found as she came to know him, and when they were married what she
continued to find, was simply, that he was perfect. He was perfect
in every way and there was no way in which, inclining neither to
the too much nor the too little, he was not perfect.

The labour of a catalogue of her Harry's virtues is thus discounted.
Name a virtue in a man and it was Harry's. Declare too much perfection
is as ill to live with as too much fault, and it is precisely just
before too much is reached that Harry's dowry stopped. Suggest she
was blind to defects, and it is to be answered that there was no
man who knew him that ever had a thought against him (except Uncle
Pyke, Colonel Pyke Pounce, R.E., who, justifiably, was warned by
his physician never to think upon the monster lest apoplexy should
supervene) nor any fellow man in his profession (and that is
the supreme test) that ever grudged him his success. Disgruntled
barristers, morosely brooding upon the fall of plums into other
mouths than theirs, always said, when it was Harry's mouth: "Ah,
Occleve; yes, but he's different. No one grudges Harry Occleve what
he gets."

Different! In Rosalie's fond, fondest love for him she often used
to hug her love by making that catalogue of all his parts that has
been shown not to be necessary. And it was the little, tiny things
wherein he differed from common men that especially she cherished.
By the deepest part of her nature terribly susceptible to the
grosser manifestations of the male habit, it was extraordinarily
wonderful and delicious to her that Harry of these had none. In an age
much given to easy freedom of language it will not be appreciated,
it perhaps will cause the pair of them to be sneered at, but
it demands mention as illuminating a characteristic of hers (and
of his), that she had, for instance, especial delight in the fact
that Harry never even swore. The impossible test in the matter of
self-command is when a man hits his thumb with a hammer. What does
a bishop say when he does that? But she saw Harry catch his thumb
a proper crack hanging a picture in the house they took, and, "Mice
and Mumps!" cried Harry, and dropped the hammer and the picture,
and jumped off the stepladder, and did a hop, and wrung his hand,
and laughed at her and wrung his hand and laughed again. "Mice and
Mumps!"

"Mice and Mumps!" It always seemed to her to characterise and to
epitomise him, that grotesque expression. It always made her laugh;
and the more serious the accident or the dilemma that brought it
to Harry's lips, the more, by pathos, one was forced to laugh and
the seriousness thereby dissipated into an affair not serious at
all. Yes, that was the point of it and the reason it epitomised him.
There was none of life's dilemmas--little dilemmas that irritate
ordinary people or in which ordinary people display themselves
pusillanimous; or tragic dilemmas that find ordinary people wanting
and leave them in vacillation and despair--there was none of any
sort that Harry, receiving with his comic, "Mice and Mumps! Mice
and Mumps, old girl!" did not receive with the assurance to her
that, though this was a nuisance, he had metal and to spare to settle
such; that, though this was a catastrophe, a facer, he'd too much
courage, too much high, brave spirit for it to discommode him;
there was no fight in such, he was captain of such, trust him!

"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward."

That was Harry!

"Mice and Mumps!" On the evening of the day following that astounding
betrothal of theirs, affianced as it were at a blow--a day spent
together in the park complete, without a break for food or thought
of occupation--on the evening of that day he must go, he de-clared,
to the horrific castle in Pilchester Square and break the awful
news, proclaim his villainy.

She was terrified. "They'll kill you, Harry. Write."

"No, no. I've been a howling cad. It's true, a howling cad, not
of guile, but of these astounding things that have happened to us
outside ourselves, but nevertheless a howling cad as such conduct
is judged, and will be judged. So I must go through it. I must.
That's certain. I couldn't hide behind a letter. They are entitled
to tell me to my face what they think of me. They must have their
right. Oh, yes, I've got to give them that. To-night. Now."

A howling cad, but of forces outside themselves ("Too quick for
me," he had explained), not of guile.

He had explained, in those enchanted hours in the park, that it was
really by resolve to do the right thing, and not to do the caddish
thing, that he had presented himself the howling cad that they would
hold him. That night at the Sturgiss's at Cricklewood had charged
him ("Oh, Rosalie, like bursting awake to breathe from suffocation
in a dream.") what for many days, only looking at her, never speaking
to her, suffering her not veiled contempt, he had felt as one feels
a premonition that is insistent but that cannot be defined--that
night had charged him that he loved her. He was no way definitely
committed to poor Laetitia. Was he more wrong if, now knowing his
heart was otherwhere, he maintained and carried to its consummation
the intimacy between Laetitia and himself, or if he stopped while
yet he had not gone too far? He had decided to break while yet it
might, be broken. There was an invitation from Mrs. Pyke Pounce
he had accepted. He wrote, endeavouring to give a meaning to his
words, excusing himself from it.

She murmured, "I remember." ("Nothing in it, dear child; nothing
in it!")

There came back a letter from Colonel Pyke Pounce in which Colonel
Pyke Pounce also had endeavoured to give a meaning to his words,
and had succeeded. Now Harry knew his problem of moral conduct in
a fiercer form; now, resolving to do what he told himself was the
right thing and not the caddish thing, he took the step that made
him be the howling cad that they would think him. ("But, Rosalie,
gave me you!")

He had resolved that he must accept the invitation, present himself
at the house--and let the hour decide. As the situation revealed
itself so he would accept it. If it was made clear to him, as the
Pyke Pounce letter much gave him to believe, that proposal for
Laetitia's hand was expected of him, he would "do the right thing"
and stand by what his behaviour apparently had led them to expect;
if the way still seemed open, the door not shut behind him, he would
very frankly explain to Laetitia's grisly father that he thought
it best his visits to the house from now should cease. The hour
should decide! But there was in the hour, when it came, one terrible,
one lovely element that he never had expected to be there. In all
his visits to the house Rosalie never had been met on any other
day than Saturday. This dinner was on the Monday, and arriving to
face and carry through his ordeal, he was startled, he was utterly
shaken to see her there. ("To see my darling there.")

O forces outside themselves! "When you had to pass me in the passage
nothing mattered then--except I could not let you pass."

So it was that now, the right thing not having been done on that
night, the right thing in this new position must be done to-day.
They were entitled to tell him to his face what they thought of
him and they must have their right. That was his view and he would
not abate it.

"They'll kill you, Harry."

They had come by this to the corner of Pilchester Square and there
he bade her wait. She said again, part laughing, most in fear,
"They'll kill you."

"I've got to give them the chance to do their best."

And off he went, strongly, erect. One who never... but marched
breast forward.

Waiting for him, she really was terrified for him. Ferocious Uncle
Pyke! Terrific Aunt Belle! Swollen and infuriated Uncle Pyke! Bitter
and outraged Aunt Belle!

In twenty minutes came the crash of a slammed front door that clearly
and terribly was Uncle Pyke Pounce slamming it as if he would hurl
it through its portals and crash it on to Harry down the steps.

Harry reappeared, uncommonly grave.

She put out a hand to him, dreadfully anxious.

"Mice and Mumps!" said Harry. "Mice and Mumps!"

You couldn't help laughing! But also, squeezing the strong arm
beneath which he tucked her hand, you felt, with such a thrill,
from that grotesque expression, and from his face as he said it,
that this, like every forward thing, had in it nothing that could
discommode that high, brave spirit: no fight in such; he was captain
of such, trust him!

Thus also her delight in another form, and yet in the same form,
in that grotesque expression, when it was ejaculated as his sole
expletive when he caught his thumb that frightful crack while hanging
a picture in what was to be his study in their newly taken house.

Any other man in the world, even a bishop, would have sworn; would
have sworn no doubt harmlessly and with an honest heartiness to
which the most pious prude could not have taken exception. Agreed!
But the point was--that Harry didn't!

She loved him so! She insisted she must bind up the thumb with
her pocket handkerchief, and did, Harry protesting; and for years,
still loving him with the old, first love, she often would be
reminded by the picture of the incident and of her joy in it.

Yes, the only expletive she ever heard him use; and, lo, in that
very room, years on, he seated beneath that very picture, she was
to come to him with news (and hers the guilt of it) that for the
first time was to strike him between the joints of his harness,
visibly ageing him as she spoke, and for the first time cause him
to groan his pain. She was to glance at the picture as she spoke
and very terribly its merry association to be recalled to her.
She was to recall him young, gay, tremendously splendid, wringing
his damaged hand, laughing, "Mice and Mumps!" She was to see him,
grey ascendant upon the raven of his hair, shrinking down in his
seat, wilting as one slowly collapsing after a stunning blow, and
at her news (and hers the guilt of it) to hear his voice go, not
exclamatorily, but in a thick mutter, as one dazed, bewildered, in
a fog, "My God, my God, my God, my God!"

How could one ever have foreseen that?






CHAPTER II





She loved him so! On that first day together in the park she told
him everything about herself, about all her ideas and theories and
principles, particularly where these touched his sex, even about
that terrible fit of crying of hers in bed an hour after she had
left him. And Harry understood everything and agreed with her in
everything. O rapturous affinity!

They met early when business London was rushing to business. They
stayed late, with no thought of food or of their occupations, till
business London was returning, and night, in lamps below and stars
above, was setting out its sentinels.

She told him everything; and even if she had wished not to open
all her heart, there would have been the immense selection of
everything--every single thing about herself--from which to choose
to tell him. For there never had been such a betrothal as theirs;
done at a blow with no single intimate thing ever before passed between
them! Her very first words to him as they met, her greeting of him
as they came together, showed how preposterous and never-before-imagined
was their affiancement. "You know, it's incredible," she greeted
him. "It's incredible, it's grotesque, it's flatly impossible--I've
never before seen you except in your dress clothes or at afternoon
tea!"

Harry took both her hands in his. "But I think I've wanted you,"
said Harry, "ever since I was in long clothes. I know I've wanted
you ever since first I saw you."

One knows another, in her place, would have bantered this off in
that modern attitude towards love which is a horror, boisterously
expressed, of admitting love as an emotion. Rosalie, that had
scorned the very name of love, and that, because betrayed by love,
had turned her face to her pillow and cried most frightfully,
received it with a sound that was between a sigh and a catching of
her breath. She loved him so!

And then they talked; and the thing between them, that had come so
wonderfully, was so wonderful that they were as it were transfigured by
it, as awe and spirituality and mysticism would fill the dwellers
in a house visited by a miracle of God. So wonderful, that
conversation, they would have felt, was not possibly a word for
all that occupied them in those rapturous hours: not conversation,
no,--a sublime engagement of their spirits wherein (possessing the
keys of all the wonders), seas, continents and worlds of thoughts
were traversed by them, in every clime most exquisite affinity
discovered.

As at a blow they had become affianced, so, with no stage between,
but in immediate sequence perfectly natural to them both, the natural
repercussion of the blow, they talked immediately of betrothal's
consummation, of marriage, of their marriage.

About marriage Rosalie had immensely much to tell Harry. It was
what she had principally to say, and this is how and why and what
she told him.

When from her first terrible dismay--that frightful crying, her
face turned to the pillow--she had recovered; when to the lovely
ardour of her love--stealing about her, soothing her, in the night;
bursting upon her, ravishing her, in the morning--she had passed
on; she remembered her second line of her defences and she fell
back upon it. "If ever I fell in love," she had often said, alike
to Keggo and to Miss Salmon, "if such an impossible thing ever
were to happen to me, I'd marry as marriage should be. I'd enter a
partnership. I would live my life; he would live his life; together,
when we wanted to, when we were off duty, so to speak, we would live
our life. A partnership, a mutually free and independent partnership."

The second line of her defences! Oh, strong and reassuring thought!
Of course, of course the first line, breached and swept away, had
never really mattered. Foolish to have wept for it! It was built
against love and she knew now, by her darling and her terrible
experience, that against love----! Nay, in that whelming admission's
very tide, sweeping upon her from envisagement of Harry and bearing
her deliciously upon its flood, there had come a thought as strong
with wine as that was sweet with honey. Built against love! Why,
in seeking to build against love, to shut away love from her life,
was she not perpetrating against herself the very act--denial
of anything a free life might have--that it was her life's first
principle to oppose? A man's place, a man's part, everything that
a man by conventional dowry is given, hers should be as freely
as a man's it is! That was her aim; that at once the basis of her
standpoint and the target of her shaft; and lo, at the very outset
of her independence, she had sought to deny herself that which (as
now she knew) was life's most lovely gift. She was steadfast, and
she was caparisoned, to obtain and to possess the things that,
of her sex, commonly a woman might not have, and she was shutting
herself from that which, if it offers, not all the man-owned world
can deny the woman lowliest in office, heaviest in chains, deepest
in servitude!

O senselessness! She could see, as looking upon an individuality
not her own, that foolish girl that for such had turned her face
to her pillow and cried out her heart; and at that very moment,
and no other, of smiling pity for that mistaken grief, there came
to Rosalie a sudden sense of womanhood attained; of much increase
of years and wisdom; of growth of stature; of transportation, as
from one world to another, from the character and the presence that
had been hers to a personality and a body that looked down upon
that other as, tenderly, a mother upon the innocence of her small
child.

That poor, brave, foolish Rosalie that was! Did she protest, that
foolish girl, that she was right in what had been her attitude
to love? Did she with would-be bitterness recall those views laid
down upon the women in the boarding house--that they were derelicts
precisely through this love business, abandoned of men, relict of
men, footsore and fallen in pursuit of men?

Ah, small, misguided creature! The principles were right but all
askew the application. Love! Consider other attributes of life.
Consider learning; consider food. Learning and food--were they not
bounties of life's treasure, to be absorbed and used for sustenance
in order, by their nourishment, to give to live this life more fully?
Why, so with love! Derelicts, those women, because receiving love
(that loveliest gift of all!) not as a means but as an end--the end
of all: that attained, everything attained; that won, all finished.
That was it! That the misapplication! Learning, or food, or love--the
same with all! How dead the life that only lived in scholarship;
how gross the life that only lived to eat; how derelict that she
that only lived to love, to marry--then ceased to live!

And equally, O small, misguided girl, how starved the life that
has no books; how weak the frame that has no food; ah, dear (thus
smiled she to herself), how dead the life that knows not love!

The second line of her defences! Nay, as now through this mature
and happy cogitation she saw it, the first and last and only line!
In her aloneness, in that girl's single life, there had been nothing
against which to defend. She had fought phantoms, that girl; resisted
shadows. Now was the necessity, now the test; and now, because with
Harry, because she loved him so, because he was every way and in
all things perfect, now should be the triumphant exposition.

And she told Harry: marriage that should be a partnership--not an
absorption by the greater of the less; not one part active and the
other passive; one giving, the other receiving; one maintaining, the
other maintained; none of these, but instead a perfect partnering,
a perfect equality that should be equality of place, equality of
privilege, equality of duty, equality of freedom. "Harry, each with
work and with a career. Harry, each living an own life as every man,
away from home, shutting his front door upon that home and off to
work, leads an own and separate life. Harry--"

Oh, wonderful beneath this imperturbable sky, amongst these
common, passive things--these paths, those trees, that grass, this
bench--within this seclusion of that murmurous investment of this
city, the ceaseless roar of London, standing like patient walls,
eternal and indifferent, about her quietudes. Oh, wonderful in these
accustomed and insensible surroundings thus to be calling "Harry,"
as he were brother, him that a day and night away virtually was
unmet; to be exposing, as to a gracious patron, all her mind's
treasury of thought; to be revealing, as in confessional, her inmost
places of her heart; to be receiving, as by transfusion, the glow
of affirmation on her way and in her trust. Oh, wonderful!

Wonderful, because remember for her that she was still beneath the
shock of her dismay at her betrayal of herself; still breathless at
that rout from her prepared positions; not yet assured her banners
were unsullied in their withdrawal to her second line; not yet
convinced it was no rout but a withdrawal, wise and strategical,
ranks unbroken, to the true point of her defence.

Do try to imagine her, tremulous in this her vital enterprise,
tremulous in this wonder that her armies found. It is very desirable
to remember what can be remembered for that girl.






CHAPTER III





Harry assured her! Harry convinced her! Harry was here upon
the battlements, come with her in her retirement, joined with her
as her ally. All her ideas were his ideas. He, too, had these new
views of marriage. He said they always had been his. He hated, as
she hated, that old dependence notion: all the privileges the man's,
the woman's all the duties. That was detestable to him, said Harry.
Marriage in his view--

"I'll tell you this," was one thing Harry said. "I'll show it to
you this way, Rosalie. I don't exactly know what a reciprocating
machine is, but I know what it sounds like, and what it sounds
like is what a marriage ought to be,--a perfect fitting together,
a perfect harmonising, a perfect joining of two perfect halves that
everywhere reciprocate."

The word delighted her. A reciprocating machine! Yes, yes! Each an
own part; each with own and separate interests; and their parts,
and the production arising out of their interests--their individual
selves--approached together, by free will, to join towards a mutual
benefit, a shared endeavour, a common advancement, a single end.

She was desperately in earnest and so was he. There was a mill near
his people's home in Sussex, a water mill, and his illustration by
it of the design they had showed her how earnestly her own ideas
were his. There were two wheels to this mill, Harry told her,
one on either side. Each ran in its own stream, each was entirely
independent of the other; they worked alone, but each helped the
other's work; the mill joined them and they joined to make the
mill.

That was it!

And she was not talking any generalities, and Harry was not, either.
They weren't, either of them, playing with this idea of mutual
independence. There would "of course" be a business basis to it,
Rosalie said. She was earning her own income and she would pay her
half of the upkeep of their home together. It was a stipulation that
she advanced with a definite fear that here, at last, she might be
taking Harry from his depth; that by natural instinct of generosity,
or by instinct of immemorial custom to endow the wife with all the
husband's worldly goods, he would here reveal a flaw in his till
now flawless duplication of the views that were her own.

But Harry (the never failing rapture of it!) was every way without
spot or blemish. He was looking straight and close into her eyes
while she put forward this, and there moved not the least dissentient
shade across his own while he received it. She need have had no
fear. He said, "I agree absolutely with that, Rosalie. There's only
one point--" and his expansion of this point wholly entranced her
because it established conditions even more matter-of-fact and
businesslike than her own broad principle.

"There's only one point," Harry said. "It can't be half and half in
terms of actual bisection. Look, Rosalie, in this matter of running
the home we're making a contract between two parties and--don't
forget I'm a lawyer--it has to be an equable and just contract,
and to be that it has to be based for each party's liability--Do
you like me to use the law jargon?"

She nodded. "I do, I do!" This was frightfully, entrancingly serious
for her. This was a survey of the fortifications of her second line
of her defences. "I do, I do!"

"Well, has to be based for each party's liability on each party's
interest, on the extent to which each party is involved. I'm making
more--an uncommon good bit more--than you are, Rosalie. My interest,
therefore my liability, that is, my share, has to be allowed to be
proportionately the more. Put it in another way. We're going to run
an establishment as an establishment might be run by two or more
people of different incomes who wish to join forces for mutual
pleasure, two or three relatives, two or three friends. Well, there's
a regular principle governing that kind of arrangement. You don't
all pay the same. If you did, you'd reduce the scale of living to
the level of what the poorest can afford, and half the idea of the
combination is to enjoy a very much better scale. No, you run the
show on the level the wealthiest is willing to go to, and to the
total charge each one contributes in the proportion of his income.
If one party has a thousand a year and the other five hundred,
and the thousand-pounder wants to live at the rate of nine hundred
a year, he pays six hundred and the other three hundred. Each is
paying his just share--that's the point. That's how we'd arrange
it, Rosalie."

She loved him so! If that were said a thousand times (as already
perhaps too often for the robust) it still would not approach
the volume of its swelling in the heart of Rosalie, for that was
ceaseless. His attitude in this matter now between them, as in
every matter, might have been the perfect agreement with her own
view that it was and yet might so have been presented as to be
much antipathetic to her. His attitude might have made her feel she
ought to say, "Thank you, Harry, for agreeing to that"; it might
have had the note, "I know exactly how you feel about marriage; I
want to make every-thing just as you wish." Quicksands! Principles
to be received as grants, bases of her defences to be accepted as
concessions! Quicksands! At either attitude, as at a foreign flavour
in a cup, she would have drawn back, suspicious; at either sense
within herself, of winning a favour, of accepting a hazard, she
would have taken alarm, dismayed. But it was why she loved him so
that here, as everywhere, his standpoint was her standpoint's own
reflection. She was, as she would have said, deadly in earnest;
deadly in earnest to a depth that she could let go to absurdity
and never know it for absurdity; and so was he.

Approving this plan of computation of the share that each would
pay, "It would have to be done strictly," she said, "as though it
were strictly business. And--you don't know, perhaps--I'm making,
or soon shall be, just on five hundred a year."

He smiled the nice smile of his she loved, more with his eyes
than with his lips. "I'm afraid mine's a good bit more than that.
Money's rather pushed at you at the Bar once it starts. You'd have
to put up with that."

Her fondness in her eyes reflected him. "I know how famous you are
getting. I'd not be stupid about that, Harry. It would be the just
share, each according to our means; that's understood. Only, for
me, it would have to be the just share, that's what I'm saying;
not a matter of form, a strict proportion."

"If you liked," said Harry, "we'd give the figures to the costs
clerk at my chambers and let him work the contributions out."

"Absurd!" she might have laughed; and as an absurdity he might,
with a laugh, have presented it. But quite gravely he made the
suggestion, and quite gravely, after a moment's grave thought, "I
don't think that would be necessary," she returned.

His earnestness in this thing so vital to her matched her own,
and therefore she loved him; and he yet could bring to it lightly
a touch which, though light, yet was profoundly based; and therefore,
newly, she loved him. She knew she talked with immense profligacy
of words in her endeavour to make clear the principles this second
line of her defences must maintain. "Each with work and with
a career, each with an own and separate life." She kept repeating
that. "Equal in work and in responsibility, Harry, and therefore
equal in place, in privilege, in freedom."

And Harry, with a light touch but a grave air, a happy setting for
a profound meaning, put it in a sentence. "Things which are equal
to the same thing are equal to one another," said Harry.

She loved him so!

But there ought here to be explained for her what, loving him so
and he so loving her, she could not have known for herself. This
plan of maintaining their establishment by contribution of share
and share was maintained by Rosalie from the beginning--to the end.
She never had cause to doubt that in all the earnestness of that
close conversation Harry was utterly sincere. She often recalled
that steady gaze with no dissentient shade across it with which his
eyes received her statement of her case and knew that only truth
was in that gaze. He did believe what she believed. It only was
afterwards she discovered that also he believed that, both for her
and him, the thing would mellow down as mellows down the year, her
heady Aprils burnt in June, her burning Junes assuaging to September;
that it would pass; that time--

Yes, it must be explained. It was not active in his mind, this
reservation. It was passive, underlying, subconscious, as beneath
vigour's incredulity of death lies passively admission of death's
final certitude. He believed what she believed; but he believed it
as are believed infinity and eternity: wherein mankind, believing,
reposes upon that limitation of the human mind which cannot conceive
infinity but sees ultimately an end, and can pretend eternity through
myriad years but feels ultimately a termination. Harry believed
what she believed but only by stabilisation of a man's inherent
articles of faith. He was of the male kind; and observe, by an
incident, what inherent processes of thought the male kind has:

When they were looking over the house which ultimately they
took--an all ways most desirable house in Montpelier Crescent,
Knightsbridge--Rosalie had only a single objection: it was far too
big.

"Miles too big," cried Rosalie, coming up to the second floor where
Harry had preceded her. "What are you doing there, Harry? Miles
too big, I was saying. It really is. Of course I realise you must
have a house suitable to your fame but--What are you doing, Harry?"

"Fame, yes," breathed Harry, desperately occupied. "I've turned
on this tap and I can't turn it off again. Eternal fame. After me
the deluge!"

She was looking around. "But, Harry, really! Look at this floor.
Two more huge rooms. What can we--"

"Mice and Mumps!" groaned Harry, straining at the tap. "Mice and
Mumps!"

He came to her wiping his hands on his handkerchief. "Too big! Look
here, supposing this house isn't washed away by that tap. Suppose
it's still standing here tomorrow. Take a broad, courageous view
of the thing. Suppose this isn't the beginning of the Great Flood
of London, and that we're going to live in a house and not an ark.
Well, what you've got to remember is that we're not coming in here
for a week. We've got to look ahead. Take these two rooms. Why,
you can see what they're for, what they've been. Opening into one
another, and those little bars on the windows, and that protected
fireplace. Nurseries. Day nursery and night nursery."

Rosalie laughed.






CHAPTER IV





That's all done. The thing traverses the waters of the years, as
across seas a ship, and makes presently a new shore, a new clime,
wherein are met occasions new and strange, not anticipated by
Rosalie.

Here is one.

Habitant in the new continent across these years, she is wife and,
though she had laughed, is mother, and on a day is with her Harry,
and Harry is saying, not at all with any hardness in his voice,
but very gravely:

"I have a right to a home."

She replies, as grave as he, as one debating a matter that is
weighty but that is before the arbitrament, not of feeling, but of
reason, "Harry, you have a home."

A gesture of his head, much comprehensive, is made by him: "Is this
a home?"

"It's where we live."

"Ah, where we live, Rosalie!"

She did not reply to this. Himself, and not she, spoke next; but
his note was as though she had answered and he were speaking in
his turn. "I have a right to a home. The children have a right to
a home."

She said, "Then, Harry, give yourself a home. Give the children a
home."

He said, "Rosalie, I am a man."

She answered, "Harry, I am a woman."

Harry was smoking and he indrew an inhalation from his pipe with
a long sibilant sound: her answer was very well understood by him.

No, she never had anticipated this.

Yet might not she have seen? Astounding how in life one's suddenly
engulfed in depths and never has perceived the shoals from which
they led; suddenly entombed in night and never has perceived the
gradual declination of the day! Why, when she looked back, so far
away as in those days of choosing their house had been in seed this
thing that now was come to fruit. And she had watched it grow from
seed to seedling, and on to bud and blossom, and never had suspected.

But had she not? Then it was curious, she knew, that, alone of all
her thoughts, all her beliefs, all her theories, her observations
and her deductions from her observations, curious that of them all
only a certain observation, made when choosing their house, she
never had told to Harry.

Choosing their house! She had gone back to her rooms from the
third day of their house-hunting gently amused at an addition to
her compendium of lore on the male habit. It was in a way like the
cat idea; at least it was, like that, reversal of a common opinion
on distinguishing traits as between men and women. It went in her
mind like this and, because it arose out of Harry, she laughed
softly to herself as like this she shaped it:

"They say a woman marries for a home. Wrong, wrong! It's man that
marries for a home--a home that, having got it, superficially he
cares little enough about, and superficially uses as a good place
to get away from; but that's just how he uses his business, how he
uses everything. Oh, he wants it, he wants it, and he marries for
it far more than a woman wants it or marries for it. How plain
it is! A man marries to settle down, a woman for just precisely
the opposite: to break up; to get away from the constraints of
daughterhood and of Miss-hood, as a schoolgirl, holiday-bound, from
the constraints of school; to enlarge her life, not to restrict
it; to aerate her life, not to compose it. Why, it's inherent in a
man, the desire for a home; it's in his bones. Look at little boys
playing--it's caves and tents and wigwams they delight to play at;
a place they can in part discover and in part construct, and then
arrange their things in, and then go off exploring and then, all
the time, be coming back to the delicious cave and creep in and
block up the door! Girls don't play at that; they play at shops and
being grown up, at nursing dolls and not themselves being nursed.
But that's your man--a hunter with a cave, and the return to the
cave the best part of the hunting. That's what he marries for--a
home; a pitch of his own; a place to bring his things to and wherein
to keep his things; an establishment; a solid, anchored base; a
place where he can have his wife and his children and his dogs and
his books and his servants and his treasures and his slippers and
his ease, and can feel, comfortably, that she and they and it are
his,--his mysterious cave with the door blocked up, his base, his
moorings, his settled and abiding centre. Dear Harry!"

"Dear Harry" because all this had come to her while with secret,
fond amusement she had watched Harry delightedly and entrancedly
fussing about the houses they explored. The boy with a cave! The
man with a home! She liked the idea of a new home, and a home with
Harry, but, given outstanding features obviously essential, almost
any home would have satisfied her. She was animated and interested
in the choosing, but not with Harry's interest and animation. Hers
were the feelings with which she had established herself in the
two-room suite at the boarding house. There any two rooms would
have done; here any pleasant house would do. It was not the rooms;
it was the significance of her entry into their possession. It
was not the house; it was the significance of all connoted by the
house. The rooms had been a stepping-off place to independence
larger and to triumphs new; the house was a stepping-off place to
independence, to triumphs, to battle of life and to joy of life,
lifted upon a plane high above her old world as the stars, as bright
and keen as they.

But for Harry it was a stepping-in place.

It was Harry that fussed and examined and measured and opened and
shut and tested and tried and must have this and must have that.
It was Harry who saw everything with the eye that was going to see
it and live with it permanently and for all time. It was Harry who
invested every square yard of every interior with the attributes
that should be there when they therein were domiciled. Harry who
said, "This front door! Rosalie, we're going to have a front door
that will hit you in the eye and make you say 'Mice and Mumps,
there's a distinguished couple that live behind a door like that!'
None of your wretched browns and greens and blacks and reds for our
door, Rosalie! We'll have a yellow front door, gamboge. I've seen
it on a house in Westminster. I'll take you there. You wait till
you see it. Imagine it, Rosalie, beneath that lovely old fanlight
overhead. And then yellow window boxes tinted to match in every
window and crammed with flowers. It'll be a house you'll run to
get into directly you catch sight of it. Then inside here, in the
hall, there'll be the thickest rugs money can buy and the brightest
light and the warmest stove. You'll step in and shut the yellow
door and, 'Mice and Mumps,' you'll say, 'this is home!' Now, look
here; here'll be my study; I'll have bookshelves built in all
round there and there and there. Pictures there. This nook--I'll
fix a little cupboard there and keep my tools in. I'll spend half
my time our first weeks pottering about with a hammer and a pair of
pliers. This place just here on the landing. Looks like a dungeon.
We'll knock out a window there and fit it up with hot and cold
water as a cloak room. Now here's your room, your--"

"My study," she had interpolated, a little apprehensive lest for
her private room he should use another word.

"Yes, your study, rather. Each of us with our own study! A lark,
eh? And Rosalie, in mine there'll be a special chair for you and
in yours a special chair for me. We'll stroll in on each other's
work--"

She loved him for that. "Like two men in chambers," she said.

His reply was, "We'll rip out this fireplace and put you in one in
oak; the walls something between gold and brown, eh? Now come into
the drawing-room. This'll be the room. Let's start with the hearth
and imagine it's winter. This is where we'll have tea the days when
I get back in time--"

"And when I get back in time."

"Of course, I'd forgotten that. Why, then whichever of us is back
first will be all ready with the tea and waiting to welcome the
other. Can't you see the room? Warm, shadowed, glowing here and
there, here and there gleaming, and the tea table shining? Won't
it be a place to rush back to? I say, Rosalie, it's going to be
rather wonderful, isn't it?"

Dear Harry! Yes, men that married for a home.

So she had known that from the start; and, the significant thing
(as later perceived) she never had mentioned it to Harry. There
was not a line of her life, as lived before she knew him, that she
had not revealed to him; there was not a passage of her life, when
joined to his, that was not handed to him to write upon; but this,
that she knew he'd married for a home, was never revealed, never
inscribed upon the tablets submitted daily for his annotation.

Yes, significant!

But how could its significance have been perceived? Look here, there
had been a night--a thousand years ago!--when a girl had turned her
face to her pillow and cried, most frightfully. Significant! Why,
that girl's world had lain in atoms at the significance of that
girl's grief. And she that now looked back had been born out of
those tears, as the first woman drawn from the side of the first
man, and fondly had chid that child that no significance was there
at all. There was none. There was nothing to fear. A natural joy
of life that had been stifled had been embraced, a shattered world
had been remoulded on foundings firmer and, ah, nearer to the
heart's desire. Significant! It had been so disproved that not more
possibly could fears arise from those, her lovely dissipations of
those fears, than from its watchful mother's reassuring candle and
her soothing words new terrors to a frightened child at night.

Then how, she used to ask herself, could significance have been
perceived in not admitting Harry to her smiling thought on men and
home? Significance--then? Nay, memory bear witness, much, much the
contrary! Bear witness, memory, it was that very thought of Harry as
boy with cave, as man with home, had suddenly suffused her with...

"Dear Harry!" she had thought, and with the thought...

Anna! That cry of Anna's upon that frightening night, striking her
hands against her bosom, "I have a longing--here!" Never till then
its meaning nor even thought upon its meaning.

Then! Upon that thought--"Dear Harry!"--had come, with a catch at
the breath as at an obscure twinge of pain, a tremor of the sense
that was its meaning: thereafter flooding all her being as floods
a flood a pasture. A longing to be mother, Anna's longing was! A
longing to be mother, to hold a tiny scrap against her breast; to
have her heart, bursting for such release, torn out by baby fingers;
to have her design of God, insufferably overpacked within her by the
remorseless pressure of instinct through a million ages, relieved,
discharged, fulfilled by motherhood. Poor Anna! Ah, piteous! "Oh,
God, thou knowest how hard it is to be a woman." Poor, piteous Anna,
and poor, piteous every woman that, made vessel of this yearning,
must have it unfulfilled.

Not she!

The coronet of love, denied poor Anna, was hers. He'd said "These
rooms--the nurseries"; the crown of love; and she had laughed!

Oh, stubborn still! Oh, still not cognisant of nature's dower to
her sex. To wear the coronet and to refuse the crown! To be wife
and not to be mother! To think of baby fingers and to think to put
away the offer of their baby clutch!

That girl that turned her face to her pillow and began to cry, most
frightfully, cried next again when she again lay abed and had a tiny
scrap, an ugly, exquisite, grotesque, miraculous scrap, a baby boy,
a baby man, along her arm and watched it there. Those had been
passionate and rending tears; these did not even flow. Those burned
her eyes; these stood within her eyes a lovely welling up of pride
and adoration, drawn from her by this newly risen wonder as by the
sun at his arising moisture in lovely mists is drawn from earth.

Motherhood! When later he was christened, she and Harry named him
Hugh; but it was a caressing diminutive she made out of his name
by which he was always known. Her tiny son! His tiny arms hugged
you as never tiny arms possibly could have hugged before and so
she called him "Huggo."

"Harry, if you could feel how he's hugging me! It's absurd he can
have such strength! It's ridiculous he can love me so! And how
can he possibly know that hugging's a sign of love? Harry, how can
he? Take him and hold him up like that and see if he hugs you the
same. He is! He is! Isn't he?"

"Mice and Mumps," said Harry, "he is; he's throttling me, the
tiger."

"Ah, give him back, I'm jealous. There's never, never been a hugger
like him since the world began. He's Huggo. That's his name. Creature
straight out of heaven, you're Huggo."

Her love for infant Huggo so maternal; her unity with Harry so
exquisitely one; how could she have known were to be met across
the waters of the years occasions new and strange, as that already
shown, or, onward yet a further voyage, as this?

The matter between them touched the same as when, "I have a right
to a home; the children have a right to a home," Harry had said.
But their tones not the same; in Harry's voice a quality of dulness
as of one reciting a lesson too often conned yet never understood;
in hers a certain weariness as with instruction too often given.

They had been talking a very long time. Harry hadn't any arguments.
He just kept coming back and coming back to the one thing. He said
again, the twentieth time, in that dull voice, "We are responsible
for the children. We have a duty towards them."

The twentieth time! She made a gesture, not impatient, just tired,
that was of repletion with this thing. "Ah, you say 'we' have a
duty. You say 'we'; but, Harry, you mean me. Why I a duty more than
you? Why am I the accused?"

Harry's dull note: "Because you are a woman." Ineffable weariness
was in the murmur that was her reply. "Ah, my God, that reason!"
No, she had never anticipated this.






CHAPTER V





How did it happen? Within her face abode the explanation of how it
happened.

There was a mirage in her face.

If she were taken (for a moment) when she had been married ten years,
her age thirty-two, and then taken again when she was forty-six,
when she had done, when, in 1922, she said, "I have done," and her
story ceases, it is material to a portrait of her that in those
fourteen years her appearance did not greatly change. Events inscribed
it; but these writings were in two scripts, rendered in the two
natures that were hers, and, as it were, a balance was maintained
between them; there remained constant the aspect that her face
presented to the world; constant, that is to say, the spirit that
looked out of her face.

That girl that at the door of the great house in Pilchester Square
had breathed, "You knew, before I knew, that I loved you," had been
called beautiful. This woman that now was wife and now was mother
was beautiful with that girl's beauty and with her own, matured of
years, set upon it. That girl, shaded in her colouring, commonly
was sombre in her hue, but with a quick, impetuous spirit beneath
her flesh that, flashing, somehow lightened all her tints; this
woman, albeit dark, had somehow about her a deep golden hue as of
dusk in a deep wood beheld against a sunset. Her face had always had
a boyish look and still, with years, was boyish. There was a mirage
in her face. The stranger glanced and saw a mother--extraordinarily
shielding and maternal and benignant things; and looked again and
saw a boy--astonishingly reckless and impetuous and rather boyish,
hard and mutinous things. Or glanced and saw a boy, perhaps laughing
and eager, perhaps obstinate and petulant; and looked again and
only much tenderness was there.

There was a mirage in her face; and with its changes her voice
changed. When she was a boy her voice was April; when she was a
mother September was her voice.

There were two natures in her and those were their reflections;
two lodestars set above her that by turns brightened and drew her
gaze; two lodestones set within her that claimed her banners as
claim the moon and earth the inconstant sea; one of head, one of
heart; one of choice, one of dower; one of will, one of nature.

In that tenth year her married life there stood for the mother in
her face three children: Huggo who then was nine; Dora, whom she
called Doda because in her first prattle this heart's delight of
hers-"A baby girl! A beloved one, Harry, to be daughter to me, and
to be a tiny woman with me as little girls always are, and then
budding up beside me and being myself to me again, my baby girl, my
daughter, my woman-bud, my heart's own heart!"--had thus pronounced
her name, who then was seven; and last Benjamin, then five, whom
she named Benjamin because, come third, come after cognizance of
confliction within herself, come after resentment of his coming--called
Benjamin because, come out of such, there were such happy tears,
such tender, thank-God, charged with meaning tears to greet him,
the one the last of three, the little tiny one, so wee beside the
lusty, toddling others. Benjamin she told Harry he must be named;
Benji she always called him.

Huggo and Doda and Benji! Her children! Her darling ones, her
lovely ones! Love's crown; and, what was more, worn in the persons
of these darling joys of hers (when they were growing up to nine
and seven and five years old) in signal, almost arrogant in her
disdain of precedent to the contrary, that woman might be mother
and yet work freely in the markets of the world precisely as man
is father but follows a career.

Children! There had been a time when, speaking from the boy that
would stand mutinous and reckless in her face, and with her April
voice, she had expressed her view on parentage in terms of the old
resentment at the old disability, encountered, bedrocked, wherever
into life she struck a new trail; in terms of the old invertion of
an old conceit wherever with her principles she touched conventional
opinion. The catlike attributes, the marriage for a home, here the
familiar saw on parenthood--

"They talk about hostages to fortune," she had expressed her idea,
"they talk about a man with young children as having given hostages
to fortune. You know, it's quite absurd. He doesn't. I don't say a
man to whom the support of children is a financial anxiety hasn't,
by begetting them, placed himself in a position of captivity to
fortune, or to the future, or whatever you like to call it. He very
much has. He's backed a bill that any day may fall due and find
him without means to meet it; he's let himself in for blackmail,
always over him a threat. But I'm talking about men above the
struggle line. They don't, in their children, give hostages. It's
the woman does that. Men don't give nor forfeit anything. It's the
woman gives and forfeits. Why, when his friends meet a man who was
last met a bachelor a couple or three years ago, what change do
they see in him? They don't see any change at all. There isn't any
change to see. He has to tell them; and he always tells them rather
sheepishly or rather boisterously. 'I'm married, you know,' he
says. 'Yes, rather. Man alive, I've got two kids!' The other says,
'My aunt!'--more probably he says 'My God!'--'My God, fancy you!'
And they both laugh--laugh!

"Hostages to fortune! To a man and amongst men it's just a joke.
It's no joke to a woman. Do you suppose a married girl, meeting old
friends, has to tell them she's a mother, or, if she had to tell
them, would tell them like that? Can't they see it at a glance?
Isn't she changed? Isn't she, subtly perhaps, but unmistakably,
altogether different from the unfettered thing she used to be? Of
course she is. How otherwise? She's given hostages to fortune and
she's paying; she's being bled. She's giving up things, she's not
going out so much, she's not reading so much, she's not playing so
much, she's not interested so much in what used to interest her. How
can she? There's the children. How can she? She's given hostages to
fortune. Oh, happy is the man that hath children for they are as
arrows in the quiver of a giant. But it's the woman is the arrowbearer!
It's the woman pays."

Lo, there had come to this intolerance the longing--"Here!"--that
Anna's bosom had, the urge to hold a tiny scrap against her breast,
to have her heart, bursting for such release, torn out by baby
fingers. It had o'erborne the other. She had thrown herself upon
its flood; not yielded to it as one drawn in by rising waters, but
tempestuously engulfed by it and borne away upon it as swallowed
up and borne away in Harry's arms when "Rosalie! Rosalie!" he had
cried to her.

That which the subsidence revealed, adoringly she called her Huggo.

There was a mirage in her face. When, turned again towards the star
to which she showed her boyish and impetuous look, and, following,
she felt again the call that set the mother in her face, she this
time reasoned. That idea that, having children, it was the woman
who gave hostages to fortune! Deadly and cruelly true it was, but
only by convention. Why should it be so? Why should motherhood
that was the crown of love, of woman's life, be paid for in coin
that no man was called upon to pay? Unjust; and need not be! She
perfectly well had carried on her work with Huggo. Sleeping was
the adored creature's chief lot in life. If she had ever thought
(which she never had) of giving up her work and staying at home
on his account, what could she have done but twirl her thumbs and
watch him sleep and in his lovely lively hours superintend the
nurse who required no superintendence? As it was she was about him
in the delicious exercises of transporting him from cot through
toilet and refreshment to readiness to take the air. His lordship was
off in his lordship's perambulator by nine o'clock every morning.
She did not herself leave, with Harry, till shortly before ten. There,
in instance, was an hour at home with not the smallest benefit to
Huggo. It would have been the same, had she remained at home, with
three in four of all the other hours. Ridiculous to lay down that
a mother, having a good nurse and a well-ordered house and a husband
out all day, must tie herself there, abandoning her own life, to
attend her children! Children! Darlings of her own! Ease for this
yearning in her heart, assumption of this lovely glory that was
her natural right! Yes, she had proved love not to be incompatible
with her freedom; she would show motherhood as beautifully could
be joined.

It seemed to her a blessing upon, and an assurance in, her purpose
that in the precious person of a little daughter came the embodiment
of this reasoning and of this design. A baby girl! A tiny woman-bud
to be a woman with her in the house of Harry and of Huggo! A woman
treasury into which she could pour her woman love! Her self's own
self, whose earliest speech chose for herself her name--her Doda!

It all worked splendidly. Winged on the eager pinions of their
individual lives these two nested their joined life in a home that
for every inmate was a perfect home; perfect for a husband, perfect
for a wife, perfect for the babies, perfect for the servants. The
peace of every home in civilized society rests ultimately on the
kitchen, and the peace of half the homes known to Harry and to
Rosalie was in constant rupture by upheavals thence. Not so behind
the gamboge door. Rosalie always granted it to men that, as was
commonly said, servants worked better for men. Men kept out of the
irrational creatures' way; that was about it. The conduct of her
life gave her the like advantage. Giving her orders before she left
the house, she was out all day and never unexpectedly in. Positively
the servants welcomed her on her return at five o'clock!

The babies, to whom then she flew, were with a perfect nurse. Harry
had helped in her appointment. She had come one evening, early in
the life of Huggo, when a change had to be made from the nurse who
specialised only up to the point then reached by Huggo, and she
had presented herself to them, seated together in Harry's study, a
short body, one shape and a solid shape from her shoulders to her
shoes, who announced her name as Muffett.

"Miss Muffett, I hope," said Harry gravely.

"Unmarried, sir," said Muffett with equal gravity and with a sudden
drop and then recovery of her stature as though some one had knocked
her behind the knees.

"There's nothing to do," said Harry when she had gone, "but to buy
her a turret and engage her"; and there was nothing to do, when she
was installed, but enjoy the babies and delight in them just as a
man enjoys and delights in his tiny ones,--in the early mornings
before Rosalie left for her work, in the evenings when she returned
home.

It all worked splendidly. In those early years, when two were in
the nursery and as yet no third, there wasn't a sign that Harry who
had married for a home ever could say, "I have a right to a home."
He had, and he was often saying so, the most perfect home. He came
not home of a night to a wife peevish with domestic frets and solitary
confinement and avid he should hear the tale of them, nor yet to
one that butterflied the day long between idleness and pleasures
and gave him what was left. He came nightly to a home that his
wife sought as eagerly as he sought, a place of rest well-earned
and peace well-earned. That was it! "Things which are equal to the
same thing are equal to each other." They had discovered and had
removed the worm of disparity that eats away the heart of countless
marriages. They not infrequently had friends in to dinner, not
infrequently dined at the tables of friends, made a point of not
infrequently attending a theatre or a concert; but however the
evening had been passed--and the evenings alone were always agreed
to be the best evenings of all--there was none but they ended
sitting together, not in the drawing-room, but in Harry's study
or in hers, just talking happiness. Equal in endeavour, they were
thereby made equal on every plane and in every taste. A reciprocating
machine. That was it!

At least that was how, profoundly satisfied with it, she thought
it was.

Then Benji came.






CHAPTER VI





There were attendant upon the expectation and the coming of Benji
certain processes of mind that had not been with Huggo or with
Doda. When it was in prospect she had vexation, sometimes a sense
of injury, that again her work was to be interrupted. It would make
no difference to Harry. It happened that the days of her trial were
timed to fall on the date when a criminal prosecution of sensational
public interest was due for hearing at the Old Bailey. Harry, for
the defence, had added immensely to his brilliant reputation when
seeing it through the preliminary stages before the magistrate.
The Old Bailey proceedings were to be the greatest event, thus far,
in his career. He had told her--how proud and delighted to hear it
she had been!--that if he pulled it off (and he had set his heart
on pulling it off) he would really begin to think about "taking
silk."

Well, but she also had her heart, in no single or sensational climax
of her work, but in its every phase and every hour. It absorbed her.
Two years earlier Mr. Simcox had begun disturbing signs of health
that, begun, developed rapidly. His brisk activity went out of him.
His walk had the odd suggestion of one carrying a load. His perky
air went dull. His mind was like a flagging watch, run down. He
could not concentrate, he suffered passages of aphasia, he began
more and more to "give up the office," more and more to leave things
to her. The agency in both its branches, scholastic and insurance,
developed well. She was its head and it absorbed her. She had a sense,
that was like wine to her, of increasing swiftness of decision, of
power, of judgment, of vision, of resource. She used to hurry to
her office of a morning as an artist urgent with inspiration will
hurry to his colours, or a poet to his pen,--avid to exercise that
which was within her.

Well, it was to be stopped. Childbed. For a month at least, for two
months more likely, all was to be set aside, to go into abeyance,
to drift. Whereas Harry's work.... Yes, vexatious! These laws that
gave men the desirable place in life were not laws but conventions
and she had proved them such; but with all proved there yet remained
to the man privileges, to the woman restraints, that were ordinances
fundamental and not to be escaped. Yes, injurious!

Thus in those weeks of the coming of him that was to be Benji,
solely the boy of aspect mutinous and impetuous was in her face;
and when within a month stood her appointed time came an event that
stiffened there that aspect, turned it, indeed, actively upon the
child within her waiting deliverance. This event in its momentous
incidence on her career placed its occasion on parity with Harry's
anticipations of the Old Bailey trial. Mr. Simcox died.

There's no use labouring why the emotions that at this loss should
have been hers were not hers. That girl whose eyes had gathered
tears at the picture of the little figure with flapping jacket
peering through the curtains at the postman's "rat-tat-flick" was
not present in the woman whose first thought at the sudden news,
brought to her seated in her office, was, "At such a time! Just
when--Now what is to be done?" True for her that there followed
gentle feelings, and gentler yet in her attendance on her patron's
obsequies, in the discovery that all of which he died possessed
he'd left to her, but it is the duller surfaces that are slowest
to give refraction, the least used springs that are least pliant.
She was come a long road from her first signs of hardening. She was
past, now, the stage where, when grieving for the little old man,
she would have felt contrition that her first thought at his death
had been, not of him, but of his death's effect upon her work.

And there supervened, immediately, interests that caused the passing
of Mr. Simcox merely--to have passed.

Mr. Sturgiss, of Field and Company, attending the funeral with her,
said to her as he was taking his leave, "One would say this isn't
a moment to be talking of other things, business things, but after
all--In a way it is the moment. You'll be making new arrangements
and rearrangements now. Before you start settling anything I want
you to have in mind the old proposition. You've been loyal to poor
Simcox to the end. This business is your own now. We want it. We
want you. We want you in Lombard Street."

This, cut and dried, glowingly enlarged in long interviews with Mr.
Sturgiss and Mr. Field, succinctly reduced to writing by the firm
that it might be fairly studied, was before her, not demanding,
but eagerly absorbing, her most earnest attention when she was
a fortnight from her trial. This was the event whose momentous
incidence on her career placed the days then in process and
immediately in prospect on parity of importance with their meaning
to Harry, absorbed in preparation for his case. There was so much
to weigh; and like a threat, a doom, banked her impending banishment
from affairs, distracting her, haunting her, hurrying her. There
was so much to do, to settle, to wind up (for she found herself
arranging for the change even while she debated it); and in the
midst of it she was to be cut off as by term of imprisonment! There
was so much to scheme, to plan, to dream (her mind already elevated
among the high places of her new outlook); and between now and
action she was to go--out of action.

Whereas Harry.... Whose child it was also to be....

Yes, injurious!

Not injurious as between dear Harry and herself; but injurious as
between his sex and hers. There were moments of thinking upon the
difference when she could have conceived a grudge against the child
she was to bear.

And Harry could not perceive the difference! Immersed in his
preparations and, when the case opened, lost to all else in his
case, he presented precisely that faculty (and that permission by
convention) of complete detachment from his home that long she had
known to be man's most outstanding and most enviable quality. He
had no attention to spare for the consideration of her own problem
and ambition, and she was too honourable to his interests, and too
devoted to him in his interests, to bother him with hers. But, more
significantly to her feelings than that, he was also too immersed
to offer her, in her ordeal of childbirth, the sympathy and
the anxiety that, unengrossed, he would have shown. It was there,
profound and loving, beneath the surface; but his work came first.
He was a man, capable of detachment, permitted by convention to
practise detachment, by gift of, nature not inhibited from detachment.
A man, he could put it beneath the surface. A woman, in conflict
of her instincts and her ambitions, it was her ambitions that she
must sink. That was it! Yes, injurious.

And he did not even understand.

On what proved to be the evening before her delivery, and was the
third day of Harry's case, she was lying, as she had lain some days,
on the Chesterfield in the drawing-room, loosely robed. Harry had
thought he could get back to tea, and got back. He came to her with
tenderest concern, and with immense tenderness at once was talking
to her. But she could see! The apparent deepening of all the lines
of his dear, striking face, as of one who for hours has been under
enormous concentration; the slight huskiness of his voice, from
hard service; the repressed excitation in his air; the frequent
glint behind the soft regard of his eyes, as of one that has been
hunting high and hunting well--she could see; she could tell where
was his spirit!

Her own went lovingly to meet it where it was. "Ah, never mind all
that, Harry. Tell me all that's been happening to you. How is it
going, Harry?"

Dear Harry! Most mannish man! She laughed (and he laughed too, knowing
perfectly well why she laughed) to note the delight, like a dog
from chain, with which he bounded off into his mind's absorption. He
sat upright. He grabbed for a cigarette and inhaled it tremendously.
"It's going like cutting butter with a hot knife. I started
cross-examining today. I gave him three and a half hours of it,
straight off the ice, and I'm not through with him yet. Not half.
If he had as many legs as a centipede he'd still not have one left to
stand on when I'm through with him. I doubt he'll have his marrow
bones to crawl out on, the way he's crumpling up. Even old Hounslow
at his worst can't possibly misdirect the jury, the way I've gummed
their noses on the trail. I'll tell you--"

He told her.

She had put out both her hands and taken one of his. "It's splendid,
Harry. It's too splendid. How delighted I am, and proud, proud!
No one would have imagined it at the beginning. What a triumph it
will be for you!"

His grasp squeezed hers in fond response. "Why, it won't do me
any harm," he agreed. His tone was light. He released his hand and
took up a cup of tea, and his tone went deep. "Mind you, I'm glad
about it," he said, and stirred the spoon thoughtfully within the
cup. He had come into the room declaring he was dying for some
tea, but he had touched none, and he now replaced the cup untasted
on the table and she saw on his face the deep "inward" look that
she knew (and loved) for the sign of intense concentration of his
mind. "Yes, glad," he spoke; his voice, as was its habit when he
was "inward," sounding as though it was the involuntary, and not
the intentional, utterance of his thoughts. "I've gone all out over
this case. I saw, the minute they briefed me, that one tiny flaw,
his neglect to take up that option--you remember, I told you--right
down at the bottom of the whole tangle, and I went plumb down for
it and hung on to it and fought it up like, like a diver coming up
from fathoms down."

She had a quickness of imagery. It constantly delighted him. "Yes,
that's good," she declared. "Up like a diver, Harry. Not with
goggles and a helmet and all that, but shot up like a flash, all
shining and glistening and triumphant with the jewel aloft. What
a shout there'd be! Dear Harry! You're splendid!"

He smiled most lovingly. "As a matter of fact, I feel I ought to
make a mess of it. It'll be the first big case since we've been
together that, while it's been on, we haven't had talks about.
You couldn't, of course, with this so near to you. It would be
significant, and proper, if I drowned in it."

She shook her head. "Absurd! Why, the thing I'm most glad about,
Harry, is that all this"--she indicated with a gesture her pose,
her dress, her condition--"that all this hasn't in the least upset
your work. It might have. It hasn't--and when it happens, it won't,
will it?"

Harry said, "I'm rather ashamed to say it hasn't, in the least.
I've thought of you, often, but I've simply put the thought away.
And when it happens, I shall think of you--terribly--going through
it; and of the small thing--But we shall be in the crisis of the
case and I shall have to forget you. I'll have to, Rosalie, as I
have had to. The work must go on."

She agreed emphatically. "Of course it must." She then said, "Whereas
mine--"

He did not attend her. The "inward" look was deep upon his face.
There was the suggestion of a grimmish smile about his mouth. One
could have guessed that he was rehearsing, with satisfaction, his
enormous application while the work was going on.

She gave a sound of laughter, and that aroused him. "What's the
joke?"

"Why, just how this does rather illuminate the point--"

"The point...?"

"Your work and mine--a man's and a woman's."

"Yes, tell me, dear."

"Why, Harry, I do think of it sometimes. We've planned it and
arranged it and settled it so nicely, these years, and you see the
big thing in marriage comes along and shatters it to bits. Your
work goes on precisely as if nothing at all were happening; mine
has to stand by."

"Ah, but this," Harry said, and in his turn indicated her condition.
"This--this is different. We agreed, before Huggo, that if we had
children it need make no difference to you, to your work, in a way.
And it hasn't, and needn't now--when it's over. But this time, this
period, why, that's bound to interfere."

"But it doesn't interfere with you. It shows the difference."

"Oh, it shows the difference," he assented.

His tone was conspicuously careless, conceding the difference but
attaching to it no importance at all; and with it he rose--she had
instantly the impression of him as it were brushing the difference
like a crumb from his lap--and announced, "I'm going to my study
now for a couple of hours before dinner. I must. Our solicitor's
coming in." He bent over her and kissed her lovingly. "You understand,
I know."

And he went.

Yes, it showed the difference! And was not seen by him! Yes,
injurious. Yes, could conceive a grudge....

There was a mirage in her face. Her face, that had been boy's and
mutinous these weeks, was Mary's and was lovely in maternal love
when it was turned towards the scrap that on a morning lay against
her breast; her thoughts, that had been stubborn, hard, resentful
while her days approached, welled in remorse, compassion, yearning,
joy, when they were past and this was come. She'd grudged him,
this littlest one! Grudged his right, put her own right against
it, this tiny, helpless one! When, added to these thoughts, Huggo
and Doda, those lovely darlings, were permitted to see him, asleep
beside her, he was so wee, so almost nothing against their sturdy
limbs, and had come so unwanted--yes, unwanted, this cherishable
one of all!--that she knew instantly what name he must be given.
Her Benjamin!

Lying much alone in the succeeding days, contrite, adoring; with
frequent happy tears (she was left weak): with tender, thank-God,
charged with meaning tears, she found a vindication of her
self-reproach that immensely bound her up, forgave her, gave her
comfort. She could give up her work! She could leave all and be
with her darlings! Of course she could! At any time! She had grudged
the right to come of this defenceless scrap. She had set against
his right her own right. Ah, dangerous! A long road lay that way!
In conflict of his coming, with her own rights she had been much
engaged. Here, on the sheet beside her, and in the nursery, overhead,
were other rights. Well, when they claimed.... Of course she could!
She had not thought enough about these things....

There is to be said for her that she thought not very widely nor
very deeply upon them now. Her resolution that she could, when it
was necessary, give up her work, scattered them. It came to her
as comes to a man, beset by poverty, scheming by this way and by
that to abate it, news of a legacy. He ceases, in his relief, his
present schemes; he has "no need to worry now." Or came to her as
comes a sail to one shipwrecked and adrift, painfully calculating
out his final dregs of food and water. He ceases, at that emblem,
his desperate plans to stretch his days. He's all right now.

It was like that with Rosalie.

While only she had realised her resentment of this baby's claims,
and only now her contrite yielding to them; before she had conjectured
deeply on all the problem thus revealed; there came to her, like
way of escape to one imprisoned, like instantaneous lifting of a
fog to one therein occluded, the thought, "I can give up the work."

Of course she could! At any moment; by a word; by the mere formulation
of the step within her mind, she could abandon her career. Not now.
It was not necessary now. But if or when--she used that phrase, in
set terms propounding her resolution to herself--if or when the
call of her children, of her home, came and was paramount, she
could give up everything and respond to it. Oh, happy! Oh, glad
discharge of her remorse! When the children wanted her she could
just--come back. Field and Company, her career, her successes--what
of them? She had done well in her career, she still would do well.
Let the claim of home and children once come into the scale against
the claim of those ambitions and--she would just come back!

Oh, happy!

"Come back"? Who was it had said something about that, something
about "come back" for a woman, making the expression thus dimly
familiar in her mind? Who? Laetitia? No, Laetitia was always
associated with another phrase: striking because in terms identical
with accusation previously delivered against her. Well she remembered
it! On the day following Harry's visit to the house to take his
deserts from poor Aunt Belle and Uncle Pyke, she also had gone
there, following his high idea of what was right. She had been
refused admittance. There had come for her as the last voice out
of that house a quivering letter from Aunt Belle, seeming to quiver
in the hand with the passionate upbraiding that had indited it,
and a forlorn sentence from Laetitia. "I have done everything for
you, everything, everything, and this is how you have rewarded me,"
had pulsed the pages of Aunt Belle; Laetitia only had written:

"Oh, Rosalie! You could have had any one you liked to love you,
but you took my Harry and I shall never, never have another."

Miss Salmon's cry again! Twice identically accused. Once grotesquely
accused; once, on the surface, rightly accused. Both times aware
how poignant and pathetic was the cry; not moved the first time,
not moved the second. Recurring to her now, she knew again how
broken-hearted sad it was, and knew again it ought to move, but
did not. Well, not strange now. She was a long way out of those too
soft compassions. No, not Laetitia had made "come back" familiar
to her. The phrase, as she seemed to recollect its context, was
too profoundly practical for the Laetitia sort; and that was why,
of course, it moved her nothing. She had learnt, jostling off corners
in the market place, what formerly she had only conjectured,--that
there was in life no room for sentiment, it clogged; it hampered;
it brought sticky unreality into that which was sharply real.
"Come back?" No, not Laetitia. Who? Keggo? Yes, it was Keggo; and
immediately with the name's recovery was recovered the phrase's
context. This very matter! "Rosalie, a woman can't--come back."

Absurd! But, yes, how she remembered it now! "Very dangerous being
a woman," Keggo had said. "Men go into dangers but they come out
of them and go home to tea. That's what it is with men, Rosalie.
They can always get out. They can always come back. They never
belong to a thing, heart and soul, body and mind. Rosalie, women
do. That's why it is so very, very dangerous being a woman. Women
can't come back. They take to a thing, anything, and go deep
enough, and they're its; they never, never will get away from it;
they never, never will be able to come back out of it. Rosalie, I
tell you this, when a woman gives herself, forgets moderation and
gives herself to anything, she is its captive for ever. She may
think she can come back but she can't come back. For a woman there
is no comeback. They don't issue return tickets to women. For women
there is only departure; there is no return."

Poor Keggo!

Poor Keggo had of course founded her theory upon her own bitter
plight. How she had given her case away when she had said, "Look
at me!" It applied to her, of course, or to any woman--or man for
that matter--who drank or drugged. It applied not in the least to
such a case as this of her own. Keggo had tried to apply it. She
had said, "You have a theory of life. You are bent upon a career
in life. Suppose you ever wanted to come back?"

She had laughed and declared she never would want to come back.
Well, look how absurd all poor Keggo's idea was now being proved!
It had suddenly occurred to her that it might at some future time
be required of her to come back; and all she had to do was just--to
come back. No difficulty about it whatsoever! No struggle! Indeed,
and fondly she touched that by her side which had called up these
thoughts, she would come back joyously. Of course she would! Field
and Company, ambition, that for if and when her darlings called
her! Yes, wrong every way, that poor Keggo. Dangerous being a woman,
she had said, and it was not dangerous. It could be, and she had
proved it, a state that could be lived full in every aspect,--full
in freedom, full in endeavour, full in love, full in motherhood.
Dangerous! A week ago, inimical to this advent, injurious; now, in
this advent's presence, and with this resolution gladly dedicated
to it, only and wholly glorious.

This one! Come after connection, come in contrition, come to call
her back when she should need to be called, the little tiny one,
the belovedest one, the Benjamin one--her Benji!






CHAPTER VII





Those children were brought up with every modern advantage. Wisdom
is judged by the age in which it flourishes, and everything that
the day accounts wise for children those children had. Their father
was of considerable and always increasing means; their mother was
of great and untrammelled intelligence: anything that money could
provide for children, and that intelligent principles of upbringing
said ought to be provided for children, those children enjoyed. When
they were out of the care of Muffet, who was everything that a nurse
ought to be, they passed into the care of a resident governess,
Miss Prescott, who was a children's governess, not for the old
and fatuous reason that she "loved children," but for the new and
intelligent reason that she was attracted by the child-mind as a
study and was certificated and diplomaed in the study of children
as an exact science,--Child Welfare as she called it. Miss Prescott
had complete charge of the children while they were tiny and while
they were growing up to eleven and nine and Benji to seven years
old. She taught them their lessons (on her own, the new, principles)
and on the same principles their habits and the formation of their
characters. It might roundly be said that everything troublesome
in regard to the children was left to Miss Prescott, and, left to
her, came never between the children and their mother. Their mother
only enjoyed her children, presented to her fresh, clean and happy
for the purpose of her enjoyment; and the children only enjoyed
their mother, visiting them smiling, devoted, unworried, for the
purpose of their happiness.

It was a perfect, and a mutually beneficial arrangement. As there
had been, before the children came, two independent lives behind
the gamboge door, so, with the occupation of the nurseries, there
were, as it might be, three independent households, mingling, at
selected times, only for purposes of happiness.

It was perfect. In the summer a house was taken at Cromer by the sea
and there, all through the fine weather, Miss Prescott was installed
with her charges. Their mother had three weeks from Field's in the
summer and she and their father would spend the whole of it, and
often week-ends, at Cromer idling and playing with their darlings.
That was jolly. The children associated nothing whatever but
happiness with their parents.

In the other months of the year their mother was immensely occupied
with her work at Field's, developing beyond expectation; and their
father early and late with his work in the Temple, his esteem
by solicitors and by litigants almost beyond his time to satisfy.
Their father was much paragraphed in the social journals, and their
mother also. The paragraphs said their father was making a "princely
fortune" at the Bar and never told of him without telling also of
his wife. They described her as "of Field's Bank" and always drove
the word "unique" hand in hand with every mention of her parts.
"Unique personality"; "unique position"; "unique among professional
women"; "unique," said one, "in combining notable beauty and rare
business acumen; an office which she attends daily and a charming
home; a profession, three beautiful children, and a brilliant
husband."

The syntax is weak, but the truth is in it and those children were
to be envied in their mother.

Miss Prescott, when she came, did not displace the Muffet. She
was installed additional to the Muffet; and as touching the modern
principles relating to children she very soon told Muffet a thing
or two not previously dreamt of in the Muffet philosophy but having,
thence forward, occasional place in the Muffet nightmares.

The Muffet, however, was of lymphatic character, with, as her most
constant desire, the desire not to be "plagued." She was one of
those people who are for ever declaring that they never eat anything,
who at meals, indeed, appear to eat very little, but who between
meals, are eating all day long. At all hours of the day the Muffet
jaws, like the jaws of a ruminant, were steadily munching, munching.
When Benji was three Muffet was getting distinctly fat. On a corner
of the night nursery mantelpiece she had a photographic group of
her parents and of an uncle and aunt who lived with her parents.
These four were very fat and one evening the children's father made
a remark about this portrait that made their mother laugh delightedly.

Benji was in his cot. Huggo had just come from his bath and was
having his toes wiped by his mother because he declared Muffet had
not dried them properly. He said Muffet groaned when she stooped.

His mother said, "You know, Harry, Muffet is getting fat. Have you
noticed it?"

Their father was bent almost double swinging Doda between his legs,
the stomach of Doda reposing on the palms of his joined hands and
Doda squealing ecstatically.

Their father said, "I have. Go and look at that photograph, Rosalie,
and you'll see why. Look at what her people are. Muffet's broadening
down from precedent to precedent."

It made their mother laugh. The children didn't know why it made
her laugh, but they laughed with her. They always did, or with
their father when he laughed. And there was always lots of jolly
laughter when their father and mother came up to the nurseries.

Those children, as they passed through early childhood, never saw
their parents but happy and good-spirited. They never saw them
worried nor ever saw them sad. That was, as one might say, Rosalie's
chief offering to her darlings. It was splendid to Rosalie that
her way of life, far from causing her (as prejudice would have
prophesied) to neglect her children, enabled her to consider them
in their relations with herself as, by their mothers, children in
her childhood never were considered. That they should associate
nothing--nothing at all--but happiness with her was the basis of
it. Children, she held, ought not to see their parents bad-tempered
or distressed or in any way out of sorts or out of control. For
a child to do so has in two ways a bad effect on the child mind.
In the first place, it is harmful for children to come in contact
with the unpleasant things of life; in the second, parents should
always be to their children models of conduct and of disposition.
They should in themselves present ideals to their children. A man
should be a hero to his son; a woman an ideal to her daughter.
Why is no man a hero to his valet? It is simply because his valet
sees him, as do not those whose esteem he desires to win, in his
off moments. Children should never see their parents in their off
moments.

This principle was not Rosalie's alone. It is the modern principle.
The point, to Rosalie, was that, by her way of life, she was able
to apply it. Children were too much with their parents. That was
the fault; in her childhood the universal fault, even now the fault
among the unenlightened. Parents, being human, must have off moments;
are not off moments, indeed, in the total of the day, of greater
sum than moments of circumspection? It follows that if children are
always with their parents, the more unlovely side cannot fail to be
perceived, and, arising out of it, must follow injury by example,
harm by environment, smirching of idealism, loss of respect. In
those homes where the mother (in Rosalie's phrase) is the children's
slave, why has the father the children's greater respect? Why is
it fine to do what father does? Why jolly and exciting to be with
father? It is only because the father commonly is away all day,
only seen by them when, shedding other affairs, he comes to see
them specially.

Her life--oddly how well for everything and every one her attitude
to life fell out!--obtained for her and for them the same wise and
happy restriction from too free familiarity. She was able to come
to her children only when all her undivided attention and whole
hearted love could be given to them. They never saw her vexed,
they never saw her angry, they never saw her sad. It was not a
commonplace to them to see their mother. It was an event. A morning
event and an evening event--and unfailingly a completely happy
event. She looked back upon her own childhood with her own mother
and reflected, fondly but clearly, affectionately but not blinded
by affection, how very different was that. She was always with
her mother. Her mother was often sad, often worried, often, in
distraction of her worries, irritable in speech. Often sad! Why,
she could remember time and again when her dear mother, hunted by
her cares, was broken down and crying. She would go to her mother
then and cry to see her crying, and her mother would put her arms
around her and hug her to her breast and declare she was her "little
comfort." Was it good for a child to suffer scenes like that? She
used to be with her mother all day long, from early morning till
last thing at night. With what result? That she saw and suffered
with her, or suffered of her, all that her mother suffered; that
she was sometimes desolated to feeling that her heart was broken
for her mother. Could that be good for a child? Her Huggo, her Doda
and her Benji never saw her anything but radiant; and because that
was so (as she told herself) she never saw them cry, either on her
account or on their own.

Therein--grief in her presence on their own account--another point
arose. With as her ideal that only happiness should be associated
with her, she found her way of life beneficial to the preservation
of that ideal in that it prevented her from being the vessel that
should convey the restrictions, the reproofs and the instruction
that are troublesome to small minds. All that was left to Miss
Prescott. She remembered lessons with her mother; she remembered
the irksome learning of a hundred "don'ts" from her mother; and
though they were tender and pathetic memories she remembered also
the reverse of the picture,--being glad to escape from her mother,
resentful against her mother when stood in the corner by her
mother, when stopped doing this that and the other by her mother,
when made to learn terribly hard lessons by her mother and to go on
learning them till she had learnt them. Only childish resentment,
of course, swept up and forgotten as by the sun emerging out of
clouds the shadow from a landscape. But why should children ever
have the tiniest frown against their mother? There must be frowns,
there must be tears. Let others bear the passing grudge of those.
Let Miss Prescott.

Miss Prescott was willing and able to bear anything like that. She
delighted in such. She told Rosalie, when Rosalie engaged her, and
after she had seen the children, that her only hesitation in accepting
the post was that the children were too normal. "By normal," said
Miss Prescott, speaking, as she always spoke, as if she were a
passage out of a book given utterance, "By normal, Mrs. Occleve, I
do not, of course, mean commonplace. Any one can see how attractive
they are, how gifted; any one can know how distinguished, with,
if I may say so, such talented parents, their inherited qualities
must be. No, when I say normal, I mean showing no disquieting
signs, constitutionally tractable, not refractory. In that sense of
normality it is much more the abnormal child to whom I would have
liked to devote myself. I have specialised in children. The harder
the case the more I should be interested in it. That's what I mean.
But I never could have hoped to find a household where, though
there can be no difficulties, I should have such opportunities of
helping children to be perfect men and women; nor a mother to whose
children I would more gladly, proudly, devote myself; nor a place
with which I should feel myself so entirely in sympathy. If you feel,
on reflection, that I should suit you, it will be, I am sure--why
should I not say so--an auspicious day for those little ones."

How happy was Rosalie thus by provision to destiny her darlings!

Miss Prescott was thirty when engaged by Rosalie. She had a way
of looking at people which, if described, can best describe her
appearance. She was once in an omnibus in London and the conductor,
standing against her, and about to serve a ticket to a passenger
seated next her, had some trouble with his bell-punch. It would not
work and he fumbled with it, angry. Everybody in the bus watched him.
It is not nice to be watched when baffled and heated in bafflement
but the only gaze to which attention was given by the conductor was
the gaze of Miss Prescott. He glanced constantly from the obdurate
machine to the face of Miss Prescott. Suddenly he said: "'Ere,
suppose you do it, then," and pushed the bell-punch at her. Miss
Prescott took it, did it, astoundingly and instantaneously, and
handed it back with no word. The conductor seemed more angry than
before.

It was like that that Miss Prescott looked at people.

There is right way of doing everything. Miss Prescott had an uncanny
instinct for finding it; and, applying this faculty to her training
of the child-mind, she presented herself as a notable exponent of
the system in which, as has been said, she was certificated and
diplomaed. She taught children how to play in the right way, how
to learn in the right way, and above all how, in every way and
at every turn, to reason. By the old, ignorant plan children were
instructed, speaking broadly, by love or by fear. It was by pure
reason that Miss Prescott instructed them. The child was treated as
an earnest physician treats a case. Ill temper or wrong behaviour
in a child was neither vexing nor sad. It was profoundly interesting.
There was a right and scientific way to treat it and that right and
scientific way was thought out and administered. The child was "a
case."

It was taught nothing but truths and facts. Its mind was not
permitted to be befogged with fairy stories, with superstitions,
with Father Christmases and the like, nor yet with religious
half-truths and misty fables. These entailed not only befogging
at the time, but disillusionment thereafter. Disillusionment was
wicked for a child. It further was taught nothing at all (in the
matter of lessons) at the grotesquely early age at which children
used to be taught. It was taught first to reason.

In general the whole system lay in developing the child's
reasoning powers and then, at every turn and particularly at every
manifestation of indiscipline, appealing to its reason. "I am here
to be happy"--that was the first, and surely the kindest and easiest,
knowledge to fix in the child. From that foundation everything
was worked. It never was necessary to punish a child. It only was
necessary to reason with it. In the old phraseology a child meet
to be punished was a naughty child. In the terminology of Miss
Prescott such a child was a sick child or an unreasoning child:
a case presenting an adverse symptom. But take the older term,--a
naughty child. A naughty child was an unhappy child. The treatment
went like this, "I am here to be happy. I am not happy. Why am I
not happy? Because I have done so and so and so and so...."

Kind, wise, simple, effective, easy. Rosalie in her childish
misdemeanours would have been prevailed upon by the unhappiness her
conduct caused her mother. All wrong! A faulty process of reasoning;
indeed not a process of reasoning at all: a crude appeal to the
emotions. Those three children who on the one part never saw their
mother sad and were constrained to comfort her, on the other never
were bribed to good behaviour by the thought of grieving her. They
only associated happiness with her and they enjoyed happiness simply
by reasoning away unhappiness.

Kind, wise, simple, effective, easy.

Happy Huggo, happy Doda, happy Benji, happy Rosalie!






CHAPTER VIII





It has been said of Time, earlier in these pages, the cloak-and-dagger
sort he is, that stalks and pounces. One seeks only to record him
when he thus assails, and there is this result; that it is necessary
to pare away so much. In instance, there's to be inserted now a note
on Rosalie's advance in her career. It's cut to nothing. This is
because all that career ultimately was known to her never to have
really mattered. And so with other things. That girl, all through,
pressing so strong ahead, rises to the eye not cumbered with other
importance than her own. There might be asked for (by a reader)
presentation of Harry's parents; of what was doing all this time
to her own parents in the rectory, to Harold, Robert, Flora, Hilda;
of friends that Rosalie and Harry had. That girl's passage is not
traced in such. Whose is? The chart where such are marked is just
a common public print, stamped for the public eye. They're not set
down upon that secret chart all carry in the cabin of their soul,
and there, in that so hidden and inviolable stateroom, poring over
it by the uncertain swinging lamp of conscience, prick out their
way.

Her installation in the bank had been a notable success. She dealt
with all the insurance advice and with income-tax advice and business;
and it was remarkable to her, at first, how many of Field's clients
were as children in the mysteries of income tax, and as children
alike in their ignorance of the possibilities of life insurance
and in their pleasure at the discoveries she set before them. But
further than this (and more important, said Mr. Sturgiss and Mr.
Field) was the quick response of the clients to the various domestic
advice that it was Rosalie's business to give. Husbands and wives
from the East, or returned thither from London and writing from the
East, consulted her on innumerable matters. When, in instance, an
army officer wrote to her from India, very diffidently wondering
if she could help him in the matter of some Christmas presents for
his wife and children at home, Mr. Sturgiss was uncommonly pleased.

"I knew it!" said Mr. Sturgiss. "That's the kind of thing. You watch
how side-lines like that will develop. That's what these people
want--some one at home they can rely on. I tell you, Mrs. Occleve,
you, that is to say your department of Field's, is what the
Anglo-Eastern has been wanting ever since Clive and Warren Hastings
went out--a link with home. You see."

She did see. Mr. Field saw. The clients saw. The friends of the
clients saw--and became clients.

All of her position reposed, and was developed by her, on the
cruel disabilities of those who earn their bread in the East. For
all such, married, comes, in time, the sad and the costly business
of the divided home,--the two establishments, the sundering of
children and parents, of husband and wife. By the age of seven at
latest, the children have to be sent home for health and education.
Then the sundering, the losing of touch, the compulsion upon the
man, that those at home may be promptly supported, to deny himself
year after year the longed-for visit home. The losing of touch....
Invaluable to them to have in Field's, in "that Mrs. Occleve" a link,
known personally or by reputation, that was useable as relations
(capricious, "touchy," interfering) often are not useable; and
dependable as relations, unpractical, certainly are not always
dependable. Invaluable to the clients; declared by Mr. Field and by
Mr. Sturgiss to be invaluable to the bank; absorbing and splendid
to Rosalie. "And still," Mr. Sturgiss was always saying, "still
capable of much bigger development."

He sketched one day a development that would be a stride indeed.
It began to be discussed by the three. It connoted so absolute
a recognition of Rosalie's worth that she decided--lest it should
fall through--she would not mention it to Harry till either it was
fallen through or was afoot. Then!

It made her busy. She told Harry once, when they'd been talking
of how much at office she was kept, of her work, and of the place
she was making for herself, "Well, it's not bad, Harry," she told
him. "It's not bad. I'll admit that. What pleases me is that it's
only a beginning; well as it's going, and long as I've now been at
it, only a beginning. I can't, as I've often said to you, be doing
all this without getting a long insight into the actual banking
business. Oh, don't you remember my telling you about that appalling
evening when I told poor Uncle Pyke that I wanted to be a banker?
How outraged he was! Poor person, how rightly outraged! The ridiculous
notion that I ever could be a banker! A grotesque dream!" She gave
a small laugh as if tenderly smiling at image before her of that
innocent, eager girl at the Pyke Pounce table. She said softly, "A
grotesque dream. Now, with patent limitations--not a dream."

It was like that that Time (disguised as triumph) kept out of the
way; and similarly disguised, showed no sign either on the children's
side. All splendid there! Growing up! Huggo set to school!

Huggo learnt with Miss Prescott till he was nine, then attended
daily a first-rate school for little boys in Kensington, at eleven
started as a boarder at a preparatory school for Tidborough. Next
he was to go to the great public school itself, afterwards to Oxford
and the Bar. All's well! Time had nothing at all to say during the
first two stages of the programme. It was in Huggo's first holidays
from the preparatory school that Time whipped out his blade and
pounced.

On a day that was a week before the end of that holidays the great
new scheme for Rosalie at Field's rose to its feet and walked. It
was a special mission on behalf of the bank.

It necessitated.. . .

She came once or twice to a bit of a stop like that while waiting
their evening talk together in which she should tell Harry. It
necessitated a departure from the established order of things; but
what of that? Was not the way bill of her life all departures from
things established, and all successful, and were not all contingencies
of this particular departure fully insured against? She very easily
cantered on, on this rein. That bit of a stop was scarcely a check
in the progression of her thoughts.

Seated with Harry in Harry's room that night she was about to tell
him her great news when, "I'd an unusual offer made to me today,"
said Harry.

Almost the very words herself had been about to use!

"Why so had I to me!" she cried.

They both laughed. "Tell on," said Harry.

"No, you. Yours first."

"Toss you," cried Harry; and spun a coin and lost and went ahead:
"Well, mine doesn't exactly shake the foundations of the world with
excitement because I refused it. It was to go out to defend in a
big murder case in Singapore!"

She exclaimed, "In Singapore!"

"Yes, Singapore. Why do you say it like that?"

She did not answer.

The prisoner, Harry went on, was a wealthy trader, immensely wealthy,
and immensely detested, it appeared, by the European settlement; had
native blood in his veins; was charged with poisoning an Englishman
with whose wife he was supposed to have been carrying on an amour.
"A wretched, unsavoury business," said Harry, and went on to say
that, though the fee offered was extraordinarily handsome, he had
declined the proposal. It was doubtful he would actually make more
money over it than in his normal round at home, more than that
it went against the grain to be defending a man of native origins
who had pretty obviously seduced a white woman if not murdered her
husband. "No, no ticket to Singapore for me, thanks," said Harry.

Rosalie turned to him with a sudden, direct interest. "Harry,
suppose you had accepted, how long would you have been away?"

"Not less than six months in all. Certainly not less. That's another
point against--"

"Yes, against the idea, because in any case you don't want to go.
But suppose the circumstances had been different; suppose it was
a case that for various reasons very much attracted you; would you
have gone?"

Harry said indifferently, "Oh, no doubt, no doubt."

"Although it would have taken you from home six months--or more?
You'd not have minded that?"

He laughed delightedly. "Ah, ha! I was beginning to wonder what
you were driving at. You're a regular lawyer, Rosalie; you led me
on and then caught me out properly."

His amusement was not reflected by her. She said with a certain
insistence, "But you wouldn't have minded?"

He laughed again. "The judge ruled that the question was admissible
and must be answered. Well, minded--I'd have minded, of course, very
much in a way. I'm a home bird. I'd have hated being away the best
part of a year. But there you are. If the call was strong enough,
there you are; it would have been business."

She indrew a long breath. "That's it. It would have been business."

There was then a pause.

Harry, who had been talking lightly, then said slowly, "Rosalie,
is there something behind this?"

She turned towards him with a very nice smile. "Harry, I've been
doing a very shocking thing. I've been making you commit yourself."

"Commit myself?"

She nodded. "Been taking down your statement without warning you
that it may be used in evidence against you."

He said gravely, "Somehow I don't like this."

She told him, "Ah, stupid me! I'm making a small thing seem big.
Listen, Harry. It was curious to me this about you and Singapore--"

"Yes, I noticed that. Why?"

"Because there's an idea of my going out to Singapore."

He was astounded. She might have said to Mars. "You? To Singapore?"

"To the East generally. To Bombay, to Rangoon, to Singapore. For
about a year."

He was all aback. "For about a year? Rosalie, I can't--Why on
earth--?"

She did not like this. The great scheme! Her special mission! It
necessitated.... Here was the necessity at which she had checked
but confidently ridden on, and Harry was pulled right up by it. His
astonishment was not comfortable to her. Was there to be a check
then? He said again, "You? A year? But, Rosalie, what on earth--"

She pronounced a single word, his own word:

"Business."

He was standing before her on the hearthrug. He made a turn and at
once turned back. "Are you thinking of this seriously?"

"Most seriously."

"Of going?"

"Of going. It's business."

"For a year?"

"Harry, yes."

He began to fill his pipe with very slow movements of his fingers,
his eyes bent down upon her. "And you called this--just now--a
small thing?"

She said with a sudden eagerness, "Harry, it's a very big thing
for me, for Field's. I meant a small thing in the sense not to be
made a fuss about."

He made very slowly a negative movement with his head. "I don't
see it like that."

"Let me tell you, Harry."

She told him how the great possibilities of the department she had
established in the bank rested on the personal touch established
between herself and the clients. The scheme was that those
possibilities should be developed to their fullest extent. While
she was in London that personal touch could be established with
clients by dozens. If she visited the branches in the East, at
Bombay, at Rangoon, at Singapore, it was by hundreds that the touch
could be established. That was it. Field's customers would talk to
her, and when she was returned they would talk of her, and would
tell others of her, as one met, not during the jolly freedom of
leave when the impulse was to feel that, after all, nothing mattered
much, but met out there when they were in the yoke and the harness
of the thing,--met as one fresh out from home in their particular
interests and shortly, charged with their special interests,
returning home. That was it! A novel mission, a valuable mission,
her mission. About a year. To start in about six weeks. "There,
Harry, that's the plan."

"And you are going?"

"I have agreed to go."

He said slowly, "It astonishes me."

There was then a pause.

She spoke. "I think I do not like your astonishment, Harry."

"It is justified."

"No, no; not justified. When you told me of a possibility of
Singapore for you I was not astonished. I made no difficulty."

"Different," he said. "Different."

"Not different, Harry. The same. How different? If you could go,
I can go. The same. Aren't things with us always the same?"

He shook his head. "Not this. If I had to go--"

"Yes, yes. It's the point. If you had to go you'd have to go. Well,
I have to go."

"Rosalie, if I had to go I could go. A man can."

She cried, "But, Harry, that--This isn't us talking at all. You
mean a man can leave his home because his home can go on without
him. But our home--it's just the same for me in our home. We've
made it like that. It runs itself. The kitchen--I don't know when
I last gave an order. The children--there's never a word. The
thing's organised. I'm an organiser." She laughed, "Dear, that's
why they're sending me. Isn't it organised?"

He assented, but with an inflexion on the word "It's--organised."

She did not attend the inflexion. "Well, that's no organisation
that can't, in necessity, run by itself. This can. You know, quite
well, this will. You know, quite well, that you will not be put
about a jot."

"Oh, I know that," he said.

"Well, then. Astonished--why astonished?"

He looked at her. "Let's call it," he said, "the principle of the
thing."

Oh, now astonishment between them. Her voice, astounded, had an echo's
sound--faint, faint, scarcely to be heard, gone. "The prin-ci-ple!"

This room was lit, then, only by a standard lamp remote from where
they were beside the fire. She was in a deep armchair; its partner,
Harry's chair, close by. He sat himself on the arm, looking towards
her. The firelight made shadows on his face.

She presently murmured, her voice as though that echo, lost, was
murmuring back, "Oh, it is I that am astonished now. The principle!
It's like a ghost. Harry, how possibly can there come between us
the principle?"

His voice was deep, "Are we afraid of it, old girl?"

She put out a hand and touched him and he touched her hand. They
were such lovers still. That was the thing about it. There never
had been an issue between them, not the smallest; the bloom of
their first union never had dissipated, not a rub. But there was
in Harry the intention now to take her, and there was in her the
apprehension now of being taken, to a new dimension of conversation,
not previously trod by them. As they proceeded it was seen not to
be light in this place; a place where touch might be lost.

She said, "But to bring up the principle in this! It can't be
possible you've changed. It isn't conceivable to me that you have
changed. Then how the principle?"

"It is the situation that has changed, Rosalie. It never occurred
to me; I never dreamt or imagined that a thing like this could
arise."

She moved in her chair. "Oh, this goes deep...."

He put a hand on her shoulder. "We're not afraid."

"But I'm so strong in this. So always certain. In our dear years
together so utterly assured. Nothing within the principle could
touch me. I am steel everywhere upon the principle. I might hurt
you, Harry."

"I'll not be hurt."

"Well, say it, Harry."

He was silent a moment. "There isn't really very much to say. To
me it's so clear."

She murmured, "And to me."

He said, "We've made this home--eleven years. It's been ideal. You
have combined your work with your--what shall I call it?--with your
domestic arrangements--your business with your domesticity--You've
done it wonderfully. We've never had to discuss the subject since
we agreed upon it."

She murmured, "That is why--agreed."

"Agreed in general. But when you take the home as between a man and
a woman, there are bound to be responsibilities which, however much
you share, cannot be divided. The woman's are the--the domesticity."

"What are the man's?"

"To maintain the home."

"I share in that."

"Well, grant you do. I do not claim to share the other."

"You are not asked to, Harry."

"No, but, Rosalie, I've the right to ask you to provide the other."

Her murmur said, "Oh, do not let us bring up rights. I am so fixed
on rights."

"Rosalie, let's keep the thing square. A man can leave his home;
he often has to. I think not so a woman; not a mother; not as you
wish now to leave it. It can't, without her, go on--not in the same
way."

"Yes, ours. Ours can."

"Not in the same way. You can't take out the woman and leave it
the same,--the same for the man, the same for the children. We're
married. The married state. With children. Doesn't the whole fabric
of the married state rest on the domesticity of woman?"

She murmured, "No, on her resignation, Harry."

As if he had touched something and been burnt he very sharply drew
in his breath.

She said, "Ah, you'd be hurt, I told you. Dear, I can't be other than
I am on this. Upon her resignation, Harry. Men call it domesticity.
That's their fair word for their offence. It's woman's resignation
is the fabric of the married state. She lets her home be built
upon her back. She resigns everything to carry it. She has to. If
she moves it shakes. If she stands upright it crashes. Dear, not
ours. I've stood upright all the time. I've proved the fallacy.
A woman can stand upright and yet be wife, be mother, make home.
Dear, you are not to ask me now--for resignation."

Therein, and through all the passage of this place where the footway
was uneven, the light not good, the quality of her voice was low
and noteless, sometimes difficult to hear. There is to say it was
by that the more assured, as is more purposeful in its suggestion
the tide that enters, not upon the gale, but in the calm and steady
flow of its own strength.

The quality of Harry's voice was very deep and sometimes halting,
as though it were out of much difficulty that he spoke. He
said, deeply, "That you stand upright does not discharge you from
responsibilities."

She said, "Dear, nor my responsibilities discharge me from my
privileges."

There was then a silence.

He spoke, "But I am going to press this, Rosalie. I say, with all
admitted, this thing--this 'I could go but you should not go'--is
different as between us. I am a man."

She made a movement in her chair. "Ah, let that go. I have a reply
to that."

"What reply?"

"I am a woman."

He began--"It's nothing--."

She said, "Oh, painful to give you pain. To me--everything."

He got up from his position beside her and went to his chair and
seated himself. He sat on the edge of the chair, bowed forward, his
forearms on his knees, his hands clasped; not smoking; his pipe
between his fingers, his eyes upon the fire. Once or twice, his hands
close to his face, he slightly raised them and with his pipe-stem
softly tapped his teeth.






CHAPTER IX





He had called it the principle. She watched him. That attitude in
which he sat was of a profundity of meditation not to be looked
upon without that sense of awe, of oppression, of misgiving that
is aroused by the suggestion in man or nature of brooding forces
mysteriously engrossed. There came to her, watching him, a thought
that newly disturbed her thoughts. He had called it the principle.
She had been astonished but she had not been perturbed. Upon the
principle as between man and woman, husband and wife, she was, as
she had said, so strong, so confident, accustomed and assured, that
there was nothing could be said could touch her there. But it was
not the principle. This was the knowledge brought to her by the
new thought suddenly appeared in her mind, standing there like
a strange face in a council of friends, unbidden and of a suspect
look. What if she communicated that knowledge to Harry brooding
there? He had called it the principle. What if she put across the
shadowed room the sentence that should inform him it was not the
principle but was an issue flying the flag of ships whose freights
are dangerous? What if she put across the shadowed room the sentence,
"Men that marry for a home"?

Ay, that was it! The thing she had always known and never told.
Those are keepsakes of our secret selves, those observations, vows,
conspiracies with which romantically we plot towards our ideals.
This the sole keepsake of her treasury she never had revealed to
Harry. Significant she had not. Some instinct must have stayed her.
Yes, significant! He had called it the principle. It was not the
principle. He was sincere upon the principle and in the examination
of eleven years had proved his sincerity. It was not the principle.
It was that herein, in her intention to exercise her freedom in a
new dimension, she had touched him, not through the principle, but
upon the instinct that led him, as she believed men to be led, to
marry for a home, a settling-in place, a settling-down place, a
cave to enter into and to shut the door upon.

Oh, this was dangerous! There were no lengths to which this might
not lead! If at her first essay at that which countered his idea
of home she was to be asked to pause, what, in the increasing
convolutions of the years, might not she be asked to abandon? Let
him attempt restriction of her by appeal to principle and she could
stand, and win, unscathed. Let him oppose her by his wish within
his home to shut the door, and that was to put upon her an injury
that only by giving him pain could be fought. Oh, dangerous! Not
less an injury because by sentiment and not by reason done! Much
more an injury because so subtly done! Much more! Dangerous! Ah,
from this the outset to be withstood!

He spoke and his first words were confirmation of her fears.

"Rosalie, do you feel quite all right about the children?"

Yes, she could see where this was set to lead. He could leave her
with the children; but she--men that married for a home--could not
leave him with the children.

She said gently, "Dear, there'll not be the least difficulty.
Everything's perfectly arranged. Everything will perfectly well go
on."

He had not moved his pose and did not move it. His voice presented
in tone the profound meditation that his pose presented. He said,
"I don't quite mean that. I mean, do you always feel everything's
quite all right with them?"

How setting now? She answered, "Dear, of course I do."

His eyes remained upon the fire. "Rosalie, d'you know I sometimes
don't."

Her motion--a lifting of her face, a questing of her brows--was of
a helmsman's gesture, suspicious to catch before it set a shifting
of the breeze. "Harry, in what way? They're splendid."

"You feel that?"

"Dear, you know they are."

He put his pipe to his mouth and with that meditative tapping tapped
his teeth. "Splendid, yes, in health, in appearance, in development,
in all that kind of thing. I don't mean that." He turned his face
towards her and spoke directly. "Rosalie, have you ever thought
they're not quite like other children?"

Oh, setting from what quarter this? She said, "They're better--miles
and miles."

He got up. "Well, that's all right. If you have noticed nothing,
that's all right."

"But, Harry. I am at a loss, dear. Of course it's all right. But
what have you noticed, think you've noticed?"

He was standing before her, his back against the mantelpiece,
looking down at her. "Just that--not quite like other children."

"But in what way?"

"It's hard to say, old girl. If you've not noticed it, harder still.
Not quite so childish as at their age I seem to remember myself
with my brothers and sisters being childish. A kind of--reserve.
A kind of--self-contained."

She shook her head, "No, no."

"You think it's fancy?"

"I'm sure it is."

He was silent a moment. "It's rather worried me. And of course
now--If you are going to be away--"

Stand by! She had the drift of this!

She said simply, "Harry, this can't be."

"You can't give up the idea?"

Her hand upon the helm that steered her life constricted. "It is
not to be asked of me to give it up." She paused. She said softly,
"Dear, this is a forward step for me. You are asking me to make a
sacrifice. I would not ask you."

He began, "There are sacrifices--"

"They are not asked of men."

He said, "Rosalie, you said once, when Benji was born, that, if
at any time need be, you would give up, not a thing like this, but
your work entirely."

As if to shield or to support her heart she drew her left hand to
it. "Would you give up yours, Harry?"

He said quickly, "I'm not suggesting such a thing. It is ridiculous.
I'm only showing you--"

She began to say her say, her voice reflective as his own had been.
"But you have shown me frightful things, shown me how far and oh,
how quick, a thing that starts may go. Oh, my dear, know the answer
before it ever is suggested. Sacrifices! It is sacrifice for the
children that you profess to mean. Well, let us call it that. Have
you ever heard of a father sacrificing himself for his children?
There's no such phrase. There's only the feminine gender for that.
'Sacrificed himself for his wife and children.' It's a solecism. If
grammar means good sense, it isn't grammar because it's meaningless.
It can't be said. It's grotesque. But 'Sacrificed herself for her
husband and her children,'--why, that the commonest of cliches.
It's written on half the mothers' brows; it should be carved on
half the mothers' tombs--upon my own dear mother's." She stood up
and faced him. "Harry, not on mine." She put a gentle hand on his.
"I love you--you know what our love is. I love the children--with
a truer love that they have never been a burden to me nor I on
a single occasion out of mood with them. But, Harry, I will not
sacrifice myself for the children. When I ask that of you, ask it
of me. But I never will ask it of you."

She was trembling.

He put an arm about her shoulders. "It's over. It's over. Let's
forget it, Rosalie."

Of course she did not forget it. Of course she knew that Harry could
not. Men that marry for a home! Already in his mind the thought
that for his home she should give up, not only this present forward
step, but--everything! Oh, man-made world! Oh, man-made men! "It's
over. It's over," he had said. Of course she knew it was not over.
Men that marry for a home! Secret she had kept it and in the same
moment that she had realised the significance of her secrecy it
had been enlarged. Now it stalked abroad.

But what is to be observed is the quality of the love between them.
It was through the children that he had made this claim that he
had sought to impose upon her. She had told him, as she believed,
that what he thought he saw was fancy. It never occurred to her to
imagine so base a thing as that he, to give himself grounds, had
invented or even exaggerated his fancy; but it had been excusable
in her (threatened as she saw herself) to avoid, in the days that
followed, discussion of that fancy, much less herself to bring it
forward. Her love for Harry was never in that plane. It could admit
no guile. It happened that within the week she was herself a little
pained by a matter with the children. She took her pain straight
to her Harry.

On his last day of the holidays before he returned for his second
term at his preparatory school, Huggo was noisy with excitement
at the idea of returning. It rather pained Rosalie that he showed
not the smallest sign of regret at leaving home. Miss Prescott had
done all the necessary business of getting his clothes ready for
school, but Rosalie took from Field's this last afternoon to do some
shopping with her little man (as she termed it) in Oxford Street;
to buy him some little personal things he wanted,--a purse of pigskin
that fastened with a button, a knife with a thing for taking stones
out of horses' hoofs, and a special kind of football boots. Since
there had come to her the "men that marry for a home" significance,
that mirage in her face had much presented that mutinous and
determined boy it often showed. Only the mother was there when she
set out with Huggo. And then the sense of pain.

Oxford Street appeared to be swarming with small boys and their
mothers similarly engaged. All the small boys wore blue overcoats
with velvet collar and looked to Rosalie most lovably comic in
bowler hats that seemed enormously too big for their small heads.
Huggo was dressed to the same pattern but his hat exactly suited
his face which was thin and, by contrast with these others, old for
his years. Rosalie wished somehow that Huggo's hat didn't suit so
well; the imminent extinguisher look of theirs made them look such
darling babies. And what really brought out the difference was that
all these other small boys invariably had a hand stretched up to
hold their mothers' arms and walked with faces turned up, chattering.
Huggo didn't. She asked him to. He said, "Mother, why?"

"I'd love you to, darling."

He put up his hand and she pressed it with her arm to her side,
but she noticed that he was looking away into a shop window while
he did as he was asked, and there came in less than a dozen paces
a congestion on the pavement that caused him to slip behind her,
removing his hand. He did not replace it.

In the shop where the knife was to be bought an immense tray of every
variety of pocketknife was put before them. Huggo opened and shut
blades with a curiously impatient air as though afraid of being
interfered with before he had made his choice. Immediately beside
Rosalie was another mother engaged with another son upon another
tray.

"It's got to have a thing for levering stones out of horses' hoofs,"
said Huggo, brushing aside a knife offered by the assistant and
rummaging a little roughly.

Rosalie said, "Darling, I can't think what you can want such a
thing for."

The lady beside her caught her eye and laughed. "That's just what
I'm asking my small man," she said.

Her small man, whose face was merry and whose hat appeared to be
supported by his ears, looked up at Rosalie with an engaging smile
and said in a very frank voice, "It's jolly useful for lugging up
tight things or to hook up toffee that's stuck."

They all three laughed. Huggo, busily engaged, took no notice.

He found the knife he wanted. Rosalie showed him another. "Huggo,
I'm sure that one's too heavy and clumsy."

The voice of the little boy with the hat on his ears came, "Mummie,
I'd rather have this one because you chose it."

Rosalie said to Huggo, "It will weigh down your pocket so."

"This one! This one!" cried Huggo and made a vexed movement with
a foot.

Rosalie, sitting with Harry before the fire in Harry's room that
night said, "Harry, tell me some more of what you said the other
day about the children."

He looked up at her. He clearly was surprised. "You've been thinking
about it?"

"I've been with Huggo shopping for him this afternoon and been at
little things a little sad. Harry, when you said 'not like other
children' did you mean not--responsive?"

He said intensely, "Rosalie, it is the word. It's what I meant. I
couldn't get it. I wonder I didn't. It's my meaning exactly--not
responsive. You've noticed it?"

"Oh, tell me first."

"Rosalie, it's sometimes that I've gone in to the three of them
wanting to be one with them, to be a child with them and invent
things and imagine things. Somehow they don't seem to want it. They
don't--invite it. Your word, they don't--respond. I want them to
open their hearts and let me right inside. Somehow they don't seem
to open their hearts."

She said, "Harry, they're such mites."

He shook his head. "They're not mites, old girl. Only Benji. And
even Benji--It was different when they were wee things. It's lately,
all this. They don't seem to understand, Rosalie--to understand
what it is I want. That's the thing that troubles me. It's an
extraordinary thing to say, but it's been to me sometimes as if
I were the child longing to be--what shall I say?--to have arms
opened to me, and they were the grown-ups, holding me off, not
understanding what it is I want. Not understanding. Rosalie, why
don't they understand?"

She had a hand extended to the fire and she was slowly opening and
shutting her fingers at the flames. This, coming upon the feeling
she had had that afternoon with Huggo, was like a book wherein was
analysed that feeling. But, "I am sure they do understand, dear,"
she said. "I'm sure it's fancy."

"I think you're not sure, Rosalie."

"Oh, yes, I am. If it's anything it's just perhaps their way--all
children have their ways. What I thought about Huggo this afternoon
might perhaps be something what you mean. Harry, if it is, it's
just the little man's way."

"What was it you thought?"

She maintained that movement of the fingers of her hand. "Why, only
things I noticed; tiny things; nothings, I'm sure. Out shopping
with me, Harry. Well, it was his last day and I would have expected
somehow he would have been fonder for that. He wasn't and I rather
felt it. Things like that. I would so like him to have held my arm.
He didn't want to. Not very grateful for the things we bought. But
there, why should he be, dear Huggo? But just his way; that's what
one ought to think. But I felt it a little."

Harry said, "I know. I know. It's that that I have felt--not
responsive. It's what I've thought I've noticed in them all."

Telling him perhaps enlarged, as telling does, her sensibilities.
She said very quickly, "Not Benji!"

"Well, Benji's so very young. But even--But in the other two--"

She said as quickly as before, "Ah, Doda's responsive!"

"You've seen it, dear, in Huggo."

"Oh, Harry, nothing, just his way. I'm sorry now I mentioned it."

He had been watching the flexion of her hand. He said, "I'm glad
you have. When I spoke of it the other day you said you didn't see
it. I think it's generous in you to admit you have."

She murmured, "Generous?"

"It brings up--Rosalie, does this affect a little, alter perhaps,
your decision?"

She shut her fingers sharply. "No." She kept them shut. "There's
nothing at all could alter that, Harry."

He turned aside and began to fill his pipe, with slow movements.

It has been warned that it was in this holidays of Huggo's from his
preparatory school that Time, that bravo of the cloak-and-dagger
school, whipped out his-blade and pounced. These, since that warning,
were but the doorways and the lurking posts he prowled along.

He now was very close to Rosalie.

Rosalie and Harry both were home to lunch next day. In the afternoon
they were to take Huggo to Charing Cross to see him off in the
saloon specially reserved for his school. All the children were at
lunch for this occasion. Benji in a high chair just like the high
chair that had been Rosalie's years back--what years and years!--at
the rectory. Huggo was in boisterous spirits. You would think,
you couldn't help thinking, it was his first day, not his last day
home. Rosalie observed him as she had not before observed him. How
he talked! Well, that was good. How could Harry have thought him
reserved? But he talked a shade loudly and with an air curiously
self-opinionated. But he was such a child, and opinions were
delightful in a child. Yes, but something not childish in his way
of expressing his opinions, something a shade superior, self-satisfied;
and she particularly noticed that when anything in the way of
information was given him by Harry or by herself he never accepted
it but always argued. She grew very silent. She felt she would have
given anything to hear him, in the long topic of railways with his
father, and then of Tidborough School, say, "Do they, father?" or,
"Does it, father?" He never did. He always knew it before or knew
different. Once on a subject connected with the famous school Harry
said, a shade of rebuke in his voice, "My dear old chap, I was at
Tidborough. I ought to know." Rosalie felt she would have given
anything in the world for Huggo to reply, "Sorry, father, of
course you ought." Instead he bent upon his plate a look injured
and resentful at being injured. But in a minute she was reproaching
herself for such ideas. Her Huggo! and she was sitting here
criticising him. Different from other children! Why, if so, only
in the way she had affirmed to Harry--miles and miles better.
Opinionated? Why, famously advanced for his years. Superior? Why,
bright, clever, not a nursery boy. She had been wronging him, she
had been criticising him, she had been looking for faults in him,
her Huggo! Unkind! Unnatural!

Listen to him! The meal was ended. His father was bantering him
about what he learnt, or didn't learn, at school; was offering him
an extra five shillings to his school tip if he could answer three
questions. The darling was deliciously excited over it. How his
voice rang! He was putting his father off the various subjects
suggested. Not Latin--he hadn't done much Latin; not geography--he
simply hated geography. Listen to him!

"Well, scripture," Harry was saying. "Come, they give you plenty
of scripture?"

"Oh, don't they just! Tons and tons!" Listen to him! How merry
he was now! "Tons and tons. First lesson every morning. But don't
ask scripture, father. Father, what's the use of learning all that
stuff, about the Flood, about the Ark, about the Israelites, about
Samuel, about Daniel, about crossing the Red Sea, about all that
stuff: what's the use?"

Time closed his fingers on his haft and took a stride to Rosalie.

She sat upright. She stared across the table at the boy.

Harry said, "Here, steady, old man. 'What's the use of Scripture?'"

"Well, what is the use? It's all rot. You know it isn't true."

Time flashed his blade and struck her terribly.

She called out dreadfully, "Huggo!"

"Mother, you know it's all made up!"

She cried out in a girl's voice and with a girl's impulsive gesture
of her arm across the table towards him, "It isn't! It isn't!"

Her voice, her gesture, the look upon her face could not but startle
him. He was red, rather frightened. He said mumblingly, "Well,
mother, you've never taught me any different."

She was seen by Harry to let fall her extended arm upon the table
and draw it very slowly to her and draw her hand then to her heart
and slowly lean herself against her chair-back, staring at Huggo.
No one spoke. She then said to Huggo, her voice very low, "Darling,
run now to see everything is in your playbox. Doda, help him. Take
Benji, darlings. Benji, go and see the lovely playbox things."

When they had gone she was seen by Harry to be working with her
fingers at her key-ring. In one hand she held the ring, in the other
a key that she seemed to be trying to remove. It was obstinate. She
wrestled at it. She looked up at Harry. "I want to get this"--the
key came away in her hand--"off."

He recognised it for her office pass-key.

Caused by that cry of hers to Huggo and by that ges-ture with her
cry, and since intensifying, there had been a constraint that he
was very glad to break. He remembered how childishly proud she had
been of that key on the day it was cut for her. They had had a
little dinner to celebrate it, and she had dipped it in her champagne
glass.

He said, "Your pass-key? Why?"

She said, "I'm coming home, Harry."

"Coming home?"

She was sitting back in her chair. She tossed, with a negligent
movement of her hand, the key upon the table. "I have done with
all that. I am coming home."

He got up very quickly and came around the table to her.






PART FOUR--HOUSE OF CARDS

CHAPTER I





There is a state wherein the mind, normally the court of pleas where
reason receives and administers the supplications of the senses,
is not in session. Reason is sick, suspends his office, abrogates
his authority, withdraws to some deep fastness of the brain,
and suffers the hall of judgment to be the house of license or of
dreams: of dreams, as sleep, as vanity of reverie; of license when
there is tumult in the body politic, as fever, as excesses of the
passions, as great shock. Reason is sick, withdraws, and there is
strange business in that place.

If that is just the way one writes, not susceptible of easy
comprehension, and not enough explanatory of Rosalie's condition,
it goes like this in Rosalie's own words. Drooped back there in her
chair before that littered disarray of lunch, and that key lying
there, and Harry stooping over her and holding both her hands, she
said, "Oh, Harry! Oh, Harry! I feel deathly sick."

She said it had been a most frightful shock to her, what Huggo had
declared. She said, "Oh, Harry, I feel all undone."

Undone! We'll try to feel her mind with that; to let that explain
her when she said this else, and when she wrote some things that
shall be given.

She said she had suffered, in that moment of crying out to Huggo
and of stretching out her arm to him, the most extraordinary--what
was the word?--the most extraordinary hallucination. "Harry, when
Huggo said that frightful thing! Oh, Harry, like an extraordinary
dream, I was a child again. It wasn't here; it was happening; it
was the rectory; and not you and the children but all us children
that used to be around the table there. No, not quite that. More
extraordinary than that. Robert was there; Robert, I think, in
Huggo's place; and all the rest were me--me as I used to be when
I was ten; small, grave, wondering, staring. And yet myself me too
as I was then--oh, horrified as I'd have then been horrified to
hear the Bible stories called untrue; jumped up and crying out,
'It isn't! It isn't!' as I would then have jumped up and cried out;
and all the other Rosalies staring in wonder as I'd have stared.
Oh, extraordinary, extraordinary! Within this minute, I have been
a child again. The strangest thing, the strangest thing!

"I was a child again, Harry, in a blue frock I used to wear and
in a pinafore that had a hole in it; and all those other Rosalies
the same. Those other Rosalies! To see them! Harry, I've not seen
that Rosalie I used to be--not years and years. That tiny innocent!
It is upon me still. I feel that small child still. Oh, I feel it!
I remember--dear, did I ever tell you?--when my father once... had
been talking about Cambridge... and suddenly cried out, it was at
breakfast, 'Cambridge! My youth! My God, my God, my youth!' There
was coffee from a cup that he'd knocked over came oozing, and I
just sat there huge-eyed, staring, a small, grave wondering child....

"Oh, Harry, my youth, my childhood--and now the children's! The
difference! The difference!"

Harry talked to her. He ended, "The teaching, all the ideas, dear
girl, you mustn't worry, it's all different nowadays."

"Harry, to hear it from a child like that!"

"It's startled you. It needn't. We'll talk it out. We'll fix it.
It's just what he's been taught, old girl."

She said, "Oh, it is what he's not been taught!"

Then there were things that, while was still upon her this shock,
this sense of being again the small, grave child in the blue frock
and in the pinafore with the hole in it, she wrote down. She dismissed
Miss Prescott. She thought, when the interview of dismissal opened,
that she would end by upbraiding Miss Prescott, but she was abated
all the time in any anger that she might have felt by Huggo's other
frightful words, "Well, mother, you never taught me any different."
She did not want to hear Miss Prescott tell her that. She told Miss
Prescott simply that she was giving up her business and coming now
to devote herself to the children. She thought, she said, their
education had in some respects been faulty, and told Miss Prescott
how. Miss Prescott, speaking like a book, told her it had not been
faulty and told her why. "Truth, knowledge, reason," said Miss
Prescott. "Could it conceivably be contested that these should not
be the sole food and the guiding principle of the child mind?"

It was after that interview that Rosalie, sitting long into the
night, wrote down some things. She is to be imagined as wrenched
back, as by a violent hand, across the years, and in the blue frock
and the pinafore with a hole in it again, and awfully frightened,
terribly unhappy, at the thing she'd heard from Huggo. That was
the form her shock took. Beneath it she had at a blow abandoned
all her ambitions as when a child she would instantly have dropped
her most immersing game and run to a frightening cry from her
mother; as once, in fact (and the incident and the parallel came
back to her), she had been building a house of cards, holding her
breath not to shake it, and her mother had scalded her hand and
had cried out to her, frighteningly. "Oh, mummie, mummie!" she had
cried, running to her; and flap! the house of cards had gone. Her
inward cry was now, "The children! The children!" and what amiss
the leaving of her work? Her work! Oh, house of cards!

Her state of mind, the imaginings in which that shock came to her,
is better seen by what she wrote down privately, to relieve herself,
than by the talk about it all that she had with her Harry. She wrote
immediately after Miss Prescott had stood up for "truth, knowledge,
reason," and by combating truth, knowledge, and reason more clearly
expressed herself than in her talk with Harry. It was in her diary
she wrote--well, it wasn't exactly a diary, it was a desultory
journal in which sometimes she wrote things. As she wrote, her
brow, in the intensity of her thought, was all puckered up. She
still felt "deathly sick; all undone." She wrote:

"Of course it's as she says (Miss Prescott). That is the kind of
thing to-day. Knowledge, stark truth--children must have in stark
truth all the knowledge there is on all the things that come about
them. It's strange; yes, it is strange. No parent would be such
a fool as to trust a child with all the money she has nor with
anything superlatively precious that she possesses; but knowledge,
which is above all wealth and above all treasure, the child is
to have to play with as it likes. Oh, it is strange. Where is it
going to stop? If you bring up a child on the fact that all the Old
Testament stories are untrue, a bundle, where they are miraculous,
of obviously impossible fairy tales, what's going to happen to the
New Testament? The Immaculate Conception, the Resurrection, the
Ascension--what's your child-mind that knows the old stories for
inventions going to say to those? Are they easier to believe? The
Creation or the Conception? The Flood or the Resurrection? God
speaking out of a burning bush or the Ascension to Heaven? The
pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire or the Three in One of the
Trinity? Oh, I wonder if Modern Thought has any thought to spare
for that side of the business--or for its results in a generation
or two?"

Then she wrote:

"I've never taught them any different."

Then she wrote:

"Mother, I am a child again to-night. Darling, in that blue frock
I used to wear. Darling, all that I to-night am thinking is what
you taught me. Oh, look down, beloved! I've been so wrong. I thought
everything was infinitely better for them than you made it, beloved
mother, for me. I didn't realise."

Then she wrote:

"It just means losing everything in God that's human. It must mean
that. All our intelligence, if materialism may be called intelligence;
all modern teaching, if this new stuff that they pontificate
may be called teaching, offers us God the Spirit but, as it seems
to me to-night, denies us God the Father and God the Son. It may
be--reasonable. But things spiritual demand for their recognition
emotions spiritual, and there's a pass that thousands reach when
the spirit is a dead thing. If they are to believe in God only as
a Spirit, a Force, a Power; an Essence to be felt but not seen; an
Element to be absorbed into but not to be visualised--if this, if
these, there needs in them some spirit, some force, some power of
themselves to lift themselves to meet it. They must be of themselves
responsive as hath the sea within itself that which respondeth to
the sublimation of the sun. Well, there are thousands (am I not
one?) that have it not. It once was theirs. Now it is not theirs.
If there is for them only God the Spirit then is there for them
only that to which they have no more power to reach than has one
bedridden power to rise and find a mile away what may restore him.
They have only that, their breaking heart, which would cast itself,
ah, with what bliss of utter abandonment, before God the Father,
a human and a personal Father, quick to succor, and before God the
Son, a human and a personal Son, ardent to intercede. And that is
denied them. That God that existed and that was taught to exist
for my mother and for her day to this day may not exist. It may
be--reasonable. Oh, it is offering a stone where bread was sought."

She also wrote:

"Oh, mother, if you could have been here, how you would have loved
my darlings, and how you would have given them all that you gave
to me! I will now, mother. Mother, I've come back home to them, in
the blue frock, and in the pinafore with a hole in it."

That was the spirit in which she came back home to the children,
that and all that went with it and that arose out of it. It was
nothing at all to her when she did it, the frightful break with
Field's. Harry was distressed for her, but there was no need at
all for him to be distressed, she told him. There wasn't a sigh in
her voice, nor in her inmost thoughts a sigh, when, telling him of
the interview with Mr. Field and with Mr. Sturgiss at her resignation
of her post, she said with a smile, "Carry on? Of course the
department can perfectly well carry on. Dear, it's just the words
I said to you a fortnight back on the matter so very different. 'The
thing's organised. It runs itself. That is why it is the success
it is, because it's organised. That's why I can come away and leave
it, because I'm an organiser. Aren't I an organiser?"

He held her immensely long in his arms. "You are my Rosalie," he
said.

Immensely long he held her, immensely close; oh, men that marry for
a home! Until, come home, she saw Harry's tremendous happiness in
the home that now she gave him, she never had realised the longing
that must have been his for the home for which he had married, and
never till now had had. It was poignant to her, the sight of his
tremendous happiness. "Always to find you here!" he would cry, in
the first weeks of the new life, coming home to tea and coming in
to her in the drawing-room where she would be, all ready for him,
with Doda and with Benji. "Always to leave you here!" he would
say, taking leave of her in the morning, and she and Doda and Benji
coming with him to the hall door to see him off. "Mice and Mumps,"
he used to add in codicil, "Mice and Mumps, I'm a happy chap!" and
was for ever bringing home trifles for her and for the children,
or plans and passes for how and where the Saturday and the weekend
should be spent, all four together. "Mice and Mumps, I'm gorged
with happiness! And you, Rosalie?"

"Oh, happy!" she used to say.

And was. It was poignant to her, his tremendous happiness, and it
brimmed up the cup of her own happiness. She was doing virtuously
and she had of her virtue that happiness which, as the pious old
maxims tell us, comes of being good.

That should have been well; but virtue is a placid condition and
the happiness arising out of it placid. It brims no cups, flushes
no cheeks, sparkles no eyes. It is of the quality of happiness
that one, loving a garden, has from his garden, the happiness of
tranquillity, not of stir; of peace, not of thrills; of the country,
not of the town. There was more heady stuff than this that Rosalie
had out of her new condition, and that was dangerous. She was
doing virtuously and she had out of her virtue an intoxication of
joy that, in so far as it is at all concerned with virtue, arises,
not from virtue's self, but from the consciousness of virtue. That
was dangerous. The danger point in stimulants is when they are
resorted to, not as concomitant of the pleasures of the table,
but be-cause they stimulate. Rosalie, come to her children and her
Harry and her home, to the thought of her renunciation and of her
happiness constantly was turning for the enormous exhilaration of
happiness that there she found. "How glad I am I gave it up! How
glad! How glad! How right I'm doing now! How right! How right! How
happy I am in this happiness! How happy! How happy!"

Is it not perceived that thus it was not well assured, this great
joy that she had, this cup of hers that brimmed? She started from
that danger point at which the drug is drunk for stimulant. On the
very first day of her new life she was saying, "How glad I am! How
glad I am!" and going on radiant from her gladness. But she, in her
resort to this her stimulant, suffered this grave disparity with
the drinker's case: he must increase his doses--and he can. She,
living upon her stimulant, equally was compelled--but could not.
The renunciation that brimmed her happiness on the first day was
available to her in no bigger dose on the succeeding days, the
hundredth day and the three hundredth and the five hundredth. It
never could increase. It had no capacity of increase. Is it not
perceivable that it had, on the contrary, a staling quality?

It would have been all right if it had been all right. It would
have been all right if it had not been all wrong. If these absurd
premises can be understood, her case can be understood. She used
them herself in after years. "It would have been all right," she
used to say to herself, twisting her hands together, "if it had
been all right." "It would have been all right," she used to say to
herself, "if it had not been all wrong." What she meant, and what
here is meant, requires it to be recalled that it was in that
spirit of that glimpse of herself back a child again in the blue
frock and in the pinafore with a hole in it that she came back to
the children, came back home to them. Shocked by the thing that
had come to pass, penitential by influence of the old childhood
influences that had stirred within her, most strangely and most
strongly transported back into that childhood vision of herself,
it was in the guise of that child and with that child's guise as
her ideal for them that passionately she desired to take up her
children's lives. Her Huggo, her man child, her first one! Her
Doda, her self's own self, her woman-bud, her daughter! Her Benji,
her littlest one, her darling! She longed, as it were, to throw
open the door, and in that blue frock and in the spirit of that blue
frock most ardently to run in to them and hug them, blue frocked,
to her breast, and be one with them and tell them the things and
the things and the things that were the blue frock's mysteries and
joys, and hear from them the things and the things and the things
that were the blue frock's all-enchanted world again.

That was what most terribly she wanted and with most brimming
gladness set about to do--and there was borne, in upon her, hinted
in weeks, published in months, in seasons sealed and delivered to
her, that there was among her children no place for that spirit.
They did not welcome the blue frock; they did not understand the
blue frock; they were not children as she had been a child. It
was what Harry had said of them, they somehow were not quite like
other children; it was what she herself had noticed in Huggo; they
did not respond. They'd gone, those children, too long as they'd
been left to go. She came to them ardently. They greeted her--not
very responsively. They didn't understand.

What happened was that, coming to them great with intention,
she was, by what she did not find in them, much dispirited in her
intention. What followed from that was that she turned the more
frequently to the stimulation of the thought of her renunciation,
to the sensation of happiness that arose in her by consciousness
that she was doing what she ought to be doing. She would be puzzled,
she would be a little pained, she would be a little tired at the
effort, fruitless, to call up in the children those lovely childish
things that as a child had been hers. She then would feel dispirited.
She then would think, "But how glad I am that I gave it all up; but
how right I am to be at home with them; but how happy I am that I
am now doing that which is right." That stimulated her. That made
her tell herself (as before she had told Harry) that it was just
fancy, this apparent difference, this indifference, in the children.

But the more she found necessary that stimulus, the less that
stimulus availed; and she began to feel, then, the first faint
gnawings after that which had been stimulus indeed, her work, her
career.

Of course this is making a case for her, this is special pleading
for her, but who so abandoned that in the ultimate judgment a case
will not for him be prepared? Try to consider how it went with
her. First intoxication of happiness; and must not intoxication in
time wear off? Then immense intention and then dispirited in her
intention. Then frequent resource to the stimulus of her realisation
of virtue and then the natural diminution of that cup's effect. Is
she not presented prey for her life's habit's longings? Is she not
shown dejected and caused by that dejection (as caused by depression
the reclaimed victim of a drug) to desire again that which had been
to her the breath of life?

That was how it went with her.

Doda was nine when she began; Huggo, when he was home for his
holidays, eleven, rising twelve; Benji only seven. They seemed to
her, all of them, wonderfully old for their years and, no getting
over that, different. She tried to read them the stories she used
to love. They didn't like them. Doda didn't like "The Wide Wide
World" and didn't like "Little Women." Huggo thought "The Swiss
Family Robinson" awful rot, and argued learnedly with her how
grotesque it was to imagine all that variety of animals and all
that variety of plants in one same climate. "But, Huggo, you needn't
worry whether it was possible. It was just written as a means of
telling a family of children natural history things. They didn't
have to believe it. They only enjoyed it. I and your uncle Robert
never worried about whether it was possible; we simply loved the
adventure of it."

"Well, I can't, mother," said Huggo. "It's not possible, and if it
isn't possible, I think it's stupid."

And Doda thought Ellen in the "Wide Wide World" silly, and Beth
and Jo and the others in "Little Women" dull.

She read them Dickens, but it was always, "Oh, leave out that part,
mother. It's dull." And so was Scott Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare"
never had a chance at all. They had heard from Miss Prescott, or
Huggo had heard at school, that Shakespeare was a lesson. "Oh, not
a thing out of lessons, mother." What they liked were what seemed
to Rosalie the crudely written stories, and the grotesque and usually
rather vulgar comic drawings, in the host of cheap periodicals for
children that seemed to have sprung up since her day. They called
these exciting or funny and they revelled in them. They were different.
Benji was no more than a baby, but he was extraordinarily devoted
to Doda, liked only the things that Doda liked, and did not like
the things that Doda didn't like, or, in the language sometimes a
little unpleasantly emphatic that always was Doda's and Huggo's,
that Doda "simply loathed." Rosalie had some old bound numbers
of treasured juvenile periodicals of the rectory days. Even Benji
didn't like them. They were markedly different from the books the
children did like. Their illustrations were mainly of children in
domestic scenes. "Don't they look stupid?" was Doda's comment; and
Benji, copying, thought they were stupid too.

All this was a very small thing and of itself negligible; even,
as Rosalie told herself, natural--naturally children of succeeding
generations changed in their tastes. It only is introduced
as conveniently showing in an obscure aspect what was noticeable
to Rosalie, and felt by her, in many aspects, whose effect was
cumulative. "A kind of reserve," Harry had said of them: "a kind
of--self-contained." It was what she found. She wanted to be a child
with the children; they didn't seem to understand. She wanted to
open her heart to them and have their hearts opened to her; they
didn't seem to understand. She was always seeing that vision of
Rosalie in the blue frock among them, rather like Alice, the real
Alice, Tenniel's Alice. She was always feeling that Rosalie, thus
guised, was held off from their circle, not welcomed, not understood,
as certainly they did not care for the demure, quaint Alice of
Tenniel.

She began to have sometimes when she was with the children
an extraordinary feeling (just what Harry had said) that she was
younger than the children, that it was she who was the child, they
that were the grown-ups.

When the step of her renunciation was first taken, ardent to devote
herself to them in every moment of the day, she began to give their
lessons to Doda and to Benji. It was not a success. The methods
of teaching, as the text-books, had changed since she was a child.
The Prescott methods were here and to her own methods the children
did not respond. There it was again--did not respond. There was
obtained a Miss Dormer who came in daily and who confined herself,
Rosalie saw to that, solely to lessons; the walks and all the other
hours of the day were Rosalie's.

That's all for that. The picture has been overdrawn if has been
given the suggestion that Rosalie was unhappy with the children
or the children openly indifferent to her. All of that nature that
in fact arose was that, whereas Rosalie had expected an immense
and absorbing occupation with the children, she found instead an
occupation very loving and very happy but not relieving her of all
the interest and all the affection she had desired to pour into
it. It was rather like to a hungry person a strange dish that had
looked substantial but that, when finished, was found not to have
been substantial; still hungry. She had thought the children would
have been entirely dependent on her. She found them in many ways
independent and wishing to be independent. It would have been all
right if it had been all right. That was it. It would have been
all right if it had not been all wrong. That was it.

She began to think of Field's.

When first she began to think of Field's, which was when she had
been nine months away from Field's, she would let her mind run
upon it freely, as it would. One day, thus thinking upon it, she
brought up her thoughts as it were with a round turn. She must not
think so much about Field's--not like that. She sighed, and with
the same abruptness of mental action checked her sigh; she must
not regret Field's--not like that.

It was a fateful prohibition. It was the discovery to herself, as
to Eve of the tree by the serpent, of a temptation seductive and
forbidden. Thereafter "like that" her mind, missing no day nor no
night, was often found by her to be there. The quality that made
"like that" not seemly to her, increased, at each return, its
potency.

It became very difficult to drag her mind away. It became impossible
to drag her mind away.

Her governance of her mind became infected and it became not
necessary to think it necessary to drag her mind away.

She had not visited Field's since she had left. Mr. Sturgiss and
Mr. Field had written to her reproaching her for carrying to such
lengths of neglect her desertion of them, and she had responded
banteringly but without a call. One day (she had lain much awake
on the previous night) she at breakfast told Harry she had the idea
of going that afternoon to see how Field's was getting on.

She was surprised at his supplement to his reply. The children had
left the room. He first agreed with her that the idea was good.
"Yes, rather; why not?" was the expression he used. He then said,
surprising her, "Rosalie, you've never, have you, regretted?"

Her surprise framed for her her reply. "Why ever should you ask
that?"

"I've thought you've not been looking very well lately."

"But what's the connection, Harry?"

"Fretting?"

She smiled. "I'm not the fretting sort."

He was perfectly satisfied. "I knew you'd tell me if you were.
Everything going well?"

"Fine."

He shot out his arms with a luxurious stretching gesture. "Mice
and Mumps, it's been fine for me, I can tell you. Fine, fine!"

How happy he looked! How handsome he looked! Her thought was "Dear
Harry!"

He got up and began to set about his departure. She went with him
into the hall and she called up the stairs, "Children, father's
going." They came bounding down. He joked and played with them. He
loved this custom, now long established. She brushed his hat, also
a rite she knew he loved. He kissed her with particular affection.
"Yes, you go up to Field's and give old Sturgiss and old Field my
love. You'll almost have forgotten the way there. I say, it's funny,
isn't it, how time changes things and how it goes? We couldn't have
imaged this once, and here it is the most established thing in the
world. Do you know, it's almost exactly a year since you chucked
it?"

"Chucked it!" The light expression smote her. O manlike man that
thus could phrase divorce that from her heart's engrossment had
cut her life asunder!

In the afternoon she set out upon her intention. It meant nothing,
her visit, she assured herself. It had no purpose beyond the exchange
of courtesies. But when she was leaving the house she paused. Should
she go? She went down the steps and through the gate, then paused
again. She returned to the house. She had an idea. She would take
the children with her. She called them, and while they gleefully
dressed for the outing she repeated to herself the word in which
the idea of taking them with her had come to her.

"A bodyguard!" she said.

The note of laughter she gave at the word had a tremulous sound.

Tremulous would well have described her manner when they were at
Field's. She was asking herself as they went towards the City what
it was that she wanted to hear--that Field's was doing very well
without her? That her department was not doing very well without
her? Which?

She would not let her mind affirm which it was that she desired.

It appeared, when they arrived, that it was neither, nor anything
at all to do with the Bank. Her first words to the partners were
of smiling apology at bringing to precincts sacred to business, "a
herd of children." That was a natural introduction of herself; it
was an unusual thing to do. But not natural the way in which she
maintained the subject of the children. It seemed that she had come
to talk of nothing else. Tremulous she was; talking, of the children,
with the incessant eagerness, and with the nervous eagerness, of
one either clamant to establish a case or frightened of a break in
the conversation lest a break should cause appearance of a subject
most desperately to be avoided.

Her bodyguard!

Mr. Field and Mr. Sturgiss were delighted to see her and expressed
themselves delighted to see the children. There was plenty in the
bank, coffers and strong-rooms and all sorts of exciting things,
said Mr. Field, that would amuse the small people, and when tea was
done they should be taken around to see them. In an inner holy of
holies, behind the partners' parlour, a very exciting tea was made.
A clerk was sent out for a parcel of pastries and returned with an
enormous bag, and there was no tablecloth, nor no proper tea-table,
and the children, much excited, were immensely entertained.

Easy, while they were there, to make them the conversation's centre.
But the meal ended and then became most evident her anxiety to
keep the chatter on the children. They became impatient to be off
on the promised exploration. She delayed it. Twice the clerk who
was to conduct the tour was about to be summoned. By a new gathering
of general attention, she stopped his coming. When at last he
came she said she would be of the party. The partners did not want
that. The children did not want it. "Mother, it will be much more
exciting by ourselves." She insisted. She was aware for the first
and only time in her life of a feeling of nerves, of not being
quite in control of herself, of making of her insistence rather
more than should be made.

"Well, stay," said Mr. Sturgiss, "at least for a minute's chat
before you join them."

That was not possible, unless she was going to become hysterical,
to resist. The children trooped away. Her bodyguard!

She turned aside and it is to be remembered for her that, her
face concealed from the partners, she gave the tiniest despairing
gesture with her hands.

When, with the children, she was returning home, she was trying to
determine whether, while it was in suspense, she had or had not
desired to hear of the partners that which she had heard from them.
They had talked with her generally of the business. They had talked
particularly of the work of her department of the business. There
was approaching all the time the thing that sooner or later they
must say. She was trembling all the time to know how she would
receive it. In whichever of its two ways it came would she be
glad or would she be sorry? She simply did not know. She suddenly
herself projected the point. She could not endure any longer its
delay. "And Miss Farmer," she said. "How's Miss Farmer doing?"
Miss Farmer, formerly one of her assistants, had on her resignation
taken her place.

Miss Farmer, replied Mr. Sturgiss, was estimable but--he opened his
hands and made with them a deprecatory gesture. "She's not you. How
could she be you, or any one be you? We could replace Miss Farmer.
What's the good? It's you we've got to replace. We can't replace
you."

Her heart had bounded.






CHAPTER II





That happened in the Christmas holidays, in January. In February was
Doda's eleventh birthday. The child had friends rather older than
herself, neighbours, who for a year had been boarders at a school
in Surrey. She was desperately eager to join them there and it
was a promise from Rosalie that she should go when she was twelve,
earlier if she were good. On this eleventh birthday, which brought
birthday letters from the neighbours at the school and thus again
brought up the subject, "Oh, haven't I been good?" cried Doda at
the birthday breakfast. "Oh, do let me go next term, mother. Father,
do say I may." Her eagerness for school had been much fostered
by Huggo's holiday stories of school life; and Huggo, as Doda now
adduced, was leaving his preparatory and starting at Tidborough
next term; couldn't she, oh, couldn't she make also her start then?

Harry said, "O grown-up woman of enormous years, think of your
sorrowing parents. How will you like to leave your weeping mother,
Doda? How will you like to leave your heart-broken old father?"

"Oh, I'd love to!" cried Doda.

The ingenuousness of it made her parents laugh.

"She'll have her way, won't she?" said Harry, when Doda, conscious,
by that laugh, of tolerance, had danced out of the room.

"I think she'd better," said Rosalie.

The school was very well known to Rosalie. It was exclusive and
expensive; was limited to seventy girls, of whom twenty, under the
age of thirteen, were received in the adapted Dower House of the
ancient estate which was its home; and the last word in modernity
was, in every point of administration, its first word. It had been
established only eight years. The motto of its founders and of its
lady principal was "Not traditions--precedents!"

The subject came up again between Rosalie and Harry that evening
and it was decided that Doda should be placed there after the next
holidays, at the opening of the summer term. Harry declared himself,
"in my bones" as he expressed it, against boarding schools for girls,
"But that's my old fogeyism," said he. "It's the modern idea that
girls should have the same training and the same chances in life
as their brothers, and there's no getting away from the right of
it."

Rosalie said in a low voice, "To what end?"

He did not hear her. She had got out from the accumulation of papers
of her business life prospectuses and booklets of the school and he
was amusedly browsing over the refinements and advantages therein,
not by traditions but by precedents, set forth. "Mice and Mumps,
Rosalie," said he, "they not only do riding as a regular thing
but 'parents are permitted, if they wish, to stable a pupil's
own pony (see page 26).' Oh, thanks, thanks! 'Mr. Harry Occleve,
barrister-at-law, availing himself of your gracious permission on
page twenty-six, is sending down for his daughter a coach and four
with 'ostlers, grooms, coachmen, and outriders complete.' Ha!"

She was just watching him.

He said after an interval: "Yes, there's a lot of sound stuff here,
Rosalie. It's convincing. Not that any one needs convincing on the
point less than you and I." He quoted again. "'And advance them
towards an independent and a womanly womanhood.' And it talks
further back about how 'Idle women' will soon be recognised as
great a term of reproach as 'an idle man.' It's sound. I like this
booklet here that each girl's given, 'To the Girl of the Future.'
It tells them all about an independent career, makes no fancy
picture of it, tells 'em everything. Did you read that?"

"A long time ago. It probably doesn't tell them one thing."

"What?"

"That they can always--chuck it."

He looked up quickly. "Hull-o!"

She gave him no response to his expressed surprise and he laughed
and said, "D'you know, Rosalie, I don't believe I've ever before
heard you use slang."

"You taught me that bit, Harry."

"Oh, I sling it about. When did I?"

"One day last holidays when it was just on a year since I'd left
Field's. Just a year, you said, since I'd--chucked it. O Harry--"

There was a quality in her voice that might, from what she saw
upon his face, have been a tocsin's roll. His face was as a place
of assembly into which, as it might be a people alarmed, there came
crowding in emotions.

He said, "What's up?"

She said, "O Harry, you look out for yourself!"

There was much movement in his face. "Look out for myself?"

She said, "That came out of me. I didn't know I was going to say
it. It's a warning. It shows the fear I have."

"Rosalie, of what, of what?"

"Harry, for you."

"You're going to say something you think will hurt me?"

"No, something you'll have to fight--if you want to fight it. Harry,
perhaps I can't go on like this. I want to go back to my work."

He expired a breath he had been holding. "I was guessing it."

"Before just now?"

"No, while you've been speaking. Only now. I asked you weeks ago
if you ever felt you regretted--"

She leant forward from the couch whereon she sat, and with
an extended hand interrupted him. She said intensely, "Look here,
Harry, if it was just regret I'd not mind and I would tell you No
a hundred times, just not to disturb you, dear. But when you asked
me that you spoke, a minute afterwards, of my having--chucked it,
as if it was giving up sugar or stopping bridge. Well, that's why
I'm warning you to look out for yourself. Because, Harry, I don't
regret it. I'm craving to go back to it, craving, craving, craving!"
She stopped. She said, "Do you want me not to go back, Harry?"

He looked steadily at her. "Rosalie, it would be a blow to me."

She said, "Well, then!" and she leaned back in the couch as though
all now was explained.

He very gravely asked her, "Are you going back, Rosalie?"

"Would it be a crime, Harry, to go back?"

He said to her, "I believe in my soul it would be a disaster."

She got up. "Come over here to me, Harry."

He went to her and took the hands that she extended to him. "If you
think that, a disaster, and if to you it would be what you said,
a blow; then that's what I mean by saying, Harry, you look out for
yourself. I don't know if I'm going back. I want to go terribly,
oh, terribly. There was a woman I once knew told me that if a woman
once gives herself to a thing, abandons all else and gives herself
to it, she never never can come back from it. 'They don't issue
return tickets to women,' she said to me. 'If you give yourself,'
she said, 'you're its. You may think you can get away but you never
will get away. You're its.' She was right, Harry. I believe I've
got to go back. If you don't want me to, well, you look out for
yourself." She drew herself towards him by her hands. "Harry, when
I went down to Field's with the children that day last holidays I
took them to be a bodyguard to me, to prevent me from being captured.
When they left me there alone for a few minutes, I turned away and
wrung my hands because I knew I was going to be terribly tempted.
I am terribly tempted. I'm being dragged." She went into his arms.
"Harry, hold me terribly tight and say you don't want me to go
back."

He most tenderly embraced her. "Don't go back, Rosalie."

She disengaged herself, and made a sound, "Ah!" as if, while he had
held her body, herself had held the fort of her solicitude for his
desires against the horde of her own cravings that swarmed about
its walls.

How long?

There was a mirage in her face. While Easter came and Doda, in huge
spirits, made her start at school, and Huggo, boisterously elated,
his start at Tidborough, and Benji, much dejected at Doda's going,
his start at Huggo's former day school; and while the long summer
term and the holidays passed on, there was never again seen nor
heard by Harry the tenderness that had been in her face and in
her voice when she had warned him, "Well, Harry, you look out for
yourself," and when she had asked him, "Harry, hold me terribly
tight in your arms and say you do not want me to go back." There
thenceforward did fill up her countenance the boy, mutinous and
defiant, that was her other self. It was almost upon the morrow of
that passage with him (whose poignancy the written word has failed
to show) that she had a revulsion from the attitude she had then
exposed to him. Avid now to go back to the life she had abandoned,
she was ferocious to herself when she remembered she had asked
him, "Would it be a crime, Harry, to go back?" A crime! "Horrible
traitor to myself that I was" (her thoughts would go) "to question
it a crime just to take up my life again! A crime! Horrible fool that
I was to be able, with no sense of humour, to give to so natural a
desire an epithet so ludicrous as crime! A crime! A right, a right!"

Worst of all, she had invited, she had implored, Harry when her
longings were manifest to reason with her. Her longings now always
were manifest; but when he reasoned with her it was out of the
scorpions of her revulsion that she answered him.

He once said, "It appears to me that your attitude is changed from
the night you first mentioned this."

She said, "Harry, what's disturbing me when we talk about it is
not my own case, it's the general case. Here's a woman--never mind
that it's me--here's a woman that has made a success in life, that
has abandoned it and that wants to go back to it. You argue she
mustn't. I could say it's monstrous. I don't say that. I choose
to say it's pitiful. If it was a man, he'd go. He wouldn't think
twice about it. And if he did think twice about it, every opinion
and every custom that he consulted would tell him he was right to
go. It happens to be a woman, therefore--well, that's the reason!
It's a woman--therefore, No. That's the beginning of the reason and
the end of the reason. A woman--therefore, No. Oh, it's pitiful--for
women."

Harry questioned: "Every opinion and every custom would tell a
man to go? No, no. You're taking too much for granted, Rosalie. He
wouldn't go, necessarily, and he wouldn't be advised to go, if he
had duties that pulled him the other way."

She gave a note of amusement. "But that's the point. He never would
have such duties. It's notable that a man always makes his duties
and his ambitions go hand in hand. Yes, it's notable, that."

"Well, put it another way. Suppose it wasn't necessary for him to
go.... Suppose nothing depended on his going, much on his staying.
That makes the parallel, Rosalie."

She said to him, "Ah, I'll agree to that. Let that make the parallel.
They'd tell a man in such a case, 'Man, take up your ambitions.
You are a man. You have yourself to think of.' That's what they'd
say. Well, that's what I'm saying. 'I am a woman. I have myself to
think of.'"

He asked, "And shall you, Rosalie?"

She said, "I'm thinking--every day."

The more she thought, the more she stiffened. This was the thought
against whose goad she always came--Why should she be hesitant?
What a position! What a light upon the case and upon the status
of woman that, just because she was a woman, she must not consider
her own, her personal interests! For no other reason; just that;
because she was a woman!

"I've shut a gate behind me," she on another day said to Harry.
"That's what I've done. I've come out of a place and shut the gate
behind me and because I am a woman I mustn't open it and go back.
That's what a woman's life is--always shutting gates behind her.
There aren't gates for a man. There're just turnstiles. As he came
out so he can always go back--even to his youth. When he's fifty
he still can go back and have the society of twenty and play the
fool as he did at twenty. Can a woman?"

"That's physical," said Harry. "A man much longer keeps his youth."

She said then the first aggressively bitter thing he ever had heard
her say. "Ah, keeps his youth!" she said. "So does a dog that's
run free. It's the chain and kennel sort that age."

She hardened her heart.

She looked back upon the days when she had discovered for herself
the difference between sentiment and sense, between sentimentality
and sensibility. She then had made her life, and therefore then her
happiness, by putting away sentiment and using sense for spectacles.
She told herself she now was ruining her life, and certainly letting
go her happiness, by suffering herself to bear the sentimental
handicap.

The summer holidays came. It had been her obvious argument to
Harry that, now the elder children were at school, and Benji soon
to be the same, that reason for her constant presence in the home
no longer was advanceable. It had been Harry's argument to her
that there were the holidays to remember. The holidays came. Huggo
wrote that he wanted to go straight from school to a topping time
in Scotland to which he had been invited by a chum; when that was
over he had promised, and he was sure he would be allowed, to have
the last three weeks with another friend whose people had a ripping
place in Yorkshire. Doda came home and Doda's first excitement
was that nothing arranged might interfere with an invitation from
mid-August to a schoolfellow whose family were going to Brittany.
So much for her holiday necessity! Rosalie thought. So much for
Harry's idea of how the children would naturally long to spend
the vacation all together! Doda did not seem to have a thought for
Huggo, nor Huggo a thought for when he should see Doda. Neither of
them, she could not help noticing, had the faintest concern to be
with Benji. She and Harry with Benji went down to a furnished house
in Devonshire, and the other two, their plans in part curtailed,
were brought to join them. It was jolly enough. It would have
been more truly jolly, she used to think, if Doda had not largely
divided her time between writing to apparently innumerable school
friends and counting the days to when she might be released for the
Brittany expedition; and if Huggo had not for the first few days
openly sulked at the veto on the Yorkshire invitation. How independent
they were, how absorbed in their friends, how--different!

She hardened her heart.

The reopening of the schools drew on and return was made to London.
Huggo and Doda were made ready for school and returned to school.
The Law Courts reopened and Harry took up again his work. October!
You could not take up a paper without reading of the inauguration
of the new Sessions at all the universities and seats of education.
October! The newspapers that for months had been padding out vapid
nothings became intense with the activities of a nation back to
the collar. October! The first brisk breath of winter in the air!
She could not stand this! Could not, could not!

She said suddenly one evening: "Harry, I was down at Field's to-day.
They want me."

Ever since, by that simile of hers of the dog chained and kenneled,
she had put a bitter note into this matter between them, he had
by this means or by that contributed no share to it when she had
presented it. He once had referred to the dog incident. "I can't
talk to you when you talk like that, old girl," he had said. "That's
not us. We don't talk like that. You know how I feel about this
matter. Talking only vexes it."

"Harry, I was down at Field's to-day. They want me." It was now to
be faced.

He put down the paper he had been reading and began to fill his
pipe. "This wants a smoke," he said and smiled at her; and he then
told her that which the level quality of her voice, a note from
end to end of purpose, had informed him. "I think we're getting to
the end of this business," he said.

Her voice maintained its quality. "Yes, near the end, Harry."

"Field's want you. What are you going to do?"

"Going back."

"I want you."

"I'm not leaving you. I am with you, as I came to you!"

"The children want you."

"I am not leaving the children."

"It's a question of home, Rosalie. It's the home wants you."

She shook her head.

"What are you going to do?

"Going back."

"You've thought of everything?"

"Everything."

"The children?"

"Harry, the children don't want me in the way that children used
to want their mothers when I was a child. They don't display the
same affection, not in the same way, that we used to. I wish they
did. I came back for it. It wasn't there. They're darlings, but
they're self-reliant darlings, self-assured, self-interested."

"They've a right to a home, Rosalie." He paused. "And, Rosalie, I
have a right to a home."

She said, "Have I no rights?"

"There are certain things--" he slowly said and paused
again--"established."

She said quickly, "Yes, men think that. They always have. Well, I
believe that nothing is."

He looked steadily before him. "If it's not established that woman's
part is the home part; if that is going to change, I wonder what's
going to happen to the world?"

She said, "Men always do. They always have--wondered, and the
future always has changed right out of their wondering. I believe
that the future is with woman. I believe that as empires have passed,
Rome, Greece, Carthage, that seemed to their rulers the pillars of
the world, so will pass man's dominion. Woman's revolt--it's no
use talking of it as that, as a revolt. Women aren't and never will
be banded. They're like the Jews. They're everywhere but nowhere.
But the Jews have had their day; woman--not yet. They work,
not banded, but in single spies. In every generation more single
spies and more single spies. In time.... In every generation man's
dominion, by like degree, decreased, decreased. In time.... I'm
one of this day's single spies, Harry."

He said with a sudden animation, "Look here, let's take it on that
level, Rosalie. In your case what's the need? Call it dominion.
I've never exercised nor thought to exercise dominion over you."

"But you've not understood, Harry. I gave up what was my life
to me. To you I'd only--chucked it. Oh, but that hurt! That man's
supreme indifference, that is dominion."

He said, "I'll know it, dearest, for your sacrifice."

She put out a hand as if to hold that word away. "Oh, trust not
that. They talk of the ennoblement of sacrifice. Ah, do not believe
it. It can go too long, too far, and then like wine too long
matured... just acid, Harry. I never said a bitter thing to you
until--thus sacrificing. It is the kennel dog again. If I went on
I'd grow more bitter yet, more bitter and more bitter. It's why
women are so much more bitter than men. It's what they've sacrificed.
I'm going back, Harry. I've got to. You ask me if I've thought of
everything. I have; but even if I had not this outrides it all.
I have gone too far. She was right, that woman I told you of, who
said that for a woman, once she has given herself to a thing, there
is no comeback from it. I have tried. It is not to be done."

There was a very long silence. She said, "It's settled, Harry."

He said, "Nothing's been said, Rosalie, that gets over what I have
said. There's no home here while both of us are working. I have a
right to a home. The children have a right to a home. Nothing gets
over that."

She answered, "Then, Harry, give yourself a home. Give the children
a home."

He said, "I am a man."

She answered, "I am a woman."






CHAPTER III





The thing goes now at a most frightful pace for Rosalie. One hates
the slow, laborious written word that tries to show it. There
needs a pen with wings or that by leaping violence of script, by
characters blotched, huge and run together, would symbolise the
pace at which the thing now goes. There's no procession of the days.
Immersed in work or lost in pleasure, there never is procession of
the days, so hurtling fast goes life. They crowd. They're driven
past like snow across a window pane. The calendar astounds. It is
the first of the month, and lo, it is the tenth. It's the sixteenth--half
gone!--while yet it scarcely had begun; a day after the twentieth
is the date; it's next the twenty-fifth; it's next--the month has
gone.... The month! It is a season that has flown. Here's Summer where
only yesterday the buds of Spring; here's Winter, coming--gone!--while
yet the leaves seem falling.

It was like that the thing now went with Rosalie.

They call it a race. It isn't a race, living like that. It's a
pursuit. Engaged in it, you're not in rivalry, you are in flight.
You're fleeing all the time the reckoning; and he's a sulky savage,
forced to halt to gather up what you have shed, ordered to pause
to note the things that you have missed, and at each duty cutting
notches in a stick.

That is his tally which, come up, he will present to you.

Well, best perhaps to take that tally stick to try by it to show
the pace at which the thing now went. Rosalie, when all was done,
could run the tally over (you have to) in thought, that lightning
vehicle that makes to crawl the swiftest agency of man's invention:
runs through a lifetime while the electric telegraph is stammering
a line; reads memory in twenty volumes between the whiff and passing
of some remembered scent that's opened them; travels a life again,
cradle to grave, between the vision's lighting on and lifting from
some token of the past.

All's done; some years rush on; she sits in retrospection, that
tally stick in hand; and thought, first hovering, would always start
for her from when, returned to her career, the thing at frightful
pace began to go; and then, from there, away! from scene to scene
(the notches cut by reckoning in his stick) rending the womb of
memory in dread delivery, as it were flash on flash of lightning
bursting the vault of night from east to west across the world.

Her thoughts first hovering: There's Huggo and there's Doda and
there's Benji! Her children! Her darling ones! Her lovely ones!
Love's crown; and, what was more, worn in the persons of those
darling joys of hers in signal, almost arrogant in her disdain of
precedent to the contrary, that woman might be mother and yet live
freely and unfettered by her home, precisely as man is father but
follows a career. Ah....

Away! The womb of memory is rent, and rent, delivers.

Look, there they are! She's down with one or other at some gala at
their schools. It's Founders' Day at Tidborough, or it's at Doda's
school on Prize Day. Aren't they just proud to be with her and
show her off, their lovely, brilliant mother so different from the
other rather fussy mothers that come crowding down! All the masters
and all the mistresses know the uncommon woman that she is. The
children, growing older, know it. "You must be very proud of your
mother." It has been said (the self-same words) to each of them
by their respective principals. Nice! Nice to have your children
proud of you!

Look, there's Huggo telling her how the headmaster had said the
thing to him (she's just walking with her Huggo across the cricket
ground on Founders' Day). "And a sloppy young ass that heard him,"
says Huggo, "oh, an awful ass, asked me why the Head had said
I must be proud of you, and I told him, and I said, 'I bet you're
not proud of your mother.' And he said, 'Of my father, I am. He
got the V. C. in South Africa.' So I said, 'Yes, but proud of your
mother?' So this frightful ass said--what do you think he said?
'No, I'm not proud of my mother. I don't think I'd want to be. I
only love her.'"

Huggo mimicked the voice in which the frightful ass had said this;
and Rosalie, at the words and at his tone, had across her body
a sudden chill, as it were physical. She wanted to say something.
But it was the kind of thing you couldn't, somehow, say to Huggo,
at fifteen. But she said it. "Huggo, you do love me, don't you?"

He turned to her a face curiously thin-lipped. "Oh, I say, mother,
do look out, some one might hear you!"

Her Huggo! (She wants to stop the passing scenes and to stretch out
to him across the years her arms.) Her Huggo! The one that first
along her arm had laid; the scrap that first within her eyes
adoring tears had brimmed; her baby boy, her tiny manling, her tiny
hugging one, her first born! It is in retrospection that she sits
and there's expelled for ever from her face that aspect mutinous,
intolerant, defiant, that used to visit there. That, when she
housed it, was the aspect of the young man Ishmael whose hand was
against every man. She is like Hagar now to be imagined, sitting
over against these things a good way off, as it were a bowshot.

Strike on!

Her Huggo! Look, that's the day they got that bad report of him
from school. She had questioned Harry about a letter in his post
and, naming the headmaster of Tidborough, "Yes, it's from Hammond,"
he had answered her.

"About Huggo?"

"Yes, it's about Huggo."

Nothing more. They were beginning to have exchanges terse as that.

She said presently, "I suppose it would interest me, wouldn't it?"

His face was very hard. "Do you want to know the answer I feel like
giving to that?"

"I've asked for it, haven't I, Harry?"

"You shall have it. The answer is that I think what the letter says
implicates you."

She preserved her composure. She by now had had practice in preserving
her composure. "What's the matter, Harry?"

"Hammond says--as good as says--that Huggo will have to be withdrawn
from Tidborough."

She knew perfectly well that this was only leading up to something.
"May I hear?"

"You may." He took up the letter and read from it. "'Apart from
that, and it would of course be the reason given--the other, I am
confident, is susceptible of change--apart from that, the boy has
now twice failed to keep his place in the school. If he does not
get his remove in the coming term I shall be compelled to ask you
to remove him.'" He put down the letter and looked at her. "That'll
be nice, won't it?"

She made an appeal. "Harry, don't. I mean, don't talk like that.
It won't happen."

He softened in no degree. He said sternly: "It will happen."

She persevered. "I'm quite sure it won't. You've only got to talk
seriously to Huggo. This coming holidays you can get him some
coaching. He's got brains."

There was a steely note in Harry's voice: "Oh, he's got brains. He
can have coaching. It's what he hasn't got and what he can't get
that's going to get Huggo withdrawn."

"What is it you mean?"

"A home."

She slightly raised the fingers of her hands and dropped them. This
subject!

Harry said: "Hammond says more than I've told you."

"I supposed he did. 'Apart from that.' Apart from what?"

"It's Huggo's character he's writing to me about. This is what he
says. 'The boy, though young, has not a good influence in his house.
If I may suggest it, he does not, during the holidays, see enough
of his home.'"

He folded the letter and returned it to its envelope. "Does it
strike you that is going to be easy for me to answer?"

"It might be easier, Harry, if your tone made it possible for us
to discuss it."

He gave a sound that was glint, as it were, of the blade in his
voice: "Our discussions! I am a little tired of that blind alley,
Rosalie."

She said sombrely, "And I."

"Will you suggest how the letter is to be answered?"

She said: "It's plain. If you agree with Mr. Hammond, it's plain.
You can say you will stop Huggo's invitations. Harry, we're not
by any means the only family that doesn't spend the whole of its
holidays together. It's rather the practice nowadays, young people
visiting their friends. If you think Huggo shouldn't--you can say
so."

"Yes, I can say that. Tell me this. Is it going to give him a home?"

Her voice sprung from a sudden higher note. "Oh, you insist, you
insist!" she cried. "You speak of blind alleys, but you insist."

He touched the letter. "This gives me ground for my insistence.
This is an outsider, a stranger, appreciating how we live. This is
my son, at my old school, condemned by how we live."

She interjected, "A schoolmaster's primeval animosity--blame the
parent."

"Rosalie, a parent's primeval duty. We are responsible for the
children. We have a duty towards them."

She softly struck her hands together. "Ah, how often, how often, and
always worse! You said just now that I am implicated. It's always
I. You say we have a responsibility towards the children. But
you don't mean us, you mean me. Why I more than you? Why am I the
accused?"

He began, "Because you--"

"Ah, don't, don't!"

But he concluded. "Because you are a woman."

Her voice that had gone high went numb. She made a gesture, as
to the same reason and with the same words she'd made before, of
weariness with this thing, "Ah, my God, that reason!"

Strike on!

Look, there's Huggo, failing again to get his remove, superannuated,
withdrawn. There's Harry having a scene with the boy. There ought
to be tears. There are tears. But they're in Harry's voice and
twice he wipes his eyes. They're not in Huggo's.

Harry says to Huggo: "I say, I'm not going to be harsh; but, I say,
can't you understand the disgrace; can't you understand the shame,
old man? You've been at the finest school in England and you've
had to leave. You're sixteen. Old man, when I was sixteen I got my
footer colours. I was the youngest chap in the team. You're sixteen
and you've never even got a house cap and you've had to leave.
Huggo, I've never missed going down to a Founders' Day since I went
to Oxford. It's always been the day of the year for me. I don't
say I've ever done much in life, but every time I've been down to
Founders' Day I've thought over, in the train, any little thing I
may have pulled out in the year and I've felt, I've felt awfully
proud to be taking it down to the old school, so to speak. Old
chap, the proudest, far the proudest of all, was the year I went
down when first you were there. I was proud. I'd given a son to
the place. I'd got a boy there. Another Occleve was going to write
the name up on the shields and rolls and things. It was the year
Garnett first came down as a Cabinet Minister. Huggo, I looked old
Garnett in the face with a grin. Whatever he'd done I'd got this
much up on him--he hadn't given a son to the place. He hadn't got
a boy there. That's how I always felt. Well, old man, it's all over.
I can't go down to Founders' Day ever again. I've never missed.
Now--I've had to withdraw my boy. I can't go again. I couldn't face
it."

He wiped his eyes. No tears in Huggo's eyes. On Huggo's face only
a look sullen and aggrieved; and sullen and aggrieved his mutter,
"Well, perhaps it was different for you. I couldn't stick the
place."

She gasped out, "Huggo!" but Harry had heard, and Harry, perhaps
in offset to the emotion he had displayed, smashed his hand down
on the table before him and cried out, "Well, keep your mouth shut
about it then! Couldn't stick it! What can you be? What can be the
matter with you? Couldn't stick it! Tidborough! The finest school
in the world! Couldn't stick it!"

She interposed, "Harry, dear! Huggo; Huggo, tell your father you
didn't mean that."

Huggo's mumble: "I'm sorry, father."

Harry's deep, kind voice: "I'm sorry too, old man. It rather
jarred. Look here, this is all over. It's just been a side-slip.
I've forgotten it. So has your mother. You just think over sometimes
what I've said, my boy. We're fixing up this tutor's for you. You
start in fresh and go like steam. Finest thing in the world a fresh
start. Makes a side-slip worth while. I'm going to be--I am--prouder
of you than anything on earth. My eldest boy! Like steam from now,
old chap, eh?"

Strike on!

After that interview and when the boy had left the room--shambled
out of the room in that sullen, aggrieved air he would always
assume under correction--after that she and Harry had talked, most
fondly. It was all, the talk, that poignantly affecting "fresh
start" business that he'd begun with Huggo. Poignantly affecting
because Harry, piling upon his love for Huggo and his pride in
Huggo, which she shared, his love for his old school and his pride
in it, which she could understand but could not share, had been
so bravely, cheerfully earnest and assured about the future. "One
who never turned his back but marched breast forward." The boy would
be all right. Mice and Mumps, old lady, he'd be all right! It was
just a mistake, just a side-slip. He'd got the right stuff in him,
Huggo had, eh, old lady? They must just pull together to help the
boy, eh?

He paused the tiniest space at that and pressed her hand and looked
at her. She knew his meaning. If only....

He went on: This was a good place, this tutor's down in Norfolk
they were sending him to, Harry was sure it was. It was a pity, of
course, he couldn't go to another public school; but of course he
couldn't; they wouldn't take him; no use worrying about that. This
tutor, this man they were sending him to, was a first-class chap.
Only took six pupils. Was a clergyman. Understood boys and youths
who hadn't quite held their own and wanted special coaching and
attention. Huggo was keen on the idea. After all, why shouldn't
he have disliked Tidborough? There were such boys who didn't like
public-school life. There, there! Perhaps it was the best thing that
could have happened. Bet your life this was going to be the making
of old Huggo, this change. This tutor and the quiet, self-reliant
life there, each chap with his own jolly little bed-sitting room,
would prop him up and get him into Oxford when the time came and
make him no end happy and splendid.

"There, there, old lady," said Harry, and patted her and kissed
her (she'd been affected). "There, there, it's going to be fine.
The rest is just up to us, eh? We know the boy's weaknesses. We
know what Hammond's told us about him--home life and home influences
and all that stuff, and that's easy; we'll see the boy gets that,
won't we?"

She used to wring her hands at that, and crying "If only!" cry
again in desperation of excuse: "If only the war hadn't come! If
only the war hadn't come!"

The war was on then. It was 1915. "You see," she used to appeal
to the arbitrament before which, watching these pictures, she
found herself, "you see, the war made everything so difficult, so
impossible, so frightful, so confused, so blinding. Sturgiss had
left the Bank to do war service in the Treasury. More than half the
clerks had gone. We were understaffed and badly staffed at every
turn. How could I give it up then? I don't say I would have. I'm
on my knees. I've thrown in my hand. I'm not pretending anything
or anyway trying to delude myself. I don't say I would have given
it up and come home to make home life for the boy and for them
all. I don't say I would. I'm only saying how infinitely harder,
how impossibly harder, the war conditions made it. There was the
understaffing--that alone. There was the cry about releasing a man
for the front--that alone. I was releasing half a dozen men. Field
said I was. I knew I was. How could I go back and be one of the
women sitting at home? That alone! How could I? And there was more
than that. It wasn't only the understaffing. It was Sturgiss going.
I'd been absorbing the banking business for years. It was meat and
drink to me. I'd had a bent for it ever since the Bagehot 'Lombard
Street' days. I'd nourished my bent. I'd been encouraged to nourish
my bent. The work was just a passion with me. Sturgiss went. I went
practically into his place. I'd a position in banking that no woman
had ever held, nor no banker ever imagined a woman ever holding,
before. It was Sturgiss, a partner, I'd released for war service.
It was Sturgiss's, a partner's, place I'd got. How could I give
that up? How could I? How could I? If only the war hadn't come. If
only...." Strike on!

It isn't all going as it should with the boy at the tutor's. But
wasn't it impossible to observe, at the time, that it wasn't all
going as it should? Of course (her thoughts would go) it was her
fault; but was not the world, spiritual and material, in conspiracy
against her, and against Huggo, and against her other darlings,
to make easy her fault? Ah, that war, that war! Didn't it unsettle
everybody and everything? Naturally it unsettled the boy down at
the tutor's. Naturally one did not notice or foresee the trend of
his unsettlement. Naturally it made plausible the excuses that he
made.

There he is, down there at the tutor's. He wanted to do war work,
not sitting there grinding lessons. All the tutor's pupils did.
Naturally they did. The boy couldn't go in the army. He was too
young. He was in a rural district. He got doing land-work. They
all did. It was supposed to be done in leisure hours. Naturally it
encroached on, and unfitted for, work hours. "After all," as the
tutor wrote, "how can you blame the boys? After all, it's very hard
to seem to try to check this patriotic spirit." After all! Oh, why
do people say "after all" when they mean quite the contrary? This
was before all, this seductive escape from uncongenial duties,
precedent of all, influencing to all that happened--after all.
Naturally it interfered with scholastic work. That was condoned.
As naturally it interfered with discipline. That was not mentioned
by the tutor. If he was cognisant of it was not domestic discipline
everywhere relaxed "on account of the war"?

There Huggo is. These are his holidays. After the setback at
Tidborough he was to have spent all his holidays at home. He was
not, for the future, to go away on invitations. That war! He never
spent any of his holidays at home. How could the boy be tied down
in London with this war on? He made his land-work his excuse, most
plausible. He spent all his holidays with friends whose homes were
in rural districts.

Then it turned out that he had not, as he had given out, been always
at the house of friends. He was found in cottage lodgings living
with a friend, a fellow-pupil at the tutor's; on land-work truly,
but in gross deception, and in worse.

It came out quite by chance and in a way very horrible. Harry
discovered it. Harry, early in 1915, had been absorbed into the
Home Office. His work was very largely in connection with a special
secret service body dealing with spies. He examined in private
arrested suspects. He advised and he directed on criminal matters
therewith connected. He was working, under immense pressure,
terrible hours. He was hardly ever in to dinner. He often was away
all night. He frequently was away travelling for days together.
When he was seen he showed signs of strain to Rosalie.

He came in one evening about nine o'clock. It was early in 1916.
Huggo was then seventeen. Rosalie heard him in the hall and heard
that some one was with him. She heard him, by the dining-room door,
say, "You'd better go in there and get something to eat. I'll attend
to you presently."

His voice was iron hard. Who was with him? What was the matter?

He came in to her. His face was iron hard. He shut the door. "Do
you know who I've got here with me? Do you know where I've been?
Do you know what's happened?"

His manner was extraordinary. His voice was like heavy axes, thudding.
His face was dark and passionate, menacing. Happened? Things were
always happening in these appalling days. She said, "Oh, what is
it, Harry?"

"It's Huggo."

"Huggo?"

"Huggo!"

Like axes! It seemed that, of his passion (and she never before
had seen passion in his face), he scarcely could speak. He fought
for words. When they came out they thudded out.

"Do you know where Huggo's been this past month?"

"With the Thorntons, his friends."

"He's not. He's lied. He's been living with some blackguard friend
in rooms in Turnhampton, in Buckinghamshire."

"Harry! Doing what? Land-work?"

"Land-work! Loafing! Drinking!"

"Drinking? Huggo?"

"Listen to me. This is what I've come to. This is what that boy's
come to. I had to go down to this place Turnhampton about a spy
they'd arrested. He was to come up in the police court there this
morning. They took the other cases first. Court going to be cleared
for my man. I sat there, waiting. The second case--this is what
I've come to--was my son, my boy, Huggo, brought up from the cells
where he'd spent the night. My son! Drunk and disorderly. He didn't
see me. The police gave him a character. I sat there and listened
to it. My son! A visitor, the police described him. Supposed to
be working on some farm. Not a desirable character in the village.
My son! Always loafing about. Always in the inn. Last night drunk.
Assaulted the landlady. My son! Arrested. My son!"

He turned away.

She cried, "Harry! What happened?"

He turned on her in a violence renewed. "I declare to you that if
he had gone to prison I would not have raised a hand to stop him.
He'd had the grace--or he'd all the time had the guile--to give an
assumed name. Would I have confessed, to save him, that he was my
son? I believe I couldn't. He got off with a fine. I got hold of
him. I've brought him back. He's here."

She went to the bell. "I must get you some food."

He stayed her. "Food! I'll tell you what to get me. I'll tell you
what to get that boy. Get me a home. Get him a home. That's what's
caused this. Do you know what he said to me coming up in the
train? I said to him, 'Why are you always away like this? Why, in
the holidays, are you never at home?' He said, 'What home is there
for me to come to? Who's ever there?' He's right. Who is? Are you?"

She said quietly, "Harry, not now. Dear, you are not yourself."

He was not and continued not to be. "Well, answer my question. Are
you ever in the home?"

She implored, "Oh, my dear!"

He was not to be placated. "Where is the home?"

"Harry!"

"Where's Doda?"

She began in her spirit to move. "Staying with friends."

"Where's Benji?"

"You perfectly well know. Staying with friends."

"Where are you?"

She put her hand to her bosom. "Oh, beware me, Harry. Here."

"For the night. Are you ever in the children's home?"

"Are you?"

"That sophistry! I have my work!"

"I've mine."

He smote his hand upon the mantelshelf by which he stood and turned
and left the room.

Strike on!

Of course it healed and was obliterated and all passed over. Of
course Harry forgave the boy. Of course he was handsome to the boy's
excuses. Drunk! Of course it was just a slightly tipsy ebullition.
Had been in the hot sun in the fields all day and was affected by
a too long slake of beer. Assaulted the landlady! She'd been rough
mannered and objected to his noise and got in the way and he had
pushed her. "The boy's all right," Harry said to Rosalie after,
the boy forgiven, he sat and talked with her. "He's got no vice.
How could he have? It was wrong, it was deceitful, going off like
that to that place without telling us. But he meant no harm. He's
explained. He's genuinely sorry. He's just got out of hand a bit.
They all have, the young people, in this war time. The boy's all
right. He's eighteen in a few months. I'll see if I can speed it
up a bit getting him into the army. He's magnificently keen. He'll
do fine, God bless him. Think no more about it, old lady. In the
whole business I'm only sick with myself that I lost my temper with
him as I did--and with you, my dear, and with you." And he put out
his hand to her.

"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward."

"And with you." Of course he was distressed he had been violent
with her. Of course that painful outbreak was healed, obliterated,
put away. He had expressed his utter regret. He'd been badly
rattled with this infernal war all that week; this business on the
top of it had been a most frightful shock to him. What had he said?
Forgive, Rosalie, forgive! Of course she had nothing to forgive.
Forgiveness also was for her to ask. As to the point thus violently
raised, he saw, didn't he, the clear impossibility of her giving up
her work, war work as much as his own, at such a time? Not to say
the unnecessity of it--the children were growing up... it clearly
could be done now. The position she held...

He said, "I know, old lady." He said, "I know, I know," and sighed.

Ah, from that vision of him saying, "I know," and sighing, and from
the mute appeal that then was in his eyes, from that--strike on!

Most retentive to her, as it had passed, of Huggo's share in all
that episode had been that she from her expostulation with Huggo
had not come away with the same satisfaction as seemingly had Harry.
She put before the boy how terribly his father had felt the shame
of it, how almost broken-hearted he had been. "He idolises you,
Huggo. You're always his eldest son. He thinks the world of you."

Huggo took it all with that familiar air of his of being the
party that was aggrieved. He listened with impatience that was not
concealed and he had no contrition to display. "Well, mother, it's
all over. What is the good of going on and on about it? I've had
it by the hour from father. He's understood. What is the good?"

She very lovingly talked to him. He all the time had an argument.
He kept up his own case. He presently said, "And I do wish, mother,
especially now I'm going into the army soon, I do wish you'd drop
that 'Huggo.' You can't tell how I hate it. You might just as well
call me Baby. It's a baby's name."

"Oh, Huggo, it was the name we loved you by."

"Well, I can't stick it. My name's Hugh."

Strike on!

There he is. He's in the army. He's utterly splendid in his uniform.
How proud of him she is! They no longer gave commissions direct
from civil life; but he'd been in the cadet corps at Tidborough and
Harry was able to get him direct into an officer cadet battalion.
He's off to France in what seems next to no time. He's home on leave
and there's nothing that's too good for him and her purse at his
disposal when he's run through Harry's generous allowance. He seems
to get through an immense amount of money on leave. He's never at
home. He's often out all night. Well, he's on leave. He's fighting
for his country. You can't be anything but utterly lenient with
a boy that's fighting for his country. He went back. Three days
after he was supposed to have gone back Rosalie came face to face
with him in Piccadilly. He was with some flapper type of girl, in
the detestable phrase (as she thought it) by which the detestable
products of the war (as she thought them) were called. He was just
getting into a cab. She called out to him, astounded. She heard him
swear and he jumped into the cab and was driven away. She didn't
tell Harry. Harry found out. It came out that the boy for overstaying
his leave was to be court-martialled. She did not know what Harry
did. She noticed in those days what a beaten look Harry's face was
getting. It was, of course, the war strain; but it only was first
evident to her in that time of the court-martial. He scarcely spoke
to her. She did not know what he did, but she knew he had much
influence and exerted it at no sparing of himself. The boy got off
with a severe reprimand and was returned to France. And to be in
France, out there, in that ever-present shadow of death, was to be
excused everything and to be forgiven everything.

Miraculously the war ended. The boy had had rather more than
two years of it. He applied for immediate demobilisation as being
a student, and he was one of the batch that got away immediately
on that ground. He was nearly twenty then. Now what was he going
to do? Oxford, of course, Harry said, and then the Bar, as always
intended. Huggo, larking about in uniform long after he ought to
have been out of it, was in immense feather with himself. He didn't
say No and he didn't say Yes to the Oxford idea. All he said was
that he voted all that wasn't discussed the very day he got back
(it was more than six weeks since he had got back). He surely, he
said, was entitled to a bit of a holiday first, after all he had
been through. London seemed to be swarming with thousands of young
men who claimed they were entitled to a bit of a holiday first
after all they had been through. Huggo was never in the house. He
had picked up with a man, Telfer, whom he had met in France, a big
business man, Huggo described him as, and he seemed to spend all
his time with this man. Telfer was a much older man than Huggo.
Huggo brought him to dinner one night. It was rather a shock to
Rosalie, meeting the man of whom she had heard so much. Huggo had
never said anything about his age. He must have been quite forty.
He had dull, cloudy eyes and a bad mouth. He called Huggo "Kid,"
using the word in every sentence, and it was easy to see from
Harry's manner that Telfer was repellent to him. Easy, also, and
not nice, to see Telfer's dominion over Huggo. Not nice to hear
Huggo's loud, delighted laughter at everything addressed to him
by Telfer. Harry spoke less and less as the meal advanced. The two
left early; they were going to a music hall. When they had gone
Rosalie and Harry looked at one another across the table and by
their look exchanged a great deal.

"That's a detestable companion for Huggo," Harry said. "Rosalie,
there's been enough of this. The boy must get to work."

It appeared, in interviews following that evening, that Huggo was
not a bit keen on the Oxford idea. He wanted to go into business.
He was not clear as to precisely what kind of business, but he
wanted the freedom and the excitement of earning his own living,
not to be cooped up at the "Varsity" like back at school again.
Harry took a firm line. The boy resented the firm line. Well, anyway,
he argued, he couldn't go till October, it was only June now; all
right, he'd go in October--if he had to. Harry made arrangements
for some reading through the summer preparatory to Oxford. It upset
plans made by Huggo. He thought it "uncommonly hard" that he should
have to spend the whole summer "swotting." Oh, well, if he had to,
he had to. He had an invitation for a month for that immediate time
to Scotland. The reading was arranged to start a month ahead. He
didn't in the least want to be out of London just when there was so
much going on and all his pals here; but anything was better than
sticking this kind of life at home, father always at him; so he'd
go to Scotland; he supposed he was entitled to a bit of country
holiday before they cooped him up? He went to Scotland.

Twice during that month Rosalie thought she saw Huggo in the West
End. But London was full of young men of the Huggo type. It wasn't
likely.

It turned out to have been very likely. It turned out that Huggo
had never been in Scotland at all but in London all the time. And
much worse than that. One evening, towards the end of the so-called
Scotland month, Huggo unexpectedly walked into the house. Rosalie
was sitting with Harry in the dining-room over the end of dinner.
Doda was upstairs putting last touches to herself before going out
to a dance. Doda was eighteen then (it was 1919), had left school,
and, with a large circle of friends, was going out a great deal.
Benji was still at school, at Milchester. Harry had never resumed
relations with beloved Tidborough.

The door opened and Huggo walked in. His face was very flushed and
his articulation a little odd. When, after greetings, he sat down,
he sat down with a curiously unsteady thud and gave a little laugh
and said, "Whoa, mare, steady!"

It appeared, after explanations, that he had come to talk about
"this Oxford business." "I really can't very well go to Oxford now,
father. I really ought to start in some money-making business now,
and I've got a jolly good opening promised me. I really ought to
take it."

The decanters were on the table. He had already taken a glass of
port. He filled another and drank it.

"The fact is, I'm--married."

There were some hard and bitter things said between his father and
the boy. The boy fumbled--he obviously had been drinking--between
would not or could not say very much as to who it was that he had
married.

Harry said, "Who are her people? That's a plain question, isn't
it?"

Huggo, very red, increasingly difficult to understand, said, "It's
a plain enough question. It's a plain enough question. I've come
here to be perfectly frank and plain and plain enough question.
The fact is I don't know very much about her plain enough people."

Rosalie broke out of the frozen stupefaction that had numbed her.
"Huggo, you must know. You must know who her people are."

Huggo turned a very slow gaze around from his father to his mother.
He looked at her. He said with astonishing violence, "Well, I
tell you I don't. People! What have her people got to do with it?
I haven't married her people. She's my little girl and I've married
her, not her people. Isn't that enough for you?"

Harry got up and went over to him. "Look here, you'd better run
along. You're not in a fit state to talk to your mother. I'm not
sure you're in a fit state to talk to any-body or to know what
you're saying. You'd better go, my boy. We'll go into this in the
morning. Come round early in the morning. We'll settle it then."

He was passing with Huggo through the door when Doda, equipped
for her dance, came running down the stairs. "Hull-o, Huggo! Why,
I haven't seen you for weeks. Where have you been?"

Huggo, standing unsteadily, unsteadily regarded her. "Point is,
where are you going? All dressed up and somewhere to go! I'll bet
you have! I've seen you jazzing about the place when you haven't
seen me, Dods. And heard about you! There was a chap with me watching
you at the Riddle Club the other night told me some pretty fierce--"

"Oh, dash, I've left my fan," cried Doda, and turned and ran back
up the stairs.

Huggo called, "I say, Dods. I'm in a row. So'll you be one day, if
you don't look out for yourself."

Doda's voice: "Oh, dry up--you fool!"

Strike on!






CHAPTER IV.





Her Doda! The one that was her baby girl, that was her tiny daughter!
The one that was to be her woman treasury in which she'd pour her
woman love; that was to be her self's own self, her heart's own
heart, her tiny woman-bud to be a woman with her in the house of
Harry and of Huggo! Her Doda!

Look, there she is! There's lovely Doda! She's fourteen. It's early
in 1915, in the first twelve months of the war. (That war!) She's
at that splendid school. She's been there nearly three years. She
loves it. She's never so happy as when she's there, except, judging
by her chatter, when she's away in the holidays at the house of
one of her friends. It's at home--when she is at home--that she's
never really happy. She's so dull, she always says, at home. She
always wants to be doing something, to be seeing something, to be
playing with somebody. She can't bear being in the house. She can't
bear being, of an evening, just alone with Rosalie. "Oh, dear!"
she's always saying. "Oh, dear, I do wish it would hurry up and be
term time again."

"Darling, you are a restless person," Rosalie says.

"Well, mother, it is dull just sticking here."

"You know how Benji loves to have you home, Doda. Benji simply
lives for you. I've never known a brother so devoted. You ought to
think of Benji sometimes, Doda."

"Well, I can't be always thinking of Benji. I'm surely entitled to
be with my own friends sometimes. I don't ask Benji to be devoted
to me."

She's strangely given to expressions like that: "I didn't ask
for"--whatever circumstance or obligation it might be that was
irksome to her. "Not traditions--precedents!" The watchword of the
school was strangely to be traced in her attitude, still in her
childish years, towards a hundred commonplaces of the daily life.
She was always curiously older than her years. She seemed to have
a natural bent away from traditionally childish things and towards
attractions not associated with childhood. She did excellently
well at the school. She was, her reports said, uncommonly quick
and vivid at her lessons. She was always in a form above her years.
Her friends, while she was smallish, were always the elder girls,
and the elder girls gave her welcome place among them. "Perhaps a
shade precocious," wrote the lady principal in one of the laconic,
penetrating sentences with which, above her signature, each girl's
report was terminated: and, in a later term, "Has 'Forward!' for
her banner, but should remember 'not too fast'."

"Gripes! I know what she's referring to," said Doda, seeing it,
and laughed, obviously flattered.

"Your expressions, Doda!"

"Huggo uses it."

"They're wretched even in Huggo. But Huggo's a boy. You're a girl."

"Well, mother, I didn't ask to be a girl."

"Doda, that's merely silly."

"A lot of us say it, that's all I know."

"Then, darling, a lot of you are silly."

"Oh, I shall be glad when next week I go to the Fergussons. It is
dull."

Look, there she is. She's sixteen. She's beautiful. She's pretty
as a picture, and she knows she is. She's grown out of the rather
early fullness of figure that had been hers. She's slim and tall
and straight and supple and slender as a willow wand. If she had her
hair up and her skirts lengthened (skirts then were only starting
on their diminution to the knees), she'd pass for twenty anywhere,
and a twenty singularly attractive, curiously self-possessed,
strikingly suggestive in her pale and beautiful countenance, and
in an alternating sleepiness and glinting in her eyes; strikingly
suggestive of, well, strikingly suggestive according to the
predilictions and the principles of the beholder.

This was in 1917. She was beginning rather to hate school now. She
wanted to be out and doing some war work of some kind. Oh, those
sickening scarves and things they were eternally knitting, that
wasn't war work. It was fun at first. They were fed to death with
doing them now. She didn't much want to go into a hospital or into
any of these women's corps. They were a jolly sight too cooped up
in those things from what she'd heard. She wanted to go into one of
the Government offices and do clerical work. Several of the school
Old Girls who had been there with her were doing that and it was
the most ripping rag. Of course you had to work, and of course it
was jolly good patriotic work, but you had a topping time in many
ways. That was what she wanted to do. Oh, mother, do let her chuck
school now and get to it! Not till she was seventeen? Well, it was
sickening. Well, it was only another term, thank goodness.

It was in the holidays--in her brief days at home of the holidays--in
which these wishes were expressed, that Rosalie found Doda was
corresponding with officers at the front.

Doda was appallingly untidy in her habits. She was out one evening
to a party--she managed to get a considerable number of parties
into her dull days at home. Rosalie, come in from Field's, peeped
into her bedroom to find her. She had not known that Doda was going
out. The bedroom cried aloud that Doda had gone out. Drawers were
open and articles of dress hanging out of them. One drawer, no
doubt stubborn in its yieldings, was bodily out in the middle of the
room. Clothes were on the floor. Clothes strewed the bed. Powder
was all over the mirror. It was as if a whirlwind had passed through
the room.

"Powder!" murmured Rosalie.

The state of the room dismayed her. The intense orderliness of
her own character forbade her ringing for a maid. She simply could
not look at untidiness like that without tidying it. She started
to tidy. Doda's box was open. Its contents looked as if a dog had
burrowed in it, throwing up the things as he worked down. If anything
was to go in, everything must first come out. Rosalie lifted out
an initial clearance.

There lay scattered beneath it quite half a dozen photographs of
officers in khaki.

There were all inscribed. "To the school kid." "Wishing you were
here." "With kisses." "Till we meet." And with slangy nicknames of
the writers. There lay with them a number of letters, all in their
envelopes. There lay also a sheet of paper covered in Doda's bold
handwriting. It began "Wonderful Old Thing."

Rosalie had not touched these evidences of an unknown interest in
Doda's life. She stooped, staring upon them, the lifted bundle of
clothes in her hand. The stare that took in "Wonderful Old Thing"
took in also the first few lines. They were not nice. But she
oughtn't to read it. One didn't do that kind of thing. She replaced
the bundle and closed the box. Then she tidied the room and wiped
the mirror.

Early next morning, immediately on coming out of her bath, she went
in to Doda. She opened the door softly and she distinctly saw the
lids of Doda's eyes flash up and close again.

"Doda!"

Doda pretended to be asleep. Rosalie had sat up for Doda the
previous night but had said nothing to her either of her discovery
or of going to an invitation without having told her. Doda wasn't
pretending to be asleep because she feared trouble. She was
pretending to be asleep just because she had no wish for an early
talk with her mother.

There was a little pang at the heart of Rosalie.

But it was just that the child wasn't demonstrative of her affections.
None of them were. Even Benji not really what you would call
demonstrative. How beautiful the child was! Her Doda! How little
she ever saw of her!

She called her again.

Doda opened her eyes. "Hullo, mother."

Just that. No more. They were different, the children.

She sat down on Doda's bed and began to talk to her. Tidiness!
"Doda, your room as you left it last night when you went out was
simply terrible. How can you?"

"Oh, I can't be tidy," said Doda. "I simply can't. It's no good
trying."

"Darling, you ought to try. It's so odd. I'm so fearfully tidy.
It's almost a vice with me. One would have thought you'd have had
it too."

Doda said indifferently, "I don't see why." She said, "Oh, I am
sleepy. It's a matter of teaching when you're a kid, that sort of
thing. You're tidy, but you never taught me to be tidy."

Rosalie said some more of encouragement to tidiness. She then said,
"And there's another thing, Doda. I think you ought not to have
rushed off like that to the Trevors last night without telling me."

"Mother, you knew where I was. I told the maids."

"You should have consulted me, Doda."

The child assumed the Huggo look. "Mother, how could I? They only
asked me on the telephone at tea-time. How could I have consulted
you?"

"In the same way as you were invited. On the telephone."

"Well, I never thought about it. Why should I if I had? I knew
you'd have agreed. You wouldn't have stopped me, would you? It's
dull enough, goodness knows."

"Doda, what I've come in to talk about is this. When I was tidying
your room last night--"

Doda sat up. "Did you tidy my room?"

"I couldn't possibly leave a room like that. Well, I went to tidy
your box--"

"I'll get up," said Doda. She jumped very quickly out of bed and
put on a wrapper and her slippers. "Yes, well?"

"Are you writing to men at the front, Doda?"

"Every girl is. It's a thing to do. It helps them."

"Are they friends of yours, dear? Personal friends."

"They're brothers of girls I've stayed with."

"All?"

"Practically all. There're not more than two or three. Lonely
soldiers, they're called. They used to advertise. It helps them.
There's no harm in it, is there?"

"I haven't suggested there is, Doda."

"I can see you're going to, though. If you ask me--" She stopped.

"I don't think I like the idea, quite. I never did when I heard of
it being done. Why should they send you their photographs?"

"But what's the harm? Why shouldn't they?"

"Darling, it's I am asking you. I'm your mother."

"Well, if you ask me--" Doda walked over to the window. She stood
there a moment looking out. She suddenly turned. "If you ask me, I
don't think it's right to--Of course if you think it right to--if
you've been reading my letters--"

"Doda, I haven't. I just saw them there. But I'd like to read them,
Doda. May I?"

"They're private letters. I don't see how you can expect me to show
you private letters."

Rosalie went over to Doda and stood by her and stroked her hair.
"Doda, I think we'll look at it like this. Let me read the letters
and we'll talk about them and see if it's nice to go on writing
to the men, in each individual case. That certainly you shall do,
continue writing, if it all seems nice to us, together, Doda. If
you won't show them to me--well, let us say if you'd rather not show
them to me--then I'll ask you just to burn them and we'll forget
it."

Doda stepped violently away from the hand that stroked her hair.
"No. I won't show them."

"Then it's to burn them, Doda."

Doda looked slowly around the room. Her face was not nice. She said
sullenly, "There's no fire here."

"Bring them down with you to the breakfast-room. Your father will
have gone. We'll see Benji's not there."

She went to Doda and kissed her on the forehead. Doda shut her
eyes. Her hand on Doda's shoulder could feel Doda quivering. She
went to the door and at the door said, "And the photographs, dear.
I should bring them too."

She had long finished breakfast when at last Doda came down. The
tall, slim, beautiful and pale creature appeared in the doorway.
She walked towards the fire, her head held high, her brown hair in
a thick tail to her waist. She had a packet in her hands. As she
began to stoop over the fire she suddenly uprighted herself and
turned upon her mother. She said violently, "Perhaps you'd like to
count them?"

Rosalie said very softly, "Doda!"

Doda bent to the flames and pressed the packet down upon them. She
stood watching them mount about it. A half-burnt photograph slid
onto the hearth. She gave a sound that was a catching at her breath
and swiftly stooped and snatched the burning fragment up and cast it
on its fellows. The leaping flames died down. She turned violently
towards Rosalie, seated at the table watching her, her heart
sick. That tall, slim, beautiful creature whose face had been pale
and was habitually pale was in her face crimson, her slight young
bosom heaving, her eyes, so often sleepy, flashing, her young hands
clenched. "I call it a shame!" Her voice was high and raw. "I call
it a shame! I call it wicked! I call it abominable! I call it an--an
outrage!"

Rosalie said, "Doda! Doda, I haven't reproached you. I haven't
reproved you. If they had been letters you could have shown me,
yes, then a shame--"

The child called out, "I'm nearly seventeen! I call it an outrage!"

Rosalie got up and went to her. "Darling, they couldn't be shown.
They're just burnt. They're forgotten." She put out inviting arms.
"My poor Doda!"

That child, almost touched by her arms, brushed herself from the
arms. "Why should I have things like this done to me by you?"

"Doda, I am your mother. You have a duty--"

"Well, I won't have a duty! Why should I have a duty? I didn't
ask to be born, did I? You chose for me to be born, didn't you? I
didn't choose it. I'll never forget this. Never, never, never!"

Tears rushed into her eyes and leapt from her eyes. She gave an
impassioned gesture. She rushed from the room.

Strike on!

Look at her. There she is. She's only eighteen but she's woman
now. Grown-up. "Out," as one would have said in the old and stupid
days, but out much wider than the freest budding woman then. It's
1919. They've caught, the rising generation, the flag of liberty
that the war flamed across the world; license, the curmudgeons
call it; liberty, the young set free. It's 1919. She's been a year
war-working in one of the huge barracks run up all over London for
the multitudes of women clerks the Government departments needed
and, the war over, not too quickly can give up. She loves it. She's
made a host of friends. Her friends are all the girls of wealthy
parents, like herself, or of parents of position if not of means;
and all, like her, are far from with complaint against the war
that's given them this priceless avenue away from home. She loves
it. Of course she doesn't love the actual work. Who would? What
she loves is the constant titillation of it. The titillation of
getting down there of a morning and of the greetings and the meetings
and the rapt resumptions of the past day's fun; the titillation
of watching the clock for lunch and of those lunches, here to-day,
to-morrow there, and of the rush to get back not too late. The
titillation of watching the clock for tea, and of tea, and then,
most sharpest titillation of them all, watching the clock for--time!;
for--off!; for--out!; away! That is the charm of it in detail. The
charm in general, as once expressed to Rosalie by one of Doda's
friends brought in to tea one Sunday is, "You see, it gets you
through the day."

That's it. The night's all right. There's nearly always something
doing for the night. It's just the day would be so hopeless were
there not this lively way of "getting through the day." That's it,
for Doda.

Until she found her feet--not in her office, but at home at first
emergence from her school--until she found her feet she often used
to be kept uncommonly late at office. In a very short while she
found her feet and that excuse no longer was put forward. Every
girl of Doda's association was on her feet in 1919; and for Doda
very much easier, at that, than for the generality, to establish
her position in the house. By 1920, when she was nineteen, she was
conducting her life as she pleased, as nineteen manifestly should.
In 1921, when she was twenty, the war work was over and she was
"getting through the day" much as she lived the night. It was pretty
easy to get through the day in 1921. That which the curmudgeons
called license, and liberty the free, was in 1921 held by charter
and by right prescriptive.

Look at her. There she is. She's lovelier yet, if that which was
her budding loveliness could bear a lovelier hue. She's always out
somewhere, or she's always off somewhere, or she's always coming
in from somewhere. Her eyes, in presentation more pronounced, have
always got that sleepy look or got that glinting look. She never
talks much at home. She seems to keep her talking for her friends
and she never brings her friends home. She's on good terms with
Rosalie. That's the expression for it. She was to have been a woman
treasury into which was to be poured by Rosalie all her woman love.
She was to have been a woman with her mother in the house of Harry
and of Huggo. But that's all done. She's not a daughter to her
mother. She never asked to be born to her mother, as once she told
her mother, and though that never now again is said it is the basis
of her stand. She owes no obligations. They just meet. They get on
very pleasantly. She's on good terms with Rosalie.

It is odd--or else it isn't odd but only natural--that in all the
pictures seen by Rosalie there scarcely is a picture that ever shows
the children all together. They hardly ever, within the compass of
her pictures, were together. As in their schoolhood, so much more
in adolescence, they never showed a least desire for one another's
company. They had their friends, each one, and much preferred
their friends. You'd not, it's true, say that of Benji; but Benji
in fraternal wish had to take what was offered him and there was
nothing offered him by Doda; by Huggo less than nothing.

Benji!

Look, here's the Benji one; the good, the quiet, gentle one; the
one that never gave a thought of trouble, Benji.

Her Benji! The one that came after disfavour, after remorse; that
came with tears, with thank God, charged-with-meaning tears. The
littlest one. The one that was so tiny wee beside the big and sturdy
others. Her last one! Her Benji!

Look, there he is. Always so quiet, gentle, good. Always, though
snubbed, so passionately fond of Doda. Look, there he is. He's
at Milchester, in his spectacles, the darling! He's always in his
books. He isn't good at games. He does so well at school. Oh, isn't
Harry proud of him and fond of him! Oh, doesn't Harry often sigh
and wish he could have gone to Tidborough to win those prizes and
those honours there. But Tidborough's closed to Harry, Harry says.
Look, there goes Benji! It's 1919. He's sixteen. It's Speech Day
at Milchester. He's in the Sixth. He's won all those prizes. She's
holding two and Harry's holding three, and there he goes to take
the Heriot Gold Medal. All the great hall is simply cheering Benji!
The Head is saying that he's the youngest boy that's ever won the
Heriot. Look, there's the Bishop handing it, and shaking Benji by
the hand, and patting Benji on the back, and saying something to
him. You can't possibly hear what it is, every one is cheering so.
Look, here he comes with the medal, in his spectacles, the darling!
She can scarcely see, her eyes are brimming so. Harry's quite
shameless. Harry's got tears standing on his cheeks and he's set
down the prizes and is stretching both his hands out to the boy.
Feel, that's his hand--her Benji's hand--snuggled a moment in hers,
and then he turns to his father and is eagerly whispering to his
father, his spectacles rubbing his father's head, the darling! He's
more demonstrative to his father than he is to her. She feels it
rather sometimes. He's awfully sweet to her, but, you can't help
noticing it, it's more his gracious manner than the outpouring she'd
give anything to have. It's funny how he always seems the tiniest
atom strange with her as if he didn't know her very well or hadn't
known her very long. It sometimes pains a little. He's different
with his father. He loves being with his father. And doesn't Harry
love having the boy with him! Harry idolises the boy. Of course
Huggo is Harry's eldest, and whatever Huggo's disappointments,
these men--at least these perfect Harry type of men--have for their
eldest boy within their hearts a place no other child can quite
exactly fill. There's some especial yearning that the eldest seems
to call. There's some incorporation of the father's self, there's
some reflection that he sees, there's some communion that he seems
to find, that makes "My eldest son" a thing apart. But, with that
reservation, and that's ingrained in men, it's Benji that's the world
to Harry. He's going to Ox-ford. He's going to have the Bar career
that Huggo wouldn't take. But Harry thinks there's some especial
wonders going to come to Benji. He says the boy's a dreamer. He
says the boy's a thinker. "Benji's got something rare about him,
Rosalie," he says. "That boy's got a mark on him that genius has.
You wait and see, old lady. It's Benji's going to make the old name
shine!" Strike on!

It is odd, sad, significant, that there is scarcely a picture that
shows together those three children, or even two of them. It's 1921
now and drawing very close to Finis; but always the old detachment,
the seeming want of mutual love, appears to hold the three apart.
Doda is sometimes glimpsed, no more, with Benji, always putting off
or chilling off her brother for her friends; sometimes she's seen
with Huggo, meeting him and he her, more like an acquaintance of
their sets than like fruit of the same parents; familiar, apparently,
with one another's lives: referring to places of amusement by both
frequented, as had been done, in instance, on that night of Huggo's
announcement of his marriage when with a note that rung sinister
he had bantered Doda and she had turned and run upstairs. But no
more than that. The children seem to have no mutual love. They're
different.

It's 1921. Huggo was scarcely ever seen now. He had married in haste
and had in haste repented. He also had played a trick, involving
a sum of money, on his father. His wife, as it appeared, had been
met at some dancing club and the brief courtship had continued
anywhere but at her home. Of her home Huggo knew only what she
told him; and what she told him was only what she could invent. She
was then, at their first meeting, in the uniform of a war service
corps to which she belonged. She said her father was a clergyman.

"A clergyman's daughter!" cried Huggo bitterly, acquainting Rosalie
only three months after his marriage of his marriage's failure. "A
clergyman's daughter! That's what they all say--those! Wasn't I a
fool to be caught out by that! Oh, wasn't I a fool! If you want to
know what she really was, she was a teashop waitress, in the city
somewhere. If you want to know what her reverend father in the country
was, is, he doesn't live in the country; he lives in Holloway, and
he doesn't live in a rectory in Holloway, he lives in a baker's
shop. That's what he is, a baker! That's what I've done for
myself, married a waitress! Yes, and then you, you and father, when
she comes whining here and complains I ill-treat her and keep her
without money, you two take her part and send her back to me with
your championship and get me here to pijaw me about my duty to my
pretty young wife! Well, now you know, now you know, and you can
tell father what my pretty young wife is--how she deceived me.
Deceived me! Now you know."

Rosalie said, "Huggo, you deceived her."

Huggo had been leaving and now very violently went. "That's your
tone, is it? I might have known! That's all you can say, is it? To
see me ruin my life and then reproach me! Ruin my life! It's not
I that's ruined my life. It's you. There, now I've told you! I can
see things now. What sort of a chance have I ever had? What sort
of a home have I ever had? Have I ever had a mother? When I was a
kid did I ever have a mother like other kids have? I can see things
now. A mother! I can't ever remember a time when I wasn't in the
charge of some servant or governess or other. You said this afternoon
before father that I didn't love you. Did you ever teach me to love
you? By God, I can't remember it. By God, I can't."

Strike on!

Also that trick, touching a sum of money, upon his father. When
he first made known his marriage, and it was obvious he must have
his way and be set up to start in life, he had also, as he had said,
the chance of a lucrative business. It was the kind of thing he
liked. It was the kind of thing he was keen on. It was a motor-car
business. There was a little syndicate that was putting a new car
on the market. They'd got works, just outside London somewhere.
They'd got show-rooms in the West End. And they'd got an absolutely
first-class article. That chap Telfer was one of the directors; a
first-class chap called Turner was another; they'd let him in for
eight thousand pounds and he'd be absolutely set up for life and
be pulling in an immense fortune in no time. You will, won't you,
father?

Of course Harry forgave the boy, his eldest son. The marriage was
done, what was the use of being unkind or stupid about it? Of course
Rosalie welcomed the wife, Lucy, the prettiest creature, a tiny
shade common, perhaps, but a sweet little soul with always about
her a pathetic air of being afraid of something (of when it should
come out precisely what she was, as the event proved). Of course
Harry paid over the eight thousand pounds. Huggo took, "to start
with," as he said, a tiny furnished flat in Bayswater. Rosalie
installed him and his bride therein and left him, on their first
night there, ever so gay, so confident, so happy. Her Huggo!

In two months it all came out. Lawyers are notoriously lax in making
their own wills. Harry, who could master a case quicker than any
man at the Bar, and could see to the soul and beyond it of a hostile
witness a minute after getting on his feet to cross-examine, was
fooled blind by the syndicate that was going to put the absolutely
first-class article on the market. Whether it was that there never
had been a business, and that Harry's inspection of works, visits
to show-rooms, and examination of books, was all part of an elaborate
swindle carried out with the aid of some one who possessed these
accessories; or whether it was that the whole thing was bought up
cheap merely to sell at a profit, was never clearly known to Harry
and to Rosalie. Harry was too grieved to pursue the shock. "I'll
take not a step further in the matter, Rosalie," Harry said. "I
can't bear to find the boy out deeper. It's done. There's no sense
in being stupid or unkind about it."

What happened was that the car enterprise never was an enterprise
at all except an enterprise to get eight thousand pounds into the
possession of the syndicate. Nothing ever was properly announced
by Huggo. It just "came out." It "came out" that the syndicate
was not established in the West End show-rooms but in three rather
dingy offices in the city. It "came out" that the syndicate was not
running a motor-car business but a business cryptically described
as "Agents." Huggo said disaster had overtaken the car enterprise
and that the syndicate, rescuing what remained of the smash, had
pluckily set up on another line. He thought he could scrape along.
It was a knockout of course, but he thought he could scrape along.

"But what I can't make out, old man," said Harry, when Huggo had
stumbled through an entirely non-explanatory explanation of the
syndicate's business in its new capacity as agents, "What I can't
make out, old man, is why you should trade under another name. Why,
'So-and-So, and So-and-So, and So-and-So, Agents'--I can't ever
remember the names? Why not 'Telfer, Occleve and Turner'?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, father--I want you to know everything
without any concealment--"

"I know you do, old man. I know you do."

"Well, as a matter of fact, that's just a bit of useful swank. The
names we're trading under are swagger names and we think it sounds
better."

"Occleve sounds pretty good to me, Huggo. We've been a good long
way on Occleve, the Occleves."

"Well, that's what they think, father, and of course, as I've told
you, they know infinitely more about business than I do. They'll
explain the whole thing to you any time you like. It's all absolutely
above-board, father."

"My dearest old boy, don't talk like that. Of course it is. We're
only so grieved, your mother and I, that you should have had such
a setback so early. But remember, old man, the great thing is not
to let your wife suffer. No pinching or screwing for her, Huggo.
Always your wife first, Huggo. We'll give you at the rate of three
hundred a year just until all's going swimmingly, and that's to
keep Lucy merry and bright, see?"

It was shortly after that it all came out that the thing was a
ramp, the motor-car business never in existence; shortly after that
it came out Huggo was neglecting his wife; shortly after that the
high words to Rosalie, telling her how his wife had deceived him;
shortly after that that the syndicate, amazingly prosperous, moved
into offices better situated and handsomely appointed; shortly
after that it came out that the business of the syndicate was in
some way connected with company promotion.

Harry, seen among these developments, was not the man he used to
be. He was at the crest of his career at the Bar, working enormously
and earning richly, but the old bright, cheery way had gone from
Harry. There was permanently upon his face, and there was intensified,
the beaten look that Rosalie first had seen on that night, in the
war, when there had been the Huggo drinking business and when for
the first and only time he had spoken passionately to Rosalie. When
he now was at home he used to sit for long periods doing nothing,
just thinking. When sometimes, home earlier than he, Rosalie saw
him coming up the street towards the gamboge door she noticed,
terribly, the bowed shoulders, the weary gait, the set, careworn
face. She used to run down then to the famous gamboge door and open
it and greet him and his face used to light up in the old way, but
it was not the same face, and the effect of its radiation therefore
not the same. It was not that the face was older. It was that its
aspect was changed.

He used to look up from that chair where he sat just thinking, when
Doda, butterflied for the evening, butterflied across the room, and
used to say, "Out again, Doda?" He then would relapse back into
his thoughts. He had a habit of getting up suddenly and rather
strangely wandering about from room to room of all the principal
rooms of the house, just standing at the door of each, and looking
in (they were all empty of inhabitants), and then coming back and
sitting again in the chair and just sit, thinking.

It used to pain the heart of Rosalie.

She said more than once when he returned from such a tour, "Dear
Harry, looking for anything?"

He'd say rather heavily, "No; no, dear. Just having a look around."

It used to pain the heart of Rosalie.

But he used to be enormously brightened up when Benji came home.
Benji was just at Oxford then, eighteen. He was a different man
when Benji was at home. He used to say, "Rosalie, that boy's going
to make a name for himself in the world. My heart's wrapped round
that boy, Rosalie. Ay, me! I wish he'd been our eldest, Rosalie."

That was because he couldn't tear away the wrappings of his heart
from about his eldest. Men can't.

It used to pain the heart of Rosalie.

Of course, with everything now known, Huggo was forgiven. Huggo was
prosperous now, almost aggressively prosperous. He kept a car. The
syndicate, whatever it actually did, was obviously doing enormously
well. What was the good of being stupid and unkind to the boy
now that, at last, he had found his feet? But Huggo scarcely ever
came to the house. He had virtually left Lucy. Lucy lived on in
the originally-taken furnished flat in Bayswater. Huggo had rooms
somewhere, no one quite knew where, and lived there. Rosalie used
to get Lucy to the house sometimes, but Lucy was never at her ease
on these visits, and Doda, who sympathized entirely with Huggo in
the matter, very much disliked her and would not meet her. Lucy
was in bad health and she was going to have a baby. Her health and
her condition made her look much more common than she used to look.

Then the baby was born; a little girl. Poor, grateful Lucy called
it Rosalie. She told Rosalie that Huggo said he didn't care what
the baby was called. He was very angry about the baby. "He was
worse than usual when he was here last week," said Lucy. "I think
he's got something on his mind. I think he's worrying about something.
Oh, he was sharp."

Lucy was very ill with the birth of her baby. She didn't seem able
to pick up again from her confinement. She kept her bed. Then,
suddenly, she developed pneumonia. The maternity nurse, paid by
Rosalie, was still in attendance. Rosalie sent in another nurse,
and on that same night, going straight to the sick bed from Field's,
and then coming home very late, told Harry, who was waiting up for
her, that the worst was feared for Lucy. She then said, "Harry,
if anything happens, I think we'll have that baby here. It will
practically be a case of adopting the child."

Harry agreed.

"I'd get in a nurse for her, the new little Rosalie." She sighed.

"Yes, yes," said Harry.

She said after a little, "Harry, the nurseries in use again!"

He sat there as he was always sitting, thinking.

She went over to him. "Dear, won't you like the nurseries to be in
use again?"

He said slowly, "I will, very much, Rosalie. It's lonely, these
empty rooms. I will very much--in some ways."

Rosalie knew what Harry meant. She touched his hand. "Dear, I think
it can be made different."

Harry knew what Rosalie meant. He pressed the hand that touched
his own. "That's all right, Rosalie. That's all right, dearest."

Rosalie was down early next morning. She desired an early breakfast
and to go on to see Lucy before Field's. It might be necessary to
stay the day with Lucy. There was also Huggo. What was Huggo doing?
Overnight Rosalie had seen Doda, come in late from an evening with
a very intimate friend of hers always known, through some private
joke of Doda's, as "the foreign friend." The foreign friend, not
in the least foreign but English, was a young married woman living
apart from her husband. Doda had brought her to the house once.
She was very pretty and a cheery soul. She would have been called
fast when Rosalie was a girl. In 1921 she would almost, in the
manner she presented to Rosalie, have been called slow. Doda and
she were greatly attached.

Doda, overnight, going straight upstairs to bed, had said, "Have
you seen Huggo to-day? He's in a scrape of some sort."

"Oh, Doda, what kind of a scrape?"

"He didn't tell me. I ran into him quite by chance coming away from
a theatre with the foreign friend. We both thought he was rather
badly rattled."

"Was he going on to Lucy? Did he know Lucy was very ill indeed?"

Doda said, "I don't know. He didn't tell me. Is she?" and indifferently
passed upstairs.

Rosalie at her early breakfast was thinking what news the day would
give of Lucy and of Huggo. She was suddenly, by Huggo in person,
brought intelligence of both. She heard the door bell ring and in
a minute Huggo surprisingly broke into the room. He had kept his
hat on. He looked white, drawn and very agitated. He shut the door
behind him. "Lucy's dead."

Tears sprang into the eyes of Rosalie, "Oh, my poor Huggo!"

He made a gesture. "Oh, that's no good! Look here, mother, will
you look after things over there for me? That's all I've come in
to say. Will you see to everything and will you take the kid? I
can't stop."

He made to go.

"Huggo, of course I will. But you'll be there? Are you going there
now?"

"I'm not. I'm going away."

"Going away?"

His hand was on the door. "Yes, going away. Look here, there's another
thing. If any one comes here for me will you say you haven't seen
me? It's important. It's vital."

"Huggo, what is the matter?"

"You'll jolly soon know. You may as well know now. Then you'll
realise. If you want to know--the police are after me."

He was gone.






CHAPTER V





In the Book of Job it all happened, to Job, in the apparent compass
of one piece of time not broken by diurnal intervals, not mitigated
by recuperative cessations between blow and blow. It seemed to
Rosalie that it was like that it happened also to her. There seemed
no interval. It seemed to her wrath on wrath, visitation upon
visitation, judgment upon judgment.

It seemed to her that she was no sooner come down out of the
Old Bailey--her hand touching at things for support, her vision
vertiginous, causing the solid ground to be in motion, her ears
resonant, crying through her brain the words she saw in Huggo's look
as they removed him; it seemed to her she was no sooner out from
there than she was at the telephone and summoned by the foreign
friend and was there with Doda and was in process of "Oh, Doda!"--"Oh,
mother!"; it seemed to her she was no sooner out from that than
she was with that burly messenger, going with him, returning from
him. There were days and nights walled up in weeks and months
between these things, but that is how they seemed to Rosalie.

The syndicate was laid by the heels, one here, one there, Huggo
in France, very shortly after the warning that had put Huggo in
flight. The syndicate went through the police court where was unfolded
a story sensational with surprising sums of money, captivating with
ingenuity of fraud covered up by fraud to help new fraud again.
The syndicate stood in the dock at the Old Bailey. Those two of
the syndicate described by the prosecution and by the judge as the
principals were sentenced to three years' penal servitude. "You,"
said the judge, addressing with a new note in his voice the third
prisoner, "You, Occleve, stand in a different--"

Rosalie began to pray.

Harry would not attend the trial. He had done all that could be
done, and of his position there was very much that he was able to
do, and had attended the police court during the initial proceedings.
He would not go to the Old Bailey. He would not go out. He would
not read the papers. He used to sit about the house. "My son a
felon.... My boy a felon. My son.... My eldest son...."

Rosalie was given a seat in the floor of the court on the first
days of the hearing. On the day when the verdict was to be given
and sentence passed she could not bear that. An usher, much pitying,
obtained her a place in the gallery. She looked down immediately
upon her Huggo. Her hands, upon the ledge before her, were all the
time clasped. Her eyes alternately were in her hands and on her
Huggo. Her heart moved between her Huggo and her God.

"You, Occleve, stand in a different position. . . ."

She began to pray. All of her being, all of her soul, all of her
life, with a spiritual and a physical intensity transcending all
that her body and her mind had ever known, was in apotheosis of
supplication. "O God the Father! O God the Father! O God the Father!"

Her Huggo! Those words that only in snatches she heard were being
addressed to her Huggo.

"... Your counsel has most eloquently pleaded for you.... You bear
an honoured name.... You bear a name held in these precincts in
honour, in esteem, in love, in admiration.... You have had a good
home, a great and a noble father, a distinguished and devoted
mother...."

That suppliant crouched lower in her supplication.

"... You have been the dupe, you have been the tool, you have been
in large part, as your counsel has pleaded, and as I believe, the
unsuspecting agent.... Nevertheless, the least sentence I can pass
on you--"

"O God the Father, the Father!"

"... is six months' imprisonment."

That boy, whose head had been hung and eyes downcast, lifted his
head and raised his eyes and gave one look into the eyes of that
suppliant for him that sat above him. There was recalled by that
suppliant a look that had passed from the place of accusation to
the place of assembly in the place called the Sanhedrin.

Her Huggo!

They took him away.

Doda didn't stop going out. She seemed to go out more. The pain
within that house, brought there by Huggo, seemed to make that house
more than before unbearable to Doda. She often spent the night, or
the week end away, staying with the foreign friend, she generally
said. She would have nothing whatever to do with the baby now
installed in the house. She never would go near it. Once she passed
it in the hall in its perambulator. She stopped and stooped over
the face of lovely innocence that lay there and gazed upon it with
an extraordinary intensity. She drew back with a sharp catch at her
breath and sharply stepped away and turned and ran very quickly
upstairs. After that. when she chanced to pass the child, she
turned aside and would not look upon the child. She began not to
look well, Rosalie thought. There often was upon her lovely face a
pinched and drawn expression, disfiguring it. On the rare occasions
when she was in to dinner she sat strangely moody. There only was
a moodiness about that table then; but the moodiness of Doda was
noticeable to Rosalie. She ate hardly at all. She sometimes would
get up suddenly before a meal was ended and go away, generally
to her own room. Very many times Rosalie would seek anxiously to
question her, but apart from the independence which commonly she
maintained towards Rosalie, Doda seemed very much to resent solicitude
upon her health. "What should be the matter? I look perfectly well,
don't I?"

"Doda, you don't. I've noticed it a long time."

"Well, I am perfectly well. If I wasn't I'd say so."

Strike on!

Rosalie was called up on the telephone by the foreign friend.
It was the evening, about ten o'clock. Doda was away for a week
at Brighton with the foreign friend. She was due back to-morrow.
Harry was out with Benji. Benji was nineteen then and was home on
vacation from Oxford. Harry never could bear Benji out of his sight
when Benji was home. In the affliction that had come upon them, he
seemed to cling to Benji. Rosalie had persuaded him that evening
to go with Benji to a concert. Harry said the idea of anything like
that was detestable to him, but Rosalie had pleaded with him. Just
a little chamber concert was different. It would do him so much
good to have an evening away and to hear a little music and Benji
would love it. Harry allowed himself to be persuaded and went off
arm-in-arm with Benji. He always put his arm in Benji's when he
walked with Benji.

Rosalie was waiting for them when the telephone bell rang and she
was spoken to by the foreign friend.

It then happened like this.

The voice of the foreign friend was very alarmingly urgent. "Would
she come and see Doda at once, at once, at once?"

The voice struck a chill to the heart of Rosalie. "But where are
you? You're at Brighton, aren't you? Are you speaking from Brighton?"

"No, no. At my flat. At my flat."

"But what is it? What is it? Why don't you tell me what it is?"

"It's an--it's an--." The voice stammered and hesitated.

"Oh, speak! Oh, speak."

She could hear the voice gulping.

"Oh, please do speak!"

"Doda isn't very well. Doda's very ill. It's an--it's an accident."

"I'll come. I'll come."

"Is Mr. Occleve there?"

"He isn't. He's out."

"Can you get him?"

"No. Yes. I don't know. I can't think. Oh, tell me. Tell me."

"Will you leave a message for him to come at once?"

"At once. At once."

She wrote a message for Harry and she picked up a wrap and she ran
out hatless to find a cab.

She found a cab and went to Doda.

This all happened as quickly as bewilderingly. It was not like a
dream, and it was not like a nightmare. It was like a kind of trance
to Rosalie.

The foreign friend was not seen at the flat. She was in some other
room and did not appear. She said afterwards, and proved, that she
had been away the previous night, leaving Doda at the flat, and had
returned to find her--as she was found; and had immediately called
the nearest doctor and then Doda's mother.

It was the doctor that opened the door to Rosalie. He was a
Scotchman; a big and rugged man, all lines and whiskers and with
a rugged accent.

He said, "You'rre her mother, arren't ye? Where's her father?"

"He's coming. Where is my child?"

The doctor jerked his head towards a wall. "She's yon."

"Tell me, please."

He pushed a chair towards her but she shook her head. "Please tell
me."

"Ye'll want your courage." He again indicated the chair. She again
shook her head. "It'll try ye. She's dying."

The lips of Rosalie formed the words: "Tell me." There was no sound
in her.

The doctor said, "I cannot tell ye. It is for your husband to hear."

The heart of Rosalie stood still. She put both her hands upon her
heart and she said to the doctor, "Tell me. I am strong."

The doctor looked upon Rosalie intently and he said: (he was perhaps
dexterously giving her time that she might weld herself) he said,
"Ye'll need be strong. Ye look sensible. Ye'll need be sensible."
He said, "There's been before me here another--There's been a
creature here before me. There's been blackguarrd work here. There's
been--that poor child there..." He told her.

She moaned: "O God, be merciful!"

That child, as that night went, was in delirium. She seemed to lie
upon a bed. She lay, in fact, upon the altar of her gods, of self,
of what is vain, of liberty undisciplined, of restless itch for
pleasure, and of the gods of Rosalie, a piteous sacrifice to them.
You that have tears to shed prepare to shed them now. Or if you
have no tears, but for emotion only sneers, do stop and put the
thing away. It is intolerable to think to have beside that bed,
beside that child, beside that Rosalie, your sneers. It's not for
you, and you do but exacerbate the frightful pain there's been in
feeling it with them.

Rosalie was all night with that child. Harry was there upon the
other side upon his knees and never raised his head. Benji was
there that loved his sister so. Across the unblinded window strove
a moon that fought with mass on mass of fierce, submerging clouds
as it might be a soul that rose through infinite calamity to God.
That child was in much torment. That child was in delirium and
often cried aloud. That child burned with a fever, incredible, at
touch of her poor flesh, to think that human flesh such flame could
hold and not incinerate. That child in her delirium moaned often
names and sometimes cried them out. Nicknames that in the sexless
jargon of her day and of her kind might have been names of women
and might be names of men. Darkie, Topsy, Skipper, Kitten, Bluey,
Tip, Bill, Kid. Names, sometimes, more familiar. Once Huggo; once
father; once loud and very piteously, "Benji, Benji, Benji, Benji,
Benji!"

She never once said mother.

She calmed and a long space was mute. The moon, its duress passed,
stood high, serene, alone. The doctor breathed, "She's passing."
That child raised her lids and her eyes looked out upon her watchers.

Rosalie cried, "Oh, Doda!"

That child sighed. "Oh, mother!"

There was no note of love. There was of tenderness no note. There
only was in that child's sigh a deathly weariness. "Oh, mother!"
That child passed out.

They came home in the very early morning. Rosalie was in her working
room. She had some things to do. She wrote to Mr. Field a letter of
her resignation from Field's Bank. She only wrote two lines. They
ended, "This is Final. I have done."

She sealed that letter and she moved about the room unlaying and as
she unlaid, destroying, all evidences, all treasures, all landmarks,
all that in any way referred to or touched upon her working
life. There were cherished letters, there were treasured papers.
She destroyed them all. From one bundle, not touched for years,
dust-covered and time-discoloured, there came out a battered volume.
She turned it over. "Lombard Street." She opened it and saw the
eager underlinings and saw the eager margin notes, and ghosts...
(it's written earlier in these pages). She rent the book across its
perished cover and pressed it on the fire and on to the flames in
the fire. "I have done."

But she was not done with and she had the feeling that she was not
done with. She said to Harry, "This is not the children's tragedy.
This is my tragedy. These were not the children's faults. These
were my transgressions. Life is sacrifice. I never sacrificed.
Sacrifice is atonement. It now is not possible for me to atone."

She was on her knees beside his chair. He stroked her hair.

There was an inquest. Harry went. She stayed at home and Benji
stayed with her to be with her. Benji was not to be consoled. His
mood was very dreadful. A report was printed in the evening paper
before Harry came home. Benji read it and told Rosalie a witness,
a man, had been arrested on the coroner's warrant. Benji said, "I
think I'll go out now, mother, for a little."

Later in the afternoon when Rosalie was with Harry a maid came into
the room and looked at Harry and saw how sunk he was in his chair
and so went to Rosalie and whispered to her. Rosalie went out. There
was a man wished to see the master. Rosalie spoke to him. He was
a large, burly man with a strong face. He looked like, and was,
a police officer in plain clothes. Rosalie heard what he began to
say and said she would go with him. In the cab, the man told her
about it. All his sentences began with or contained "The young
gentleman."

"The young gentleman... the prisoner, when the young gentleman
came rushing in, happened to be in the charge-room writing out a
statement.... The young gentleman, before any one could stop him,
rushed at this prisoner and caught him by the throat and threw him
and the table over and banged the man's head against the floor, fair
trying to kill him. They got the young gentleman off. They ought
to have arrested the young gentleman, and they did most earnestly
wish they had of arrested him, and blamed themselves properly that
they didn't arrest him. But they felt cruelly sorry for the young
gentleman and they got him outside and let him go and no more said.
Of course, as madam knew, the police office wasn't very far from
Gower Street station, the underground station with them steep
stairs leading straight down from the street to the platform, as
madam might be aware.... The young gentleman was seen by witnesses,
whose names were took, to come rushing down these stairs on to the
platform as if some one was after him.... The young gentleman come
rushing down and there was a train just coming in, and whether he
couldn't stop or whether he.... There's some say one thing and some
say the other.... Whichever way it was the young gentleman...."

Rosalie did her errand with the man and then came back to Harry.
She had to tell Harry.

He was sitting in his chair. He had an open book on his knees. She
saw, as one notices these things, it was a Shakespeare. She stood
up there at the door before him and she said, "Harry--Benji!"

He saw it in her face.

He groaned.

He took the book off his knees and fumbled it, and with a groaning
mutter dropped it: "'Unarm, Eros, the long day's work is done.'"

She came to him and saw, as one sees things, above his head the picture
he had hung when raven was his hair and radiant his face, and had
hit his thumb, and jumped, and cried out, "Mice and Mumps!" and
had laughed and wrung his hands, and cried out, "Mice and Mumps!"
and laughed again. She came to him and saw him wilt and crumple
in his chair, and could have sworn she saw the iron of his head,
that had been raven, go grey anew and greyer yet. She came to him
and she said, "Harry--Benji--an accident--not an accident--on the
railway--killed."

His voice went, not exclamatorily, but in a thick mutter, as one
agrope, in sudden darkness, befogged, betrayed. "My God, my God,
my God, my God, my God!"

She fell on her knees; and on her arms and on his lap she buried
then her face.

He suddenly stooped to her, and caught his arms about her, and raised
her to him, and pressed his face to hers, and held her there; and
his cry was as once before, passionately holding her, his cry had
been; then from his heart to her heart, now from the abysses of
his soul to her soul's depths, "Rosalie! Rosalie!"






POSTSCRIPT.





There was to have been some more of it; but there, they're in each
other's arms, and one has suffered so with them one cannot any
more go on. One's suffered so! One has looked backward with her.
The heart must break but for a forward glimpse:--

They're all right now. Huggo's in Canada. He writes every week.
They're all right now. That other Rosalie that they brought in is
looking after them. She's looking after them, that elf, that sprite,
that tricksy scrap, that sunshine thing. She calls Harry father and
Rosalie she calls mother. She has all her meals with them. There's
no nurse. It's breakfast she loves best. She's on the itch all
breakfast. When breakfast's done she's off her chair and hopping.
She trumpets in her tiny voice, "Lessons! Lessons!" She trumpets
in her tiny voice, "Lessons, lessons! On mother's knee! On mother's
knee!"

THE END






End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of This Freedom, by A. S. M. Hutchinson

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THIS FREEDOM ***

This file should be named tfrdm10.txt or tfrdm10.zip
Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, tfrdm11.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, tfrdm10a.txt

Produced by Carrie Fellman and Charles Aldarondo

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
even years after the official publication date.

Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so.

Most people start at our Web sites at:
http://gutenberg.net or
http://promo.net/pg

These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).


Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.

http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03

Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90

Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
as it appears in our Newsletters.


Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.

The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.

Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):

eBooks Year Month

    1  1971 July
   10  1991 January
  100  1994 January
 1000  1997 August
 1500  1998 October
 2000  1999 December
 2500  2000 December
 3000  2001 November
 4000  2001 October/November
 6000  2002 December*
 9000  2003 November*
10000  2004 January*


The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.

We need your donations more than ever!

As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
that have responded.

As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.

In answer to various questions we have received on this:

We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
just ask.

While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
donate.

International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
ways.

Donations by check or money order may be sent to:

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109

Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
method other than by check or money order.

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.

We need your donations more than ever!

You can get up to date donation information online at:

http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html


***

If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
you can always email directly to:

Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>

Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.

We would prefer to send you information by email.


**The Legal Small Print**


(Three Pages)

***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.

*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.

ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.

Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
any commercial products without permission.

To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.

THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.

INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
or [3] any Defect.

DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:

[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
     including any form resulting from conversion by word
     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
     *EITHER*:

     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
          does *not* contain characters other than those
          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
          author, and additional characters may be used to
          indicate hypertext links; OR

     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
          OR

     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
          or other equivalent proprietary form).

[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
     "Small Print!" statement.

[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
     let us know your plans and to work out the details.

WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine readable form.

The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
Money should be paid to the:
"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
hart@pobox.com

[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
they hardware or software or any other related product without
express permission.]

*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*