Front matter (continued 3)

Susan started.

"Whom have you told?" I asked again. "Did you talk about it at Traxelby?"

"Oh, no, Miss!" said Susan, almost reproachfully. Then, after an awkward pause, she added: "Unless..."

"Unless...?"

"Well, Miss, I did say to Gibson that ... that there was somebody. But I didn't mention names, Miss, and he could never guess."

"Have you said anything to Georgette?"

Susan hung her head and studied the toe of her shoe a long time before she confessed:

"Georgette asked me, Miss."

"Asked you what?"

"Georgette said: 'Have you got an Ammee?' And when I told her I didn't know what an Ammee was, she said..."

Susan blushed and stopped.

"Go on," I said. "An ami. What did Georgette say an ami was?"

"It is French for Mister," faltered Susan. "Georgette says it is a Mister with whom one is in love."

"What did you tell her?"

"Nothing, Miss."

"You were very sensible, Susan," I said. "You oughtn't to talk about it to any one."

I picked up a book; but Susan still loitered.

"Well?" I asked at length. "What is it?"

"Please, Miss," began Susan uncomfortably, "I didn't tell Georgette anything."

"So you said before."

"Yes, Miss. But Georgette ... wanted to look at the envelope. I mean the letter to his lordship, Miss."

"But you didn't let her do it?"

"Oh, no, Miss."

"Then what is there to worry about?"

Susan scraped the floor with the point of her shoe, and shifted about. By and by she blurted:

"Georgette wanted to know if the letter was to my Ammee or ... or to yours, Miss."

I shut the book. Susan hurried on.

"So, of course, I said he was mine, Miss."

Ruddington is right. Susan is a wonder, a gem, and five times out of six a born lady. After I had praised her discreetly and had deplored the impertinent pryings of Georgette, I took up the book again and told Susan she might go away.

She went, but within five minutes she was back.

"I thought I'd best tell you, Miss," she said when I looked up.

"Yes?"

"I didn't show Georgette the address, Miss. But ... she noticed the envelope wasn't gummed down."

"Yes, yes. Get on."

"I oughtn't to have done it, Miss. But Georgette went into the garden and plucked a flower, and lifted up the flap of the envelope, and laughed, and tucked the flower inside."

"It's a great pity, Susan," I said, "that you didn't take it out again. If you'd make up your mind to marry Lord Ruddington it wouldn't matter. But can't you see how foolish it will look? It simply contradicts the letter asking for a week's grace."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan, going redder than ever. But she showed no sign of departing.

"Is that all, Susan?" I asked, with a sudden fear that there was worse to follow.

"No, Miss," she answered faintly. "After we'd posted the letter, Georgette laughed again and said that the flower had a meaning."

"A meaning?"

"Yes, Miss. The Language of Flowers, Miss. Georgette said the flower meant 'Vang.'"

"Vang?"

"Yes, Miss. That's the French Language of Flowers, Miss. Georgette says that, in English, it means 'Come'!"

Before I could speak, she burst out crying.

"Please, Miss," she wept, "I didn't see any harm on Saturday. But last night, when I went to bed, and thought about it ... oh, Miss Gertrude, I'm so miserable!" And she cried harder than ever.

In the end I sent her away consoled to the extent of my assurance that I didn't blame her in the least, and that the sole offender was Georgette. Also, I promised her that I wouldn't get Georgette into trouble.

At first I felt determined to give Georgette some very plain speaking in private. Yet how can I? How was Georgette to know that Susan hadn't been writing a common country love-letter to some common country sweetheart? What divination could teach Georgette that we had been writing a superfine letter to a milord? Georgette simply indulged her rural playfulness. And if the envelope was open for Georgette to put the flower in, it was also open for Susan to take it out.

That's the devil (I can't help saying it!) of this endless affair. Everybody keeps on giving me shocks and jumps, and yet nobody is ever to blame.

Not that much harm is done this time. I suppose Ruddington will go silly over the flower. He'll kiss it, and wear it next his heart by day, and lay it under his pillow by night, and worship it as a symbol of fresh mysticalities and exquisitenesses in his divine Susan. But he won't ring for the kitchen-maids and request the kind loan of a Language of Flowers. He won't so much as think of it that way. Even if he does, he will know that it is the letter and not the flower that he must obey.

I wonder what flower it is that means "Viens?"

Monday night.

I have been reading Ruddington's last letter over again. And although I began it with prejudice (being still nettled by Georgette's prank), it has affected me strangely.

Seen whole, I know the situation is farcical. It is a farce that may end in a tragedy. But as Ruddington sees it, with the wrong notion of Susan that I have helped to give him, it is a most high and sweet romance, all rose and gold.

Life can be most hideously cruel. Better no beautiful dreams at all when there must be such an awakening. And that poor lad Gibson is to be soured for ever in order that Ruddington may go through life with a millstone of disenchantment round his neck. Something is here for tears.

Tuesday, three o'clock.

Ruddington remains quiet, like a good boy; so the flower has done no harm. Susan has been quite brightened up by suddenly remembering that the flower was only a French one.

This morning there was a wedding at Sainte Véronique. I have seen country weddings in France before, but this is the first one that hasn't offended me. The bride was a pink-and-white, almost English looking girl, and the bridegroom was a tanned, honest, handsome young fisherman. When Susan and I saw them, it was after the wedding. They were standing side by side, hand in hand at a door, while the guests were bustling for places at an open-air breakfast-table. You could not say that they were not taking in the scene. Indeed, they laughed more than once at the horse-play of the youths. Yet it was plain that while their eyes recognized friends, and while their minds were lightly engaged with the outer world, their spirits had built a little hidden shrine of peace. Never before have I seen on human faces such a serene yet delicate fulness of perfect happiness. Below the rattle of plates and the shouts and the laughter, my ear caught a rich undersong of love.

In the past I have learned almost to loathe lovers. When Hugh came to see Alice, I used to wonder how she could endure him. I suppose he enjoyed his courtship, just as a budding barrister enjoys his obligatory course of dinners; but he used to turn up more like a man who had come to tune the piano than like a man in love. And I don't think I detest any one in this world more than poor Maude Slaney's Bob. Heaven only knows how many millions of times he has mispronounced the word "fiancée" these last two years; and the way they go on in public is simply horrid. I'd almost rather have the boorishly amorous couples who slouch on Sunday nights along Church Lane, gaping up at the Grange.

But, this month, I've begun to see lovers in a less garish light. The fisherman reminded me of Gibson. I shall be the better all my life long for having stood in the glow of Gibson's splendid manliness when he thought Susan was in danger. Ruddington, poor man, is quite an endurable lover, too. As for Susan, although she's so simple, I haven't definitely made her out. But, allowing amply for her shyness and for her deference to my guidance, it's rather fine to see how she hangs back from Ruddington's money and rank until she feels sure she can care for him. If the bulk of human love is anything like these samples, I don't wonder that the world goes right round in a night and a day.

Tuesday, bedtime.

Another earthquake.

This afternoon, Madame Dupoirier went to Grandpont station in the hotel omnibus. She has just come back.

Madame says that when the 'bus drew up at the station "a compatriot" of mine stepped alongside and attentively perused the words "Hôtel du Dauphin, Sainte Véronique-sur-mer," painted on the 'bus sides. Apparently he mistook Madame for a guest who was going away; and he asked her (very politely, Madame says) if she knew whether "Mees Langley and Mees Breeggs" were still at the hotel. Madame said "Yes;" and she is quite pleasantly fluttered at the thought of an extra guest fairly on his way hither.

I was too much stunned to do more than thank her for telling me. I didn't even ask her what the man was like, and whether he spoke to her in French or in English. But I've no doubt it is Ruddington.

I call it abominable. If Susan were travelling in France with her parents, or even with some married woman for a mistress, it would be different. But this is outrageous.

I ought to have known that he would hunt up the meaning of Georgette's flower. A man who can read such super-exquisite meanings into the half-dozen notes I have scribbled for Susan, isn't the sort to leave any stone unturned. I can't help despising him. When a full-grown, educated man has such sickly rubbish as the Language of Flowers at his finger ends, a lady's-maid is as much as he deserves.

What will he do? I hardly think he'll descend upon Sainte Véronique till his mystical Susan's sacrosanct week of retreat has expired. I suppose he'll hover ridiculously in the neighbourhood, like a knight keeping vigil outside a woodland oratory where his milk-white ladye kneels at prayer. Probably there will be a mysterious succession of leaves and petals in otherwise empty envelopes--a scarlet-runner to mean "I have come post-haste," a convolvulus to mean "I am still hanging on," a thorny bramble to mean "I suffer."

Even the ardours of a lover ought not to burn out the instincts of a gentleman. I gave Ruddington credit for more decency and restraint.

When the week is over, he will want to come here. It is an intolerable position. I am about to be made a fool of. Everybody will get to hear of it some day.

Ought I to wire for Alice? No, I can't. If it were anybody but Ruddington, I could. I'm like a poor hunted beast in a trap, with no way to turn.

I have more than half a mind to pack up at daybreak and to slip stealthily back to Dieppe for my promised week at the Cheval d'Or.

Wednesday, very early.

I forgot to wind up my watch.

I have decided not to run away.

Three things have become clear as I have turned them over in the night.

First, I'm as good a man as Ruddington. If I stood up to Mr. John Lamb, I can stand up to his successors. He shall either treat me with respect or be taught a lesson. I'm not going to run away from any one. Certainly not from a youth sick with calf-love who babbles the Language of Flowers.

Second, I might as well face the fact that the gods never intended me to have a peaceful September this year. How true it is that the unexpected happens! When I came to Sainte Véronique twelve months ago, I expected to have a lively time. But everybody failed me, and it was the quietest, peacefullest month of my life. This year I came expecting four weeks of vegetable existence; and instead, I am kept running and leaping and turning like a trick-horse in a circus. Wherefore, I do hereby decide not to kick against Destiny a minute longer. Instead of staving off all this comedy, and instead of hating it because it distracts me, I hereby decide that it is well worth looking at, and that it would be foolishness to brush aside such a human drama as I am never likely to see performed again. Norman villages, and carafes of cider, and plunges in the sea, and lobster salads under apple-trees, can be bought for nine or ten francs a day, year after year, as often as I want them. But a handsome, virtuous, learned, stark-mad young lord in love with a pretty, honest, lovable, stupid lady's-maid isn't a sight to be seen at close quarters every week. It shall be the principal pleasure as well as the principal business of my remaining fortnight to see this play played right out.

Third--how do I know that Master Ruddington isn't lying peacefully at this very moment in his little white cot at Ruddington Towers, dreaming of his Susan as good as gold? How do I know that the Grandpont person isn't somebody else? It struck me in the night that it is probably Mr. John Lamb. At the Customs, he looked at the Sainte Véronique labels on my boxes as well as at the Cheval d'Or labels on our bags. I know he tumbled down the steps of the Astor still believing that he had conquered Susan's maiden heart, and that if he could only have seen her all would have been well. Perhaps he has got together a fresh supply of francs and is proposing to wait on us with some preposterous apologies and explanations. It may be that he wants me to promise that next time I am in Amelia Road, Shepherd's Bush, I won't give him away to Phipps Brothers--and, above all, that I won't give him away to Ma. This morning I shall ask Madame Dupoirier to describe him. If it be indeed Mr. John Lamb, he will find me ready with the mint sauce.

Ten a.m.

It's a good thing that I have decisively renounced all hope of peace and quietness. The postman has brought Susan no flowers from Grandpont, but he has brought me just the sort of letter from Alice that I don't want.

Ruddington, Ruddington, Ruddington--that's Alice's letter from beginning to end.

Alice has "found out all about him." He's richer than Alice thought. And prettier. And nicer. And I am the wickedest, foolishest, proudest young woman in the world for clinging on at Sainte Véronique.

It seems that Ruddington and I "were made for each other." He has just my tastes! Alice even adds, with splendid candour, that he "isn't the least little bit like Hugh."

I had hardly smoothed my poor fur after Alice's ruffling when Susan chose to begin stroking me backwards again. She said:

"I'm thinking, Miss, about this letter that came on Friday night."

"Yes?" I said.

"Please, Miss, you never told me what you thought of it."

"What did you think yourself, Susan?"

Susan fidgeted about. At last she answered:

"I can't feel that it's right, Miss."

"What isn't right?"

"Him speaking that way, Miss, to a girl ... like me. It doesn't seem right."

"I don't understand, Susan."

She fidgeted again. Then she said:

"I'm afraid you'd be vexed, Miss. It isn't my place to say it."

"To say what?"

"Well, Miss," Susan explained in instalments, "it doesn't seem right, it doesn't seem natural for him to be courting ... me. It's what my Aunt Martha used to say, Miss. She used to say, 'More unhappiness comes to them as marries above 'em than to them as marries below 'em.'"

"You mean, Susan," I suggested, "that you're uneasy at the thought of such a great change in your position? So you ought to be. That's why I've always wanted you to look well before you leap. There's a great deal in what your Aunt says."

"Yes, Miss," answered Susan abstractedly. And for a few moments she tried to hold her peace. But it was no use. A sudden torrent of warm words gushed forth and swept all restraint away.

"Oh, Miss Gertrude!" she cried, "I can't help saying it! I can't! It isn't me, Miss, Lord Ruddington ought to be coming after. It's you, Miss Gertrude, it's you!"

I was struck dumb.

"Yes, it's you, Miss, it ought to be," Susan went on. "When I think of what he says in his letter, Miss--how he couldn't go making love to Miss Langley--I could die for shame. I ought to have cut off my hand before I showed you such a thing, Miss."

"Susan," I said, "you mustn't talk to me like this. You did quite right to show me his letter. It isn't your fault that Lord Ruddington wrote things in his letter which it would have been better taste to leave out."

"No, Miss, I know," broke in Susan. "But oh, Miss Gertrude, I'm so miserable! I do so wish he hadn't never seen me. If I don't get married to him, I shall be miserable because I've thrown away all that money, and living in a grand house, and being Your Ladyship. And if I do get married to him, I shall be miserable because ... because it isn't natural, Miss! Oh, Miss Gertrude, how lovely it would have been if he'd liked you instead of me! Then you would have got married and gone to live at the Towers, and we would have come with you, Miss, and we'd have been so happy!"

I noticed Susan's "we." But it was not a time for re-catechizing her about Gibson. I cut her short peremptorily.

"Susan," I said, "be so good as to stop. You are taking a great liberty. If Lord Ruddington has so far forgotten himself as to drag my name into his affairs, that's no excuse for you doing the same. I dislike it most strongly."

"Yes, Miss," said obedient Susan. "But," she added wistfully, speaking more to herself than to me, "it would have been lovely!"

"Am I to take it, Susan," I demanded abruptly, "that you've finally decided not to accept Lord Ruddington?"

She blushed; paled; blushed again. But she did not answer.

"Because," I added, "if you are still thinking it over, you'd better not talk of it, even to me. Lord Ruddington won't expect you to write before Saturday. I've given you all the help and advice I can, but I don't want to influence you either one way or the other. Work it out in your own mind."

Susan promised to try.

As she was going out, something else occurred to me, and I called her back.

"Susan," I said kindly, "I don't wish to refer to it again, but what you have said about myself and Lord Ruddington reminds me of one little point."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan.

"His portrait. One day I went into your room for the scissors. I saw you had put Lord Ruddington's portrait in the same frame as mine."

"Yes, Miss. They went together beautiful."

"I shall be much obliged, Susan, if they don't go together any longer."

Susan shed a tear. But she is going to obey.

Now I've had enough ruffling for one morning. Before I interrogate Madame about the creature at Grandpont, I mean to run down to the bathing-hut and enjoy an hour's basking in the sun.

Before lunch.

I have seen the man from Grandpont. Has the event proved worse than my fears, or better? I can't say. All I know is that the event was different.

Susan didn't go down with me to the bathing-hut. I unlocked it myself, and carried out the deck-chair on to a sunny patch of clean white pebbles. But I had hardly drunk in two draughts of the salt air when I sat up with a start.

A man was watching me.

He had been sprawling on the stones at the foot of the cliff about a quarter of a mile away. At such a distance it was impossible to make out his features, but, as he stood up, I saw it was not Mr. John Lamb. I saw the figure of a man well drilled, a man accustomed to an outdoor life. The man wore a dark blue lounge suit and a straw boater of unmistakably English lines.

For a moment I thought with disgust that he was one of those provincial English tourists (we have had two or three of them off and on at Sainte Véronique) who find some sort of pleasure in lurking about the beaches furtively watching "the ladies" while they bathe. I wished I hadn't left Susan behind. But, as soon as he saw me sit up, the man began to walk towards me in a perfectly open manner.

I couldn't feel sure that it wasn't Ruddington. It flashed across my brain that he was scheming an interview with me as a flank movement upon Susan. Besides, I remembered that a rather fine-tempered man like Ruddington must perceive the unpleasantness of the position in which Susan's acceptance of him would place Susan's mistress, and, in his unconventional ingenuousness, he was just the sort of man to come forward betimes with boyishly candid explanations, and adjustments, and appeals. As he sped towards me over the blinding chalk-stones, there was something in his stride that recalled the eager, masterful love-making of his present Majesty of Spain.

I got up, relocked the hut door, left the chair outstretched on the shingle, and swung off for home as swiftly as was possible without seeming to run away. I did not choose to grant an audience to Lord Ruddington whenever and wherever it might suit him to claim it.

But his legs were longer than mine and in better training. I had an instinct to run, an instinct to look back, but I mastered them both.

Very soon I could hear the stones crunching or slipping or rolling under his boots. Surely, I told myself angrily, any man who wasn't a bounder or a madman could see that I resented the pursuit. But he came ever quicklier on. And, as I gained the path up the beck, he positively broke into a run.

I turned round.

It was Gibson.

"Gibson!" I cried; "Gibson! Is it you?"

"Yes, Ma'am," he answered firmly, pulling off his hat and standing, six feet away, bare-headed in the sun.

"What has brought you here?" I demanded as sternly as I could. But I was too greatly relieved to make a convincing display of indignation.

"I haven't been near the hotel, Ma'am," said Gibson, meeting my eyes.

"Of course you haven't. The idea! But, if you had, you'd have startled me less than by running after me on the beach like this."

"It's about Susan, Ma'am," said Gibson. Gibson is not a man of words, and I could see that he was determined not to be scolded or flurried out of the speech he had been rehearsing.

"Susan's all right," I said; "I told you so in my letter."

"I thank you, Ma'am," said Gibson, less aggressively. "I sha'n't never forget how kind you wrote."

"What's the matter, then? You don't seem to realize, Gibson, that I'm very much annoyed. Didn't I tell you not to come to Sainte Véronique unless I sent for you?"

"You did, Ma'am, you did," answered Gibson, losing his self-control and speaking more and more excitedly; "and I give you my word, Ma'am, I won't come nearer Sinn Verrynick than this bit of ground I'm standing on. Oh, yes, Ma'am! You've wrote right enough, and I thank you. But it's Susan. She hasn't wrote not one line, Ma'am--not so much as a card with a photygraph of the pier on it!"

"You've forgotten the bargain, Gibson. I'm ever so sorry for you; but what did you say at Traxelby? You said you could bear Susan marrying some one else so long as everything was honourable and above-board. You were not to come here unless I found that"--I nearly let slip Lord Ruddington's name--"that Susan's admirer was not going to play the game."

"So I did, Ma'am," broke out Gibson hotly. "That's what I said. That's what I promised. And I've cursed myself every day, every minute of every day, since I said it. It was a lie, Ma'am. Whether Susan's took away from me honest or took away from me dishonest, I can't stand it, and I won't. Susan's mine! I was a dirty hound, Ma'am, ever to say as I would give her up, even if it's the Emperor of France that comes begging for her with a sack of gold and dymonds. Susan's mine! She's the only girl in the world I ever cared about. Yes, Ma'am," he cried proudly, raising his voice and taking a step forward, "and Susan's never cared a straw about any man in the world 'cept me, and she never shall."

"Susan is a free woman, Gibson," I said. "Ever since we left Traxelby she hasn't mentioned your name. I know nothing about it. But how do you know that Susan ever cared for you? Perhaps she only led you on, as girls do. And, supposing she did care for you, how do you know she hasn't changed her mind?"

"That's just the trouble, Ma'am," said Gibson bitterly. "I don't deny they may have changed her mind. If they've dangled a lot o' money before her eyes, and fine clothes and joolry, and motor-cars and going to Egypt, and all that, I don't deny they may have managed to change her mind. They may have been too strong for a poor girl. Oh, yes, Ma'am, they may have changed Susan's mind! But ... but they can't never change her heart, Ma'am. Her heart'll go on beating true all the same, all the time; and when she's got tired of the fine things..."

He clenched his fist and finished off the sentence with a gesture between rage and despair. I was forced to turn away from the white heat of his rough eloquence and superb sincerity.

"What is it you want, Gibson?" I asked, as soon as I was able.

"I want to know first, Ma'am, has Susan got herself engaged?"

"No, she has not."

"Is she going to be, Ma'am?"

"I don't know. It isn't my affair. I think she hasn't made up her mind one way or the other."

I met Gibson's eyes. But, this time, it was he who looked away. Apologetically, clumsily, he asked:

"If I may make so bold, Ma'am ... is the party at Sinn Verrynick?"

"The party?"

"I mean, Ma'am, the rich party that's took a fancy to Susan?"

"No, he is not. I have never so much as seen him. Neither has Susan. But what did I promise? Didn't I give you my word that, if he came here, I would let you know? That's why I'm so vexed, Gibson, at your coming like this."

He accepted the rebuke without a word.

"What are you going to do now?" I asked.

"I suppose, Ma'am," he said slowly and painfully, "I'd better go back to Granpong."

I asked him a few questions. It turns out that he came over on Saturday, viâ Southampton and "Lee Harver." He held a letter from a chauffeur he had met in Derlingham to a Havre motor-accessories firm. The Havre people, hearing he wanted to be near Sainte Véronique, gave him a letter to a small cycle and motor jobber in Grandpont who speaks a little English. He boards and lodges Gibson, and teaches him the driving and mending of cars, in return for English conversation, Gibson's labour, and thirty francs a week.

"Of course, if you object to me staying on at Granpong, Ma'am..." said Gibson.

"If I'd known beforehand I should have objected very much, Gibson," I said. "But you've been so lucky in your arrangements, I hardly like to disturb them. Give me your Grandpont address."

Gibson gave me a printed card. He is staying "À la Descente des Automobilistes." The "Descente" announces, on a card adorned with crossed billiard-cues over a foaming bock, that it speaks Englisch, and that it is equal to billiards, coffee, repairs, and beefsteacks à toute heure.

"Are you comfortable, Gibson?" I asked.

"Very," he answered. "I never could abide cider, and the beer is shocking, Ma'am. But I'm quite comfortable."

"I'm glad, Gibson," I said. "I won't lose the address. Good-morning."

I record it to my shame that I was heartless enough to begin moving away. Indeed, I had advanced twenty or thirty paces up the beck before Gibson decided on a second pursuit.

"About Susan, Ma'am!" he said, with red cheeks. "Shall you tell Susan, Ma'am, that I'm in these parts?"

"That reminds me, Gibson," I retorted, "you've forgotten so much of the bargain we made at Traxelby that I can't be certain of anything. You promised not to tell Susan that I had ever let you discuss her with me."

"I sha'n't forget, Ma'am. But ... can't I see Susan for a minute?"

"How? Where?"

"I might hang about, Ma'am."

"And frighten her out of her life. No thank you, Gibson! If there's to be any meeting, you'd better write about it from Grandpont."

"It'd take time, Ma'am."

"Surely you can wait a day or two, Gibson?"

He lost his self-command once more.

"No!" he cried, "I can't wait. And if I could wait, I won't. I must see Susan before another sun goes down."

"Don't shout, Gibson," I said; "people will hear you. Even if it isn't against your interest to force yourself on Susan, how do you know she will see you? Perhaps she won't."

He started. Then he turned aside in such sharp trouble, that my hard heart melted.

"The most I can do," I said, "is this. I will tell Susan how you met me on the beach, and that I was very angry. I will say nothing about our talk that night in the garden at Traxelby, and you must not mention it either. All I'm supposed to know is, that you're very keen about Susan, and that you think she encouraged you, and that you're worrying because she doesn't write. In short, if you and Susan meet, you must keep to your own affairs, and not bring me in at all. Above all, never say that I wrote to you. I will tell Susan that you will be on the beach at half-past two. She must please herself whether she meets you or not. But remember, to-day is exceptional. No secret meetings. You can get something to eat in the village at the Café de la Marine. I must go."

I found Susan sitting under an apple-tree with Georgette. Georgette was jabbering over a fearful and wonderful plum-coloured blouse which the two were slashing and altering. It may have been my fancy, but Georgette looked a bit sheepish as she went away. "Mees Breegs" advanced to meet me.

"Susan," I said, "some one whom you know is in the neighbourhood."

Susan's colour fled.

"Is he, Miss?" she asked fearfully.

"At Grandpont," I went on. "Madame Dupoirier told me about it last night. She was at Grandpont station in the 'bus yesterday. He read the name of the hotel, and asked Madame if you were here."

As usual, Susan's colour rushed back, with reinforcements. She began to tremble.

"It's that flower, Miss!" she gasped, "Georgette's flower! Oh, Miss Gertrude, I can't face him yet! I can't, I can't!"

"You don't need to, Susan," I said. "It isn't Lord Ruddington."

Susan moaned a little moan of thankfulness. But her face clouded again as I added:

"It is somebody else."

She searched my eyes. Then she asked, in an agonized whisper:

"Not ... It isn't ... Not Gibson, Miss?"

"Yes," I answered, "Gibson."

Susan turned half round and gazed over the sea. Her pretty country-girl's figure shook with hardly pent feeling. For the first time I saw Susan bitter and angry.

"I'm ashamed of him, Miss," she burst out. "I could never have believed it of him."

Not knowing what to say, I refrained from saying it. Susan's wrath waxed stronger. She turned upon me with something dangerously like active resentment.

"You ... you knew last night, Miss?" she said, almost fiercely.

"Certainly not, Susan," I replied. "Madame told me that an Englishman had asked her questions at Grandpont. But she didn't know who he was, and I never asked her to describe him."

"Then how do you know it is Gibson?" asked Susan, a very little less pugnaciously.

"Because I've just seen him."

Susan collapsed.

"Where, Miss? where, Miss? ... Oh!" gasped Susan.

"Come, come," I said, "I was quite as much annoyed as you are. I told Gibson very plainly what I thought about it. But, Susan, I must admit that there is some little excuse for him. Of course he hasn't repeated to me a single word that he ever said to you, or that you ever said to him. But it is plain that he's very fond of you. And he thinks you encouraged him. He says you haven't sent him even so little as a postcard for a fortnight."

Susan's Amazonian ire had died down to a village beauty's pout.

"I can never forgive him, Miss," she said. "I wouldn't have believed it of Gibson. Not to mention the disrespect to you, Miss Gertrude."

"Never mind the disrespect to me," I answered, "I can look after that myself. No doubt it's very silly and weak of him; but the point is, that Gibson is so badly in love that he's madly jealous."

"Please, Miss, you didn't tell him about ... Lord Ruddington?" asked Mees Breegs in a fright.

"Susan," I said, "I'm surprised. What are you thinking of? Unless you've told him yourself, he can't have the faintest notion that there's a Lord Ruddington in the case. But I can see he suspects there is somebody. That's why he couldn't sit quiet in England while his rival cuts him out in France."

"I shall never forgive him, Miss," snapped Susan more conclusively than ever.

"Don't say that, Susan," I said; "or, if you say it, take care you don't mean it."

"But I do, Miss."

"Then it's nothing to be proud of. Don't hate a man for merely loving you."

"He ought to have stopped at home, Miss."

"He ought. But he hasn't. You see, Susan, I don't know how it is, but you seem to have a way of making people do mad things. Gibson cares for you quite as much as Lord Ruddington does. But he hasn't done anything madder than Lord Ruddington's first letter, has he?"

"No, Miss," said Susan, mollified and visibly flattered. And, after a minute's pleasant meditation on the unsuspected range and power of her charms, she added prettily: "But Lord Ruddington does stop at home when I tell him to, Miss."

"That's true," I granted; "but Lord Ruddington has all the advantages. Poor Gibson is so frightfully handicapped. I suppose he thinks that all's fair in love and war. I'm annoyed with him for coming here, but I admire his spirit. Gibson isn't a muff, Susan."

"Oh, no, Miss," she answered promptly and heartily.

"In fact, this morning I felt quite vexed with Lord Ruddington for stepping between you. But I mustn't say more about that. I will come to the point. I have brought a message."

Susan's agitation began afresh.

"I've told Gibson he mustn't come here. He is lodging at Grandpont. At this minute he's getting something to eat in the village. But he will be on the beach at half-past two."

"To-day, Miss?" she asked faintly.

"Yes, to-day. You can please yourself whether you see him or not. But understand, Susan, I've told him it must be only this once. No meetings on the sly."

"Of course not, Miss," Susan answered, with a touch of indignation, which I ignored.

"If you do go to-day," I added, "you won't mention Lord Ruddington's name. But, Susan, if there has been anything between you and Gibson, I'm bound to say that you have no right to trifle with him. It isn't fair to him, or to yourself, or to Lord Ruddington; or even to me. Perhaps it's still too soon for you to decide whether you will accept Lord Ruddington; but it's high time for you to decide whether you will drop Gibson. If you find you can't drop Gibson, the other matter will settle itself. Be a good girl, and remember that the only way to be happy is to do right. Only, for heaven's sake, don't prolong the agony. I'm not going to grumble, Susan, but you must have seen that, although I came to Sainte Véronique for peace and rest, I've had to spend nearly three weeks worrying my head over people that want to marry you. It's getting to be a bit tiresome."

"You've been awfully good to me, Miss," said Susan with all her usual meekness. "I'll try."

I must stop. Here's Georgette with a litre of cider, and a crisp roll three feet long, and a dish of raie au beurre noir.

A quarter past two.

Susan has just started down to the beach.

Three o'clock.

Susan didn't say anything before she went. While she was brushing my hair--it had got all anyhow in the hammock after lunch--she hardly uttered a word.

I have been thinking strange thoughts and wondering at some wonders.

What on earth can it be that has turned a china shepherdess like Susan into a Helen of Troy? Why is she a storm-centre, a battlefield of heroes? I have seen enough of the world to know that both Gibson and Lord Ruddington are exceptional men. What is it in Susan that drives them mad? Susan's is not a case of the Eternal Masculine basely desiring lamb-like innocence and childish beauty. In her case the groom is as good as the lord in native chivalry and honour.

Madame's magnificent old Empire cheval-glass reflected us full-length while Susan was busy with my hair. In the autumnal light, and with the background of bright hangings and bold furniture, we looked less like a mere reflection in a mirror than like one of those vivid modern French pictures. At first the feeling was uncanny; but, by degrees, this full-coloured life-sized, gilt-framed portrait mastered me until I was able to look at it as dispassionately as if it had been on a wall of the Luxembourg. It was then I began to wonder at wonders and think thoughts.

One must not praise oneself up, even in one's diary. But one may, one must, be sincere. And it is the simple truth, that the more I compared the full-length portrait of Susan with the full-length portrait of myself, the deeper and more inscrutable became the mysteries of life. I looked at the two portrayed forms and the two portrayed faces as critically and with as much detachment as if I had never seen the originals in the real world.

Ruddington has seen Susan thrice. But he has seen me thrice also. He says that I was with Susan every one of the three times. Perhaps Susan's brushing jogged my wits; but, face to face with that double portrait, I couldn't help being reminded of what I scolded Susan for saying this morning. As a matter of purely speculative interest, as a curious human problem, I couldn't help saying to myself: "He saw us both. Why didn't he fall in love with me?"

To be immodestly candid, the only answer I could arrive at was: "I don't know!"

Of course, what he says in his letter to Susan about shrinking from making love to Miss Langley is absurd. It is merely a fanciful thought after the event, a pretty conceit, a gossamer compliment partly to Susan and mainly to himself. He fell wildly, instantly, irresistibly in love with Susan because there is Something in Susan which gave him no choice. He looked at me and was cold, because the Something has been left out.

Never before to-day have I looked at myself in a glass hungrily. But to-day I peered with all the strength of my eyes into the confused depths of the secret. It was no good. I cannot read the riddle.

I will write this page without reserve. It is no more my merit, my own work, that I am beautiful than it would be my fault, my disgrace, if I had been born ugly. I will call a spade a spade, and beauty beautiful. So here goes.

If Susan is pretty, I am beautiful, and I am more beautiful than Susan is pretty. If Susan is as graceful as a nymph, I am as noble as a goddess. If Susan's blue eyes are as blue as the sky, my brown eyes are deeper than the sea. If Susan is curds and cream, I am fire and snow. If Susan can turn plain men into heroes, I ought to raise heroes into gods.

Yes. Although I have a hundred deformities of mind, a thousand uglinesses of conduct and character, which I could help and for which I am to blame, it is the plain truth that God chose to make me beautiful. Has not every one told me so, as long as I can remember? But Heaven knows that, although I have always felt glad, it has never made me puffed up or vain. And I'm thankful it hasn't. If it had, this would have been a bitter day for my pride. For, after all, Ruddington saw us both; and he fell in love with Susan.

I can think of only one answer to the enigma, and I hope it isn't the right one. I suspect that men of abundant manliness, like Lord Ruddington and Gibson, instinctively seek for their opposites in the shape of some passive, clinging femininity like Susan's. They demand that the woman shall be pretty as well as clinging and passive and feminine; because they know that they are brave, and that the brave deserve the fair, I suspect that these strong characters find sweet repose in a simple woman's characterlessness. Their eager spirits recuperate in her placidity.

Conversely, a flabbier man rejoices in a strenuous, all-alive woman. Take poor Alice. She is taller than I am; stronger, quicker, harder, more self-willed. And I suppose that is why Hugh, in his humdrum way, adores her, and is wretched when she's away, like a faithful hound.

If this be the sound theory, I shall never marry. How could I endure a man weaker and pettier than myself? And yet the only kind of man I could ever want ... won't ever want me!

I wish I hadn't begun to think these thoughts. Still more do I wish I hadn't made them become clearer by writing them down. It makes the world seem so mean and lean. There ought to be grander men than Ruddington--men who would spurn honeyed sloth with dolls like Susan--men who would exult at the challenge of a proud, high-spirited woman as climbers exult at the white blaze of the Jungfrau, as hunters exult at the roaring of a desert lion, as soldiers exult at the sight of a strong city set on a hill. But, alas for this shrunken, sluggish, poverty-stricken time, when I, poor I, who am so far short of being a heroine, must begin to regard myself as a Brynhild doomed to virgin sleep because the Siegfrieds are all too timid and too puny to leap through the small fires of my will and my pride.

Four o'clock.

These worries have been too much for my nerves. I feel all overstrung, as if a little thing would make me break down and cry.

For example, just now I went into Susan's room to make sure that she had taken me out of her frame. I find that, instead of taking me out, she's left me in, and taken out Ruddington. There I am, staring across the hinges at an empty oval.

Last time I saw the frame it had both of us in it, and Susan's room was warm and brilliant with floods of morning sunshine. But, just now, her room was chill and dim. The paper background of the empty oval showed up ghostly white.

I walked to the mantelpiece, and gazed at my own photograph. Instead of looking like one half of a happy honeymoon couple, I looked like a girl-widow staring at a shroud. Outside, in the sunless garden, a gust of wind smote a leafy apple-branch against the window, like a slap of a hand; and at the same moment a great dreariness, an utter loneliness, fell like a blight, like a frost, like a black shadow, on my soul.

I have come back to my own room, where it is more cheerful. But I see that I have written too much to-day in this book. Since sunrise this morning I must have written two or three hours. No wonder I am morbid and dumpy!

I swear an oath. Whatever happens, and whatever Susan may report, not another word will I write to-day.

Thursday morning, in the summer-house.

I hate to think of yesterday. Hitherto I have hugged a fond belief that my nerves were of steel. Yet the trivial shock of Gibson's chase, coming on top of my early rising, bowled me over for the rest of the day.

It is humiliating to read all the stuff I wrote in this book--the feverish retrospects, prospects, introspects. After I had skimmed through it this morning, I nearly vowed to lock it up and not write another word until I am back in England. But, if I don't jot them in a diary, I mix up dates so frightfully.

For example, I was trying the other night to remember the three days when Ruddington saw me with Susan. While Alice was with me, I let this book slide; and the result is I can't recall being with Susan once except at the post-office; and Susan declares that Ruddington's photograph isn't the least like the young man who stared at her in a dark green suit.

I don't even remember where Susan was while he was feasting his eyes on her through the pillars of the monument. Perhaps she sat behind Alice and me. Or did she sit with the servants? It's tantalizing to think that perhaps I've seen him, and perhaps stared back at him, and that it's all slipped out of my mind.

So I sha'n't stop entering things in this journal. But I mean to enter them more curtly.

Luckily there isn't much to write about Susan and Gibson, even if I were disposed to write it. Susan didn't come back till half-past four. Until after dinner she avoided the subject; and it was only when I was mounting to a very early bed that I asked any questions.

"Well, Susan," I said, "and what have you done with poor Gibson?"

"I've sent him home, Miss."

"To England?"

"Oh no, Miss. To Grandpont."

"He had to go to Grandpont whether you sent him there or not," I said. "But didn't you give him an answer?"

Susan had replied to my questions rapidly and defiantly; but, without any warning, she sat down plump on the top stair with the candlestick in her lap, and sobbed the plentifullest and heartiest sobs of all her many sobbings since Ruddington wrote his first letter. Overwrought as I was, I wonder that the unexpectedness and oddity of it did not drive me into hysterical laughter. I controlled myself only by speaking to Susan roughly.

"Get up, you silly creature!" I said. "Georgette will hear you, and Madame! What's the matter?"

"Oh, Miss Gertrude," she sobbed, "I know I oughtn't to have said the things to Gibson that I did say. I oughtn't, I know, I know!"

"Then what did you say them for?"

"It was all his fault, Miss, not mine. I oughtn't to have said the things I did. But why did he say such bitter, cruel, awful things to me?"

"I've no idea, Susan," I said, taking the candlestick from her lap and leaving her to follow.

She did not appear till she had dried her eyes and regained some composure. When she came into my room, her lips were set, and she did not speak.

"Susan," I explained, "I was sorry to cut you short. But we mustn't have scenes on the stairs. Besides, to-night I'm tired out. Gibson upset me this morning. But I'm sorry if you've quarrelled."

Susan broke down again.

"I hate him, Miss," she cried with a stamp of her pretty foot. "I sha'n't never forgive him for the things he's said to-day! I sha'n't never speak to him again! Not a word, Miss. Not if I live to be a thousand!"

At that I stopped her, and I don't know any more.

Friday, three o'clock.

Susan came to me in the summer-house this morning, and said firmly:

"Please, Miss, I've decided."

Certainly I am out of sorts. As she paused on the verge of her announcement, my heart stood still. No doubt the strain and excitement of these three weeks have sapped me and mined me, and Susan's and Gibson's affairs have been so constantly present to my mind that I suppose they have become affairs of my own. Anyhow, I felt myself chilling ridiculously and going pale as Susan spoke.

"What have you decided?" I asked at last.

"I have decided," replied Susan in her most important manner, "that I will keep company with his Lordship for a month. I mean, Miss, when we're back at Traxelby."

"You'll take him for a month on trial?" I said, jesting feebly.

"Yes, Miss. I don't think I ought to be married to him till I'm sure I can put up with him."

"Of course, Susan," I answered. "But that was settled all along. He isn't expecting you at present to say that you will marry him. He simply asks whether he may come in person and persuade you."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan, colouring charmingly. And after thirty seconds she added, "Please, Miss Gertrude, I beg pardon, ... but when shall we go back to Traxelby?"

The prospect vexed me suddenly and enormously. I foresaw myself enmeshed for another month in ignominious arrangements for the comings and goings of the Lord of the Towers to the lady's-maid at the Grange. The presentiment of inevitable complications and humiliations on my very own territory was too much for my patience, and I answered Susan sharply.

"Really, Susan," I said, "do try to understand that I must think about myself a little as well as you! With all these worries, I feel as if I've hardly had three clear days at Sainte Véronique all these three weeks. You and Lord Ruddington might be the only people in the world!"

"I'm very sorry, Miss," said the bride-elect, completely penitent. "I only asked, Miss, so that we could..."

"Could what?"

"Put it in the letter, Miss."

"Susan," I enquired, "how have you got on with your writing? This letter will be very short. Don't you think you can manage it yourself? Bring down my writing-case and your own pen, and see what you can do!"

"I'll try, Miss," she said, most deeply disappointed. And she went away.

When she sat down again by my side I admit that Susan astonished me by the speed and the tolerable skill with which she executed a fully-addressed envelope. But my surprise had a short life. It seems that Susan's handwriting exercises have been practically confined to the scribing and rescribing, a hundred times, of the words "Lord Ruddington" and "Ruddington Towers." But, when she sat face to face with a blank sheet of note-paper, ideas, words, and penwomanship alike failed. Susan sighed, moaned, squinted, wriggled, ate the penholder, pouted, and finally adorned the middle of the paper with a big tear.

Doubtless it was my duty to transmit that sheet of paper, tear-drop and all, to the Lord Ruddington so that he might frame it in gold and ivory or treasure it in a casket of bejewelled silver. But I was quite heartless this morning. I snatched the sheet away unkindly, crushed it up profanely, and said:

"You're wasting paper, Susan, and what's worse, you're wasting time. Can you do it or not?"

"No, Miss," whimpered Susan. Her shoulders began to heave, and she shed two more big tears.

"Hand me my own pen, then," I said, less harshly, "and a clean sheet of paper. You may come back in ten minutes to see if what I've written will do."

"I know it will do, Miss," said Susan fervently. "All the letters you write, Miss, are beautiful. I don't always understand them at first; but when I think them over and over after they're posted----"

"Now, run along, Susan," I cut in. "I'll leave the letter inside this case in my room. Your own envelope will do. Post it if you think it is all right."

Here is the letter:

DEAR LORD RUDDINGTON,--Your question is: Do I consent to one or more interviews between us on my return to England?

My answer is: Yes.

After we have met, one or the other or both of us may decide that it is better we should not meet again. I repeat that you have read too much into my letters, and that you have formed expectations concerning me which are bound to be disappointed.

I think our meetings, like this correspondence, ought not to be oftener than once a week, and that we ought to make up our minds once for all at the end of a month. When our return-day is fixed, I must tell all that is in my mind to Miss Langley, and must fall in with her wishes as to the place and time of meeting. Probably she will prefer London to Traxelby.

I hope to hear that you are well.--Yours very sincerely,

SUSAN BRIGGS.

I can't expect Susan to be over-pleased. To use her own old scared phrase, it gives his lordship a chance of backing out. But it makes the only arrangements that are fair and safe all round. Besides, if Susan thinks it is too prudent and cold, she can easily warm it up by getting Georgette to shove in an appropriate collection of sentimentiferous flowers.

Saturday night.

This day have coffee'd, read Les Chouans, bathed, lunched, read more Chouans, walked to the village, dined, read more Chouans, and am just going to bed.

Sunday night.

There was a letter for Susan this morning, with the Grandpont postmark. She regarded Gibson's waiting on the envelope with darkling brows, and thrust the packet unopened into her pocket.

So far as Gibson is concerned, I am not exactly delighted with the situation. He ought to go home. But I can't tell him so. When the new Lady Ruddington begins her reign at the Towers, Gibson will hardly enjoy life at the Grange. I shall feel his going very much. But I'm getting used to Ruddington's wrecking. He's wrecked my holidays, he's stealing Susan, and I suppose I must spend the autumn watching him smash up my whole household. In any case, I mustn't command or persuade Gibson to leave Grandpont so long as he thinks that a smattering of motor-mending will help him in his next place.

I can't guess what the poor lad has written to Susan or how she is going to take it. But love and hate, even the loves and hates of poor and simple people, come home to me so vividly here at Sainte Véronique, that I can't help feeling miserable over Gibson's trouble. With the undimmed sun shining down from a cloudless heaven on the endless waters and the immeasurable uplands, such elemental verities as love and life and death seem to be at home.

It was to Bérigny that I went for Mass. The curé spoke to me afterwards, as I was sitting under the shadow of the Calvary. He is a simple soul; but he talked with spirit and intelligence about his Church and his country. I found him still smarting under the well-meant fussiness of two old maids from Bournemouth who were at the Hôtel du Dauphin last month. It appears that they distributed Evangelical tracts in French, wherein the present troubles of the Church in France were explained as a divinely appointed punishment of Popery and as a divine call to the French people to embrace Scriptural truth. The curé spoke with fine scorn of that British sectarian animosity which hates the Pope ten times worse than the Devil. And he confirmed what I had learned from the more blatant Paris journals--that the so-called campaign against clericalism is at heart a campaign against Christianity, and not only against Christian dogma, but even against many ancient precepts of Christian morals. More. He confirmed what I have myself read in the speeches of deputies and even of Ministers--that the attack is not merely against Christianity, but against the whole idea of supernatural religion, and that it is avowedly an attempt to establish a lay state, a purely secular community trained from childhood to believe that all religion is superstition and that human science alone can teach men how to live and die.

After the curé went home to break his fast, I still lingered in the churchyard. A new plank-monument had been raised during the week over a new tomb; and its jet-black letters on a snow-white ground reminded me of the resolve I had made to offer a De Profundis for the faithful dead.

I found the place in my paroissien, and said the opening words aloud. The sound of my own voice in that sunny field of death frightened me, and I stopped. I began again, reading to myself. But it was of no use. I couldn't go on.

When it comes to downright earnest, you can't skip from one religion to another. Lost in a crowd one can coquet with another religion, tolerate it, even enjoy its unfamiliar ancient ritual. But, with my De Profundis it was different. I couldn't shed my Protestantism like an old cloak in the twinkling of an eye.

Not that I felt, as I sat down again on the platform of the Calvary, that praying for the dead was false doctrine and superstitious error. I dared not say it was true; but still less dared I say that it was false. I thought of the two old maids from Bournemouth, their half-knowledge, their meddling; and I felt it would be, at the very least, an unpardonable impertinence to offer doubting prayers for needs that I could only half understand.

I ought to have remembered the Ancient Mariner; how, with a heart as dry as dust, seven days, seven nights, he stood alone on a wide, wide sea with Death; how, at last, he watched the water-snakes, coiling and swimming, blue, glossy green, and velvet black, in the shadow of the ship; how a spring of love gushed from his heart and he blessed them unaware; and how, the self-same moment, he could pray.

With me it was the other way about. At Bérigny this morning I began with faith and ended with unfaith. I went to pray and came away to doubt. Hardly had I clasped my book and resolved that it would be bad taste to pray, before a shadow fell upon all things. The light of the sun was broad and bright; but, within me, there grew a bleak wonder that any one should be able to believe in God.

I mean the Christian's God, of course. If He is truly identical with the eternal Cause of the universe and yet yearns for man's love and worship, how can his heart be content that his right arm should hang idle while puny unbelievers are closing his temples and muzzling his messengers?

I looked along the wooded ravine where the beck chatters down to Sainte Véronique, with Grandpont spire away to the right, and I thought of Susan and Ruddington and Gibson. If God's delight is in the virtuous happiness of men and women, why this hateful tangle? Perhaps it was a blasphemous thought; but the tangle was so cruel, so useless, so cunning, that it seemed to require an omnipotent Devil for its explanation.

The cruelty of it brought tears to my eyes. I thought, for the first time, of a coincidence that deepened the wrong. Susan, Ruddington, and I--we are all orphans. As for Gibson, if he has parents it is fifteen years since they made a sign. Each one of us robbed before we could speak, or think, or remember, of a mother's care and love; and, for compensation, Gibson cheated of love altogether, Susan beloved where she cannot love. Ruddington loving with no love to answer.

I thought of myself. If the Christian's God is one with the Upholder of all things, his was the lightning which struck the old Grange and slew my father and mother as they slept. Where are they to-day? Are they annihilated, body and soul--as dead as stones on the beach? Or do their spirits wander wearily in profundis bowed under the burden of new sorrows, awful and unknown?

Yes. I thought of myself. Except grannie, who was fifty years my senior, who has ever loved me dearly, whom have I ever dearly loved? No one. Not even Alice, though we have been good chums.

I resolved on Thursday never again to think the thoughts I thought before the glass. But thoughts will not be denied. In the churchyard this morning, as I sprang up and paced among the graves, a hot, vast, rebellious anger nearly drove me mad. To-day I knew that I was made for love--for a love immense as the sea, ever-lasting as the hills, more splendid than the sun. Why has it been written that love must pass me by?

So I did not say a De Profundis. I know that God exists; but the depths seemed too deep for him to pity and the heights too high for him to hear. I clanged the churchyard gate behind me harshly; and it was in vain that the jet-black letters on the snow-white plank of the new grave whispered: "If you please."

Monday, 2.45 p.m.

Susan is behaving strangely, and I don't like it.

There is a letter from Ruddington. When it arrived, Susan made no secret of it; but she has neither shown it to me nor mentioned it, although she has been with me all the morning.

In one sense I grant that it is Susan's letter, not mine, and that she is under no obligation to let me read a line. But, in another sense, it is as much mine as hers. The letters Ruddington writes are answers to my letters, not Susan's. The Susan he thinks about and writes to is no longer the palpable Susan with whom he fell in love at Traxelby. He has a new Susan, a composite Susan, a Susan who never was and never will be, a Susan idealized as much from my letters as from his recollections of her face. If Susan, at last, feels competent to compose and write her replies, well and good. But she should say so. To take back the whole affair into her own hands without a word is rather cool. Not that I care one jot about what Ruddington has written. But I do feel rather sick about Susan's uncouthness. After the pains I've taken, it is so monstrously ungrateful.

Bed-time.

Susan drifted down the garden path about three o'clock, and came to anchor beside my chair. She began turning up the gravel with her toe.

"He wrote this morning, Miss," she said suddenly.

"I know, Susan," I said, "I saw the envelope."

Susan went on furrowing the gravel.

"Would you like to read it, Miss?" she asked.

"Perhaps there's no necessity," I answered a little stiffly. "Perhaps you can manage the reply yourself."

"I wish you would read it, Miss," she said, after a very long pause.

"Where is it?"

"Upstairs, Miss."

"Then how can I read it?"

"Please, Miss," said Susan coyly. "I don't like to show it you. It's so loving."

"Indeed," I said. "Then be sure you don't worry me with it unless you find you can't answer it."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan.

She went back to the hotel with a clouded face.

The afternoon dragged. To tell the truth, I wanted to see his letter immensely. Yet how could I? To have read it out of mere curiosity would have been like peeping through a hedge at an unsuspecting pair of sweethearts, or like eavesdropping behind some Lover's Seat. Still, it was terribly tantalizing to have the door of the play-house slammed in my face just as the piece was getting exciting. I tried to read, work, walk about, write; but in vain. All I could do was to think, remember, anticipate, dream, till I felt like the loneliest of lonely outcasts. Ruddington's love-affair, which had been so silly and worrying and tiresome, suddenly became as warm and homely, and bright and cosy as a Christmas hearth; and I felt like a friendless orphan wandering outside in the gloom and the cold.

By six o'clock, I was so deep in the dumps that I positively made some sort of a weather-remark to the enormous, silent Frenchman who has been here a week. I hadn't guessed that he was a mountain of shyness. At my voice he jumped, flushed crimson, knocked over his wine, choked, and nearly frightened me out of my wits before he could utter an intelligible word. Georgette was sulky about the spilt claret; and, from merely feeling solitary, I went on to the knowledge that I was roundly hated. When I came up to my room, an hour ago, I found Susan had left Ruddington's letter under my blotting-pad. Envelope and contents were so flat and uncrumpled that I hardly think they have been cherished next to Susan's wildly-beating heart. Ruddington says:

SUZANNE, ALL MINE,--As ever, I love, honour and obey. Take a month, if you will, before you speak the word. But I have settled it with the stars in their courses what the word must be. For ever, everywhere, you are Suzanne, all mine.

In her neighbourly good-nature and excellent wisdom, Miss Langley may choose for our meeting-place, Traxelby or London, or the Equator or the North Pole, or Sainte Véronique or the New Moon, or the summit of Mont Blanc or Ruddington Towers, or a coral island, or the Bottomless Pit, or the top of the Monument, or any other square yard she pleases. So long as Suzanne is there in the midst, the arid, scorching heat of the Sahara will be Eve's garden refreshed and guarded by the four streams of Paradise.

Suzanne has promised that she will come an inch to meet me. She shall never turn back alone.

But let not Suzanne mistake this perfect confidence of mine for vanity. I believe that Suzanne will run to be all mine, not because she gives herself lightly (for where is there a prouder than Suzanne?) and not because I am handsome, or desirable or magnetic. I am not magnetic, I am not desirable, I am not handsome. No. I believe that Suzanne must be all mine because I am all hers; because it is unthinkable that she should come close to the blaze of such a love as mine without herself taking fire.

Unless the Devil is torturing the world, such love as mine for Thee implies, requires, compels an equal love of thine for Me.

What a Suzanne this is, who is all mine! When I recall her face as I saw it in Traxelby church, what a wonderful, beautiful Suzanne! But, when I read her letters, I cry again, with threefold gratitude: what a beautiful, wonderful Suzanne! Her pride is as fine as the curl of a rose leaf; but her sweetness, like the rose's perfume, hovers over it all.

Not that Suzanne thinks that she has ever revealed herself in her letters. She believes that she has veiled herself in veils of prudence and reserve. But my eyes have found her out--have found her, more beautiful for her dissembling, like a great bright star hiding in the Milky Way.

Suzanne, it is no use hiding any longer. The hour has come for shining out without a cloud between. Do not wait for our meeting. Write to me, just once, without distrust of yourself or of me. I have obeyed, have I not, in all things? Reward me at last. Pour out your heart, even if it be a-brim with fears.

When she reads this, prudent Suzanne will be moved to answer that I am taking too long and sudden a leap, and that I am skipping over two or three seemly stages. She will say that she has written nothing which I have the right to answer with a love-letter like this.

But this is not an answer to Suzanne's letter. It is an answer to her flower.

RUDDINGTON

In a corner of the envelope I found something which his Lordship's wonderful beautiful Susan has overlooked. It was a petal of a creamy rose. Poor Ruddington! And to think that it is nobody's fault.

Tuesday at sunrise.

How can I write it?

Only because, if I write it not, my brain will turn, my heart will break.

I love Ruddington.

For days and weeks I have lied to myself, I have lied to this book. With my wits I have parried the truth; but in the heart of my heart, ever since the day I took his portrait in my hand, I have known.

As I have looked for his writing by every post, I have known. As I have read his letters, grave or gay, I have known. As I have sat replying, I have known. Every hour of every day, by the sea, in the garden, in this room, I have known.

When I saw his portrait facing mine, I knew. When I saw his place empty in the frame, I knew----oh, how hungrily! And when I sat on Sunday, bitter-hearted, under the Bérigny Calvary, I knew.

Yet God knows how I have fought it, how I have held it down even out of my own sight. And God knows how, according to my light, I have striven to do my duty by Susan, and by Gibson, and by them all.

My poor wits are too weary. They can parry the truth's bright, cruel thrusts no more.

So, before I tear this book into tatters and burn it till not a letter of his name remains, once for all I will confess. I love Ruddington. I fell asleep last night with his rose-leaf, my stolen rose-leaf, under my pillow. I dreamed a dream of peace--a peace as sweet and strong as death. I dreamed I was at rest within his arms. And I awoke in the loneliness of the rainy daybreak, holding out my hands to him and murmuring his name.

Tuesday, 2 p.m.

I shall burn this book. But not to-day.

The world seems hushed, remote, unreal. To-day, I seem to belong, not to Life, but all to Love and Death.

As soon as the sun had conquered the mist, we went down, Susan and I, to bathe. The tide was high, with warm boisterous waves. Perhaps I went out too far, or breasted the rude buffeting too long.

Without warning, my strength forsook me. I half swooned in the water. The undertow drew my feet away from their hold on the ribbed sand, and, at the same moment, a towering, craggy wave broke with a shattering crash full over me.

Involuntarily, by the animal impulse of a creature clinging to life, I raised a foolish cry which filled my mouth with water; I threw up foolish hands, and straightway began to sink. But, instantly, calm and self-control returned. The great waters were chanting in my ears. I even opened my eyes and looked up through the green crystal at the noon-day sun--a round, moon-like sun, mild and cool and kind.

I believed it was the end. Death was all round me and under me and over me, like the sea. But I was not afraid. Till Death was near, I had not dreamed that he could be so sweet. To sink down, down, down in his arms was not a frightful descent into horror; it was a gentle settling into unutterable peace.

But it was not to be. For the present I belong to Life, who is so niggardly and cruel, not to Love who is so lavish, or to Death who is so kind. Susan had seen me collapse; and when a thunderous wave swung me towards her she plucked me from its grasp.

Susan does not know that Death has laid his lips on mine and that I have looked into his pitiful eyes. She thinks I merely lost my footing, and she knows nothing of the swoon. But she says I look ill and shaken; and I do believe she has forgotten her own affairs in mine.

At sunset.

Susan won't let me leave my room. She has guessed that this morning's affair was more serious than a mere swallowing of salt water, and she insists that I am an invalid for the rest of the day.

Georgette has made a crackling wood-fire. The logs rest on quaint old iron dogs and, in one sense, the blaze is cheerful. In another sense it is depressing. The sun has set early, and these logs are the funeral-pyre of summer.

Everybody is so kind. Georgette set a table between the hearth and the window, and Madame has sent up such a poulet en casserole as I have never tasted before. Dupoirier chose out a Burgundy, dry and bold and strong.

Now that I feel so much better, I know that I was ill. Before dinner, I lay down on my bed and slept two unrestful hours. I dreamed that I was climbing toilfully up a stony path between ruinous walls and close-grown ancient thorns. I climbed in a light that was neither of the night nor of the day: in the wan and chilly light of a moon-like sun such as I had seen through the water. And, all the time I climbed, I knew that he was near. Thrice I saw him through the briers, and once he called my name: but he was always at the other side of the wall.

I dreamed much more. But though I couldn't help dreaming, I can help recalling it all, I can keep writing it.

Yet what can I do if I don't write? I can't get to close grips with a book. The end of Les Chouans is too beautiful, too sorrowful, and I've no one to talk to, save Susan. Susan has been an angel all day: but I couldn't talk to her just now. I will go to bed.

Midnight.

The house is quiet as the grave.

I cannot sleep. Perhaps the fire was too restless and bright.

The room is so warm that I am sitting without even a dressing-gown, just as I slipped out of bed. I have a plan of wooing sleep.

I am going to write to Ruddington. Not a reply on behalf of Susan. Not a letter that will ever be posted. Not a letter that any eye save mine shall ever see. Once, just this once, because I am sleepless, and shaken, and worn, and unhappy, I will let myself go. For half an hour, he shall be mine. His rose-leaf, my stolen rose-leaf, shall lie by my hand. To-morrow ... the fire for what I write to-night. And for me--to-morrow and all the morrows after it--no looking back to this hour, no brooding, no idle regret, nothing save the quest of forgetfulness.

This is what I write--the first and last love-letter of my life:

SAINT VERONICA'S, at dead of night.

BELOVED,--You bid me write to you just once without distrust either of myself or of you. You bid me pour out all my heart.

I obey. Once--this once--I will speak to you as I have never spoken before, as I can never speak again.

You have seen me, in the flesh, three times, treading the solid ground, breathing the summer air. Yet you do not love me. I have seen you only in a portrait: and I love you as wildly, as eternally, as immeasurably as you believe you love poor Susan. I know it all through my soul: and, as you wrote in your first letter, there can never be any one in the world for me save you.

Your portrait was the beginning. How I can have been near your own very self those three times in England without turning to you as a flower turns to the sun, without answering you as deep answers deep, I do not know. Perhaps my heart did turn, my soul did answer. But, for my consciousness, the portrait was the beginning. And what your portrait began your letters have carried on.

You say that poor Susan's mind is even more beautiful and wonderful than poor Susan's face. Alas, how cruelly you are deceived, how rudely you must be awakened. But with Thee, beloved, it is thy mind that makes me love Thee most. Although I have wandered only a few steps along its margin, I know that a long lifetime would not suffice me to explore that goodly land with its sunny fields, its merry brooks, its great deeps, its peaks piercing the clouds of heaven.

Yes, Beloved, thy mind is beautiful and wonderful. And yet it has deceived you. At the sight of a pretty face, you bent like a reed under an immense infatuation which you think is love. It is the tragedy of your life and mine, Beloved, that we, whom God made one for another, must go our separate ways, you with your infatuation, I with my love.

Doubtless, before long, we shall meet. You will feel the delicacy of my position, you will be considerate, grateful, kind. And I must sit and smile and put you at your ease, while all the time my heart will be crying: This is the man who should have loved me!

To-morrow all will be changed. This hour of self-revelation will belong to the past, never to have a successor. But to-night I have let myself go. If you were here at this moment, your infatuation should melt and vanish before my love, like hoarfrost before a raging fire. You should go down on your knees, you should prostrate yourself at my feet, imploring pardon for your ignoble truancy and for your treason against love. But I would make haste to forgive you, Beloved, and to raise you up, and to throw myself against your heart into your arms.

I send you back your rose-leaf. It has lain by me as I have written, and I will keep nothing to remind me of this hour. So I send it back--not as it came, for it is heavy with a kiss.

The sand has run out in the glass. My hour is ended. When I have laid down my pen, I shall weep. And, when I have wept, perchance I shall sleep and love you dreaming as you will never love me waking. Farewell.

I laid down my pen five minutes ago. I take it up again to say that I have not wept and that I cannot sleep.

What a letter I have written--what a slow-footed, cold-blooded, low-pulsed, nerveless, schoolgirlish scribble! Will the fire be able to burn it, I wonder, or will it put the fire out like an armful of damp green boughs?

No, I can't sleep. My very contempt for what I have written has awakened me in every fibre.

I am not ill now. I have never been so well before in my life. A moment ago I looked at myself in the glass. The picture enchained me. I stood with the torch-like brass candlestick held high. My uplifted arm was bare as far as the deep lace at my elbow. My eyes shone, my hair fell all about me, almost to my knees. In contrast, my feet were like two lilies, my neck was like a swan's. And, as I gazed, another veil was withdrawn from the mystery of life. By the light of the candle I saw my own cheeks glow red, as it was revealed to me what it will mean to live without love. What Fate denies me is not only communion with a kindred spirit. I, too, am flesh and blood.

Let Susan and Ruddington thank their stars that I was brought up gently, christianly, instead of wickedly, selfishly, in the passion-fraught air of a worldly home. Let them thank their stars that the devil in me has been laid, that the tigress in me has been tamed. If Ruddington were here to-night, if Susan came running hither through that door, how small a thing could sting me past control and rouse me to overwhelm them under my proud anger and pitiless love! I could dash his china shepherdess into a thousand pieces. I could compel him to forsake all and follow me to the end of the world.

A memory rises up suddenly and makes me laugh bitterly. Susan at Traxelby. How I smiled at her melodramatics when she knelt down in an agony of fear and made me swear that I would not take him away from her! But I have sworn, and I may not repent.

Enough, far more than enough, of this. It is mad, it is sickly, it is contemptible. No more of it, to-night or ever. I will get back into bed, and lie snug, and read till morning.

Wednesday, noon: in bed.

I feel bruised all over, strengthless, stunned. Susan woke me at ten o'clock. Les Chouans had fallen to the floor and the candle at my bedside had burned down to its socket.

Susan says that she came in at seven with no less noise than usual. But I was sleeping so soundly that she didn't like to wake me before ten.

While she was propping me up with pillows and pouring out the coffee, I looked round the room and my heart stood still.

The letter to Ruddington was gone.

My cheeks turned whiter than the sheets. Susan caught me in her arms.

"Oh, Miss Gertrude, no, no!" she wailed, "I couldn't bear it."

She thought I was going to die. I opened my eyes and tried to speak. But Susan wailed on.

"It's my fault, Miss, all mine. You're so good to me, Miss, I ought to have known. I ought to have said, 'Don't bother about his lordship, Miss, till you're well and strong.' But I didn't think. I'm too selfish, Miss. Oh, Miss Gertrude, to think you were sitting up writing and writing all that, and me snug and warm in bed!"

"Susan," I said feebly, asking the question in terror, "What have you done with it?"

"It's gone, Miss," answered Susan, with the prompt heartiness of one who breaks good news and administers consolation. "So you don't need to worry your head about it any more."

"Gone?" I echoed, in a voice as thin as a ghost's.

"Yes, Miss. Madame was going to Grandpont in the omnibus. She asked me if we had any letters for the early post. And oh, Miss Gertrude, it was perfectly lovely! I can't never thank you enough. I couldn't understand it all through; but it was so lovely, it made me cry."

I lay still with closed eyes. When Susan held the coffee to my lips, I drank. When she drew away the extra pillows and settled the bedclothes cosily round me, I did not resist. Indeed, I did not say another word. Susan thinks I am asleep.

I ought to be up and doing. But doing what? I ought to be hot, angry, ashamed, full of resolves and plans. But I am lying here, despite the shocks and bruises, subdued, at rest, strangely imperturbable. Can it be that I am happy because, while I have played fair with Susan, I have been suffered once, just once, to speak in his ear and to send him a rose-leaf with a kiss?

I have thought it all out. Did Susan sign the letter? Even if it has gone without her name, it doesn't matter. He cannot guess that it is mine.

At first I shuddered at recollecting the bits about "poor Susan." But, again, it doesn't matter. He will take it that Susan has written "poor Susan" instead of "I," just as he himself writes "prudent Suzanne" instead of you.

He will read it to-morrow morning. It will puzzle him. But the task of interpreting it will delight his fanciful, super-subtle mind. I can predict his reading of the riddle. He will take it that Susan, in her wonderful, beautiful soul, is comparing her angelic love with his very human infatuation. He will picture her more exquisite and spiritual and poetical than ever. But it is my kiss that he will cull from the curling lip of that pale rose.

BOOK IV

LA VILLA DE LA MER

BOOK IV

Thursday night.

I am not Number 3 at Dupoirier's hotel any more. I am a householder; and mistress, until Sunday morning, of the Villa de la Mer.

I am writing in my new bedroom. The French windows open on a broad wooden balcony facing the sea. The furniture is brand new--as new as the villa garden, with its glaring paths of chalk-chippings bordering an oblong of wiry grass and lean, shivery shrubs.

If Ruddington rode into Derlingham, he would get the letter this morning, about a quarter to ten. At half-past two a telegram arrived at the Hôtel du Dauphin, addressed to Susan. Happily, he had the tact to hand it in at Miller's Bridge where Susan isn't known. Susan brought the unopened message to me with a scared face. I took it, and this is what I read aloud:--

TO MISS BRIGGS,

HÔTEL DU DAUPHIN, SAINTE VÉRONIQUE, FRANCE.

I am crossing to-night, and shall reach Sainte Véronique to-morrow at 6 p.m.

RUDDINGTON.

Susan snatched the paper out of my hand with a cry of dismay.

"Oh, Miss!" she moaned, letting it fall on the grass, "whatever shall we do?"

I was struck dumb.

"Whatever shall we do?" she cried again. "Oh, Miss Gertrude, he mustn't come! I can't bear it. I must send him a telegram at once. I must!"

Too much staggered to answer, I looked at her blankly. She collapsed on the rustic seat by my side, covered her face with her pretty new French apron, and went off into an old-fashioned, uncontrollable fit of weeping.

To the sound of her sobs, I tried to decide what course was best. Susan's plan of an immediate telegram commanding him to stop at home seemed good at first. But I glanced at his words again, and all doubt vanished. I knew that Susan might as well tell to-morrow's sun not to rise, to-morrow's tides not to flow, as tell Ruddington that to-morrow he must not invade Sainte Véronique. Nor could I blame him, or wonder at him. With such a letter as mine in his hand, I should have despised him if he had not flown on the wings of the wind.

"Stop crying, Susan," I said. And, with a bitterness which she did not understand, I added, "It is I who should be upset, not you."

"Yes, Miss, I know, Miss," sobbed Susan. "With you so ill and weak, it's horrible, it's dreadful!"

"I don't mean that, Susan," I said. "But do you think I like his coming here? First it was Gibson, and now it's Lord Ruddington."

She turned on me white with terror.

"I know, I know, oh, I know, Miss Gertrude!" she crooned, wringing her hands. "What if Gibson meets him, Miss? They'll fight, and they'll both be killed!"

"Don't talk nonsense," I said irritably; "if they killed each other, at least we should have some peace. As for sending a telegram, what's the good? He's made up his mind. Very likely he has started. If so, no power on earth will turn him back again."

"Do you think, Miss----?" began Susan.

"Think what?"

"Your letter, Miss ... my letter. Do you think that perhaps it was too ... loving?"

"And what if it was?" I retorted. "He's got the letter by now, hasn't he? He's got it, and it can't be altered."

Susan wept afresh.

"Oh, Miss!" she moaned. "If only we was at Traxelby I wouldn't mind. But it's dreadful!"

A plan occurred to me.

"Wait here," I said, "while I go and speak to Madame."

Within a quarter of an hour it was all arranged. I told Madame that an Englishman from the next parish to my own would arrive to-morrow night. Madame is the pink of propriety; and she had nothing but approval for my scheme of taking Susan and Georgette to the Villa de la Mer for the time of Ruddington's stay. I took it upon myself to declare that the newcomer will go away again on Sunday; and I am not sure that I shall allow him to remain so long.

The Dupoiriers had made the villa beautifully sweet and clean in the hope of attracting one more end-of-the-season tenant. There was hardly anything that needed to be done. Madame has sent down a great hamper of linen, and two baskets of provisions, and a pudgy little baby cask of cider. And here we are.

Already the change has done me good. Sitting on the broad balcony, between two tubs of bushy, bright-leaved euonymus, I am so near the sea that, at the top of the tide, the spray kisses my cheeks. To come here was an inspiration, every way. From a house of my own, I can manage to-morrow's happenings. To be mistress of a house helps me to be once more mistress of myself. These wholesome, hearty breezes will blow away the morbid nightmares of yesterday and the days before. I mean to go back to where I stood a week ago. That is to say, having done my duty by Susan, I mean to stand aloof and look on at the last act of the comedy.

All this afternoon I have been healthily awake, and now I am healthily drowsy. To-night I shall be like a child in a cradle, with the big soft sea cooing me to sleep.

Friday morning.

If ever I cross to Sainte Véronique again, I shall come to the Villa and not to the hotel. Last year, I hated the sight of the Villa standing up gaunt and shadeless, with raw red walls, and a cold muddy-blue slate roof. But, once inside, you are cheerfuller than in the hotel.

There's another and a stronger reason. What was it that demoralized me at the hotel and made me such an easy prey to mawkish fancies? It was because I had nothing to do, nothing to supervise. The Villa is only a big doll's-house; but its toy duties and its miniature responsibilities have stiffened my backbone already.

I have settled everything about Ruddington. When he reaches the hotel, he will find a note from Susan. I can't have him worrying us to-night. He must cool his ardour till to-morrow. And he mustn't stay longer than Sunday, Thirty-six hours of it will be a long enough ordeal for poor Susan. All that is needed at this stage is that they should come face to face, and, as Susan says, decide whether they can put up with one another. If he stays more than one clear day, they'll be getting to explanations and confidences, and it will all come out about my letters.

Unless there is mutual disenchantment (in which event Susan will send him off at once) I will see him to-morrow, after lunch. As Susan's guardian, I shall have to sit in state and give him a gracious audience, while he shyly unfolds his tale of love and proves the honourableness of his intentions.

I am glad that he is coming. It's far better to get it over at Sainte Véronique than to have to go through it all at Traxelby. Besides, it's better that I should meet him without any more delay. Distance and mystery have lent enchantment to my view of him, and they are to blame for my three silly nights and days. If there are any germs of love-sickness still lurking in my veins, I expect a talk with him will kill them. He will be unlike his portrait and far more unlike his letters, he is just an ordinary male person, gone mad over a pretty face. The only uncommon thing about him, is that his letters strive, by an ecstatic tour de force, to lift an everyday masculine passion up to supra-mundane regions. Through a sequence of galling accidents, I have bolstered up his illusion. That is why, for a few days, there really was a spiritual bond between us. But to-morrow will snap it. There is sure to be a something. Perhaps he will have a weak voice. I could no more endure him with a weak voice than I could endure Susan with a gruff one. This is the note he will find awaiting him:--

You ought not to come here. But I received your telegram too late to stop you.

I showed the telegram to Miss Langley and she was angry. Not angry because you want me. Indeed, so soon as she is satisfied that all is as it should be, she will help me as much as lies in her power. But she was angry that you should come here.

I have promised to ask you, imperatively, not to remain after Sunday. Until that day we shall be at the Villa de la Mer, a chalet about a mile from here.

Do not try to see me to-night. I agree with Miss Langley that it will be best if we meet to-morrow morning on the beach at eleven o'clock. I shall expect you at the end of the path down from the hotel, where the beck is lost in the shingle.

I can be with you for an hour. If we do not find that we are making a mistake, Miss Langley will be glad to see you at the Villa at half-past two.

S.B.

That is as far ahead as I mean to look. If Susan and he strike a bargain at once, I may have to consider what unbendings I must make, and what little honours I must render to-morrow night, and Sunday, to my noble neighbour, and to my Lady Ruddington of the very near future.

I have kept faith with Gibson. To-morrow morning he will have a discreet letter, telling him that the unknown is coming for a few hours: that he is an honourable man; and that Gibson will best serve himself and everybody else by keeping out of the way.