"Well, I was brought up in 'em, as you may say," said Annie, whose father had been a park-keeper, and whose mother and grandmother were natives of Westbourne Grove.

By a quiet day Rosamund meant a day lived through in absolute solitude, a day of meditation in the cloistered garden. She would not have any lunch. Then she would have a better appetite for the nursery tea at which Robin would relate to her all the doings of the greatest day of his life. Precious, precious Robin!

She went down into the garden.

It was a mistily bright day of November. The sun shone through a delicate veil. The air was cold but not sharp. Neither autumn nor winter ruled. It seemed like a day which had slipped into an interstice between two seasons, a day that was somehow rare and exceptional, holding a faint stillness that was strange. There was in it something of the far away. If a fairy day can be cold, it was like a fairy day. On such a day one treads lightly and softly and at moments feels almost as if out of the body.

Lightly and softly Rosamund went to and fro between the high and mossy walls of the garden, keeping to the straight paths. When the bells chimed in the tower of the Cathedral they sounded much farther away than usual; the song of the thrush somewhere in the elder bush near the garden door was curiously remote; the caw-caw of the rooks dropped down as if from an immeasurable distance. Through the mist the sunshine filtered, lightly pale and pure, a sensitive sunshine which would surely not stay very long in Rosamund's garden.

A sort of thin stillness had fallen upon the world.

And so another chapter of life was closing, the happy chapter of Welsley!

Something of sadness accompanied Rosamund along the straight paths, the delicate melancholy which attends the farewells of one who has regret but who has hope.

With the new Dion and with the old Robin, the Robin blessedly unchanged, she could not be really unhappy. Yet it was sad to give up the dear garden and all the dreams which belonged to it. Far down in her—she knew it—there was certainly a recluse. She could see the black figure, the sheltered face, the eyes looking down, the praying hands. It would have been very natural to her long ago to seek God in the way of the recluse. But not now!

Hermes and the child came before her. In the stillness of Welsley it was as if she heard the green stillness of Elis. She was quite alone in that inner room where stood the messenger with the wings on his sandals. Dion had stayed outside. He had been unselfish that day as to-day she had been unselfish. For she had wanted to go with the little gaiters. She could see the smiling look of eternity upon the face of the messenger. He had no fear for the child. He had mounted on winged feet to the region where no fear is. How his benign and eternal calm had sunk into Rosamund's soul that day in Elis. Far off she had seen through the frame of the Museum doorway a bit of the valley in which the Hermes had dwelt, and stretching across it a branch of wild olive. She had looked at it and had thought of the victor's Crown, a crown which had even been won by a boy at the games.

Already then a fore-knowledge of Robin had been in her.

She had gazed at the branch and loved it. Certainly she had been dreaming, as she had afterwards told Dion, and in her dream had been Hermes and the child, and surely another child for whose future the messenger would not fear. The branch of wild olive had, perhaps, entered into the dream. Into a crown she had wound it to set upon the little fair head. And that was why she had suffered, had really suffered, when a cruel hand had come into Elis and had torn down the wild olive branch. Dion's hand!

That action had been like a murder. She remembered even now her feeling of anger and distress. She had been startled. She had been ruthlessly torn away from the exquisite calm in which, with the Hermes, she had been celestially dreaming. Dion had torn her away, Dion who loved her so much.

Why had he done it? Even now she did not know.

He had taken her out of that dream, and now he was going to take her away from Welsley.

The misty brightness was already fading from the garden; the song of the thrush was no longer audible: he had flown away from the elder bush and from Rosamund. The coldness and silence of the day seemed to deepen about her. Welsley was fading out of her life. She felt that. She was going to begin again. But as she had carried Elis with her when she left it, and the dear tombs and temples of Greece, when she had bidden good-by to the bare and beautiful land whose winds and whose waters are not as the winds and the waters of any other region, so she would carry away with her Welsley, this garden with its seclusion, its old religious atmosphere, the music of the chimes, even the thrush's song from the elder bush. "Farewell!" She must say that. But she had her precious possession. Another page of the book of life would be turned. That was all.

That was all? She sighed. A painful sense of the impermanence of the things of this world came suddenly upon her. Like running water life was slipping by; its joys, the shining bubbles poised upon the surface, drifted into the distance and—how quickly!—were out of reach.

Perhaps the great attraction, the lure of the religious life, was the sense felt by those who led it of having a close grip upon that which was permanent. The joys of the world—even the natural, healthy, allowed joys—were shut out, but there was the great compensation, companionship with that to which no "farewell" would ever have to be said, with that to which death only brought the human being nearer.

Rosamund stopped in her walk, and looked up at the great Cathedral which towered above the wall of the garden. She had been pacing to and fro for a long time. She did not feel tired, but she was beset by an unaccustomed sensation of weariness, mental and spiritual rather than physical.

After a minute she went into the house, found a rug and a book, came back into the garden, and sat down on a bench in a corner hidden from observation. This bench was close to the wall which divided the garden from the "Dark Entry." It was separated from the lawn and the view of the house by a belt of shrubs. Rosamund was fond of this nook and had very often sat in it, sometimes alone, sometimes with Robin. She had told the maids never to look for her there; if any visitor came and she was not seen in that part of the garden which was commanded by the windows of the house, they were to conclude that she was "out." Here, then, she was quite safe, and could turn the last page of the chapter of Welsley in her book of life.

She wrapped herself up in the big and heavy rug. The sun was gone, the mist had become slightly more dense, the air was colder.

Presently Dion and Robin would come back; there would be tea in the warm old-fashioned nursery, gay talk, the telling of wonderful deeds.

If only Robin did not fall off Jane! But Dion would take care of that. Dion certainly loved Robin very much. The bond between father and son had evidently been strengthened by the intervention of the war, which had broken off their intercourse for a time, and given Robin a father changed by contact with hard realities.

For a few minutes in imagination Rosamund followed the two figures over the stubble, the thin strong walking figure, and the little darling figure on pony back. Would Robin quite forget her in the midst of his proud and triumphant joy? She wondered. Even if he did, she would not really mind. She wanted him to be very happy indeed without her—just for a short time: that he could not be happy without her for long she knew very well.

Oddly, her sensation of weariness persisted. She recognized it now as wholly unphysical. She was certainly feeling what people call "depressed." No doubt this unusual depression—for she had been born with a singularly cheerful spirit—was caused by the resolution she had taken to give up Welsley. Perhaps Welsley meant more to her even than she had supposed. But it was absurd—wasn't it?—to be so dominated by places. People, certain people, might mean everything in the life of a woman; many women lived, really lived, only in and through their lovers, their husbands, their children; but what woman lived in and through the life of the place? She had only to compare mentally the loss of Welsley with—say—the loss of Dion, the new Dion, to realize how little Welsley really meant to her. Certainly she loved it as a place, but probably a woman can only love a place with a bit of her.

And yet to-day, she certainly felt depressed. Even the thought of the nursery tea did not drive the depression from her.

She opened the book she had brought from the house. It was a volume of Browning's poems. She had opened it at hap-hazard, and now her eyes rested on these words, words loved almost above all others by one of the greatest souls that ever spent itself for England:

"I go to prove my soul! I see my way as birds their trackless way I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first I ask not; but unless God send His Hail Or blinding fire-balls, sleet, or stifling snow, In some time, His good time!—I shall arrive: He guides me and the bird. In His good time!"

She read the lines three—four times. Then she laid the book down on her knees and sat very still. Consciously she tried to withdraw herself, to pass into meditation carrying the poem with her.

"I see my way as birds their trackless way—I shall arrive!"

Rosmund was gazing downward at a coping of worn brick on which she had set her feet, but she did not see it now. She saw migratory birds traveling steadily through a vast expanse of gray sky; birds that were going, at the appointed time, to some far-distant place, in search of a golden climate, in search of the sun. Inevitably they would come into the golden climate, inevitably they would find the sun which they needed. Like them she was traveling through a vast gray expanse, the life of the world. Robin and Dion were with her. They were seeking the sun which they needed. Surely, like the birds, they would find the sun at last. She had thought to seek her way deliberately. When she was quite a girl it had seemed to her that the human being had the power, and was therefore almost under the obligation, to find the way to God for herself. When she had contemplated entering the religious life the thought at the back of her mind had perhaps been something like this: "I'll conquer the love and the mercy of God by my own exertions; I'll find the way to God by my own ingenuity and determination in searching it out." Possibly she had never quite simply and humbly said in her soul, with Newman, "Be Thou my Guide." Now, as she sat in the garden, with the image of the migratory birds in her mind, she thought, "The birds do that. They give themselves to the sky, and God does the rest. He knows the way by which each human soul can best go back to that from which once it issued forth." Perhaps as a Sister, leading the hidden secluded life, she could not have found the way; perhaps she had to find it in the world, through Dion with whom she had united herself, or through Robin to whom she had given birth.

Through Robin! Yes, surely that was her way to God. "A little child shall lead them." The words started up in her mind without their context, and she realized that, though people believe it is the mother who teaches the child, nevertheless the mother learns the greatest truths from the child. Who living on the earth could keep her from sin as surely as her Robin? How could she be evil when Robin looked to her as the embodiment of goodness. What would she not do, what would she not give up, to increase Robin's love for her, to give him more reason for regarding her with innocent confidence and simple reverence?

Yes, Robin was surely her way to God.

And now, withdrawn into the very depths of meditation, and hearing no longer the distant voices of the rooks as they wheeled about the elm-tops near Canon Wilton's house, she went onwards down the way chosen for her by God, the "Robin-way."

Now Robin was a young child, and naturally looked up to her as a kind of Providence. Presently he would be a lad; inevitably he would reach the age when the growing mind becomes critical. Young animals gnaw hard things to test the strength of their teeth; so do young growing minds gnaw the bones that come in their way. Even the mother comes in for much secret criticism from the son who loves her. Rosamund's time for being criticized by Robin would come in the course of the years. She must try to get ready against that time; she must try to be worthy of Robin's love when he was able to be critical. And so onwards down the way across the gray expanse, guided, like the birds!

Rosamund saw herself now as the mother of a tall son, hardened a little by public-school life, a cricketer, a rower, a swimmer; perhaps intellectual too, the winner of a scholarship. There were so many hearts and minds that the mother of a son must learn to keep, to companion, to influence, to go forward with: the heart and the mind of the child, the schoolboy, the undergraduate, the young man out in the world taking up his life-task—a soldier perhaps, or a man of learning, a pioneer, a carver of new ways for the crowd following behind.

It was a tremendous thing to be a mother; it was a difficult way to God. But it was the most beautiful way of all the ways, and Rosamund was very thankful that she had been guided to take it. Robin, she knew, had taught her already very much, but how little compared with all that he was destined to teach her in the future! Even when her hair was white no doubt she would still be learning from him, would still be trying to lift herself a little higher lest he should ever have to look downward to see her.

For a long time she meditated on these things, for a very long while. The sun never came back to the garden as she dreamed of the sun which the birds were seeking, of the sun which she and Dion and Robin were seeking; the afternoon hours passed on in a gray procession; the chimes sounded many times, but she did not hear them. She had forgotten Welsley in remembering how small a part Welsley must play in her mother-life, in remembering how very small were the birds in the immense expanse of the sky.

In Meditation she had entered into Vastness.

The sound of the organ in the Cathedral recalled her. It was four o'clock. The afternoon service was just beginning. She sat still and listened. It was growing dark now, but she had no wish to move. Probably in half an hour Robin and Dion would come back from the shooting. From to-day she would think of Robin in a different way. He would be even dearer to her, even more sacred, her little teacher. What did it matter where she lived if her little teacher was with her. The sting had gone out of her unselfishness; she was glad she had been able to be unselfish, to put Dion before herself.

The organ ceased. They were praying now in the Cathedral. Presently she heard them singing the psalms faintly. The voices of the boys came to her with a sort of vague sweetness through the gathering darkness and the mist. They died away; the Magnificat followed, then silence, then the Nunc Dimittis, then another silence, presently the anthem. Finally she heard the organ alone in a Fugue of Bach.

The quarter to five chimed in the tower. Dion and Robin were a little late.

She got up, and carried the rug into the house.

"Annie!" she called.

Annie came.

"When Mr. Leith and Robin come back,—they'll be here directly,—will you ask them to give me a call? I shall be in the garden."

"Very well, ma'am."

Again Rosamund paced up and down the paths. Now she was very conscious of herself and of her surroundings. The long night of early winter was falling upon Welsley. Five o'clock struck, a quarter-past five, then the half-hour. She stood still on the path, beginning to wonder. How late they were! Robin would surely be very tired. It would be too much for him. Directly he had had his tea he must be put to bed. Or perhaps it would be best to put him to bed at once. He would be disappointed, but they could easily have tea in the night nursery. She smiled, conjuring up a picture of Robin under the bedclothes being fed pieces of cake. He would enjoy that. And she would hold his cup for him while he drank, so that the bed might be safe. Meals in bed are often dangerous to the bed. How delightful were all the little absurd things she did for Robin!

When the chimes told her that it was a quarter to six she began to feel puzzled, and just the least little bit anxious. It had been quite dark for a little while now. Job Crickendon's farm was only about four miles from Welsley. Harrington's horse might not be an exceptionally fast-goer, but surely he could cover six miles in an hour. Dion and Robin could get back in forty minutes at the most. They must have stayed on at Job Crickendon's till past five o'clock. Could they have had tea there? No, she was sure they would not have done that, when they knew she was waiting for them, was looking forward eagerly to tea in the nursery.

When six o'clock struck and they had not returned she felt really uneasy, although she was not at all a nervous mother, and seldom, or never, worried about her little son. She could not doubt any longer that something unexpected had occurred. They were dining at half-past seven that night. In an hour's time at the latest she and Dion would have to dress. The hopes she had set on the family tea were vanishing. In her uneasiness she began to feel almost absurdly disappointed about the tea. She was hungry, too; she had had no lunch just because of the tea. It was to be a sort of family revel, and she had wished to enjoy it in every way, to make of it a real meal. Her abstention from lunch now seemed to her almost pitiful. Disappointment became acute in her. Yet even now her uneasiness, though definite, was not strong. If it had been she would not have been able to feel so disappointed, even so sorry for herself. She had given up the day to Dion. The nursery tea was to have been her little reward. Now she would be deprived of it. For a moment she felt hurt, almost the least bit angry.

As the words formed themselves in her mind she heard the quarter-past six chime out in the tower. She stood still on the path. What had happened? Perhaps Robin had fallen off Jane and hurt himself, or perhaps there had been an accident when they were driving home. Harrington's horse was probably a crock. He might have fallen down. The dogcart was a high one——

She pulled herself up. She had always secretly rather despised the typical "anxious mother," had always thought that the love which shows itself in perpetual fear was a silly, poor sort of affection. Even when Robin, as a baby, had once been seriously ill, at the time of the Clarke divorce case, she had been calm, had shown complete self-control. She had even surprised people by her fearlessness and quiet determination.

They did not know how she had prayed, and almost agonized in secret. She had drawn the calm at which they had wondered from prayer. She had asked God to let Robin get well, and she had felt that her prayer had been heard, and that God would grant her the life of her child.

Perhaps she had exaggerated to herself the danger he was in. But he was ill—for a short time he was very ill, and a baby's hold on life is but frail.

Now she remembered her self-control during Robin's illness, and resolutely she banished her anxiety. There was no doubt some perfectly simple explanation which presently would account to her for their not coming at the tea hour.

"Ma'am!" cried a respectable voice. "Ma-a-am!"

"What is it, Nurse. They haven't come back?"

Nurse was coming down the path gingerly, with a shawl over her cap.

"No, ma'am. Whatever can have happened? Something's a-happened, that's certain."

"Nonsense, Nurse!"

"But whatever should keep them out till late into the night, ma'am?"

"It's only a little after six. It isn't night at all."

"But the tea, ma'am! And Master Robin's so regular in his habits. He'll be fair famished, ma'am, that he will. I——Well, ma'am, if I may say it, I really don't hold with all this shooting, and sport, and what not for such young children."

"It's only just for once, Nurse. Go in now. You'll catch cold."

"But yourself, ma'am?"

"I'm quite warm. I'd rather stay out."

Nurse stared anxiously for a moment, then turned away and went gingerly back to the house. Her white shawl faded against the background of darkness. With its fading Rosamund entered into—not exactly darkness, but into deep shadows. She supposed that nurse's fear had communicated itself to her; she had caught the infection of fear from nurse. But when was nurse not afraid? She was an excellent woman and absolutely devoted to Robin, but she was not a Spartan. She leaped at sight of a mouse, and imagined diseases to be for ever floating Robinwards on all the breezes. Rosamund had strictly forbidden her ever to talk nonsense about illness to Robin, and she had obeyed. But that was her one fault; she had a timorous nature.

Rosamund wished nurse had not come out into the garden to infect her with foolish fear.

Nurse's invitation to her to come into the house had made her suddenly know that to be shut in would be intolerable to her. Why was that? She now knew that lately, while she had been walking in the garden, she had been straining her ears to hear the sound of wheels in the Green Court. She knew she would be able to hear them in the garden. In the house that would be impossible. Therefore she could not go into the house till Robin came back.

All her fear was for Robin. He was so young, so tiny. Perhaps she ought not to have allowed him to go. Perhaps nurse was right, and such an expedition ought to have been ruled out as soon as it was suggested. Perhaps Dion and she had been altogether too Doric. She began to think so. But then she thought: "Robin's with his father. What harm could come to him with his father, and such a competent father too?" That thought of Dion's strength, coolness, competency reassured her; she dwelt on it. Of course with Dion Robin must be all right.

Presently, leaving the path in front of the house, she went again to the seat hidden away behind the shrubs against the wall which separated the garden from the Dark Entry. This dark entry was an arched corridor of stone which led directly from the Green Court to the passage-way on which the main door of the garden opened. It was paved with worn slabs of stone upon which the feet of any one passing rang with a mournful and hollow sound. A tiny path skirted the garden wall, running between the hidden seat and the small belt of shrubs which shut out a view of the house. Just before she turned into this path Rosamund looked back at the old house, and saw a lamp gleaming in the lattice window of the nursery. She did not sit down on the seat. She had thought to do that and to listen. But the mist had made the wood very wet, and she had left the rug in the house. If she walked softly up and down the little path she would be sure to hear the hoofs of Harrington's horse, the wheels of the dogcart directly the wanderers drove into the Green Court. There they would get down, and would walk home through the Dark Entry. She intended to call out to them when she heard their footsteps ringing on the old stones. That would surprise them. She tried to enjoy the thought of their surprise when they heard her voice coming out of the darkness. How Robin would jump at the sound of mummy!

She stood just in front of the seat for two or three minutes, listening intently in the misty darkness. She heard nothing except for a moment a rustling which sounded like a bird moving in ivy. Then she began to walk softly up and down passing and repassing the seat. When she came up to the seat for the fourth time in her walk, an ugly memory—she knew not why—rose in her mind like a weed in a pool; it was the memory of a story which she had long ago read and disliked. She had read it, she remembered, in a railway train on a long journey. She had had a book, something interesting and beautiful, with her, but she had finished it. A passenger, who had got out of the carriage, had left behind him a paper-covered volume of short stories. She had taken it up and had read the first story, which now, after an interval of years, recurred to her mind.

There was in the story a very commonplace business man, middle-aged, quite unromantic and heavy, the sort of man who does not know what "nerves" means, who thinks suggestion "damned nonsense," and psychical research, occultism, and so forth, absurdities fit only to take up the time of "a pack of silly women." This worthy person lived in the suburbs of London in a semi-detached villa with a long piece of garden at the back. On the other side of the fairly high garden wall was the garden of his next-door neighbor, another business man of the usual suburban type. Both men were busy gardeners in their spare time. Number one had conceived the happy idea of putting up a tea-house in the angle of the wall at the bottom of his lawn. Number two, having heard of this achievement, and not wishing to be outdone, put up a very similar tea-house in the corresponding angle on his side of the wall. The two tea-houses stood therefore back to back with nothing but the wall between them. Now, one warm summer evening Mr. Jenkins-Smith—Rosamund could remember his name, though she had not thought of him for years—had been busy watering his flowers and mowing his lawn. He had worked really hard, and when the evening began to close in he thought he would go into the tea-house and have a rest. On each side of the curly-legged tea-table of unpolished wood stood a wicker arm-chair. Into one of these chairs Mr. Jenkins-Smith sank with a sigh of content. Then he lighted his pipe, stretched out his short legs, and, gazing at his beautifully trimmed garden, prepared to enjoy a delicious hour of well-earned repose. Things were going well with him; money was easy; his health was good; when he sat down in the wicker chair and put his pipe into his mouth he was, perhaps, as happy a man as you could find in all Surbiton.

But presently, in fact very soon, he became conscious of a disagreeable feeling. A curious depression began to come upon him. He smoked steadily, he gazed out at his garden green with turf and gay with flowers, but his interest and pleasure in it were gone from him. He wondered why. Presently he turned his head and looked over his shoulder. What he was looking for he did not know; simply he felt obliged to do what he did. He saw, of course, nothing but the curved wooden back of the tea-house. He listened, he strained his ears, but he heard nothing except the faint "ting-ting" of a tram-bell, and voices of some children playing in a distant garden. His pipe had gone out. As he lit a match and held it to his pipe bowl he saw that his hand was shaking. Whatever had come to him? He was no drinker; he had always been a temperate man, proud of his clear eyes and steady limbs, yet now he was shaking like a drunkard. Perspiration burst out upon his forehead. He was seized by an intense desire to get away from the tea-house, to get out into the open, and he half rose from his chair, holding on to the arms and dropping his pipe on the wooden floor. The tiny noise it made set his nerves in a turmoil. He was afraid. But of what? He took his hands from the chair and sat back, angry with himself, almost ashamed. That he should feel afraid, here in his own garden, in his own cozy tea-house! It was absurd, monstrous; it was like a sort of madness come upon him. But he was determined not to give way to such nonsense. Just because he was longing to go out of the tea-house he would remain in it. Let the darkness come; he did not mind it; he was going to smoke his pipe.

Again he stared over his shoulder, and the sweat ran down his face. Had not he heard something in the tea-house of his neighbor on the other side of the wall? It seemed to him that he had rather felt a sound than actually heard it. Nausea came upon him. He got up trembling. But still he was ashamed of himself, and he would not go out of the tea-house. Instead he went behind the table, stood close to the wooden wall, put his ear to it and listened intently. He heard nothing; but when he was standing against the wall his horror and fear increased until he could no longer combat them. He turned sharply, knocked over a chair, and hurried out into the garden. There for a moment he stood still. Under the sky he felt better, but not himself; he did not feel himself at all. After a pause for consideration he put on his jacket,—he had been gardening in his shirt-sleeves,—went into his house, out into the road, and then up to the door of his neighbor. There he rang the bell and knocked. A maid came. "Is your master in?" he asked. "Yes, sir, he's sitting in the summer-house at the end of the garden." "How long's he been there?" "About half an hour, sir, as near as I can reckon." "Could I see him?" "Certainly, sir." "Perhaps you'd—perhaps you'd show me to the summer-house." "Yes, sir."

Mr. Jenkins-Smith and the maid went to the end of the garden, and there, in the summer-house, they found the corpse of a suicide hanging from a beam in the roof.

This was the ugly story which had come into Rosamund's mind as she stood by the seat close to the garden wall. On the other side of Mr. Jenkins-Smith's wall had been the summer-house of his neighbor; on the other side of her wall there was the Dark Entry. She stood considering this fact and thinking of the man's terror in his garden. He had been subject surely to an emanation. A mysterious message had been sent to him by the corpse which dangled from the beam on the other side of the wall.

She went nearer to the wall of the garden and listened attentively. Had she not heard a sound in the Dark Entry? It seemed to her that some one had come into the stone corridor while she had been walking up and down on the path, and was now standing there motionless. But how very unlikely it was that any one would do such a thing! It must be quite black there now, and very cold on the stone pavement, between the stone walls, under the roof of stone. Of course no one was there.

Nevertheless she went on listening with a sort of painful attention. And distress came upon her. It began in a sort of physical malaise out of which a mental dread, such as she had never yet experienced, was born. She felt now quite certain that some one was standing still in the Dark Entry, very close to her, but separated from her by two walls of brick and stone; and something of this unseen person, of his attention, or his anger, or his terror, or his criminal intent, in any case something tremendously powerful, pierced the walls and came upon her and enveloped her. She opened her lips, not knowing what she was going to say, and from them came the cry:

"Dion!"

Silence followed her cry.

"Dion! Dion!" she called again.

Immediately after the third cry she heard a slow step on the stones of the Dark Entry, passing close to her but muffled by the intervening walls. It went on very slowly indeed; it was a dragging footfall; the sound of it presently died away.

Then she sat down on the bench close to the wall. She still felt distressed, even afraid. Whoever it was—that loiterer in the Dark Entry—he had left the corridor by the archway near Little Cloisters; he had not gone into the Green Court.

She sat waiting in the darkness.

* * * * *

That afternoon, while Rosamund was in the garden, Mr. Esme Darlington was paying a little visit to his old friend and crony, the Dean of Welsley. He had known the Dean—well, almost ever since he could remember, and the Dean's wife ever since she had married the Dean. His delay in returning to town, caused by Rosamund's attractive invitation, enabled him to spend an hour at the Deanery, where he had tea in the great drawing-room on the first floor, which looked out on the Green Court. So pleasant were the Dean and his wife, so serenely flowed the conversation, that the hour lengthened out into two hours, and the Cathedral chimes announced that it was a quarter to seven before Mr. Darlington uncrumpled his length to go. Even then Mrs. Dean begged him to stay on a little longer.

"It's such a treat to hear all the interesting gossip of London," she said, almost wistfully. "When Dickie"—Dickie was the Dean,—"when Dickie was at St. Peter's, Eaton Square, we knew everything that was going on, but here in Welsley—well, I often feel rather rusty."

Mr. Darlington paid the appropriate compliment, not in a banal way, and then mentioned that at half-past seven he was dining in Little Cloisters.

"That delightful creature Mrs. Dion Leith!" exclaimed Mrs. Dean. "Dickie's hopelessly in her toils."

"My dear!" began the Dean, in pleased protestation.

But she interrupted him.

"I assure you," she went on to Mr. Darlington, "he is always making excuses to see her. She has even influenced him to appoint a new verger, a most extraordinary old person, called Thrush, with a nose!"

Mr. Darlington cocked an interrogative eyebrow.

"My darling!" said the Dean. "He's a good old man, very deserving, and has recently taken the pledge."

"He's a modified teetotaler!" said his wife to Mr. Darlington, patting her husband's arm. "You see what Dickie's coming to. If it goes on he will soon be a modified Dean."

It was past seven when they finished talking about Rosamund and Dion, when Mr. Darlington at length tore himself delicately away from their delightful company, and, warmly wrapped in an overcoat lined with unostentatious sable, set out on the short walk to Canon Wilton's house. To reach the Canon's house he had to pass through the Dark Entry and skirt the garden wall of Little Cloisters.

Now, as he came out of the Dark Entry and stepped into the passage-way, which led by the wall and the old house into the great open space of green lawns and elm trees round which the dwellings of the canons showed their lighted windows to the darkness of the November evening, he was stopped by a terrible sound. It came to him from the garden of Little Cloisters. It was short, sharp and piercing, so piercing that for an instant he felt as if literally it had torn the flesh of his body. He had never before heard any sound at all like it; but, when he was able to think, he thought, he felt almost certain, that it had come from an animal. He shuddered. Always temperamentally averse from any fierce demonstrations of feeling, always instinctively restrained, careful and intelligently conventional, he was painfully startled and moved by this terrible outcry which could only have been caused by intense agony. As he believed that the cry had come from an animal, he naturally supposed that the agony which had caused it was physical. He was a very humane man, and as soon as he had mastered the feeling of cold horror which had for a moment held him rigid, he hastened on to the door of Little Cloisters and pulled the bell. After a pause which seemed to him long the door was opened by Annie, Rosamund's parlor-maid. She presented to Mr. Darlington's peering gaze a face full of ignorance and fear.

"What is the matter?" he asked, in a hesitating voice.

"Sir?" said Annie.

"What has happened in the garden?"

"Nothing, sir, that I know of. I have been in the house." She paused, then added, with a sort of timorous defiance: "I'm not one as would listen, sir."

"Then you didn't hear it?"

"Hear what, sir?"

Her question struck upon Mr. Darlington's native conventionality, and made him conscious of the fact that, perhaps almost indiscreetly, he was bandying words with a maid-servant. He put up one hand to his beard, pulled at it, and then said, almost in his usual voice:

"Is Mrs. Leith in?"

"She's in the garden, sir."

"In the garden?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is—is Mr. Leith at home?"

"He's just come home, sir, and gone to Mrs. Leith in the garden."

Mr. Darlington stood for a moment pulling his beard and raising and lowering his eyebrows. Then he said doubtfully:

"Thank you. I won't disturb them now. I shall be here with Canon Wilton at half-past seven."

Annie stood staring at him in silence.

"They—Mr. and Mrs. Leith expect us, I believe?" added Mr. Darlington.

"They haven't said anything to the contrary, sir."

"No?"

Slowly Mr. Darlington turned away, slowly he disappeared into the darkness; his head was bent, and he looked older than usual. Annie gazed after him. Once she opened her lips as if she were going to call him back, but no sound came from them.

"Annie! Annie!" cried a voice in the house behind her.

She turned sharply and confronted Robin's nurse.

"Where's Master Robin?" said the nurse, almost fiercely.

"I don't know. He hasn't come back with master."

"I'm going into the garden," said the nurse.

"For God's sake, don't!" said Annie.

"Why not?" asked the nurse.

Suddenly Annie began to cry. The nurse pulled her in and shut the door of the house.



CHAPTER X

Rosamund did not know how long she sat in the garden after she had heard the footfall in the Dark Entry. Perhaps five minutes, perhaps many more had slipped by before she was aware of feeling cold. A chill had gone through her mind when she heard the footfall; now her body was chilled. She shivered and got up. She must go into the house.

It was now very dark. The path was a pale grayish blur at her feet. On her left the shrubs which concealed the house from her showed as a heavy morose blackness against the softer and more mysterious blackness of the night. The dampness which rose in the garden was like the dreary whispering of sad earth voices.

She shivered again.

Then she heard a faltering step on the path beyond the shrubs. It was certainly Dion's step. At last they had come back!

With a movement of her shoulders she tried to throw off her depression, as if it were something heavy resting upon her, something which a physical effort could get rid of. Then she called out in a brisk and cheerful voice:

"Dion, I'm here. How late you are! What have you shot?"

It was too late now for the nursery tea, but they had come back and all was well.

"Dion!"

The step had stopped on the path and no voice answered her. Nevertheless she was certain that it was Dion who had come into the garden. Perhaps Robin was with him, perhaps they were going to give her a surprise. She waited for an instant. Something within her was hesitating. She conquered it, not without an effort, and went round the angle of the path. Beyond the shrubs, but not far from them, a man was standing. It was Dion. He was alone. It was so dark that Rosamund could not see him clearly, but she noticed at once that the outline of his figure looked strange. His body seemed to be all awry as if he were standing in an unnatural position. She stopped and stared at this body.

"Is anything wrong, Dion?" she asked. "What's the matter? Why do you stand like that?"

After her last quick question she heard a long-drawn quivering breath.

"Where's Robin?" she said sharply.

He did not answer. She meant to go up to him; but she did not move.

"Why are you so late? Where's Robin?" he repeated.

"Rosamund—"

"Don't move! Stand there, and tell me what it is."

"Haven't I—always tried to make you happy?"

The words came from the body before her, but she did not know the voice. It was Dion's voice, of course. It must be that. But she had never heard it before.

"Don't come nearer to me. What have you done?"

"Robin—I have—I have—Robin—my gun——"

The voice failed in the darkness. Rosamund shut her eyes. She had seen an angry hand tear down a branch of wild olive. Suddenly she knew. It seemed to her that ever since that day long ago in Elis some part of her had always prophetically known that Dion was fated to bring terror and ruin into her life. This was not true, but now she felt it to be true.

"You've killed Robin," she said, quietly and coldly.

Her brain and heart seemed to stand still, like things staring into an immense voice. They had come to the end of their road.

"You've killed Robin," she said again.

"Rosamund——"

The body in front of her moved to come towards her. Then she uttered the fearful cry which was heard by Mr. Darlington on his way home from the Deanery, and she fled from the body which had slain Robin.

That purely instinctive action was the beginning of Dion's punishment. A cry, the movement of a body, and everything which meant life to him, everything for which he had lived, was gone. But he followed Rosamund with a sort of blind obstinacy, driven as she was by instinct. Dimly he knew that he was a man who only merited compassion, all the compassion of the world. He had no horror of himself, but only a horror of that Fate to which mortals have to submit and which had overtaken him in a shining moment of happiness. The gun accident of which his little son had been the victim presented itself to his erring mind as a terrific stroke from above, or from beyond, falling equally upon father and child. He was not responsible for it. The start of a frightened pony, its sudden attempt to bolt, the pulling of a rein which had brought the animal against him just as he was lifting his gun to fire at a rising bird—what were those things? Only the clumsy machinery used by implacable Fate to bring about that which had been willed somewhere, far off in the dark and the distance.

He must tell Rosamund, he must tell Rosamund.

* * * * *

Annie and the nurse came out to the edge of the broad path which ran along the front of the house and peered into the darkness. Annie was crying and holding on to the nurse, whose almost fierce determination faded as she confronted the mystery of the night which hid her master and mistress.

"H'sh, Annie," she whispered. "Where can they be? Listen, I tell you!"

Annie strove to choke down her sobs.

"I can hear—some one," whispered the nurse, after a moment. "Don't you. Listen, I tell you! Right over by the wall near the Bishop's!"

The sound of steps indeed came to them through the darkness. Annie broke away from the nurse.

"I'm frightened! I'm frightened! I don't know what's come to them," she whispered through her teeth, resisting the impulse to cry out. "Come in, Nurse, for God's sake!"

She shrank into the house. The nurse stood where she was for a moment, but when she heard the steps a little nearer to her she, too, was overcome by fear and followed Annie trembling, shutting the door behind her.

Exactly at half-past seven Mr. Darlington and Canon Wilton were outside the door of Little Cloisters and Mr. Darlington pulled the bell. Always the most discreet of men, he had not mentioned to his host the terrible cry he had heard in the Leiths' garden, or his short colloquy with Annie. He was seriously disturbed in mind, but, being a trained man of the world and one who prided himself upon his powers of self-control, he had concealed this unpleasant fact from the Canon, and had talked quite agreeably during their little walk between the two houses. The sound of that dreadful cry still seemed to shudder through his flesh, but it was not for him to pry into the private lives of others, even of those whom he knew intimately, and had a great regard for. He hoped all was well with his dear young friends, There might be some quite simple explanation of that cry. He fervently hoped there was. In any case it was not for him to ask questions, or to—

"They're a long while answering the bell," said Canon Wilton, in his strong, earnest voice. "Hadn't you better give it another tug, Darlington?"

Mr. Darlington started.

"H'm—ha!"

He raised his hand and pulled the bell a second time.

"That's better," said the Canon, as he heard inside the house a long tinkle. "Annie's bound to come now. As a rule she's very quick in answering the door. Among her many virtues, Mrs. Leith counts that of being a first-rate housewife. She trains her maids well."

"Does she?" murmured Mr. Darlington abstractedly, bending forward till he seemed almost to be listening at the door. "Does she? I hear some one coming. H'm!"

He straightened himself. The door opened and Annie appeared. When she saw the two men she drew back quickly to let them pass in. Canon Wilton said kindly: "Good evening, Annie."

"Oh, sir," said Annie, and began to cry audibly.

"What's the matter?" asked the Canon, surprised.

They were now in the little oak paneled hall, and by the light of the lamp they could see the tears running down the flushed face of the maid. "Is anything wrong?" said the Canon.

"Oh, sir, I'm so glad you've come! Oh, we don't know what it is!"

At this moment Robin's nurse showed herself on the staircase.

"For God's sake, sir," she said, with trembling lips, "do go into the garden!"

"Why?" said Canon Wilton, in a loud, firm voice.

"Mr. and Mrs. Leith are both there, sir. They've been there this long time. Mr. Leith he's come back from the shooting without Master Robin. Oh, there's something wrong, sir, there's something wrong!"

"Stay here for a moment, Darlington," said the Canon, with a sudden, almost fiery, decision. "I'll go at once and see what's the matter."

But Mr. Darlington laid a bony hand on his friend's arm.

"I'll come with you, Wilton. I'm—I'm afraid it's something very bad."

He lowered his voice almost to a whisper in saying the last words.

The Canon formed "Why?" with his lips.

"Just now, as I was passing the garden here coming back from the Deanery, I heard a most dreadful cry. I thought at the time that it came from an animal, but—now——"

The Canon stared at him almost sternly.

"We'd better not waste time," he said. "I wish you'd gone in then."

And he turned bruskly. He had opened the door, and was about to step on to the broad path which divided the front of the house from the lawn, when he heard steps approaching swiftly on the gravel.

"Some one coming!" he said. "Stop where you are, Darlington. I believe its . . ."

Before he could finish his sentence Rosamund came upon him out of the darkness. Her face was distorted, so distorted that he scarcely recognized it. It seemed to have shrunk and sharpened, and it had the look of fierceness which is characteristic of the faces of starving people. She put out both her hands as she came up to him, pushed him with violence into the house, and followed him.

"Lock the door!" she whispered. "Lock it! Lock it!"

"But——"

Her voice rose. She seemed savage with fear.

"Lock it, I tell you!"

A long arm shot out and a bony hand turned the key in the door.

"It's the only thing to be done for the moment," said Mr. Darlington to the Canon. "She's mad with fear."

Both the maids had disappeared, terrified by the face of their mistress. Rosamund caught hold of the stair-rail and began to hurry upstairs, but Mr. Darlington followed her and seized her by the arm.

"Rosamund! Rosamund! What is it?"

She turned.

"I'm going to find Robin. That man's killed Robin! Keep him out! Keep him away from me!"

A dreadful surreptitious expression made her face hideous. She leaned forward, nodding her head, and whispered in Mr. Darlington's ear:

"You keep him away from me while I find Robin. He's killed Robin!"

Her whole body began to shake. Mr. Darlington put one arm round her.

"But, Rosamund——"

Below, the handle of the door leading to the garden was turned, the door was shaken, and there came a knocking on the wood.

Then Mr. Darlington heard again the cry which had come to him that evening as he passed the garden of Little Cloisters. His arm dropped.

Rosamund went frantically up the stairs and disappeared on the dark landing above.



BOOK IV — THE UNKNOWN GOD



CHAPTER I

In June of the following year two young Englishmen, who were making a swift tour of the near East, were sitting one evening in a public garden at Pera. The west wind, which had been blowing all day, had gone down with the coming of night. The air was deliciously warm, but not sultry. The travelers had dined well, but not too well, and were ready to be happy, and to see in others the reflection of their own contented holiday mood. It was delightful to be "on the loose," without responsibilities, and with a visit to Brusa to look forward to in the immediate future. They sat under the stars, sipped their coffee, listened to the absurd music played by a fifth-rate band in a garishly-lighted kiosk, and watched with interest the coming and going of the crowd of Turks and Perotes, with whom mingled from time to time foreign sailors from ships lying off the entrance to the Golden Horn and a few tourists from the hotels of Pera. Just behind them sat their guide, a thin and eager Levantine, half-Greek and half-Armenian, who, for some inscrutable reason, declared that his name was John.

There was little romance in this garden set in the midst of the noisy European quarter of Constantinople. The music was vulgar; Greek waiters with dissipated faces ran to and fro carrying syrups and liqueurs; corpulent Turks sat heavily over glasses of lager beer; overdressed young men of enigmatic appearance, with oily thick hair, shifty eyes, and hands covered with cheap rings, swaggered about smoking cigarettes and talking in loud, ostentatious voices. Some women were there, fat and garish for the most part, liberally powdered and painted, and crowned with hats at which Paris would have stared almost in fear. There were also children, dark, even swarthy, with bold eyes, shrill voices, immodest bearing, who looked as if they had long since received the ugly freedom of the streets, and learned lessons no children ought to know.

Presently the band stopped playing and there was a general movement of the crowd. People got up from the little tables and began to disperse. "John" leaned forward to his employers, and in a quick and rattling voice informed them that a "fust-rate" variety entertainment was about to take place in another part of the garden. Would they come to see it? There would be beautiful women, very fine girls such as can only be gazed on in Constantinople, taking part in the "show."

The young men agreed to "have a look at it," and followed John to a place where many round tables and chairs were set out before a ramshackle wooden barrack of a theatre, under the shade of some pepper trees, through whose tresses the stars peeped at a throng and a performance which must surely have surprised them.

The band, or a portion of it, was again at work, playing an inane melody, and upon the small stage two remarkably well-developed and aquiline-featured women of mature age, dressed as very young children in white socks, short skirts which displayed frilled drawers, and muslin bonnets adorned with floating blue and pink ribbons, swayed to and fro and joined their cracked voices in a duet, the French words of which seemed to exhale a sort of fade obscenity. While they swayed and jigged heavily, showing their muscular legs to the staring audience, they gazed eagerly about, seeking an admiration from which they might draw profit when their infantile task was over. Presently they retired, running skittishly, taking small leaps into the air, and aimlessly blowing kisses to the night.

"Very fine girls!" murmured John to his young patrons. "They make much money in Pera."

One of the young men shrugged his shoulders with a smile.

"Get us two Turkish coffees, John!" he said. Then he turned to his companion. "I say, Ellis, have you noticed an English feller—at least I take him to be English—who's sitting over there close to the stage, sideways to us?"

"No; where is he?" asked his companion.

"You see that old Turk with the double chin?"

"Rather."

"Just beyond him, sitting with a guide who's evidently Greek."

"I've got him."

"Watch him. I never saw such a face."

A blowzy young woman, in orange color and green, with short tinsel-covered skirts, bounded wearily on to the stage, smiling, and began to sing:

"Je suis une boite de surprises! O la la! O la la! Je suis une boite de surprises."

Ellis looked across at the man to whom his attention had been drawn. This man was seated by a little table on which were a siphon, a bottle of iced water, and a tall tumbler nearly half-full of a yellow liquid. He was smoking a large dark-colored cigar which he now and then took from his mouth with a hand that was very thin and very brown. His face was dark and browned by the sun, but looked startlingly haggard, as if it were pale or even yellowish under the sunburn. About the eyes there were large wrinkles, spraying downwards over the cheek bones and invading the cheeks. He wore a mustache, and was well-dressed in a tweed suit. But his low collar was not very fresh, and his tie was arranged in a slovenly fashion and let his collar stud be seen. He sat with his legs crossed, staring at the grimacing woman on the stage with a sort of horribly icy intentness. The expression about his lips and eyes was more than bitter; it showed a frozen fierceness.

On the other side of the table was seated a lean, meager guide, obviously one of those Greeks who haunt the quays of Constantinople on the look out for arriving travelers. Now and then this Greek leaned forward and, with a sort of servile and anxious intelligence, spoke to his companion. He received no reply. The other man went on smoking and staring at the boite de surprises as if he were alone. And somehow he seemed actually to be alone, encompassed by a frightful solitude.

"A tragic face, isn't it?" said the man who had first spoken.

"By Jove it is!" returned the officer. "I wonder that woman can go on singing so close to it."

"Probably she hasn't seen him. How many years do you give him?"

"Thirty-eight or forty."

"He isn't out for pleasure, that's certain."

"Pleasure! One would suppose he'd been keeping house with Medusa and—the deuce, she's seen him!"

At this moment the singer looked towards the stranger, quavered, faltered, nearly broke down, then, as if with an effort, raised her voice more shrilly and defiantly, exaggerated her meaningless gestures and looked away. A moment later she finished her song and turned to strut off the stage. As she did so she shot a sort of fascinated glance at the dark man. He took his cigar from his mouth and puffed the smoke towards her, probably without knowing that he did so. With a startled jerk she bounded into the wings.

At this moment John returned with two cups of coffee.

"You know everything, John. Tell us who that man over there is," said Ellis, indicating the stranger.

John sent a devouring glance past the old Turk's double chin, a glance which, as it were, swallowed at one gulp the dark man, his guide, the siphon, the water-bottle and the glass partially full of the yellow liquid.

"I dunno him. He is noo."

"Is he English?"

"Sure!" returned John, almost with a sound of contempt.

He never made a mistake about any man's nationality, could even tell a Spanish Jew from a Portuguese Jew on a dark night at ten yards' distance.

"I tell you who he is later. I know the guide, a damned fool and a rogue of a Greek that has been in prison. He robs all his people what take him."

"You needn't bother," said Ellis curtly.

"Of course not. Shut up, John, and don't run down your brothers in crime."

"That man my brother!"

John upraised two filthy ringed hands.

"That dirty skunk my brother! That son of—"

"That'll do, John! Be quiet."

"To-morrow I till you all about the gentleman. Here is another fine girl! I know her very well."

A languid lady, with a face painted as white as a wall, large scarlet lips, eyes ringed with bluish black, and a gleaming and trailing black gown which clung closely to her long and snake-like body, writhed on to the stage, looking carefully sinister.

The dark man swallowed his drink, got up and made his way to the exit from the garden. He passed close to the two young men, followed by his Greek, at whom John cast a glance of scowling contempt, mingled, however, with very definite inquiry.

"By Jove! He's almost spoilt my evening," said Ellis. "But we made a mistake, Vernon. He isn't anything like forty."

"No; more like thirty under a cloud."

"By the look of things I should guess there are plenty of people under a cloud in Pera. But that English feller stands out even here. This girl is certainly a first-class wriggler, if she's nothing else."

They did not mention the stranger again that night. But John had not forgotten him, and when he arrived at their hotel next day he at once opened his capacious mouth and let out the following information:

"The gentleman's name is Denton, his other name is Mervyn, he is three days in Constantinople, he lives in Hughes's Hotel in Pera, a very poor house where chic people they never goes, he is out all day and always walkin', he will not take a carriage, and he is never tired, Nicholas Gounaris—the Greek guide—he is droppin' but the gentleman he does not mind, he only sayin' if you cannot walk find me another guide what can, every night he is out, too, and he is goin' to Stamboul when it is dark, he is afraid of nothin' and goin' where travelers they never go, one night Gounaris he had to show the traveler—"

But at this point Ellis shut John up.

"That'll do," he observed. "You're a diligent rascal, John. One must say that. But we aren't a couple of spies, and we don't want to hear any more about that feller."

And John, without bearing any malice, went off to complete his arrangements for the journey to Brusa.

Two days later, Mrs. Clarke, who was at Buyukderer in a villa she had taken for the summer months, but who had come into Constantinople to do some shopping, saw "Mervyn Denton" in a side street close to the British Embassy. Those distressed eyes of hers were very observant. There were many people in the street, and "Denton," who was alone, was several yards away from her, and was walking with his back towards her; but she immediately recognized him, quickened her steps till she was close to him, and then said:

"Dion Leith!"

Dion heard the husky voice and turned round. He did not say anything, but he took off the soft hat he was wearing. Mrs. Clarke stared at him with the unself-conscious directness which was characteristic of her. She saw Dion for the first time since the tragedy which had changed his life, but she had written to him more than once. Her last letter had come from Buyukderer. He had answered it, but he had not told her where he was, had not even hinted to her that he might come to Constantinople. Nevertheless, she did not now show any surprise. She just looked at him steadily, absorbed all the change in him swiftly, and addressed herself to the new man who stood there before her.

"Come with me to the Hotel de Paris. I'm spending the night there, and go back to-morrow to Buyukderer. I had something to do in town."

She had not given him her hand, and he did not attempt to take it. He put on his hat, turned and walked at her side. Neither of them spoke a word until they had come into the uproar of the Grande Rue, which surrounded them with a hideous privacy. Then Mrs. Clarke said;

"Where are you staying?"

"At Hughes's Hotel."

"I never heard of it."

"It's in Brusa Street. It's cheap."

"And horrible," she thought.

But she did not say so.

"I have only been here three days," Dion added.

"Do you remember that I once said to you I knew you would come back to Constantinople?"

For a moment his face was distorted. When she saw that she looked away gravely, at the glittering shops and at the Perotes who were passing by with the slow and lounging walk which they affect in the Grande Rue. Presently she heard him say:

"You were right. It was all arranged. It was all planned out. Even then I believe I knew it would be so, that I should come back here."

"Why have you come?"

"I don't know," he answered, and his voice, which had been hard and fierce, became suddenly dull.

"He really believes that," she thought.

"Here is the hotel," she said. "I'm all alone. Jimmy has been out, but has had to go back to Eton. I wish you had seen him."

"Oh no!" said Dion, almost passionately.

They went up in a lift, worked by a Montenegrin boy with a big round forehead, to her sitting-room on the second floor. It was large, bare and clean, with white walls and awnings at the windows. She rang the bell. A Corsican waiter came and she ordered tea. The roar of the street noises penetrated into the shadowy room through the open windows, and came to Dion like heat. He remembered the silence of Claridge's. Suddenly his head began to swim. It seemed to him that his life, all of it that he had lived till that moment, was spinning round him, and that, as it spun, it gave out a deafening noise and glittered. He sat down on a chair which was close to a small table, laid his arms on the table, and hid his face against them. Still the deafening noise continued. The sum of it was surely made up of the uproar of the Grand Rue with the uproar of his spinning life added to it. He saw yellow balls ringed with pale blue rapidly receding from his shut eyes.

Mrs. Clarke looked at him for a moment; then she went into the adjoining bedroom and shut the door behind her. She did not come back till the waiter knocked and told her that tea was ready. Then she opened the door. She had taken off her hat and gloves, and looked very white and cool, and very composed.

Dion was standing near the windows. The waiter, who had enormously thick mustaches, and who evidently shaved in the evening instead of in the morning, was going out at the farther door. He shut it rather loudly.

"Every one makes a noise in Pera. It's de rigueur," said Mrs. Clarke, coming to the tea-table.

"Do you know," said Dion, "I used to think you looked punished?"

"Punished—I!"

There was a sudden defiance in her voice which he had never heard in it before. He came up to the table.

"Yes. In London I used to think you had a punished look and even a haunted look. Wasn't that ridiculous? I didn't know then what it meant to be punished, or to be haunted. I hadn't enough imagination to know, not nearly enough. But some one or something's seen to it that I shall know all about punishment and haunting. So I shall never be absurd about you again."

After a pause she said:

"I wonder why you thought that about me?"

"I don't know. It just came into my head."

"Well, sit down and let us have our tea."

Dion sat down mechanically, and Mrs. Clarke poured out the tea.

"I wish it was Buyukderer," she said.

"Oh, I like the uproar."

"No, you don't—you don't. Pera is spurious, and all its voices are spurious voices. To-morrow morning, before I go back, you and I will go to Eyub."

"To the dust and the silence and the cypresses—O God!" said Dion.

He got up from his chair. He was beginning to tremble. Was it coming upon him at last then, the utter breakdown which through all these months he had—somehow—kept at a distance? Determined not to shake, he exerted his will violently, till he felt as if he were with dreadful difficulty holding, keeping together, a multitude of living, struggling things, which were trying to get away out of his grasp. And these living things were the multitudinous parts of the whole which was himself.

All that now was had been foreshadowed. There had been writing on the wall.

"I am grateful to you for several things. I'm not going to give you the list now. Some day, perhaps, I shall tell you what they are . . . among the cypresses of Eyub."

She had said that to him in London, and her voice had been fatalistic as she spoke; and in the street that same day, on his way home, the voice of the boy crying the last horror had sounded to him like a voice from the sea, a strange and sad cry lifted up between Europe and Asia. And now——

"How did you know?" he said. "How did you know that we should be here together some day?"

"Sit down. You must sit down."

She put her languid and imperative hand on his wrist, and he sat down. He took her hand and put it against his forehead for a moment. But that was no use. For her hand seemed to add fever to his fever.

"I have seen you standing amongst graves in the shadow of cypress trees," he said. "In England I saw you like that. But—how did you know?"

"Drink your tea. Don't hurry. We've got such a long time."

"I have. I have all the days and nights—every hour of them—at my own disposal. I'm the freest man on earth, I suppose. No work, no ties."

"You've given up everything?"

"Oh, of course. That is, the things that were still left to me to give up. They didn't mean much."

"Eat something," she said, in a casual voice, pushing a plate of delicious little cakes towards him.

"Thank you."

He took one and ate. He regained self-control, but he knew that at any moment, if anything unusual happened, or if he dared to think, or to talk, seriously about the horror of his life, he would probably go down with a crash into an abyss in which all of his manhood, every scrap of his personal dignity, would be utterly lost. And still almost blindly he held on to certain things in the blackness which encompassed him. He still wished to play the man, and though in bitterness he had tried sometimes to sink down in degradation, his body—or so it had seemed to him—had resisted the will of the injured soul, which had said to it, "Go down into the dirt; seek satisfaction there. Your sanity and your purity of life have availed you nothing. From them you have had no reward. Then seek the rewards of the other life. Thousands of men enjoy them. Join that crowd, and put all the anemic absurdities of so-called goodness behind you."

He had almost come to hate the state he conceived of as goodness; yet the other thing, its opposite, evil, he instinctively rebelled against and even almost feared. The habit of a life-time was not to be broken in a day, or even in many days. Often he had thought of himself as walking in nothingness, because he rejected evil.

Goodness had ruthlessly cast him out; and so far he had made no other friend, had taken no other comrade to his bruised and bleeding heart.

Mrs. Clarke began to talk to him quietly. She talked abut herself, and he knew that she did this not because of egoism, but because delicately she wished to give him a full opportunity for recovery. She had seen just where he was, and she had understood his recoil from the abyss. Now she wished, perhaps, to help him to draw back farther from it, to draw back so far that he would no longer see it or be aware of it.

So she talked of herself, of her life at Buyukderer in the summer, and in Pera in the autumn and spring.

"I don't go out to Buyukderer till the middle of May," she said, "and I come back into town at the end of September."

"You manage to stand Pera for some months every year?" said Dion, listening at first with difficulty, and because he was making a determined effort.

"Yes. An Englishwoman—even a woman like me—can't live in Stamboul. And Pera, odious as it is, is in Constantinople, in the city which has a spell, though you mayn't feel it yet."

She was silent for a moment, and they heard the roar from the Grande Rue, that street which is surely the noisiest in all Europe. Hearing it, Dion thought of the silence of the Precincts at Welsley. That sweet silence had cast him out. Hell must be full of roaring noises and of intense activities. Then Mrs. Clarke went on talking. There was something very feminine and gently enticing in her voice, which resembled no other voice ever heard by Dion. He felt kindness at the back of her talk, the wish to alleviate his misery if only for a moment, to do what she could for him. She could do nothing, of course. Nevertheless he began to feel grateful to her. She was surely unlike other women, incapable of bearing a grudge. For he had not been very "nice" to her in the days when he was happy and she was in difficulties. At this moment he vaguely exaggerated his lack of "niceness," and perhaps also her pardoning temperament. In truth, he was desperately in need of a touch from the magic wand of sympathy. Believing, or even perhaps knowing, that to the incurably wounded man palliatives are of no lasting avail, he had deliberately fled from them, and gone among those who had no reason to bother about him. But now he was grateful.

"Go on talking," he said once, when she stopped speaking. And she continued talking about her life. She said nothing more about Jimmy.

The Corsican waiter came and took away the tea things noisily. Her spell was broken. For a moment Dion felt dazed.

He got up.

"I ought to go," he said.

"Must you?"

"Must!—Oh no! My time is my own, and always will be, I suppose."

"You have thrown up everything?"

"What else could I do? The man who killed his own son! How could I stay in London, go among business men who knew me, talk about investments to clients? Suppose you had killed Jimmy!"

There was a long silence. Then he said:

"I've given up my name. I call myself Mervyn Denton. I saw the name in a novel I opened on a railway bookstall."

She got up and came near to him quietly.

"This is all wrong," she said.

"What is?"

"All you are doing, the way you are taking it all."

"What other way is there of taking such a thing?"

"Will you come with me to Eyub to-morrow?"

"It was written long ago that I am to go there with you. I'm quite sure of that."

"I'll tell you what I mean there to-morrow."

She looked towards the window.

"It's like the roar of hell," he said.

And he went away.

That night Mrs. Clarke dined alone downstairs in the restaurant. The cooking at the Hotel de Paris was famous, and attracted many men from the Embassies. Presently Cyril Vane, one of the secretaries at the British Embassy, came in to dine. He had with him a young Turkish gentleman, who was called away by an agent from the Palace in the middle of dinner. Vane, thus left alone, presently got up and came to Mrs. Clarke's table.

"May I sit down and talk to you for a little?" he said, with a manner that testified to their intimacy. "My guest has deserted me."

"Yes, do. Tell the waiter to bring the rest of your dinner here."

"But I have finished."

"Light your cigar then."

"If you don't mind."

They talked for a few minutes about the things of every day and the little world they both lived in on the Bosporus; then Mrs. Clarke said:

"I met a friend from England unexpectedly to-day."

"Did you?"

"A man called Dion Leith."

"Dion Leith?" repeated Vane.

He looked at her earnestly.

"Now wait a moment!"

His large, cool blue eyes became meditative.

"It's on the edge of my mind who that is, and yet I can't remember. I don't know him, but I'm sure I know of him."

"He fought in the South African War."

Suddenly Vane leaned forward. He was frowning.

"I've got it! He fought, came back with the D.C.M., and only a few days afterwards killed his only child, a son, out shooting. I remember the whole thing now, the inquest at which he was entirely exonerated and the rumors about his wife. She's a beautiful woman, they say."

"Very beautiful."

"She took it very badly, didn't she?"

"What do you mean by very badly?"

"Didn't she bear very hard on him?"

"She couldn't endure to see him, or to have him near her. Is that very wonderful?"

"You stand up for her then?"

"She was first and foremost a mother."

"Do you know," Vane said rather dryly, "you are the only woman I never hear speak against other women. But when the whole thing was an accident?"

"We can't always be quite fair, or quite reasonable, when a terrible shock comes to us."

"It's a problem, a terrible problem of the affections," Vane said. "Had she loved her husband? Do you know?"

"I know that he loved her very much," said Mrs. Clarke. "He is here under an assumed name."

Vane looked openly surprised and even, for a moment, rather disdainful.

"But then——" He paused.

"Why did I give him away?"

"Well—yes."

"Because I wish to force him to face things fully and squarely. It's his only chance."

"Won't he be angry?"

"But I don't mind that."

"You've had a reason in telling me," said Vane quietly. "What is it?"

"Come up to my sitting-room. We'll have coffee there."

"Willingly. I feel your spell even when you're weaving it for another man's sake."

Mrs. Clarke did not reject the compliment. She only looked at Vane, and said:

"Come."



CHAPTER II

In the morning Mrs. Clarke sent a messenger to Hughes's Hotel asking Dion to meet her at the landing-place on the right of the Galata Bridge at a quarter to eleven.

"We will go to Eyub by caique," she wrote, "and lunch at a Turkish cafe I know close to the mosque."

She drove to the bridge. When she came in sight of it she saw Dion standing on it alone, looking down on the crowded water-way. He was leaning on the railing, and his right cheek rested on the palm of his brown hand. Mrs. Clarke smiled faintly as she realized that this man who was waiting for her had evidently forgotten all about her.

She dismissed the carriage, paid the toll and walked on to the bridge. As usual there was a crowd of pedestrians passing to and fro from Galata to Stamboul and from Stamboul to Galata. She mingled with it, went up to Dion and stood near him without uttering a word. For perhaps two minutes she stood thus before he noticed her. Then he turned and sent her a hard, almost defiant glance before he recognized who his companion was.

"Oh, I didn't know it was——Why didn't you speak? Is it time to go? I meant to be at the landing."

He spoke like a man who had been a long way off, and who returned weary and almost dazed from that distance. He looked at his watch.

"Please forgive me for putting you to the trouble of coming to find me."

"You needn't ever ask me to forgive you for anything. Don't let us bother each other with all the silly little things that worry the fools. We've got beyond all that long ago. There's my caique."

She made a signal with her hand. Two Albanians below saluted her.

"Shall we go at once? Or would you rather stay here a little longer?"

"Let us go. I was only looking at the water."

He turned and sent a long glance to Stamboul.

"Your city!" he said.

"I shall take you."

For the first time that day he looked at her intimately, and his look said:

"Why do you trouble about me?"

They went down, got into the caique, and were taken by the turmoil of the Golden Horn. Among the innumerable caiques, the steamboats, the craft of all kinds, they went out into the strong sunshine, guarded on the one hand by the crowding, discolored houses of Galata rising to Pera, on the other hand by the wooden dwellings and the enormous mosques of Stamboul. The voices of life pursued them over the water and they sat in silence side by side. Dion made no social attempt to entertain his companion. Had she not just said to him that long ago they had gone beyond all the silly little things that worry the fools? In the midst of the fierce activity and the riot of noise which marks out the Golden Horn from all other water-ways, they traveled towards emptiness, silence, the desolation on the hill near the sacred place of the Turks, where each new Sultan is girded with the sword of Osman, and where the standard-bearer of the Prophet sleeps in the tomb that was seen in a vision.

In the strong heat of noon they left the caique and walked slowly towards the hill which rises to the north-east, where the dark towers of the cypresses watch over the innumerable graves. Mrs. Clarke had put up a sun umbrella. Her face was protected by a thin white veil. She wore a linen dress, pale gray in color, with white lines on it, and long loose gloves of suede. She looked extraordinarily thin. Her unshining, curiously colorless hair was partly covered by a small hat of burnt straw, turned sharply and decisively up on the left side and trimmed with a broad riband of old gold. Dion remembered that he had thought of her once as a vision seen in water. Now he was with her in the staring definite clearness of a land dried by the heats of summer and giving to them its dust. And she was at home in this aridity. In the dust he was aware of the definiteness of her. Since the blackness had overtaken him people had meant to him less than shadows gliding on a wall mean to a joyous man. Often he had observed them, even sharply and with a sort of obstinate persistence; he had been trying to force them to become real to him. Invariably he had failed in his effort. Mrs. Clarke was real to him as she walked in silence beside him, between the handsome railed-in mausoleums which line the empty roads from the water's edge almost to the mosque of the Conqueror. A banal phrase came to his lips, "You are in your element here." But he held it back, remembering that they walked in the midst of dust.

Leaving the mosque they ascended the hill and passed the Tekkeh of the dancing dervishes. All around them were the Turkish graves with their leaning headstones, or their headstones fallen and lying prone in the light flaky earth above the smoldering corpses of the dead. Here and there tight bunches of flowers were placed upon the graves. Gaunt shadows from old cypresses fell over some of them, defining the sunlight. Below was the narrowing sea, the shallow north-west arm of the Golden Horn, which stretches to Kiathareh, where are the sweet waters of Europe, and to Kiahat Haneh.

"We'll sit here," said Mrs. Clarke presently.

And she sat down, with the folding ease almost of an Oriental, on the warm earth, and leaned against the fissured trunk of a cypress.

Casually she had seemed to choose the resting-place, but she had chosen it well. More times than she could count she had come to that exact place, had leaned against that cypress and looked down the Golden Horn to the divided city, one-half of which she loved as she loved few things, one-half of which she endured for the sake of the other.

"From here," she said to Dion, "I can feel Stamboul."

He had lain down near to her sideways and rested his cheek on his hand. The lower half of his body was in sunshine, but the cypress threw its shadow over his head and shoulders. As Mrs. Clarke spoke he looked down the Golden Horn to the Turkish city, and his eyes were held by the minarets of its mosques. Seldom had he looked at a minaret without thinking of prayer. He thought of prayer now, and then of his dead child, of the woman he had called wife, and of the end of his happiness. The thought came to him:

"I was kept safe in the midst of the dangers of war for a reason; and that reason was that I might go back to England and kill my son."

And yet every day men went up into these minarets and called upon other men to bow themselves and pray.

God is great. . . .

In the sunlit silence of the vast cemetery the wheels of Dion's life seemed for a moment to cease from revolving.

God is great—great in His power to inflict misery upon men. And so pray to Him! Mount upon the minarets, go up high, till you are taken by the blue, till, at evening, you are nearer to the stars than other men, and pray to Him and proclaim His glory. For He is the repository of the power to cover you with misery as with a garment, and to lay you even with the dust. Pray then—pray! Unless the garment is upon you, unless the dust is already about you!

Dion lay on the warm earth and looked at the distant minarets, and smiled at the self-seeking slave-instinct in men, which men sought to glorify, to elevate into a virtue.

"Why are you smiling?" said a husky voice above.

He did not look up, but he answered:

"Because I was looking at those towers of prayer."

"The minarets."

She was silent for a few minutes; after a while she said:

"You remember the first time you met me?"

"Of course."

"I was in difficulties then. They culminated in the scandal of my divorce case. Tell me, how did you think I faced all that trouble?"

"With marvelous courage."

"In what other way can thoroughbred people face an enemy? Suppose I had lost instead of won, suppose Jimmy had been taken from me, do you think it would have broken me?"

"I can't imagine anything breaking you," said Dion. "But I don't believe you ever pray."

"What has that to do with it?"

"I believe the people who pray are the potential cowards."

"Do you pray?"

"Not now. That's why I was smiling when I looked at the minarets. But I don't make a virtue of it. I have nothing to pray for."

"Well then, if you have put away prayer, that means you are going to rely on yourself."

"What for?"

"For all the sustaining you will need in the future. The people commonly called good think of God as something outside themselves to which they can apply in moments of fear, necessity and sorrow. If you have really got beyond that conception you must rely on yourself, find in yourself all you need."

"But I need nothing—you don't understand."

"You nearly told me yesterday."

"Perhaps if you hadn't gone out of the room I should have been obliged to tell you, but not because I wished to."

"I understood that. That is why I went out of the room and left you alone."

For the first time Dion looked up at her. She had lifted her veil, and her haggard, refined face was turned towards him.

"Thank you," he said.

At that moment he liked her as he had never liked her in the past.

"Can you tell me now because you wish to?"

"Here among the graves?"

"Yes."

Again he looked at the distant minarets lifted towards the blue near the way of the sea. But he said nothing. She shut her sun umbrella, laid it on the ground beside her, pulled off her gloves and spread them out on her knees slowly. She seemed to be hesitating; for she looked down and for a moment she knitted her brows. Then she said;

"Tell me why you came to Constantinople."

"I couldn't."

"If I hadn't met you in the street by chance, would you have come to see me?"

"I don't think I should."

"And yet it was I who willed you to come here."

Dion did not seem surprised. There was something remote in him which perhaps could not draw near to such a simple commonplace feeling in that moment. He had gone out a long way, a very long way, from the simple ordinary emotions which come upon, or beset, normal men living normal lives.

"Did you?" he asked. "Why?"

"I thought I could do something for you. I began last night."

"What?"

"Doing something for you. I told an acquaintance of mine called Vane, who is attached to the British Embassy, that you were here."

A fierce flush came into Dion's face.

"I said you would probably come out to Buyukderer," she continued, "and that I wanted to bring you to the summer Embassy and to introduce you to the Ambassador and Lady Ingleton."

Dion sat up and pressed his hands palm downwards on the ground.

"I shall not go. How could you say that I was here? You know I had dropped my own name."

"I gave it back to you deliberately."

"I think that was very brutal of you," he said, in a low voice, tense with anger.

"You wanted to be very kind to me when I was in great difficulties. Circumstances got rather in the way. That doesn't matter. The intention was there, though you were too chivalrous to go very far in action."

"Chivalrous to whom?"

"To her."

His face went pale under its sunburn.

"What are you doing?" he said, in a low voice that was almost terrible. "Where are you taking me?"

"Into the way you must walk in. Dion—"—even in calling him by his Christian name for the first time her voice sounded quite impersonal—"you've done nothing wrong. You have nothing, absolutely nothing, to be ashamed of. Kismet! We have to yield to fate. If you slink through the rest of your years on earth, if you get rid of your name and hide yourself away, you will be just a coward. But you aren't a coward, and you are not going to act like one. You must accept your fate. You must take it right into your heart bravely and proudly, or, if you can't do that, stoically. I should."

"If you had killed Jimmy?"

She was silent.

"If you had killed Jimmy?" he repeated, in a hard voice.

"I should never hide myself. I should always face things."

"You haven't had the blow I have had. I know I am not in fault. I know I have nothing to blame myself for. I wasn't even careless with my gun. If I had been I could never have forgiven myself. But I wasn't."

"It was the pony. I know. I read the account of the inquest. You were absolutely exonerated."

"Yes. The coroner and the jury expressed their deep sympathy with me," he said, with intense bitterness. "They realized how—how I loved my little boy. But the woman I loved more even than my boy, whom I had loved for ever since I first saw her—well, she didn't feel at all as the coroner and the jury did."

"Where is she? I hear now and then from Beatrice Daventry, but she never mentions her sister."

"She is in Liverpool doing religious work, I believe. She has given herself to religion."

"What does that mean exactly?"

"People give themselves to God, don't they, sometimes?"

"Do they?" said Mrs. Clarke, with her curious grave directness, which seemed untouched by irony.

"It seems a way out of—things. But she always had a tendency that way."

"Towards the religious life?"

"Yes. She always cared for God a great deal more than she cared for me. She cared for God and for Robin, and she seemed to be just beginning to care for me when I deprived her of Robin. Since then she has hated me."

He spoke quietly, sternly. All the emotion of which she had been conscious on the previous afternoon had left him.

"I didn't succeed in making her love me!" he continued. "I thought I had gained a good deal in South Africa. When I came back I felt I was starting again, and that I should carry things through. Robin felt the difference in me directly. He would have got to care for me very much, and I could have done a great deal for him when he had got older. But God didn't see things that way. He had planned it all out differently. When I was with her in Greece, one day I tore down a branch of wild olive and stripped the leaves from it. She saw me do it, and it distressed her very much. She had been dreaming over a child, and my action shattered her dream, I suppose. Women have dreams men can't quite understand—about children. She forgave me for that almost directly. She knew I would never have done anything to make her unhappy even for a moment, if I had thought. Now I have broken her life to pieces, and there's no question of forgiveness. If there were, I should not speak of her to you. We are absolutely parted forever. She would take the hand of the most dreadful criminal rather than my hand. She has a horror of me. I'm the thing that's killed her child."

He looked down at the dilapidated graves, and then at the lonely water which seemed trying to hide itself away in the recesses of the bare land.

"That's how it is. Robin forgave me. He was alive for a moment—after, and I saw by his eyes he understood. Yes, he understood—he understood!"

Suddenly his body began to shake and his arms jerked convulsively. Instinctively, but quite quietly, Mrs. Clarke put out her hand as if she were going to lay hold of his right arm.

"No—don't!" he said. "Yesterday your hand made me worse."

She withdrew her hand. Her face did not change. She seemed wholly unconscious of any rudeness on his part.

"Let's move—let's walk!" he said.

He sprang up. When he was on his feet he regained control of his body.

"I don't know what's the matter with me," he said. "I'm not ill."

"My friend, it will have to come," she said, getting up too.

"What?"

But she did not reply.

"I've never been like this till now," he added vaguely.

She knew why, but she did not tell him. She was a woman who knew how to wait.

They wandered away through that cemetery above the Golden Horn, among the cypresses and the leaning and fallen tombstones. Now and then they saw veiled women pausing beside the graves with flowers in their hands, or fading among the cypress trunks into sunlit spaces beyond. Now and then they saw a man praying. Once they came to a tomb where children were sitting in a circle chanting the Koran with a sound like the sound of bees.

Before they went down to the Turkish cafe, which is close to the holy mosque, they stood for a long while together on the hillside, looking at distant Stamboul. The cupolas of the many mosques and the tall and speary minarets gave their Eastern message—that message which, even to Protestant men from the lands of the West, is as the thrilling sound of a still, small voice. And the voice will not be gainsaid; it whispers, "In the East thou shalt find me if thou hast not found me in the West."

"Why do you care for Stamboul so much?" Dion asked his companion. "I think you are utterly without religion. I may be wrong, but I think you are. And Stamboul is full of calls to prayer and of places for men to worship in."

"Oh, there is something," she answered. "There is the Unknown God."

"The Unknown God?" he repeated, with a sort of still bitterness.

"And His city is Stamboul—for me. When the muezzin calls I bow myself in ignorance. What He is, I don't know. All I know is that men cannot explain Him to me, or teach me anything about Him. But Stamboul has lures for me. It is not only the city of many prayers, it is also the city of many forgetfulnesses. The old sages said, 'Eat not thy heart nor mourn the buried Past.' Stay here for a time, and learn to obey that command. Perhaps, eventually, Stamboul will help you."