By eleven o'clock on Monday he was in Mr. Pearson's office. After the first involuntary smile, concealed by the fair moustaches, and instantly dismissed, with which the eminent lawyer greeted the announcement of his visitor's name, the two augurs carried through their affairs with perfect decorum. Wharton realised, indeed, that he was being firmly handled. Mr. Pearson gave the Clarion a week in which to accomplish its retreat and drop its strike fund. And the fund was to be "checked" as soon as possible.

A little later, when Wharton abruptly demanded a guarantee of secrecy, Mr. Pearson allowed himself his first—visible—smile.

"My dear sir, are such things generally made public property? I can give you no better assurance than you can extract yourself from the circumstances. As to writing—well!—I should advise you very strongly against anything of the sort. A long experience has convinced me that in any delicate negotiation the less that is written the better."

Towards the end Wharton turned upon his companion sharply, and asked:

"How did you discover that I wanted money?"

Mr. Pearson lifted his eyebrows pleasantly.

"Most of the things in this world, Mr. Wharton, that one wants to know, can be found out. Now—I have no wish to hurry you—not in the least, but I may perhaps mention that I have an important appointment directly. Don't you think—we might settle our business?"

Wharton was half-humorously conscious of an inward leap of fury with the necessities which had given this man—to whom he had taken an instantaneous dislike—the power of dealing thus summarily with the member for West Brookshire. However, there was no help for it; he submitted, and twenty minutes afterwards he left Lincoln's Inn carrying documents in the breast-pocket of his coat which, when brought under his bankers' notice, would be worth to him an immediate advance of some eight thousand pounds. The remainder of the purchase-money for his "shares" would be paid over to him as soon as his part of the contract had been carried out.

He did not, however, go to his bank, but straight to the Clarion office, where he had a mid-day appointment with Louis Craven.

At first sight of the tall, narrow-shouldered form and anxious face waiting for him in his private room, Wharton felt a movement of ill-humour.

Craven had the morning's Clarion in his hand.

"This cannot mean"—he said, when they had exchanged a brief salutation—"that the paper is backing out?"

He pointed to the suspicious paragraph in Wharton's leader, his delicate features quivering with an excitement he could ill repress.

"Well, let us sit down and discuss the thing," said Wharton, closing the door, "that's what I wired to you for."

He offered Craven a cigarette, which was refused, took one himself, and the two men sat confronting each other with a writing-table between them. Wharton was disagreeably conscious at times of the stiff papers in his coat-pocket, and was perhaps a little paler than usual. Otherwise he showed no trace of mental disturbance; and Craven, himself jaded and sleepless, was struck with a momentary perception of his companion's boyish good looks—the tumbling curls, that Wharton straightened now and then, the charming blue eyes, the athlete's frame. Any stranger would have taken Craven for the older man; in reality it was the other way.

The conversation lasted nearly an hour. Craven exhausted both argument and entreaty, though when the completeness of the retreat resolved upon had been disclosed to him, the feeling roused in him was so fierce that he could barely maintain his composure. He had been living among scenes of starvation and endurance, which, to his mind, had all the character of martyrdom. These men and women were struggling for two objects—the power to live more humanly, and the free right of combination—to both of which, if need were, he would have given his own life to help them without an instant's hesitation. Behind his blinking manner he saw everything with the idealist's intensity, the reformer's passion. To be fair to an employer was not in his power. To spend his last breath, were it called for, in the attempt to succour the working-man against his capitalist oppressors, would have seemed to him the merest matter of course.

And his mental acuteness was quite equal to his enthusiasm, and far more evident. In his talk with Wharton, he for a long time avoided, as before, out of a certain inner disdain, the smallest touch of sentiment. He pointed out—what, indeed, Wharton well knew—that the next two or three weeks of the strike would be the most critical period in its history; that, if the work-people could only be carried through them, they were almost sure of victory. He gave his own reasons for believing that the employers could ultimately be coerced, he offered proof of yielding among them, proof also that the better men in their ranks were fully alive to and ashamed of the condition of the workers. As to the Syndicate, he saw no objection to it, provided the workers' claims were first admitted. Otherwise it would only prove a more powerful engine of oppression.

Wharton's arguments may perhaps be left to the imagination. He would have liked simply to play the proprietor and the master—to say, "This is my decision, those are my terms—take my work or leave it." But Craven was Miss Boyce's friend; he was also a Venturist. Chafing under both facts, Wharton found that he must state his case.

And he did state it with his usual ability. He laid great stress on "information from a private source which I cannot disregard," to the effect that, if the resistance went on, the trade would be broken up; that several of the largest employers were on the point of making arrangements for Italian factories.

"I know," he said finally, "that but for the Clarion the strike would drop. Well! I have come to the conclusion that the responsibility is too heavy. I shall be doing the men themselves more harm than good. There is the case in a nutshell. We differ—I can't help that. The responsibility is mine."

Craven rose with a quick, nervous movement. The prophet spoke at last.

"You understand," he said, laying a thin hand on the table, "that the condition of the workers in this trade is infamous!—that the award and your action together plunge them back into a state of things which is a shame and a curse to England!"

Wharton made no answer. He, too, had risen, and was putting away some papers in a drawer. A tremor ran through Craven's tall frame; and for an instant, as his eye rested on his companion, the idea of foul play crossed his mind. He cast it out, that he might deal calmly with his own position.

"Of course, you perceive," he said, as he took up his hat, "that I can no longer on these terms remain the Clarion's correspondent. Somebody else must be found to do this business."

"I regret your decision, immensely," said Wharton, with perfect suavity, "but of course I understand it. I trust, however, that you will not leave us altogether. I can give you plenty of work that will suit you. Here, for instance"—he pointed to a pile of Blue Books from the Labour Commission lying on the table—"are a number of reports that want analysing and putting before the public. You could do them in town at your leisure."

Craven struggled with himself. His first instinct was to fling the offer in Wharton's face. Then he thought of his wife; of the tiny new household just started with such small, happy, self-denying shifts; of the woman's inevitable lot, of the hope of a child.

"Thank you," he said, in a husky voice. "I will consider, I will write."

Wharton nodded to him pleasantly, and he went.

The owner of the Clarion drew a long breath.

"Now I think on the whole it would serve my purpose best to sit down and write to her—after that. It would be well that my account should come first."

A few hours later, after an interview with his bankers and a further spell of letter-writing, Wharton descended the steps of his club in a curious restless state. The mortgage on the Clarion had been arranged for, his gambling debts settled, and all his other money matters were successfully in train. Nevertheless, the exhilaration of the morning had passed into misgiving and depression.

Vague presentiments hung about him all day, whether in the House of Commons or elsewhere, and it was not till he found himself on his legs at a crowded meeting at Rotherhithe, violently attacking the Government Bill and the House of Lords, that he recovered that easy confidence in the general favourableness of the universe to Harry Wharton, and Harry Wharton's plans, which lent him so much of his power.

A letter from Marcella—written before she had received either of his—reached him at the House just before he started for his meeting. A touching letter!—yet with a certain resolution in it which disconcerted him.

"Forget, if you will, everything that you said to me last night. It might be—I believe it would be—best for us both. But if you will not—if I must give my answer, then, as I said, I must have time. It is only quite recently that I have realised the enormity of what I did last year. I must run no risks of so wrenching my own life—or another's—a second time. Not to be sure is for me torment. Why perfect simplicity of feeling—which would scorn the very notion of questioning itself—seems to be beyond me, I do not know. That it is so fills me with a sort of shame and bitterness. But I must follow my nature.

"So let me think it out. I believe you know, for one thing, that your 'cause,' your life-work, attracts me strongly. I should not any longer accept all you say, as I did last year. But mere opinion matters infinitely less to me than it did. I can imagine now agreeing with a friend 'in everything except opinion.' All that would matter to me now would be to feel that your heart was wholly in your work, in your public acts, so that I might still admire and love all that I might differ from. But there—for we must be frank with each other—is just my difficulty. Why do you do so many contradictory things? Why do you talk of the poor, of labour, of self-denial, and live whenever you can with the idle rich people, who hate all three in their hearts? You talk their language; you scorn what they scorn, or so it seems; you accept their standards. Oh!—to the really 'consecrate' in heart and thought I could give my life so easily, so slavishly even! There is no one weaker than I in the world. I must have strength to lean upon—and a strength, pure at the core, that I can respect and follow.

"Here in this nursing life of mine, I go in and out among people to the best of whom life is very real and simple—and often, of course, very sad. And I am another being in it from what I was at Lady Winterbourne's. Everything looks differently to me. No, no! you must please wait till the inner voice speaks so that I can hear it plainly—for your sake at least as much as for mine. If you persisted in coming to see me now, I should have to put an end to it all."

"Strange is the modern woman!" thought Wharton to himself, not without sharp pique, as he pondered that letter in the course of his drive home from the meeting. "I talk to her of passion, and she asks me in return why I do things inconsistent with my political opinions! puts me through a moral catechism, in fact! What is the meaning of it all—confound it! —her state of mind and mine? Is the good old ars amandi perishing out of the world? Let some Stendhal come and tell us why!"

But he sat up to answer her, and could not get free from an inward pleading or wrestle with her, which haunted him through all the intervals of these rapid days.

Life while they lasted was indeed a gymnast's contest of breath and endurance. The Clarion made its retreat in Wharton's finest style, and the fact rang through labouring England. The strike-leaders came up from the Midlands; Wharton had to see them. He was hotly attacked in the House privately, and even publicly by certain of his colleagues. Bennett showed concern and annoyance. Meanwhile the Conservative papers talked the usual employers' political economy; and the Liberal papers, whose support of the strike had been throughout perfunctory, and of no particular use to themselves or to other people, took a lead they were glad to get, and went in strongly for the award.

Through it all Wharton showed extraordinary skill. The columns of the Clarion teemed with sympathetic appeals to the strikers, flanked by long statements of "hard fact"—the details of foreign competition and the rest, the plans of the masters—freely supplied him by Mr. Pearson. With Bennett and his colleagues in the House he took a bold line; admitted that he had endangered his popularity both inside Parliament and out of it at a particularly critical moment; and implied, though he did not say, that some men were still capable of doing independent things to their own hurt. Meanwhile he pushed a number of other matters to the front, both in the paper and in his own daily doings. He made at least two important speeches in the provinces, in the course of these days, on the Bill before the House of Lords; he asked questions in Parliament on the subject of the wages paid to Government employes; and he opened an attack on the report of a certain Conservative Commission which had been rousing the particular indignation of a large mass of South London working men.

At the end of ten days the strike was over; the workers, sullen and enraged, had submitted, and the plans of the Syndicate were in all the papers. Wharton, looking round him, realised to his own amazement that his political position had rather gained than suffered. The general impression produced by his action had been on the whole that of a man strong enough to take a line of his own, even at the risk of unpopularity. There was a new tone of respect among his opponents, and, resentful as some of the Labour members were, Wharton did not believe that what he had done would ultimately damage his chances on the 10th at all. He had vindicated his importance, and he held his head high, adopting towards his chances of the leadership a strong and careless tone that served him well.

Meanwhile there were, of course, clever people behind the scenes who looked on and laughed. But they held their tongues, and Wharton, who had carefully avoided the mention of names during the negotiations with Pearson, did his best to forget them. He felt uncomfortable, indeed, when he passed the portly Denny in the House or in the street. Denny had a way of looking at the member for West Brookshire out of the corner of a small, slit-like eye. He did it more than usual during these days, and Wharton had only to say to himself that for all things there is a price—which the gods exact.

Wilkins, since the first disclosure of the Clarion change of policy, had been astonishingly quiet. Wharton had made certain of violent attack from him. On the contrary, Wilkins wore now in the House a subdued and pre-occupied air that escaped notice even with his own party in the general fulness of the public mind. A few caustic north-countryisms on the subject of the Clarion and its master did indeed escape him now and then, and were reported from mouth to mouth; but on the whole he lay very low.

Still, whether in elation or anxiety, Wharton seemed to himself throughout the whole period to be a fighter, straining every muscle, his back to the wall and his hand against every man. There at the end of the fortnight stood the three goal-posts that must be passed, in victory or defeat; the meeting that would for the present decide his parliamentary prospects, his interview with Marcella, and—the confounded annual meeting of the "People's Banking Company," with all its threatened annoyances.

He became, indeed, more and more occupied with this latter business as the days went on. But he could see no way of evading it. He would have to fight it; luckily, now, he had the money.

The annual meeting took place two days before that fixed for the committee of the Labour party. Wharton was not present at it, and in spite of ample warning he gave way to certain lively movements of disgust and depression when at his club he first got hold of the evening papers containing the reports. His name, of course, figured amply in the denunciations heaped upon the directors of all dates; the sums which he with others were supposed to have made out of the first dealings with the shares on the Stock Exchange were freely mentioned; and the shareholders as a body had shown themselves most uncomfortably violent. He at once wrote off a letter to the papers disclaiming all responsibility for the worst irregularities which had occurred, and courting full enquiry—a letter which, as usual, both convinced and affected himself.

Then he went, restless and fuming, down to the House. Bennett passed him in the lobby with an uneasy and averted eye. Whereupon Wharton seized upon him, carried him into the Library, and talked to him, till Bennett, who, in spite of his extraordinary shrewdness and judgment in certain departments, was a babe in matters of company finance, wore a somewhat cheered countenance.

They came out into the lobby together, Wharton holding his head very high.

"I shall deal with the whole thing in my speech on Thursday!" he said aloud, as they parted.

Bennett gave him a friendly nod and smile.

There was in this little man, with his considerable brain and his poet's heart, something of the "imperishable child." Like a wholesome child, he did not easily "think evil"; his temper towards all men—even the owners of "way-leaves" and mining royalties—was optimist. He had the most naive admiration for Wharton's ability, and for the academic attainments he himself secretly pined for; and to the young complex personality itself he had taken from the beginning an unaccountable liking. The bond between the two, though incongruous and recent, was real; Wharton was as glad of Bennett's farewell kindness as Bennett had been of the younger man's explanations.

So that during that day and the next, Bennett went about contradicting, championing, explaining; while Wharton, laden with parliamentary business, vivid, unabashed, and resourceful, let it be known to all whom it concerned that in his solicitor's opinion he had a triumphant answer to all charges; and that meanwhile no one could wonder at the soreness of those poor devils of shareholders.

The hours passed on. Wednesday was mainly spent by Wharton in a series of conferences and intrigues either at the House or at his club; when he drove home exhausted at night he believed that all was arranged—the train irrevocably laid, and his nomination to the chairmanship of the party certain.

Wilkins and six or seven others would probably prove irreconcilable; but the vehemence and rancour shown by the great Nehemiah during the summer in the pursuit of his anti-Wharton campaign had to some extent defeated themselves. A personal grudge in the hands of a man of his type is not a formidable weapon. Wharton would have felt perfectly easy on the subject but for some odd bits of manner on Wilkins's part during the last forty-eight hours—whenever, in fact, the two men had run across each other in the House—marked by a sort of new and insolent good humour, that puzzled him. But there is a bravado of defeat. Yes!—he thought Wilkins was disposed of.

From his present point of ease—debts paid, banker propitiated, income assured—it amazed him to look back on his condition of a fortnight before. Had the Prince of Darkness himself offered such a bargain it must have been accepted. After all his luck had held! Once get through this odious company business—as to which, with a pleasing consciousness of turning the tables, he had peremptorily instructed Mr. Pearson himself—and the barque of his fortunes was assured.

Then, with a quick turn of the mind, he threw the burden of affairs from him. His very hopefulness and satisfaction had softened his mood. There stole upon him the murmurs and voices of another world of thought—a world well known to his versatility by report, though he had as a rule small inclination to dwell therein. But he was touched and shaken to-night by his own achievement. The heavenly powers had been unexpectedly kind to him, and he was half moved to offer them something in return.

"Do as you are done by"—that was an ethic he understood. And in moments of feeling he was as ready to apply it to great Zeus himself as to his friends or enemies in the House of Commons. He had done this doubtful thing—but why should it ever be necessary for him to do another? Vague philosophic yearnings after virtue, moderation, patriotism, crossed his mind. The Pagan ideal sometimes smote and fired him, the Christian never. He could still read his Plato and his Cicero, whereas gulfs of unfathomable distaste rolled between him and the New Testament. Perhaps the author of all authors for whom he had most relish was Montaigne. He would have taken him down to-night had there been nothing more kindling to think of.

Marcella!—ah! Marcella! He gave himself to the thought of her with a new and delightful tenderness which had in it elements of compunction. After those disagreeable paragraphs in the evening papers, he had instantly written to her. "Every public man"—he had said to her, finding instinctively the note of dignity that would appeal to her—"is liable at some period of his career to charges of this sort. They are at once exaggerated and blackened, because he is a public man. To you I owe perfect frankness, and you shall have it. Meanwhile I do not ask—I know—that you will be just to me, and put the matter out of your thoughts till I can discuss it with you. Two days more till I see your face! The time is long!"

To this there had been no answer. Her last letter indeed had rung sadly and coldly. No doubt Louis Craven had something to do with it. It would have alarmed him could he simply have found the time to think about it. Yet she was ready to see him on the 11th; and his confidence in his own powers of managing fate was tougher than ever. What pleasant lies he had told her at Lady Masterton's! Well! What passion ever yet but had its subterfuges? One more wrestle, and he would have tamed her to his wish, wild falcon that she was. Then—pleasure and brave living! And she also should have her way. She should breathe into him the language of those great illusions he had found it of late so hard to feign with her; and they two would walk and rule a yielding world together. Action, passion, affairs—life explored and exploited—and at last—"que la mort me treuve plantant mes choulx—mais nonchalant d'elle!—et encore plus de mon jardin imparfaict!"

He declaimed the words of the great Frenchman with something of the same temper in which the devout man would have made an act of faith. Then, with a long breath and a curious emotion, he went to try and sleep himself into the new day.



CHAPTER XV.

The following afternoon about six o'clock Marcella came in from her second round. After a very busy week, work happened to be slack; and she had been attending one or two cases in and near Brown's Buildings rather because they were near than because they seriously wanted her. She looked to see whether there was any letter or telegram from the office which would have obliged her to go out again. Nothing was to be seen; and she put down her bag and cloak, childishly glad of the extra hour of rest.

She was, indeed, pale and worn. The moral struggle which had filled the past fortnight from end to end had deepened all the grooves and strained the forces of life; and the path, though glimmering, was not wholly plain.

A letter lay unfinished in her drawer—if she sent it that night, there would be little necessity or inducement for Wharton to climb those stairs on the morrow. Yet, if he held her to it, she must see him.

As the sunset and the dusk crept on she still sat silent and alone, sunk in a depression which showed itself in every line of the drooping form. She was degraded in her own eyes. The nature of the impulses which had led her to give Wharton the hold upon her she had given him had become plain to her. What lay between them, and the worst impulses that poison the lives of women, but differences of degree, of expression? After those wild hours of sensuous revolt, a kind of moral terror was upon her.

What had worked in her? What was at the root of this vehemence of moral reaction, this haunting fear of losing for ever the best in life—self-respect, the comradeship of the good, communion with things noble and unstained—which had conquered at last the mere woman, the weakness of vanity and of sex? She hardly knew. Only there was in her a sort of vague thankfulness for her daily work. It did not seem to be possible to see one's own life solely under the aspects of selfish desire while hands and mind were busy with the piteous realities of sickness and of death. From every act of service—from every contact with the patience and simplicity of the poor—something had spoken to her, that divine ineffable something for ever "set in the world," like beauty, like charm, for the winning of men to itself. "Follow truth!" it said to her in faint mysterious breathings—"the truth of your own heart. The sorrow to which it will lead you is the only joy that remains to you."

Suddenly she looked round her little room with a rush of tenderness. The windows were open to the evening and the shouts of children playing in the courtyard came floating up. A bowl of Mellor roses scented the air; the tray for her simple meal stood ready, and beside it a volume of "The Divine Comedy," one of her mother's very rare gifts to her, in her motherless youth—for of late she had turned thirstily to poetry. There was a great peace and plainness about it all; and, besides, touches of beauty—tokens of the soul. Her work spoke in it; called to her; promised comfort and ennobling. She thought with yearning, too, of her parents; of the autumn holiday she was soon to spend with them. Her heart went out—sorely—to all the primal claims upon it.

* * * * *

Nevertheless, clear as was the inner resolution, the immediate future filled her with dread. Her ignorance of herself—her excitable folly—had given Wharton rights which her conscience admitted. He would not let her go without a struggle, and she must face it.

As to the incidents which had happened during the fortnight—Louis Craven's return, and the scandal of the "People's Banking Company"—they had troubled and distressed her; but it would not be true to say that they had had any part in shaping her slow determination. Louis Craven was sore and bitter. She was very sorry for him; and his reports of the Damesley strikers made her miserable. But she took Wharton's "leaders" in the Clarion for another equally competent opinion on the same subject; and told herself that she was no judge. As for the Company scandal, she had instantly and proudly responded to the appeal of his letter, and put the matter out of her thoughts, till at least he should give his own account. So much at any rate she owed to the man who had stood by her through the Hurd trial. Marcella Boyce would not readily believe in his dishonour! She did not in fact believe it. In spite of later misgivings, the impression of his personality, as she had first conceived it, in the early days at Mellor, was still too strong.

No—rather—she had constantly recollected throughout the day what was going on in Parliament. These were for him testing and critical hours, and she felt a wistful sympathy. Let him only rise to his part—take up his great task.

* * * * *

An imperious knocking on her thin outer door roused her. She went to open it and saw Anthony Craven,—the perspiration standing on his brow, his delicate cripple's face white and fierce.

"I want to talk to you," he said without preface. "Have you seen the afternoon papers?"

"No," she said in astonishment, "I was just going to send for them. What is wrong?"

He followed her into the sitting-room without speaking; and then he unfolded the Pall Mall he had in his hand and pointed to a large-print paragraph on the central page with a shaking hand.

Marcella read:

"EXCITING SCENES IN THE HOUSE.—MEETING OF THE LABOUR MEMBERS.—A committee of the Labour representatives in Parliament met this afternoon at 2 o'clock for the purpose of electing a chairman, and appointing whips to the party, thus constituting a separate parliamentary group. Much interest was felt in the proceedings, which it was universally supposed would lead to the appointment of Mr. H. S. Wharton, the member for West Brookshire, as chairman and leader of the Labour party. The excitement of the meeting and in the House may be imagined when—after a short but very cordial and effective speech from Mr. Bennett, the member for North Whinwick, in support of Mr. Wharton's candidature—Mr. Wilkins, the miner's member for Derlingham, rose and made a series of astounding charges against the personal honour of the member for West Brookshire. Put briefly, they amount to this: that during the recent strike at Damesley the support of the Clarion newspaper, of which Mr. Wharton is owner and practically editor, was bought by the employers in return for certain shares in the new Syndicate; that the money for these shares—which is put as high as 20,000 l.—had already gone into Mr. Wharton's private pocket; and that the change of policy on the part of the Clarion, which led to the collapse of the strike, was thus entirely due to what the Labour members can only regard under the circumstances as a bribe of a most disgraceful kind. The effect produced has been enormous. The debate is still proceeding, and reporters have been excluded. But I hope to send a fuller account later."

Marcella dropped the paper from her hand.

"What does it mean?" she said to her companion.

"Precisely what it says," replied Anthony, with a nervous impatience he could not repress. "Now," he added, as his lameness forced him to sit down, "will you kindly allow me some conversation with you? It was you—practically—who introduced Louis to that man. You meant well to Louis, and Mr. Wharton has been your friend. We therefore feel that we owe you some explanation. For that paragraph"—he pointed to the paper—"is, substantially—Louis's doing, and mine."

"Yours?" she said mechanically. "But Louis has been going on working for the paper—I persuaded him."

"I know. It was not we who actually discovered the thing. But we set a friend to work. Louis has had his suspicions all along. And at last—by the merest chance—we got the facts."

Then he told the story, staring at her the while with his sparkling eyes, his thin invalid's fingers fidgeting with his hat. If there was in truth any idea in his mind that the relations between his companion and Harry Wharton were more than those of friendship, it did not avail to make him spare her in the least. He was absorbed in vindictive feeling, which applied to her also. He might say for form's sake that she had meant well; but in fact he regarded her at this moment as a sort of odious Canidia whose one function had been to lure Louis to misfortune. Cut off himself, by half a score of peculiarities, physical and other, from love, pleasure, and power, Anthony Craven's whole affections and ambitions had for years centred in his brother. And now Louis was not only violently thrown out of employment, but compromised by the connection with the Clarion; was, moreover, saddled with a wife—and in debt.

So that his explanation was given with all the edge he could put upon it. Let her stop him, if she pleased!—but she did not stop him.

The facts were these:

Louis had, indeed, been persuaded by Marcella, for the sake of his wife and bread and butter, to go on working for the Clarion, as a reviewer. But his mind was all the time feverishly occupied with the apostasy of the paper and its causes. Remembering Wharton's sayings and letters throughout the struggle, he grew less and less able to explain the incident by the reasons Wharton had himself supplied, and more and more convinced that there was some mystery behind.

He and Anthony talked the matter over perpetually. One evening Anthony brought home from a meeting of the Venturists that George Denny, the son of one of the principal employers in the Damesley trade, whose name he had mentioned once before in Marcella's ears. Denny was by this time the candidate for a Labour constituency, an ardent Venturist, and the laughing-stock of his capitalist family, with whom, however, he was still on more or less affectionate terms. His father thought him an incorrigible fool, and his mother wailed over him to her friends. But they were still glad to see him whenever he would condescend to visit them; and all friction on money matters was avoided by the fact that Denny had for long refused to take any pecuniary help from his father, and was nevertheless supporting himself tolerably by lecturing and literature.

Denny was admitted into the brothers' debate, and had indeed puzzled himself a good deal over the matter already. He had taken a lively interest in the strike, and the articles in the Clarion which led to its collapse had seemed to him both inexplicable and enraging.

After his talk with the Cravens, he went away, determined to dine at home on the earliest possible opportunity. He announced himself accordingly in Hertford Street, was received with open arms, and then deliberately set himself, at dinner and afterwards, to bait his father on social and political questions, which, as a rule, were avoided between them.

Old Denny fell into the trap, lost his temper and self-control completely, and at a mention of Harry Wharton—skilfully introduced at the precisely right moment—as an authority on some matter connected with the current Labour programme, he threw himself back in his chair with an angry laugh.

"Wharton? Wharton? You quote that fellow to me?"

"Why shouldn't I?" said the son, quietly.

"Because, my good sir,—he's a rogue,—that's all!—a common rogue, from my point of view even—still more from yours."

"I know that any vile tale you can believe about a Labour leader you do, father," said George Denny, with dignity.

Whereupon the older man thrust his hand into his coat-pocket, and drawing out a small leather case, in which he was apt to carry important papers about with him, extracted from it a list containing names and figures, and held it with a somewhat tremulous hand under his son's eyes.

"Read it, sir! and hold your tongue! Last week my friends and I bought that man—and his precious paper—for a trifle of 20,000 l. or thereabouts. It paid us to do it, and we did it. I dare say you will think the preceding questionable. In my eyes it was perfectly legitimate, a piece of bonne guerre. The man was ruining a whole industry. Some of us had taken his measure, had found out too—by good luck!—that he was in sore straits for money—mortgages on the paper, gambling debts, and a host of other things—discovered a shrewd man to play him, and made our bid! He rose to it like a gudgeon—gave us no trouble whatever. I need not say, of course"—he added, looking up at his son—"that I have shown you that paper in the very strictest confidence. But it seemed to me it was my duty as a father to warn you of the nature of some of your associates!"

"I understand," said George Denny, as, after a careful study of the paper—which contained, for the help of the writer's memory, a list of the sums paid and founders' shares allotted to the various "promoters" of the new Syndicate—he restored it to its owner. "Well, I, father, have this to say in return. I came here to-night in the hope of getting from you this very information, and in the public interest I hold myself not only free but bound to make public use of it, at the earliest possible opportunity!"

The family scene may be imagined. But both threats and blandishments were entirely lost upon the son. There was in him an idealist obstinacy which listened to nothing but the cry of a cause, and he declared that nothing would or should prevent him from carrying the story of the bribe direct to Nehemiah Wilkins, Wharton's chief rival in the House, and so saving the country and the Labour party from the disaster and disgrace of Wharton's leadership. There was no time to lose, the party meeting in the House was only two days off.

At the end of a long struggle, which exhausted everybody concerned, and was carried on to a late hour of the night, Denny pere, influenced by a desire to avoid worse things—conscious, too, of the abundant evidence he possessed of Wharton's acceptance and private use of the money—and, probably, when it came to the point, not unwilling,—under compulsion!—to tumble such a hero from his pedestal, actually wrote, under his son's advice, a letter to Wilkins. It was couched in the most cautious language, and professed to be written in the interests of Wharton himself, to put an end "to certain ugly and unfounded rumours that have been brought to my knowledge." The negotiation itself was described in the driest business terms. "Mr. Wharton, upon cause shown, consented to take part in the founding of the Syndicate, and in return for his assistance, was allotted ten founders' shares in the new company. The transaction differed in nothing from those of ordinary business"—a last sentence slily added by the Socialist son, and innocently accepted by one of the shrewdest of men.

After which Master George Denny scarcely slept, and by nine o'clock next morning was in a hansom on his way to Wilkins's lodgings in Westminster. The glee of that black-bearded patriot hardly needs description. He flung himself on the letter with a delight and relief so exuberant that George Denny went off to another more phlegmatic member of the anti-Wharton "cave," with entreaties that an eye should be kept on the member for Derlingham, lest he should do or disclose anything before the dramatic moment.

Then he himself spent the next forty-eight hours in ingenious efforts to put together certain additional information as to the current value of founders' shares in the new company, the nature and amount of Wharton's debts, and so on. Thanks to his father's hints he was able in the end to discover quite enough to furnish forth a supplementary statement. So that, when the 10th arrived, the day rose upon a group of men breathlessly awaiting a play within a play—with all their parts rehearsed, and the prompter ready.

* * * * *

Such in substance, was Anthony's story. So carried away was he by the excitement and triumph of it, that he soon ceased to notice what its effect might be upon his pale and quick-breathing companion.

"And now what has happened?" she asked him abruptly, when at last he paused.

"Why, you saw!" he said in astonishment, pointing to the evening paper—"at least the beginning of it. Louis is at the House now. I expect him every moment. He said he would follow me here."

Marcella pressed her hands upon her eyes a moment as though in pain. Anthony looked at her with a tardy prick of remorse.

"I hear Louis's knock!" he said, springing up. "May I let him in?" And, without waiting for reply, he hobbled as fast as his crutch would carry him to the outer door. Louis came in. Marcella rose mechanically. He paused on the threshold, his short sight trying to make her out in the dusk. Then his face softened and quivered. He walked forward quickly.

"I know you have something to forgive us," he said, "and that this will distress you. But we could not give you warning. Everything was so rapid, and the public interests involved so crushing."

He was flushed with vengeance and victory, but as he approached her his look was deprecating—almost timid. Only the night before, Anthony for the first time had suggested to him an idea about her. He did not believe it—had had no time in truth to think of it in the rush of events. But now he saw her, the doubt pulled at his heart. Had he indeed stabbed the hand that had tried to help him?

Anthony touched him impatiently on the arm. "What has happened, Louis? I have shown Miss Boyce the first news."

"It is all over," said Louis, briefly. "The meeting was breaking up as I came away. It had lasted nearly five hours. There was a fierce fight, of course, between Wharton and Wilkins. Then Bennett withdrew his resolution, refused to be nominated himself—nearly broke down, in fact, they say; he had always been attached to Wharton, and had set his heart upon making him leader—and finally, after a long wrangle, Molloy was appointed chairman of the party."

"Good!" cried Anthony, not able to suppress the note of exultation.

Louis did not speak. He looked at Marcella.

"Did he defend himself?" she asked in a low, sharp voice.

Louis shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, yes. He spoke—but it did him no good. Everybody agreed that the speech was curiously ineffective. One would have expected him to do it better. But he seemed to be knocked over. He said, of course, that he had satisfied himself, and given proof in the paper, that the strike could not be maintained, and that being so he was free to join any syndicate he pleased. But he spoke amid dead silence, and there was a general groan when he sat down. Oh, it was not this business only! Wilkins made great play in part of his speech with the Company scandal too. It is a complete smash all round."

"Which he will never get over?" said Marcella, quickly.

"Not with our men. What he may do elsewhere is another matter. Anthony has told you how it came out?"

She made a sign of assent. She was sitting erect and cold, her hands round her knees.

"I did not mean to keep anything from you," he said in a low voice, bending to her. "I know—you admired him—that he had given you cause. But—my mind has been on fire—ever since I came back from those Damesley scenes!"

She offered no reply. Silence fell upon all three for a minute or two; and in the twilight each could hardly distinguish the others. Every now and then the passionate tears rose in Marcella's eyes; her heart contracted. That very night when he spoke to her, when he used all those big words to her about his future, those great ends for which he had claimed her woman's help—he had these things in his mind.

"I think," said Louis Craven presently, touching her gently on the arm—he had tried once in vain to attract her attention—"I think I hear some one asking for you outside on the landing—Mrs. Hurd seems to be bringing them in."

As he spoke, Anthony suddenly sprang to his feet, and the outer door opened.

"Louis!" cried Anthony, "it is he!"

"Are yer at home, miss?" said Minta Hurd, putting in her head; "I can hardly see, it's so dark. Here's a gentleman wants to see you."

As she spoke, Wharton passed her, and stood—arrested—by the sight of the three figures. At the same moment Mrs. Hurd lit the gas in the little passage. The light streamed upon his face, and showed him the identity of the two men standing beside Marcella.

Never did Marcella forget that apparition—the young grace and power of the figure—the indefinable note of wreck, of catastrophe—the Lucifer brightness of the eyes in the set face. She moved forward. Anthony stopped her.

"Good-night, Miss Boyce!"

She shook hands unconsciously with him and with Louis. The two Cravens turned to the door. Wharton advanced into the room, and let them pass.

"You have been in a hurry to tell your story!" he said, as Louis walked by him.

Contemptuous hate breathed from every feature, but he was perfectly self-controlled.

"Yes—" said Craven, calmly—"Now it is your turn."

The door was no sooner shut than Wharton strode forward and caught her hand.

"They have told you everything? Ah!—"

His eye fell upon the evening paper. Letting her go, he felt for a chair and dropped into it. Throwing himself back, his hands behind his head, he drew a long breath and his eyes closed. For the first time in his life or hers she saw him weak and spent like other men. Even his nerve had been worn down by the excitement of these five fighting hours. The eyes were lined and hollow—the brow contracted; the young roundness of the cheek was lost in the general pallor and patchiness of the skin; the lower part of the face seemed to have sharpened and lengthened,—and over the whole had passed a breath of something aging and withering the traces of which sent a shiver through Marcella. She sat down near him, still in her nurse's cloak, one trembling hand upon her lap.

"Will you tell me what made you do this?" she asked, not being able to think of anything else to say.

He opened his eyes with a start.

In that instant's quiet the scene he had just lived through had been rushing before him again—the long table in the panelled committee-room, the keen angry faces gathered about it. Bennett, in his blue tie and shabby black coat, the clear moist eyes vexed and miserable—Molloy, small and wiry, business-like in the midst of confusion, cool in the midst of tumult—and Wilkins, a black, hectoring leviathan, thundering on the table as he flung his broad Yorkshire across it, or mouthing out Denny's letter in the midst of the sudden electrical silence of some thirty amazed and incredulous hearers.

"Spies, yo call us?" with a finger like a dart, threatening the enemy—"Aye; an' yo're aboot reet! I and my friends—we have been trackin' and spyin' for weeks past. We knew those men, those starvin' women and bairns, were bein' sold, but we couldn't prove it. Now we've come at the how and the why of it! And we'll make it harder for men like you to sell 'em again! Yo call it infamy?—well, we call it detection."

Then rattling on the inner ear came the phrases of the attack which followed on the director of "The People's Banking Association," the injured innocent of as mean a job, as unsavoury a bit of vulturous finance, as had cropped into publicity for many a year—and finally the last dramatic cry:

"But it's noa matter, yo say! Mester Wharton has nobbut played his party and the workin' man a dirty trick or two—an' yo mun have a gentleman! Noa—the workin' man isn't fit himself to speak wi' his own enemies i' th' gate—yo mun have a gentleman!—an' Mester Wharton, he says he'll tak' the post, an' dea his best for yo—an', remember, yo mun have a gentleman! Soa now—Yes! or No!—wull yo?—or woan't yo?"

And at that, the precipitation of the great unwieldy form half across the table towards Wharton's seat—the roar of the speaker's immediate supporters thrown up against the dead silence of the rest!

As to his own speech—he thought of it with a soreness, a disgust which penetrated to bones and marrow. He had been too desperately taken by surprise—had lost his nerve—missed the right tone throughout. Cool defiance, free self-justification, might have carried him through. Instead of which—faugh!

All this was the phantom-show of a few seconds' thought. He roused himself from a miserable reaction of mind and body to attend to Marcella's question.

"Why did I do it?" he repeated; "why—"

He broke off, pressing both his hands upon his brow. Then he suddenly sat up and pulled himself together.

"Is that tea?" he said, touching the tray. "Will you give me some?"

Marcella went into the back kitchen and called Minta. While the boiling water was brought and the tea was made, Wharton sat forward with his face on his hands and saw nothing. Marcella whispered a word in Minta's ear as she came in. The woman paused, looked at Wharton, whom she had not recognised before in the dark—grew pale—and Marcella saw her hands shaking as she set the tray in order. Wharton knew nothing and thought nothing of Kurd's widow, but to Marcella the juxtaposition of the two figures brought a wave of complex emotion.

Wharton forced himself to eat and drink, hardly speaking the while. Then, when the tremor of sheer exhaustion had to some extent abated, he suddenly realised who this was that was sitting opposite to him ministering to him.

She felt his hand—his quick powerful hand—on hers.

"To you I owe the whole truth—let me tell it!"

She drew herself away instinctively—but so softly that he did not realise it. He threw himself back once more in the chair beside her—one knee over the other, the curly head so much younger to-night than the face beneath it supported on his arms, his eyes closed again for rest—and plunged into the story of the Clarion.

It was admirably told. He had probably so rehearsed it to himself several times already. He described his action as the result of a double influence working upon him—the influence of his own debts and necessities, and the influence of his growing conviction that the maintenance of the strike had become a blunder, even a misfortune for the people themselves.

"Then—just as I was at my wit's end, conscious besides that the paper was on a wrong line, and must somehow be got out of it—came the overtures from the Syndicate. I knew perfectly well I ought to have refused them—of course my whole career was risked by listening to them. But at the same time they gave me assurances that the workpeople would ultimately gain—they proved to me that I was helping to extinguish the trade. As to the money—when a great company has to be launched, the people who help it into being get paid for it—it is invariable—it happens every day. I like the system no more than you may do—or Wilkins. But consider. I was in such straits that bankruptcy lay between me and my political future. Moreover—I had lost nerve, sleep, balance. I was scarcely master of myself when Pearson first broached the matter to me—"

"Pearson!" cried Marcella, involuntarily. She recalled the figure of the solicitor; had heard his name from Frank Leven. She remembered Wharton's impatient words—"There is a tiresome man wants to speak to me on business—"

It was then I—that evening! Something sickened her.

Wharton raised himself in his chair and looked at her attentively with his young haggard eyes. In the faint lamplight she was a pale vision of the purest and noblest beauty. But the lofty sadness of her face filled him with a kind of terror. Desire—impotent pain—violent resolve, swept across him. He had come to her, straight from the scene of his ruin, as to the last bulwark left him against a world bent on his destruction, and bare henceforward of all delights.

"Well, what have you to say to me?" he said, suddenly, in a low changed voice—"as I speak—as I look at you—I see in your face that you distrust—that you have judged me; those two men, I suppose, have done their work! Yet from you—you of all people—I might look not only for justice—but—I will dare say it—for kindness!"

She trembled. She understood that he appealed to the days at Mellor, and her lips quivered.

"No," she exclaimed, almost timidly—"I try to think the best. I see the pressure was great."

"And consider, please," he said proudly, "what the reasons were for that pressure."

She looked at him interrogatively—a sudden softness in her eyes. If at that moment he had confessed himself fully, if he had thrown himself upon her in the frank truth of his mixed character—and he could have done it, with a Rousseau-like completeness—it is difficult to say what the result of this scene might have been. In the midst of shock and repulsion, she was filled with pity; and there were moments when she was more drawn to his defeat and undoing, than she had ever been to his success.

Yet how question him? To do so, would be to assume a right, which in turn would imply his rights. She thought of that mention of "gambling debts," then of his luxurious habits, and extravagant friends. But she was silent. Only, as she sat there opposite to him, one slim hand propping the brow, her look invited him.

He thought he saw his advantage.

"You must remember," he said, with the same self-assertive bearing, "that I have never been a rich man, that my mother spent my father's savings on a score of public objects, that she and I started a number of experiments on the estate, that my expenses as a member of Parliament are very large, and that I spent thousands on building up the Clarion. I have been ruined by the Clarion, by the cause the Clarion supported. I got no help from my party—where was it to come from? They are all poor men. I had to do everything myself, and the struggle has been more than flesh and blood could bear! This year, often, I have not known how to move, to breathe, for anxieties of every sort. Then came the crisis—my work, my usefulness, my career, all threatened. The men who hated me saw their opportunity. I was a fool and gave it them. And my enemies have used it—to the bitter end!"

Tone and gesture were equally insistent and strong. What he was saying to himself was that, with a woman of Marcella's type, one must "bear it out." This moment of wreck was also with him the first moment of all-absorbing and desperate desire. To win her—to wrest her from the Cravens' influence—that had been the cry in his mind throughout his dazed drive from the House of Commons. Her hand in his—her strength, her beauty, the romantic reputation that had begun to attach to her, at his command—and he would have taken the first step to recovery, he would see his way to right himself.

Ah! but he had missed his chance! Somehow, every word he had been saying rang false to her. She could have thrown herself as a saving angel on the side of weakness and disaster which had spoken its proper language, and with a reckless and confiding truth had appealed to the largeness of a woman's heart. But this patriot—ruined so nobly—for such disinterested purposes—left her cold! She began to think even—hating herself—of the thousands he was supposed to have made in the gambling over that wretched company—no doubt for the "cause" too!

But before she could say a word he was kneeling beside her.

"Marcella I give me my answer!—I am in trouble and defeat—be a woman, and come to me!"

He had her hands. She tried to recover them.

"No!" she said, with passionate energy, "that is impossible. I had written to you before you came, before I had heard a word of this. Please, please let me go!"

"Not till you explain!"—he said, still holding her, and roused to a white heat of emotion—"why is it impossible? You said to me once, with all your heart, that you thanked me, that I had taught you, helped you. You cannot ignore the bond between us! And you are free. I have a right to say to you—you thirst to save, to do good—come and save a man that cries to you!—he confesses to you, freely enough, that he has made a hideous mistake—help him to redeem it!"

She rose suddenly with all her strength, freeing herself from him, so that he rose too, and stood glowering and pale.

"When I said that to you," she cried, "I was betraying "—her voice failed her an instant—"we were both false—to the obligation that should have held us—restrained us. No! no! I will never be your wife! We should hurt each other—poison each other!"

Her eyes shone with wild tears. As he stood there before her she was seized with a piteous sense of contrast—of the irreparable—of what might have been.

"What do you mean?" he asked her, roughly.

She was silent.

His passion rose.

"Do you remember," he said, approaching her again, "that you have given me cause to hope? It is those two fanatics that have changed you—possessed your mind."

She looked at him with a pale dignity.

"My letters must have warned you," she said simply. "If you had come to-morrow—in prosperity—you would have got the same answer, at once. To-day—now—I have had weak moments, because—because I did not know how to add pain to pain. But they are gone—I see my way! I do not love you—that is the simple, the whole truth—I could not follow you!"

He stared at her an instant in a bitter silence.

"I have been warned,"—he said slowly, but in truth losing control of himself, "not only by you—and I suppose I understand! You repent last year. Your own letter said as much. You mean to recover, the ground—the place you lost. Ah, well!—most natural!—most fitting! When the time comes—and my bones are less sore—I suppose I shall have my second congratulations ready! Meanwhile—"

She gave a low cry and burst suddenly into a passion of weeping, turning her face from him. But when in pale sudden shame he tried to excuse himself—to appease her—she moved away, with a gesture that overawed him.

"You have not confessed yourself"—she said, and his look wavered under the significance of hers—"but you drive me to it. Yes, I repent!"—her breast heaved, she caught her breath. "I have been trying to cheat myself these last few weeks—to run away from grief—and the other night when you asked me—I would have given all I have and am to feel like any happy girl, who says 'Yes' to her lover. I tried to feel so. But even then, though I was miserable and reckless, I knew in my heart—it was impossible! If you suppose—if you like to suppose—that I—I have hopes or plans—as mean as they would be silly—you must—of course. But I have given no one any right to think so or say so. Mr. Wharton—"

Gathering all her self-control, she put out her white hand to him. "Please—please say good-bye to me. It has been hideous vanity—and mistake—and wretchedness—our knowing each other—from the beginning. I am grateful for all you did, I shall always be grateful. I hope—oh! I hope—that—that you will find a way through this trouble. I don't want to make it worse by a word. If I could do anything! But I can't. You must please go. It is late. I wish to call my friend, Mrs. Hurd."

Their eyes met—hers full of a certain stern yet quivering power, his strained and bloodshot, in his lined young face.

Then, with a violent gesture—as though he swept her out of his path—he caught up his hat, went to the door, and was gone.

She fell on her chair almost fainting, and sat there for long in the summer dark, covering her face. But it was not his voice that haunted her ears.

"You have done me wrong—I pray God you may not do yourself a greater wrong in the future!"

Again and again, amid the whirl of memory, she pressed the sad remembered words upon the inward wound and fever—tasting, cherishing the smart of them. And as her trance of exhaustion and despair gradually left her, it was as though she crept close to some dim beloved form in whom her heart knew henceforward the secret and sole companion of its inmost life.



BOOK IV.

"You and I— Why care by what meanders we are here I' the centre of the labyrinth? Men have died Trying to find this place which we have found."



CHAPTER I.

Ah! how purely, cleanly beautiful was the autumn sunrise! After her long hardening to the stale noisomeness of London streets, the taint of London air, Marcella hung out of her window at Mellor in a thirsty delight, drinking in the scent of dew and earth and trees, watching the ways of the birds, pouring forth a soul of yearning and of memory into the pearly silence of the morning.

High up on the distant hill to the left, beyond the avenue, the pale apricots and golds of the newly-shorn stubbles caught the mounting light. The beeches of the avenue were turning fast, and the chestnuts girdling the church on her right hand were already thin enough to let the tower show through. That was the bell—the old bell given to the church by Hampden's friend, John Boyce—striking half-past five; and close upon it came the call of a pheasant in the avenue. There he was, fine fellow, with his silly, mincing run, redeemed all at once by the sudden whirr of towering flight.

To-day Mary Harden and the Rector would be at work in the church, and to-morrow was to be the Harvest Festival. Was it two years?—or in an hour or two would she be going with her basket from the Cedar Garden, to find that figure in the brown shooting-coat standing with the Hardens on the altar steps?

Alas!—alas!—her head dropped on her hands as she knelt by the open window. How changed were all the aspects of the world! Three weeks before, the bell in that little church had tolled for one who, in the best way and temper of his own generation, had been God's servant and man's friend—who had been Marcella's friend—and had even, in his last days, on a word from Edward Hallin, sent her an old man's kindly farewell.

"Tell her," Lord Maxwell had written with his own hand to Hallin, "she has taken up a noble work, and will make, I pray God, a noble woman. She had, I think, a kindly liking for an old man, and she will not disdain his blessing."

He had died at Geneva, Aldous and Miss Raeburn with him. For instead of coming home in August, he had grown suddenly worse, and Aldous had gone out to him. They had brought him to the Court for burial, and the new Lord Maxwell, leaving his aunt at the Court, had almost immediately returned to town,—because of Edward Hallin's state of health.

Marcella had seen much of Hallin since he and his sister had come back to London in the middle of August. Hallin's apparent improvement had faded within a week or two of his return to his rooms; Aldous was at Geneva; Miss Hallin was in a panic of alarm; and Marcella found herself both nurse and friend. Day after day she would go in after her nursing rounds, share their evening meal, and either write for Hallin, or help the sister—by the slight extra weight of her professional voice—to keep him from writing and thinking.

He would not himself admit that he was ill at all, and his whole energies at the time were devoted to the preparation of a series of three addresses on the subject of Land Reform, which were to be delivered in October to the delegates of a large number of working-men's clubs from all parts of London. So strong was Hallin's position among working-men reformers, and so beloved had been his personality, that as soon as his position towards the new land nationalising movement, now gathering formidable strength among the London working men, had come to be widely understood, a combined challenge had been sent him by some half-dozen of the leading Socialist and Radical clubs, asking him to give three weekly addresses in October to a congress of London delegates, time to be allowed after the lecture for questions and debate.

Hallin had accepted the invitation with eagerness, and was throwing an intensity of labour into the writing of his three lectures which often seemed to his poor sister to be not only utterly beyond his physical strength, but to carry with it a note as of a last effort, a farewell message, such as her devoted affection could ill endure. For all the time he was struggling with cardiac weakness and brain irritability which would have overwhelmed any one less accustomed to make his account with illness, or to balance against feebleness of body a marvellous discipline of soul.

Lord Maxwell was still alive, and Hallin, in the midst of his work, was looking anxiously for the daily reports from Aldous, living in his friend's life almost as much as in his own—handing on the reports, too, day by day to Marcella, with a manner which had somehow slipped into expressing a new and sure confidence in her sympathy—when she one evening found Minta Hurd watching for her at the door with a telegram from her mother: "Your father suddenly worse. Please come at once." She arrived at Mellor late that same night.

On the same day Lord Maxwell died. Less than a week later he was buried in the little Gairsley church. Mr. Boyce was then alarmingly ill, and Marcella sat in his darkened room or in her own all day, thinking from time to time of what was passing three miles away—of the great house in its mourning—of the figures round the grave. Hallin, of course, would be there. It was a dripping September day, and she passed easily from moments of passionate yearning and clairvoyance to worry herself about the damp and the fatigue that Hallin must be facing.

Since then she had heard occasionally from Miss Hallin. Everything was much as it had been, apparently. Edward was still hard at work, still ill, still serene. "Aldous"—Miss Hallin could not yet reconcile herself to the new name—was alone in the Curzon Street house, much occupied and harassed apparently by the legal business of the succession, by the election presently to be held in his own constituency, and by the winding-up of his work at the Home Office. He was to resign his under-secretaryship; but with the new session and a certain rearrangement of offices it was probable that he would be brought back into the Ministry. Meanwhile he was constantly with them; and she thought that his interest in Edward's work and anxiety about his health were perhaps both good for him as helping to throw off something of his own grief and depression.

Whereby it will be noticed that Miss Hallin, like her brother, had by now come to speak intimately and freely to Marcella of her old lover and their friend.

Now for some days, however, she had received no letter from either brother or sister, and she was particularly anxious to hear. For this was the fourth of October, and on the second he was to have delivered the first of his addresses. How had the frail prophet sped? She had her fears. For her weekly "evenings" in Brown's Buildings had shown her a good deal of the passionate strength of feeling developed during the past year in connection with this particular propaganda. She doubted whether the London working man at the present moment was likely to give even Hallin a fair hearing on the point. However, Louis Craven was to be there. And he had promised to write even if Susie Hallin could find no time. Some report ought to reach Mellor by the evening.

Poor Cravens! The young wife, who was expecting a baby, had behaved with great spirit through the Clarion trouble; and, selling their bits of furniture to pay their debts, they had gone to lodge near Anthony. Louis had got some odds and ends of designing and artistic work to do through his brother's influence; and was writing where he could, here and there. Marcella had introduced them to the Hallins, and Susie Hallin was taking a motherly interest in the coming child. Anthony, in his gloomy way, was doing all he could for them. But the struggle was likely to be a hard one, and Marcella had recognised of late that in Louis as in Anthony there were dangerous possibilities of melancholy and eccentricity. Her heart was often sore over their trouble and her own impotence.

Meantime for some wounds, at any rate, time had brought swift cautery! Not three days after her final interview with Wharton, while the catastrophe in the Labour party was still in every one's mouth, and the air was full of bitter speeches and recriminations, Hallin one evening laid down his newspaper with a sudden startled gesture, and then pushed it over to Marcella. There, in the columns devoted to personal news of various sorts, appeared the announcement:

"A marriage has been arranged between Mr. H.S. Wharfon, M.P. for West Brookshire, and Lady Selina Farrell, only surviving daughter of Lord Alresford. The ceremony will probably take place somewhere about Easter next. Meanwhile Mr. Wharton, whose health has suffered of late from his exertions in and out of the House, has been ordered to the East for rest by his medical advisers. He and his friend Sir William Ffolliot start for French Cochin China in a few days. Their object is to explore the famous ruined temples of Angkor in Cambodia, and if the season is favourable they may attempt to ascend the Mekong. Mr. Wharton is paired for the remainder of the session."

"Did you know anything of this?" said Hallin, with that careful carelessness in which people dress a dubious question.

"Nothing," she said quietly.

Then an impulse not to be stood against, springing from very mingled depths of feeling, drove her on. She, too, put down the paper, and laying her finger-tips together on her knee she said with an odd slight laugh:

"But I was the last person to know. About a fortnight ago Mr. Wharton proposed to me."

Hallin sprang from his chair, almost with a shout. "And you refused him?"

She nodded, and then was angrily aware that, totally against her will or consent, and for the most foolish and remote reasons, those two eyes of hers had grown moist.

Hallin went straight over to her.

"Do you mind letting me shake hands with you?" he said, half ashamed of his outburst, a dancing light of pleasure transforming the thin face. "There—I am an idiot! We won't say a word more—except about Lady Selina. Have you seen her?"

"Three or four times."

"What is she like?"

Marcella hesitated.

"Is she fat—and forty?" said Hallin, fervently—she beat him?"

"Not at all. She is very thin—thirty-five, elegant, terribly of her own opinion—and makes a great parade of 'papa.'"

She looked round at him, unsteadily, but gaily.

"Oh! I see," said Hallin, with disappointment, "she will only take care he doesn't beat her—which I gather from your manner doesn't matter. And her politics?"

"Lord Alresford was left out of the Ministry," said Marcella slily. "He and Lady Selina thought it a pity."

"Alresford—Alresford? Why, of course! He was Lord Privy Seal in their last Cabinet—a narrow-minded old stick!—did a heap of mischief in the Lords. Well!"—Hallin pondered a moment—"Wharton will go over!"

Marcella was silent. The tremor of that wrestler's hour had not yet passed away. The girl could find no words in which to discuss Wharton himself, this last amazing act, or its future.

As for Hallin, he sat lost in pleasant dreams of a whitewashed Wharton, comfortably settled at last below the gangway on the Conservative side, using all the old catch-words in slightly different connections, and living gaily on his Lady Selina. Fragments from the talk of Nehemiah—Nehemiah the happy and truculent, that new "scourge of God" upon the parasites of Labour—of poor Bennett, of Molloy, and of various others who had found time to drop in upon him since the Labour smash, kept whirling in his mind. The same prediction he had just made to Marcella was to be discerned in several of them. He vowed to himself that he would write to Raeburn that night, congratulate him and the party on the possibility of so eminent a recruit—and hint another item of news by the way. She had trusted her confidence to him without any pledge—an act for which he paid her well thenceforward, in the coin of a friendship far more intimate, expansive, and delightful than anything his sincerity had as yet allowed him to show her.

But these London incidents and memories, near as they were in time, looked many of them strangely remote to Marcella in this morning silence. When she drew back from the window, after darkening the now sun-flooded room in a very thorough business-like way, in order that she might have four or five hours' sleep, there was something symbolic in the act. She gave back her mind, her self, to the cares, the anxieties, the remorses of the past three weeks. During the night she had been sitting up with her father that her mother might rest. Now, as she lay down, she thought with the sore tension which had lately become habitual to her, of her father's state, her mother's strange personality, her own short-comings.

* * * * *

By the middle of the morning she was downstairs again, vigorous and fresh as ever. Mrs. Boyce's maid was for the moment in charge of the patient, who was doing well. Mrs. Boyce was writing some household notes in the drawing-room. Marcella went in search of her.

The bare room, just as it ever was—with its faded antique charm—looked bright and tempting in the sun. But the cheerfulness of it did but sharpen the impression of that thin form writing in the window. Mrs. Boyce looked years older. The figure had shrunk and flattened into that of an old woman; the hair, which two years before had been still young and abundant, was now easily concealed under the close white cap she had adopted very soon after her daughter had left Mellor. The dress was still exquisitely neat; but plainer and coarser. Only the beautiful hands and the delicate stateliness of carriage remained—sole relics of a loveliness which had cost its owner few pangs to part with.

Marcella hovered near her—a little behind her—looking at her from time to time with a yearning compunction—which Mrs. Boyce seemed to be aware of, and to avoid.

"Mamma, can't I do those letters for you? I am quite fresh."

"No, thank you. They are just done."

When they were all finished and stamped, Mrs. Boyce made some careful entries in a very methodical account-book, and then got up, locking the drawers of her little writing-table behind her.

"We can keep the London nurse another week I think," she said.

"There is no need," said Marcella, quickly. "Emma and I could divide the nights now and spare you altogether. You see I can sleep at any time."

"Your father seems to prefer Nurse Wenlock," said Mrs. Boyce.

Marcella took the little blow in silence. No doubt it was her due. During the past two years she had spent two separate months at Mellor; she had gone away in opposition to her father's wish; and had found herself on her return more of a stranger to her parents than ever. Mr. Boyce's illness, involving a steady extension of paralytic weakness, with occasional acute fits of pain and danger, had made steady though very gradual progress all the time. But it was not till some days after her return home that Marcella had realised a tenth part of what her mother had undergone since the disastrous spring of the murder.

She passed now from the subject of the nurse with a half-timid remark about "expense."

"Oh! the expense doesn't matter!" said Mrs. Boyce, as she stood absently before the lately kindled fire, warming her chilled fingers at the blaze.

"Papa is more at ease in those ways?" Marcella ventured. And kneeling down beside her mother she gently chafed one of the cold hands.

"There seems to be enough for what is wanted," said Mrs. Boyce, bearing the charing with patience. "Your father, I believe, has made great progress this year in freeing the estate. Thank you, my dear. I am not cold now."

And she gently withdrew her hand.

Marcella, indeed, had already noticed that there were now no weeds on the garden-paths, that instead of one gardener there were three, that the old library had been decently patched and restored, that there was another servant, that William, grown into a very—tolerable footman, wore a reputable coat, and that a plain but adequate carriage and horse had met her at the station. Her pity even understood that part of her father's bitter resentment of his ever-advancing disablement came from his feeling that here at last—just as death was in sight—he, that squalid failure, Dick Boyce, was making a success of something.

Presently, as she knelt before the fire, a question escaped her, which, when it was spoken, she half regretted.

"Has papa been able to do anything for the cottages yet?"

"I don't think so," said Mrs. Boyce, calmly. After a minute's pause she added, "That will be for your reign, my dear."

Marcella looked up with a sharp thrill of pain.

"Papa is better, mamma, and—and I don't know what you mean. I shall never reign here without you."

Mrs. Boyce began to fidget with the rings on her thin left hand.

"When Mellor ceases to be your father's it will be yours," she said, not without a certain sharp decision; "that was settled long ago. I must be free—and if you are to do anything with this place, you must give your youth and strength to it. And your father is not better—except for the moment. Dr. Clarke exactly foretold the course of his illness to me two years ago, on my urgent request. He may live four months—six, if we can get him to the South. More is impossible."

There was something ghastly in her dry composure. Marcella caught her hand again and leant her trembling young cheek against it.

"I could not live here without you, mamma!"

Mrs. Boyce could not for once repress the inner fever which in general her will controlled so well.

"I hardly think it would matter to you so much, my dear."

Marcella shrank.

"I don't wonder you say that!" she said in a low voice. "Do you think it was all a mistake, mamma, my going away eighteen months ago—a wrong act?"

Mrs. Boyce grew restless.

"I judge nobody, my dear!—unless I am obliged. As you know, I am for liberty—above all"—she spoke with emphasis—"for letting the past alone. But I imagine you must certainly have learnt to do without us. Now I ought to go to your father."

But Marcella held her.

"Do you remember in the Purgatorio, mamma, the lines about the loser in the game: 'When the game of dice breaks up, he who lost lingers sorrowfully behind, going over the throws, and learning by his grief'? Do you remember?"

Mrs. Boyce looked down upon her, involuntarily a little curious, a little nervous, but assenting. It was one of the inconsistencies of her strange character that she had all her life been a persistent Dante student. The taste for the most strenuous and passionate of poets had developed in her happy youth; it had survived through the loneliness of her middle life. Like everything else personal to herself she never spoke of it; but the little worn books on her table had been familiar to Marcella from a child.

"E tristo impara?" repeated Marcella, her voice wavering. "Mamma "—she laid her face against her mother's dress again—"I have lost more throws than you think in the last two years. Won't you believe I may have learnt a little?"

She raised her eyes to her mother's pinched and mask-like face. Mrs. Boyce's lips moved as though she would have asked a question. But she did not ask it. She drew, instead, the stealthy breath Marcella knew well—the breath of one who has measured precisely her own powers of endurance, and will not risk them for a moment by any digression into alien fields of emotion.

"Well, but one expects persons like you to learn," she said, with a light, cold manner, which made the words mere convention. There was silence an instant; then, probably to release herself, her hand just touched her daughter's hair. "Now, will you come up in half an hour? That was twelve striking, and Emma is never quite punctual with his food."

* * * * *

Marcella went to her father at the hour named. She found him in his wheeled chair, beside a window opened to the sun, and overlooking the Cedar Garden. The room in which he sat was the state bedroom of the old house. It had a marvellous paper of branching trees and parrots and red-robed Chinamen, in the taste of the morning room downstairs, a carved four-post bed, a grate adorned with purplish Dutch tiles, an array of family miniatures over the mantelpiece, and on a neighbouring wall a rack of old swords and rapiers. The needlework hangings of the bed were full of holes; the seats of the Chippendale chairs were frayed or tattered. But, none the less, the inalienable character and dignity of his sleeping-room were a bitter satisfaction to Richard Boyce, even in his sickness. After all said and done, he was king here in his father's and grandfather's place; ruling where they ruled, and—whether they would or no—dying where they died, with the same family faces to bear him witness from the walls, and the same vault awaiting him.

When his daughter entered, he turned his head, and his eyes, deep and black still as ever, but sunk in a yellow relic of a face, showed a certain agitation. She was disagreeably aware that his thoughts were much occupied with her; that he was full of grievance towards her, and would probably before long bring the pathos of his situation as well as the weight of his dying authority to bear upon her, for purposes she already suspected with alarm.

"Are you a little easier, papa?" she said, as she came up to him.

"I should think as a nurse you ought to know better, my dear, than to ask," he said testily. "When a person is in my condition, enquiries of that sort are a mockery!"

"But one may be in less or more pain," she said gently. "I hoped Dr. Clarke's treatment yesterday might have given you some relief."

He did not vouchsafe an answer. She took some work and sat down by him. Mrs. Boyce, who had been tidying a table of food and medicine, came and asked him if he would be wheeled into another room across the gallery, which had been arranged as a sitting-room. He shook his head irritably.

"I am not fit for it. Can't you see? And I want to speak to Marcella."

Mrs. Boyce went away. Marcella waited, not without a tremor. She was sitting in the sun, her head bent over the muslin strings she was hemming for her nurse's bonnet. The window was wide open; outside, the leaves under a warm breeze were gently drifting down into the Cedar Garden, amid a tangled mass of flowers, mostly yellow or purple. To one side rose the dark layers of the cedars; to the other, the grey front of the library wing.

Mr. Boyce looked at her with the frown which had now become habitual to him, moved his lips once or twice without speaking; and at last made his effort.

"I should think, Marcella, you must often regret by now the step you took eighteen months ago!"

She grew pale.

"How regret it, papa?" she said, without looking up.

"Why, good God!" he said angrily; "I should think the reasons for regret are plain enough. You threw over a man who was devoted to you, and could have given you the finest position in the county, for the most nonsensical reasons in the world—reasons that by now, I am certain, you are ashamed of."

He saw her wince, and enjoyed his prerogative of weakness. In his normal health he would never have dared so to speak to her. But of late, during long fits of feverish brooding—intensified by her return home—he had vowed to himself to speak his mind.

"Aren't you ashamed of them?" he repeated, as she was silent.

She looked up.

"I am not ashamed of anything I did to save Hurd, if that is what you mean, papa."

Mr. Boyce's anger grew.

"Of course you know what everybody said?"

She stooped over her work again, and did not reply.