Front matter (continued 4)

"Young, you know. She's young," the father apologized. "We must try to remember that. You'd think that Geoffrey would be glad to play a round with me; but if he can dodge it, he will. I saw a bit of him last week, because there was a fellow staying at the hotel who offered to give me some advice about the proper allowance to make him at Oxford when he goes up in October. I can't help feeling that two hundred and fifty pounds a year is enough. But this fellow says, 'No, you can't do on less than three hundred pounds at a college like St. Mary's.' Well, I suppose I shall have to give it to him."

"Yes," Mary sighed, "children are strange. They seem quite suddenly not to belong to one, and to be almost complete strangers. Thank heaven, Richard at any rate has never learnt to do without me entirely."

"Ah, Richard!" her husband laughed. "But we were discussing ordinary boys and girls, common or garden boys and girls, not paragons. Though, by George, I've no right to tease you about him, for he is a fine lad. There's no doubt about that. Well, he'll be here to-morrow. Yet not for long, I'm afraid. You mark my words, he'll be gazetted almost at once. They've a good many losses to make up in South Africa."

"Jemmie, don't! It's too horrible to think of."

"Duty, my dear," said the father sternly. "You must be glad in your heart that Richard is going to do his duty. We shall be proud of him if he gets out there."

"I should be just as proud of him at home," said the mother.

Further discussion of Richard was interrupted by the arrival of Geoffrey and Muriel, who immediately sat down to tea and exclaimed at the coldness of the scones.

"Did you expect us to wait any longer?" their mother asked. "It's half-past five, dear children."

"Sorry," muttered Geoffrey, who was a plump youth, but good-looking in a fair florid style. He greatly resembled his father at the same age; and though to hear Jemmie talk about his youth now was to conjure up a half-heroic figure of mythical prowess and virtue, it is probable that the son equally resembled in character his father at the same age. Muriel, who was fifteen, did not resemble either of her parents much, although in figure, if the figure of a girl of fifteen may be granted the name, she seemed likely to take after her father. She was very fair, round-faced and blue-eyed, reputed clever, an admirable athlete, and immensely popular at school. Her mother never felt really at ease with Muriel, though she never could satisfactorily explain to herself why this should be so; it seemed absurd to allow herself to bow embarrassed before that pitiless judgment of youth; but bow she did, and the consciousness of her position often made her irritable. Not that any display of irritation affected Muriel, who would merely stare at her mother, slightly knitting the fair brows above those eyes of porcelain blue.

"I'm beginning to be afraid that Muriel may be difficult," Mary confided in her husband that evening, when she came to bid him good night.

"Oh no, I don't think so. Several of my family have been very clever, but it never led to anything unpleasant. They were clever, but always very womanly women. I think she's a nice straightforward, clean-minded English girl. Oh no, I don't believe she'll be difficult."

"I find her very hard to understand," Mary complained. "All the time I have a feeling that she is building up a wall between herself and me."

"Know what it is?" Jemmie asked. "Know what's the matter with you? You're growing old."

"Jemmie, what a horrible thing to tell me."

"Never mind, old lady. It's got to be. We're both growing old. I tell you I realize it more and more when I'm playing golf. Good night, my dear."

He offered himself to her salute without rising from the chair in which he was smoking his final cigar before a light autumnal fire in the library—the Badminton Library, as Muriel called it, for that collection of authoritative treatises on sport, together with some bound volumes of Punch and the Illustrated London News, Handley Cross, and a few novels by writers like Frank Smedley, constituted her father's literary environment.

"Growing old?" Mary repeated to herself on the way upstairs to her room. "Growing old?" she echoed once more when she stood in front of her mirror. The candlelight, apricot-shaded, flattered her reflection. Growing old at forty? What nonsense Jemmie talked! He forgot that he was fifteen years older than she. Now he certainly was growing old. How much he had aged just lately and how much he had improved with age! Dear old Jemmie, he really needed her far more than Geoffrey or Muriel needed her. He was much more a child to her than either of them. If it were not for Richard, she might begin to wonder if children were much of a consolation for growing old. And Richard would be here to-morrow. But for how long? Mary felt sick and dizzy in a sudden thought of how brief his stay might be. If he really were ordered to the front? Was it credible that he should be? Richard in danger, and Richard how many thousand miles away! She had been proud and glad when he chose to be a soldier; but war had been so remote then. It seemed only yesterday that Jemmie bought High Corner, so that the children might always spend their holidays out of London. And now the eldest of those children was liable to be sent abroad to fight for his country. High Corner without children would not be High Corner any longer. But perhaps the war would soon be over. She must read the papers more carefully. She must not skip them as she did now. She must not rely on gossip about the duration of the war. She must learn to judge for herself. And Richard would be here to-morrow.

"I must not lie awake fretting," she decided. "I must get to sleep quickly. It will be time to fret when Richard is ordered abroad."

He arrived when the sun was driving away the wraiths of morning mist and when the others were all at golf. For her, when she saw him, so tall and straight and slim and fair, coming toward her along that green walk by the phloxes, he was more radiant than the sun.

"Hark, mother, do you hear that robin? That's the first I've heard this autumn," he exclaimed as he bent to kiss her.

In the silence of their first embrace the birdsong passed into the dim green recesses of the day, vanishing like the voice of her son's vanishing childhood.

"Do you remember that fatal day when I killed a robin?" he asked.

"No, dearest, I'd forgotten that you'd ever killed anything."

"Why, mother, when I had that air-gun I killed everything I saw until that day."

"How you exaggerate, my Richard."

"Yes, I did indeed. But that day I'd missed everything, and then sitting on a branch of that oak, the one Geoff and I planted to shade us in our old age, I saw a robin. I fired and killed him, and I was so shocked at what I'd done that I've never really been able to kill even a partridge since with any pleasure."

"Always such a dear little boy," she exclaimed, holding tight to her son's arm.

"Was I?" Richard laughed. "I'm afraid I must always have kept my good behavior for you. Aren't your phloxes splendid this year? Best I've ever seen."

They paced the walk arm-in-arm, admiring the glow of color. At last Richard said:

"Mother, I've got something to tell you."

She knew immediately what it was.

"You're going to South Africa."

"Yes. I'm in the Gazette this morning. I thought you'd all have seen it."

"They went out to golf without reading the papers," she said, trying to keep her voice from trembling. "What regiment, darling?"

"Rifle brigade."

"Are you pleased?"

"Pleased to be a rifleman? Mother, of course I am!"

"I'm glad you're pleased about it, darling. I'm glad you've got what you wanted."

"My battalion is at the front."

She braced herself for the next question.

"And when do you think you'll have to go, darling?"

"Rather soon," he told her in his gentlest voice.

"Rather soon," she echoed in a whisper. "Shall we go and sit somewhere in the shade? The sun is so hot along this wall. I wonder the phloxes can stand it without wilting."

"There was a heavy dew this morning," he reminded her.

A heavy dew this morning? It was a day then, a real day in time. The date was in the almanac. It was not a dream. There was a heavy dew this morning, and Richard would be on his way to South Africa rather soon.

"And I suppose you'll have to go up to town about your uniform?" she asked.

"Yes, I shall have to see about my kit."

"And that will mean some of the little time we have left will be taken away from us."

"You could come up to town with me and we could have lunch somewhere," he suggested.

Yes, they could have lunch together, and then a week or two later he would be gone.

"Richard!"

He looked round in astonishment at the poignant exclamation of his name.

"No, I did not want to say anything," she told him with a sad smile. "Nothing more than 'Richard,' while you can still look round at me like that, while you are still here to look round at me."

The fine autumn weather lasted until Richard left for South Africa. His mother at his earnestly expressed desire did not go to Southampton to wave the last farewell. When he was trying to dissuade her from the journey, she felt as she used to feel when as a boy he had always tried to dissuade her from coming to Paddington to bid him good-by on the platform before he went back to Eton. They parted on the steps of Woodworth Lodge, and the carriage drove off with ghostly quietude along the road that was littered with dead leaves, drove off with her Richard in the yellow light of an October morning.

"Seems strange without him," said Jemmie, taking his wife's arm affectionately and guiding her when she stumbled on the stairs because the tears in her eyes obscured all objects familiar and unfamiliar, all life indeed for the moment.

"Geoffrey's off to Oxford to-morrow, and then you and I shall be all alone, old lady, just as we used to be when we were first married twenty years ago."

Jemmie was evidently anxious to free his mind of the emotional discomfort that Richard's departure provoked by directing his emotion into the channels of a sentimentalized past; but Mary refused to follow his lead. She had only one idea, which was to be alone with her grief. She had no superfluity of idle regret, no lachrymatories of stale tears to be unsealed for Jemmie's gratification. She was inconsolable.

My darling Mother,

I hope you got my post-card from Capetown. Here I am at last with my regiment in the field. It was awfully nervous work finding out where they were, and I felt an awful fool when I had to walk into the mess after riding about ten miles and explain who I was. They were awfully decent to me, however, and luckily there was quite a decent dust-up with the Boers soon after I arrived. I was glad to get it all over at once. I mean both my joining up and going into action for the first time. Love to everybody and lots to yourself. I'll write a better letter when I'm more settled. I hear that we are going off chasing De Wet presently. They say we've really got him in a corner this time. It doesn't look as if the war would go on for much longer. I'm really a year too late. That's the bad luck of it. Of course, there's still plenty to do, but it's nothing to what it was, they tell me. The regiment fought splendidly at Spion Kop. I wish I'd been there!

Don't read this letter to anybody except Father, and don't let him have it to take with him when he goes to golf. Just read it to him at home. Once more with lots of love,

Your loving son, Richard.

My dearest Mother,

I've quite settled down at St. Mary's. I'm sorry I've not written more often this term. I shall be going down next week and I've been asked to spend the week before Christmas with a man in my year called Whittington-Jones, an old Carthusian. His people have a rather decent shoot in Norfolk. I wonder if you could get Father to lend me his guns. He practically never shoots now. I suppose you wouldn't mind if I asked Whittington-Jones to come to Woodworth Lodge soon after Christmas? He is rather keen to trot around the theaters, and so am I, I'm bound to admit.

I wonder if you could manage to lend me £100? I know this sounds rather a large sum to want in my first term, but the fact is I seem to have spent rather more than I meant, and I had to borrow £75 from a man in my year. I bought one or two pictures for my rooms, and I also lost a bit at roulette one night at the House. I didn't really mean to play, but I couldn't very well sit looking on without seeming rude, because I had been dining with a House man. I lost more than I meant. I don't like to ask Father for the money because he'll jump to the conclusion that I'm gambling, which of course I need hardly say is not the case. If you could manage to get me out of rather an awkward hole just this once I promise not to run any risks again. Will you let me know as soon as you can about Whittington-Jones coming to us after Christmas and also about the £100? The extra £25 is for expenses during the vac. I shall have some tipping to do in Norfolk. If Father consults you about a present for me at Christmas, would you mind suggesting a check? It's awfully hard to choose a suitable present, though of course there are lots of things I should like for my rooms. But a check would really be more useful. I don't think there's much to tell you about Oxford. It's been very foggy there for the last few days.

Your loving son, Geoffrey.

My dear Mother,

I'm sorry I have waited so long to answer your last letter, but we have been fearfully busy rehearsing for our Break-up. I am acting Gratiano in the trial scene from "The Merchant of Venice." Celia Wentworth, the girl who plays Shylock, is most dreadfully good. Miss Bewick considers her simply marvelous. She says that ever since she has been elocution mistress at the school she never has known such a good Shylock. I wonder if I could invite Celia to spend a few days with us during the Christmas holidays. She is fearfully keen to see some theaters, and we've made out a gorgeous list of things we're simply dying to see. Celia says that the way I play Gratiano helps her most frightfully, and Miss Bewick was tremendously complimentary. The blot on the performance is the Doge played by a girl I hate called Marjorie Lane. She simply won't learn her words, and at the first rehearsal without books she cut out all the middle of her long speech and said "the world thinks and I think so too, we all expect a gentle answer, Jew." You should have seen Miss Bewick's face. Of course we all snorted like anything, and Marjorie could only sit there and giggle in that affected way she does. Celia says she hopes she won't do that on the afternoon of Break-up, because the audience is sure to laugh, and Celia thinks it may spoil her performance. I hope you and Father are going to turn up in force, and when you come do please invite Celia to stay with us in January.

Your loving daughter, Muriel.

Geoffrey and Muriel had their friends to stay with them as they wanted; and continuous chatter about the world of Oxford and the world of school, from both of which worlds their mother perceived herself infinitely remote, made her feel still more hopelessly banished from the only world where she cared to live, the world of South Africa and war. Perhaps if her two younger children had been able or anxious to appreciate what she was suffering from Richard's absence she would not have grudged them their gayety. It was not that she wanted them to devote themselves entirely to her. That would be an unworthy maternal egotism. But such a complete absorption already in other interests was surely not what most mothers had to endure from their children.

"Muriel, haven't you anything to tell me about your life at school?"

"Oh, mother, I'm always telling you things."

"But only about the other girls, dear child."

"Well, what else is there to tell you?" Muriel countered.

"Don't you ever want to tell me anything about yourself and your thoughts and what you would like to do when you grow up?" her mother persisted.

Muriel frowned.

"I wish you wouldn't always be imagining that I have any thoughts as you call them. You always ask such impossible questions, mother."

Mary turned away with a sigh. It was not thus that she had pictured her daughter at fifteen when ten years ago she used to enter the nursery on tiptoe and steal through the dim hush to where in her cot Muriel lay sleeping as still as a gathered carnation. It was not for this Muriel that she had peered into the future, not for this Muriel that she had stood in the door on her way out and looked back to see that the night light was burning faithfully in the glimmering saucer.

"Geoffrey, you and your friend Mr. Whittington-Jones, never seem to talk about anything except horses and cards."

Geoffrey, remembering that he owed his mother a hundred pounds and that a time might come when he should wish to extend this obligation, tried not to look irritated by the question. The result was an expression of patient long-suffering, which irritated her.

"Really, my dear boy," she exclaimed, "there is no occasion for you to assume that expression of injured innocence. You do talk a great deal about horses and cards."

"Well, the men I know best are interested in horses," Geoffrey muttered. "And surely one can be interested in horses without being jumped on?"

"I'm not jumping on you, dear Geoffrey. I don't think I ever jumped on anybody. Sometimes I think it would be better if I did jump on people. I do hope that you will try to make the best of your time at Oxford. It would be such a pity if you wasted these years. You would always regret them and wish you could have them all over again."

Geoffrey removed his weight from his right leg and put it upon his left.

"I know it's boring," his mother went on, "very boring to have a mother who tries to interfere with a young man's natural amusements. I don't a bit want to be a spoil-sport, but you know how horrified father would be if he thought you were gambling. Luckily I was able to help you out with that money. But I shan't always be able to help you, and I do so want you to help yourself."

Mary had tried not to bring Richard into the conversation in order to make a comparison. But before she could stop herself the comparison was made.

"Richard!" Geoffrey echoed, flushing. "I've never pretended to compete with him. And anyway you wouldn't expect a soldier on active service to have the temptations I have at the 'Varsity."

"What a mean remark! Unworthy of a brother!"

Geoffrey shifted back from his left leg to his right.

"Whatever I do and whatever I say is sure to be wrong," he muttered.

Mary turned away with a sigh. It was not thus she had pictured her second son at eighteen when ten years ago she had sat in the shade of the mulberry tree at High Corner, during that first delicious summer of their possession, and watched him turning somersaults on the bright lawn. Then her only fear for Geoffrey was that the blood might rush to his head from the energy of his exercise. How foolish an apprehension that seemed compared with the present dread for Geoffrey's future!

Later in that month Queen Victoria died, and on the gray February morning when the funeral procession crossed London Mary found herself kept by the press of people from reaching Grosvenor Place, where Jemmie had been lent a window to watch with his family the passing of a great period, the end of a mighty reign, the obsequies of an august and noble woman. She turned aside into Hyde Park, vexed with herself for making a muddle of the occasion; but when she was out of the crowd and walking in comfort under the bare trees she was glad that she had not succeeded in reaching Grosvenor Place, for out of the gray air beyond the fume of gray boughs sounded the lament of Chopin's Funeral March, not as if it was being played by mortal instruments, but like a coronach wailed by remote winds, a threnody uttered by unimaginable waves.

Mary looked round her. There was no longer a human being in sight; there was only tree after tree in audience of that melodious lamentation. For a while her fancy was caught by the picture of that grave pageant moving across London to the music of those poignant cadences. Her mind went back to a year or two ago when she had seen the Queen driving along Kensington High Street, a little old woman in black nodding to right and left in acknowledgment of her subjects' welcome. Now that little old woman in black was being borne on a gun-carriage, nothing left of her domination save the orb and scepter upon the coffin in which she lay dead. The funeral strains of Chopin died away, and their place was taken by the heavier grief of Handel's Dead March, so solemn that one seemed to hear above the crash of cymbals the tread of mourning emperors and kings. Mary felt it was wrong of her not to have made certain of beholding the procession, that she had no business to be standing here alone among the trees. She started to hurry forward in the direction of the music, so that above the crowd she might catch a glimpse of the plumes and helmets and perhaps even of the white pall itself. It began to seem of the greatest importance that she should have this glimpse, for she was thinking that without it she should miss the most important public event in her time. To-day would surely be a landmark in time to which everything in contemporary life would be referred. She must hurry. Already Handel's solemn beat was becoming muffled and dying into silence beyond the Marble Arch. This silence was tremendous. She hurried on, panting for breath. There at last was that endless mourning edge of black spectators, and there above them the plumes and the helmets of the cavalry flashing and rippling. Had the coffin passed? Once more the silence was rent by the plangent strains of Chopin.

Mary turned away from the people and the procession; with all the air behind her melodious with grief, she sought again the holy quiet of the bare trees. A little child, too young for the pomps of death, was running after a gay ball, while a Dandie Dinmont jumped in circles round her barking. In a moment Mary was walking under these very trees, herself of twenty years ago! How little they had changed, but herself how much. The melody in which at first she had found the expression of a world's sorrow for the death of a Queen, now rose with its yearning and fell with its despair upon her own life. It was identified with herself and so much the more poignant in consequence. It no longer expressed a nation's grief, but voiced instead all the regrets for what might have befallen herself. She was back again among these trees twenty-one years ago with Mac. It was a month later than this, she reminded herself, and although the trees were just as bare, the crocuses were in full bloom then. Yes, Mac was barking there beside her, and children were running after brightly painted balls. Still that wailing of the Funeral March! What did twenty years ago matter now? What did they count for now? More sharply sad, more passionately wistful in one supreme melodious sigh the refrain, seeking to express an incommunicable grief, died away into silence. If only Richard had not been ordered abroad! He would have been with her to-day. He would have waited for her this morning. Richard was not like Geoffrey and Muriel, not so forgetful of his mother as they were. Yet perhaps she was unfair to her younger children. Perhaps, in her devotion to Richard, she had let them understand too well that she cared more deeply for him than for them. It might be her own fault if they were forgetful. And ten years ago she had not been fair to Jemmie. She had a great deal for which to blame herself. From to-day onward she would think more about other people and not be so ready to blame them, when it was she herself who was at fault. This was a solemn day in the history of England. She would try to make it a solemn day in the history of herself.

The mellow form of Kensington Palace came into sight. It looked exactly the same as it always looked. It was strange to think that more than sixty years ago the little old woman now being borne to the grave should have been a young girl in that Palace and there received the news of her accession. Here was no noise of music for the dead, but like the sound of running water the ripple of children's laughter. In the precincts of Kensington Palace the children were playing as usual with their hoops and their balls. The Queen herself may have played here as a child long before she was a queen. It was a spot sacred to children, not to the dead; sacred to the future, not to the past.

"Let me remember that thought," Mary said to herself. "And when I think of the day of the Queen's funeral I will always remember that I am not dead yet and that while I am alive I have a future. I must be more sympathetic with Muriel, more patient with Geoffrey, more solicitous for Jemmie. And I must not fret for Richard, for my boy."

It was a pity that Geoffrey went back to Oxford the day after the funeral and that Muriel went back to school. Mary felt that from the state of mind she had achieved on that day she might have drawn closer to her children.

The first year of the new century came to its Spring, blossomed and shed its blossom, opened to its Summer and reached its Autumn without Mary's hopes of a deeper intimacy being realized. She began to wonder if Richard would return from South Africa as much a stranger as the other two. His letters betrayed no falling off in affection; but affectionate letters might be the result of habit and not reflect the man that was being wrought out of her boy, down there beneath the unfamiliar Southern stars.

In her maternal loneliness Mary found herself more than ever inclined to adopt Jemmie. He would really have been a most satisfactory child if he would only have abstained from continually reminding her that age was creeping fast upon both of them. It was difficult to be motherly to a man who would talk all the time about his stiff joints and hardening arteries, who would grunt and groan when he rose from an arm-chair, and who after dinner had scarcely read half a dozen headlines of The Times before he was fast asleep. Mary did not want to be as old as all that, and she wished that her husband would remember that there were fifteen years between them. Fifteen long years. Or was it only because Richard was away that the years seemed longer nowadays? They had fled by so swiftly when he was little. She must go in for gardening more seriously this Autumn. If Richard came back next Spring, he would appreciate her English flowers after Africa; and if he did not come back, the flowers would be a small consolation. It was a pity that she had begun so early to work among girls. That club would have been such an interesting occupation for the present. But if she began again now, it would mean arguments with Jemmie, who would never understand why, when he was always at home, she wanted to wear herself out ministering to a lot of strange girls. Strangeness was Jemmie's bugbear. Strange people, strange ideas, strange manners, strange places, strange clothes, they were all equally abhorrent to Jemmie nowadays.

"I may not be very distinguished or anything like that," he boasted. "But at any rate I'm not always running after new-fangled ideas. Some people would call me old-fashioned and consider me out of date; but I don't care what they call me or what they think me. When I was at school we used to kick fellows who tried to be original. We were rough and ready in those days, my dear, but, by George, we were men! Yes, by George, m-e-n. Men!"

"I thought you were boys," Mary laughed.

"Now, my dear, you know perfectly well what I mean."

"Yes, yes, you foolish old thing, of course I know what you mean. And I wish you could make Geoffrey a little less original."

"Ah, Geoffrey! Geoffrey is becoming a problem. I cannot think where he inherits his low tastes."

"Haven't we agreed to call him original?" said Mary. "Don't let's bother about the hereditary side of his misbehavior. You and I between us must be responsible for him, and we ought to shoulder our responsibility. I really am worried about his future."

They were sitting in the garden of High Corner on a fine afternoon at the end of September, and surely never had the phloxes been finer than they were this Autumn. If Richard admired them last year, what would he have said if he could have seen them now?

Muriel had already gone back to school, so that Geoffrey, as the only child at home, became for the time the chief object of his parents' solicitude.

"You've always taken his part when I've tried to be severe with him," the father pointed out.

"Yes, I know I have, and I think rather foolishly. But I suppose it's natural for a mother. It's what remains of the instinct to defend one's young. I wish he were a little boy again. I believe I should bring him up quite differently, if I had another chance."

Jemmie shook his head.

"Ah, if," he murmured sapiently. "If if's were horses, old lady, beggars might ride."

"Yes, and I think I've been rather foolish," Mary continued, "in keeping from you certain things about Geoffrey. You know, three times already since he went to Oxford I've lent him comparatively large sums for him to pay his debts. Gambling debts, I'm afraid."

"Gambling debts?" Jemmie echoed. "You don't mean to tell me that the young fool has been gambling? Gambling debts at nineteen? Why, the notion is ridiculous. Think of me. There was I, my own master from the time I left school. But I never had any gambling debts. I never had any debts at all. Why, when I was not much older than Geoffrey, my poor old father died and I was left in sole charge of the business. Suppose I had had gambling debts? A pretty stockbroker I should have made."

"There's no need for you to imagine that I'm trying to defend Geoffrey for running into debt," Mary observed.

"But why did you keep it from me? Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I know it was silly of me. I've admitted it was silly. Let that pass."

"How much have you paid for him?"

"About three hundred pounds."

"Three hundred what? Did you say three hundred pounds, or am I going mad and deaf? Three hundred pounds? Why, that's nearly a whole year's allowance. Do you seriously mean to tell me that you've allowed Geoffrey to play ducks and drakes with three hundred pounds of your money?"

"Frankly, Jemmie, I don't think that the amount matters," she said. "Three hundred pounds or three hundred pence, if he can't pay, the large sum is morally no worse than the smaller."

Jemmie began to splutter.

"Now that's a woman all over. No idea whatever of the value of money. It's not a question of morality, my dear. It's a question of finance. He knows very well, even if you don't, that he has no more business to risk three hundred pounds than I have to risk three thousand. A fine father my children would call me if I started gambling and gambled away all their inheritance."

"Jemmie dear, there is really no need for you to get angry with me," she protested. "I am as well aware as you how wrong it is of Geoffrey to gamble. But I do blame my own indulgence. I ought to have refused to give him the money and sent him to you. I don't know why I didn't. I suppose it was an absurd kind of jealousy. I suppose really that I hoped to make him fonder of me by giving him the money he wanted."

"But why have you told me now?" her husband asked in sudden bewilderment.

Mary looked unhappy.

"Promise me," she began, "that if I tell you something more you won't fly into a rage with Geoffrey and by losing your temper perhaps do him more harm than good. Promise me that, Jemmie, before I tell you anything more."

"He's not been stealing? He hasn't committed forgery or anything like that, has he?" stammered an apprehensive father.

"No, it's not quite so bad as that," she laughed sadly. "But you haven't promised."

"As long as it's nothing criminal, I promise to do my utmost to be patient with the boy."

Mary hesitated for a few moments, half regretting that she had raised the subject of Geoffrey's behavior. Then she plunged.

"It's this girl at the White Hart. Mrs. Woldingham came to see me this morning...."

"Girl at the White Hart?" Jemmie interrupted. "What has Mrs. Woldingham got to do with girls at the White Hart, even if she is the Rector's wife?"

"Jemmie, I must beg you not to interrupt me. If you will have the patience to let me say what I was going to say, you'll hear. Mrs. Woldingham, who came to see me about the Bazaar which is being got up for the debt on the new peal of bells, spoke very nicely about Geoffrey, and I'm sure she had not the least idea of making mischief or repeating village gossip. But people are beginning to talk about Geoffrey's being seen so often at the White Hart."

"Drinking too!" the father apostrophized. "Great Heavens, my second son appears to have every vice."

"No, not drinking," Mary contradicted irritably. "At least Mrs. Woldingham did not suggest that he was drinking. The attraction is this girl."

"What girl?"

"The girl at the White Hart."

"Do you mean the barmaid?"

"I suppose that's what she is. I really don't know anything more except that Geoffrey is credited with having a love affair with some girl at the White Hart."

Jemmie shook his head to Heaven.

"I really don't know what's happening to the young men of to-day. They stop at nothing. Still, I'm relieved to hear it's only that. At least, I suppose it's only that."

"Only what?" Mary asked frowning.

"Only a flirtation with a barmaid. Of course, he ought not to do that kind of thing in his own village; but I'm relieved to hear it's only that."

"That was all Mrs. Woldingham said."

"She didn't suggest that there was the likelihood of an open scandal?"

Mary looked puzzled.

"Come, come," her husband scoffed. "You are not a schoolgirl. I suppose Mrs. Woldingham didn't suggest that the young woman was going to have a child?"

"Jemmie, sometimes you really are unnecessarily coarse in the way you blurt things out. No, Mrs. Woldingham didn't say anything about that or indeed hint anything of the sort. At least, I don't think she did. But, oh dear, what a horrible notion! Please, I do beg of you, speak seriously to Geoffrey. If there were anything like that he would have to admit it to you."

When Mary was alone, she reproached herself for being so disloyal to Geoffrey as to tell his father about the money she had given him. It was no use trying to pretend to herself that her only motive for telling was a desire for Geoffrey to make a complete avowal of everything and after he had been forgiven to be able to start fair in his first encounter with life. She had not had the least temptation to say a word about his debts until Mrs. Woldingham had thrown out those hints about his behavior at the White Hart.

"I really believe I was jealous," she told herself. Jealous? Could she possibly be jealous of this girl? It sounded too absurd when stated in words. But there certainly had been an impulse to hurt Geoffrey and a desire to punish him not for his generally unsatisfactory behavior so much as for presuming at his age to fancy himself in love. It was not the knowledge that people were talking which had roused her indignation, but the suggestion that Geoffrey was madly in love with this girl, this common, crude, flamboyant creature, this barmaid. Even now her heart was beating fast with rage at the thought of such a disgraceful entanglement.

"Of course, my dear Mrs. Alison, it may be nothing but a youthful infatuation. At the same time I think I ought to warn you that they do say he has proposed to the girl."

She had not told Jemmie that. She had unjustly allowed him to suppose that the only scandal to be feared was Geoffrey's treatment of the girl. Jemmie had jumped to the commonplace conclusion, and she had been able to do no more than simulate the shocked feelings of a prude. She had been annoyed by her husband's clumsy assumption of Geoffrey's guilt, and she had found no better way to display her annoyance than by that pretense of delicacy.

"One always thinks that one is going to find it easier to be better in a few years' time; but, when the few years roll by, there is always a new trap for one's self-confidence," Mary reflected.

She made up her mind to be patient with Geoffrey, and went down to dinner with the intention of persuading Jemmie to be as patient as she hoped to be herself. But her good intentions were frustrated by Geoffrey's failure to appear.

"Keep nothing hot for Mr. Geoffrey," his father commanded.

Mary realized the extent of his wrath from this order, for nothing in life seemed more important to Jemmie than the temperature of food. Deliberately to let his son's dinner spoil was in his case almost the equivalent of open excommunication. Another sign of his anger was manifested after dinner, when, before he fell asleep in his chair, instead of reading the headlines of The Times, the list of killed and wounded in South Africa, and the sum of Roberts' points at billiards, he neither read nor slept; when instead he paced up and down the drawing-room, always tripping on the same head of a grizzly bear shot by himself long ago in the Rocky Mountains, always saying "damn," always begging his wife's pardon for the oath with an implication that Cæsar as well as Cæsar's wife should be above suspicion in dealing with Cæsar's son.

"This is a bit too much of a good thing," he declared when the clock struck ten without Geoffrey's arrival. "A little bit too much of a good thing, by George! He's staying down at that confounded inn till closing-time. That's what he's doing, you mark my words."

Half-past ten struck; but there was still no sign of Geoffrey.

"If his highness thinks that he's going to keep the whole household up while he wanders about with that girl in the moonlight, he's mistaken. I'll lock him out. By George, I will."

"But Jemmie, he may have had an accident."

"Fiddlesticks, my dear. If he'd had an accident, we should have heard of it by now. I'll give him until eleven. If he isn't home by then, the house shall be locked against him. I'll give him a lesson. I'll frighten him this time."

The clock struck eleven; but Geoffrey did not come. His father rang the bell.

"Please, Jemmie," his wife expostulated. "I'd rather you didn't say too much in front of the servants."

"You're weakening. You're not backing me up. You're perfectly ready to let him in. I tell you he has got to have a lesson."

"But the servants...."

"Bother the servants. I decline to let Geoffrey flout me, because I'm afraid of the servants."

However, Jemmie did so far humor his wife as to imply when he was giving orders to lock up the house, that he and she knew where their son was.

"Although I was in half a mind to forbid anybody in the house to go downstairs and let him in when he does come."

"I'm glad you didn't," Mary said. "I think that would only have made ourselves look ridiculous."

She resolved not to go to sleep, so that when Geoffrey did come back, she should hear him herself and be able to go downstairs and let him in. She felt certain that she should be able to do this and that Jemmie, who had announced his own intention of admitting this errant son, would be fast asleep by that time. Jemmie must be very sleepy by now, for he had been awake ever since dinner.

But Geoffrey did not come back at all that night, and in the morning his mother received a letter.

Hawkins' Hotel, Buckingham Street, Strand, W.C. Sept. 27th, 1901.

My dearest Mother,

I find this a very difficult letter to write, but it has got to be written, and you may as well know at once that by the time you get this letter I shall be married to Mary Wyatt who was at the White Hart Inn. I made up my mind to do this a month ago and I would have told you if I had not been afraid that somehow or other I would have been prevented. Of course I know that you and Father will be angry, but it can't be helped. It's done now. At least it will be by the time you get this. I'm going out to make arrangements now. Of course I'm rather worried about what you will say, but she is a charming girl and if you could only get over your prejudice and meet her I think you would agree with me. She is only three years older than me. Of course I cannot dictate what you are or are not to do. But unless you can see your way to being decent to Mary I would rather cut myself off from the family altogether. It would only make me angry if I thought she was being snubbed, and she is very sensitive. I am sorry for the way I am getting married, but please do not think that I am sorry about getting married, if you can understand what I mean. If I am old enough to know what profession I want to choose, I am old enough to know what wife I want to choose. I mention this because Father said to me last week that if I hadn't made up my mind yet what I wanted to do with my life, I never would make up my mind. I'm afraid this letter sounds rather defiant, but it's not meant to be defiant. Only I do want you both to understand that I'm in earnest. I will spare you the boredom of hearing how fond I am of Mary, partly because I know it would probably bore you and partly because I could not possibly express what I would like to say about her in writing. I know that this will mean giving up Oxford. But I do not mind about that. I think most people stay there too long. It's no good doing nothing for three years. We are going to stay for three or four days in London, and then we are going to spend our honeymoon in the village where Mary lives in Berkshire. After that I had an idea of emigrating to Canada.

Your loving son, Geoffrey.

Mary gave this letter to her husband without comment and left him to read it alone. She did not feel that there was any possible comment except an outburst of bad language, and she was sure that Jemmie would manage that better than herself. When she rejoined him, he was still spluttering with rage, damning and disinheriting his son with equal fervor. For one thing Mary was grateful. He did not say it was all due to the way she had spoilt him. Indeed, he offered no reproaches. The blow was as inevitable as an apoplexy. There was no human being to be blamed apart from the unhappy principal.

"Married at nineteen to a barmaid! What a future! It isn't as if I'd set him a bad example. I can't blame myself. It's his natural wickedness and selfishness. It's the sort of thing young men do nowadays. No sense of decency. Want of proportion. Form ... no good form. Fancy comparing the choice of a profession with the choice of a wife! You can't compare things like that. The boy's mad. He's been touched by the sun playing golf. He's not normal. I consider we might get the marriage annulled on the ground that he was non compos when he committed it. Yes, non compos! We'll shut him up in a nursing-home for a couple of months. A rest cure. He's mad. The damned lunatic! Emigrate indeed? Canada! He might as well talk of emigrating to the moon. In fact, it strikes me that's the place to which his brains have emigrated...."

Jemmie went on railing like this until his wife interposed with a suggestion that she should go up to town this very morning and interview Geoffrey. There was just a chance he was not married yet. He probably had not realized how hard it was to get married without some preparation. Yes, there was just a chance that he was still free, and that if he were tactfully handled he might consent to remain free.

"You see, he's evidently nervous about us," Mary pointed out. "He had to run away in order to bring himself to do it. I expect the girl is a hussy. I expect she hooked him. Oh dear, how vulgar it makes oneself, when one mixes oneself up with vulgarity. Hooked him! And yet there's no other word for it."

"He's no longer a son of mine," the father swore. "By George, Mary, he is no longer my son. A lazy spendthrift who gets married with less preparation than he would give to ordering himself a lunch. This money he's been wheedling out of you. Depend upon it, his gambling debts were nothing but an excuse, a mean subterfuge. If he'd really been losing money at roulette, he'd have come to me. He'd have known that I wouldn't be hard on him."

"I should prefer to think that the money I gave him was spent upon getting married," said Mary unreasonably. "I loathed the idea of my son's being a weak gambler."

"Well, don't let you and me start arguing. Whatever he did with it, he has had the money. A barmaid! A girl who spends her day listening to beastly chaff! A crimped, corseted, vulgar barmaid to be my daughter-in-law! It's incredible."

"But there is a slight chance that she is not your daughter-in-law yet. So, if you've no objection, dear, I think I'll catch the midday train and go straight to this hotel in the Strand. I will take my dressing-case, and if necessary I can stay in town. I might go to Morley's Hotel. That would be close by."

Hawkins' Hotel was a tall, narrow, gloomy house with a German porter, sluttish chambermaids, and a manageress like a large doll with hair of tow. In the lower half of the house there was a perpetual odor of vegetables being cooked, and in the upper part there was a smell of dusty muslin.

Mary was shown into what was called the writing-room while inquiries were made for Number Nineteen, which was as far as Geoffrey's individuality was recognized. In each of the windows of the writing-room there was a frayed aspidistra growing apparently in a compost of cigarette-ends, matches, and old plaster. In one corner of the room a man in a stained check-suit with cuffs that were continually trying to swallow his hands was seated at a spindle-shanked desk working out from a Bradshaw fifteen months old a railway journey across country.

"Number Nineteen's gone out," announced the waiter, who looked like the negative of a photograph, so black were his face and shirt-front, so greasy and begrimed were his clothes.

Mary told him that she would wait and asked him to bring her a cup of tea, which he brought half an hour later in a breakfast cup with blunted lumps of dead-looking sugar lying in the saucer beside it, and a hare-lipped jug of pale blue milk.

"I'll bring the bread and butter in a minute," he promised, and though Mary told him that she did not want anything to eat, he brought her four slices a quarter of an hour later.

It was growing dusk in the writing-room of Hawkins' Hotel; the man in the check-suit, unable to read the figures in the railway-guide, was moping in an arm-chair by the empty grate, before Geoffrey came in followed by the waiter, who lighted the two burners of the gaselier which had been fitted with incandescent mantles and pulled down the blinds.

"We can't talk here," said Mary, glancing across at the man in the check-suit, who as soon as the room was lighted up had returned to his railway-guide. "You'd better walk round with me to Morley's Hotel, where I'm staying for to-night."

"I can't leave Mary alone here," Geoffrey replied.

His mother winced at the name.

"If you want to talk private," said the man with the railway-guide, "I'll leave you to yourselves. I've found what I was looking for."

He pushed his cuffs well up with the aid of the edge of the desk, and, whistling "The Honeysuckle and the Bee," went out of the room, leaving mother and son together.

"Geoffrey, are you married?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, no, I'm not," he admitted sulkily. "Apparently you have to live in a parish for a certain amount of time first. One would imagine it was a crime to get married by the difficulties the parson made."

"Then you'll think better of it?" his mother pleaded. "You'll change your mind and come back with me to High Corner? Father will say nothing. Your mad freak shall be forgiven and forgotten."

"Steady on, Mother. I can't leave Mary like that. You see, it's a bit awkward. I thought I should have been married to-day, and so we should have been if I hadn't made a muddle about the license. I wanted to be married in a register office, but Mary stuck out for a church. She can't believe that any other kind of marriage is genuine. Besides, I don't want to give her up, if that's what you mean by coming back to High Corner."

His mother argued with him in vain. He did not attempt to answer her, but stood sulkily first on his right leg, then on his left leg until she stopped talking.

"I don't agree with you that she'll drag me down, as you say. I think it will buck me up to be married."

"But, my dear boy, look at your surroundings already. Look at this horrible hotel. How on earth did you ever come to discover such a place? It's like some dreadful place in a French novel."

"The bedrooms are all right," Geoffrey said. "And we've been eating out. I think if you'd let me bring Mary down to see you, you wouldn't be so much upset by the prospect of my future. Anyway, you needn't think I'll disgrace the family. I've made up my mind to emigrate. It's a funny thing, but when a fellow does what he thinks is the right thing to do, he gets more blamed than if he just plays about with a girl."

"Geoffrey," said his mother, "I'm grieved that I cannot see things from your point of view; but you are too young, my dear boy, to hamper yourself like this so early in your life. I have never told you before; but I think that it is only fair that I should tell you about your grandfather. He quarreled with his father because he insisted on marrying my mother. They emigrated, and both he and my mother were drowned. I was a baby then, and I was about the only person saved from the wreck."

"Well, it's much safer traveling nowadays," argued Geoffrey obstinately. "And anyway I don't see that it did you much harm."

"But it caused infinite misery to others. My grandmother never really got over it. It brought about the extinction of the Flowers."

"I'm sorry, Mother, but I can't go back on my word. Besides, we've been living here as man and wife. It wouldn't be right."

This boy of nineteen to be talking of living here as man and wife!

Mary was suddenly chilled.

"Very well, Geoffrey, if you will not listen to me, I must see what your father can do. You must remember that you are not yet of age, and if your father sees fit to exercise his authority you will have to obey. I shall telegraph for him at once."

"Perhaps Father will condescend to see Mary before he does anything," Geoffrey said. "Perhaps he won't judge her as you have judged her without seeing her."

Mary turned away from her son and went quickly from the room. She felt when she walked up Buckingham Street as if she was struggling up through some horrible drain to reach the air.

In the hall of her own hotel the porter told her that Mr. Alison had arrived and was waiting for Mrs. Alison in Mrs. Alison's room. Mary went upstairs, glad that he had come, because he might do something with Geoffrey. He might remonstrate with the girl and persuade her to give him up. In books it would have been herself who would have done that; but books seemed to forget that a mother could be as proud as anybody when her deepest feelings were outraged.

"Mary, my poor little wife, prepare yourself for a dreadful shock," Jemmie cried when she entered her room.

In an instant she guessed that it was bad news about Richard.

"South Africa," she heard herself murmur with a tongue that was parched with apprehension and horror.

"A telegram from the War Office."

"Jemmie, he's not dead? He's only wounded?"

"My poor darling Mary, our boy is dead."

"Richard! Richard! Richard!" she wailed to the roar of London, the cruel roar of London which let young men die to keep the city roaring.

"It wasn't even in battle. He was in charge of a convoy. He was ambushed. By God, Mary, I'd like to burn the scoundrels in Parliament who talk about brother Boer. I'd like to throw them down into Trafalgar Square from the top of Nelson's Column. Lloyd George and the whole skulking crew. It's they who are encouraging the Boers to go on with this guerilla warfare. Mary, don't look so white. Shall I ring for some brandy? Did you do anything about Geoffrey and this marriage?"

"Geoffrey!" the mother echoed, and her voice was like the tinkling of broken ice. "Let him do what he likes, and go where he likes, and die where he likes. I want Richard. Do you hear? I want Richard. I want him. I want him. He's mine. He can't really be taken away from me like this. There must be some mistake in the name. Mistakes are made. We must go to Africa and make sure. We'll emigrate," she laughed, and then mercifully the tears began to flow.

Chapter Six

THE WIDOW

Chapter Six: The Widow

Jemmie Alison had been buried a fortnight. The rays of the fallow November sun lighted the table in the window of his old study at which his widow was seated engaged upon the task of sorting out his papers. Mary's hands frilled with snowy organdie were now the hands of her grandmother when she was fifty, fifty years ago. Otherwise she did not resemble Lady Flower, being of a fairer complexion with roses still fresh upon her cheeks and rich brown hair on which the gossamer spun by age was less conspicuous than the first rime upon October leaves. She had paused for a moment from her task and was staring out at the drooping chrysanthemums that gave to the garden of Woodworth Lodge such an aspect of mournfulness and decay. Why did not Markham take them up? There was nothing so melancholy as flowers which had outstayed their season. Winter was at hand. Of what use was it to try to prolong the illusion of summer? Winter was not to be cajoled by such pretenses. Besides, chrysanthemums were at best funereal blossoms. How high they had been heaped a fortnight ago, wreath upon wreath, on Jemmie's coffin.... She turned back to her task of sorting out the papers; but a minute or two later she stopped to reproach herself, as she had reproached herself many times daily since her husband's death with having failed to be as deeply moved by it as she ought. No doubt the protracted illness, when he lingered month by month after the doctors had declared that he could not survive another week, was partly responsible for the absence of emotion. She had been preparing so long for the death that, when at last he did die, she discovered that there was no emotion which she had not already exhausted. Yes, although while he lay dying all those weeks she had fought against a monstrous and wicked hope that the agony would not be too long protracted, at the end her only definite feeling had been one of relief. Poor old Jemmie, he had been so good throughout those weary weeks. The nurses had assured her that they had never known such a patient. It was strange that a man who throughout his life had allowed himself to be disconcerted by the smallest interference with his minor comforts should be able to endure without a murmur months of fierce pain. There must have been something fundamentally noble about Jemmie, some bedrock of character impervious alike to violent passions and the fretful whims of ordinary existence. Impervious at any rate to the latter. It was verging on the ludicrous to associate violent passions with Jemmie, for surely no man ever lived less subject to the stress of the unattainable. Not that his exemption should detract at all from her admiration of his suffering. On the contrary she should yield him a greater respect, because he could never have been tested in the whole of his life as he was tested every hour of that last illness. But herself? Had that endlessly drawn out vigil revealed in herself any fundamental nobility of character? Outwardly she had been all devotion. She had accepted the flattery of the nurses, the laudation of her friends, the pathetic gratitude of her husband for the care she lavished, the zeal with which she waited on him, the affection never in all their married life so freely given as when he lay dying. Yet always at the back of her mind had lurked the question when it would be over, the desire to be quit of her obligation, the longing to be herself for the remainder of her life. Or was she doing herself an injustice in thinking that? Was it not really the nervous strain of expecting the inevitable for so long which made her sigh for that consummation to achieve itself? It was foolish to exaggerate one's deficiencies. It savored of a morbid self-interest. These inward contests in which women permitted themselves to indulge, especially in books, were nothing more than a subtle form of self-flattery. They were another aspect of the schoolgirl's habit of talking a situation to death. The female mind could never resist the remnants of a conversation a whit more easily than it could resist a July sale.

Mary compelled herself to concentrate upon the task she had taken in hand, and for a while she was able to keep her thoughts fixed upon her husband's papers. How neatly he had kept his receipted bills until January of this year. Here was a thin sheaf for 1910, the record of the last month he spent walking about before he took to his bed. There had been plenty of bills all through this year for doctors and nurses and medicine, and at last for the funeral. But it was she who had kept them, so they were lying about anyhow. How vexed Jemmie would have been with her if he had known that she had already mislaid the undertaker's receipt.

"I wish you would try to be more business-like."

She could hear his voice so plainly that she looked round the room, and noted with a pang of regret that this pallid sunshine was not so weak but that it lighted up the dust upon his empty pipes. Was it conceivable that Jemmie was regarding her at this moment from another sphere? Was there really anything in spiritualism? She had wished to experiment with it after Richard was killed; but Jemmie had been so contemptuous of the idea and so profoundly convinced of the fraud it was, that she had lacked the courage for a real investigation. There was no Jemmie now to deter her. She must have a talk with Mrs. Hippisle who so firmly believed in the possibility of communicating with the dead ... yes, it would make such a difference if one could only be sure.

1909? Nothing but bills in that file. It would be prudent to keep them. Not that it was likely one of Jemmie's tradesmen would be dishonest. He had always patronized the oldest and most respectable firms in London. Still, there might be a clerical mistake. Better to keep 1909. 1908? She turned the leaves of that file. To one Angora coat ... to cuffs for same ... to one large bottle of Crinum ... to one large bottle of Doctor Gunter's Hair Tonic ... to one large bottle ... Jemmie had never ceased to abuse hair-restorers, but in his sixty-third year he was still the victim of their audacious promises.

If she did decide to take up spiritualism, she should not be so gullible as that. Why, Jemmie had begun to lose his hair before he was married! 1907, 1906, 1905, 1904. All receipted bills. 1904? A letter in Geoffrey's handwriting. That was queer.

Hopkinsville, Ontario, April 4th. My dear Father,

Thank you very much for the check you sent me. I am hoping very much that the milk business will turn out as well as I hope. I now owe you £420. Do you want me to send you a formal I.O.U.? Or will this acknowledgment by letter be enough?

Your affectionate son, Geoffrey.

It was strange that Jemmie should never have mentioned that he was giving Geoffrey money. And stranger still that he should keep his son's letter with the receipted bills of hatters and hosiers. Perhaps there were other letters. Mary examined again more carefully the recent files. Yes, here was another that spoke of receiving money two years later, written from Winnipeg. And here, why here in 1909 was a letter from London!

45 Almond Terrace, Wood Green, November 15. My dear Father,

Thank you very much for the £100 which brings up my debt to £930. I shouldn't have bothered you again, but the expenses of getting back from Canada and the birth of our little girl have made things rather difficult. I am going in for the cinematographic business which from what I can see looks like being the business of the future. I've got a job as studio manager with a new firm who I hope will prove to have some staying power. I don't think any good purpose would be served by my coming to see you. I've kept out of your way for so long now that it's better to keep out of the family for good. It would be useless to pretend that Mary doesn't feel a certain amount of resentment, and now that we have our little girl we get on very happily. Please do not misunderstand my motive in writing to you like this. If it was only you I might take a different course. But there is Mother to be considered. She would feel—quite rightly from her point of view—that the baby ought to be brought up in different surroundings. This would only cause bad feeling between her and Mary, which I would not like. I haven't made such a terrific success of my life, and so I am perhaps a bit oversensitive. It seems very ungrateful to write like this after your kindness, but I hope you will understand that I'm trying to act for the best. I am sorry to hear that you've not been feeling quite yourself lately. I hope it's nothing more than the effect of the beastly weather we've been having. I'm glad to be back in England again. I don't know what made me choose Canada as a country to settle in.

Your affectionate son, Geoffrey.

Geoffrey had written this only a year ago. Perhaps he was still at the same address. Mary felt inclined to order the car so that she could drive immediately to Wood Green, wherever Wood Green was, and find out. She had risen from the table before she remembered that Muriel had taken the car for the afternoon. But to-morrow she would go. Nothing should stop her to-morrow.

Poor old Jemmie, he must have been pining for his son. He must have had a vague presentiment of his last illness. And how extraordinary that he should have said nothing about the birth of Geoffrey's little girl. To have lain there all these months silent about that great event! It was strange too that he should not have left any money to Geoffrey. Perhaps he had known when he left in his will everything to her that she would find out from his papers about Geoffrey and the little girl, and had trusted to her to make some provision for them. It might be that all those years he had been anxious for a reconciliation and that he had waited for a word from herself to give him an excuse to make the first move. He would have been too proud of his own accord to propose the reconciliation; but if he could have salved his pride by pretending that he was receiving Geoffrey back into the family on her account, there was no doubt that he would have done so. Oh, it was clearly her duty to go to-morrow and find out if Geoffrey was still in Wood Green. It was her duty to the dead man and to her own self. Few might be the gray hairs of her head, but heavy had been the frost upon her heart all these years of middle-age. The more she thought about it, the more remarkable appeared Jemmie's secretiveness. What could have been at the back of his mind? To be sure, when first Geoffrey married, it was she who had been of all the bitterest against him. But there had been some justification then. She had not stayed implacable. Yet she had never suggested a reconciliation, which it was her place to do. Jemmie might be pardoned for supposing that she did not want one. But what a pity! He would have died more happily if he had been friends at the last with the only son left to him. How much she hoped that he could be looking down from that mysterious hinterland of death, and that he might behold her setting out to-morrow on her mission of good-will.

How far had she got with the papers? Oh yes, 1904. 1903? Nothing from Geoffrey in 1903. Nothing from him in 1902 either. She wished that Jemmie had kept his first letters from Canada, for there must have been earlier letters. Those first hundreds of pounds must have been begged for with tales of misfortune in Canada. Or had Geoffrey written casually in the beginning as he used to write to her from Oxford for a hundred pounds? Perhaps that was the reason why his father had always spoken bitterly of him in those first years of the marriage. 1901. Mary turned pale. Here was the bill for Richard's uniform. Received with compliments and thanks ... the money that equipped her boy to be killed. The paper with its royal warrants was as fresh as the day on which it was printed. But Richard! Her Richard! What was Richard now? And here in the file for 1900 was the bill for Richard's uniform as a cadet at Sandhurst. All these years going backward from this date held something of Richard. 1899? White waistcoats for Richard when he got into Pop at Eton. How delighted he had been! 1898? 1897? 1896? Tophats for Richard every year. 1895? The right kind of Eton jacket, "because a chap at my private school told me to be jolly careful about that, mother." And Jemmie had remembered from his own Eton days how important it was to be jolly careful about that. 1894? School fees. 1893? Richard's straw hat with the second eleven ribbon of his private school. That hot summer of 1893 when they had moved in to High Corner for the holidays. 1892? School fees, and the bill for a bicycle in which Jemmie had invested to reduce his growing stoutness. That bicycle with cushion tires of which Jemmie had been so proud, but which almost immediately became old-fashioned by the invention of pneumatic tires. How Richard and Geoffrey had scorned his offer of it to them! They would not be seen dead on such an out-of-date old boneshaker; and two years later Richard had been given £7 10s. to buy from a friend at school a second-hand one with huge pneumatic tires. His first big present. It had made both him and his mother feel so very old.

1891? The doctor's bill when Richard had diphtheria. That was the year when she might have changed the whole course of her life. Ought she to have confessed the impulse of that May evening to Jemmie before he died? From the file of bills dropped a lilac-hued and even after twenty years still faintly lilac-scented scrap of notepaper.

Frivolity Theater, May? Wednesday. Darling old Podge,

I can get away to-night, so you must come. Thanks everso for the duck of a ring. My eye, won't it dazzle some of the mashers in the front row when we open next week. Lots of love.

From Maudie.

1891? May, 1891? It could not be just a coincidence that this old letter was in the file of 1891. That must have been the year when Jemmie received it. And the month was May. That was the time when Jemmie was so frequently having to be away for the night on business. But why should he have filed only this note? It surely had no more sentimental value than many others he must have received from this Maudie. It must have been put away with his papers by accident. Perhaps this was the very note that kept him from coming home to dinner that night when Pierre came and when Richard fell ill.

"If I had known of the existence of this Maudie, would anything have kept me from going away that night?" Mary asked herself.

The sere chrysanthemums were lost in the wan radiance of the November sunlight: the sodden lawn and greasy London trees vanished: the outlines of other houses no longer affronted the vision. Mighty palms cooled the fervid air with their green and glittering fans: their trunks were wreathed with odorous trumpet-flowers to steal whose honey came fluttering a myriad humming-birds with breasts of emerald and lapis-lazuli, and rubied wings, and tails of fire.

"My boys have cut a path before us through the forest. Let us ride through, my love, to the sea."

Perfume on perfume, color on color, with the forest stretching behind them and before them.

"You are tired, my love. Dismount. Here is a filanjàna in which you may travel through the forest to the sea."

A filanjàna, a filanjàna. Thus had Pierre named the palanquin in which he promised that she should travel with him in Madagascar. A filanjàna! A filanjàna! Swaying lightly in a filanjàna, she traveled on through the forest to the sea. Sun-birds and parroquets and purple kingfishers flew down the forest glade on either side of the gently swaying filanjàna; and so at last they came to the sea ... the sea ... to the nipped and withered chrysanthemums and the slimy city trees.

"If I had known that Richard would be killed ten years later, and that Geoffrey would run off with a barmaid, would I have gone away that night?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I should have known that one day I should be fifty."

"Am I really fifty?"

"Yes. I am fifty, fifty, fifty. How strange that I should have remembered that word filanjàna. It had been hidden away all these years in a secret room of memory like a bit of jewelry that one buys on a voyage."

"Yes, but if I'm fifty, Maudie can't be much less. What happened then to her and what happened then to me matters nothing, to either of us."

"Poor Maudie!"

She could not have had any illusions about Jemmie, or she would never have called him Podge. It was not a name that could share a grand passion. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Still, Podge and Juliet. No, whatever Juliet might think about roses and Montagues, she would never have called Romeo Podge.

"But I need not reproach myself with not having told him about Pierre."

How long had Maudie lasted? Probably until Jemmie took up golf, and that was soon after they bought High Corner in 1893. He must have forgotten all about her, or he surely could not have been so indignant with Geoffrey when he was first told about the girl at the White Hart. Yet if Jemmie did involve himself in a romance, it was her own fault. She had never encouraged him to be romantic with her. When they were first married she had let him think that any kind of affectionate demonstrativeness was distasteful to her. It had been. She had known nothing of life. Muriel was different. Somehow girls nowadays seemed able to find out much more. One could not imagine Muriel's marrying anybody, because her mother advised it. But it was time for Muriel to think about marriage. She was twenty-five. The modern girl was inclined to cherish her independence too long and too dearly. Next season it would be well to make a point of inviting suitable young men to the house. Perhaps, with the strain of Jemmie's illness, she had allowed Muriel's interests to be neglected. And Muriel herself was discouraging. She had always been remote even at school; but Newnham had made her more than remote. She was now as unapproachable as the inhabitant of a star. Jemmie, dead though he was, seemed nearer to her than Muriel. It was not surprising that she was still unmarried. Young men must stand in awe of her. Those calm cold eyes lacked any expression that might lead even the most self-confident young man to suppose that she could be thought of in connection with marriage. No doubt, as she grew older, she would acquire the warmth of humanity; but at present she was a statue. And then there was her Socialism. That was a very unattractive side of Muriel. That continuous drip of ice-cold water upon all existing laws and institutions, upon all creeds and sentiments and political opinions, could not but be alarming to the average young man. Why should she be so hostile to established beliefs? It was not as if she had too much church-going forced upon her when she was small. She had had to go to church once every Sunday; but the rest of the day, at any rate when she was at home, had been hers without Puritanical restrictions to sicken her of religion for the rest of her life. Yet the contempt with which she spoke of Christians was quite unpleasant to hear. Moreover, she had a habit of attributing the worst motives to many dull but essentially worthy people, a trick of assuming that they did not in their hearts believe what they professed. According to Muriel the world consisted of idiots and hypocrites, an opinion which was not calculated to make young men fall in love with her. Nowadays, girls were really as great a problem as boys. No wonder people were beginning to have fewer children.

1890 ... 1889 ... 1888 ... these early bills could all be burnt. Ah, there was Markham setting to work at last to clear the borders of the chrysanthemums.

Mary did not change her mind about her visit to Wood Green; nor did she allow herself to be deterred by Muriel's indignation at not being able to have the car in order to drive round the sights of London the Northern delegates to a conference that was being held in town.

"It's very inconvenient, Mother," she protested.

"I daresay it is, dear. But it would be still more inconvenient for me not to have the car this afternoon."

"You see I'd promised the committee...."

"I'm sorry, Muriel dear, but I am unable to let you have the car this afternoon. And your committee cannot complain. They are doing their best to make it impossible for people to keep cars. So really while they allow us to keep them, we had better make the most of them. You'll have to take your party from Sheffield in an omnibus. You can really see more of London from the top of an omnibus."

"The point is that it makes me look somewhat ridiculous," said Muriel.

"No more ridiculous than you would look tearing about London with these gentlemen in your mother's car."

Driving along to Wood Green, Mary wondered why they allowed trams on these crowded roads. They made it most dangerous for a car to drive fast; now that she was on her way to heal a breach that had endured ten years, every minute gained seemed of the utmost importance. It would be terrible to find that Geoffrey had left Almond Terrace a month ago for some unknown destination. He must have read in the Morning Post or in The Times the announcement of his father's death, and if he was still in London it was strange that he had not attended the funeral. A quarrel should not be allowed to endure after death. Of course, there was a chance that Geoffrey had missed the announcement and that he was actually unaware of his father's death. London was so huge. One realized how large it was when one drove along roads like this, past clanging trams full of people, past side-street after side-street, each of them leading to other side-streets which led to others full of human beings who all lived in London just as one lived in London oneself. If Geoffrey had left Almond Terrace, she should never find him; and she might die without his knowing that she was dead, without his knowing that she had sought him out for a reconciliation.

"Does Mr. Geoffrey Alison live here?"

"Ye-es," grudgingly admitted what was evidently a landlady of the common vulturine type, beneath whose outspread apron lurked a fledgling. "Ye-es," she repeated. "Was you wanting to see him about anything?"

"Please."

"Well, he's out," said the landlady with a triumphant sniff. "And not likely to be back till late, what's more. Yes, he was out soon after ten this morning. Soon after ten—well, it was about five after as near as a touch—soon after ten, he was out. I suppose you're from the Pictures where he works? Any message, of course, as you care to leave with me I'll see he 'as it, and no one can't do more than that."

"But I wanted to see him myself," said Mary, pausing undecided upon the steps of the little two-storied house.

"Ah, there you are," the landlady rejoined. "Well, I can't do no more than what I've said. Leave off, do, Eric," she exclaimed, slapping her son's hand for some misdeed committed upon the apron that sheltered him from observation. "One don't know which way to turn with children sometimes, and that's a fact."

"Perhaps I could see ... Mrs. Alison?" Mary suggested.

Little did the landlady know how much it cost her to make that simple inquiry.

"Mrs. Alison?" the woman echoed with a return of that first suspicion in her manner. "Well, I'm sure I don't know what to say. Eric! If you don't give over picking at my boot-buttons, my lad, I'll give you something to remember with next time. Stand up, you naughty boy. Who should I say wants to see Mrs. Alison?"

"I'm Mr. Alison's mother."

This announcement was altogether too much for the landlady, who without another word grabbed Eric by the hand and led the way upstairs to the lodgers' sitting-room.

"Here's Mr. Alison's mother to see you, Mrs. Alison," she exclaimed in the doorway, after which thunderclap she returned to her own intimate glooms at the back of the house, admonishing Eric to ush if he didn't want to get such a slapping as would properly ush him for a week.

As Mary entered, the woman who had ruined her son's life rose from an arm-chair by the fire and putting a finger to her lips pointed to a cot.

"Molly's asleep," she exclaimed.

"My granddaughter," said Mary.

"My little gurl," replied the other with a burr that in these sharp-set London lodgings sounded strange. There was nothing about her except the accent to proclaim that she was rural. Mary remembered that Geoffrey had said she was three years older than himself. That would make her about thirty-two. She looked nearer forty with her thin-lipped anxious mouth, her fretful eyes, and needle-like fingers. It was hard to perceive now what beauty had charmed Geoffrey into marrying her. However, she did not appear blatant, which was something to be thankful for.

The two women had been watching each other in silence, when the child in the cot gave a low restless cry. At once they both made an instinctive movement to see what was the matter; but the mother was the quicker to bend over and murmur a few soothing words.

"Her teeth are fidgeting her," she explained. "She's been late in cutting them." In that instant she seemed to think that by saying so much she was offering her visitor more than she had intended to offer, and she drew close her eyebrows in a scowl.

"Not that my little gurl's teeth can interest you," she added scornfully.

"On the contrary," said Mary. "They interest me enormously. I did not know until yesterday that I was a grandmother. As soon as I knew, I came to see my granddaughter."

"But you knew that you were a mother ten years ago. You weren't in any hurry to come then except to try and keep Geoff from marrying me. That was all your worry then."

"You must think of the situation from our point of view. Geoffrey was not even of age. It was our duty to protest against his committing himself to a marriage before he knew his own mind. But isn't it rather a mistake to argue about the past now? I am anxious to forget the past."

"Some people can forget very easily," said the younger woman, "others can't."

"You may not know that Geoffrey's father is dead."

"Geoffrey does know, so there. And he wanted to go to the funeral, but I said, 'No, you don't want them to think that as soon as your father died you was looking around for what you might pick up. You let well alone,' I said, and Geoff he took my advice. 'Your father's been dead to you,' I said, 'this many a year. There's no call for you,' I said, 'to attend his funeral all on your own. I'm not going to wear black for him,' I said. 'And I'm not going to his funeral, not if you was to ask me on your bended knees.'"

"Whatever you think about me," said Mary, "you've no right to speak like that about my husband. Why, I've just found out that all these years he has been helping Geoffrey with money whenever he asked for it."

"He wouldn't ever have been asked for it, if I'd had my way. I'd sooner have starved in the gutter, I would. But Geoff's got no pride, Geoff hasn't."

"You should be the best judge of that," said Mary. She regretted the sneer as soon as she had uttered it, not because she minded hurting the feeling of her son's wife, but because it might jeopardize the object she had in view, which was nothing less than to be awarded the guardianship of her granddaughter. An immense jealousy had been roused in her by the sight of the sleeping child, and she was thinking how well she should know with all her experience the way to bring her up. It was imprudent to say anything that might increase her daughter-in-law's hostility. In order to obtain what she desired Mary compelled herself to think of this woman as her daughter-in-law.

"It's no use for you to be sarcastic with me," said Geoffrey's wife. "Geoff's tried being sarcastic once or twice. But he always got the worst of it. Always."

Mary had a vision of Geoffrey's existence during these ten years. She was filled with a profound pity for him, picturing him forever in rooms like these, the prey of his wife's tongue, the victim of her determination to drag him down to her level. It never struck her that the child in the cot whom she was so eager to take for herself was probably the only thing that made his life endurable.

"I'm sure it's a mistake to be sarcastic," Mary admitted. "I'm sorry, Mary. You know I find it quite difficult to call you Mary, because it's my own name. I really came this afternoon to try to effect a reconciliation. I'm anxious to be friends. It's useless to live in the past. We should all be miserable if we did that, for we all of us make mistakes. It struck me that it might be difficult for you and Geoffrey suddenly to re-enter the family circle—a very small circle nowadays. Only myself and Muriel. So, I didn't suggest that you and he should come and live at Woodworth Lodge or anything like that. But what I thought was that perhaps you might be glad to let me assume the responsibility for that little girl in the cot. If she was allowed to live with me, you would of course be coming to see her often, and then gradually we should get to know one another, and this gulf between us might be bridged."

"Never!" cried the mother. "I wouldn't let you have my Molly for nothing. Not if she was going to die the next minute. I'd sooner for her to die than have her go to you. I suppose you think I'm not fit to look after my own little gurl? Well, you've made a mistake, let me tell you. I'm as fit to look after her as what you are. She's mine. She's not yours. She never shall be yours, not while I'm alive anyway. I suppose you think I ought to be so proud because I've married a gentleman that I ought to sit still for the rest of my life with my hands crossed on my lap and do nothing. Only be proud. But I didn't marry Geoff because he was a gentleman. I married him because I loved him. I suppose you think a woman like me can't love? I suppose you think it's only ladies who can love? But that's just where you're wrong. I've loved him so much that I've been angry with myself for being so soft and carried on at him something cruel. You wouldn't have done that, would you? But I've nagged at him until he's been fit to jump into the lake, which is near where we were living at Hopkinsville. Only it isn't like a lake. More like a sea really. I suppose you think that I wouldn't dare to be jealous, just because I'd married a gentleman? I suppose you think I ought to have let him do just what he wanted? Not me. Why, he couldn't be half an hour late without I was ready to tear his eyes out to know where he'd been and what he'd been doing. I reckon sometimes he wished he'd never set eyes on me. But I loved him all the time. You needn't make no mistake about that. I've wished sometimes he'd beat me, but he never raised his hand to me. Not once. Though I've nagged him enough to make any man hit me, even though he might have been a gentleman. And then last year, when I'd given up all hopes of such things, my little Molly came along, and since she came I've been better with Geoff. I seemed to feel he belonged to me at last, because the kid's half him and half me, as I figure it out. And now you come along and want to carry off my Molly. Never. That's my last word. Never! Perhaps if you'd come along before my little girl arrived and wanted to carry off Geoff, I might have let him go. I was fond enough of him to do that, I believe. Once I'd thought it was really for his good. But now him and me has never been such friends, just because we've got the baby. Our baby. His and mine. Not yours, and she never will be."

The child whose future was at stake was disturbed by the clamor of her mother's voice and woke up shrieking.

Mary waited a moment or two in embarrassment, uncertain how to get herself out of the room. In the end she went away in silence.

When she reached home, she sat down and wrote to her daughter-in-law:

Woodworth Lodge, Campden Hill, W., November 9, 1910. Dear Mary,

I am afraid that you misunderstood the spirit in which I paid you my visit to-day. I feel that you may have imagined that my proposal for you to let me assume the responsibility for Molly's future meant that the little girl would be taken away from you. What I intended was that she should be the means of bringing us all together again. Perhaps in a little time you will be able to look at the situation with less bitterness. I do so hope that you will. Please accept this check as a belated wedding present and

Believe me to be, Yours affectionately, Mary Alison.

To which she received the following answer from her daughter-in-law:

Dear Mrs. Alison,

Thank you for the check which I would rather not accept if you don't mind. I'm sorry I was rude when you came to see me, but I should only be rude again, and so it's better for you not to come.

Yours sincerely, Mary Alison.

And from her son:

My dear Mother,

I'm afraid you will think us ungracious in the way we've received your kindness. I'm afraid that Mary allowed herself to give vent to a good deal of the resentment she has had ten years to accumulate.

I feel I ought to have written to you about poor Father's death, but for various reasons I was naturally a little shy of intruding myself at such a moment, which I'm sure you will understand. I expect you know that from time to time Father very kindly helped me with loans. I should like to be in a position to repay these, but that is impossible. However, I seem to be fairly well fixed up now in a job, and I would rather not incur any more obligations. It is better, I feel, that Mary and I should continue to lead a life apart from the rest of the family. Please do not think that I am giving way to a false pride in taking up this attitude. I do feel that I owe a duty to Mary as the mother of our little girl. I wish I was a better hand at explaining myself. But she would never fit into the sort of life she would have to lead if she were to be "adopted" now. You may say that she never would have fitted in. I do not wish to give the idea that I am reproaching you for the past, but I do believe that if that day you came to the hotel where we were staying you had welcomed her as a daughter you would have found her responsive. She has become hard during these ten years, because, poor little girl, she felt that she had spoilt things for me. She was becoming really quite difficult to manage in her moods until Molly was born. But now, thank God, we are quite happy together, and so long as I can keep my job I believe that we shall go on being happy. I very much fear, however, that if she felt that she was not considered good enough to bring up her baby she would sink back into her former state of resentment, and the peace which we now enjoy would be destroyed.