"Has Ninian come back yet?" Henry asked, sipping the whisky.

"He's gone to bed. The Gigantic got off all right, but there was trouble at the start. She fouled a cruiser or something. Ninian's full of it. He'll tell you the whole rigmarole in the morning. You'd better trot off to bed when you've drunk that, and for God's sake, Quinny, don't try to be heroic again. You're not cut out for that sort of job!..."



THE EIGHTH CHAPTER

1

Mrs. Graham and Mary and Rachel Wynne dined with them on the first night of "The Magic Casement." Rachel, fresh from a Care Committee, composed mostly of members of the Charity Organisation Society and the wives of prosperous tradesmen, was inclined to tell the world what she thought of it, but they diverted her mind from the iniquities of the Care Committee by congratulating her on her engagement to Roger. She blushed and gave her thanks in stammers, looking with bright, proud eyes at Roger; and when they saw how human she was, they forgot her hard efficiency and her sociological angers, and liked her. Gilbert urged her to tell them tales of the C.O.S. and the Care Committee, and rejoiced loudly when she described how she had discomfited a large, granitic woman ... the Mayor's wife ... who had committed a flagrant breach of the law in her anxiety to penalise some unfortunate children whose father was an agitator. "If I were poor," Rachel said, "I'd hit a C.O.S. person on sight! I'd hit it simply because it was a C.O.S. person! That would be evidence against it!" She enjoyed calling a C.O.S. person, "it," and Henry felt that perhaps some of the difficulty with the Mayor's wife was due to the pleasure that Rachel took in rubbing her up the wrong way. He suggested that tactful treatment....

"You can't be tactful with that kind of person," she asserted instantly. "You can only be angry. You see, they love to badger poor people. It's sheer delight to them to ask impertinent questions. There's a big streak of Torquemada in them. They'd have been Inquisitors if they'd been born in Spain when there were Inquisitors!" She paused for a second or two, and then went on rapidly. "I never thought of that before. Why, of course, that's what they are. They've been reincarnated ... you know, transmigration of souls ... and that fat woman, Mrs. Smeale...." Mrs. Smeale was the Mayor's wife ... "was an Inquisitor before she was ... was dug up again. I can see her beastly big face in a cowl, and hot pincers in her hands, plucking poor Protestants' flesh off their bones ... and she's doing that now, using all the rotten rules and regulations as hot pincers to pluck the spirit out of the poor! Of course, she does it all for the best! So did the Inquisitors! She doesn't want to undermine the moral character of the poor, and they didn't want to let the poor heretic imperil his soul.... I'd like to inquisit her!..."

"There isn't a word 'inquisit,' Rachel!" said Roger.

"Well, there ought to be," she answered.

Henry pictured her, in her committee room, surrounded by hard women, opposing herself to them, fighting for people who were not of her class against people who were, and it seemed to him that Rachel was very valiant, even if she were tactless, much more valiant than he could be. Rachel belonged to the fearless, ungracious, blunt people who are not to be deterred from their purpose by ostracism or abuse, and Henry realised that such courage as hers must inevitably be accompanied by aggressiveness, a harsh insistence on one's point of view, and worst of all, a surrender of social charm and ease and the kindly regard of one's friends. "I couldn't do that," he thought to himself. It was easy enough to sneer at such people, to call them "cranks," but indisputably they had the heroic spirit, the will to endure obloquy for their opinions. "I suppose," he reflected, "the reason why one feels so angry with such people is partly that nine times out of ten they're in the right, and partly that ten times out of ten they've got the pluck we haven't got!" And he remembered that Witterton, a journalist whom he had met at the office of the Morning Record, had climbed on to the plinth in Trafalgar Square during the Boer War and made a speech in denunciation of Chamberlain and the Rand lords, and had been badly mauled by the mob. "By God, that's courage!" he murmured. That was the sort of person Rachel was. He could see her opposing herself to mobs, but he could not see himself doing so. Probably, he thought, he would be on the fringe of the crowd, mildly deprecating violence and tactlessness....

He came out of his ruminations to hear Mrs. Graham telling Rachel how pleased she was to hear that Roger and she were engaged. "My dear," she said, "I'm very glad!" and then she kissed Rachel.

"Come here, Roger," she added, and when he had ambled awkwardly up to her, she took his head in her hands and kissed him too....

"I've a jolly good mind to get engaged myself," said Gilbert.

"Well, why don't you?" Mrs. Graham retorted.

"I would, only I keep on forgetting about it," he answered. "Couldn't you kiss me 'Good-luck' to my play?"

"I could," she replied, and kissed him.

Then they insisted that she should kiss them all, and she did as they insisted. She was very gracious and very charming and her eyes were bright with her pleasure in their youth and spirits ... so bright that presently she cried a little ... and then they all talked quickly and kicked one another's shins under the table in order to enforce tactful behaviour.

2

They sat in one of the two large boxes of the Pall Mall Theatre. Gilbert was nervous and restless, and after the play began, he retreated to the back of the box and sat down in a corner.

"What's up, Gilbert?" Henry whispered to him. "Are you ill?"

"Ill!" Gilbert exclaimed, looking up at Henry with a whimsical smile. "Man, Quinny, I'm dying! Go away like a good chap and let me die in peace. Tell all my friends that my last words were...."

Henry went back to his seat beside Mary and whispered to her that Gilbert was too nervous and agitated to be sociable ... "some sort of stage fright!..." and they pretended not to notice that he was huddled in the darkest corner of the box. "Thank goodness," Henry said to the others, "a novelist doesn't get a storm of nerves on the day of publication!" Leaning over the edge of the box, he could see Lady Cecily sitting in the stalls, with Jimphy by her side ... and for a while he forgot the play and Mary and Gilbert's agitation. She was sitting forward, looking intently at the stage, and as he watched her, she laughed and turned to Jimphy as if she would share her pleasure with him, but Jimphy, lying back in his stall, was fiddling with his programme, utterly uninterested. She glanced up at the box, her eyes meeting his, and smiled at him.

"Who is it?" said Mary, leaning towards him.

"Oh ... Lady Cecily Jayne!" he answered, discomposed by her question.

"She's very beautiful, isn't she?"

"Yes."

They turned again to the stage and were silent until the end of the first act. There was a burst of laughter, and then the curtain descended, to rise again in quick response to the applause.

"Cheering a chap at his funeral!" said Gilbert, groaning with delight as he listened to the shouts and handclaps.

They turned to him and offered their congratulations.

"Five curtain-calls," said Roger. "Very satisfactory!"

"It's splendid, Gilbert," Mrs. Graham exclaimed. "I'm sure it'll be a great success!"

"Oh, dear, O Lord, I wish it were over!" Gilbert replied.

"Let's fill him with whisky," said Ninian, rising and taking hold of Gilbert's arm, and he and Henry took him and led him to the bar where they met Jimphy, looking like a lost rabbit.

"Hilloa, Jimphy!" they exclaimed, and he turned gleefully to welcome them. Here at all events was something he could comprehend. He congratulated Gilbert. "Jolly good, old chap! Have a drink," he said, and insisted that they should join him at the bar. "Of course," he added privately to Henry, "this sort of stuff isn't really in my line ... jolly good and all that, of course ... but still it's not in my line. All the same, a chap has to congratulate a chap. Oh, Cecily wants you to go and talk to her. You know where she is, don't you?"

He turned to listen to Ninian who was describing the accident which had happened when the Gigantic started on her first trip to America. "She jolly near sank a cruiser," he was saying as Henry moved away from the bar. "That was the second accident. The first time, she broke from her moorings...."

He pushed his way through the crowd of drinking and gossiping men, and entered the stalls. Lady Cecily saw him coming, and she beckoned to him.

"Who is that nice girl in the box?" she asked, as he sat down in Jimphy's seat. "She sat beside you...."

"Oh, Ninian's sister," he replied. "Mary Graham."

"She's very pretty, isn't she?"

"Yes...."

He would have said more, but it suddenly struck him as comical that Lady Cecily should speak of Mary almost in the words that Mary had used when she spoke of Lady Cecily. He looked up at the box and saw that Mary was talking to her mother, and something in her attitude sent a pang through his heart.

"I do love Mary," he said to himself, "but somehow ... somehow I love Cecily too!"

Lady Cecily was speaking to him and he turned to listen.

"I want you to introduce me to Ninian's sister," she said.

"Yes," he answered reluctantly, though he could not have said why he was reluctant to introduce her to Mary.

"After the next act," she went on, and he nodded his head.

Then Jimphy returned, and Henry got up and left her, and hurried back to the box. The second act had begun when he reached it, and he tiptoed to his seat and sat down in silence. Mary looked round at him, smiling, and then looked back at the stage, and again he felt that odd reluctance to bring Lady Cecily and her together.

3

At the end of the second act, he turned to Mary and said, "Lady Cecily wants to be introduced to you. I said I'd bring her here after this act!"

"Do," Mary answered.

As he walked towards the door of the box, he remembered Gilbert and he bent towards him and said quietly, "Oh, Gilbert, I'm going to fetch Lady Cecily. She wants to talk to Mary!..."

"Righto!" Gilbert replied, without looking up.

Henry hesitated. "You ... you don't mind, do you?" he said, and then wished that he had remained silent.

"Mind!" Gilbert looked up. "Why should I mind?"

"I thought perhaps ... but of course if you don't mind, that's all right!"

He hurried out of the box, feeling that he had intruded into private places. He had intended to be considerate and had achieved only the appearance of prying. "That's like me!" he thought, as he descended the stairs that led to the stalls. "I wonder why it is that I'm full of sympathy and understanding and tact in my books, and such a clumsy fool in life!"

He entered the stalls, and as he did so, Lady Cecily rose to join him. Jimphy had already gone to the bar. He held the curtain for her and she passed through. "Isn't it clever?" she said, speaking of the play, and he nodded his head. The passage leading up from the stalls was full of chattering people, but when they reached the narrow corridor which led to the box, there was no one about....

"Cecily!" he said in a low voice.

"Yes, Paddy!" she answered, looking back over her shoulder.

He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her towards him.

"Some one will see you," she said.

"No, they won't," he replied, "and I don't care...."

He kissed her ardently. "My dear!" he murmured with his lips on hers.

She pushed him from her. "You are a fool," she said.

"I couldn't help it!"

Their voices were low lest the people in the box should hear them.

"You must never do that again," she said. "I'd never have forgiven you if any one had seen us!"

"What are you afraid of, Cecily?" he asked.

She made a gesture of despair. "Haven't you any sense?" she said.

She turned to go towards the box again, but he caught hold of her hand and held her.

"Cecily," he whispered, "you know I love you, don't you?"

"Yes, yes," she answered impatiently, snatching her hand from his, "but you needn't tell everybody about it!"

"And you love me, too. Don't you?"

"Let's go and join the others!..."

He held her again. "No, Cecily," he said, "you must listen to me!"

"Well, what is it?"

"Cecily!" He was breathing hard, and it seemed to him that he could only speak by forcing words out of himself. "Cecily ... come with me! ..."

"That's what I want to do, but you keep me hanging about here. If any one were to see us!..."

"I don't mean that," he interrupted. "You know quite well what I mean!..."

"What do you mean? I don't know!..."

He went closer to her, trying to waken her passion by the strength of his. "I want you to leave Jimphy and come away with me," he said.

"Leave Jimphy!"

"Yes. You're not happy ... you're not suited to each other. Come with me!"

"Like this?" she said, holding out her hands and mocking him.

"That doesn't matter," he urged. "We'll go somewhere...."

"Fly to Ireland, I suppose, in evening dress! Poor Paddy, you're so Irish, aren't you? Please don't be an idiot!"

She went on towards the door of the box, and he followed after her. "Cecily!" he said.

"Not to-night," she answered. "I want to be introduced to that nice girl, Mary Graham, and I really must congratulate Gilbert ... I suppose he's here ... it's such a clever play!"

She opened the door of the box and went in, and, hesitating for a moment, he went after her.

4

She stayed in the box, sitting between Mrs. Graham and Mary, until the end of the play. The curtain had gone down to applause and laughter and had been raised again and a third and fourth time, and then the audience had demanded that the author should appear. Somewhere in the gallery, they could hear the faint groan of the man who attends all first nights and groans on principle. "I'd like to punch that chap's jaw!" Ninian muttered, glancing up at the gallery indignantly. There was more applause and a louder and more insistent shout of "Author! Author!" and the curtain went up, and Gilbert, very nervous and very pale, came on to the stage and bowed. Then, after another curtain call, the lights were lowered and the audience began to disperse.

There was to be a supper party at the Carlton, because the Carlton was nearer to the Pall Mall than the Savoy, and Sir Geoffrey Mundane and Mrs. Michael Gordon had accepted Gilbert's invitation to join them. "It'll cost a hell of a lot," Gilbert said to Henry, "but what's money for? When I die, they'll put on my tombstone, 'He was born in debt, he lived in debt, he died in debt, and he didn't care a damn. So be it!' He extended his invitation to Jimphy and Lady Cecily.

"You didn't come to Jimphy's birthday party," she objected.

"Didn't I?" he replied. "Well, both of you come to my party ... that'll make up for it!"

Gilbert did not appear to be affected by Cecily's presence. He had greeted her naturally, behaving to her in as friendly a way as he would have behaved if she had been Mrs. Graham. Henry, remembering the scene on the Embankment, had difficulty in understanding Gilbert's easy manner. Had he been in Gilbert's place, he knew that he would have been awkward, constrained, tongue-tied. Undoubtedly, Gilbert had savoir faire. So, too, had Cecily. Her look of irritation with Henry had disappeared as she entered the box. He, following after her, had been nervous and self-conscious, feeling that the flushed look on his face must betray him to his friends; but Cecily had none of these awkwardnesses. She behaved as easily as if the scene with Henry had not taken place. "You'd think she hadn't any feelings," he murmured to himself, and as he did so, it seemed to him that in that moment he knew Cecily, knew her once and for all. She had no feelings, no particular feelings for any one, not even for Gilbert. She was a beautiful animal, eager for emotional diversions, but indifferent to the creature that pleased her after it had pleased her. If Henry were to quit her now and never return to her, she might some day say, "I wonder where poor Paddy is!" and turn carelessly to a new lover; but that would be all. Gilbert had piqued her, perhaps, but he had done no more than that, though probably it was more than Henry could ever hope to do, and she had yawned a little with the tedium of waiting for him, and then had decided to yawn no more....

He fell among platitudes. "Like a butterfly," he said to himself. "Just like a damned butterfly!"

Well, he thought, mentally cooler because of his revelation, that is an attitude towards life that has many advantages. One might call Cecily a stoical amorist, an erotic philosopher. "Love where you can, and don't bother where you can't!" might serve her for a motto. "And, really, that's rather a good way of getting through these plaguey emotions of ours!" he told himself. "Only," he went on, "you can't walk in that way just because you think it's a good one!"

He sat between Lady Cecily and Mary at supper, but he did not talk a great deal to either of them, for Mary was chattering excitedly to Sir Geoffrey Mundane, and Cecily was persuading Ninian that engineering had always been the passion of her life. "I quite agree," she was saying, "a Channel Tunnel would be very useful and ... and so convenient, too. I've often said that to Jimphy, but dear Jimphy doesn't pretend to understand these things!" She had turned to him once and, in a whisper, had said, "Which of you is in love with Mary?" but he had pretended to be wooden and hard of understanding.

"My dear Paddy," she said, raising her eyebrows, "I believe you're sulking ... just because I wouldn't run away with you. You're as bad as Gilbert!"

"You're perfectly brutal," he said under his breath.

"Aren't you exaggerating?" she replied. "And if I had gone off with you, we'd have missed this nice supper. Do be sociable, there's a dear Paddy, and perhaps I'll run away with you next Tuesday!"

There was a babble of conversation about them, and much laughter, for Gilbert, reacting from his fright, was full of bright talk, and Sir Geoffrey, reminiscent, capped it with entertaining tales of dramatists and stage people. It was easy for Cecily and Henry to carry on their conversation in quiet tones without fear of being overheard.

"You treat me like a boy," he said reproachfully.

"You are a boy, Paddy dear, and a very nice boy!"

"I suppose," he retorted, "it's impossible for you to understand that I love you...."

"Indeed, it isn't," she interrupted. "I understand that quite easily. What I can't understand is why you wish to spoil everything by silly proposals to ... to elope!..."

"But I love you," he insisted. "Isn't that enough to make you understand?"

She shook her head, and turned again to Ninian.

"You see," Ninian said, "you bore through this big bed of chalk from both sides...."

"But how do you know the two ends will meet?" she asked.

"Oh, engineers manage that sort of thing easily," Ninian answered. "Think of the Simplon Tunnel!..."

"Yes!" she said, to indicate that she was thinking of it.

"Well, that met, didn't it?"

"Did it?" she replied. "Oh, but of course it must have met. I've been through it!..."

"There was hardly an inch of divergence between the two ends," he went on....

"Hell's flames!" Henry said to himself.

5

"I must see you," he said to her when the party had broken up and she was going home. "I must see you alone!"

"I do hope you're not going to be a nuisance, Paddy!" she replied.

He put her cloak about her shoulders. "Will you meet me at the suspension bridge over the lake in St. James's Park to-morrow at eleven?..."

"That's awfully early, Paddy, and St. James's Park is such a long way from everywhere. Couldn't you come to lunch? Jimphy'll be glad to see you. He seems to like you for some reason!"

"I want to talk to you alone, and we're not likely to be disturbed in St. James's Park. You must come, Cecily!"

"Oh, all right," she answered. "But I shan't be there before twelve. You can take me to lunch somewhere...."

"Very well," he said. "I'll be at the bridge at twelve, and I'll wait for you ... only, come as soon as you can, Cecily!"

"I can't think why you want to behave like this, Paddy. It's so melodramatic. Gilbert was just the same!..."

He felt that he could hit her when she said that, and he turned away from her so quickly that her cloak slipped from her shoulders.

"Oh, Paddy!" she exclaimed.

"I beg your pardon!" he answered, turning again and picking the cloak from the ground.

"You're so ... so selfish," she said. "You want everything to be just as you like it. You're just like Gilbert ... where is Gilbert?... I must say good-night to him ... and that nice girl, Mary. I think it's a very clever play, and she's such a nice girl, too. Oh, Gilbert, there you are! Good-night! I've enjoyed everything so much ... a nice play and a nice supper. Good-night, and do come and see me soon, won't you. Why not come to-morrow with Paddy?..."

"Paddy?" said Gilbert.

"Yes, Henry Quinn. I call him Paddy. It seems natural to call him Paddy. He's so Irish. Do come with him to-morrow, and bring all your press cuttings with you and read them to me. Paddy wants to talk to me...."

Henry walked away from them. What sort of woman was this? he asked himself. Was she totally insensitive? Was it impossible for her to realise that she was hurting him?...

"Good-night, Quinny!"

He turned quickly to take Mary's hand.

"We're going back to Devonshire the day after to-morrow," she said.

"Are you?" he murmured vaguely.

"Yes. Good-night, Quinny!"

"Aren't you tired?" he asked.

"Oh, no," she answered. "I've enjoyed myself awfully much. Here's Ninian! He's taking us back to our hotel. Good-night, Quinny!"

He hesitated for a moment or two. He wanted to suggest that he should go with her instead of Ninian, but before he could speak he saw Cecily moving down the room towards the street.

"Good-night, Mary!" was all he said.

6

Roger had taken Rachel home, and so, when Ninian had gone off with his mother and Mary, there were only Henry and Gilbert left.

"Let's go home, Quinny," Gilbert said. "I'd like to walk if you don't mind!"

"Very well," Henry replied.

They left the hotel and strolled across the street towards the National Gallery.

"I wish it were the morning," Gilbert said. "I want to see the newspapers!"

"It doesn't greatly matter what they say, does it?" Henry answered. "The play's a success. The audience liked it."

"I want to read the notices all the same. Of course, I want to read them. I shall spend the whole of to-morrow reading and re-reading them. Just vanity!"

They walked past the Gallery, and made their way through the complicated streets that lie behind the Strand, about Covent Garden, towards Bloomsbury. They did not speak for some time, for they were tired and their minds were too full of other things. Once indeed, Gilbert began to speak ... "I think I could improve the second act a little ..." but he did not finish his sentence, and Henry did not ask him to do so. It was not until they were nearly at their home that Henry spoke to Gilbert about Cecily.

"Are you going to Lady Cecily's to-morrow?" he said.

"Eh?" Gilbert exclaimed, starting out of his dreams. "Oh, no, I think not! Why?"

"I only wondered. She asked you, you know!"

They walked on in silence until they reached the door of their house.

"I say, Quinny," said Gilbert, while Henry opened the door, "you seem to be very friendly with Cecily!"

Henry fumbled with the key and muttered, "Damn this door, it won't open!"

"Let me try!..."

"It's all right now. I've done it! What were you saying, Gilbert?"

They entered the house, shutting the door behind them, and stood for a while in the hall, removing their hats and coats.

"Oh, nothing," Gilbert replied. "I was only saying you seemed very friendly with Cecily!"

"Well, yes, I suppose I am, but not more than most people. Are you going to bed now or will you wait up for Ninian and Roger?"

"I shan't sleep if I go to bed ... I'm too excited. I shall read for a while in my room ... unless you'd like to jaw a bit!"

Henry shook his head. "No," he said, "I'm too tired to jaw to-night. See you in the morning. Good-night, Gilbert!"

"Good-night, Quinny!"

Henry went to his bedroom, leaving Gilbert in the hall, and began to undress. His mind was full of a flat rage against Cecily. She had consented to meet him in St. James's Park, and then, almost as she had made her promise, she had turned to Gilbert and had invited him to call on her, in his company, at the time she had appointed for his private meeting with her. He did not wish to see her again. "She's fooling me," he said, throwing his coat on to a chair so that it fell on to the ground where he let it lie. "I've not done a stroke of work for days on her account, and she cares no more for me than she does for ... for anybody. I won't go and meet her to-morrow, damn her! I'll send a messenger to say I can't come, and then I'll drop her. It isn't worth while going through this ... this agony for a woman who doesn't care a curse for you!"

"I'm not going to be treated like this," he went on to himself while he brushed his teeth. "I'm not going to hang about her and let her treat me as she pleases. She can get somebody else, some one who is more complacent than I am, and doesn't feel things. I hope she goes to the Park and waits for me. Perhaps that'll teach her to understand what a man feels like...."

But of course she would not go to the Park and wait for him. He would send an express messenger with a note to tell her that he was unable to keep the appointment.

"I'll write it now," he said to himself and he stopped in the middle of washing his face and hands to find notepaper. "Damn, my hands are wet," he said aloud, and picked up a towel.

"Dear Lady Cecily," he wrote, when he was dry, using the formal address because he wished to let her know that he was ill friends with her, "I am sorry I shall not be able to meet you to-day as we arranged last night." He wondered what excuse he should make for breaking off the appointment, and then decided that he would not make any. "I won't add anything else," he said, and he signed himself, "Yours sincerely, Henry Quinn." "She'll know that I'm sick of this ... messing about. I don't see why I should explain myself to her!"

He sealed the envelope and put the letter aside, and sat for a while drumming on his table with the pen.

"Mary's worth a dozen of her," he said aloud, getting up and going to bed.



THE NINTH CHAPTER

1

They all rose early the next day. Ninian had been out of the house before any of them had reached the breakfast room, and when he returned, his arms were full of newspapers.

"What's Walkley say?" said Gilbert. "That's all I want to know!"

They opened the Times, and then, when they had read the criticism of "The Magic Casement," they murmured, "Charming! Splendid! Oh, ripping!" while Gilbert, sitting back in his chair, smiled beatifically and said, "Read it again, coves. Read it aloud and slowly!"

While they were reading the notices, Henry went off to a post office, and sent his letter to Lady Cecily by express messenger. "That's settled," he said, as he returned home, for he had been afraid that he might change his mind. As he was shaving that morning, he had faltered in his resolution. "I'd better go," he had said to himself, and then had added weakly, "No, I'm damned if I will!" Well, it was settled now. The letter was on its way to her. She would probably be angry with him, but not as angry as he was with her, and perhaps they would not meet again for a long while. So much the better. Now he could get on with his book in peace. Gilbert was right. Women do upset things. Well, this particular woman would not upset him again....

They had read all the notices when Henry returned, and were now at breakfast. Roger was relating the latest legal jest about Mr. Justice Kirkcubbin, a poor old man who persisted in clinging to the Bench in spite of the broadest hints from the Law Journal, and Ninian was making mysterious movements with his hands.

"What's the matter, Ninian?" Henry asked, as he sat down at the table.

Ninian, while searching for the notices of Gilbert's play, had seen a sentence in a serial story in one of the newspapers.... "Her hands fluttered helplessly over his breast" ... and he was trying to discover exactly what the lady had done with her hands. "She seems to have just flopped them about," he said, and he turned to Gilbert. "Look here, Gilbert," he said, "you try it. I'll clasp you in my arms as the hero clasped this female, and you'll let your hands flutter helplessly over my breast!"

"I'll let my fist flutter helplessly over your jaw, young Ninian!..."

"I don't believe she let her hands do anything of the sort," Ninian went on. "She couldn't have done it. An engineer couldn't do it, and I don't believe a female can do what an engineer can't do!"

"I suppose," he added, getting up from the table, "Tom Arthurs is half way across now. I wish I could have gone with him. What a holiday!"

"Talking of holidays," Gilbert said, "I'm going to take one, and as you don't seem in a fit state to do any work, Quinny, you'd better take one too, and come with me!"

"Where are you going?" Roger asked. "Anglesey?"

"No. I thought of going there, but I've changed my mind. I shall go to Ireland with Quinny."

"Ireland!" Henry exclaimed, looking across at Gilbert.

"Yes. Dublin. We can go to-night. I've never been there, and I'd like to know what these chaps, Marsh and Galway, are up to. That whatdoyoucallit movement you were telling me about?... you know, the thing that means 'a stitch in time saves nine' or something of the sort!"

"Oh, the Sinn Fein movement!"

"Yes. That's the thing. The Improved Tories ought to know about that...."

"That reminds me," said Roger, "of an idea I had in the middle of the night about the Improved Tories. We ought to publish our views on problems. The Fabians do that kind of thing rather well. We ought to imitate them. We ought to study some subject hard, argue all round it, and then tell the world just how we think it ought to be solved. I thought we might begin on the problem of unemployment...."

"Good Lord, do you think we can solve that!" Ninian exclaimed.

"No, but we might find a means of palliating it. My own notion...."

"I thought you had some scheme in your skull, Roger!" said Gilbert. "Let's have it!"

"Well, it's rather raw in my mind at present, but my idea is that the way to mitigate the problem of unemployment, perhaps solve it, is to join it on to the problem of defence. Supposing we decided to create a big army ... and we shall need one sooner or later with all these ententes and alliances we're forming ... the problem would be to form it without dislocating the industrial system. My idea is to make it compulsory for every man to undergo military training, about a couple of months every year, and call the men up to the camp in times of trade depression. You wouldn't have to call them all up at once ... trades aren't all slack at the same time ... and you'd arrange the period of training as far as possible to fit in with the slack time in each job. I mean, people who are employed in gasworks could easily be trained in the summer without dislocating the gas industry ... colliers, too, and people like that ... and men who are slack in the winter, like builders' men, could be trained in the winter. That's my idea roughly. There'd be training going on all the year round, and of course you could vary the duration of the period of training ... never less than two months, but longer if trade were badly depressed. You'd save a lot of misery that way ... you'd keep your men fit and fed and their homes going ... and you'd have the nucleus of a large army. I don't see why we shouldn't bring the Board of Education in. If we were to raise the school age to sixteen, and then make it compulsory for every boy to go into a cadet corps or something of the sort for a couple of years, you'd relieve the pressure on the labour market at that end enormously, and you'd make the job of getting the army ready much easier in case of emergency. A couple of years' training to begin with, followed by a couple of months' further training every year, would make all the difference in the world to us militarily, and it would do away, largely, with the unemployed!"

"How about apprentices?" said Gilbert. "If you raise the school age to sixteen and then make all the boys go into training until they are eighteen, you're going to make a big difficulty in the way of getting skilled labour!"

"I don't think so. As far as I can make out the period of apprenticeship is much too long. Five or six years is a ridiculous time to ask a boy to spend in learning his job, and any trade unionist will tell you that every apprentice spends the first year or two in acting as a sort of messenger: fetching beer and cleaning up things. I suppose the real reason why the period of indenture is so long is because the Unions don't want to swamp the labour market with skilled workers. Well, why shouldn't we reduce the period of apprenticeship by giving the boy a military training? You see, don't you, what a problem this is? I thought of talking about it to the Improved Tories, and when we'd argued it over a bit, we'd put our proposals into print and circulate them among informed people, and invite them to come and tell us what they think of the notion from their point of view ... Trade Union secretaries and military men and employers and people like that ... and then, we might publish a book on it. Jaures wrote a book on the French Army ... a very good book, too ... so there isn't anything remarkably novel about the notion, except, perhaps, my idea of linking the military problem on to the unemployment problem. You and Quinny could write the book, Gilbert, because you've got style and we want the book to be written so that people will read it without getting tied up. Of course, if you must go to Ireland, you must, but it seems a little needless, doesn't it?"

"This business will take time," Gilbert replied. "Tons of time. I don't think our visit to Ireland will affect it much. You'll come with me, won't you, Quinny?"

Henry nodded his head. "At once, if you like," he answered, hoping indeed that Gilbert would suggest an immediate departure. If Lady Cecily were to hear that he had left London....

"To-night will do," said Gilbert.

2

"Are you going to work?" Gilbert said to Henry, when the others had gone.

"I think so," Henry replied. "I haven't written a word for days. You?"

"I'll go and have a squint at the Pall Mall ... just to make sure that last night wasn't a dream. I'll come back to lunch. It 'ud be rather jolly to go on from Dublin and see your father, Quinny?"

"Yes ... that's a notion. I'll write and tell him we're coming. Bring back the afternoon papers when you come, Gilbert, I'd like to see what they say about the play!"

"Righto!" said Gilbert.

Henry sat on in the breakfast room, after Gilbert had gone, reading the criticisms of "The Magic Casement," and then, when he had finished, he went up to his room and began to work on "Turbulence." He wrote steadily for an hour, and then read over what he had done.

"This is better," he murmured to himself, pleased with what he had written, and he prepared to go on, but before he could start again, there was a knock on the door, and Magnolia came in.

"You're wanted on the telephone, sir!" she said.

"Who is it?"

"I don't know, sir. They didn't say!"

He went downstairs and took up the receiver. "Hilloa!" he said.

"Is that you, Paddy?" was the response.

"Cecily!"

"Yes. I've just had your letter. Are you very cross, Paddy?"

He felt perturbed, but he tried to make his voice sound as if he were indifferent to her.

"No," he replied, "I'm not cross at all...."

"Oh, yes, you are, Paddy. You're very cross, and you're going to teach me a lesson, aren't you?"

He could hear her light laugh as she spoke.

"I can't make you believe that I'm not cross at all," he said.

"No, you can't. Paddy!" Her voice had a coaxing note as she said his name.

"Yes."

"Come to lunch with me. Jimphy's gone off for the day somewhere...."

"I'm sorry!..."

"Do come, Paddy. I want you to come. I do, really!"

He paused for a second or two before he replied. After all why should he not go?...

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I really can't lunch with you. I'm going to Ireland!..."

"Going where?"

"Ireland. To-night! I'm going with Gilbert!"

"But you can't go this minute. Paddy, you are cross, and you're spiteful, too. If you aren't cross, you'll come and lunch with me. You ought to come and say 'good-bye' to me before you go to Ireland...."

"I've got a lot to do ... packing and things!"

"You can do that afterwards!" Her voice became more insistent. "Paddy, I want you to come. You must come!..."

He hesitated, and she said, "Do, Paddy!" very appealingly.

It would be weak, he told himself, to yield to her now ... she would think she had only to be a little gracious and he would be at her feet immediately; and then he thought it would be weak not to yield to her. "It'll look as if I were afraid to meet her ... running away like this. Or that I'm sulking ... just petulant!"

"All right," he said to her, "I'll come!"

"Come now!"

He nodded his head, forgetting that she could not see him, and she called to him again, "You'll come now, won't you?"

"Yes," he replied. "I'll come at once!"

He put up the receiver and reached for his hat. "I wonder what she wants," he thought, "perhaps she really does love me and my letter's frightened her!" His spirits rose at the thought and he went jauntily to the door and opened it, and as he did so, Ninian, pale and miserable, panted up the steps.

"My God, Quinny!" he exclaimed, almost sobbing, "the Gigantic's gone down!"

"The what?"

"The Gigantic's gone down! It's in the paper. Look, look!" He was unbalanced by grief as he thrust the Westminster Gazette and the Globe into Henry's hands.

"But, damn it, she can't have gone down," Henry said, "she's a Belfast boat ... she can't have gone down!"

"She has, I tell you, and Tom Arthurs ... oh, my God, Quinny, he's gone down too! The decentest chap on earth and ... and he's been drowned!"

Henry led him into the house. "I went out to get the evening papers to see about Gilbert's play," he went on, "and that's what I saw. I saw her at Southampton going off as proud as a queen ... and now she's at the bottom of the Atlantic. And Tom waved his hand to me. He was going to show me over her properly when he came back. Isn't it horrible, Quinny? What's the sense of it ... what the hell's the sense of it?"

"She can't have gone down ..." Henry said, as if that would comfort Ninian.

"She has, I tell you...."

Henry went to the sideboard and took out the whisky.

"Here, Ninian," he said, pouring out some of it, "drink that. You're upset!..."

"No, I don't want any whisky. God damn it, what's the sense of a thing like this! A man like Tom Arthurs!..."

There was a noise like the sound of a taxi-cab drawing up in front of the house, and presently the bell rang, and then, after a moment or two, the door opened, and Mrs. Graham came hurrying into the room.

"Ninian! Where's Ninian?" she said wildly to Henry.

"He's here, Mrs. Graham!"

She went to him and clutched him tightly to her. "Oh, my dear, my dear," she said.

"What is it, mother?" he asked, calming himself and looking at her.

"I telephoned to your office, but you weren't there, so I came here to find you. I couldn't rest content till I'd seen you!"

"What is it, mother?"

"That ship, Ninian. If you'd been on it ... you wanted to go, and I said why didn't you ... oh, my dear, if you'd been on it, and I'd lost you!"

He put his arms about her and drew her on to his shoulder. "I'm all right, mother!" he said.

Henry left the room hurriedly. He went to the kitchen and called to Mrs. Clutters. "I won't be in to lunch," he said. "Don't let any one disturb Mrs. Graham and Mr. Graham for a while. They ... they've had bad news!"

Then he went out of the house. The taxi-cab in which Mrs. Graham had come was still standing outside the door.

"I ain't 'ad me fare yet," said the driver.

"All right!" said Henry. "I'll pay it."

He gave Cecily's address to the man, and then he got into the cab.

3

He could hear the newspaper boys crying out the news of the disaster as he was driven swiftly to Cecily's house. The sinking of the great ship had stunned men's minds and humiliated their pride. This beautiful vessel, skilfully built, the greatest ship afloat, had seemed imperishable, the most powerful weapon that man had yet forged to subdue the sea, and in a little while, recoiling from the hidden iceberg, she had foundered, broken as easily as a child's toy, carrying all her vanity and strength to the bottom....

"It isn't true," he kept on saying to himself as if he were trying to contradict the cries of the newsvendors. "She's a Belfast boat and Belfast boats don't go down...."

He felt it oddly, this loss. The drowning of many men and women and children affected him merely as a vague, impersonal thing. "Yes, it's dreadful," he would say when he thought of it, but he was not moved by it. When he remembered Tom Arthurs he was stirred, but less than Ninian had been. He could see him now, just as he had stood in the shipyard that day when John Marsh and Henry had been with him, and he had watched the workmen pouring through the gates. "Those are my pals!" he had said.... Poor Tom Arthurs! Destroyed with the thing that he had conceived and his "pals" had built! But perhaps that was as he would have wished. It would have hurt Tom Arthurs to have lived on after the Gigantic had gone down.... It was not the drowning of a crowd of people or the drowning of Tom Arthurs that most affected Henry. It was the fact that a boat built by Belfast men had foundered on her maiden trip, on a clear, cold night of stars, reeling from the iceberg's blow like a flimsy yacht. He had the Ulsterman's pride in the Ulsterman's power, and he liked to boast that the best ships in the world were built on the Lagan....

"By God," he said to himself, "this'll break their hearts in Belfast!"

The cab drew up before the door of Cecily's house, and in a little while he was with her.

"Have you heard about the Gigantic?" he said, as he walked across the room to her.

"Oh, yes," she answered, "isn't it dreadful? Come and sit down here!"

He had not greeted her otherwise than by his question about the Gigantic, and she frowned a little as she made room for him beside her on the sofa.

"That great boat!..." he began, but she interrupted him.

"I suppose you're still cross," she said.

"Cross?"

"Yes. You haven't even shaken hands with me!"

He remembered now. "Oh!" he said in confusion, but could say no more.

"Are you really going to Ireland?" she asked, putting her hand on his arm.

"Yes," he answered, feeling his resolution weakening just because she had touched him.

"But why?"

"You know why!" he said.

Her hand dropped from his arm. "I don't know why," she exclaimed pettishly, and he saw and disliked the way her lips turned downwards as she said it.

"I can't bear it, Cecily," he exclaimed. "I must have you to myself or ... or not have you at all!"

"Perfectly absurd!" she murmured.

"It isn't absurd. How can you expect me to feel happy when I see you going off with Jimphy? Can't you understand, Cecily? Here I am with you now, but if Jimphy were to come into the room, I should have to ... to give way, to pretend that I'm not in love with you!"

"I can't see what difference it makes," she said. "Jimphy and I don't interfere with each other. It's ridiculous to make all this fuss. I don't see any necessity to go about telling everybody!..."

"I didn't propose that," he interrupted.

"Yes, you did, Paddy, dear! You asked me to run away with you, and what's that but telling everybody?"

He felt angry with her for what seemed to him to be flippancy. "I'm in earnest, Cecily!" he said. "I'm not joking!"

"I'm in earnest, too. I don't want to run away with you ... not because I don't love you ... I do love you, Paddy, very much ... but it's so absurd to run away and make a ... a mountain out of a molehill. We should be awfully miserable if we were to elope. We'd have to go to some horrid place where we shouldn't know anybody and there'd be nothing to do. Really, it's much pleasanter to go on as we are now, Paddy. You can come here and take me to lunch sometimes and go to the theatre with me when Jimphy wants to go to a music-hall, and ... and so on!"

He could not rid himself of the notion that she was "chattering" in the Lensley style.

"It would be decenter to go away together," he said.

She moved away from him angrily. "You're a prig, Paddy!" she exclaimed. "You can go to Ireland. I don't care!"

He got up as if to go, but did not move away. He stood beside her irresolutely, wishing to go and wishing to stay, and then he bent over her and touched her. "Cecily," he said, "come with me!"

"No!" she answered, keeping her back to him.

"Very well," he said, and he walked across the room towards the door. His hand was on the handle when she called to him.

"Aren't you going to stay to lunch?" she said.

"You told me to go!..."

"Yes, but I didn't mean immediately. I shall be all alone."

He went back to her very quickly, and sat down beside her and folded her in his arms.

"I loathe you," he cried, with his lips pressed against her cheek. "I loathe you because you're so selfish and brutal. You don't really care for me...."

"Oh, I do, Paddy I ..."

"No, you don't. You were making love to Ninian last night!..."

"So that's it, is it?..."

"No, it isn't. Ninian doesn't care about you or about any woman. He's not like me, a soft, sloppy fool. You don't love me. If I were to leave you now, you'd find some one to take my place quite easily. Lensley or Boltt!..."

"They're too middle-aged, Paddy!"

He pushed her away from him. "Damn it, can't you be serious!" he shouted at her.

"You're very rude," she replied.

"I'd like to beat you! I'd like to hurt you!..."

She smiled at him and then she put her arms about his neck and drew him towards her. "You don't loathe me, Paddy," she said softly, soothing him with her voice, "you love me, don't you?"

"Will you come away with me? Now?"

"No!" She kissed him and got up. "Let's go to lunch," she said.

He felt that he ought to leave her then, but he followed her meekly enough.

"I don't think I'll stay to lunch," he said weakly.

"Yes, you will!" she replied. "You can take me to a picture gallery afterwards!..."

4

They did not go to a picture gallery. The spring air was so fresh that she declared she must go for a drive.

"Let's go to Hampstead!" he said, signalling to a taxi-driver. "Well have tea at Jack Straw's Castle!"

"Yes, let's!" she exclaimed.

She had tried to persuade him not to return to Ireland, but he had insisted that he must go because of his promise to Gilbert.

"Do you care for Gilbert more than you care for me?" she had asked, making him wonder at the casual way in which she spoke Gilbert's name. It seemed incredible, listening to her, that Gilbert had been her lover....

"It's hardly the same thing," he replied.

Then, after more pleading and anger, she had given in.

"Very well," she said, "I won't ask you again, and don't let's talk about it any more. Well enjoy to-day anyhow!"

The taxi-cab carried them swiftly to Hampstead.

"Well get out at the Spaniards' Road," he said, "and walk across the Heath. It's beautiful now!"

"All right," she answered.

They did as he said, and walked about the Heath for nearly an hour. The fresh smell of spring exhilarated them, and they sat for a little while on a seat which was perched on rising ground so that they were able to see far beyond the common. Young bracken fronds were thrusting their curled heads upwards through the old brown growth; and the buds on the blackened boughs were bursting from their cases and offering delicate green leaves to the sunlight; and the yellow whins shone like little golden stars on their spiky stems. Henry's capacity for sensuous enjoyment was fully employed, and he would willingly have sat there until dusk, drawing his breath in with as much luxurious feeling as a woman has when she puts new linen on her limbs. He would have liked to strip and bathe his naked body in the Highgate Ponds or run with bare feet over the wet grass ... but Cecily was tired of the Heath.

"Isn't it time we got some tea?" she said, getting up and looking about her as if she were searching for a tea-shop.

"I suppose it is," he answered reluctantly, and he rose too. "We go this way," he said, moving in the direction of Jack Straw's Castle. "Let's come back to the Heath," he added, "after we've had tea!"

"But why?" she asked.

"Oh, because it's so beautiful."

"I thought it was getting chilly," she objected.

5

"I don't see why you want to go to Ireland," she exclaimed, as she handed a cup of tea to him.

"I've told you why," he said.

"Oh, but that isn't a reason. And why does Gilbert want to go? He isn't Irish."

"I suppose!..."

"It's so absurd to go rushing about like this. I should have thought Gilbert would want to stay in town now that his play is on. Is it a success? I haven't looked at the papers, but then I never do. I can't read newspapers ... they're so dull. This tea is nice. And it's much nicer in town now than it can possibly be in Ireland. Besides, I don't want you to go!"

He let her chatter on, hoping that she would exhaust her interest in his visit to Ireland and begin to talk of something else, but he did not know that Cecily had greater tenacity than might appear from the incoherence of her conversation. She held on to a subject until it was settled irrevocably. She looked very charming as she sat opposite to him, and he wondered how Jimphy could be so careless of her loveliness. The sunlight shining through the window above her head kindled her hair so that the ripples of it shone like gold, and the delicate sunburnt flush of her cheeks deepened in the soft glow. He put out his hand and touched her fingers. "Beautiful Cecily!" he said, and she smiled because she liked to be told how beautiful she was.

"But you're going to Ireland," she said.

He did not answer.

"You say you'd do anything for me," she proceeded, "but when I ask you not to go to Ireland, you refuse. If you really love me!..."

"I do love you, Cecily!"

"Well, why don't you stay in town! It's so queer to go away the moment you get to know me!" She began to laugh.

"What's the joke?" he asked.

"Oh, I've just remembered how little we know of each other. You kissed me the first time you came to my house!"

"I loved you the moment I saw you ... that day in the Park when I was with Gilbert ... I loved you then. I didn't know who you were, but I loved you. I couldn't help it, Cecily. You were looking at Gilbert and then your eyes shifted and you looked at me, and I loved you, dear. I worried Gilbert to tell me about you!..."

"What did he say?" she interrupted eagerly, leaning her elbows on the table and resting her chin in the cup of her hands.

"He told me who you were," Henry answered awkwardly.

"But didn't he say anything else?... didn't he?..."

"I've forgotten what he said.... Then I saw you at the St. James's ... he told me you often went to first-nights, and I went specially, hoping to see you!..."

"Dear Paddy," she said, "and you were so shy!"

"And so jealous and angry because you talked all the time to Gilbert, and ignored me. You made me go out of the box with Jimphy, and as I went, I saw you putting your hand out to touch Gilbert, and I heard you calling him, 'Gilbert, darling.' ..."

She laughed, but did not speak.

"And I was frightfully jealous. Gilbert's my best friend, Cecily, but I hated him that night. I suppose ... oh, I don't know!"

"What were you going to say!" she asked.

He looked at her intently for a few moments. Her grey eyes were full of laughter, and he wondered whether she would answer his question seriously.

"Well?" she said.

"Do you still love Gilbert, Cecily! Am I ... just some one to fill in the time ... until Gilbert!..."

She sat back in her seat, and the laughter left her eyes.

"Let's go!" she said.

But he did not move. "You do love him," he persisted, "and you don't love me...."

"Are you going to Ireland with him?" she demanded.

"Yes!"

"Very well, then!" The tightened tone of her voice indicated that there was no more to be said, but he would not heed the warning, and persisted in demanding explanations.

"If you go to Ireland with Gilbert," she said, "I'll never speak to you again!"

She closed her lips firmly, and he saw the downward curve of them again, and while he pondered on what she had said, the thought shot across his mind that that downward curve would deepen as she grew older. "She'll get very bad-tempered!..."

"I mean it," she said, interrupting his thought and compelling him to pay heed to her. "I'll never speak to you again if you go away now."

"But I've promised, Cecily!" he protested.

She shrugged her shoulders. "I don't see what that's got to do with it," she answered.

6

They came out of the inn, and stood for a few moments before the door.

"Shall we go back to the Heath?" he said.

"No," she replied. "Let's go home."

"Very well!"

He felt broken and crushed and tongueless. Cecily did not speak to him as they walked towards the Spaniards' Road, nor did he speak to her. The angry look on her face deterred him.

He hailed a taxi, and they got into it and were driven down Fitzjohn's Avenue and homewards. Once she turned to him and said again, "Are you going to Ireland with him?" but when he answered, "I must, Cecily, I said I would!" she turned away again and did not speak until the taxi drew up before her door.

"Perhaps you'd rather I didn't come in?" he said, expecting that she would dismiss him, but she did not do so.

"Jimphy may be at home," she said, "and probably he'd like to see you!"

"I thought he'd gone away for the day!"

"He may have returned."

She went up the steps of the house while he paid the driver of the taxi-cab, and spoke to the servant who had opened the door.

"He's not in," she said to Henry when he joined her.

"Then I won't ..."

"Come in," she interrupted. "I want to say something to you!"

He followed her into the hall and up the stairs to the drawing-room, where she left him while she went to her room to take off her outdoor garments. He moved aimlessly about until she returned. She had changed her clothes, and was wearing a loose golden silk teagown with a girdle round it, and the gold in her hair seemed to be enriched by the gold in her dress. She went up to him quickly, putting her hands on his shoulders and drawing him close to her.

"Paddy!" she said, and her voice was very tense.

"Yes?" he answered.

"I've never asked you to do anything for me, have I?" She put her arms round his neck and kissed him. He tried to answer her, but could not because her lips were tightly pressed on his.

"You won't go, will you?" she murmured, closing her eyes and tightening her hold on him.

He struggled a little.... "Why don't you want me to go with Gilbert?" he said.

But she did not answer his question. She drew him back to her again, whispering, "I love you, Paddy, I love you. I don't love any one else but you!"

He threw his arms about her, and they stood there forgetful of everything....

She moved a little, and he led her to the sofa where they sat down together. She laid her head on his shoulder, and he put his arms around her and drew her warm, yielding body close to his. He could feel the beating of her heart....

"You won't go, will you, Paddy?" she whispered.

"No," he answered, bending over her and kissing her.

She drew herself closer to him. "Dear Paddy!" she said.

7

He went up to Gilbert's room immediately after he returned home. All the way back from Lady Cecily's, he had told himself that he must tell Gilbert at once that he was not going to Ireland because he was in love with Cecily "and because she's in love with me!" and he had repeated his resolution many times to himself in the hope that by thinking exclusively of it, there would be no opportunity for other thoughts to come into his head. He shrank from the meeting with Gilbert, for his conscience hurt him because of his betrayal of Gilbert's love and friendship. He had palliated his conduct by saying to himself that Gilbert had given Cecily up, but the excuse would not serve to absolve him from the sense of unfriendly behaviour.

"I'm making excuses for myself," he murmured.

"That's all I'm doing. The decent thing is to go to Gilbert and tell him everything ... or ... or I could write it. I could write a long letter to him and get Magnolia to give it to him.... Perhaps that 'ud be better than telling him. It'll be difficult to get a chance to say anything to him with Roger and Ninian about...."

He broke off his thoughts and spoke out loud. "You're funking it," he said. "Damn you, you're funking it!"

"I must tell him myself," he went on. "I must stand up to some one. I can't go on funking things forever...."

It was odd, he thought, that he had no feeling for Jimphy. He had not any sense of shame because he had made love to Jimphy's wife. Jimphy appeared to him only in a comic light. Yet Jimphy had professed friendship for him. "Of course," he said, "they don't love each other!" but in this mood of self-confession which held him, he admitted that he would have felt no contrition even if Jimphy had been devoted to Cecily.

"He's a born cuckold!" he went on. "I might be afraid to take his wife from him, but I wouldn't be ashamed to do it. No one would...."

He had opened the door and gone quickly up the stairs, hoping that he would not meet any of the others. Gilbert would probably be in his study or in his bedroom, and so he could talk to him at once and get the thing over. He knocked on the study door, and then, receiving no answer, opened it and looked in. Gilbert was not there. He went to the bedroom and called "Are you in, Gilbert?" but there was no response. "I suppose he's downstairs," he said to himself, and he walked part of the way down to the dining-room, stopping midway when he saw Magnolia.

"Tell Mr. Farlow I want to speak to him," he called to her. "Up in my study!"

He went to his room, and stood staring out of the window until Gilbert came.

"Hilloa, Quinny, what's up?" Gilbert said, as he entered the study.

Henry turned to him. He could feel the pallor of his cheeks, so nervous was he.

"Gilbert," he said desperately, "I want to talk to you!"

"Yes?..."

"I'm not going to Ireland with you!"

"Not going!... Why?"

He moved mechanically towards Gilbert and stopped at the table where he wrote. He stood for a few moments, fingering things, turning over pieces of foolscap and tapping the table with a paper knife.

"What is it, Quinny?" Gilbert said again, and as he spoke, he came up to Henry and touched him. "Is it ... is it anything about Cecily?" Henry nodded his head. "I thought so," Gilbert continued. He moved away and sat down. "Well, tell me about it," he said.

"I'm in love with her, Gilbert!"

"Yes."

"I ... I asked her to run away with me!..."

Gilbert laughed. "You have hustled, Quinny," he said. "And she wouldn't, eh?"

"No!" Gilbert's laughter stimulated him, and he spoke more fluently. "But she's in love with me. She told me so. I've just come from her. And she wants me to stay in town."

"To be near her?"

"Yes. Yes, I suppose so. I had to tell you. I felt that I must tell you. Gilbert, I'm ashamed, but I can't help it. I love her so much that I'd ... I'd do anything for her."

Gilbert did not move nor did he speak. He sat in his chair, looking very intently at Henry.

"I can't understand myself," Henry went on. "My feelings are hopelessly mixed up. I want to do decent things and I loathe cads, but all the same I do caddish things myself. I want to be straight, but I'm not straight. ... It's awfully hard to explain what I mean, but there's something in me that seems to keep pulling me out of line, and I haven't enough force in me to beat it. I suppose it's the mill in my blood. My grandfather was a mill-owner."

Gilbert shook his head and smiled. "I don't think your notions of heredity are sound, Quinny. Is that all you have to confess?"

"All?"

"Yes. There isn't anything else?"

"No. I wanted to tell you that I'm ashamed, but I must tell you, too, that although I'm ashamed, I shan't stop loving Cecily. I can't...."

Gilbert got up and went over to him. He sat on the edge of the table so that Henry, when he looked up, had to gaze straight at him.

"You're a rum bloke, Quinny," he said. "I'm always telling you that, aren't I? But you were never so rum as you are now. It's no good pretending that I don't feel ... feel anything about Cecily. I do. But I've known about you and her for some while. I knew you'd fall in love with her that day in the Park when you were excited about her beauty and were so anxious that I should introduce you to her. Of course, I knew you'd fall in love with her. I'm not a dramatist for nothing. So what you say isn't news. I mean, it doesn't surprise me. Quinny, I'm awfully fond of you, old chap, much more than I am of Ninian or Roger. I expect it's because you're such a blooming baby. I'm not really upset about your being in love with Cecily. That had to be. But I'm awfully upset about you!"

"Me, Gilbert?" Henry said, looking up in astonishment.

"Yes. You haven't got much resolution, have you? Cecily has only got to blub a little or kiss you a few times, and you're done for ... she can do what she likes with you. You haven't got the courage to run away from her, and you haven't the power to stand up to her and say 'Be-damned to you'!"

"No, I know that!"

"So, I think I'll just kidnap you, Quinny. I think I'll make you come to Ireland with me...."

"You can't do that, Gilbert!"

"Can't I, by God!" Gilbert's voice had changed from its bantering note to a note of resolve. "Do you think I'm going to let my best friend make an ass of himself, and do nothing to prevent him? Quinny, you're an ass! You're too fond of running about saying you can't help this and you can't help that ... and spilling over! And what do you think's going to be the end of this business? I suppose you imagine that Cecily'll change her mind some day, and run away with you? Do you think she'll run away with you when she wouldn't run away with me? Damn you, you've got a nerve to think a thing like that...."

"I don't think that, Gilbert," Henry interjected.

"Oh, yes, you do! Of course, you do! That's natural enough. I wouldn't mind so much if I thought there were a chance that she would run away with you, but she won't!"

"You wouldn't mind!..."

"No. Why should I? If she won't run away with me, she couldn't do better than run away with you. And there'd be a chance then that you'd get on with your job. You'd soon shake down into some sort of balance if you were together, but you'll never get level if you go on in the way you're going now. You'll run up into one emotional crisis and down into another, and you'll spend the time between them in ... in recovering. That's all. And your work will go to blazes. I know, Quinny. You see, I was your predecessor...."

"But Cecily's proud of my work...."

"She was proud of mine. So she said. Look here, Quinny, buck up! How much of your new novel have you written since you knew her!"

"Not very much, of course, but!..."

"Exactly. I couldn't work either when ... when I was your predecessor. Cecily's greedy, Quinny! She wants all of you ... and she has the power to make you give the whole of yourself to her. If you think that 'all for love and the world well lost' is the right motto for a man ... then Cecily's your woman. But is it? Hang it all, Quinny, you haven't done your work yet ... you've only begun to do it!"

He got off the table and began to search among Henry's papers.

"What are you looking for?" Henry asked.

"I want the manuscript of 'Turbulence.' Where is it?"

"I'll get it. What do you want it for?"

He opened a drawer and took out the few sheets of the novel that were written.

"Is that all?" said Gilbert.

"Yes," Henry answered.

"Cecily doesn't seem to inspire you, Quinny, does she, any more than she inspired me? You haven't written a whole chapter yet.... Do you remember what we swore at Rumpell's?"

"We swore a whole lot of things!..."

"Yes, but the most important thing? We swore we'd become Great. I don't know that any of us ever will be Great.... I get the sensation now and then that we're frightfully crude, even Roger, but we can become something better than one of Cecily's lovers, can't we?"

"I don't know that I want to be anything else...."

"For shame, Quinny!"

Gilbert put the manuscript back into the drawer from which Henry had taken it.

"You'll come to Ireland with me?" he said.

"No, Gilbert, I won't!"

"You will. I'll break your jaw if you don't come. I'll knock the stuffing out of you if you don't come. We can catch the night train and be in Dublin to-morrow morning!..."

"I promised Cecily I wouldn't go...."

"And you promised me you would go. I've packed all the things I want, and it oughtn't to take you long to pack a trunk. I'll come and help you after dinner ... there's the gong ... well just have time if you hop round quickly. Ninian can telephone for a taxi to take us to Euston!"

"It's no good, Gilbert...."

"Come on. I can smell onions, and I'd risk my immortal soul for onions. Boiled, fried, stewed or roasted, Quinny, there's no vegetable to beat them...."

8

"I'm not going, Gilbert!..."

"You are going!"

They had finished dinner and were now in Henry's bedroom. Gilbert had instructed Ninian to telephone for a taxi. Then, shoving Henry before him, he had climbed the stairs to Henry's room and started to pack his trunk.

"You can't make me go!..."

Gilbert took an armful of shirts from the chest of drawers and dropped them into the trunk. "Once, when I was wandering in Walworth," he said, "I heard a costermonger threatening to give another costermonger a thick ear, a bunged-up eye and a mouth full of blood. That's what you'll get if you don't hop round. What suits do you want!"

Henry did not answer. He walked to the window and stood there, peering out at the trees in the garden. A taxi-cab drove up to the door and presently Ninian came bounding up the stairs to tell them of its arrival.

"Tell him to wait," said Gilbert, and Ninian hurried back to do so. "If you won't choose your suits yourself," he went on to Henry, "I shall have to do it for you. Socks, socks, where the hell do you keep your socks?..."

It seemed to Henry that he could see Cecily's face shining out of the darkness. He could feel her arms about him and hear her beautiful voice telling him that she loved him. "I won't go," he said to himself. "I won't go!..."

"If you'd only help to pack, we'd save heaps of money," Gilbert grumbled. "It's sickening to think of that taxi sitting out there totting up tuppences. Come and sit on the lid of this trunk, will you?"

Henry did not move from the window. Gilbert straightened himself. For a moment or two he could not see clearly because he was giddy with stooping. Then he crossed the room and took hold of Henry's arm.

"Come on, Quinny," he said, pulling him towards the trunk.

"What's the good of fussing like this, Gilbert, when I've told you I won't go...."

"Well, sit on the trunk anyhow. I may as well close the thing now I've filled it...."

9

He called Ninian, and between them they carried the luggage downstairs to the cab.

"Now then, Quinny!" said Gilbert.

"I'm not going, I tell you...."

"Get into the cab, damn you. Go on!"

He shoved him forward so that he almost fell against the step of the taxi, and Ninian caught hold of him, and they lifted him and heaved him into the taxi.

"Get in, Ninian," said Gilbert. He turned and shouted up the hall to Roger. "Come on, Roger! You'd better come and see us off!"

None of them spoke during the short drive to Euston. Henry sulked in a corner of the cab, telling himself that it was monstrous of Gilbert to treat him in this fashion, and vowing that nothing would induce him to get into the train ... and then, his mind veering again, telling himself that perhaps it would be a good thing to go to Ireland for a while. Cecily had chopped and changed with him. Why should he not chop and change with her?... Neither Ninian nor Roger made any remark on the peculiarity of the journey to Ireland. They had known in the morning that Gilbert and Henry were going away that night, but it was clear that something had happened since then, that Gilbert was more intent on the journey than Henry.... No doubt, they would know in good time. Probably, Ninian thought to himself, that woman Jayne is mixed up in it....

"You get the tickets, Ninian," Gilbert said when they reached Euston. "Firsts. Democracy's all right in theory, but I don't like it in a railway carriage!"

"Where's the money?" said Ninian.

"Money! What do you want money for? All right! Here you are! You can pay me afterwards, Quinny!"

They had only a few minutes in which to get into the train, and Gilbert, putting his arm in Henry's and hurrying him towards the Irish mail, was glad that the wait would not be long.

"It's ridiculous to behave like this," said Henry, as they shoved him into a carriage.

"I know it is," Gilbert answered. He turned to Roger. "We may want grub during the night. Get some, will you! Sandwiches will do and hard-boiled eggs, if you can get 'em...."

He turned to Henry. "You're my friend, Quinny," he said, "I can't let you make a mucker of everything, can I?"

Henry did not answer.

"I know exactly how you feel," Gilbert went on. "I should feel like it myself if I were in your place, but if I were, Quinny, I'd be damned glad if you'd do the same for me!"

10

"Good Lord!" Gilbert exclaimed, as the train drove out of London, "I forgot to pack your toothpaste...."



THE THIRD BOOK

OF

CHANGING WINDS



... quitted all to save A world from utter loss.

PARADISE LOST.



THE FIRST CHAPTER

1

As the boat turned round the end of the pier and moved up the harbour to her berth, Gilbert, eyeing the passengers, caught sight of Henry and instantly hallooed to him. The passage from Kingstown had been smooth, and Henry, heartened by the sea air and sunshine, pressed eagerly through the throng of passengers so that he might be near the gangway and so be among the first to descend from the steamer. He called a greeting to Gilbert, and then, the boat being berthed, hurried forward to the gangway. He could not get off the steamer as quickly as he wished for the number of passengers on board was very large, and he fidgeted impatiently until he was able to get ashore.

"We'll send this bag on by the waggonette," Gilbert said, when they had shaken hands and congratulated each other on their healthy looks, "and walk over to Tre'Arrdur, and we'll gabble on the way. Here," he added, taking a letter out of his breastpocket, "you can read that while I find the man. It's from Ninian. It came this morning!..."

He seized Henry's bag and hurried off with it, leaving Henry to follow slowly or remain where he was, as he pleased, and then, before Henry had time to do more than take the letter from its envelope and glance carelessly at the first page of it, he came quickly back. "Come up," he said, putting his arm in Henry's. "You can read it as you go along. There's not much in it!"

They left the pier and passed through the station into the street.

"Holyhead," said Gilbert, "is a good place to get drunk in! We won't linger!..."

They took the lower road to Tre'Arrdur Bay because it was quieter than the upper road, and as they walked, Henry read Ninian's letter.

"He seems to like South America," he said, returning the letter to Gilbert when he had finished with it.

Gilbert nodded his head. "That old Tunnel of his doesn't get itself built, does it? But it must be great fun building a railway in a place like that. There's a revolution on the first and third Tuesdays of the month, and the President of the Republic and the Emperor of the Empire are in power for a fortnight and in exile for another one. So Ninian says. He told Roger in his last letter that he had had to kick the emperor's backside for him for interfering with the railway contract.... Oh, by the bye, Rachel's produced an infant. She says it's like Roger, but Roger hopes not. He says it's like nothing on earth. He came to see me off from Euston yesterday and when I asked him to describe it to me, he said he couldn't ... it was indescribable. It looks raw, he says. It must be frightfully comic to be a father, Quinny!"

"I don't see anything comic about it," Henry replied. "I'd rather like to be a father myself."

"Well, why don't you become one. They say it's easy enough. First, you get a wife...."

"What sort of an infant is it? Is it a boy or a girl?"

"Great Scott!" said Gilbert, "I forgot to ask that. That was very careless of me. Look out, Quinny, here's a motor, and that's Holy Mountain on the right. We'll go up it to-morrow, if you like. It's not much of a climb. Just enough to jig you up a bit. There's a chap in the hotel who scoots up mountains like a young goat. He asked me to go up Snowdon with him, but when I asked him what the tramfare was, he was slightly snorty in his manner. How's the novel getting on?"

"It'll be out in September. I corrected the final proofs last month. I think it's rather good."

"Better than 'Turbulence' or 'The Wayward Man'?"

"Yes, I think so. I'm calling it 'The Fennels.' That's the name of the people it's about. I've taken an Ulster family and ... well, that's what I've done. I've taken an Ulster family and just shown it. My father likes it much better than anything else I've done, although he was very keen on 'Turbulence.'"

"How is your father?"

"Oh, much better, thanks, but still a bit shaky. He hates all this Volunteer business in Ireland. You remember John Marsh, don't you, and Galway? You saw them in Dublin that time!..." Gilbert nodded his head and so Henry did not complete his sentence. "Well, they're up to their necks in the opposition Volunteers. I saw John in Dublin yesterday for a few minutes. He was very excited about the gun-running in Ulster! Damned play-acting! He could hardly spare the time to say 'How are you?' to me, he was so anxious to be off to his drilling. He hasn't done any writing for a long time now. He's become very friendly with Mineely!..."

"Is that the Labour man?"

"Yes. I liked him when I met him, but he's frightfully bitter since the strike. He's got more brains than all the others put together, and he influences John tremendously. I don't wonder at his bitterness. The employers were brutal in that strike, Gilbert, and Mineely will never forget it. He'll make trouble for them yet, and they'll deserve all they get. He said to me 'They won't deal reasonably with us, so they can't complain if we deal unreasonably with them. They set the police on to us....'"

"What's he going to do then?"

"I don't know, but he's drilling his men as hard as ever he can. He means to hit back. After he'd spoken about the police, he said, 'The next time we go to them, we'll have guns in our hands. Mebbe they'll listen to us then!' He's like John ... he doesn't care what happens to himself. All those people, John and Galway and Mineely, have a contempt for death that I can't understand. I loathe the thought of dying ... but they don't seem to mind. It's their religion partly, I suppose, but it's something more than religion. If they were poor, like the slum people, I could understand it better. You can't frighten them by threatening to kill them. Their life is such a rotten one that they'd be much better off if they were dead, even if there were no heaven, and I suppose they feel that ... and of course the Catholic religion teaches them to despise life! But it isn't all religious fervour or the apathy of people who're too poor to mind whether they live or die. Marsh and Galway and Mineely are moved by a sort of nationalistic ecstasy ... Marsh and Galway more than Mineely, I think, because there's a bitterness in him that isn't in them. They think of Ireland first, and he thinks of starving workmen first. They're Ireland mad. They really don't value their lives a happorth. They'd love to be martyrised for Ireland. It's a kind of lust, Gilbert. They get a sensual look on their faces ... almost ... when they talk of dying for Ireland."

"It's a little silly of us English people who love life so much to try and govern a people like that," said Gilbert.

2

Much had happened to them in the two years that had elapsed since the day on which Gilbert carried Henry off to Dublin. The Bloomsbury household had come to an end. Suddenly and, as it seemed to them, inexplicably, Mrs. Clutters had died. It had never occurred to any of them that Mrs. Clutters could die. They seldom saw her. The kitchen was her domain, and Magnolia was her messenger. If they had any preferences or prejudices concerning food, they made them known to Magnolia, and Magnolia made them known to Mrs. Clutters. Ninian returning home in an epicurean mood, might announce that he had seen mushrooms in a greengrocer's window. "Magnolia," he would say, "let there be mushrooms!" and Magnolia would answer, "Yes, sir, certainly, sir!" and behold in the morning there would be mushrooms for breakfast. Or Gilbert would give their opinion of a dish. "Magnolia, we do not like scrambled eggs. We like our eggs boiled, fried, poached, beaten up in milk, Mr. Graham even likes them raw, but none of us like them scrambled!..." and Magnolia would say, "Yes, sir, certainly, sir!" and so scrambled eggs ceased to be seen on their breakfast table. Magnolia always said, "Yes, sir, certainly, sir!" If they had informed her that the Judgment Day was to begin that afternoon at three o'clock, Magnolia, they felt sure, would say, "Yes, sir, certainly, sir!" and go on with her work.... There seemed to be no adequate excuse for Mrs. Clutters' death ... "an' everythink goin' on so nice an' all!" as Magnolia said ... and yet she had died. There had been delay in serving breakfast, and Roger, anxious to catch a train, had been impatient.

"Magnolia!" he shouted from the door, "Magnolia!"

"Yes, sir!" Magnolia answered in an agitated voice.

They waited for her to add "Certainly, sir!" but she did not do so, and they looked oddly at each other, feeling that something unusual had happened.

"We're waiting for breakfast," Roger said in a less impatient voice.

"Yes, sir, I'm comin', sir!..."

Magnolia appeared at the door, very red in the face and very worried in her looks, and placed a covered dish in front of Roger who was the father of the four, appointed to carve and to serve.

"What's this?" Roger demanded when he had removed the cover.

"Please, sir, it's eggs, sir! Fried eggs, sir! That's what it's supposed to be, sir!" Magnolia replied dubiously.

"It's a bad imitation, Magnolia!" Gilbert said. "I think I'll just have bread and marmalade this morning!"

He reached for the marmalade as he spoke, and Henry, eyeing the eggs with disrelish, murmured, "After you, Gilbert!"

"Tell Mrs. Clutters I want her," Roger said to Magnolia.

"Please, sir, she's not very well in herself this mornin'...."

"Not very well!"

"Do you mean to say she's ill?" Ninian shouted.

"Yes, sir. It was me fried the eggs, sir!"

"But ... but she can't be ill," Ninian continued.

"Well, she is, sir. That's what she says any'ow. 'You'll 'ave to cook the breakfis yourself', she says to me, an' when I said I didn't know 'ow, she said 'Well, you must do the best you can, that's all!' an' I done it, sir. She don't look well at all!..."

"How long has she been ill?" Roger asked.

"I don't know, sir. She didn't tell me. She was groanin' a bit yesterday an' the day before, but she wouldn't give in. I said to 'er, 'If I was you, Mrs. Clutters, I'd 'ave a doctor an' chance it!' an' she told me to 'old me tongue, so of course I wasn't goin' to say no more, not after that. I mean to say, I can take a 'int as good as any one...."

"We'd better send for a doctor," Roger said, interrupting Magnolia. "I'll telephone to Dunroon. He lives quite near!" Then he remembered his county court case. "You'd better telephone, Quinny! I must catch this train. Take these ... eggs away, Magnolia. We won't say anything more about them. You did your best!"

"Yes, sir, I did, but I told 'er I didn't know 'ow...."

"All right!" said Roger, passing the dish to her.

3

Dr. Dunroon suggested that they should send for Mrs. Clutters' friends.

"Is it serious, doctor?" Henry asked, and the doctor nodded his head. "She's dying," he said.

"Dying!"

Magnolia, disregarding the conventions, had stood by, openly listening to what they were saying, and when she heard the doctor say that Mrs. Clutters was dying, she let a howl out of her that startled them. The doctor turned to her quickly.

"Hold your tongue," he said, "or she'll hear you. Anybody 'ud think you were dying by the noise you're making!"

Magnolia blubbered away. "I 'ate to 'ear of anybody dyin'," she said. "I never been in a 'ouse before where it's 'appened, an' besides she's been good to me!" Her mind wandered off at a tangent "Any'ow," she said, wiping her eyes, "I done me best. No one can't never say I ain't done me best, an' the best can't do no more!"

"Has she got any friends, Magnolia?..."

It seemed to them to be extraordinary that this woman had lived in their house, had worked and cared for them, and yet was so much a stranger to them that now, in this time of her coming dissolution, they did not know where her friends were to be found, whether indeed, she had any friends. "That's very English," Henry thought; "in Ireland we know all about our servants!"

"Well, I think 'e's 'er 'usband," Magnolia replied. "Any'ow, 'e was drunk when 'e come!..."

They had assumed that Mrs. Clutters was a widow, a childless widow....

"I've seen 'im 'angin' about two-three times, an' when I said to 'er, 'Mrs. Clutters, there's your friend 'angin' about the corner of the street, she tole me to mind me own business, an' then she 'urried out. Of course, it 'adn't got nothink to do with me, 'oo 'e was, an' when she tole me to mind me own business, I took the 'int...."

"Do you know where he lives?" Gilbert asked.

"No, sir, I don't. When she told me to mind me own business!..."

The approach of Death had made Magnolia amazingly garrulous. She said more to them that morning than she had said to them all the rest of the time she had been in their service ... and mixed up with her reminiscences of what Mrs. Clutters had said to her and what she had said to Mrs. Clutters, there was a continual statement of her fear and dislike of death, followed by the assertion that no one 'ad ever died in a house she'd worked in before.

"You'd think she was blaming us for it," Gilbert said afterwards.

"Well, you'd better go and ask her to tell you where her husband lives," Henry said to her, but she shrunk away from him when he said that.

"Oh, I couldn't go near no one what was dyin'," she said. "I ain't used to it, an' I don't like it!"

Ninian shoved her aside. "I'll go," he said.

"We'd better get some one to look after her," Gilbert proposed when Ninian had gone. "Magnolia's no damn good!..."

"No, sir, I ain't ... not with dead people I ain't!"

"Clear out, Magnolia!" Gilbert shouted at her. "Go and make the beds or sit in the kitchen or something!"

"Yes, sir, certainly, sir!" Magnolia answered, and then she left the room.

"I've never felt such a helpless ass in my life before," Gilbert went on when she had shut the door behind her. "I simply don't know what to do!"

"We can't do anything," Henry murmured. "Dunroon said he'd come in again in a short while. Perhaps if we were to get a nurse or somebody. There's sure to be a Nurses' Home near to. Can't we ring up somebody?"

He got hold of the telephone book and began to turn over the pages rapidly.

"What are you looking for?" Gilbert asked.

"Nursing Homes," he answered.

"That's no good. Let's send round to Dunroon's!..."

"He won't be there!"

"Some one'll be there. We'll ring 'em up!..."

Dr. Dunroon's secretary was there, and she knew exactly what to do. "Oh, very well," she said in a voice so calm that Gilbert felt reassured. "I'll send some one round as soon as possible!"

Ninian came down the stairs before they had finished telephoning to Dr. Dunroon's secretary.

"I'm going to fetch her husband," he whispered to Henry, and then he left them.

4

"Let's go out," Gilbert said suddenly to Henry.

The nurse had arrived, and was busy in attendance on Mrs. Clutters. Magnolia, full of the antagonism which servants instinctively feel towards nurses, was maintaining a grievance in the kitchen. "Givin' 'er orders, as if she was some one!" she was mumbling to herself. "Too bossy, she is!..."

"It's no good trying to do any work to-day," Gilbert went on. "I ... I couldn't make up things with her ... up there!"

They told Magnolia that they would have their meals out, and that she need not trouble to cook anything for them, and they sent for the nurse and explained their circumstances to her. "That's all right," she said cheerfully, "I'll look after myself!"

They set off towards Hampstead, but after a while they found themselves returning to Bloomsbury. They could not keep away from the house.... They tried to eat a meal at the Vienna Cafe, but they could not swallow the food, so they paid their bill and went away. They wandered into the British Museum, and tried to interest themselves in Egyptology....

"This female," said Gilbert, pointing to the mummy of the Priestess of Amen-Ra, "is supposed to bring frightful ill-luck to you if you squint at her. There was a fellow at Cambridge who was cracked about her ... used to come here in vac. and make love to her ... sit here for hours spooning with a corpse. I often wanted to smack his face for him!"

"Pose, I expect!" Henry replied. "I should have thought it was rather dull to get smitten on a woman who's as dead as this one is...."

They remembered Mrs. Clutters....

"Let's go back and see what's happened," Gilbert said, turning away from the case which held the Priestess....

Ninian met them in the hall. "She's dead," he said. "Her husband's in the kitchen. I found him in a lodging-house in Camden Town, and I should say he's a first-class rotter!"

5

They sat together that evening without speaking. There was to have been a meeting of the Improved Tories to talk over Roger's plan for enlarging the Army and mitigating the problem of unemployment. They could not get messages to people in time, and so part of the evening was spent in whispered explanations at the door to those who turned up.

"I think I'll go to bed," Ninian said, but he did not move, nor did any of them move. It was as if they wished to keep together as long as possible.

Magnolia, red-eyed from weeping, had come to them earlier in the evening, declaring that she was frightened.

"What are you afraid of?" Roger snapped at her.

"'Er!" she answered.

"But she's dead!..."

"Yes, sir," Magnolia said, "that's why! I don't like goin' upstairs be meself, sir!..."

"Oh, rubbish, Magnolia!" Roger exclaimed.

"I can't 'elp bein' afraid, sir. I know she's dead an' can't do me no 'arm ... not that she'd want to do me any 'arm ... I will say that for 'er ... but some'ow I'm afraid all the same, sir. I can't 'elp it!"

"I want to get a book out of my room," Henry interjected, "so I'll go upstairs with her!"

"Oh, thank you, sir," said Magnolia gratefully. "I know she wouldn't 'arm me if she could 'elp it, not if she was alive any'ow, but they're different when they're dead!..." She broke down, blubbering hopelessly. "Oh, I wish I was 'ome," she moaned.

"Come on, Magnolia!" Henry said, opening the door for her.

"That girl's getting on my nerves," Gilbert murmured when she had gone.

Magnolia followed Henry upstairs. They had to pass the room in which the dead woman lay, and Magnolia, when she reached the door, gave a little squeal of fright and ran forward, thrusting past Henry.... "Don't be a fool, Magnolia!" he said, catching hold of her arm and steadying her.

"I'm frightened, sir!" she moaned, looking up at him with dilated eyes.

"There's nothing to be afraid of. Come along!"

He took her to her room and opened the door for her.

"You're all right now, aren't you?" he said, switching on the light.

"Yes, thank you, sir!"

"Good-night, then!"

"Good-night, sir!"

When she had shut the door, he heard her turning the key in the lock, and he smiled at her precaution. "That wouldn't hinder Mrs. Clutters' ghost if she ... if she started to walk!" he thought to himself, as he descended the stairs to his room. He had switched off the light on Magnolia's landing, but there was a light showing dimly up the stairs from the landing beneath. It shone faintly on the door of the room in which Mrs. Clutters' body was lying. He went down the stairs towards the door, and then, half-way down, stopped. He could not look away from the door ... he felt that in a moment or two it would open, and Mrs. Clutters, in her grave-clothes, would stand in the shadow and look at him with fixed eyes....

"Don't be a fool!" he said aloud, shaking his head and dashing his hand across his eyes as if he were trying to sweep something away. "I'm nervy, that's what it is," he went on, still speaking aloud. "I'm worse than Magnolia!..."

He descended the rest of the stairs, determined not to show any sign of fear, and then, as he passed the door, he shut his eyes and hurried by. He ran down the next flight of stairs, afraid to look back, and did not pause in his running until he had reached the ground floor. He stood still in the hall for a few minutes to recover himself, and then he entered the room where the others were sitting.

They looked up at him.

"All right?" Ninian asked, and Henry nodded his head.

"You haven't brought the book," Roger said.

"No," he answered, "No ... I changed my mind. I didn't really want the book. I just said that to ... to get Magnolia out of the room!"

6

Mrs. Clutters' husband insisted on seeing them after the funeral because, he said, he wished to thank them for all they had done for "'er!" He made a jerk over his shoulder with his thumb when he said "'er," and they gathered that he was indicating the direction of Kensal Green cemetery. He was very maudlin and drunk, and Ninian thought that he ought to be kicked.

"I'm shorry," he said, "to be thish con ... condish'n, gemmem, but y'see it's like this. A gemman said to me, y'see, 'Bert,' 'e says ... thash my name ... Bert, called after Queen's 'usban' ... Gaw' bless 'er!... Alber' the Goo' they called 'im ... not me, oh, Lor' no!... thish gemmam, 'e says to me, 'Bert,' 'e says, 'come an' 'ave one!' an' so o' course I 'ad to 'ave one. Thash 'ow 'twas, see! Shorry to be in thish disgrashful state ... thish sad occas'n, gemmem. Very shorry! I thank you!" He turned to leave them, staggering towards the door. "I ain't been a good 'usban' to 'er," he went on, again making the jerking gesture over his shoulder with his thumb. "Thash a fac'. I ain't. But I 'pologise. I'm shorry! Can't say no more'n that, can I? Goo'-ni', gemmem!"

And then he staggered out.

"Somebody ought to do him in," said Ninian, going to see that he left the house as quickly as possible.

"Well," said Roger, when Ninian had returned, "what are we going to do next?"

"Sack Magnolia," said Gilbert.

"And then?" Roger went on.

"I don't know," Gilbert replied.

"I suppose we can get another housekeeper," Henry suggested.

"Yes, we could do that," said Gilbert.

Roger got up and moved about the room for a few moments. "I think I shall get married," he said at last. "I've got to get married some time, and I might as well get married now. This ... this business seems to provide an opportunity, don't you think?"