Chapter XXVII…

Chapter XXVII

HOW JUDITH'S STAGE MANIA HAD COOLED. TROUT BEND, AND A TICKLISH INTERVIEW. HALF-A-MILE OFF TEA. A DISCUSSION ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

The story has scarcely room for anything that was said or done at Royd until two days after the reunion that closed the last chapter. All it wants may be told in a few words. Challis was sulky all the rest of the first evening, and would not admit it to himself. Judith was dignified, glittering, and universal; talked to everybody, whereas Challis wanted her to talk to him. She was judicious, no doubt--woman of the world, and so on--but was it necessary to carry it so far? Surely Marianne in the background safeguarded the situation?

The party made itself at home rapidly, having begun at an advantage from previous experience. On the third day after its arrival any two members of it were ripe for arranging their day in each other's pockets, and treating their hosts as a sort of lay inn-keepers of benevolent dispositions, but quite negligible. Challis had taken the latter at their word when they said he was to stop in his room and write all day if he liked. He had brought his MS. of "Estrild" with him, and had made up his mind to complete it. The play would have its value, even if the Estrild he had set his heart on, and had written the part for, decided on not attempting it.

For a doubt had crept into the scheme as it stood when Challis paid that visit to the sprained-ankle patient in Grosvenor Square. Something had influenced Judith since then; probably some passage of arms with her family. At least, so Challis surmised. But she had told him next to nothing, so far. Her passing lameness had occasioned a break in tentative readings of the play, in which others than herself had taken part; and during this interruption it had been evident that the young lady's ambition to fly in the face of Society and family tradition had undergone a change. But the invitation to Royd at Whitsuntide remained in black and white, and could not be gainsaid.

Therefore, Challis had found himself on that well-remembered lawn, as recorded in our last chapter, at the time appointed, with no misgiving on him at the moment as to the cordiality of his welcome. Nothing had happened to create one. But as the hours grew to a day, and then to days, he began to be conscious somehow that his hosts had towards him a feeling they were too well-bred to show; and not only that, but that an indefinable discomfort had arisen between himself and Judith. Something had flawed the relation that each called friendship, and refrained from speculating about any other designation for. He had recognized this consciousness for the first time at that moment beside the carriage. And the reason he so readily accepted her ladyship's permission to indulge his inspirations ad libitum in his own room was that he felt it was a sort of release to him to do so. Was it a release for them also?--for Judith?

If this visit was to be no more than the fulfilment of an invitation to which his hosts stood pledged, let him work it out like a term of penal servitude, and go his ways at the end of it. But he chafed at the impossibility of challenging the position in any way. How in the name of common-sense could he say to the Baronet or her ladyship, "I see through your persistent amiability of manner that your feelings towards this eminent author are not the same to a nicety as they were six months since, and I should like to review the situation with you, with a view to the removal of misunderstandings"?

Still less was it possible to say to Judith, "You know that an indescribable change of manner has come over you in your demeanour towards your humble admirer, and he would give worlds to know the cause of it. But, in consideration of a certain effect you have upon him, of a certain exaltation he experiences in your presence, a certain depression at your absence, a very certain exasperation at any suspicion of a slight to him in favour of another male, he much doubts his powers of self-command through an explanatory interview. So he cannot ask questions. But if you could, with your womanly tact, frame some communication that would let him know what-the-anything it is all about, he would feel very grateful."

The position was a delicate one, with that necessity in the background for locking his heart up tight, for the sake of Polly Anne, of whom--odd though it may seem--he never lost sight. Only he never actually formulated an admission of its delicacy. The nearest approach to it was when a sudden image of Mr. John Eldridge flashed across his mental bioscope, shut one of its eyes, and said, "Rather ticklish, Master Titus--eh?"

Very few people will understand the odd freaks of Challis's mind, but it is useless to write this story and omit them.

There was only one thing he was absolutely clear about. Nothing the word dishonourable would apply to was admissible into any hypothetical drama his mind would construct, to cut the--rather hypothetical, please!--Gordian knot of his relation to Judith. He pictured himself to himself as potentially Don Juan, Captain Macheath, Silenus, or the late Prince Regent, as far as his normal ideas of morality went; but he was one thing, mind you, and Judith was another! She, being what she was, made any speculations in that department irrelevant. They did not arise from any question before the House. Besides--her position! Think of it!

He never contrasted his estimation of Judith now with his rough valuation of her at first sight. Just a handsome woman--the fine contents of an expensive, well-cut dress--a fit mate for fifty thousand a year, deer-forests in Scotland, houses in Park Lane, opera-boxes, and newspaper paragraphs! If he had done so, might he not have suspected, in the exaggeration of thought that placed her above and beyond suspicion, an element of danger more formidable to him than the imaginary laxity he was so ready to credit himself with. He might at least have seen the moral imbecility of what was virtually an appeal to Judith's self-respect and integrity to protect him from his own weakness. Perhaps he had subcutaneous misgivings of the correctness of his insight into her character when he decided that it would never do to tempt confidences of a personal nature.

If a friendship between a man and a woman is to remain contented with itself, seeking neither promotion nor dissolution, there must not be present in it, on the part of either, any longing to gain power over the other. Our own belief is that if Miss Arkroyd's self-love had not felt hurt at what seemed to her a too ready acceptance by Challis of the position in which a slight change in her manner had placed him, he might have paid his visit to Royd, gone back home, and maybe pretended to himself that the still waters of his inner soul had never been ruffled by Judith or any other fashionable enchantress. But a woman's pleasure in the power of her beauty is like that of dram-drinking. She may "swear off," as Rip Van Winkle did, a thousand times--but she will go back and do it again, or die for it. How can she help it, when a glance, a movement, a slight inexplicable intonation of her voice, is enough to bring back to bondage the idiot that thinks he has broken free? Why should she try to help it, from the point of view of self-interest, when she believes--as Judith did, without misgiving--that she can throw her end of the chain away at any moment, and wash her hands of that booby, and go on to another?

Judith believed her position was security itself, and was a little piqued at the readiness with which Challis had jumped at the permission to withdraw into his own sanctum. Whatever behaviour of her own had influenced this readiness, she resented it as an interruption to an assertion of power she was beginning to feel herself entitled to. Like the dram-drinker, she could not do without it. So, after three days of cordial civility, too dexterous to indite as a change of front, and equally dexterous postponement of Estrild for some future discussion, the young lady, without explanation, resumed the half-familiar, half-patronizing tone Challis had become accustomed to in Grosvenor Square.

Some three days later it happened that this household decided on a sort of picnic known to it as "half-a-mile-off tea." A houseful of able-bodied servants made this festivity, which was exactly what its name implies, easily possible. All the most critical tea-drinker could want had gone before, and the house-party, or most of it, was straggling across the parkland to Fern Hollow, the place appointed. Challis and Judith were accidentally last.

A chance left him the only hearer of a voice dropped languidly for the benefit of his ears alone. "Let these noisy people go on in front, Scroop," said its owner to him; and then, in reply to his amused look at hearing himself so addressed, "I knew I should do it in the end, because of the newspaper reviews. Do you mind my calling you Scroop now and then, by accident?"

"Nothing can please me better," said he. "Biggest compliment you can pay me!" It started the soul-brush afresh, and he had to settle whether it was to be submission or protest. He fancied he could manage the latter even though he acknowledged the voice, that continued, "Suppose we go by Trout Bend! It's nonsense hurrying. The tea can wait. Or we can have fresh made." This was concession, both in the proposed tête-à-tête, and something in the familiarity of treatment, which seemed to savour more of the Hermitage than Grosvenor Square. But it was only the simple vocabulary common to all tea-worlds; they are above class distinctions.

"Suppose we do," said Challis. And they did.

Trout Bend is a small incident in Geography. But it has a quality in common with--for instance--the Arctic Circle. It is always the same. Its lower segment has the same merry ripple over the same stones, and its upper one spreads to the same pools, that foster here and there each year the very selfsame bulrushes, to all appearance. And in the middle of the best one--the one, that is, that lends itself best to self-deception on the part of the fisherman--the fish that leaped last year, when you were looking at it and wondering how deep it was in the middle, does it again, and doesn't bore you. Because if he did, you wouldn't watch for him a third time. Only then he doesn't do it again, and that does bore you. And where the pools end and the ripples begin are the same infatuated stepping-stones, that think they can bear your weight, and can't. And then you become spell-bound on them as they wobble, and are rescued by extended walking-sticks from either side, and get across quite dry, or only a very little water in one shoe.

It was all the same this time, certainly, as when Challis was here in the autumn; all but a black swimming-bird, who had nodded a great deal, and surprised him, but not his companion--it was Athelstan Taylor--by diving suddenly and never coming up. The Rector had explained the ways of water hens, and that this slyboots was still under some floating rubbish, with her nose out for breath. Challis remembered wondering whether the whole of this class of birds was feminine, and watercocks only existed in connection with the Company. There was none this time--neither cock nor hen--and the open pastureland this side the beech-covert was all ablaze with buttercups in the high grass. For the fallow-deer found their pasture farther from the house, and never a little tail wagged on a dappled back in sight of Challis and Judith as they crossed the bridge--one slice of an elm-tree, with the outline on it of its trunk of a hundred years ago.

"I suppose you know the legend of this bridge and the convict," said the lady, turning to the gentleman.

"What legend of this bridge and what convict?" His inattention to his words was shown in the way he echoed them--sounds without meaning.

"You must have heard it. When he was a boy--the convict--he was sent with a small package containing a ring to a lady at Tallack's Gate--one of the Cazenoves, I think it was--and on the way he thought it would be good fun to have a look inside his parcel. So he got the ring out, and, standing near this bridge, dropped it. He hunted for it in vain, and then, in terror of his mishap, ran away. I never quite understood it, but I suppose in those days they convicted people very easily...."

"Much more than now! Was this chap convicted?"

"Yes--and sent to Botany Bay. Twenty years after, having served his time, he came back to England, married, and lived to be an old man, but always under a ban. One day he came here, to this spot, with a grown-up daughter to whom he then told the whole tale for the first time. When he finished he said to her: 'I was standing just where you are when I dropped it.' She said, 'Here on the ground, or here on the bridge,' and touched the plank with her parasol. The point of it slipped into a knothole in the wood, and when she drew it out, something glittered on it. It was the ring."

Challis was in the habit of inventing horrors for serials, and had had some success. But it chanced that he had never before heard this story--which, by the way, is told in connection with more than one locality in England--and he envied the master-hand that had fashioned it. He told in exchange the tale of the man who brought what he thought was his wife out of a house on fire, too black for recognition by his scorched and dazzled eyesight, and sat with his hand in hers till a strange voice came from the lips, and asked if the lady had been got out, naming his wife. "But your story is more probable," he in conclusion. "A man would know...."

"Know his own wife's hand? Of course he would! But are we under any obligation to sup full of horrors on a day like this?" Her voice was that of indifference, dismissing an unpleasant topic. Challis slightly resented its placidity, which looked as if the horrors had been easily digested, at least. It seemed to him to do injustice to a sweetness of disposition he chose to consider inseparable from the beautiful eyelids at ease under a slight protest of raised brows--the beautiful lips that waited unclosed for an answer to their question.

"What do you prefer me to talk about?" said he. "The crops? The weather?"

"Nonsense, Scroop!" She paused in her walk, so that he had either to look round at her or show no wish to know why. "I suppose you must have guessed," she said, without logical continuity. A request for explanation would have been warranted.

But Challis was in no mind for make-believe. He took her meaning, which he knew quite well, for granted. "I have had my suspicions," said he. "But I could not catechize, as you seemed so silent. Tell me now!... Which is it?--mother--father?--sister?... Is it Sibyl?--or the Bart?--or the madre?" The way in which these familiar designations were accepted as a matter of course showed how their relations of last September had defined and strengthened themselves.

"All three. At least--I ought to be fair--my father least of all! Indeed I believe that if an instance could be found of any lady of William the Conqueror's taking part in a Court performance, he would concede the point altogether. Has he spoken to you about it?... Well!--of course he wouldn't do that. But has he 'approached the subject'? Of course, that is what he would do--'approach the subject.'"

"No--no one has said a word about it. But I guessed, soon after I came down, that the play was doomed. I did not at first suppose it was your family, as a matter of course. I thought you might have settled to throw it up on your own account." She made a sort of impatient disclaimer--a head-shake that flung that possibility aside, and forgot it. But she said nothing, and he continued: "There was a row, I suppose? Don't tell me more about it than you like. Don't tell me anything if you...."

"I prefer to tell you. Who is there that I can talk to about it if not to you?" This was the soul-brush again; and again Challis's inner consciousness gasped at the choice he had to make between giving way to a luxury, a dangerous intoxication, and attempting to freeze the conversation down to a safe temperature.

Duty dictated a struggle for the latter. He affected a manner of equable unconcern fairly well. "No one," said he, "unless you were to make a confidante of...." He stopped short of saying "Marianne," conscious of difficulties ahead. But he could shelve the side-issue, and fall back on the previous question with a sense of getting out of shoal water. "There was a row, then ... well--a warm discussion, suppose we say? It's more refined, certainly. What form did it take?"

"Then we mustn't go so quick," said Judith. "Or I shan't have time." She was inconsecutive; but it was clear, when she paused in her walk through the long grass, that it was for an anchorage. "Suppose we sit down a little here," she said. "Unless you mind?" Challis didn't.

"Here" was an oak trunk that must have said to itself when it was a sapling--four hundred years ago, maybe--"I will see to it, when I am grown up, that my roots shall live above ground, and be thick with moss; and one shall be horizontal and a seat for a king, who shall lean against me contented. But he shall go, that lovers may come; and they shall make up my contentment, and I shall hear their voices in the twilight." Challis half made this little legend as he took his place by Miss Arkroyd on that tree-trunk. But he fought shy of the sequel their presence suggested--what word ought his fancy to supply as the tree's imaginary speech about themselves? He shrank from it, and he knew the reason why. It was because, as his own disordered passion grew, as he found himself more and more at loggerheads with his lot, he became more and more alive to the danger of relying on this woman _her_self as his protection against _him_self. How if she gave way, too?

As far as any conscious loss of self-control at that moment went, on the part of Miss Judith Arkroyd, Challis need not have fretted. Never was a young woman more perfectly cool and collected, more equal to any occasion that might arise in connection with a love of power that she just felt this man was a satisfactory lay-figure for. That best defines all the feeling she had on his account--so far.

She resumed the conversation where the question of anchorage had interrupted her. "I don't think we have rows in our family, in the ordinary sense of the word. That is, if I understand it rightly.... No!--I know what you are going to say. It has nothing to do with that repose that marks the caste of Vere de Vere. It is entirely individual and local. We have our quarrels, of course, but they take the form of distant civility, entirely due, as I understand, to our self-respect. There is nothing we Arkroyds respect more than ourselves, not even the Bill of Rights or the Protestant Succession...."

Challis interrupted: "But the distant civility, this time?..."

"Followed naturally on my telling Sibyl that the first act of Estrild was ready for rehearsal. She merely said she supposed I must go my own way. But that day after lunch she allowed me to leave the apartment first. It had been a cold lunch, as far as emotions went; and I knew, when Sibyl stood courteously on one side to let me pass, what was coming. So I wasn't the least surprised to find a letter from my mother on the dressing-table next morning."

"A letter from your mother!" Challis's tone was puzzled, awaiting enlightenment. Judith was not to be hurried, though. For one thing, she was engaged with a beetle, who wanted either to go home or to get farther away from home. She had been heading off his successive rushes in different directions with an ungloved hand, which he always refused to crawl upon. The perseverance she gave to this seemed not altogether without its charm to her companion.

"He seems to be praying for those that despitefully use him," she said, referring to the action of his antennæ. Then, without discontinuing her amusement, she went back to the conversation. "Yes--a letter, with 'My dearest daughter' at the beginning, and 'Your affectionate mother' at the end. Do you not believe me? It's quite true--all my family do it! In fact, it was a long time before I found out that other families didn't do it, too. I can tell you this letter all through."

Then in a semi-humorous, indifferent way she gave alternately its actual wording and the upshot of some of its passages. Lady Arkroyd hoped she had been misinformed about her daughter's intentions. She was aware that she had no longer any legal control over her, and she made no appeal to anything but her good feeling. She would not comment on the character of the associates with whom her daughter would probably be brought in contact. She would limit what she had to say entirely to the underlined deep grief that Sir M. and herself would experience if their child persisted in a course which could only lead to degradation and disgrace. She then forgot her promise to say nothing against the profession, and gave a brief sketch of it founded on Hogarth's "Strolling Players." After which she wound up with an exhortation to her daughter not to break her father's underlined heart in his underlined old age. "And so on," said Judith, in placid conclusion, still continuing her persecution of the beetle. Challis's infatuation believed that all this was parti pris--mere bravado; and that his insight saw truly a hinterland of devoted affection to her parents, and consideration for the comfort of beetles. Such is the power of beauty!

"And that letter determined you to give up the drama?"

"Oh no!--it was only the beginning of it. I wrote in reply, saying I was sorry to give pain to such an exemplary parent as my papa--that was not the wording, only the sense--but that I had made up my mind, and was not prepared to disappoint you in order to keep up the traditions of a rather dreary respectability. I said you had written this part for me, and I had promised to play it, and that ended the matter. My ancestors had always kept their promises, and I should keep mine. I laid a good deal of stress on Sibyl." At this point the beetle got away cleverly, threatening a break in the conversation. This was not what Challis wanted.

"I don't understand," said he. "Why 'stress on Sibyl'?"

"I mean on Sibyl's being allowed to indulge all her fancies, at any cost; and to take up trade, too--a thing that our ancestors would not have tolerated for a moment. Why is the Great Idea to be capitalized with thousands?..."

"And Shakespeare's trade discountenanced? I see, and agree in the main. I suppose they said it wasn't a trade--the Great Idea?"

"They did. Sibyl said it was Guilds and Crafts, and Mediæval, and quite another thing. Perhaps it is; I don't know. But I'm sure 'Sibyl Arkroyd, Limited' is neither Mediæval nor Guilds, and that's what they propose to call it."

"It sounds like six three-farthings, and pay at the desk. They can hardly be in earnest."

"Well, I don't know! People of--of condition are getting to take such curious views of things. It's nothing nowadays for a Countess to promise punctual attention to orders. Was it you told me there was a Curate who preached a Sermon on the New Atheism in its relation to Socialism?... No?--oh, then, it was somebody else!"

Challis suspected that Judith was talking in this way to defer telling him the upshot of the family discussion. He said nothing, and the flight of a heron filled out a lapse into silence which followed. And then Judith, who had risen from the tree-root to watch the vanishing bird, turned to Challis, and resumed:

"Shall we go on?... Oh, what was I talking about? Sibyl and the Great Idea. Well!--you see, the thing worked out like this: Papa had been wavering a good deal about financing the Great Idea, and Sir Spender Inglis had become very restive indeed, and was ready to jump at any excuse for backing out of his undertaking. He saw his opportunity, and pointed out--like Mr. Brownrigg--that my logic was irresistible, and that it was impossible to forbid my appearing on the boards if Sibyl was to be allowed to go behind the counter. A recent slump in Kaffirs had fostered economical impulses, I suppose. Anyhow, if I surrender the stage conditionally, my parent will keep his money in his pocket."

"Won't Sibyl Limited get it somewhere else?"

"She thinks she will, and my brother thinks so, no doubt. But will they? Perhaps you know about these things. I don't."

"I know little or nothing," said Challis. "But I understand that the chief point is settled. You won't play Estrild." There was no affectation of unconcern in his manner now.

The two walked on together along the river-brink of Trout Bend in silence; until, leaving the river, a path, winding through scattered gorse and fern, brought them in sight of the picnic party in the shade of a great beech, the vanguard of the deep woods beyond. Then Judith stopped and said: "I suppose you are angry with me?"

To which Challis replied, with vexation in his voice: "I could have forgiven you more than that." Said as a politeness this speech would have meant, "That is a mighty small matter to forgive you for." Said with a gasp, or something like it, it meant, to Judith's ears, that she had been winding that skein--this man's life, you see!--too quickly round her finger. He might become embarrassing.

"You will find another Estrild," she said. An attempt at a laugh failed, and its failure was worse than its omission would have been.

"I shall not try," said he. And then his evil genius saw his chance, and made Alfred Challis conceive that he could, for the release of his soul, make a false fetch of what he would have liked to say, in terms of a parallel line of thought. "I care little or nothing for the play for its own sake. My interest was in your presentation of the leading part." The words were safe, so far as they went--might have been spoken to a male actor who had taken another engagement. But he could not leave it there. That Evil Genius must needs make him go on speaking, with more and more betrayal of the great share she whom he addressed had personally in his visible chagrin. Visible in the restless movement of his hand about his face. And audible in the way he crushed his words out, cut them short on their last letter, threw them behind him: "Listen to me, and believe what I say. I count the play not worth completion now. With you the life goes out of it. It has become nothing for me." Then his voice fell, and whatever it had of petulance settled down to determination. "As for what is written of the play, I tell you plainly, I shall destroy it. At least, it shall never be acted by anyone else.... Stop one minute, and let me finish. I have not a word or a thought of blame for you, Judith Arkroyd. It was a mad idea--the whole thing! Now I see plainly that it never could have been. Let us forget it--all!"

The face that he spoke to was none the less beautiful that its owner was frightened at his vehemence. It continued to be--to this fool of a man who had not the courage to run away from it, but who was not at liberty to love it--the face of six months ago that had been growing on him ever since. He would almost have been thankful--though he would not confess it to himself--for visible flaws in it; a squint, a twist, an artificial tooth or two betraying their extraction, or their predecessors'. A wig would have spelt salvation, as the Press puts it.

As for Judith, she was perfectly alive, by now, to the sub-intents of meaning woven into Challis's speech, for the easement of a feeling he could neither tell nor conceal. "Let us forget it all!" was so overtense in emphasis, if referring only to a disappointment about a part in a play, that it scarcely left room for an equable society response. Her tone of voice had to keep at bay any hint of a meaning that might have betrayed both into a recognition of the precipice they were so close to. As might have been expected, she lost her presence of mind, and overdid it. "I can't see any occasion for hysterics about it," said she. "Of course, I am awfully sorry, and all that sort of thing. But we live in a world, after all! And I suppose one must sometimes accommodate one's views to the necessities of Society.... Oh dear!--these people are quite close." She referred to their near approach to the assembled tea-drinkers, some of whom, at peace with all mankind under its influence, were scattering abroad through the neighbouring woods and dingles, discussing religious education and the fighting power of nations, pigeon-shooting, and Psychical Research.

"We came away from the tree too soon," Challis said. "Can't we turn?..."

"Suppose we do. We can go round the coppice.... What was I saying? Oh--about Society! Don't you think it is so? One has to reckon with one's Social Duties. So I'm told."

"We could have thought of Society before," Challis said, rather sullenly. And then he felt brutal. "No, Judith Arkroyd, I won't say that. Forgive me! All I mean is--it was all just as true--what you say about Society--six months ago as it is now. The mistake was then."

A small thing in his speech unnerved Judith--the way he used her full name. This was the second time he had done so. It seemed to imply some new aspect of their relation--the throwing aside of some veil--the recognition of some discarded formality. She was no longer "Miss Arkroyd"; and "Judith" would have been either patronage or impertinence. In her case there was no professional name to build a half-way house to familiarity on.

She dropped her worldly tone as misplaced or useless, as she said: "I had at one time half thought I would leave you to finish the play before I cried off. But should I have done you any service? I thought not, in the end, and I wished to get it over."

He said: "It is over now. No harm is done. I would not have had it otherwise."

She replied: "Your work will not be lost. You will think better of it--better about destroying it, I mean. You will finish it, I hope."

"No--I think I shall probably destroy it. I hate having incomplete manuscripts hanging about. They keep me always in doubt whether to go on with them or not."

"Then give this one the benefit of the doubt, and finish it. Come!" She tried to leggierire the tone of the conversation, but it was a failure--worse than a failure, by the speech that followed on its provocation.

"I can have no woman play the leading part but you. It was written for you, and I have kept you in my mind as I wrote. I...." And then Alfred Challis stopped dead. But his speech, had he let it all out of his heart, would have been: "I have kept you in my mind, and now you will not leave it. You have crept into its secret corners, and rise up between me and my duty at every turn. It is not for nothing that those eyes of yours have flashed through every syllable of my very commonplace blank verse, that that voice of yours has filled out my imagination of a dozen soliloquies complying with the highest canons of dramatic art, that that hand of yours has caressed undeserving tyrants and stabbed innocent persons on insufficient provocation!" It would have been all this, for he would not have been himself if he had kept back his constant sense of the ridiculous, a term in which his mind included himself as a prime factor. But he said never a word further than what we have reported. Only the last particle, "I," as good as contained all the rest.

Judith understood it all now--all that was needed--and began to find her breath and the pulsation of her heart--things one usually forgets--forcing themselves on her attention. Why need the former catch and trip, and clip or magnify her words? Could not the last keep still? Plague take human nature! To think that she, Judith Arkroyd, mistress of herself in her own conceit, should be thus upset; unable to steer her ship out of the currents of a semi-flirtation--granted, that much, Sibyl!--with a middle-aged scribbler, who meant to be bald, in a year or so!

Had Challis dared to look at her at that moment, he would have seen that she had lost colour, as she stopped beside a hawthorn with some pretence of gathering the pink may-bloom. No one gathers may without a knife, and what Judith really did was to get a passing stay, against a slight dizziness, from a hand rested on a bough in easy reach. The gathering pretence sanctioned Challis's half-dozen paces in advance. But he did not look back at her--and it was well for him, perhaps, so beautiful was she against the may-tree--nor she at him. She knew, and he knew she knew.

Both were so conscious of their mutual consciousness that they tacitly agreed to say nothing. But there was a difference of feeling due to their positions. Challis could not live with a Tantalus cup held to his lips, and was, moreover, constantly stung with the injustice to Marianne of admission of--entertainment of--submission to love for another woman. Poor dear old Marianne, at home there by herself! So he honestly wished to fly--fly from himself if you like to put it so--from Judith, at any rate, as her beauty had become insupportable, and to his home as a haven by preference, just to live this folly down and forget it.

And as for the young woman--well!--she didn't want to lose Challis altogether. She could see no reason why a sort of affectionate friendship should not be cherished between them, not she! It was in the nature of the animal, and it may be Challis had been entirely at fault in casting the part of Estrild, whom he had certainly not portrayed as a person who would be content, like Bunthorne, with a vegetable love. It may be also that the cold-blooded faculty Sibyl objected to in her sister was part of this nature. A pleasure in disconcerting married folks' confidence in each other may belong to systems without a heart. Only, biters are sometimes bit.

Whether or not what this lady said next, after the two had walked, a little way apart, exchanging neither look nor speech, until the tea-party came again in view--for they had made the circuit of the coppice-wood--whether this had anything to do with her wish to avoid a complete separation from her literary friend or not, we cannot guess. It may have, and yet she herself may not have known it.

"Marianne has never answered my letter," she said. "You knew I had written?"

"No," he replied. "I did not. What had you to say to Marianne?"

"I wrote to beg her earnestly once more to change her mind, and pay us a visit. We do wish her to come."

"What good would it do?" His question vexed Judith. Why could he not help her at least to shut her eyes to a change in their relation each had to know of, yet to seem, in self-defence, to ignore the other's knowledge of? He evidently had no intention of doing so.

"What good?" she repeated. "What an odd way of putting it, Scroop! Why--of course--only that it would be pleasant, and that we should be glad to have her! I always feel that I should like to know her better, for my own part." Her pique at his want of tact had been a bracing stimulus, and enabled her to put their talk more on its old footing. The subdued tone gave place to what was almost like that of those thoughtless, unembarrassed groups they were drawing so near to. How free from care everyone else does seem when one meets him out!

Of course, she threw off their late conversation--washed her hands of it--quicker than he could. But by the time they came within hearing of the nearest group, and heard the word denominational, and knew thereby that religious education was under discussion, Challis had shaken off the gloom or distraction that made his answer ring so false: "You are kindness itself to Marianne. I wish she were more tractable." Those were his words. They had sounded rather civil than true or heart-felt. But behind them, inexplicably, was a feeling akin to gratitude to Judith, who had somehow made it easier to his mind to go back to Marianne without a shock. Not that it would have been good form in him to acknowledge it!

In the pre-Shakespearian days of Love, did ever a King Solomon, we wonder, feel grateful to the last Hareem capture for a courtesy shown to a disused, tolerated survival of other days?

Challis was intercepted by the group of heated discutients, saturated with religious education. Judith passed on without looking at him, merely referring to the abstract truth, "There is tea," and leaving his teawardness to develope itself at leisure, or die of neglect. The huge boarhound left a sweet biscuit to meet her, and after exchanging a few words and a kiss, made believe that he had found her in the wilderness, and brought her in safety to refreshments, which it was distinctly understood that he was to share.

The conclave on religious education, like Polly's employers after Sukey had taken the kettle off again--presumably--had all had tea, and were horridly indifferent about anyone else going without.

They were confident they might rely on Mr. Challis's impartiality to distinguish between things that to the casual observer might seem identical; to assign due weight to considerations which the superficial observer would overlook; and to sift and examine evidence which the prejudiced observer would be only too prone to reject.

Mr. Challis, appealed to to give an impromptu casting-vote on a variety of subjects, felt impartial and flattered. He could only contribute, he said, an absolute freedom from bias on the question of religious education. He regretted his total absence of information, the possession of which, in however small a degree, always adds weight to the decisions of the most unbiassed judgment. However, it soon became clear that all that was asked of him was that he should listen impartially to all three disputants, and hold his tongue sine die while they talked sixteen to the dozen. As he was not in a humour for talking, he had no objection to this.

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Chapter XXVIII

THE BRITISH HOUSEKEEPER. HOW MRS. ELDRIDGE CAME INSTEAD OF TO-MORROW. HER ADVICE. TELEGRAPH GIRLS. A FRENCHWOMAN'S IDEAS. HOW THE CAT GOT NO SLEEP. HOW MARIANNE POSTED A CIVIL SORT OF LETTER IN THE PILLAR-BOX, AND WAS SORRY

In the absence of Master Bob at Rugby, and of his father with those Royd people in the country, Mrs. Challis had a quiet time in the Hermitage. She was able to keep housekeeping at bay by ordering in a joint for the family to prey on slowly for three days or thereabouts; after which Mrs. Steptoe had to help her to think of what to have in. Marianne sat still and bit a pen-stick, while Mrs. Steptoe remarked at intervals, "You see, as I say, ma'am, it isn't as if there was anything in the house."

When Aunt Stingy had done this two or three times, her mistress indicated the nature of the problem to be dealt with; saying, as a contented giraffe might have done, "I don't want another neck."

Mrs. Steptoe advanced a cautious suggestion: "You don't take to liver, ma'am?" Mrs. Challis did not; that was flat! But a piece for the kitchen was a different thing. Just as you liked! Mrs. Steptoe said in a soothing manner, "A nice little bit of liver!" and that was settled.

Should anyone not accustomed to these islands ask why the question of one day's rations should be approached as though it had been raised for the first time in the history of mankind, no answer can be given in the present state of human knowledge. All that can be said is that an equivalent interview is going on in most households of the natives every other morning, or thereabouts.

In time stimulated perspicuity saw a light. Shrewd discriminative subtlety was on Aunt Stingy's face as she said, "Why not the fowl to-day, ma'am, and stand the joint over for a day or two? Because in this briling weather it is that liable to smell faint!" Marianne cogitated deeply, turning the pencil in her mouth; then said, "If we were to have Mrs. Eldridge to-day instead of to-morrow.... It doesn't matter which, because Mr. Eldridge won't be back till Wednesday." This will not bear close analysis; but Marianne was not pricking pins at a tissue, and all purposes were answered. When the children went out for their walk, they brought back word that Mrs. Eldridge would "come instead of to-morrow." And that is how on this particular Monday evening these two ladies are agreeing that this coffee is too strong, and there's no hot water, and the more florid one of the two is saying that she must speak to Steptoe about it.

The heat of the weather tells differently on them, which has to do with our epithet for Marianne's complexion. Charlotte's look is rather sallower than usual, as she leans back fanning the full lids of her half-closed eyes. She is not bad-looking, certainly--must have been very graceful when she was a girl.

The coffee-incident must have interrupted a conversation, for the sound of resumption is in Charlotte's remark as she sips it. "I should write" is what she says.

"Which to? Him or her?"

"Her. No!--him. I should write to him."

"Which do you mean?"

"Him."

"I don't know what to say."

"What you've been saying to me just now."

"Nonsense, Charlotte! How can you talk such stuff?"

"Well!--I should." After which neither lady spoke for awhile, but seemed to be thinking over points raised. Marianne uneasily, and even with an occasional impatient jerk, resented as selfish by a cat asleep on her knees; Charlotte introspectively, but as one enjoying some internal satisfaction.

Presently Marianne spoke, looking curiously at her friend, as though she suspected this concealed something. "I wish you would say plainly what you mean, Charlotte," she said.

Charlotte answered evasively. "It doesn't the least follow that what I should do you ought to do." She had on Marianne the sort of effect the ringed snake is said to have on the oriole--was sure her victim would jump down her throat if she bided her time. And if Marianne did this of her own accord, she herself would clearly be free from all complicities. For there was nothing Charlotte was so clear about in theory as that she did not wish to mix herself up in the affair; or any affair, for that matter. It was curious how frequently she found herself abstaining from getting mixed up. In this case, even when Marianne said point-blank, "But what would you do?" she still replied, "Never mind, dear! What can it matter what I should or shouldn't do?"

"Charlotte, you're unkind! At least, you're not friendly. You go in and out. First it's one thing, and then it's another. Suppose you were me, what would you do? Write to this girl, and just refuse the invitation?"

After all, Charlotte was not so very clear about what she would write. "N--no, dear!" she said. "I don't think I should write to her. I should send her a message, through him. All civility, don't you know? Couldn't leave home at present. Hope some other time. So nice of her to ask you! Best thanks. Kindest regards. That sort of thing. But writing to my husband, you know--the rule mightn't hold good for yours; I quite see that--I shouldn't mince matters."

"What does 'not mincing matters' mean? I think you might speak plain, Charlotte. Can't you say what you mean?" She puts her hand up to her head restlessly, causing her friend to ask, "Headache?" To which she replies impatiently, "Not headache!" and takes it down. Charlotte then resumes, with much implication that the use of her husband as a lay-figure franks her of responsibility.

"I should tell him plainly that if he wanted to make love to fashionable young women he might go his own way, and I could do without him perfectly well. I should let him know he's not the treasure he fancies he is."

Marianne looked unconvinced, incredulous. "Suppose he took you at your word, Charlotte!" said she.

Charlotte laughed out scornfully. "My dear woman," she said, "John's a born fool, I know. But he's not such a fool as that! He knows what he's like well enough to know that this sort of young woman is not the sort to give me a case."

"Give you a case?"

"Stupid girl!--don't you see? A case for divorce. It's plain enough to anyone who isn't a downright fool. A telegraph-girl would be quite another pair of shoes."

"I suppose I don't understand these things."

"Now, my dear Marianne, do you mean to say that if you heard that your Titus had been lunching at Jules's with Lady Thingammy What's-her-name, it wouldn't be quite different from a telegraph-girl and an ABC?" Marianne said she couldn't see any difference. But this was only her obstinacy. Charlotte continued: "Well, I should! And so would the jury. Why, I know by this--that if it was Jules's I shouldn't lose a wink of sleep about it; but if it was a telegraph-girl, I wouldn't go to Clacton-on-Sea in August and leave John alone in London. Not with my ideas, which are rather strict. Of course, one isn't a Frenchwoman or an Italian."

"What are their ideas? How should I know anything about them?"

"Do you want me to tell you anything about them, or not? That's the question.... Well, of course, one knows what a Frenchwoman's ideas are, and I suppose Italians are exactly the same." Strange to say, this shadowy suggestion in a dropped voice, to fend off the dangers of empty space, seems to convey a distinct impression to its hearer, for she says, "Suppose they are, what then?" and the reply is, "Well--I suppose you wouldn't want us to do as they do! Would you?"

Mrs. John Eldridge possessed in the very highest degree the faculty of making it understood, by slight inflections and modulations of voice, by pauses in the right place, by gestures the shrewdest eyesight could not swear to, though the dullest could never remain in ignorance of them, that a lady and gentleman were engaging her attention. She had manipulated the subject in hand by a dexterous introduction of the Latin races, who are notoriously immoral, until a halo of profligacy had encircled her friend's husband and his aristocratic acquaintance. Marianne kicked in her soul against all suggestions of the kind, but with a misgiving that her friend knew more about "this sort of thing" than she herself did. This, too, she strove to keep under, not to allow Titus, whom she believed incapable of the part Charlotte's management would have assigned to him, to be attired for it in the cast-off garments of some reprobate of the Parisian stage.

"I can't see what the ways of French people have to do with the matter. When I said what I did just now I wasn't thinking of that sort of thing."

"Then, dear, perhaps you'll tell me what you were thinking of. Because I can't make out, for the life of me." This came rather coldly from Charlotte.

"It's very simple. I meant that if Titus is tired of me, I had just as soon that he should go away to someone else. And so I would--just as soon. S-s-sooner!" If Marianne had stopped on the penultimate word, there might have been no breakdown. But it came, with the intensification of her courageous little falsehood; came in the stereotyped course one knows so well--first, the failure of the lips to be still, then the quickened breath, and then the final irrepressible tears. Then the beseeching to be left alone--only just for one minute!... all will be right in a minute, only don't speak to me, please! Go on talking!

"There!--I've been a fool, and I'm sorry." As she said this, Mrs. Challis returned to her pocket a handkerchief that had dried her tears, certainly, but had finished by taking a very unpoetical part in the transaction. The cat, bored by her demonstrativeness, had left her lap for a short stretch on the rug, and now returned with returning quiet.

Mrs. Eldridge took a base advantage. "No, dear!--you're very, very brave about it. I know just what I should feel myself. Any woman would feel exactly as you do.... Oh no, dear!--of course we both thoroughly understand. There's nothing really wrong, and nobody is to be suspected of anything."

"You don't see what--I--mean!" said Marianne. "You never have, Charlotte. But it ought to be simple enough. You don't suppose I think Titus isn't to be trusted away from my apron-strings after all the years I've known him."

"I don't know, dear. Don't ask me! Men are men. However, if you can trust him, I don't see what you want."

"I can want a great deal, and I do. I want him not to care about other people more than his own home."

"You want him not to care so much about this girl? Isn't that it?"

"In a certain sense, yes!"

"Very well, dear. Perhaps if there are more senses than one in the business, you'll tell me what they are. According to me, a man either cares for a girl, or he doesn't. I can't see any half-way."

"I can see heaps of half-ways. What I mean is, when he takes more pleasure in her society than he does in...."

"In his wife's? I don't see that we don't mean the same thing, so far."

"Then I don't mean that at all, but something else. What is the use of talking if you always twist what I say round?" Marianne is like a witness in the hands of a clever counsel, but with an advantage. If the witness resorts to the use of a bludgeon against the legal rapier, the Court interposes to protect his assailant. There was no Court in Marianne's case.

Charlotte retreated into the entrenchments of forbearance. "I don't want to quarrel, dear!" she said. "Suppose you write the letter!"

"To her?"

"To him. Do it now! You may just as well." None the less, Charlotte was surprised--only she didn't show it--when Marianne shook off the re-established cat, and rose to go to the writing-table. The cat, this time disgusted beyond words, stretched herself, and weighed the comforts of divers corners available. Mrs. Eldridge could have afforded one, but decided that cats were too hot in this weather. So Pussy had to be content with an angle in sofa-cushions.

The long-expiring light of the summer evening had been good to talk by, but enough of it was not left for letter-writing. Nevertheless, Mrs. Challis wouldn't ring for the lamp. Candles would do, she said. And having lighted them, she sat down to write.

A fly had perished in the ink since it was last used, and had to be coaxed out gradually, legs having got left behind by the first drags employed. Also, the pens--so described--consisted of a single example, which was a very long pen with diabolical corrugations at its shoulder, and a terrible sharp point. It refused to write on any terms, and on examination was proved to consist of one widowed nib, a source of despair to the scribe. There were no other pens; at least, Harmood had put them somewhere. Never mind!--there was a fountain-pen that did perfectly if you dipped it in the ink. It was really a lot better that way, because then you didn't inky your fingers all over. The experience of many among us is that escritoires are strewn with writing materials of these sorts, especially the last.

However, there was no doubt of the fountain-pen, once its haughty spirit could be curbed and induced to submit to the position of a mere agent. And the sounds of writing come presently from the writing-table, mixed with the curses of its occupant, who presently discovers that she has been writing on a sheet with a "limerick" on the back.

"Never mind. Let's see how far you've written." Mrs. Eldridge stretches her fingers out to receive the letter without taking her eyes off a paragraph she is reading in a Daily Mail. She holds the letter till she has finished, then reads it, and gives an immediate verdict. "You can't send that," she says.

"And why not?" asks Marianne, a little nettled at this rather cavalier treatment of her effort. But she knows she has not the courage to rebel, not having a particle of faith in her powers of composition.

"You can't say, 'Your Miss Arkroyd has written to me, and I won't come, and you know perfectly well why.'"

"Why not?"

"My dear!... However, do if you like."

"Well, then--I shall." This was mere bluster, of which Charlotte took no notice.

"And you can't say: 'You know I am not wanted, and both of you will be wishing me somewhere else all the while.' Simply impossible!"

"I cannot see the impossibility. Titus would be in a panic about what I should say next. I hate their rooms, full of people. They always make me nervous."

Charlotte sees that interpretation down to her companion's level is necessary. "Rooms-full have nothing to do with it," she says. "He will think you meant you would be de trop."

"Well, and what does that mean?"

Charlotte coughed explanatorily. "It is only used under circumstances of three," she says, not without obscurity. And then adds, as a full light on the subject: "One has to go."

"Same as 'two's company and three's none,' I suppose? But why French?"

"It means more. There are niceties." And this lady seems to keep back a suggestion that these niceties are beyond her friend's range of French. She goes on with a roused attention, having glanced farther on as she spoke last, absently. "And, my dear, look here! You can't possibly send this: 'Why can't we agree each to go our own way? Lots of people don't go about everywhere in couples.' You can't send that!"

"Well, Charlotte, I shall send that, and I think you're ridiculous. Why shouldn't I send it when I mean it? If Titus would only not worry about, and think it his duty to say things, these people wouldn't want me. Why should they? And then perhaps we should have an end of complaining about Steptoe's gravy. I'm simply sick of it all." And Mrs. Challis taps with her foot, and shows a feverish irritability.

Charlotte keeps well on her higher level. "My dear Marianne, you are the most unworldly baby! Don't you see the interpretation that might be put--I don't say your Titus would put it, but he might--on 'Why can't we agree, et cetera?' If I were to say such a thing to John, it would be a telegraph-girl directly."

Marianne flushes angrily. "Charlotte! How often have I said to you that I hate you when you draw comparisons between Titus and your John! It might be fifty telegraph-girls with him, but I know Titus well enough to know...."

"Oh!" A slight interjection, but it checks Marianne half-way.

"At any rate, he has never deceived me about anything of this sort." The flush is vanishing.

"Not exactly of this sort--no!" Now, Charlotte had been watching her opportunity to say this, having noted that the effect produced by Mrs. Steptoe's story had been falling into abeyance, owing to the subsidence of a policy of pin-pricks between Mr. and Mrs. Challis, in view of his pending visit to Royd, and still more in consequence of a sufficiently affectionate farewell at his departure. Marianne had in fact been gradually minimising the incident, and was on her way towards asking Titus straightforwardly for an explanation, as, of course, she ought to have done at first.

It is quite possible Mrs. Eldridge might have kept this card up her sleeve if Marianne had not nettled her by the way she spoke of her John. She may have provoked it; but did that matter? She was not going to let anyone else pelt him. Anyhow, she played the card, and, glancing up at Marianne, had reason to be satisfied with the effect it had produced.

Marianne may have known she looked white, and wished for darkness to hide it, for she blew both candles out, and returned to her seat with her back to the window. The cat sighed, as lamenting the selfishness of mortals, and resumed her old place, now again available, with a pretence of magnanimity.

"I shall copy that letter on a clean sheet, and send it." The darkness seemed to give the speaker fortitude.

"Go your own way, dear! I've done my best." Mrs. Eldridge claimed freedom from responsibility.

"You know, I suppose, that I spoke to mamma about that Steptoe nonsense--the photograph?"

"No, I didn't. What did she say?"

"Said it was all sheer impossibility. Said Steptoe had been turning the cupboards over when we were away at Easter, and cooked it all up."

"That won't do us any good. How did Steptoe know the name of the coal-merchant?"

"Saw it on the back of the photo, mamma says."

"And how did she know the name Verrall?"

"Because it's Bob's second name. Besides, it's on a brass plate on Kate's old portmanteau in the trunk-room."

"I can't say I think that accounts for anything." Mrs. Eldridge pointed out two or three weak points in Mrs. Craik's explanation, and condemned it as worthless. She was wrong. The explanation was a good one per se, but, like so many explanations, taxed human powers of belief more than the thing it explained. However, no one who has the faculty of selecting his creeds ever stickles about the trouble one will give him. He only thinks of the advantages it will bring with it.

"Perhaps it doesn't explain. That's what mamma said, anyhow." Thus Marianne, as if it didn't matter much, either way. Then, more convincedly: "I don't believe Steptoe is lying, because I can't see what she has to gain by it. Besides, I pulled the photo out of the passe-partout, and it was gummed in, and the name on the back."

"Did you say so to your mother?"

"Yes, and she said I must have been mistaken, because, if not, the story would have been true."

"I can't see"--Mrs. Eldridge is talking reflectively, introspectively--"I cannot see why your husband did not tell you all about it! Suppose your sister was married to this man first, I don't see that it was any such hanging matter. Unless...."

"Unless what?"

"Well!--nothing, dear. That is, perhaps I oughtn't to say...."

"Charlotte!--that's you all over! You know you're wanting to say all the time. Do speak out and have done with it!" Marianne got up uneasily, and walked from place to place in the room. The cat went back to the sofa cushion, and resumed her task of getting a little sleep.

Charlotte means to say, in time. Trust her! "You know, dear Marianne, that all this is the merest speculation. We really know nothing! And ten to one, when you do speak of it to Titus, he'll be able to clear it all up. Besides, after all, it could only be the sort of thing that's always happening, and one says nothing about it as long as the parties get married afterwards...."

Marianne interrupts stormily. "Will you have the goodness, Charlotte, to tell me what you mean, and not beat about the bush? You can't mean that poor Kate...."

"I can't tell you anything, dear, if you get so excited (Your hair's coming undone. A pin?--here's one.) Remember, I'm only mentioning this as one of the possibilities, and I don't suppose it's true. But if it were ever so true, I don't see that it would be anything to fly out about. After all these years!... Will I tell you what I mean? Yes, dear, if you'll be quiet and listen."

"Will you go on?"

Mrs. Eldridge braces herself up to consecutive narrative, as in response to unreasonable impatience. "There was a marriage. That's understood--I mean your sister's with her first husband. And it was kept dark...."

"I wish you wouldn't talk as if it was the Criminal Classes. Go on!"

"I can't if you interrupt. Well!--Mr. Challis was quite a young man then, and a friend of the first husband's, and she was young. You see?"

"I see their youngness would make it all the worse, instead of better. If it was true! But it isn't." At this point Marianne gives up the attempt to engineer the hairpin. "Can't you stop stopping, Charlotte, and go on?"

Charlotte deserts the extreme of deliberation for irritating rapidity and conciseness. "The first husband may have been anything, for anything we know of him. Only, there must have been a reason for their parting, if you think of it. Within a few months! Now suppose--don't be in a rage, Marianne dear, it doesn't do any good!--suppose your husband was the reason! Of course, he would never tell you, if Kate never did...."

"I was a child!"

"I don't think anything of that. Children are easier to tell than half-grown-up people. Remember, too, as time went on, how much harder it would get to tell. Fancy his beginning to speak of it! How would he? Come, Marianne!" And Marianne's silence admitted that she felt the difficulty her husband would have had in publishing for private circulation an early transgression of his own--and Bob's mother, please! It may all have been, and yet Titus may have done rightly to let bygones be bygones. That was her thought at the moment, but it jumped gladly at leave to go when further speech of Charlotte's brought a respite: "Of course, the obstacle to accounting for it this way is the divorce. It seems impossible there should have been a divorce, and your mother never heard of it!"

"Why, of course, Charlotte! What nonsense it all is!" Marianne is greatly relieved. But we must not halloa before we are out of the wood. Charlotte had a reservation:

"Only there's just one thing--I'm afraid I must shock you, Marianne; only, mind you, I don't believe for a moment that it's true--just one thing, and that is ... yes!--I'm going on ... that is, that there may have been no need for a divorce. You see?"

She doesn't, evidently. For, after a moment's consideration, she says: "If there was no need for a divorce, why drag Titus in? What nonsense, Charlotte!" She is breathing freely over it--too freely.

"No, dear--not that way! You don't understand." A pause to get a clear start. "Your sister Kate and this man were supposed to be lawfully married. At least, the coal-merchant and his wife must have thought so. But suppose they were not! Don't you see, dear"--this very gently, not to tax her hearer overmuch--"don't you see that then no divorce would have been necessary?"

"You puzzle me so, Charlotte! Do stop and let me think. Say it again." She opened to the full a window partly raised for the heat, and found the sweet air from the Common grateful. For her head had become hot, and her lips were dry.

Charlotte followed her last instruction, by choice. "Try to imagine, dear, for instance, that your sister had been entrapped into a false marriage by this man, and that he discarded her because he was jealous of your husband. You know if he had grounds for his jealousy your husband might be bound in honour to keep silence--especially to her own sister. And then consider!--they were married afterwards."

It was beginning to dawn on Mrs. Challis that in the little drama her friend's imagination had constructed her husband figured as a licentious youth, a traitor to his friend; and a dissimulator, when he was posing at her mother's house as an honourable suitor to her sister, his only redeeming feature being his constancy to the girl of whose second betrayal he was the guilty author. While, as for that young woman herself!... Marianne's whole soul recoiled from the semblance of an indiscriminate liaison-monger with which Charlotte had not scrupled to clothe her. The intrinsic impossibility of associating such an image with her sister made her feel as though she really disposed of the whole question when she said, with perfect naïveté, "But this was Kate!"

How perfectly clear and exhaustive! That was Kate--or would have been had there been any truth in the tale--and Kate was her grown-up sister in the early days when her father was living, and they were a household. That was our Kate that was just thinking about being a young lady when she herself, Marianne, was just beginning to take intelligent notes of her surroundings--our Kate that knew how to play the piano and had a governess--our Kate that became one herself in a modest way when father died, and it turned out that Uncle Barker had invested her mother's settlement money in himself, contrary to the behests of the Lord Chancellor. How in Heaven's name could a thing one knew as a girl, unlengthened, become an immoral, unprincipled woman, like in books and newspaper-paragraphs! Absurd!

And yet--may not this be a question as hard for us to answer as poor, slow, middle-class, muddle-headed Marianne? Look at it from the other side! How many reprobates, dashing and otherwise, may there not be who began good and sweet, and kept so till they became bad and putrid--can even look back, from the gutter their last stage of decay is on the watch to defile, on a spell of blameless maturity? That ill-complexioned thing that thought it was singing as it reeled from the pothouse door but now, was once--maybe--a savoury little maid enough, with a sweetheart. What if he saw her at this moment?--saw the passers-by shrink from her and leave her a clear pavement?--heard the mock approval of London humour, seasoned to the shameful sight, and unashamed, "Go it, old Sairah"?

The story disclaims imputing all these thoughts to Marianne, or any of them. But the sum and gist of them came out--just as clearly, maybe more so--in those four words, "But this was Kate."

She turned from the window and looked her friend full in the face, in return for "What if it was?"--which was the answer she got. She felt angry with Charlotte, who, for all her profession of belief that her surmises were probably baseless, seemed to be always supporting the one that ascribed most lawlessness to her husband and sister.

"What if it was?" said she. "Everything if it was." She couldn't argue to save her life. But she dealt with dialectical difficulties in a method of her own that was quite as effectual. This time it told forcibly.

"Don't blaze out at me like that, Marianne," said the enemy. "I can't help it. I suppose everyone was somebody's Kate once--even Jezebel and Judas Iscariot!" The selection sounded trenchant, and no Biblical critic was at hand. "Besides, as I said, it wasn't a hanging matter, at the worst."

"I thought you said you were strict, Charlotte."

"So I am. But this sort of thing does take place, and one knows it, and I don't see the use of going on nagging for ever." Marianne's religious feelings prompted her towards pointing out that the Almighty might not subscribe to this view, but she was not quick enough. Charlotte continued: "And how a girl who knows nothing can know if a ceremony's done correctly is more than I can tell. Look at vaccination--all the little ivories exactly alike! Why, you may be vaccinated from a mad bull and never be a penny the wiser!"

Any metaphor or analogy makes Marianne's head go round, and she still keeps silence. Charlotte ends with consolation: "And when you come to think of it, if they weren't correctly married, it was all to the good."

"What on earth you mean, Charlotte. I cannot imagine!"

"Well, dear!--I should have thought anyone would spot that at once. Even John saw that! Of course, if the first marriage was irregular, there was no breach of the Seventh Commandment." Marianne felt a distinct relief from one of the nightmare apprehensions about her husband's past that Charlotte's ingenious speculations had aroused. She and her friend shared with a large section of the respectable World, strict and otherwise, the idea that trespassers who jump over a wedding-ring fence should be prosecuted, while poachers on unenclosed property may escape with a caution.

But her mind was not capable of more than one idea at a time, and in dwelling on this remission of the imputations against him, she quite forgot that the theory of a victimization of Kate by her first husband, if it did not acquit him of any indiscretion towards her sister, at any rate altered all the circumstances under which the indictment was framed. If there was no divorce, why select a co-respondent? Marianne just missed the important point. Out of the chaotic cross-questionings of the mystery she emerged with one false fixed idea, that her husband's reason for concealing the story must have been his desire to draw a veil over that Brighton period before his pretended courtship and marriage. Mrs. Eldridge encouraged this idea.

"I hope you see now, dear, what I mean about the letter," said she, after some more talk, embodying the foregoing, more or less. She pulled the letter from under the cat, who had lain down on it, and read again: "'You know I am not wanted, and both of you will be wishing me somewhere else all the while.' I'm sure I'm right in saying you can't send that. If it was all innocence and Paul and Virginia and Jenny and Jessamy and Arcadian shepherds, I dare say! But, with that story not cleared up! My dear Marianne, do be a little a woman of the World.... Isn't that my cab?"

Marianne said drearily: "I think so. They'll tell us." Because, although Mrs. Eldridge made things worse for her every time she spoke, she clung to her as the only person in her confidence--for she restrained her communications to her mother--and as one for whose knowledge of the mysterious thing called "the World" she had always had a superstitious reverence. So, when Harmood announced the advent of the cab--in cypher, as it were; for she merely said, "Adcock, for Mrs. Eldridge, ma'am"--she was sorry.

"It is Adcock," said Mrs. Eldridge; and Harmood would bring her things down to save her going upstairs, and did so. During Harmood's absence the conversation could be rounded off and wound up.

"Am I to send the letter or not?" said Marianne. This was concession, for had she not flounced her intention of sending it in Mrs. Eldridge's face half-an-hour ago?

"Do as you like, dear! But I hope you won't. That's all I can say. Now good-night!" Charlotte's lips are extended as towards a farewell kiss; her hands tell well, anticipating embrace, and all her suggestions are graceful--as a lady's may be, who terminates musically in skirts.

But Marianne wants a straight tip for that letter.

"What am I to say, then?" says she doggedly. "I must write."

"Say what I told you, dear! So sorry--too much wanted at home to be able to come away just now--hope to see Miss Arkroyd ... or Judith, if you call her Judith ... in town before she goes away for good. Just a civil-letter sort of business! Don't you see how much better it will be yourself?" Harmood has come again, and is tendering a shroud from behind. Two hands accept it gracefully over each shoulder, and it abets the music of the skirts.

"I suppose it will," says Marianne doubtfully, and they go out to where Mr. Adcock awaits them. And then either of them who desires to do so may study the relations to one another of a very civil man with a flavour you would pronounce beer if encouraged by an expert; a four-wheeler he has to bang the door of--you are no good!--or it wouldn't shut; a horse that wants to be at home, and a summer moon doing its level best to make some birch-trees down the road look like silver. It is overhead, and you have to crane your neck to look at it.

Mrs. Challis did so, but saw nothing in it to make her eyes and lips less dry and hot. She returned to the drawing-room, and told Harmood not to shut the shutters; she would herself ultimately. Whereupon Harmood asked whether she would like anything. And being told she would like nothing else, thank you! said good-night, and was soon after audible passing upstairs with the plate, and not being absolutely cordial with Mrs. Steptoe.

Did Charlotte know how miserable she was making her? So thought the poor lady to herself as she looked out at the persevering moon. She felt feverish--and revengeful. Not with Charlotte, of course; a little aggravated, perhaps--that was all! But this girl--this Judith, with her insolent beauty and her knowledge of its power! This anxiety that she should go to Royd--what was it worth? Was she asked because it was so clear the invitation would never be accepted, or because she was wanted to cover the position? One or the other, or something like it--no good or honourable motive!... Oh no!--nothing dishonourable, of course, in that sense--so Marianne reasoned with herself--but there were distinctions of honour and dishonour in higher strata of morality, above the gutter-ethics Charlotte would always be harping on. And yet!--suppose there had been any truth in that Steptoe legend, with the worst interpretations on it, might not Titus have concealed another self all along? He had concealed something: that she knew. Why not many things? Why not everything?

The condemned letter was not altogether judicious, but its very errors of judgment might have led to plain speech, recrimination, a storm, and a reconciliation. Anything would have been better, as the result showed, than an ill constructed epistle Marianne wrote in the end, a message for her husband to pass on to Miss Arkroyd much on the lines Charlotte had suggested. Too many words for a message, too few for a letter from any wife to a husband under circumstances where brevity might be ascribed to pique. In which, too, she could not bring herself to the point of saying she hoped to see Miss Arkroyd, either in town or elsewhere, because she didn't. She hated Judith, but would not confess the reason to herself. So the letter worked out as nothing but a cold and civil message, refusing a very cordially written invitation. And it was all the worse that it contained a few lines in answer to Titus's last--not an unaffectionate epistle, written promptly on the evening of his arrival. But Marianne was a truthful person when her back was up, and wasn't going to tell any lies when candour tasted sweet in her mouth. So she indulged in a word or two of postscript on the back of the letter, and didn't quite like it when re-read. But really the text was just as bad without it. Look at the chilly "My dear Alfred," and "yr: aff: wife"! She fought off her vacillation, helped by a glance at Judith's letter and an allusion to her "dear husband"; closed the envelope, directed and stamped it, feeling determined, while she knew under the skin that she was wrong, and showing a proper spirit.

Then, possessed by her evil genius, she must needs go downstairs, undo the front door and walk out in the sweet moonlight to the red pillar-box only a few paces off, that was so convenient. Then, when she had heard the letter fall to the bottom of the empty box, past hope, past help, past cure, she was sorry. Then she called herself a coward and went back to bed. But she felt like a criminal as she pushed open the door she had left unhasped.

What a many miscarriages proper spirits have to answer for!

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Chapter XXIX

HOW CHALLIS MET LIZARANN IN SOCIETY. OF A LECTURE THE RECTOR READ CHALLIS, AND ITS EFFECT ON HIS IMAGE OF MARIANNE. HOW HE HADN'T BEEN TO ASHCROFT. IT WAS AN UNSATISFACTORY LETTER THAT!

The persistent self-absorption and stunning monotonous clatter of one's fellow-creatures, however execrable it may seem when one wants to predominate over them by the legitimate employment of one's superior gifts--without shouting, you know!--may be not unwelcome when one longs for an excuse for silence, as Challis did after that unsettling interview with Judith--silence, and a little time to think things over before any further speech with the source of his disquiet. The more row other people were making, the better! This feeling was quite consistent with susceptibility to a magnetism which needed some device to veil its nature. He would call it tea, for the nonce, anyhow. He made tea the pretext to escape from his position of arbiter without rights of speech, and left the disputants, promising to return forthwith, and meaning to break his promise.

He made the most of the hundred yards to the tea-camp, nodding remotely to casuals by the way. He looked for an excuse to avoid joining the group at headquarters, who appeared at his distance off to be discoursing brilliantly, interestedly, on absorbing topics, with smiles. He knew they were talking nonsense about nothing particular, and was glad to find his excuse in Athelstan Taylor and his sister-in-law, who had joined the party, bringing with them their own little girls and the small cockney waif in blue, whose aunt was Mrs. Steptoe. That was how our Lizarann presented herself to Mr. Challis.

"I like you better than your aunt," said that gentleman candidly, when Lizarann was introduced.

"So do I," replied Lizarann. But this answer, clear as its meaning was to all sympathetic souls, was taken exception to by the Rector's sister-in-law.

"What can the unintelligible child mean by that?" said she. "Because you are unintelligible, you know you are, Lizarann!"

"Yass, please!" said Lizarann. And then she felt when people laughed that she was being treated like a child, which at her age was absurd.

Miss Caldecott, the sister-in-law, was one of those tiresome people who are always forming grown-up Leagues against children, and making it distinctly understood that these leagues, though ready to stoop to the level of children's understanding, do so under protest, and with reservations as to their own superiority. Miss Caldecott paraded hers, greatly to Lizarann's umbrage, in the tone in which she said, "We do not yet know, my dear, that Mr. Challis has an aunt"; into which tone she contrived to infuse a suggestion of respect for Challis's family, even if the previous generations consisted only of the direct line.

Challis refused to be taken into the League. To avoid it he stated that he had more aunts than was really the case. He went further, and ascribed to one of them attributes that have surely never belonged to any person's aunt. She had, he said, a front, and lived on tea-leaves, which came out on her person as a kind of stiff black net which he had the impudence to say he believed was never removed at night.

Lizarann recalled a like experience which she thought would bear repetition.

"Bridgetticks," she said, in a loud, outspoken way that commanded an audience, "she's a hunkle comes out a Sundays and Schristmas Day, and gold trimmings to his coat, and brarse buttons, and Bridgetticks, she could count up eight and two behind."

"You must try to say 'uncle,' my dear, not 'hunkle,'" said Miss Caldecott, which Lizarann did, meekly, with an impression that perhaps she had claimed too much for Old Shakey, which was the old man's bye-name in Tallack Street, where he appeared at intervals. She had used the "h" to give an adventitious force of character to the tremulous relic of better days she was referring to. She wished him to be thought of as resolute, without presenting him in the aspect of a swashbuckler.

"What do you make of him, Rector?" asked Challis.

"I know all about him. At least, Gus knows." Athelstan Taylor had appropriated a camp stool, that he might accommodate Lizarann and his younger daughter on his knees. He looked round at his sister-in-law. "Don't you remember, my dear? Gus told us about him. A sort of old pensioner chap!"

Miss Caldecott remembered him, primly. "Not very sober, I fear!" said she.

Lizarann joined in the conversation. "Wunst you get him inside of the bust," she said, "the sconductor keeps his eye upon him. Yass!--All the way to Stockwell." Lizarann's confidence that her hearers knew the world had something very pretty and touching about it.

But Miss Caldecott, as the exponent of the League--which no one had asked her to form--checkmated Bridgetticks's relative. "We won't talk any more about him now, my dear," she said. The smallest shade passed over the Rector's face. However, it didn't matter for him. He could tickle Lizarann slightly, thanks to his position of vantage, and thus avoid being misunderstood.

With Challis it was otherwise. The effect upon his mind of the action of the League was that he now felt that Bridget's disreputable uncle was absolutely the only topic of conversation possible. He tried in vain to remember that anything else existed in the Universe.

"Mayn't we hear more about Miss Hicks's family?" said he, with some sense of proposing a compromise--not to run counter to the feeling of the League, as it were. Miss Caldecott said something confidentially to Space about not encouraging the child too much.

But she did not understand the earnestness and good faith of the said child. Lizarann had no suspicion that the gentleman's anxiety to know about her friend's connection was sheer affectation, and hastened to supply particulars. She proceeded to sketch the Hicks family, laying stress as much as possible on the excellence of its motives and the sobriety of its demeanour.

"Bridgetticks," she said, "she spinched her finger in the jam of the door, and felt it a week after in her shoulder-j'int. Yass--she did! And Mr. 'Icks, he don't take nothing till after gone twelve o'clock, and then mostly at meals. And Mrs. 'Icks, she never touches anything. Only then she never has scarcely no rheumatic pains to speak of."

"You see that point, Challis?" said the Rector parenthetically, in a quick undertone, over the heads of the two young ladies. "What Mr. 'Icks does touch is part of a course of treatment for rheumatism." Challis nodded the completeness of his understanding, and then the little girl Phoebe, who was listening with gravity, leaning on the shoulder of her father, said, "And then say why!"

Lizarann, prompted, continued, "Yass--she hasn't! Because of the nature of the suds. Because she's over her elbers all day, and can't roll nothin' up high enough, not to keep dry. And Dr. Ferris, he puts it down to the lump soda." An inquiring look of Challis's produced the additional information. "Yass!--you can buy it at the oilshop just acrost the road from the Robin Hood. Only it comes to less by the quarter-hundredweight." All this did the greatest credit to Lizarann's power of storing information.

But the League had been tolerating this sort of thing too long, and its Secretary or Solicitor--whichever Miss Caldecott was--struck in with, "Perhaps we've talked qui-ite enough now about Bridget Hicks and her family, my dear! We mustn't trespass too much on Mr. Challis's good-nature." Suspicion of the sinister intentions of the League gleamed in Lizarann's eye; for she disbelieved in its representative, while admitting her goodness. She might have ignored her intrusion if it had not been that the extraordinary sensitiveness of childhood to impressions that never penetrate the thick hide of manhood made her detect in Challis's disclaimer an understanding between himself and the League--one that civility had dictated reference to on his part, but that he would have preferred to conceal. Now Lizarann might have fallen back disconcerted on silence, even on tears, had it not been for Athelstan Taylor's keen understanding of children, and the supreme necessity for not letting them know allowances are being made for them. He said, with great presence of mind and an appearance of absolute sincerity: "Old Mrs. Fox sells it--where your Daddy lives, Lizarann. She'll let you have twopenny-worth if you say it's for me. So mind you bring it on with you when you come home." For Lizarann was to call on her Daddy on her way back from this visit. The Rector added that he should like old Christopher to try it, and this confirmed Lizarann's belief in his bona fides. She would not have believed his sister-in-law, who, with the best intentions, had been unfortunate enough to incur unpopularity by throwing doubt on the Flying Dutchman. This was her chief offence; but she had also questioned the accuracy of the surgical reports of the boy Frederick Hawkins, and other minor matters. So that Lizarann, while she acknowledged her kindness, took a low view--but secretly--of her intelligence.

When the children had gone away dutifully to play, discussing by the way such things as might be played at with advantage, the Rev. Athelstan said, "Now I must be getting home, or I shall be late for Mrs. Silverton." Said Mr. Challis: "Then I'll walk with you, Rector; I don't want any tea." Said the Rector: "Then I'll wait till you've had it," and waited. Presently they were walking through the long grass, overfield, having said little till the Rector spoke, as one who resumes conversation in earnest:

"What was all the interesting discussion about?"

"As far as I could gather--because they all spoke at once--they agreed in condemning the measure now before the House. But that may have been merely the common form of political discussion. There must be agreement about something to establish cordiality."

"Didn't they agree about anything else?"

"I think not--as far as I recollect. But really, in listening to discussions of this sort, I find myself handicapped by not understanding any of the terms in use. I am convinced I shall die in ignorance of what Secondary Education is, and though I talk confidently of University Extension, I am painfully conscious that the meaning I attach to it is founded, not on information of any sort, but on a washy inference that it can't mean anything else. So it's quite possible our friends were agreeing about something, and I didn't catch them at it."

"What had the M.P. to say?" asked the Rector.

"What M.P.'s generally do say. Things lay in nutshells, and called aloud for decisive handling, which there was but little reason to anticipate from a venal Press and an apathetic electorate. He would not presume to arraign the judgment of any fellow-mortal, but he would venture to call our attention to several things, and to lay before us a great variety of alternatives with which it would, sooner or later, be our bounden duty to grapple. He dwelt once more, at the risk of wearying his hearers, on the necessity for dealing with each political problem, as it arose, in a truly Imperial Spirit. I believe he did touch upon some aspects of the question of religious education, but then he also said he would not dwell upon them, and proceeded to consider everything else. I have a very vague idea of his views, but I understand they were luminous."

Athelstan Taylor thought he could detect in his friend to-day rather more than usual of his spirit of careless perversity. Something was the matter. But he made no attempt to find out what, and pursued the conversation.

"It would be interesting to know what he thought."

"It would--in view of the difficulty of inferring it from what he says. Mr. Brownrigg was more intelligible."

"What did he say?"

"Brownrigg pointed out. Of course! He pointed out that the subject had been exhaustively dealt with by Graubosch in his twenty-ninth volume. The forty-eighth chapter of that volume--one of its most brilliant passages--indicates the means by which all the objects of moral and religious education can be attained, without involving the instructor of youth in the solution of a single difficult problem. Strictly speaking, all such problems will at once disappear with the abolition of Morality, Religion, and Education--changes which form a fundamental feature of the scheme of Graubosch. But each of these will be more than replaced. The Great Doctrine of Retributive Inconvenience will result, as an inevitable consequence, in the Theory of the Avoidance of Retributive Inconvenience, which will attain all the ends Morality proposes to itself, but falls very short of. Religion will cease to be a necessity to a race of beings to whom it has been pointed out in their babyhood that they will do well to comply with the Apparent Aims of the Metaphysical Check, who will supply more fully the place the human imagination has hitherto supplied with Deities so unsatisfactorily that even now monotheism is not quite agreed about their number...."

"Never mind me!" said the Rector, who thought Challis hesitated. "Go ahead!"

"Well--it was Brownrigg, you know; it wasn't me."

"It's all quite right, my dear fellow! I want to know now about the Education. Suppose a member of the human race refuses to pay any attention to the Apparent Aims of the Metaphysical Check...."

"He will come into collision, clearly, with the Doctrine of Retributive Inconvenience. In the case of young persons, on whom a certain amount of Inconvenience can be inflicted without overtaxing the Salaried Suggesters who will take the place of the so-called Educational Classes, an exact system might be formulated. Brownrigg gave as an example the case of a child refusing to comply with the System of Hypothetical Notification, under which it would be required to address propitiatory sentiments, or requests for personal benefit, to an unseen Metaphysical Check, whose hearing of the Application the Salaried Suggester might hold himself at liberty to guarantee. He might also--this was Brownrigg's point--endorse his suggestion, in the case of a child refusing to Notify, by the infliction of a certain amount of Inconvenience, tending to produce, if not an actual belief in the existence of the Metaphysical Check, at any rate a readiness to confess it, which would be for working purposes exactly the same."

The Rector shook his head doubtfully. "At present," said he, "the practice in this village is to threaten rebellious youth with the wicked fire. Would Brownrigg's substitute be as effectual?"

"You remember what he said in September--that Graubosch meant to retain the Personal Devil until the new System had had time to settle down? Just as people keep the gas on till the electric light is a certainty!"

The Rector laughed. "You'll make me as bad as yourself, Challis, before you've done." Then he became more serious. "I would give a good deal," said he, "to know what you really think on matters of this sort."

But Challis was persuading a pipe to light inside his hat, and no immediate answer came. One vesta had perished in the attempt. The second made a lurid flash on his face, in the shadow of the protecting hat, his invariable grey felt. As Athelstan Taylor looked at him, he saw again, more clearly than before, that the face was inconsistent with its owner's levity of tone two minutes since. He negatived his own impulse to ask questions, and waited. Perhaps it was part of a growing interest in his companion that made him mix with this curiosity, about what was going on inside that head, a wish to see the hat back on it. For the sun was still fierce at the end of a hot June day, and the soft brown hair the wind blew about so easily seemed to have little shelter in it for the somewhat delicate skin the blue veins made so much show on below, on the forehead.

"You would give a good deal," said Challis, when the pipe was well alight, "to know what I think about the religious education of children? So would I!" It was a disappointing ending. His hearer had expected something better.

"What have you done about your own boy?" said he, with a kind of magnanimous impatience. "Come! That's the point."

"Nothing. At least, I have sent him to Rugby, where he will be brought up a member of the Church of England."

"But before?"

"I left him to his mother--at least, his aunt.... I told you...."

"I know."

"So you observe that with respect to Master Bob I have pursued a policy of well-considered devolution of responsibility. Perhaps I should say of evasion. However, I think I may lay claim to having given my son every reasonable opportunity of believing the creeds that will best advance his interests in the world. He has had the advantage of imbibing them from a lady who enjoys the privilege of being able to believe what she chooses, and has inherited or selected the tenets of the well-to-do. He has been till lately at a preparatory Academy, where every one of the masters is in orders, and every other boy the son of a Bishop. And now he's gone to Rugby! What can a human father do more, in the name of respectability?"

"My dear Challis, if you want to make your son's education a text for a sermon against worldliness and hypocrisy, do so by all means. We have weak joints enough in our armour, God knows, for you to shoot your arrows into. But let me finish finding fault with you first."

Challis slipped his arm into the Rector's. "Go on finding fault," he said. "Don't finish too soon."

"I won't. It seems to me, my dear friend, that under cover of a complete confession you have contrived to raise issues which have nothing to do with the question before the House, which I take to be--what is a father's conscientious duty towards the child for whose existence he is partly responsible? I want to keep you to the point."

"I'm a slippery customer, I know. Go on."

"Do you, or do you not, think a parent is bound to supply a child with a religious faith? Failing the parent, is it the duty of the guardian--of the State? That seems to me to lie at the root of all questions of religious education. But our question is about the parent's duty when one exists. Exempli gratiâ, yourself and Master Bob! It seems to me that your policy was one of evasion, and that the devolution of responsibility upon your wife was a rather cowardly evasion. Especially as her responsibility could only be for her own children!"

Challis's hand pressed the arm he held a little more warmly. There was certainly no offence. "You are perfectly right, Rector," said he. "I took a mean advantage of a little local patch of obscurantism to get my boy inoculated in his youth with a popular form of Christianity, in order that his father's heretical ideas should not stand in the way of his advancement. But I lay this unction to my soul; that if ever he sees his way to a bishopric, nothing I have ever said to him need stand in his way.... Oh no!--there is no idea at present of his entering the Church. The Army is engaging his attention at this moment--and phonographs.... But go on pitching into me about cowardly evasions."

"I am afraid you are incorrigible, Challis. I can't help laughing sometimes. But for all that, I think you were wrong. You were wrong towards your wife, because, instead of helping her, you made her task difficult. What can be harder than to turn a child's mind into any channel with a strong counter-influence, as a father's must needs be, constantly at work against one's efforts?"

Challis smiled in his turn. "It was Marianne, you see," he said. "I can't express it. The position was harder to deal with than you think." He then went on to tell one or two incidents connected with Bob's early indoctrinations of the Scriptures. How, for instance, when Marianne once crushed him under, "You know perfectly well, Titus, what the words of Our Lord were," and followed it up with a quotation, he had remarked in the presence of Master Bob that at any rate Jesus Christ didn't speak English; and then she had flounced out of the room white with anger, and not spoken to him for two days; and when she did at last, it was to declare that if there was to be any more blasphemy and impiety before the boy, she should go straight away to Tulse Hill, and not come back. Also, when he once innocently remarked that he believed there was now a tram-line from Joppa to Jerusalem, she had become very violent, and accused him of speaking of Jerusalem as if it was a place in Bradshaw.

The Rector considered, and then said: "I was just going to say Mrs. Challis must be unusually ill-informed, when I happened to recollect what a number of very good people are exactly like her. In fact, a very dear old friend of mine"--he was thinking of the Rev. Mr. Fossett--"is rather shocked when he hears Our Lord spoken of as a real person; and with him it isn't exactly ignorance, because he's a priest in orders. It's a phase of mind that seems to have its source in a belief that nothing can be both Good and Actual." He stopped abruptly, as one who changes a subject. "By-the-bye, should you have said the little person looked delicate--that little Lizarann, I mean?"

Challis had stopped to think. "N-no!" he said. "On the contrary, I thought she had such a good colour." On which the Rector said, "Ah--well!" and then more cheerfully, "Well--well!--I suppose it's all right. However, we must keep our eyes open."

"Isn't the child strong? She's a funny little party."

"Why, no!--they say she isn't. Isn't strong, I mean. Never mind! What were we talking about?"

"People and Scripture, don't you know. Things being actual...."

"I know. I was just going to tell you what dear old Gus--my friend--won't forgive me for. I'll risk it. Only don't you make copy of it.... Very well!--mind you don't.... It was this. Some years ago I was urging him to marry, and he pleaded in extenuation of his celibacy that he wished to model his life on Our Lord's in every point within his power. 'It's all very fine,' I said. 'But why do you suppose the Apostles did not model their lives on Our Lord's? Do you mean that they all led celibate lives?' Gus said this was almost an insinuation that Our Lord was or had been married. I'm sorry to say I couldn't help saying, 'Can you produce a single particle of direct evidence that Our Lord was not a widower when John baptized Him?' Gus hardly spoke to me all that day. But what hurt him was the realism of the expression 'widower.' The case was exactly on all fours with your wife's."

They were just in sight of the Rectory, and Challis had to get back in time for dinner. So he shook hands with his friend, remarking: "You will go on blowing me up another time." Athelstan Taylor replied with a cordial handshake. "You deserve it, you know!" and pulled out his watch. "I shall be in time for Mrs. Silverton," said he. But who and what that lady was this story knoweth not, neither whence she came nor whither she went. But she occurs in the text for all that.

* * * * *

Challis wandered back, having intentionally allowed himself time to do so, keeping out of the direct path to avoid meeting people. He liked his own company best.

His talk with Athelstan Taylor, which else could claim little place in the story, had had a curious effect on him. It had brought back vividly his early days with his wife. As he sauntered on with his eyes on the ground, choosing rather destructively special whitey-green heads of new young fern to crush down, or cutting here and there an inoffensive flower with his stick, his ears heard nothing of the wind-music in the trees, his eyes saw nothing of the evening rabbits, popping away and vanishing one by one--for which of them could say he had no gun, off hand?--as he approached. The small village maiden who stopped and stood still through a blank bar, and dropped a semiquaver curtsey in the middle and then went on andante capriccioso, might almost as well not have been there for any notice Challis took of her. His thoughts were back in Great Coram Street, in the dingy London home this Marianne--yes! this very Marianne--made cheerful, more than cheerful, to the industrious accountant of ten years since; who parted from her each morning looking forward to the return each evening brought to the grubby domicile he associated with so many blackbeetles in the impenetrable basement, such smells of mice in spite of such much stronger smells of cats, and the wails and choral conclusions of these last in the backyard they held against all comers, in the small hours of so many foggy mornings.

How many escapes from the fog without to the firelight within could he recall, in those days when he rose from his office-desk without a dream of what he could have used his brain for, instead of those interminable figures! How many a shock of trivial disappointment to find that Missis wasn't home yet!--how many an insignificant reviving thrill of contentment when Missis's knock followed near upon his own arrival and his thwarted expectation! For now and again it must happen to a man that some woman he has no passionate love for, pedantically speaking, shall grow round his heart and make the comfort of his life. That was the sort of thing that had come to pass in the case of Marianne and Alfred Challis. And now, as he--the flattered guest of folk he then had never thought to sit at meat with--passed up the great beech-avenue to the house, respectfully saluted by a great game-keeper, a Being who, in those older years, would simply have spurned him, his thoughts had all gone back to the rosy, if rather short-tempered girl who then seemed plenty for his life, and might surely have remained so, only ... only Challis couldn't finish the sentence. Now, why was he, in his own mind, commenting a moment after on the inappropriateness of two lines of Browning that had come into it:

"... Strange, that very way Love begun! I as little understand Love's decay."

He resented their intrusion. Who would dare to say his affection for Marianne was not what it had always been? It was--he would swear it!--and that in spite of the fact that Marianne, look you, was not now what she was in those days.

How and when had the change come over things? He was on the alert to keep Judith out of the answer to this question. He must see to that, or Unfairness, that was in the air, would twist awry the admiration of her beauty that was all mankind's--womankind's, for that matter, jealousy apart!--and put a misconstruction on his simplest actions, his most obvious feelings. He could have held his head up better, true enough, over this passage of his analytical self-torment, if only it had not been for that unhappy revelation of unspoken suspicion, by the river there, not two hours since. But be fair!--be fair! It was unspoken, at least! Who had said anything? As he asked the question of himself, Challis wiped from his brow perspiration he ascribed to the weather!

Did he not know of old how often he had deceived himself? Might not all this be self-delusion, too? At least, he had as good a vantage-ground as the man to whom some woman may often say, truly: "You have looked love, and there has been love in the pressure of your hand, in the tone of your voice. But I cannot indite you. Live safe behind your equivocations." Nay, he was safer than such a one! For in his case the more he could ignore love, the better he would discharge his duty to Judith. The other man would be the greater sneak, the more he did so.

But the question--the question! It was still unanswered. When did the change come over Marianne? Oh, he knew perfectly well! It was from the day when he began, to all seeming at her request, to go out into this accursed Society without her. Very well, then!--it was all mere glamour, the whole thing. Let him do now what he should have done at first--insist on her being his companion, among his kind as well as in his home. Then would the old Marianne come back, and all would be well.

So by the time he was two-thirds through the avenue, his thoughts had worked back into his old existence, and taken him with them. If only his knowledge of his surroundings in his daily life at home would bear him out, and help him to keep at bay this image of Judith that forced itself upon him now--this image of her as she stood in the sunset light last September, just on this very spot!

* * * * *

What he recognized at once as the nose of a large grey boarhound touched him gently, and he turned. There stood Saladin, satisfied to all seeming that what he had smelt was in order, but content to take no further steps. Challis glanced round, expecting to see the dog's mistress; in a sense rather afraid to do so. She was near at hand, a few paces from the pathway, and her perfect self-possession reassured him.

"I never told Saladin to disturb your reverie, Mr. Challis," she said, quite easily, and with deliberation. "The darling acted on his own responsibility." Saladin, hearing his own name, seemed to think he had leave to go, and trotted on, giving attention to tree-trunks and the like. Challis had to say something.

"Are we not late for dinner?" was what it came to.

"I believe we are, but it never matters. Did you get your letter?"

"No--I got no letter. What letter?"

"Haven't you been up at the house? It was there when I went back. I thought it looked like your wife's handwriting. I hope it's to say we shall see her on Saturday."

"I hope so, too." But Challis wasn't sanguine.

No pretence that no embarrassment exists between two people, however determined, can do more than encourage a hope that a modus vivendi may be found. These two persevered in theirs, because each hoped for a working pretext that would carry Challis's visit through, without further useless complications, and this one of Marianne was a good one to make a parade of their detachment about. See how anxious we both are to emphasize the perfect self-possession a friendship like ours allows!--was what it seemed to say. Each knew it was a pretext, but each was loyally ready to accept the other's belief in it as a reality.

So when Judith said those last words of hers, Challis went so cordially through the form of believing her in earnest that he powerfully helped the image he had set his mind to construct of a Marianne based on his impressions--illusions, if you must have it so!--of ten years past. Conversation that followed on the way to the house, artificial though it might be, all tended towards a cheap local apotheosis of Marianne, with a beneficial side-influence on her husband's disposition to idealize her. Thus Judith: "Of course, a change would do her so much good. Housekeeping is tiresome work."

"Yes," said Challis. "It's wearing! And if you understand what I mean, it makes her unlike herself."

"Oh, I understand so exactly. Everyone would--every woman, I mean. It has nothing to do with ill-temper."

"Nothing whatever!" Challis made the most of this. "There isn't a better-tempered creature in the world than Polly Anne." He called her a creature, though, to keep the position properly qualified. "And one knows what children are."

"They are darling little people." Judith yawned slightly. "But they are nicest when you know them as acquaintances. Too much intimacy palls. Unless they are very nice children. I am sure yours are. But all the same, Marianne would be the better for a change." And so on. But there was very little life in this talk.

None the less, Challis was feeling good about his wife, when he reached the house looking forward to finding Marianne's letter awaiting him, and carried it up into his room to read it. He was more curious to read it than to wait for the arrival of the motor, whose hoot had just become audible from somewhere near the park-gate, a mile off. Saladin immediately started at a gallop either to sanction or condemn it, and Judith lingered, awaiting its arrival.

"I see Mr. Challis didn't go to Ashcroft," is what Sibyl says first to her sister. It refers to a projected excursion a full day long, which had been cancelled after the departure of the motor in the morning.

Judith looks ostentatiously indifferent. "No one went," she says. "It was given up. But how came you to know?"

"That Mr. Challis didn't go? We saw you from the Links, walking together in the avenue."

Judith turns with handsome languor to Lord Felixthorpe, the other occupant of the motor. "Did she?" she says. "Did you? I mean." Sibyl says: "Thank you for doubting my word! The avenue is visible from the Links."

His lordship is deliberate, as usual. The answer to Judith's first question is, he says, in the affirmative; to the second, in the negative. Identification, even of eminent authors, at a distance in an evening light, is difficult when a time-limit is fixed by the rapid locomotion of the observer. Sibyl's comment, in an undertone, Judith understands to be a caution against prosiness. But a respectful reference by Elphinstone to the many minutes ago that the first gong sounded causes a hurried flight to dress.

* * * * *

Challis felt good about his wife as he opened her letter; and the feeling grew rather than lessened when he saw how short it was. She must be coming, that was clear! But the satisfaction in his face died out as his eye caught the "Yr: aff: wife" at its conclusion. He read the two ill-covered pages twice and again before he threw it down with an angry "Humph!" and set himself to make up for lost time with his toilet.

He only just succeeded in scrambling into his coat in time for the second, or heart-whole, dinner-bell. All right!--he would run, directly. But it would only make him a minute late to glance once more at that letter. Besides, he could do it as he went downstairs. He did so, and ended by pocketing it just in time to appear last in the drawing-room, apologetic.

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Chapter XXX

HOW CHALLIS HAD A NEW NEIGHBOUR AT DINNER AND METAPHYSICS AFTER. HOW HE WAS GUILTY OF EAVESDROPPING, AND MET MISS ARKROYD AFTER IN A LITTLE GARDEN CALLED TOPHET. A FOOL'S PASSION. WHAT ABOUT BOB?

That was a very fortunate interview in the park-avenue between Challis and Miss Arkroyd. If their sequel to that half-hour before they joined the tea-party, when they stood hand-in-hand on the edge of a volcano, had been a stiff meeting in society, the position would have become a rigid one; its joints would have ossified. Some may hold that it would have been best that they should do so, and that the lubrication of this interview was really unfortunate. It depends on how one looks at it. Efficacious it certainly was.

So efficacious that Challis almost felt at liberty to be sorry that Judith was moved to the far end of the long table at dinner, beyond his range of communication. He grudged the geometrical distance between them, while he acknowledged their moral or spiritual éloignement. He had to confess to his regret when a fresh dress she had on that evening rustled and glittered--it was all sparks and flashes--past the place she occupied the evening before. "We move up, like the Hatter and the Dormouse," said she to her partner.

The house-party had become enormous; indeed, some of it had oozed out into an adjoining apartment, and had a little round table all to itself--which it may be said to have forgotten, for it made a great noise.

Challis's own flank-destinies for this dinner were an elderly young lady with a bridge to her nose--a county family in herself--whom he had protected through the dangerous passage from the drawing-room; and the extraneous chit, Lady Henrietta Mounttullibardine. The latter had been provided with a counter-chit, who was always spoken of as Arthur, and seemed to be many people's cousin. The former had a powerful pair of eyeglasses on a yard-arm, or sprit, workable from below; these, Challis noticed, were manoeuvred so as to leave the bridge free. He imputed powder, or something that might come off, to its owner. She seemed to have been very carefully prepared to go into Society, and to look down on it now that she had arrived. But she had to be talked to about something within its confines, and Challis had to find out what.

"I wonder what the brilliant stuff is called," said he, therefore. Judith's dress was the stuff.

"Sequin net is the name, I believe." This suggested somehow that the stuff's sphere was one grade below the speaker's.

"How much is a sequin?" asked Challis.

"It is not an expensive material," said the lady.

"I don't want a dress for myself," said Challis.

"Oh, indeed!" said the lady. Settlements ensued. And then Challis's other neighbour addressed him.

"They are in the other room this evening," said the chit. Her remark related to a mutual confidence between herself and Challis, begun on the lawn on the day of his arrival. They never spoke of anything else.

"I can hear them," said he. "They're making noise enough. But I thought they had quarrelled this morning?"

"This morning--oh yes!" This was very empressé. "But they made that up long ago!"

"When do they?... when are they?... when will it?... Clear, please! Oh no!--that'll do beautifully. I meant thick." This was to the servant, respecting soup.

"I'm so afraid it never will! Do you know, I really am!"

"Instances are not wanting of young ladies and gentlemen who haven't got married.... Hock, thank you!"

"Of course! But they always do, if they can. Don't they now, Mr. Challis?"

"I admit it. Unless they meet with someone they like better. Of course, that does happen."

"Oh yes--of course! But then it only matters when it isn't both." Challis, on the watch for copy, noticed that whenever this chit italicized a word--which was frequently--she opened her large blue eyes as far as possible.

"You express it to perfection. When it's both, it doesn't matter the least. But this time it's neither, so far!"

"Oh no!--they can't look at anyone else."

"Nothing can be more satisfactory. But why shouldn't it?... why shouldn't they?..."

"Oh dear! I'm so afraid they never will. Because he has only his pay, and she has--nothing!" Human eyes have only limited powers of opening, and the speaker's had done all they could.

"Couldn't a rich aunt settle something on them, or someone place a fund at their disposal? Or something of that sort?... What a shindy they are making!... Not before Christmas." This was because his left-hand neighbour had said sternly: "When is your next book coming out, Mr. Challis?"

But the chit had a secret knowledge of the vera causa of the riot in the next room, when three chits and as many counter-chits, uncontrolled, had the small round table to themselves. She knew exactly what they were doing--trying to pick up tumblers upside down, like this!--"this" being the thumb on one side, and one finger only on the top.

"I have forgotten when your last book came out, Mr. Challis." This left-hand neighbour seemed reproachful. But Challis couldn't help it. "Just eight weeks ago," said he.

A lull came in the next room, with the young soldier's voice audible in it, "Now all together, or it doesn't count!" Some sort of wager was being put to the test. Challis's chit murmured in the moments of suspense that followed, "They broke several yesterday in the billiard-room." Challis, amused, waited for the inevitable smash.

It came, and was a grand one. And the chorus of contrition and apology from the culprits was only equalled by their indignation at the way the Laws of Nature had proved broken reeds. If there was one thing more than another that the student of dynamics could not have credited, it was that under the circumstances a single tumbler should have been broken. Challis perceived that Lady Arkroyd spoke sotto voce to Mr. Elphinstone, who, he thought, replied, "Plenty, your ladyship. They came this morning." Then followed a fine exhibition of dexterity in the rapid collection and removal of broken glass. Challis thought to himself, but did not say so, that it reminded one of being on board ship.

The chit had done her duty by Mr. Challis, and now deserted him. Arthur had done his by Mrs. Ramsey Tomes, on his other flank, who had told him she wasn't quite sure if Mr. Tomes approved of football. She was almost certain he thought young men gave up too much time to rowing, and cricket, and lawn-tennis, and cycling, and everything else, and perfectly certain he didn't disapprove of anti-vivisection or anti-vaccination, but she wasn't quite sure which. She was not a gifted person, and was quite unable to keep pace with her husband's powerful mind. She had been freely spoken of before now, by heedless linguists, as a Juggins. Arthur deserted her with a sense of duty done, and passed the remainder of the banquet in exchanging wireless undertones with his other neighbour. It was wonderful how much communication they seemed to get through, considering how little noise they made. It seemed to be done with eyebrows, slight facial adaptations, new ways of keeping lips closed, but rarely completed speech.

Challis was conscious that each of these young people would be the other's menu for the rest of the banquet, so he surrendered himself to a portentous catechism from the lady with the eyeglass touching his habits.

"Where do you write, Mr. Challis?"

"At home--when I'm at home. Or wherever I happen to be at the time." When he had said this, he wondered whether he was going idiotic. It was like saying a mother was always present at the birth of her child.

"But upstairs or down? And is the room at the back of the house?" He gave close particulars of all the rooms at the Hermitage. A capital way of making conversation! But in the end it ran dry.

"I like writing in bed," said he, for variety. "Rabelais wrote in bed." He wasn't sure of this at all. But it didn't matter.

"Oh, indeed!" said the lady. She was an Honourable Miss Something, and not nearly dissolute enough to know anything about authors who write in bed; and, besides, she had her doubts about Rabelais. She changed the conversation delicately. Did Mr. Challis use a Fountain Pen? No, he didn't. Because he thought for a quarter of an hour at every third word, and that was time enough for an active person under fifty to dip his pen in the ink. Pressmen had to write straight on without stopping. The lady took this seriously, and said, "Dear me!"

What followed was very like the sample. Challis could make talk and think of something else quite well. So he thought how different his right-hand neighbour was from Charlotte Eldridge. And that set him a-thinking again about his wife. But there were unnavigable straits in that sea. His thoughts got into shoal-water, and his neighbour pursued a topic unaccompanied until she found she had left him behind. Then indignation kindled, but subject to good-breeding. She would put a test question, though, to see how much attention this gentleman had been paying.

"How many words are there in a book?" The question came with sudden severity, and Challis had to pull himself together to reply.

"Of course," he said, "there's not always exactly the same number. But a hundred thousand, more or less." It was a good answer, and embodied a feeling current in the book-trade. And the conversation, thus re-established, developed on the same lines until the vanishing-point of the army of womankind. Challis fancied he saw commiseration on Judith's face as she brought up the rear. He certainly had seldom in his life passed a duller hour.

He knew what it was going to be next. Dreary politics, wearisome ethics, maudlin philosophy, execrable--thrice execrable!--Social Problems which it was every man's duty to confront, and every other man's duty to hear him elucidate. Yes!--there was Mr. Ramsey Tomes at it already! He had got a good new word to talk with--"noumenal"--and was brandishing it over his hearers' heads....

Oh dear!--metaphysics! Not even free treatment of what Challis's mind classed as Charlottology! That always appealed to our common something or other. Now what he could catch at first hearing seemed bare, cold, cruel Metaphysics. Never an indiscreet lady nor an unprincipled gentleman, nor even a New Morality, of any sort! No fun at all!

But stop a bit! Was there none? Challis listened, and perceived, before coffee-time, that the changed guest of last September, who had become a Complete Christian Scientist, had denied the existence of matter. He took a chair nearer to the discussion, not to seem out of it, and so attracted to himself the attention of Mr. Ramsey Tomes, whose lung-power had taken possession of the rostrum.

"I appeal," said that gentleman, "to Mr. Challis." He went on with a testimonial or appreciation beginning with "than whom I will venture to say," and elucidating Challis's great accomplishments and intellectual powers, Challis seized the opportunity of a coffee-deal to ask what he was being appealed to about. A mixed response informed him on this point. A definition of Matter had been called for, and the Confirmed Christian Scientist had demurred to giving any such definition. "No one," said he, "can be logically called on to define a thing he denies the existence of. The burden of definition manifestly lies with those who affirm it."

"Personally," said Challis, "I prefer--but I admit it may be only idiosyncrasy on my part--to know, when I deny the existence of anything, what the thing is that I am denying the existence of. Perhaps I should say, rather, what it would be if it existed. If I knew, I think I should always communicate my knowledge, both from civility and as a politic act. For how the dickens anyone else would know what I was denying the existence of if I didn't tell him, I'll be hanged if I know!"

An indignant murmur was perceptible round the table. It gathered force, and became a protest against this treatment of the subject. Everybody, it said, knew perfectly well what matter was. All that was wanted was a Definition of it.

"What is Matter?" said Challis. But he had some difficulty in hearing all the answers to this question. However, he caught the following:

"Obviously, there is no such distinct thing as Matter. What we call matter--stuff, substance, body, or what not--is really only a manifestation of energy."

"Obviously, Matter is a phenomenon."

"Obviously, Matter is the negation of mind."

"Obviously, Matter is the antithesis of spirit."

"Obviously, Matter is the reciprocal interdependent externalization of what used at one time to be called Forces, but which are now almost universally recognized to be merely modes of motion."

"Something you can prod." This last piece of crudity came from the young man Arthur, and attracted no attention.

Now, when several persons shout simultaneously a profound and intuitive judgment apiece, each naturally pauses to hear what effect his own has had upon the Universe. An opening for speech is then given to anyone who has the presence of mind to abstain from wasting time over the detection of a stray meaning anywhere. In this case, Mr. Ramsey Tomes saw his opportunity, and seized it.

"Am I mistaken," said he, "in supposing that at least one suggestion has been made that the Universe, as at present formulated, has but two constituents--namely, the subject under discussion, Matter, on the one hand; and on the other what has been variously called Mind or Spirit. Shall I presume too far on the attention the Philosophical Mind is prepared to vouchsafe to the voice of a mere sciolist in Metaphysical profundity if I indicate the existence of yet a third constituent of what has been not inaptly called the Universal Whole? I refer to what I may term the Unknown."

The speaker felt that this was so admirably expressed that he rashly paused to lick his lips over it. This gave Challis, who was in a malicious or impish mood, time to interject a remark. Its effect was that, for the purpose of discussing the Existence of Matter, no definition of it would be of any use to us, unless we provided ourselves also with an accurate definition of Existence. Agreement on these two points would enable us to approfondir the question of the entity or nonentity of the appreciable Universe.

There seemed to be no serious difficulty, unless it were the selection of the required definitions from an embarras de richesses. Among those which survived the tumult of many confident voices, Challis distinguished the following:

"The relation a thing has to itself."

"The condition precedent of the concept 'nothing,' which is itself a fundamental condition of thought."

"A quality thought imputes to the external cause of every phenomenon."

"The recognition by the Ego of the reality of its environments."

"When you've nothing particular to do." This one was Arthur, who, however, was heard a moment after to say, "All right; I'll come!" in response to a summons, and thereafter went, carrying away his unfinished cigar. Challis heard his voice afar very soon, probably in the garden in the moonlight, where chits and counterchits were in council on the lawn. He wanted to go out in that garden himself, but--he supposed--he recognized the reality of his environments, like the Ego, and felt that such conduct would be rude. Besides, he was rather amused, too. What was that Mr. Brownrigg was saying?

He was pointing out, of course. Nay, more!--he was pointing out that Graubosch had already pointed out, in his Appendix B, that we had no direct evidence of any existence whatever independently of a percipient. The Confirmed Christian Scientist applauded this audibly, but remarked that that was merely Immanuel Kant, after all! On the other hand, Mr. Brownrigg continued, we have not a particle of evidence that any percipient could exist as such, independent of a percipiendum. We could not collect his evidence, clearly, without exposing ourselves to his untried observation, and thereby upsetting the conditions of the problem.

The Confirmed Christian Scientist's face fell, and he asked dejectedly, What conclusion did Graubosch draw? Mr. Brownrigg replied that Graubosch considered the problem afforded a fine instance of Metaphysical Equilibrium, which would under that name continue to engage the attention of thinkers long after the Insolubility of Problems had ceased to be admitted as a Scientific possibility. The final solution of all questions could not be regarded with complacency by a thoughtful world; and the recognition of Metaphysical Equilibrium, in questions which the Primitives of Philosophy had condemned as unanswerable, was a welcome addition to the resources of Modern Thought, for which the world had to thank its originator and greatest exponent, Graubosch, et cetera.

Challis began to think he must really make an effort, and go. He would watch for an opportunity. It came.

The advocates of the Existence of Matter were disposed to make a stand in favour of Human Reason; in fact, they were inclined to claim for Man, before the dawn of sight, hearing, or feeling, the position of a Unit charged with Syllogism, ready to make short work of any Phenomenon that might present itself. But, then, how about anthropoid apes? Didn't Sally count up to five? Well, then--Reason be blowed! Make it perception, and include all forms of Life.

This brought up Mr. Ramsey Tomes in great force. We were now landed, he said, in a crux on the axis of which this most interesting group of problems might be said to rotate. Let the many-headed activities of Ratiocinative Speculation agree on a Definition of Life, and he would venture to say without fear of contradiction that a keynote would have been struck that would resound through the proper quarters. Challis missed their description, owing to Mr. Brownrigg's voice intercepting it resolutely.

"Surely," said he, "we need go no further than the one supplied by Herbert Spencer." Everyone listened with roused attention, and Mr. Brownrigg continued. "You will all recall it at once! 'The definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences.' It is among the few decisions of modern thought which Graubosch has been able to accept intact; and the translation he himself made of it into German surpasses, if anything, its English original in force and lucidity."

Challis thought he might go. No need to stay for the German translation. On the way from the entrance-hall into the garden, he nearly collided with the largest possible white shirt-front associated with the smallest possible black waistcoat. The owner, Arthur, the universal cousin, begged his pardon. He begged it awfully, it seemed; but why? What he added, before going away up the broad staircase four steps at a time, was enigmatical: "No gloves--only I can lend Jack a pair." Challis left the meaning of this in a state of Metaphysical Equilibrium, till the sound of music under moonlit cedars on the lawn explained it. A chit-extemporized dance was afoot on the close-cropped turf. Challis remembered this young subaltern's definition of Existence, and felt he knew what sort of definition of Life his would be.

He himself would not mix with it, under the cedars there, but would finish his cigar with his arms crossed on this ledge of clean stone balustrade, all silvery with lichens in the moonlight, where he would see and not be seen. Perhaps he would remember the name of the little creeping flowers that last September were climbing all over the shrub that half hid him; that were only pledges as yet, but that he knew the morning sun would soon make rubies of. Cockney that he was, he had had to ask the little flower's name of Judith, as she stood on that gravel path below, near ten months back. What a short time it seemed! Petroleum?--No!--Protæolum, was it?--No!--that wasn't it exactly. But near enough!...

Footsteps were coming along the pathway now. Was it honourable to overhear what those two girls were discussing in the moonlight? Pooh!--stuff and nonsense! These chits--the idea! What could those children have to say that they could mind his hearing? Besides, they would never know; and he could cough at a moment's notice.

"You could have lawts of awfers, if you liked, Flawcey. I know a girl that's had eleven awfers. I've had three awfers. I suppose now it is Jack I shan't have any maw awfers." The sweet drawler, who is of course the speaker, has rather a rueful sound over this.

"I could have been engaged twice," says the other; "only one was forty-five, and the other was a Hungarian."

They do not interest the drawler. She ripples on musically: "Of cawce, I shall have Cerberus, because he belawngs to Jack. Oh, he is a dahling!" Then the two go out of hearing; but the drawl is there, in the distance still. Challis notes afar, under the cedar-trees, how Chinese lanterns are coming to birth in the twilight. There will only be real darkness quite late to-night.

Two other voices are audible near for a few seconds, with a roused interest for Challis, whose sense of eavesdropping increases. Before he can decide on stopping his ears, he has heard Sibyl say: "I have eased my conscience, and you can't blame me, whatever happens!" She is speaking as one who has the Universe on her shoulders. Judith's answer is lost, rather to his relief, all but the timbre of its resentment.

Here come the chits back! They don't matter. What's the story now?

"Oh, it was hawrible! If only it had been an awdinary eyeglass, with a string!"

"But then it would have had to be fished up, you know!"

"Of cawce it would. I didn't think of that. Perhaps it's just as well it wawse a lens.... No, it was quite easy how it happened, if you think!"

"But whatever did you do?"

"Of course, d'ya, we both pretended it had rolled on the floor, and kneeled down to look for it. But we both knew quite well where it was, and I could feel it cold all down my back. Oh, it was hawrible!" The speaker added thoughtfully after a pause: "I am so glad it's Jack now, and not Sholto. He did look such a fool, and such strong cigars!"

Challis was able, being a dramatist, to put an intelligible construction on this little dramatic experience of the young lady and her previous admirer. We need not probe into its obscurity, as its only interest in this story is that it reminded him of an incident of his own bygone youth--the disappearance of a pearl from a ring of his first wife's, and its resurrection from the inside of his own stocking after setting him limping, inexplicably, all the way home to his rooms from her mother's house. Oh, the ridiculous trifles of life!--nothing at the time, but all-powerful for sadness in the days to come.

So powerful, in this case, that he was less than ever ready for the sphere of pink and green illumination and dance-music, just becoming self-assertive. Of course!--those young monkeys were hanging about in the suburbs merely in order to be fetched. They knew their value, bless you! So Challis thought to himself as he lit another cigar, sauntering among the cut yew-hedges of a side-garden. A wing of the house was between him and the dancers, and their sounds were dim. But from a back-window of the room he had left a quarter of an hour since still came such noise as is inevitable when a number of close reasoners with strong lungs go seriously to work on the Nature of Things, and point out each other's fallacies. "Word-changers in the Temple of the Inscrutable," thought Challis to himself, as he turned to seek congenial silence farther afield.

He would find it, he knew, if it were nowhere else in the world, in the sweet little rose-garden called, for no sane reason, "Tophet."

He and Judith had walked there more than once on his previous visit, and he had surmised that its most inapt name might be connectable with the now common word toff, meaning a person of birth and position--a descendant of ancestors. Judith had asked why, and he had told her she would never be an etymologist at that rate. Bother why!

It was a very exclusive little garden certainly--if that would make a reason--with four high stone walls and a very small door with a very large key. Perhaps this was locked. It was sometimes. But no one had ever confessed to having locked it. And the large key always hung on a hook almost in the lock's pocket, so to speak. A very old gardener had told Challis it was done on the understanding it might be used. "I see," said Challis. "'Locke on the Understanding.'" And the old gardener had said "Ah!" with perfect unsuspicion.

This night it seemed that someone had taken advantage of the understanding, for the key was in the lock, and the door stood partly open. Someone must be inside. There was an unaccountable little grating in the door one could look through. Challis did so, and saw who it was--the woman in the moonlight.

It was strange how his relations with this woman had changed since their walk by the river two days since; when, mind you!--not a word had been spoken to which either ascribed a meaning that could have changed them. A few days ago theirs was a normal friendship enough, bearing in mind difference of age and social standards; always factors in human problems all the world over, shut our eyes to them as we may! Now, the weft of his consciousness at least was hot with a new disturbing tint. Why, in Heaven's name, else, need his first instinct be to turn and run? And all because, forsooth, he had come on Judith Arkroyd walking in a garden! Surely all the circumstances were vociferous enough of detachment and independence, for both, to make a start and a quickened pulse enormously illogical. Why will emotions never be logical?

One thing is certain, that he did all but turn and slip quietly away. He accounted to the upper stratum of his consciousness for this by referring it to a strong desire to be alone and "think over things." But he had to ignore a mind-flash that had crossed its lower stratum--one the story should almost apologize for recording, as too improbable--a sudden image of his odious neighbour, John Eldridge; which he knew, without hearing anything, had said: "You can't stand that, Master Titus--never do!--never do at all!" Again, this story is compelled to disclaim all responsibility for Challis's mental oddities. But they have to be recorded, for all that.

Perhaps that speech of Sibyl's, in the garden just now, had something to answer for. What had she been protesting against? Not the stage; that was all over and done with. Challis never detected his own absurdity in jumping to the conclusion that the protest must have related to himself! What right had he to infer, from a tone of Judith's voice, that she spoke about him?

He did not run, though he went near it. Self-contempt stepped in. What imbecile cowardice! What a miserable fear that he would lose the whip-hand of a fool's passion he was not even prepared to admit the existence of! He--Alfred Challis--who but half-an-hour ago had been moved to a puny heartache over that memory of the pearl and its wanderings and recovery! And then, to stagger in a fraction of time all sane contemplation of past and present, came the clash between that memory and his moment of shame, a short while since, that "poor Kate's" place in his heart had so soon been filled by poor slow Marianne. His wife now!--how his brain reeled to think of it all! There was that home of his, and the children, and Bob; the thought of the boy as good as stung him. What should he--what could he--say to Bob hereafter, if...?

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Chapter XXXI

CONCERNING A ROSEBUD, AND MARIANNE'S TORTOISESHELL KNIFE. CHALLIS'S PRESENCE OF MIND. THE FOOL ON FIRE. DEFINITION WANTED OF DEFINITION. CHALLIS'S SUDDEN CALL BACK TO TOWN. HOW SIBYL HAD SEEN IT ALL

There was a little fountain in the middle of the little garden, with a little amorino from the court of the Signoria at Florence to attend to the squirting. The moon was comparing the light she could make on its shower of drops with sparkles from the lady's dress who stood beside it. It was in no hurry to decide--might perhaps ask a tiny cloud, that was coming, to help. Once inside the garden Challis was committed to approaching its centre. There was--remember!--no official recognition of any change in the position of the two since Trout Bend.

"I came here to be alone, but you may come." Judith's words might well have made matters worse. But her tranquil, unconcerned, almost insolent beauty in the moonlight was fraught with a sense of self-command that more than counterbalanced them. It gave her hearer a sort of rangé feeling--determined his position--put him on his good behaviour. He could trust to her control of their interview, but all the same a little resented feeling so much like a child in her hands.

"I came here to be alone, too," said he.

"Perhaps I ought to go?" Manifestly not spoken seriously, but not jestingly enough to set badinage afoot. She did not wait for his answer, but went on, "Perhaps we both ought, for that matter. Did you find the politics bored you?... oh!--metaphysics, was it? I came here because I found my little sister unendurable."

Challis thrust what he had overheard, when eavesdropping, into the background of his mind: "About the stage, I suppose? Why do you not tell her--set her mind at ease?" But he knew Sibyl knew already, and this was only to help him to keep his foreground clear.

Judith appeared to select her answer at leisure, from among reserves. "Sibyl knows," she said. "The indictment related to something else this time." Then, as though she were weighing a possibility: "No--I suppose I could hardly tell you about that. One is too artificial. We should be much nicer if we were small children. Never mind! Some day, perhaps!"

Challis decided on saying, with a laugh, "I suppose I mustn't be inquisitive and ask questions," as the best way of suggesting that his own guesses, if any, were trivial and impersonal. She ended a silence in which he fancied the subject was to be forgotten by saying: "I should tell you nothing, whatever you asked. Besides, you have never had a little sister, and would not understand. Family relations are mysteries."

"No, I have never had a little sister." And then Challis felt like a liar, and heart-sick as he thought of the thoroughness with which he had accepted Kate's "little sister" as his own. What a compensation he had thought her for a mother-in-law his most gruesome anticipations had not bargained for! When did the change come about?--when?--when? Why need the memory of it all come on him now, of all times? But Judith stopped his retrospect short with: "Get me that rose-bud, if you have a knife. Don't scratch yourself on my account." For Challis to reply: "What care I how much I scratch myself, if it is on your account?" would have savoured of Chitland, musically audible afar. Challis left it unsaid.

The rose-bud was soon got with the aid of a little tortoiseshell knife that was really Marianne's. There was another twinge in ambush for her husband over that, and a sharp cross-fire between it and the soul-brush, that was being kept at work all this while--unconsciously, one hopes; but this story knows exactly what Charlotte Eldridge would have thought and said. And she might have been right, for it makes little pretence of being able to see behind the veil this Judith's beauty hides her inner soul with, nor to read her heart. All it, the story, has known of her so far has been that beauty and her love of power. A perilous quality, that!

All it can say now is that if this woman knows, as she bends, careless how close, to take the flower from the hand that gathered it; as she flashes the diamonds on her white fingers quite needlessly near his lips--if she has any insight, as she does this, into the way she is playing with a human soul, then is she a thoroughly bad woman. And to our thinking all the worse if she knows, or believes, her reputation is safe in her own keeping. For then what is she, at best, but a keen sportswoman wicked enough to poach on her fellow-woman's preserves, destroying the peace of a home merely to show what a crack shot she is. We must confess to a preference for the standard forms of honourable, straightforward lawlessness. But perhaps these reflections are doing injustice to Judith. She may be capable of good, honest, downright wickedness. Remember that she is comparatively young and inexperienced.

One should surely beware, too, of doing injustice to beautiful women--ascribing to them motives of overt fascination, to entangle man, in every simple action a discreet dowdy might practise unnoticed and unblamed. Make an image of such a one in your mind--make it ropy, bony, obliging, with unwarrantable knuckles--let it place a flower in its bosom, if any; and then say whether Charlotte Eldridge's keenest analysis could detect in its action the smallest element she could pounce on as seductive; the slightest appearance of a hook baited to captivate her John, or anybody else's? No, no!--let us be charitable, and suppose, for the present, at any rate, that Judith was unconscious in this flower incident of every trace of guile--merely wanted the flower, in fact, and asked Challis to get it, rather than risk her "Princess" skirts in the thorns which would have made shoddy of them in no time.

There are those, we believe, who hold that all the fascination of woman is due to adjuncts; that the thrill of enchantment that "goes with" adroit coiffures and well-cut skirts--especially the latter--would not survive seeing their owner, or kernel, run across a ploughed field in skin-tights--for we assume that the Lord Chamberlain would allow no more crucial experiment. It may be they are right. High Art teaches us the truth of the converse proposition. For that draggled-tailed, ill-hooked, ill-eyed, ill-buttoned thing with a bad cold and a shock of tow on its head, that is emerging from a damp omnibus to the relief of its next-door neighbour, is going, please--when it has got rid of some raiment which would certainly go to the wash with advantage--is going to sit for Aphrodite, of all persons in the world; for that very goddess and no other!--for her the light of whose eyelids and hair in the uttermost ends of the sea none shall declare or discern....

There!--it's no use talking about it, and stopping the story. Besides, Miss Arkroyd "had on" her "Princess" dress aforesaid, a strange witchery of infinitely flexible woven texture, snake-scaled and gem-fraught without loss of a fold, rustling and glittering till none could say which was rustle and which was glitter. And it all seemed a running comment on its owner--its pith and marrow, as it were!--a mysterious outward record of her inner self. Where is the gain of trying to guess how much was shell and how much was self? Enough that few women would have looked as lovely as she did, then and there.

For all this speculation--let the story confess it--is due simply to the excessive beauty the moonbeams made the most of, as its owner's eye dropped on the flower her fingers were adjusting, to make sure it was exactly in the right place, and to engineer stray thorn-points that else might scratch. As for what is really passing in her heart, the story washes its hands of it.

"Marianne refuses again, of course," said she, when the rose was happily settled--or sadly, as it must have felt the parting from its stem.

"Again, of course!" said he. "But...!"

"But how did I know, you mean? Why, you would have told me at once if she had been coming."

"Not necessarily. I might have hoped for a second letter, to say she had changed her mind. It is no pleasure to me that she refuses."

"It might be to some husbands. But you are an affectionate husband. Do tell me something."

"Anything!" His emphasis on this was a satisfaction to him. It was like a very small instalment of what he had no right to say, or even to think; but, uttered in an ambush of possible other meanings, it franked the speaker of any particular one among them.

"If I were to ask to see her letter, should you be offended?"

He knew he could not answer, "Nothing you do can possibly give me offence," in the tone of empty compliment that would have made it safe. He gave up the idea, and said, with reality in his voice: "I should not show it to you."

"I like you when you speak like that," said Judith.

He felt a little apologetic. "After all," he said, "it's only tit-for-tat. You wouldn't tell me what Sibyl said."

"I am not offended," said Judith. A certain sense of rich amusement in her voice made these words read: "I take no offence at your male caprices. I know your ways. You are forgiven." But aloud her speech was, with a concession to seriousness: "I cannot well repeat what Sibyl said. But do not think of showing me Marianne's letter if you wish not to do so. It is not idle curiosity that made me ask to see it. I had a motive--perhaps not a wise one--but I think...."

"What?"

"I think you would forgive it." The suggestion certainly was that the speaker would see some way of influencing Marianne--making her drop her absurd obstinacy. No other motive was possible, thought Challis.

After all, what was there in the text of the letter that it would be a hanging matter for Judith to read? She, from her higher standpoint--for Challis believed in her, you see?--could forgive, overlook, understand a scrap or two of rudeness, a misspelt word or so. Why should he not show the letter, and have done with it?

"It is in your pocket, you know!" Judith was certainly clairvoyante, and Challis said so. "Clairvoyante enough to see you put it in your pocket as you came into the drawing-room!" said she, laughing.

Why this context of circumstances should make Challis plead illegibility by moonlight as a reason for not producing the letter he could not have said for the life of him. It was a weak plea; because, when Judith "pointed out" that so inveterate a smoker probably had wax vestas in his pocket, it seemed to leave him no line of defence to fall back upon. He produced the letter, and to our thinking was guilty of a breach of faith to Marianne in allowing Judith to take it from him. At least, he should only have read to her what related to the invitation.

The first wax vesta blew out, and the second. "Hold it inside this," said Judith, making a shelter for the third with a gauzy thing of Japanese origin she really had no need for, the night was so warm. "You must hold it steadier than that," she added. "If this caught, it would blaze up." She was holding the open letter herself, with perfect steadiness.

"This is the last vesta," said Challis. "So you must read quick. Look sharp!" It was the fifth match, and the flame was nearing his fingers.

"Half-a-second more!" said Judith. She had turned the letter over. There was writing on the back that Challis had missed. He tried to read it now, over the shoulder that was so white in the moonlight, and failed. For the flame touched his fingers, and burned him.

Man is absolutely powerless against the sudden touch of fire. Remember Uncle Bob and the knife! Challis had to leave go, nolens volens. The burning remnant of the wax fell on the gauzy scarf, which caught instantly. The moment was critical. But Challis showed a presence of mind beyond what one is apt to credit neurotic literary men with--mere mattoids, after all! Instead of trying to beat the flame out, or waiting to get his coat off to smother it, he tore the scarf sharply away from its wearer, who, happily, had the nerve to release a safety-pin in time to get it clear.

"Are you burned?" His voice seemed out of keeping with the resolution of his action.

"Very little, if at all. Just a touch, on this shoulder. Nothing really--but I am afraid your hands...."

"Oh no!--they're all right. Stop a bit!--what's that?" It was Marianne's letter, half-burned, and still burning. The unextinguished scarf it had fallen to the ground with had got through its combustion briskly. Challis was only just in time to save half the letter; and it was not the half he wanted.

"I dare say it doesn't matter," said he to Judith; "but there was something I hadn't read on the back. What you were reading when the match gave out."

"Yes--I think there was. A postscript. I didn't make it out. Shall we go in, or over on the lawn, where they are dancing?" She added a moment later: "I don't know why I am taking it for granted that you don't dance."

"I certainly don't; nowadays, at least. But you do, of course. The lawn by all means!" They passed through the little porticino, and complied with the understanding it had entered into. As Challis was turning the key, he paused an instant to look round at Judith and say: "Are you sure you can't remember anything of what was written on the back of the letter?" And she replied without hesitation: "Not a word. I had no time." Then he said: "I wish you could remember only just one word or two, to show what it was about." She answered: "But I can't. I am sorry. We must hope it was of no importance."

They walked side by side, without speaking, to the end of the last yew-hedged terrace, just on the open garden. Then, inexplicably, they turned and went back along the path. When they arrived again at the little gate in the wall, Challis suddenly faced his companion. He looked white and almost handsome in the moonlight--or so she may have thought, easily enough--for his eyes had a large, frightened look, that became them and the thoughtful thinness of their bone-marked setting. He spoke quite suddenly, keeping his voice under, with quick speech that showed its tension.

"Judith--Judith Arkroyd! It is no use. I can bear it no longer. I must leave you. It would have been well for me if I had done so earlier. It would have been best for me if I had never seen you." He turned from her, almost as though he shrank from the sight of her, and leaned against the grey stone angle of the little doorway, his face hidden in his arms. Had the woman who watched him--shame if it were so!--a feeling akin to triumph, as she saw how his visible hand caught and clenched and trembled in the moonlight? It may have been so. The story has no plummet to take soundings of her heart.

Her mere words may have meant fear lest she had overplayed her part--no more! "Oh, Scroop, you cannot blame me." But the way she too leaned, as for support in dizziness, on the edge of a great Italian garden-pot, raised on a pedestal at the path-corner, and pressed her hand to her side as though her breath might catch the less for it--these things seemed to belong to more than the alarm of a sudden start.

He turned, with some recovery of self-possession, as one who shakes free of any unmanliness. "Blame you, Judith!" he cried, calling her freely by her name--a thing he had never yet done. "Not I, God knows! I am all self-indictment, if ever man was. And this, look you, is my offence: that I, knowing myself as I am, knowing what I owe to my wife, to my children--they are dear to me still, I tell you, believe it who may!--that I have allowed the image and presence of you, Judith Arkroyd, to take such possession of me, my mind, my whole soul, that you are never absent from me. And the bondage that is on me is one I cannot see the end of. All I know is that I am powerless against it. It may be--it may be--that the memory of you will die out and leave me--that when I see you no longer, your voice and your beauty will become things of the past, and be forgotten. When we have parted, as we must, Heaven grant me this oblivion! But I cannot conceive it now."

He paused, and as he wiped the drops from his brow, seemed to hark back a little to his daily self, saying in a quick undertone: "It is a good world to forget in. Precedents are in favour of it. There is that to be said."

The little change in his manner made her find her voice. "Yes!" she said. "I see how it is. You must go. I shall always grieve that I could not keep your friendship ... yes--you see my meaning? I have valued it. But this kind of thing is the misfortune of some women. It is a bitter thing--we must part in a few hours, so I may speak plainly--a bitter thing to be forced to lose a friend one loves as a friend, merely because one chances to be a woman."

If only this interview might have ended here! If only Mr. Ramsey Tomes and Mr. Brownrigg could have come on the scene now, instead of five minutes later! But there never was good came of last words, from the world's beginning.

The unhappy, storm-tossed man and his tormentor--for that was what Judith was, meaningly or without intent--turned to go back towards the noisy world. Half-way, as though she would use the silence and darkness of the alley they were passing through for the freedom of speech such surroundings give, Judith spoke again. If Charlotte Eldridge had been there, her interpretation of Judith certainly would have been: "She doesn't mean to let him go--not she!" Would it have been a fair one?

Possibly. But all Judith said was: "I am afraid I am a woman without a heart."

Challis said interrogatively: "Because...?" and waited.

"Because I find myself only thinking of what I shall lose when you go. If I were good, Scroop"--a slight sneer here--"I should have a little thought for you. I suppose I'm bad. Very well!"

"I am taking no credit to myself for any sort of altruism in my--my feelings towards yourself." Challis shied off from the use of the word "love"; but whether because it would have rung presumptuously without the sanction of its object, or because of the bald rapidity of its use on the stage, where Time is of the essence of the contract, he might have found it hard to say.

"I should not thank you for it. Nor any woman. But many a woman who injures a friend unawares--being unselfish and pious and so on--would gladly...." She hesitated.

"Put a salve to the wound?"

"Well--yes--that sort of thing! But I am afraid I am rather brutal about it. Can you not, after all, forget this foolish infatuation for my sake? Consider the wild words you spoke just now unsaid, and give me back my friend. Come, Scroop!" Her beautiful eyes were surely full of honest appeal--no arrière pensée Mrs. Eldridge would have damned her for--as she went frankly close to him and laid her hand on his.

He shrank from her--absolutely shrank!--and gasped as though her touch took his breath away. He found no words, and she had not finished.

"Think--oh, think!--what rights could I ever have in you? Think of your wife...."

"I do think of her--oh, I do think! But it makes me mad."

"Go back to her and forget me then, if it must be so. Remember this, Scroop--that the bond that holds you to her is thrice as strong as it would be if...."

"If what?"

"Well!--I must say it. If it were a legal one...."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean you are not married to her--there!"

"Oh, the Deceased Wife's Sister rubbish?"

"Yes." And then Challis thought to himself, through the fog of all his soul-torture and perplexity, "How comes she to be so ready to go home to the mark? We have never talked beyond the bare fact that Marianne and Kate were sisters." But he let the thought go by, to make way for another of greater weight with him.

"You never can mean," he cried--"you--you--you never can mean that I----" She interrupted him with the self-command that seemed to belong to her--to grow upon her, if anything--and completed his speech for him: "That you would take advantage of a legal shuffle to evade a promise given in honour? Of course, I mean the exact reverse. I mean that you, of all men, would hold yourself three times bound to an illegal contract."

"All men would, worth the name of men. Debts Law disallows are debts of honour. But all that is nothing. I love my wife. I tell you I love my wife; I will not have it otherwise." His voice was almost angry, as against some counter-speech. But he dropped it in a kind of exhaustion, with a subdued half-moan. "What have I to do," said he wearily, "with all these wretched nostrums of legislation and religion, that would dictate the terms of Love? Mine have come to me, and my soul is wrenched asunder. Surely the penalty is enough to make beadledom superfluous. No man who knows what Love means will ever love two women.... There--that's enough!" He stopped abruptly, as cutting something needless short. She spoke:

"It comes to good-bye, then?"

"Yes--unless...."

"Unless what?"

"You will say I am strange."

"You are. But you cannot change yourself. Speak plainly!"

"Listen, Judith! If you can look me in the face and say you have no love for me--you know the sense I use the word in as well as I--then I will pack away a sorrow in my heart till it dies; and the time will come when you shall say: 'That man is my good friend, but he declared a fool's passion to me once, for all that, and now he seems to have forgotten it.' It shall be so. But, better still, and easier for me, if you could say with truth that there was some other man elsewhere whose hand in yours would be more welcome than mine; whose voice, whose look, whose lips would be a dearer memory. If you could tell me this, the fool's passion would at least be all the shorter lived." He stopped as they reached the end of the sheltered path, and looked her full in the face. He had stopped, as it were, on a keynote of self-ridicule--the habit was inveterate--and he was one of those men who are at their best when individuality comes out strongest.

She had never looked so beautiful in his eyes as when she stood there, silent in the moonlight, weighing to all appearance the answer she should make. Perhaps she knew how beautiful--who can say? She remained motionless through a long pause--through the whole of a nightingale's song in the thicket hard by. Then her bosom heaved--a long breath--and then, with a sort of movement of surrender of her hands--how the diamonds flashed!--she said, "I cannot," and then again, "No--I cannot." Then, in a more measured and controlled voice: "This means that we must part--now! I shall not see you to-morrow."

"Strangers and foes do sunder and not kiss," said Helena to Bertram. But how about those who are neither foes nor strangers, yet must be more than friends, and dare not be lovers? An interview of this sort had best not end in an embrace, if two victims of infatuation are to be saved from themselves. Let the description remain for Judith as well as Challis. But she had the self-command to check his impulse, throwing out her jewelled hands against it, and crying--not loudly, but beneath her breath: "No--no--no! Remember what we are--what we must be. For Heaven's sake, no madness!" And then, as he let fall his hands and their intention, but with all his hunger on him, and the foreknowledge of sleepless hours to come, she turned towards the voices that were approaching them from the house.

"I cannot recall"--it was Mr. Tomes who couldn't--"any occasion on which a discussion of so abstruse, and I may say elusive, a topic has been conducted with more philosophical insight, and a stronger sense of what I need not scruple to term the argumentative meum and tuum. Neither am I prepared to admit what possibly inexperience in debate may be eager to affirm, that the ratiocinative perspicuity of a post-prandial collective intelligence has been fruitless in result. I may point with satisfaction to at least two conclusions--the impossibility of drawing safe inferences in discussions where the same word is used in several different senses, and the uselessness of the attempt to define the meaning of words until we are agreed upon the nature, and, I may add, the legitimate limits, of Definition." Mr. Tomes paused. He was a little disconcerted at the discovery that he was being intelligible by accident, and also he had caught sight of Challis and Miss Arkroyd. His abrupt full-stop as he met them was unwelcome to this former, who would have had the orator continue, to hide his own perturbation. But it did not matter, for Judith was more than equal to the occasion.

"I have narrowly escaped being burned alive, Mr. Tomes. Mr. Challis set fire to me lighting his cigar. However, he put me out." Nothing could exceed her easy grace and perfect self-possession.

Very fortunately Mr. Wraxall, the Universal Insurer, was one of Mr. Tomes's companions. The opportunity was a splendid one, and he seized upon it. Challis got away in a most dastardly manner, leaving Judith exposed to risks and averages and premiums beyond the wildest dreams of Negotiation run mad. As a matter of fact, Mr. Wraxall must have been welcome enough. When life jars, let others do the volubility, and spare us!

* * * * *

The dispersal of guests and the family at the foot of the great staircase was to-night more tumultuous than usual. Not only was the house-party at its maximum--its noisy maximum!--but many outsiders from the neighbourhood were among the dancers. Challis noticed, though whether as cause or consequence he never inquired, four more young soldiers, who, he understood, had come from as far off as it would take a blood mare in a dog-cart, that just held them and no room to spare, an hour and fifty minutes to trot back to, over a good road. These youths were in such tremendous spirits that when the last farewells of the dog-cart died away on the offing, a sort of holy hush seemed to ensue, and people drew long breaths, and smiled excusefully--for young folk are young folk, you know--and said now we could hear ourselves speak. Why was it that Challis, not unobservant, for all his own hidden fever, pictured the occupants of the dog-cart, beyond the offing, as speaking little now, each dwelling on his own private affairs? Was it because four corresponding chits, at least, had hushed down and become self-absorbed and absent? And where was the relevance of measles, and Challis's thought to himself that it was best to have them young?

The Rector was there, too. He had not been a dancer, but had refrained merely because, in view of this great accession of force from Jack's and Arthur's friends from the garrison, no further male dancers were wanted. When Challis reached the house, after prolonging a voluntary ostracism in the garden-silences until he heard the guests dispersing, and saw Chinese lanterns being suppressed, he found Athelstan Taylor just on the point of taking leave. He was explaining to her ladyship why he had not come to dinner--for it seemed he had been invited--when she stopped him with a question about one of the children who came into his explanation. His reply was: "Oh yes!--just a bad inflammatory cold. But she'll be all right in a day or two. Only we shall have to be careful. Good-night, Lady Arkroyd!"

"'I think it is good-morrow, is it not?'" said Challis, quoting. "Is Charles's Wain over the new chimney, I wonder. Perhaps, Rector, you know which Charles's Wain is. I don't. I always confuse between him and Orion."

"You'll have a hard job to do so now. Why, my dear fellow, can't you remember how we talked of Orion last Autumn, and he was hardly visible even then?"

"I remember--in your garden. You must show him to me again some day!" The Rector looked attentively at the speaker. He had caught the minor key in his voice; it had crept in alongside of a misgiving. "I shall lose this friend I would so gladly keep, cloth or no!"

"All right! But you mustn't stop away till Orion comes. When shall I tell my sister to lay a place for you? I believe we are clear next Thursday--will that do?" He took out a notebook for an entry.

"I'm sorry," said Challis. "But I'm obliged--I was just going to tell Lady Arkroyd--I am obliged to return to town to-morrow. I had a letter to-day, calling me back on business. It's a case of compulsion--oh no!--nothing wrong. A mere matter of business relating to publication!"

Her ladyship's sorrow at losing her distinguished guest knew no bounds. She must look forward to seeing him in town, where the family would return in a fortnight. But Mr. Challis would stay over to-morrow. No!--Mr. Challis couldn't do any such thing, thank you! He ought to go by the early train--was sorry to give trouble--but if he and his box could be taken to the railway early enough.... Oh no!--he didn't mind breakfast at 6:30, only it was the trouble! But as Lady Arkroyd's heart was rejoicing--hostesses' hearts do--at her guest getting clear of the mansion before she was out of bed, she was able, from gratitude, to make her grief at his departing at all almost a reality. Otherwise she was consciously relieved that he should go; but as for any mental discomfort on the score of her daughter's relations with him--the idea!--a middle-aged, married, professional man! The eleventh century to the rescue!

Athelstan Taylor said "Good-bye, then!" with real regret, especially as there was something wrong, manifestly. His first instinct was to forswear driving back with Miss Caldecott to the Rectory, and to persuade Challis to walk "part of the way" with him. But--breakfast at 6:30, and Charles's Wain over the new chimney, or its equivalent! After all, he was human. Only, what a pity! A talk with him might have meant so much to Challis.

Sibyl's regrets merely meant, "See how well-bred I am, to be able to conceal my rejoicing! Go away, and don't call in Grosvenor Square when I'm there! Do not give my kind regards to your wife, though a worthy woman, no doubt!" That is, if Challis translated an overflow of suave speech rightly.

Other adieux followed, genuine enough. Mr. Brownrigg was honestly sorry to lose the opportunity of showing Mr. Challis those extracts from Graubosch. Mr. Wraxall was seriously concerned at not being able to supply the figures necessary to a complete understanding of Differential Equivalents, a system by which all deficits would be counteracted. Mr. Ramsey Tomes said he should always regard with peculiar satisfaction the opportunities for which he was indebted to his friend Sir Murgatroyd, of shaking the hand of an author of whom he had always predicted a very large number of remarkable things, "considering"--thought his author--"that he does not appear to have read any of my immortal works." The Baronet himself seemed to be developing a scheme for correlating Feudalism with everything else, in connection with his regret that Mr. Challis had to go away next morning, until her ladyship reminded him that Mr. Challis had to go to bed. So at last Mr. Challis went.

* * * * *

Sibyl hung back. Judith had not gone up yet, she said, in answer to her mother's "I suppose you do mean to go to bed, child, some time!" Why, then, couldn't she leave Judith till breakfast to-morrow? But her ladyship stopped short of pushing for an answer, for she mixed "Good-night" with a yawn, and got away upstairs.

Mr. Elphinstone testified discreetly that he could hear Miss Arkroyd coming. Yes--there she was! Who was that with her? Only the young girl, Tilley, miss! This was what the name Cintilla had become, naturally, in the mouths of the household.

"Go up, child, and see that my hot water isn't cold. Cold hot water is detestable.... Yes, Sibyl?" This was in answer to a particular method of saying nothing, containing an intention to say something disagreeable presently.

"I didn't say anything."

"Please don't be tiresome. You know what I mean, quite well. What was it you didn't say?"

"I suppose you know Mr. Challis is going away to-morrow?"

Judith's demeanour is exemplary. Something pre-engages her. Mr. Challis must come after. She calls the little ex-dairymaiden back; and then, turning to Mr. Elphinstone, waiting patiently to be the last to retire, says to him, "What is good for a burn, Elphinstone?"--as to a universal referee. He replies, "I always use olive-oil, miss," as if he belonged to a particular school of singed butlers. "Give the child some for me," says Judith; and then, being free to give attention to her sister, goes on with, "Yes, what is it? Oh yes! Do I know Mr. Challis is going away to-morrow? Of course I know Mr. Challis is going away to-morrow."

"I thought you did," says Sibyl. This is hardly consecutive, but Judith's equanimity is impregnable. No impertinences or aggressions are to affect it, that's clear! She is easily able to compare the watch on her wrist with the hall-clock, and to find their testimony is the same, for all their difference of size, before she makes further answer.

"Mr. Challis is called away by business. So he says.... Good-night!" Cintilla, or Tilley, will bring the magic oil; so Judith goes upstairs leisurely. Her sister follows. But she has not said good-night yet.

Telepathy makes very funny terms, sometimes, between sisters. And a fact ignored, that has called for comment, may broach a reciprocal consciousness that will never be at rest without speech in the end. This time it is that burn, which Sibyl has said nothing about--has asked no explanation of. And both know it.

At the stair-top both sisters say good-night, with a sort of decision that seems overloaded for the occasion. But the valediction seems inoperative; as both wait, for no apparent reason. Then Sibyl speaks in a quick undertone:

"You wouldn't listen to me, Ju.... No, you needn't be frightened--they're not coming yet...." For Judith had glanced back down the staircase. "You wouldn't listen, and now you see what has come of it."

"What has come of it?"

"Judith!--do you think I am blind, or do you take me for a fool?"

"Yes, dear--the last! But go on. I can wait any time, in reason, for an explanation." She embarked on a period of waiting, gracefully indulgent, a tranquil listener.

"Do you suppose I am taken in by this story?"

"What story?"

"This story of Mr. Challis's going home on business."

"It's a very simple story."

"Very simple ... oh dear!--there's the girl. I'll tell you in the morning...."

"I want to hear now.... Put it in my room, child, and go to bed." And Cintilla says, "Yes, miss!" and vanishes to an innocent pillow. "I want to hear now, and perhaps you'll be so kind as to tell me."

"Come into my room!"

"Certainly!" Judith complies without reserves, dropping gracefully into an armchair, after placing her candle in safety. She makes a parade of her waiting patience. Sibyl, all aflame with flashing eyes, turns on her after closing the door carefully.

"After what I have seen this evening, Judith, I know what to think.... No!--it's no use your denying it." Then in a lower voice, with the flush on her cheeks spreading to her temples, she adds: "Not an hour ago I saw that man Challis...." She pauses on the edge of her indictment.

"You saw that man Challis...?"

"I saw that man Challis ... yes!--I don't care, Judith ... making love to you in Tophet, with his arm round your waist."

"And where were you?"

"Up here in this room. My hair came down, dancing. And I looked out of that window and saw you. Oh, Judith!"

"Oh, Sibyl!" Judith repeats mockingly. She goes to the window with easy deliberation. It is wide open on the summer night, for heat. "Of course one sees Tophet from here," she says. "But how you could distinguish Mr. Challis's arm, or my waist, is a mystery to me, at this distance."

"Have I no eyesight, Judith? I tell you I saw it all, as I stood there where you are now. I saw him set fire to your scarf thing with his cigar. And his arm was round you, and he was looking over your shoulder. I saw it by the blaze-up, as plain as I see you now!"

Judith is undisturbed. "I see you have withdrawn my waist," she says. She circles her diamonded fingers round its girth, and seems not dissatisfied with the span they cannot cover. "But you've got the story wrong, little sister."

"Being offensive won't do you any good."

"You are my little sister, Sib dear! And you're a goose. Mr. Challis showed me a letter, and was kind enough to hold a lighted match for me to read it by."

Sibyl makes no reply. Her eyes remain fixed on her sister as she turns a bracelet on her arm uneasily. Evidently she only half believes her. Can she be lying? It is a matter on which a woman who has never lied before will lie freely. One who has flirted, at such close quarters, with another woman's husband, will tell her sister lies rather than admit it. Sibyl wishes, on the whole, that Judith would look her in the face as she speaks, instead of being so wrapped up in a landscape she knows by heart.

Judith seems inclined to get out of hearing of that subject--has had enough of it. "It seems a shame," she says, "to go to bed on such a heavenly night. But I suppose one must!"

Sibyl is not going to be fubbed off with any such evasions. She has made up her mind, this evening--this is in strict confidence--to accept a peer's son who will be a peer himself when his father ceases to be one, and she is keenly alive to the desirability of avoiding family scandals just at this crisis. If Judith is going to bring a slur on an honourable name, thinks Sibyl, let her do it after my coronet is landed. Her blood is up.

"What was there in the letter?" she says bluntly.

"Sibyl dear, really!" There is amusement in Judith's tone, as of forbearance towards juvenility.

Her sister mocks her. "Yes--me dear, really!" she says. "What was there in the letter?"

"May the catechism stop, if I tell you?" The yawn that begins in these words lasts into what follows: "Oh, no, I don't mind telling you, child! There was nothing to make a secret of. It was from his affectionate wife--poor fellow! He really deserves something less dowdy. Let me see, now, how did it run? Her dear Titus--that was it!--she had had another letter from me, pressing her to come. Hadn't written back. Would her dear Titus make me understand that she was too much wanted at home to come away just now? Besides, she did not care for society, as her dear Titus perfectly well knew. She would only be in the way if she did come. It was much better she should have her friends, and he his--spelt wrong: ei instead of ie. Do you want to know all the rest of the important letter? Very well! She had spent yesterday evening with grandmamma at Pulse Hill, and dear Charlotte was just gone. He was not to hurry back on her account, as it was easier for--some name of a cook--when he was away. He had better stay as long as he could, where he was being amused and flattered. And she was his affectionate wife Marianne.... Have you been flattering Mr. Titus Scroop, Sibyl dear?"

Sibyl ignored the question. "Tulse Hill, I suppose," said she thoughtfully. "Who's dear Charlotte, I wonder?"

"A Mrs. Eldridge. Nobody you know!"

"I wonder if she's good for dear Marianne." Simple truth must now and then tax credulity, or be excluded from fiction. The whole of the conversation is given above, and where or when on earth Sibyl found in it anything to warrant this wonderment of hers Heaven only knows! However, one can wonder at nothing, oneself, in these days of Marconigraphs. Sibyl ended her speech with, "The woman's as jealous as she can be--one can see that!"

"Can one?... oh, I dare say one can, dear! Only she's no concern of mine. Suppose we go to bed."

"If you were Mr. Challis's wife, you might feel just as she does. And if you were not really his wife, it would be all the worse."

"Of course, when one's neither, one doesn't care." This was faulty in construction, yet neither sister felt that it could not be understood.

The hardships of a forgotten casual on the landing outside were recognized with, "Oh dear! Why didn't you go to bed? It's nearly two o'clock." And then sleep came in view, for those who were at home to him.

If Judith said, "Not at home," was it any wonder? Think what an amount of dissimulation she had gone through since that revelation of Challis's in the garden--since what may have been a discovery about herself of something she may have suspected before, but had half-contemptuously dismissed! She may have more than once asked herself the question, "Do I possibly love this man?" and laughed a negative. But oh, the difference it makes when a man has said roundly, "I carry your image in my heart, and cannot be quit of it." She had played with edged tools, and had cut herself. The burn on her shoulder was not the only result of tampering with fire that day, for her. Most surely for her own sake, and his, concealment was the sacramental word, for the moment. She had let him know she was unable to say she did not love him; that was all! But an intent she had half formed in the very core of her heart must be hidden from him. He must have no suspicion that she would lend herself to a scheme that would take advantage of a wretched legal shuffle--one of the most wretched that even Themis has scheduled as a shift for the cancelling of a solemn contract. Was she quite prepared to say she would not, for her own sake, jump at an expedient granted by the solemnity of Law, to make Dishonour seem honourable, and disallow the claims of this stupid, commonplace, would-be wife, who was no wife at all? And who knew it, for that matter.

For this intention had sounded its first note in her heart as she read that postscript, when the last match was all but burned out. She could remember every word of it, as she paced to and fro in the silence of her bedroom, fostering the idea it suggested. "I suppose you know"--so poor fool Marianne had written, in her momentary fit of spleen and obduracy--"what mamma always says about you and me--that we are not really married at all. If so, I ought to go back and live with her, and the sooner the better. Then you would be free, and I suppose it would be Judith." For that was what the stupid, exasperated woman had actually written, and next morning would have been so glad to plunder the postman's bag of, when he disembowelled the vermilion pillar-box at the corner.

But, as for Judith, her business was to bury the suggestion--which she had read, and Challis had not--in her heart. Had she not a right to hide her cloven foot, if it was one--to wear over it a pretext of her reverence for the bond that linked this man to his dowdy wife, until it broke asunder from its natural rottenness? What was that nauseous saying male man was so fond of? "All's fair in Love!" and what the foetid interpretations he felt no shame to put upon it? Why was all the selfishness and meanness to belong to one sex alone?

And meanwhile Challis himself was tossing through the fever of a sleepless night, until some wretched sleep was broken by Samuel calling him at 6.30 in the morning, and the hoot of a motor outside. Samuel explained that he had come later than the first time fixed, as his lordship had placed the Panhard at Mr. Challis's disposal, and it would more than make up the time. Challis was grateful.

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Chapter XXXII

HOW LIZARANN AND JOAN PLAYED TRUANT. OF A RIDE IN A MOTOR, AND ITS BAD EFFECTS. HOW LIZARANN CONVALESCED, AND JUDITH WALKED HOME FROM CHURCH WITH THE RECTOR. HOW MARIANNE HAD BOLTED WITH THE TWO CHILDREN

Lizarann was, of course, the patient Mr. Taylor spoke of. But it was all her own fault, said Public Opinion, that she had such a bad inflammatory cold. If she and Joan had been good, obedient children, and done as they were told when they came home from the tea-party at Royd, instead of giving Aunt Bessy the slip and running away to Daddy at Mrs. Forks's cottage, all would have been well. But be lenient to Lizarann! It was all through her anxiety that old Christopher should have his bicarbonate of soda. Her anxiety on his behalf was great, although she did not know him personally.

"Maten't Phoebe and Jones go round to old Mrs. Forks, where Daddy is, and bring it screwed up in piper like acrost the road to Mr. Curtis's?" So Lizarann had said--for she really believed that Joan's name was one and the same with that of the Wash, in Cazenove Street--and Aunt Bessy's negative had been emphatic.

"Certainly not, my dear! At this time of the evening! Why, it's past six o'clock.... Yes, you and Joan may run on in front, only don't get over the gate till I come. The gate of the next field, you know." But when Aunt Bessy and Phoebe reached that gate--where were Lizarann and Joan? The wicked imps had gone to Mrs. Forks's.

The worst of it was that when the Rector had personally recaptured the truants, and was taking them home, a motor-car, with a lady and gentleman in it, passed them, going at speed. That, as they escaped alive, was no harm. But, having passed, it stopped, and something disagreed with it all through the colloquy that followed.

"Isn't that Mr. Taylor? Can't we give you a lift?"

"You're going the wrong way. And we're too numerous."

"Nonsense! Any amount of room! And it won't take us three minutes to run you back to the Rectory. Jump in."

The Rector hesitated a moment. It was just on to dinner-time at the Hall, and it seemed a shame to make this lady and gentleman late. But Lizarann was coughing again. It may have been the petrol, but still----! Then, too, Aunt Bessy's anxiety would be over all the sooner. And there were those children almost frantic with delight at the idea of a ride in a motor!

So he agreed. And it was fun! Only there were two drawbacks--one, that it was over so soon; the other, that no sooner were they deposited at the Rectory gate, and the lady and gentleman in the motor off at great speed to be in time for dinner, than Lizarann had such a terrible attack of coughing that Miss Caldecott and her brother-in-law were quite alarmed.

The report the Rector gave to Lady Arkroyd was too sanguine. Bad inflammatory colds don't yield to treatment in a couple of hours, which was about how long it had been at work by the time he and Aunt Bessy drove away to the Hall, to come in after dinner, having been forced to cry off, with apology and explanation, owing to the escapade of the children.

Lizarann's didn't yield to treatment for many days, and during that period was a serious source of alarm to all her circle of friends at the Rectory, and a frequent subject of inquiry by interested outsiders. For the little maid had a happy faculty of remaining in the memory of chance acquaintances. Also, it was generally understood in the neighbourhood that she was a delicate protégée of the Rector's friend's sister, Adeline Fossett, and had been sent away from town to get the benefit of the air at Royd. So Lizarann got quite her fair share of public interest.

But her attack must have been a sharp one, or we may rely upon it she wouldn't have been kept in bed next day, and more days after next day. And Dr. Sidrophel--it wasn't his real name, mind you!--wouldn't have said, as he did till Lizarann really felt quite sick of hearing it, that it would be as well to continue the poultices, for the present, as a precaution. Her own view, to be sure, was that inflammation was the result of mustard poultices and stethoscopes primarily, and that it was bound to get worse if you had to put a glass tube in your mouth at the bidding of well-meaning friends. But she concealed these convictions in deference to public opinion, and did everything she was told to do, however gross the infatuation might be that instituted the obnoxious treatment. Her conviction that she had, intrinsically, nothing the matter with her was, however, not one to be shaken lightly. She went so far once as to say so to Dr. Pordage--that was his real name!--who replied, "Oh ah, that's it, is it? Nothing the matter! But you will have, if you don't look alive, as safe as a button! So there we are, little miss!"--but absently, as though she was a child and wouldn't understand him--and blotted the prescription he had been writing. But Lizarann heard every word, and resolved to look alive, so far as in her lay, whenever an opportunity came. Meanwhile, none being manifest, she reflected a good deal on buttons, wondering what was the nature of the security they tendered, and why she had never heard it before.

When Mr. Yorick--the name she preferred for the Rector, because, you see, Miss Fossett must know best--came to pay her a visit shortly after, she inquired on this point, giving the whole of the doctor's speech, and making herself cough. Now, Mr. Yorick always talked to Lizarann as if she was a sensible person; and if there was one attribute for which the child loved him more dearly than another, it was that. But her devotion to him was so complete--second only to her love for her Daddy--that analysis of it was absurd.

"Was he talking to you, or talking to himself, Lizarann?" said he, sitting by the bed with the patient's hand in his. It was small and feverish.

The reply called for reflection. Having thought well over it, Lizarann said decisively: "Bofe!"

"Was he writing all the while?"

"Yass!" Nods helped the emphasis. "All the while! Scritch-scratch!"

"That was it, Lizarann! Dr. Sidrophel can't write and hear what he says to himself at the same time. So nobody knows what he means." But the little woman's great eyes were full of doubtful inquiry, and more must be said. "I expect he only meant that if you went out in the air you would get your cough back. So you must just look alive and lie in bed." It was plausible, and would have to do for the present. The button question might stand over.

"Mustn't I go and see Daddy where Mrs. Forks is?"

"Yes, in a little while. Daddy will come and see you every day."

"And bring his crutches to come upstairs with?"

"Daddy left his crutches here yesterday. To be ready for him whenever he comes."

"And not tear a hole in the drugget?"

"Not if he goes gently and I put my hand on his back!"

"Which hand?"

"This one I've got hold of you with, Miss Coupland! Any more questions?"

Lizarann pursed up her lips and shook her head. But she reconsidered her decision. "Yass! About Dr. Side--Dr. Side...."

"Dr. Sidrophel? What about him?"

"Why's his real nime Pordage?" She had the name very pat, showing close observation and reflection.

Mr. Yorick had to consider the point. "Well!" said he presently, "I admit it's rather a bad job. But there's no way out of it now. It is his real name, and that's all about it!" But Lizarann looked dissatisfied. "We may call him Dr. Sidrophel behind his back, Lizarann," added he.

"Supposing he was to hear us talking behind his back, and was to listen behind his back...!" Hypothetical knavery being admitted between these two, as a necessity in ingenious fictions, Mr. Yorick did not think a homily on truth-telling necessary at this point. In fact, he counselled bold duplicity, to Lizarann's great relief. "We should have to go far enough off, Lizarann," said he. And the stage direction indicated was so pleasant to her unfledged mind that she utilized it to develope the subject further--kept the curtain up, as it were!

"Then if we wentited far enough off, you could tell me why his nime was Dr. Spiderophel, too." She dashed intrepidly at the name, and nearly captured it.

"Of course I could, and he wouldn't hear one word."

"And what should you sye?" Lizarann gave a slight leap in bed, from pleasant anticipation. She was told to lie quiet, and she should hear.

And that is how it was that when Miss Caldecott came in, dressed cap-à-pie for public worship, a prayer-book in a gloved hand--for it was Sunday morning--to remind her brother-in-law that the bells were going to begin, and arouse him to his duties, she found him telling how Sidrophel was an astronomer who took a fly in his telescope for an elephant on the moon; and that this legend was only partly cleared up by its narrator. Telescopes and stethoscopes remained imperfectly differentiated in Lizarann's mind. And Mr. Yorick's temporary acceptance of her pronunciation led to a misapprehension about spiders and flies. Did this astronomer catch that fly, or did the fly get away? Lizarann treasured hopes on its behalf, for the next chapter in the story.

But she felt it her duty to look alive, and lie quite quiet in bed, although--law bless you!--she had nothing the matter with her. So she lay and watched a greedy bee, who seemed bent on leaving no honey in that jessamine, at any rate, that came across the open lattice, and had its say in the mixed scents of hay and roses that came in out of the sunshine for Lizarann to get her share of them. She lay and listened to the bells, and wondered why the sound rose and fell, and decided at first that it was done for the purpose, and was the right way. But then, how did Nonconformity afar manage to do it so exactly like? For the Chapel tinkle rose and fell, too. Then came the footsteps on the garden-gravel; one big one, the Rector's, and many small ones. And Lizarann was so sorry she wasn't to go to Church, where it was her Sunday-wont, in these days, to drive a coach-and-six through the first Commandment, and worship Athelstan Taylor on his pulpit-altar in a heart-felt way, while admitting official obligations elsewhere.

But she couldn't go this time, and, what was more, she had to go on looking alive and lying quiet while Phoebe and Joan shouted good-byes up at the window, as though they were off to New Zealand; because, you see, Lizarann had solemnly promised, if they did so, not to shout back and make herself cough.

"She hardly coughed at all when I was with her," said the Rector, on his way to his weekly pièce de résistance--his Sunday sermon. "I can't help thinking Dr. Sidrophel may be making his fly out an elephant this time."

"Perhaps, dear! But the fly may become an elephant. He's really very clever, although you do make such game of him. You see, he was quite right about poor Gus."

"Ah, dear, dear!--yes. But then he says, if Gus got into a better climate, he might make old bones yet."

"So Gus will, by God's mercy, dear! But I mean, Dr. Pordage said--and I do not see that I am bound to call him out of his name--that in the end Gus would have to give in, and go. You see, he was right! Joan!"

"Yes, aunty darling!"

"Don't turn your toes in and out, and whistle. It's not at all lady-like, and there's Mrs. Theophilus Silverton just behind in the pony-carriage." Joan toned her behaviour down to meet the prejudices of local society. "You do see, don't you, that Dr. Pordage was right?" For this good lady wouldn't glisser, and always appuyait until her accuracy had been entered on the minutes. Her brother-in-law said, "Quite right, aunty!" And she said, "Very well, then!" and seemed to find the fact that she was right almost a set-off against the painful fact she was right about.

For Dr. Sidrophel's shrewd forecast about the Rev. Augustus Fossett meant exile for that invalid; and this exile had already taken form in the proposal that Gus should accept a chaplaincy of an English church in Tunis, which had been offered to him. Athelstan Taylor was keen on his acceptance of the post; as he would have been on the amputation of his own right hand, if he had seen therein any benefit for his friend. But his face went very sad over it as he walked on in silence.

His mind was back in old Eton and Oxford days, when they were all young together--Gus and his sister Adeline, and he, and the mother of those two youngsters in front, who were being so decorous, pending the approach of the pony-chariot behind. And this semi-sister of his own, beside him now, who was always a sort of thorn in the Rector's innermost conscience. For hadn't she--or had she--foregone wedlock and babes of her own for the sake of her sister's and his? The sort of thing no one could ever really know! And what would happen if this confounded Deceased Wife's Sister bill were to become law? That was the cul-de-sac these explorations often led him to, more and more as the chances increased of a majority for the Bill in the House of Peers. But it was a cul-de-sac. Why think about it? Was not each day's evil sufficient for it, and something over?

The pony-carriage gained and gained--overhauled the pedestrians--underwent a period of rapture that it should absolutely see them alive in the flesh--and forged ahead unfeelingly. But it had not expelled from the Rector's mind a something that it had met with in that cul-de-sac--what was it?--oh yes, he knew!

"That's a very sad business, I'm afraid, of poor Challis's."

But Miss Caldecott cannot honour this remark immediately. Deportment calls for attention. "You're not to begin again, the minute they're out of sight, Joan.... What business, dear?"

"I thought you knew about it?"

"No, I know nothing. Only what Lady Arkroyd said."

"Exactly! Well--it's a very painful affair."

"No doubt, dear! Phoebe, don't hunch your shoulders."

"Come, Bess, be a little sorry for the poor chap! I don't believe it's his fault."

"Oh, I dare say not! I know nothing about it. And I don't want to know anything about people of that sort."

"What sort?"

"You know what I mean, Athel. Literary, freethinking sort of people. Them and their wives!"

"I know quite well what you mean, Bess." As Athelstan does know, he says so honestly, instead of allowing his sister-in-law to attempt to explain her meaning, which he is well aware she cannot. "But tell me again what Lady Arkroyd said about Challis and his wife."

"Just what I told you."

"Which was...?"

"That they had quarrelled, and she had gone away to her mother. The day after he went back."

"Was that all?"

"Yes--I think so! Yes, there was nothing else."

"How came Lady Arkroyd to know?"

The lady becomes suddenly explicit. "My dear, it's, no, use, your, catechizing me! For I tell you I know nothing about it! You must ask Lady Arkroyd yourself. There they are!" Meaning that carriage-wheels are audible, identifiable as the Hall coming to Church.

And then the Rector had to mind his _p_s and _q_s. For he hadn't so much as thought of the text he should preach on.

However, he acquitted himself well, as he had done a hundred times under analogous circumstances. And then, as soon as he felt at liberty to be secular, his mind went back to the profane author's domestic affairs.

"My dear Lady Arkroyd, what's this about our friend Challis and his wife?"

The Baronet, who is close by--for he is a punctual church-goer: it is feudal--says, informedly, "A row in that quarter!" nods sagaciously, and contains further information in closed lips. Her ladyship supposes it's the usual thing; need we know anything about it? She dismisses nuptial quarrels, presumably resulting from infidelities, with graceful languor; perhaps reserving such as are within the pale, sanctioned by titles. Judith, with the most perfect self-command, immovably graceful, says sweetly: "Is there a row between Mr. and Mrs. Challis?" On which her mother suddenly becomes petulant and human--comes down from Olympus as it were--exclaiming: "Why, Ju, you know you told me so yourself, child!--what nonsense!"

"Perhaps I used the wrong word," says Ju, undisturbed. "Have we any business with Mr. and Mrs. Challis's private affairs?"

"None at all, my dear! Jump in: you're keeping the horses." Her ladyship is in the carriage already, and will have no objection to driving away from Mr. and Mrs. Challis's private affairs. It was just like dear Mr. Taylor to begin talking about them, with everyone about.

But Judith has another scheme. She is going to walk, thank you! Miss Caldecott and Phoebe and Joan may do the jumping in, and the carriage may drop them at the Rectory. Oh, very well!--if Miss Arkroyd really wants to walk. All settled. Only Joan puts in a demurrer; she means to walk with papa, and he will carry her on his shoulder. Joan is an anti-Sabbatarian of an advanced school, and often makes her father as bad as herself.

The Rectory is not really on the way to the Hall, but Judith's short cut to the latter is not far out of it for Joan and her man-servant, or ox, or ass--whichever is nearest--who ought to be doing no labour on this day. So, as soon as the Rector escapes from the small-talk of many parishioners on the road, and turns into the field path, Judith can effect an end she has in view. It was none of her doing, mind you!--this was the substance of her exordium--it was entirely mamma. What she referred to, after many minutes in abeyance, had revived the moment the last parishioner died away. But the Rector disallowed her line of pleading.

"Come, I say now, Judith!" He Christian-names the daughters of the Hall when alone with them, having known them as children. "Draw it mild! You must have told your madre something. Of course you did!"

"Yes. I was obliged to. But Mr. Challis did not mean me to. It was very difficult not to say something about what was in the letter...."

"From Mr. Challis?"

"Yes. Mamma knows his handwriting, and asked me what was in it. It was too long for me to say--nothing! So I told her what I knew she must hear afterwards, but begged her to say nothing about it."

"And then she told Bess?"

"I'm extremely sorry to have to turn and rend my mother--especially coming from Church--but you see she has her idiosyncrasies, the madre. I assure you, dear Mr. Taylor, she actually went straight to Miss Caldecott, and said with the most unblushing effrontery that she had promised not to tell anyone, but that she knew she might do so safely to anyone so discreet, and then repeated what I had said to her, with additions. She is a trying mother sometimes!"

"And then Bess comes and tells me! You're a nice lot of confidantes...." Something in Judith's look checks his joking tone as he glances round at her, and he says, "What?" And then, "Yes--go on!" Then a hesitation leaves her, and she speaks:

"I will tell you more than I told mamma, Mr. Taylor. I wish to, because I think your advice would be good. Mr. Challis wrote to me--a long letter--we are friends, you know; I have seen a good deal of him...."

"Quite right! I like Challis, you know."

"So do I;--though he might smoke less. However, we're none of us perfect.... Well!--I'm sorry to say the story is true. He fell out with Marianne--his wife is Marianne--the day after he arrived at home, although she had received him cordially enough on his arrival. She was at her mother's when he arrived, but came back to dinner. In the course of the evening they quarrelled, but I gathered from his letter that he thought it would blow over. Next morning they were civil to one another, but short of reconciliation. She went out in the morning, and in the afternoon he went away to a club-dinner. When he came back, quite late, he found a note from her, saying that she had gone away again to her mother's, and had taken her children with her."

"Good God!" The Rector's voice is a shocked undertone. "Was that Bob, and the two little girls...? Oh yes!--he told me a good deal of his family."

"Not Bob; he's at school. The others are her own children; he isn't."

"I never was more shocked in my life.... Yes!--Joanikin. You'd better get down and walk a bit. There we are, all alive and kicking!" Joan is deposited on the ground, her legs in evidence. "But do tell me!--'took away her children with her'! She can't, legally."

"She has done it illegally, I presume." Judith is very equable over this point. "She has done it actually, anyhow!"

"What an extraordinary thing!" The Rector cannot get over it.

"Well!--it's true! He came back from his club, poor man, to find his house empty and his children gone. And no explanation but the note. He roused up the servants that were left, a cook named Steptoe and the housemaid, who said their mistress and the nurse and children had packed a few things and gone away in a cab with a friend, about an hour after he left."

"It seems almost incredible--at first." He has to walk on a little way, fanning himself with his bandana handkerchief, before he can settle down from his amazement, and try for enlightening details. At last he says: "And then he wrote to you--when? Next day?"

"He left us, you remember, on Tuesday. His letter is dated Tuesday. The Tuesday after. Just a week."

"Would you object to my seeing it?"

"I should not. Why should I? But I fancy he did not wish anyone else to see it. I could tell you what there was in it, just as well. And then, dear Mr. Taylor, you will see why he wrote at such length to me about it. You must be wondering."

"I was."

"It was simply this.... By-the-bye, I dare say you heard how he set me on fire--that night we had the dance?... No?... Well, it was all connected with that. You know this Marianne of his would keep on refusing to come and see us, and I asked him to show me her letter with a message to me in it. We were out in our little Tophet garden, and it was too dark to read it. I thought one could read by moonlight, or I wouldn't have asked for it. Mr. Challis lighted a vesta for me to read by, and set me on fire ... well--yes--I was just a little burned, on this shoulder. The worst of it was, her letter caught fire, and was burned to a cinder."

"But what harm did that do? She didn't want it back."

"No, she didn't. But there were two or three words on the back he hadn't read, and I couldn't tell him what they were. It seems she was surprised at his making no reference to them; and since he told me in his letter what he surmises they were, I can't say I wonder. I should have been."

"What were they? Or what does he suppose them to have been?"

"He might not like me to say, because she can never have meant them to be seen. It doesn't matter what they were...."

"Certainly, certainly! I quite understand."

"If he had known of them, he would have refused to show me the letter. As it turned out, it was most unfortunate. Because he said nothing except that he had given me her message to read...." Judith faltered--was coming to the difficult part.

"'Message to read,'" said the Rector connectively. "Yes?"

"Had given me her message to read, and had said nothing about when or where or how. And then the poor man had to account for the burning of the letter before he saw these words on the back ... oh yes!--of course, one ought always to tell the whole truth in a fix; I know that. But she had only his word for it that he had read the letter before and overlooked the postscript. Of course, what she thought was that her good gentleman was allowing a strange young lady--who isn't very popular with her--to open her confidential letters, and let him read them over her shoulder. Now do you appreciate the position, Rector?" Probably this young lady was very glad that this way of accounting for Mrs. Challis's resentment franked her of referring to the possible effect on a jealous wife's imagination of the loneliness of Tophet and the moonlight, both of which were sine qua non to a true account of the conflagration. Surmises about Challis's passionate outburst were not to be encouraged by reference to any of the surroundings that provoked them. Let them be ignored, "sequin net"--which is not expensive, but deadly in the moonlight--and all!

So unsuspicious was Athelstan Taylor of the inner soul of a thorough-paced flirt that he thought he might indulge in a little subcutaneous paternal amusement, as of wider experience, at this young lady's seeming innocence of the constructions Mrs. Challis might attach to details of the story told in full. He nodded assent to his own insight. Oh yes!--he appreciated the position thoroughly; Judith might be sure of that!--and points below the surface as well. But these belonged to a part of the drama altogether of minor importance, seeing how foregone a conclusion it was that no such thing as flirtation between a daughter of the Hall and a stray scribbler was possible. The fact that Challis had quarrelled with his wife was on another footing altogether. May there not have been some other cause?

"Challis puts his wife's resentment down entirely to this matter of the opening of the letter?" The Rector's question comes after cogitation.

"Ye-es!--entirely, this time."

"H'm!--have there been other times?"

"He does not say so. That is not quite what I meant. I should have said that she seems to have accused him of untruthfulness before, or at least hinted at it. I don't gather that there has ever been a rupture between them. Don't let's walk fast, or we shall be back before I've told you what I am in it--I mean, what Mr. Challis wants me to do."

"I can come a little way on with you ... why, of course, he wants you to write to his wife and confirm his version of this picturesque event. That's it, isn't it?"

"That's it. But what use will it be?"

Now for all Athelstan Taylor's superior insight into the world and its ways, it had not so far presented itself to him that a letter from Miss Arkroyd to Mrs. Challis on this subject might be like a red rag to a bull. It crossed his mind now, and kept him silent until Judith repeated: "What use will it be?" Then he replied uneasily: "Do you know?--I don't feel the ground firm under my feet. I shouldn't like to advise off-hand. What does your mother think?"

"Oh, I haven't talked to mamma, beyond what I told you. You see--she's dear, of course; but she's a sieve. And these are Mr. Challis's affairs, not mine ... oh no!--I know he wouldn't mind my talking to you about them."

"How do you know?"

"Oh, I know! He would like me to talk to you, I'm certain."

"Would you mind talking to Bess about it? She's very sensible."

"I don't think Mr. Challis would like it. I am sure he would not mind you."

The Rector admitted this was possible, in his inner conscience. But he would make another suggestion: "Why not ask Addie what she thinks? She's coming to-morrow, on a visit to Lizarann."

"How is the little girl?"

"Getting on like a house on fire. But you will ask Addie? You needn't answer his letter yet, you know. At least, you needn't write to Mrs. Challis."

"Miss Fossett? Isn't she, though--isn't she somehow some sort of connection of Mrs. Challis?"

"Is she?"

"Or isn't it?... Oh, I know--it was a cousin of hers I met at the play. Mr. Challis hates her--the cousin. I didn't dislike her."

"She might know something...."

"I don't think Miss Fossett would see much of this--Mrs. Partridge, I think the name was. But Mrs. Partridge and Marianne are bosom-friends. So it might be worth...." She interrupted herself. "Only isn't Miss Fossett...?"

"Isn't she what?"

"Well, then, doesn't she feel very strongly on the Deceased Wife's Sister question?"

"What would that have to do with it?"

"You know he married his deceased wife's sister?"

"Eh?" said the Rector. "So he did." And then, thoughtfully: "I see--I see--I think I see."

"See what?"

"The reason why she took her children away. She thinks they are hers legally--thinks she has a right to them."

Judith evidently did not see the point involved, and the Rector had to explain that the children of an unmarried woman belong legally to their mother, and that probably Marianne, not being Challis's wife according to the law of the land, had imagined that her right to possession of them could be maintained in a law-court.

"But surely--it could!" said Judith.

"Ah, my dear young lady!"--was the answer--"little you know the amazing resources of legislation for deciding that the weaker party is in the wrong!"

But Judith did not want the conversation to become a review of the iniquities of Law, a subject on which she knew Athelstan Taylor was given to being in revolt against constituted authority. So she brought him back to the real issue before the house.

"You haven't told me what you think I ought to write, Mr. Taylor. Please don't send me away to ask somebody else!--that's such very cold comfort. Give me real advice. What can I say?"

It took a little time to decide, but was clear when it came. "The question, I take it, isn't whether the letter will do any good. I tell you honestly, I don't think it will. But Challis asks you to write, and that settles the matter. Well!--say you write at his request, and that he asks you to write exactly what happened. Do it as literally as possible."

"Say anything about how grieved I am--painful circumstances--hope to hear misunderstanding completely removed--anything of that sort?"

"Oh no!--no, on the whole, certainly not! Better keep off that as much as possible!"

"Won't it be rather like ... snuffing poor Mrs. Challis out, if I don't end up somehow?"

"Hm--well! Suppose we go so far as to hope this will help to remove ... to remove ... what seems a perfectly groundless misunderstanding. Stop it at that. Quite enough! And I say, Judith, look here! In writing to Mrs. Challis, don't you go and show that you've heard particulars of the row. Stick to the explanation of the letter-business. Don't on any account show you know she has left her home, or that he has told about it."

"Won't that be what Mr. Tomes calls suppressio veri?"

"Tut--tut! If it is, not sending the letter at all will be suppressio of still more veri. You stick to what Challis asks for, and let him be responsible. Married couples, when they quarrel, are kittle cattle to shoe behind. Now we must say good-bye, or one of us will be late for lunch."

They had overshot the point at which the path diverged to the Rectory, and it was time to hark back. But before Judith was out of hearing the Rector called after her.

"Tell poor Challis I'm writing to him. I shall go and see him when I get up to town--some time next week. Good-bye!"

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