O builder of that sand-hued cottage, owner of that manly room of books, how many hours have I devoted to patient study of you! How many nights have I hunted you down, searched you out, compelled you to reveal yourself to me—and how strangely have I succeeded! It has been a labour of love, and I have sometimes felt I know your mind almost as my own.

In the outside further corner of the room a narrow, steep flight of steps led to the second story and lent a queer little foreign air to the whole. Ascending, I found myself in a small room with one door—its only entrance—and one window. For a moment I had a curious sense of the English barracks and seemed to be in the major's sleeping-room again. A low cot-bed with a narrow rug beside, a pine washing-stand and a chest of drawers, a straight chair and small bed-table with a reflecting candle and match box upon it, and a flat tin bath furnished this room, which was, like all the others, speckless. A small shaving-mirror was attached at convenient height near the window; razor and strop hung beside it. All this I took in at a glance, without turning, but when I did turn and confronted the entrance wall, I caught my breath. For there on the space directly opposite the bed hung what, for a moment, I took to be a portrait of Margarita.

I moved closer and saw that it was a wonderfully perfect etching of a head by Henner—a first impression, beyond a doubt. It was a girl's head, half life size, almost in profile, white against the dark rain of her hair, which covered her shoulders and bust and blackened all the rest of the picture. The haunting melancholy, the youth, the purity of that face have become so associated with Margarita and her home and that part of my life that I can never separate them, though it has been more than once pointed out to me, and fairly, I dare say, that the picture does not resemble her so much as I think, that her type of beauty is larger, less conventional, infinitely richer, and that, aside from the really unusually suggestive accident of her likeness, it is only a general effect.

Well, well, it may be. But I dare to believe that I understand, perhaps better than anybody, why it hung facing that bare cot-bed, and what it meant to the man who slept so many years of his life there, dreaming of the woman for whose sake he hung it. He knew what it recalled to him even as I know what it means to me, and to both of us it was more than any portrait. For we are fearfully and wonderfully made so that no reality shall ever content us, and those sudden sunsets and bars of music and the meaning glance of pictured eyes are to teach us this....

The picture (etched by Waltner) was framed in a broad band of dull gold, and under it, on a very slender, delicately carved teak-wood stand whose inlaid top just held it, was a silver bowl full of orange and yellow and flaming nasturtiums. They were quite fresh and must have been put there that morning, for the dew was still on the pale leaves.

It was inexpressibly touching, this altar-like, vivid touch in the austere room, and I stood, drowned in a wave of pity and passionate regret—for what I could not quite tell—before it, overwhelmed by the close, compelling pressure of these mysterious dead loves: all over now and gone? Ah, who knows? Who can know? Not Darwin nor Huxley, be sure!

I went down the stairs, crossed the study and living-room, and after a comprehensive glance over the little kitchen ell with its simple batterie de cuisine went up the main staircase, and entered the room over the study. Here again was a surprise, for this room was completely furnished in delicate, light bird's-eye maple, fit for a marquise, all dainty lemon-tinted curves. The exquisite bed was framed for a canopy, but lacked it; the coral satin recesses of the dressing-table had faded almost colourless; the chintz of the slender chairs had lost its pattern. An oval cheval glass reflected the floor on whose long unpolished surface sprawled two magnificent white bear skins. But with these furnishings the elegance ended, for nowhere in the cottage were to be found such curious, mocking contrasts. The walls, which should have displayed wanton Watteau cherubs, were bare, clean grey; instead of a satin coverlet a patchwork quilt covered the fluted bed; no scented glass and ivory and silver-stoppered armoury of beauty crowded the dressing-table, only a plain brush and comb such as one might see in some servant's quarters; the beautiful grained wardrobe's doors, carelessly ajar, spilled no foam and froth of lace and ribbon and silk stocking: only a beggarly handful of clean, well-worn print gowns hung from the shining pegs. A battered tin bath and water-can stood beneath the window, and on a graceful cushioned prie-dieu instead of a missal lay—of all things—a mouse trap.

I have never in my life stood in a room so contradictory, so utterly unrelated to its supposed intention. Occupied it certainly was: towels and soap and sponge, and nightgown neatly folded on the patchwork quilt, showed that. But of all teasing suggestion of femininity, all the whimsical, rosy privacy of a girl's bedchamber, all the dainty nonsense and pretty purity, half artless, half artful, with which romance has invested this retreat and poetry and song have serenaded it, Margarita's apartment was entirely void. Even its spotlessness was not remarkable in a house so noticeable everywhere for this quality, and as for personality, a nun's cell has more. I think that its utter scentlessness added to the peculiar impression; there was not a suggestion of this feminine allurement; not even the homely lavender or the reminiscent dried roses hinted at the most matter-of-fact housewife's concession to her sex.

And yet it had its own charm, this strange room, a peculiar French quality, provided, perhaps, by the mingling of yellow furniture and soft grey wall spaces; and a quaint atmosphere of something once alive and breathing and daintily fleshly, cooled and faded and chastened by inexorable time....

I slept that night in the room with the etching (the silver bowl was filled with marigolds) and all night I heard the roar of the surf and the hiss of the breaking waves through my busy dreams.

I woke into a clear storm-swept morning, just after the dawn, very suddenly, and with no apparent reason for the waking. That is to say, I thought I woke, but knew instantly that it must be a very pleasant and odd species of dream, for there in the quiet light, at the foot of my bed—quite on it, in fact—sat Margarita. She smiled placidly, classic in her long white nightgown, and I smiled placidly back as one does in dreams, and prayed not to wake.

"You speak when you sleep do you not, Jerry?" she said calmly, "because you called my name, but your eyes were closed."

Then a cold sweat broke out on my forehead and I clenched my hands under the blankets, for I knew I was awake.

"Margarita!" I gasped, "what is it? Why are you here?"

"Because I wanted to talk to you, Jerry," she answered pleasantly. "Roger is asleep. Do you like this little room? It is my father's."

Her hair hung in two braids; one rosy bare foot showed under her nightgown, as she sat, her hands clasped about her knees, like a boy. The upper button of the gown was loose and I saw my milky, gleaming pearl around her neck; it was no whiter than her even teeth.

"Get down," I said sternly, "get off the bed immediately and go back to your room. You ought not to have come here!"

"But I do not want to get down, Jerry—the floor is cold. Roger is asleep and he cannot talk to me. It is like being alone, when anyone is asleep. Do you not want to talk to me, Jerry?"

"Yes, I want to talk to you, well enough," I answered in a sort of stupor, "but—but you must go. Please go, Margarita!"

In her abominable perspicacity she answered what I meant, not what I said.

"No," said she, shaking her head adorably, "I shall not go. Why do you pull the blanket up to your chin so? Are you cold, too?"

My head was whirling and my breath came uneven through my lips, but I fixed my eyes on the wall over her head, and this time there was, for the best of reasons, no ambiguity in my voice.

"I beg and implore you, Margarita, to get down at once," I said, as steadily as I could. "It is not at all proper for you to be here, and I do not wish it. If you want to talk to me, I will dress immediately and go out for a walk with you, but not unless you go instantly. Do you understand me?"

She sighed plaintively and unclasped her hands from her knees.

"Yes, I understand you, Jerry," she said, dropping her voice that haunting third, "but I would rather——"

"Are you going?" I cried.

"Y-yes, I am going," she murmured, and with what I knew were backward imploring glances and argumentative pouts she slipped down, hesitatingly, hopefully, as a child retreats, and pattered across to the door.

When I lowered my eyes the room was empty—but where she had sat the blanket was yet warm!



CHAPTER XV

FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS

To-day I dived into one of my boxes for some warmer underclothing and stumbled upon a pair of rubber-soled shoes for deck wear. They brought the great boat before me in a flash and then the wharves and then the little group that had gathered at the long pier on that Saturday morning so long ago—Wolcott Sears and his wife, Sue, white as a ghost, Tip Elder and I, with Roger and Margarita leaning over the rail. She had on a long, tight-fitting travelling coat of slate grey and a quaint, soft little felt hat with a greyish-white gull that sprawled over the top of it. She looked taller than I had ever seen her, and her hair, drawn up high on her head, made her face more like a cameo than ever, for she was pale from the excitement and fatigue of shopping. On her hand, as she waved it with that lovely, free curve of all her gestures, shone the great star sapphire Roger had bought her, set heavily about with brilliants, a wonderful thing: all cloudy and grey, like her eyes, and then all densely blue, like her eyes, and now stormy and dark, like her eyes, and always, and most of all, like her eyes, with that fiery blue point lurking in the heart of it.

It was her birth stone—an odd bit of sentimental superstition for Roger to have cherished—and his own as well, for they were both born in September. Her father had told her of this on one of the few occasions when he seemed to have talked with her at any length, and like all his remarks it had made a great impression upon her. Anything more violently at odds with the theory of planetary influence it would be hard to find, for two people more fundamentally unlike each other than Roger and his wife, I never met.

And yet ... and yet (for I am not so sure as to what is "absurd" now that my half-century milestone is well behind, and those months in Egypt taught me that much of the inexplicable is terribly true) shall I leave out of this rambling tale the moment of attention due the old horoscopist of Paris? I think not.

He was withered and heavily spectacled and absent-minded to a degree I have never seen equalled. Shall I ever forget the day he made a soapy mixture in a great tin pan in his little garret in the Rue Serpente, produced a long, clean clay pipe, delivered to me a neat if extraordinary little lecture on the experiment he was about to make and the inferences I must draw from it if it succeeded—and then, with his prismatic bubbles all unblown, gravely sat down in the pan! He gazed stupefied at me when I pointed out his error.

"Il ne manquerait que ca!" he snapped at length, and as he had no other suit of clothes, he went resignedly to bed and discoursed there most learnedly. He was seventy-five then and his great treatise was but one-third done: the concierge told me long after his death that his last living act was to burn it, with the tears streaming down his old face, poor old fellow! And yet he was one of the happiest people I have ever known. The concierge was terribly afraid of him, because he had once in his dry, detached way presented that official with a complete chart of his life, temperament and just deserts, neatly done in coloured inks and mounted on cardboard. It was so devilishly accurate that the concierge trembled whenever he passed it, which was frequently, as his wife had it framed and hung it in their bedroom.

To old Papa Morel, then, I propounded the problem of accounting for Margarita's birth-month having been Roger's, and even within the same week. Pressed for the year of her birth, I made her twenty-two, at which the old man scowled and muttered and traced with his cracked yellow nail devious courses through his great map of the heavens. To tease him I enumerated a few of her qualities and habits, all to be thoroughly accounted for in my estimation, by her strange environment and bringing up; but far from exasperating him further, as I had supposed it would, this recital appeared to please him mightily. Shaking his finger reprovingly, he advised me no longer to mock myself of him, for unknown to myself I had exposed my own deceit: was I so utterly unversed in the heavenly politics as not to know that this person described herself fully as having been born four years previous to the date I had given him, in the year of the eclipse, which was moreover a comet-year and one in which Uranus usurped the throne of reigning planets, and breaking all bounds, shadowed that fateful season? That Aquarius, drawn by him, had imposed himself, too, and affected the very Moon in her courses? Indeed she would be an unbelievable person, that one! But assuredly she was born in the year 186—. And when we finally found the year of Margarita's birth, it was precisely the year stated by Papa Morel! He told me, moreover, that she would be a great artist, at which I laughed, for her future life was fairly well mapped out for her, I fancied, knowing Roger as I did. He told me that she would be in grave danger of death within three years, and then, turning to a horoscope of my own which he had insisted upon drawing, he ran his yellow finger down to a point and raising his mild, fanatic eyes to mine, remarked that at precisely that time it was written that I should save life! At which I smiled politely and said that I hoped I should save Margarita's and he replied politely that as to that he did not know.



"You will remark," he added, "that persons born in that month of that year will never be otherwise than far out of the ordinary. No. And mostly artists: dramatic, musical—how should I know? You will remark, also, that they will indubitably possess great influence over the lives of others—and why not, with Uranus in that House as he is, opposing the Moon? Ah, yes, her life is not yet lived, that one!"

But on the Saturday that found us waving from the pier I had not met the good old Morel, and I was not thinking of the planets at all. It had just come over me with dreadful distinctness that from now on my life could never, never be the same. When I had first parted from Roger and Margarita, the poetic strangeness of their surroundings, the shock of all the discoveries I had just made, the relief of finding our friendship secured on a new footing, nay, the very darkness of the mild evening through which I was rowed away from them after that exciting day, all combined to blunt my sense of loneliness, to invest it with a gentle, dreamy pathos that made philosophy not too hard. It was like leaving Ferdinand and Miranda on their Isle of Dreams, with my blessing. But here were no Ferdinand and Miranda; only a handsome, well-dressed bride and her handsome, well-dressed husband-lover, sailing off for a brilliantly happy honeymoon and leaving me behind! The excitement was gone, the past was over, the future seemed dreadfully dull. My English blood, the blood of the small land-owner, with occasional military generations, forbade my plunging into the routine of business, in the traditional American fashion, even had the need of it been more pressing. It may as well be admitted here and now that I was not ambitious; I never (fortunately!) felt the need of glory or high places and my simple fortune was to me wealth and to spare—Margarita's pearl was the greatest extravagance of my life. Up to this point I had never seriously realised that all the little, comfortable details of that little, comfortable bachelor life of ours were over and done, the rooms into which we had fitted so snugly, rented, perhaps, at that moment, the table at the club no longer ours by every precedent, the vacations no more to be planned together and enjoyed together.

The ship drew out into the harbour and I leaned hard on my stick and wondered drearily how long I was likely to live. Oh, I admit the shamefulness of my unmanly state! I might have been drying the orphan's tear or making Morris chairs or purifying local politics, but I wasn't.

Tip Elder walked over to me and put his hand on my shoulder.

"Well, that baby's face is washed!" he said cheerily, "as my mother puts it. And I hope it's going to turn out all right. But I don't believe you or I would be in Roger's shoes for a good deal, would we?"

I turned on him fiercely.

"Speak for yourself, Elder!" I cried. "I'd give most of this life that I know about and all of the next that you don't, to be for a little while in Roger's shoes! Understand that!"

And brushing by him and utterly neglecting Sue and the Wolcott Searses, I jumped into a waiting cab and hurried away from that departing vessel, with two-thirds of what I loved in the world on her deck.

I took one last look at our old rooms, bare and clean, now, for my things were sold and Roger's stored; I gave all my clothes to the house valet, to his intense gratitude, and when, with a nervous blow of my favourite cane—a gift from Roger—in an effort to beat the pile of cloth on the floor into symmetrical shape, the stick broke in the middle, I came as near to an hysterical laugh as I ever came in my life.

"Take all the other sticks, Hodgson," I said huskily, "and the racquets, if you want them. And give the rod to the night porter—Richard fishes, I know. And take the underwear, too—yes, all of it!"

"And the trunk, sir? Where would you wish——"

"O Lord, take the trunk!" I burst out, for the familiar labels, ay, the very dints in the brass lock, carried only sour memories to me, now.

"But, sir, you've only what you stand in!" the man cried, convinced, I am certain, that I contemplated suicide. "I've got the day to get through, Hodgson," I reassured him, "and the shops will be of great assistance!"

I left him gloating over his windfall, and plunged into haberdashery.

Fortunately for my nervous loathing of all my old possessions, I had celebrated Uncle Win's legacy by a prompt visit to my tailor, and the results of this visit went far to stock the new leather trunk that I recklessly purchased for the shocking price such commodities command in America. At the end of a successfully costly day I registered myself, the trunk, with its brilliant identification label, a new silver-topped blackthorn, and the best bull terrier I could get in New York, at the new monster hotel I had never before entered, with a strange feeling of an identity as new as my overcoat. This terrier, by the way, marked my definite division from Roger more than anything else could have done. I have always been fond of animals, dogs especially, and as a little fellow was never without some ignominiously bred cur at my heels; but Roger never cared for them, and little by little I had dropped the attempt to keep one, since he objected to exercising them in town, did not care to bother with them in the country, and absolutely refused to endure the encumbrance of one while travelling. Not that he was ever cruel or careless: when thrown into necessary relations with animals he was far more just and thoughtful of them than many a sentimental animal lover of my acquaintance! Strangely enough, I have never seen a dog or cat that would not go to him in preference to almost anyone else—one of nature's ironies.

With Kitchener (not of Khartoum, then!) curled at the foot of my bed in a brand new collar, I went to sleep, woke early, and took the first train to Stratford to say good-bye to my mother and receive her congratulations on my legacy.

Everything was unchanged in the neat little house: only old Jeanne in her bed in a wonderful nightcap marked the visit as different from any other. Years had ceased to leave any mark on my mother since her hair had turned grey, and I might have been a collegian again as I kissed her.

What extraordinary creatures women are! She knew inside of ten minutes, I am sure, as well as Sarah Bradley had known, how matters stood with me, and whenever I spoke of Margarita an inscrutable look was in her eye and she stroked my arm in a delicate, mute sympathy. Nor did she refer to my children any more or her hopes that I would ranger myself and settle down. If she sighed a little at the news of my projected wander jahr, she did not beg me to set any term for it, and cheerfully congratulated herself upon my known faithfulness in the matter of correspondence. The tact of the woman!

She herself cooked our simple dinner to Jeanne's voluble accompaniment of regret: the chicken from her own brood, the salad from her garden, the delicious pastry that her own hands had put into the oven. After dinner, during which we drank Jeanne's health and took her a glass of the wine I always brought with me for the stocking of her unpretentious cellar (the neighbours had never been able to regard this addition to my mother's table without suspicion and regret) my father's favourite brand of cigars was produced and I dutifully smoked one. I had not inherited his taste in this instance, but for years I had respectfully made this filial sacrifice and my mother would have been seriously hurt had I foregone it.

We talked of anything but what was in our minds: the wonderful late planting of peas; the beauties of Kitchener, who was formally introduced to Jeanne and listened with perfect good breeding to a long account (in French) of the departed family poodle; the kindness of the old parish priest to Jeanne; the war-scare in the East (my mother religiously took in the London Times and watched Russia with unceasing vigilance) the shocking price of meat. Later she brought out my old violin and I played all her favourites while she accompanied me on the little cottage piano my father had bought for her when they began life together. If a tear dropped now and then on the yellow keys, neither of us took it too seriously, and it was a pleasant, soothing evening on the whole. My nerves relaxed unconsciously, and Jeanne's wild applause as one after another of her particular tunes rang out (Parlons-nous de lui, Grandmere, Sous les Tilleuls and Je sais bien, mon amour) gave me an absurd thrill of musicianly vanity.

I slept in my own little room with the prim black walnut bedroom suit, the prize-books in a row on the corner shelf, the worn rug made from the minister's calf that I shot by mistake, and my father's sword, with its faded tassel, over my bed. By some odd chance all my dreams that night were of those boyish days, and it was with sincere surprise that I stared on waking at my long moustache, in the toilet mirror—we were not so universally clean shaven twenty years ago.

My steamer sailed at noon from Boston, and to my intense delight there was no one on board that I knew. Unattended and unwept Kitchener and I marched up the gang plank, and I pointed out to him the conveniences and eccentricities of his surroundings with the contented confidence known only to the intimate friend of a good dog. For Kitchener and I were already intimate: the cynical philosophy, the sentimental maundering, the firm resolutions I had poured out in his well-clipped ear had brought us very close together, and had he chosen to betray my confidences he could have made a great fool of me, I can tell you.

I can see him now—good old Kitch! With a great black patch over one roving blue eye and an inky paw, a trim, taut body and a masterful tail, he travelled more miles than fall to the lot of most bull dogs and got quite as much good out of them as most of his fellow travellers. He would have chased an elephant if I had told him to and carried bones to a cat if I had ordered it done. He is buried next to Mr. Boffin the poodle, in quiet Stratford, and for many years his grave was tended—for Harriet never forgot.

Though I had made no formal decision as to where I would go, somewhere in the back of my brain it had been made for me. That astonishing young Anglo-Indian had not at that time reminded us that "when you 'ear the East a callin', why, you don't 'eed nothing else" (I quote from memory and far from libraries) but it was true, for all that, and I knew the skies that waited for me—the low, kindling stars, the warm, intimate wind, the very feel of the earth under my feet.

And yet I did not go there, after all. We were bound for England, and as I travelled up the Devon country and drank in the pure, homelike landscape and strolled by those incomparable (if occasionally malarial) cottages, my father's and grandfather's blood stirred in me, and half consciously, to tell the truth, I found myself on the way to Oxford. By some miracle of chance my old lodgings were free, and before I quite realised what I was doing, I was making myself comfortable in them.

I should have hated to be obliged to explain to my incredulous American friends what I "did" in those long months, when every week I planned to be off for the South and every week found me still lingering by the emerald close, the grey tower, the quiet, formal place of this backwater of the world. In their sense, of course, I "did" nothing at all. I watched the youth around me (any one of them I might have been, had my father lived) I renewed the quiet, cordial friendships, which, if they never rooted very deep, never, on the other hand, desiccated and blew away; I wrote many letters, and more than this, I formulated once for all, though I did not know it then, such theory of life as I have found necessary ever since. What it may have been does not so much matter: if I have failed to illustrate it in my life, if I have, even, failed to make it reasonably clear in this rough sketch of the most vital interests of my life, it cannot have been very valuable.

Among my correspondents at this time neither Roger nor his wife was numbered. This was not strange, for he was a poor letter-writer, except for business purposes or in a real necessity, and she had never been taught so much as to write her own name! But I heard from them indirectly, and as Roger, it turned out, supposed me to have gone on a long hunting trip through the Rockies, neither of us was alarmed by the three months' silence.

A strange, dozing peace had settled over me; though I thought of them often, it was as one thinks of persons and scenes infinitely removed, with which he has no logical connection, only a veiled, softened interest. Margarita seemed, against the background of the moist, pearly English autumn, like some gorgeous and unbelievable tropical bird, shooting, all orange and indigo, across a grey cloud. It was impossible that I, a quiet chess-player sitting opposite his friend, the impractical student of Eastern Religions, could have to do with such a vivid anomaly as she must always be. It was unlikely that the silent, moody man strolling for hours through mist-filled English lanes, pipe in mouth, dog at heels should ever run athwart that lovely troubler of man's mind, that babyish woman, that all-too-well-ripened child.

My Christmas holidays were quietly passed with the Oriental Professor in his tiny Surrey cottage, where he and his dear old sister, a quaint little vignette of a woman, forgot the world among her pansy beds. She was not visible at that time, however, owing to a teasing influenza which kept her in bed, and our hostess was her trained nurse, a quiet, capable little American, with a firm hand-grip and kind brown eyes, already set in fine, watchful wrinkles. She rarely spoke, except in the obvious commonplaces of courtesy, and our days were wonderfully still. The Professor taught me Persian, in a desultory way, and chess most rigorously, for he was hard put to it for an opponent even partly worthy of his prodigious skill. He was a member of all the most select societies of learning in the world, an Egyptologist of such standing that his pronouncements in that field were practically final, a man called before kings to determine the worth of their national treasures and curiosities—and his greatest pride was that he had beaten the hitherto unmatched mechanical chess-player in public contest and had been invited to settle absolutely the nicest problems in a chess magazine!

I dwell with a curious fondness upon this placid interval in my life. I supposed myself honestly settled, grown old, grateful for the rest and oblivion my father's old university gave me so generously. When I thought of the feverish, break-neck journey I had planned, of the hot and doubtful reliefs and distractions I had promised myself that day when the lawyers' letter had dropped half read on my knees and I had sniffed my freedom first, I wondered. But, truly, it is all written, and the hour had not yet struck, that was all!



CHAPTER XVI

MARGARITA COMES TO TOWN

[FROM SUE PAYNTER]

WASHINGTON SQUARE,

Oct. 16, 188—

JERRY DEAR:

First about the will—how splendid it was! Nothing could have pleased Roger more, I am sure—he told me with that queer, little whimsical grimace of his that it cleared his conscience to feel he was leaving you something! What a personality he has, and how, in his quiet unassuming way, he impresses it on us!

I hear that Sarah made a great fuss about the will, but was advised by Mr. Sears to stop—and stopped! With Madame B. I am of course anathema—I have not heard from her since. The bank, bien entendu, is of the past, and you, I hear, are in the far West. How you will revel in the freedom and how good it must have been to kick off the ball and chain! If anyone can be trusted not to abuse leisure, it is you, dear Jerry—you won't appear so culpable, as a poor American always does, somehow, under such circumstances. Even I feel unjustifiably idle now, so I have taken up some of Mr. Elder's fads—what a fine, manly sort of fellow he is!—and may be seen, moi qui vous parle, teaching sight-reading to a boy's glee-club!

But of course you are impatiently waiting for me to turn to Margarita and leave this silly chatter about my egotistic self. Eh bien, she is marvellous. For half an hour I hated her, but I couldn't hold out any longer. I have never even imagined such a person. What a pose that would be if any actress were clever enough to avail herself of the un-paralleled opportunities it would give her! Of course I thought it was a pose, at first—I simply couldn't believe in her. But equally of course no woman could deceive another woman very long at that, and she is one to conquer both sexes. When she put her hand in mine and asked if I was going to buy her some dresses on Broadway, I had to kiss her.

I got very little, just enough for absolute necessity, and gave her a letter to my woman in Paris and another to one I could only afford occasionally, and told her to obey them and take what they gave her. She understood and promised not to buy what happened to strike her—this was necessary, for she begged piteously for a rose pink satin street dress and a yellow velvet opera cloak to wear on the boat! We had a terrible struggle over a corset—she screamed when the corsetiere and I got her into one and slapped the poor woman in the face. It took all my diplomacy to cover the affair and I doubt if I could have done it, really, if Margarita herself had not suddenly begun to cry like a frightened baby and begged pardon so sincerely that the woman was melted and ended by offering her sister as a maid! The girl had the best of references, and as she must have someone and Elise has travelled extensively and seems very tactful, she is now (I trust) adjusting the elastic girdle her sister finally induced Margarita to wear.

I took her to my Sixth Avenue shoe place, and she was so ravished with a pair of pale blue satin mules I got her that she actually leaned down and kissed the clerk who was kneeling before her! Fortunately we were in a private room and he was the cleverest possible young Irishman, who winked gravely at me and took it as naturally as possible—he thought she was not responsible, you see, and assured me that he had an aunt in the old country who was just that way!

What a beautiful voice she has—have you ever heard it drop a perfect minor third? But what a strange, strange wife for Roger, of all men! I suppose she is the first thoroughly unconventional person he was ever closely connected with—in one way you would seem more natural with her—I suppose because you are more adaptable than Roger. With him, everybody must adapt. Will she! Voila l'affaire! I should say that the young woman would be likely to have great influence over other people's lives, herself. If she and Roger ever clash—! Ah, well, advienne que pourra, it's done.

I gave her for a wedding present that lovely little old daguerreotype of Roger at three years old. It was in an old leather frame, you know, and I had it taken out and put into a little band of steel pearls and hung on a small dark red velvet standard. No one could fail to know him from it—I think it is the most wonderful child portrait I ever saw. He seems to have always had that straight, steady look. There is a tiny curl of yellow baby hair in the back, which amused her very much. That is the only one of him at that age, you know—his mother gave it to me when we were engaged, and I always kept it.

I am forgetting to tell you about our visit to the Convent, and you must hear it. I love the old place and often go up there to see Mary, when things grow a little too unbearable. She is wonderful—so placid and bright, so somehow just like herself, when you expect something different! Why did she do it, I wonder? I was one of her best friends, and I never knew. Her great executive ability is having its reward, they tell me, and she is likely to be Mother Superior some day.

I had told her about Margarita and she was deeply interested in her, though the terrible state of the child's soul naturally alarmed her. When I told her that her sister-in-law had never been in a church, nor seen one, unless she had noticed those we passed in New York, she crossed herself hastily and such a look of real, heartfelt pain passed over her face!

Well, I got my charge safely up there, and everything interested her tremendously from the very beginning. It was the intermission demi-heure of the morning and the girls were all munching their gouter and playing about on the grass. I explained to her why they all wore the same black uniform, and why the honour girls, "les tres-biens," wore the broad blue sashes under their arms, and why the Sisters kept on their white headdresses in the house, and why the girls all made their little reverence when Mother Bradley came out to meet us. She kissed Margarita so sweetly and held her in her arms a moment—I don't think Roger quite realised how his attitude hurts her: it is the only almost unjust thing I ever knew him to do. In the halls there is a great statue of Christ blessing the children, and Margarita stopped and stared at it several minutes, while we watched her. She seemed so rapt that Mary took my hand excitedly and whispered to me not to disturb her for the world, but wait for what she would say. After a while she turned to me.

"Why has that woman a beard, Sue?" she asked cheerfully. Imagine my feelings! I did not dare look at Mary.

We went all through the school-rooms and she was most curious about the globes and blackboards and pianos. We stopped at the door of a tiny music room, and I smiled, as I always do, at the pretty little picture. The young girl with her Gretchen braids of yellow hair, straight-backed in front of the piano, the nervous, grey-haired little music master watchfully posted behind her, beating time, and in the corner the calm-faced Sister, pink-cheeked under her spreading cap, knitting, with constantly moving lips. The music rooms are so wee that the group seemed like a gracefully posed genre picture. Before we knew what she was about, Margarita had slipped in behind the music master and brought both hands down with a crash on the keys, so that the Chopin Prelude ended abruptly in an hysterical wail and the young lady half fell off the stool—only half, for Margarita pushed her the rest of the way, I regret to say. Fortunately Mary was able to get us out of it, but I fear there was no more Prelude that day! Why will women play Chopin, by the way? I never heard one who could—Aus der Ohe is masculine enough, heaven knows, but even that amount of talent doesn't seem to accomplish it. Do you remember Frederick's diatribes on the subject? He used to say that Congress should forbid Chopin to women, on pain of life imprisonment.



But you must hear the end of the visit. We went into Mary's room—perfectly bare, you know, with a great crucifix on the wall and below it, part of the woodwork, a little cup for holy water. As soon as she entered the room Margarita paused, and gave a sort of gasp—her hand, which I held tight in mine, grew cold as ice. She moved over slowly to the crucifix, with her eyes glued to it—she seemed utterly unconscious of us, or where she was; she stood directly under the crucifix, with Mary and me on either side of her shaking with excitement, and then she put out her hand in a wavering, unsteady way, like a blind person, dipped her fingers in the empty bowl and began to cross herself! She touched her forehead quickly, then moved her hand slowly down her chest, fumbled toward one side, then drew a long breath and stared at us, winking like a baby.

"I wish I had some food, Sue," she said, and actually yawned and stretched her arms, like a plow-boy, in our faces. "I think this room makes me hungry. Are you not hungry, Mary?"

Now, Jerry, what do you make of that? She cannot have seen a crucifix, can she? Nor anyone crossing themselves? She acted like a woman walking in her sleep. If I lived in Boston and were interested in that sort of thing I could swear that she had been a nun in her last incarnation!

Mary is, of course, much wrought up, and is going to set the whole convent praying for her, I believe. I told Roger about it, but you know what he is—it sounded rather silly as soon as I had it begun. He pointed out that there were plenty of chances for her to have seen the Sisters crossing themselves before crucifixes, and other sensible explanations. But really and truly, Jerry, I was with her every minute, and she did what she had not seen done.

What do you think of it?

Yours always,

SUE PAYNTER.



PART FIVE

IN WHICH THE BROOK BECOMES A RIVER AND FLOWS BY GREAT CITIES

Now sit thee down, my bride, and spin, And fold thy hair more wifely yet, The church hath purged our love from sin, Now art thou joined to homely kin, The salten sea thou must forget.

Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden.



CHAPTER XVII

OUR PEARL BATHES IN SEINE WATER

BLEEKS, LITTLE ARCHES, SURREY,

January 2nd, 188—

MY DEAR MR. JERROLDS:

You will be surprised, doubtless, to hear from an old woman who is perfectly unknown to you in all probability, but if your mother is still living she will remember Agatha Upgrove and the cups of tea and dishes of innocent scandal she shared with her, when you were rolling in a perambulator. I write to you instead of to her in order to find out if she is living, in fact, and to renew at sixty-two the friendship of twenty-six! You may well wonder at such a sudden impulse after thirty years, almost, of silence, and if you will pardon a garrulous old woman's epistolary ramblings, I will tell you, for you are at the bottom of it.

My grandniece was summoned hastily to Paris a month ago, to act as bridesmaid to a young school friend, and as no one else could well be spared at that time to go with the child, I offered myself. I am an experienced traveller and even at my age think far less of a trip across the Channel than most of my relatives do of one to India, with which, by the way, I am also familiar. It was when my husband's (and your father's) regiment was ordered to India that your mother and I met. You came very near being born there, did you know it? But the regiment was recalled, and we came back delighted, for neither of us liked it. Major Upgrove died of dysentery a year later, and my widowhood and your father's absence in Africa at that time drew your mother and me very close together. One wonders that such intimacies should ever fade, but I have seen it too often to regard it as anything but natural, alas! It was my son, Captain Arthur Upgrove of the ——th Hussars, who taught you to walk—I can see you now, with the lappets of your worked muslin cap flying in the wind, and such a serious expression!

But to return to my trip to Paris. I established my niece comfortably with her friends, and then betook myself to my own devices till such time as she should need me again. I had not been in Paris for eight years (one settles down so amazingly in provincial England!) and I derived great pleasure from the old scenes of my honeymoon, that sad pleasure which is all that is left to women of my age, who have not their grandchildren to renew their youth in!

The Major and I had always been particularly attached to the Gardens of the Luxembourg, and there I went and sat musing many hours on end. One morning as I sat watching the children and their bonnes, my ear was caught by a shrill scream and I turned and saw a very handsome young woman, beautifully dressed, dragging a cup and ball away from an angry little French boy. I supposed, of course, that she was his mother or his aunt, and only regretted that she should be so rough and undignified in her manner to him, but when his nurse rushed up and angrily questioned the young woman, who fought her off, still clinging to the toy, I realised that something was wrong, and went over to them. Hardly had I got there when a neat-looking lady's maid ran up, chid the young woman severely, and apologised in a rapid flood of French, that I could not follow, to the nurse. Then it was clear (or so I thought) that the poor creature was not responsible and I tried to soothe her, in a quiet way, till her attendant should leave the bonne.

To make a long story short, imagine my surprise when I found that she was not insane at all, only strangely undeveloped. Her maid explained this to me while the curious young thing (a bride, too!) actually made friends with the child and begged the cup and ball away successfully!

She took quite a fancy to me and we talked together in English, as soon as I found out that she was an American. What an extraordinary nation! It quite makes one giddy to think of them. Fancy a child that had never been taught of the God who made her nor the Saviour who died for her, in a civilised Christian country! And yet she was naturally very sweet, I found, though high-tempered. She spoke beautiful French (they tell me Americans often do) but she seemed to know very little about her native country and had never seen a red Indian nor a buffalo. The Major always regretted so deeply that he had never hunted in North America.

During our conversation, which I should hardly dare to repeat, it was so very odd, she told me that she was very glad to have found another friend, for now she had three, besides her husband.

"And who are the other two, my dear?" I asked her.

"One is Sue, that is a woman," she answered, "and the other is Jerry, that is a man."

"Jerry? Jerry?" I repeated, for it sounded strangely familiar.

"Yes. Do you know him, too?" she asked eagerly.

"I am afraid not," I said, "but it so happens that I once knew a baby boy whom his mother called Jerry many years ago, in England."

"My Jerry gave me this pearl," she said, and she showed me a beautiful pearl which she wore.

"I do not think it likely that the Jerry I knew would be able to afford such presents," I said rather stiffly. You must know, Mr. Jerrolds, that we are still old-fashioned in our ideas in England, and fail to realise the quick growth of your amazing American fortunes!

She persisted, however, and to quiet her I told her that "my Jerry's" right name was Winfred Jerrolds. When she assured me that it was "her Jerry" and described your appearance (exactly your father's, except that he required a pince-nez), I began to believe in the strange coincidence, and readily agreed to go home with her. She lived in a charming appartement (I have forgotten the street, but they were au cinquieme, and there was a queer little hydraulic lift, which I refused to use, preferring my own feet) and she did the honours of it very prettily, upon the whole, like a child that is just learning, looking to her maid constantly for approval.

This, frankly, did not seem right to me, Mr. Jerrolds. I may be old-fashioned, but I cannot think that a woman should learn etiquette from her maid, and I must have showed my feeling in my face, for the girl, a capable one, I must say, blushed and said that in her opinion Madame required a governess, a chaperon, as it were, and that she believed Monsieur had it in his mind also. I could not help exclaiming that I knew of the very person, and most officiously, I know, I wrote down the address of a second cousin of mine, once removed, then in Paris by the merest chance.

She is a Miss Jencks, Mr. Jerrolds, and of unexceptionable family: her great-uncle a bishop, her father a retired army officer. She has been governess to the family of the Governor-General of Canada, thus, as you see, enabling her to know just what would be required in American society (the maid told me that Mr. Bradley was most aristocratic and quite wealthy) and has always associated with the best people. She is plain, but refined, and unusually well educated, being in Paris now for special art study. She would be moderate in her charges, I am sure, and would take a real interest in young Mrs. Bradley, for she deeply enjoys forming character and manners and has always been considered most successful at it.

I wrote down the address of her pension and left it with the maid, telling her, so that Mr. Bradley would not think me too forward, that I was an old friend of your mother. Do, if you write to him, say a good word for Miss Jencks, for I am sure he will never regret engaging her.

Before I left, Mrs. Bradley sang for me, accompanying herself on the piano. Her voice is unusually fine, though she does not sing at all in the English way, but more like a professional opera singer. It was rather startling to me. Barbara Jencks could teach her a little more restraint, I think, to great advantage. But there is no doubt of the beauty of the organ. She is taking lessons of a famous teacher, and the maid says she had made the most wonderful progress in a short time. She is a very loving little creature (I call her little, though she is half a head taller than I!) but though she is so childish, I fancy she has a very strong will and a character of her own. She would have a great influence over anyone that was much with her, I think.

I am sending this letter in care of your mother's old bankers. I hope so much that I may hear that she is alive and well! I was never better myself. I enclose with this long letter a picture of my son. Like your mother, I have but one, and he is everything to me, as I daresay hers is.

I trust that you will not come to England without letting me see you at Bleeks, and remain, my dear Mr. Jerrolds,

Your mother's old friend,

AGATHA UPGROVE.

[FROM ROGER'S DIARY]

PARIS, Feb. 17, '8—

Weather fine and clear for a week. M. well and very happy. Her voice certainly comes on surprisingly. Mme. M——i very enthusiastic. Miss J. has persuaded her to learn to write. She makes great progress.

Feb. 24.

To-night we actually gave a little dinner. Friends of Miss J.'s: a sort of practice affair. M. behaved very well, but drank her neighbour's (Miss J.'s cousin's) wine and would not apologise. Miss J. a little inclined to be over-severe, I think. It will be very pleasant to entertain, later, certainly. Spent the morning at the Bibliotheque Nationale, reading up Code Napoleon. What a man! I never thought enough emphasis laid on that side of him.

Mar. 3.

Bad weather over for the present. Called at the Legation. M. very quiet and good and looking exquisite in dark blue silk from Sue's crack dressmaker. Enormously admired and very happy. Quite well. Took a few notes to-day on the Code. A great lawyer, that man.

Mar. 6.

Wonderful weather, fine and warm. Chestnuts soon starting. Went to Versailles for the day. M. played cup and ball with R——n, the sculptor, who wants to model her. He gave us a petit souper and M. behaved perfectly. Miss J. certainly an investment. She cannot drag M. into a cathedral, however. M. insists they make her feel queer and then hungry. Says her hands get cold. Have told Miss J. cannot have any meddling with religion just yet. (N. B. not at all!) Strange not hearing from Jerry.

Mar. 10.

M. spoke of old home to-day for first time. Remarked on absence of ocean and hoped dog was well. Dog's name appears to be Rosy, which is absurd, as it's not that kind of dog. Obstinate as usual. Miss J. objects to kissing as a disciplinary measure. M. balks at Kings of England in order, and gets no dessert. Odd thing to have happen to your wife! She grows sweeter every day. Am getting quite deep into notes on the Code. Really enough for a book.

Mar. 15.

Weather still holds. Met Stokes and Remsen of my class to-day and went out to St. Cloud with them. Say I look five years younger. Didn't realise I needed the rest, to tell the truth. Suppose we do work too steadily, over there. But I never felt any ill effects from it. Have cabled Jerry at University Club. Remsen swears he saw him in London last week. Doesn't seem possible, or would have known. M. sang to-day at musicale for Mme. M——i. Great success and looked very beautiful. She gets a high colour singing. Hate Frenchmen as much as I ever did. They're more monkey than man. Magnificent new tenor-barytone just discovered—can't recall the name. Wants to sing with M., who was much taken with him. Worked up a few of my notes: Stokes thought well of them.

Mar. 16.

Barytone called while I was out with Miss J. yesterday on business. M. told me that he loved her and admits that he kissed her. Went around to his rooms and gave him a good licking this afternoon: warm work, for he is a big fellow. M. cannot see anything out of the way in what she did: told me she wished she'd married Jerry, I was so cruel. Miss J. talked to her like a Dutch uncle. Can't have the child treated too harshly for all the Governor-Generals Canada ever had, and told her so. We all got pretty hot, but nothing would budge M. till Elise happened to confide in her that I was a man in a thousand. This for some reason struck her forcibly and she acted like an angel. Women are certainly strange. Nothing more done on the Code.

FLORENCE, Mar. 26.

Have been a week here. M. enjoys it very much. She and Miss J. studying Italian day and night: M. takes to it like a duck to water. Got a grammar myself and began. M. practises faithfully. Some pleasant old ladies I knew in New Haven called on us to-day and M.'s behaviour could not have been better, I thought, though Miss J. objects to her crossing her ankles. She writes very well now. It is better than a play to hear her and Miss J. arguing over points of etiquette. J. explained the theory of the chaperon, but M. pinned her down to admitting that it did not apply to married women. Then why to her? M. demanded imperiously. J. shuffled a little, then explained that M. was an exceptional married woman. M. inquired if that meant that she was the only married woman that could not be trusted alone with a man. J. replied "Unfortunately, no, Mrs. Bradley!" M. scored, in my opinion.

April 2.

Long cable to-day about Wilkes case. Cannot possibly attend to it from here. Cabled to make every effort to postpone it. Bound to get in a mess, if they don't. R——should have been disbarred long ago. M. spoke again of the beach at home to-day. The second time since we were married. Sometimes I think she has no heart, in the ordinary sense, and then again her sweetness and kindness would win over a statue. She cannot, of course, be judged by ordinary standards.

April 6.

Heard from Jerry to-day. Has been in England all the time, the rascal, playing chess and learning Persian! Has promised to run over to Paris and we are going back there. M. wants to go on with her music lessons. Have never known her so steady at anything. Expected to stay here indefinitely, but must be very patient with her now. Is wonderfully well. Wouldn't mind getting back to work, myself, but she can't very well sail now, I suppose.

PARIS, April 11.

Perfect weather. Paris very gay. As a holiday, all very well: as a business, what a life! Mme. M——i advises stop lessons now for a while. M. very disappointed, but yields finally very gracefully. How changed Jerry will find her! He agrees to stay a fortnight at least, which delights M. And me, too. We must have one of our old walking-trips, perhaps try an ascension. Have got at the Code again.

April 15.

Weather still holds. Jerry expected to-morrow. M. has taken to reading. She and J. read aloud David Copperfield, turn about. What good work it is, after all! Hester taught her to read unknown to her father, who seems to have forbidden it. It was her only disobedience, it seems. I wonder what that woman's real name was? She learned to read from the Psalms, but never read much. The Wilkes case going badly, I'm afraid: no postponement. They will be able to appeal, however.



CHAPTER XVIII

MY PEARL OF TOO GREAT PRICE

Kitchener and I were very philosophic as we crossed the Channel that fine day in April. We had got thoroughly fitted to each other, now, the rough edges smoothed down, all idiosyncrasies allowed for; we knew when to press hard, so to speak, and when to go light, and the result was a good, seasoned intimacy that lasted twelve long years.

I have always been a good sailor, a slight headache in an unusually nasty roll being my only concession to Neptune, and Kitch and I viewed with cynical tolerance the depressing antics of our less fortunate fellow-travellers. As we neared the French coast I realised gradually how good it would be to see Roger again, and found time to regret a little of my solitary lingering through the damp English winter, which seemed more oppressive in retrospect than it had been in reality.

For Margarita I had only the kindest feelings and the friendliest hopes that she would develop into a good wife for Roger. To marry such a bewitching knot of possibilities was of course more or less a risk, but on the other hand, if any man could succeed in such an undertaking, surely that man was our placid, patient Roger! I had learned patience myself during the winter, by dint of chess and philosophy, and somehow, as the little Channel boat pitched under me and the shifty April clouds rolled along the sky over me, life, as it stretched out for me and Kitchener, was not too gloomy: was even flavoured with a certain easy freedom that rather tickled my middle-aged epicurean palate—for the middle thirties were, even twenty years ago, reasonably middle-aged.

Nevertheless it was impossible not to remember that my feelings had not always been thus ordered, and when, a few hours later, the guard let me out of the carriage, and I saw only Roger on the platform, I realised that I had braced myself a little for a meeting that did not take place.

"It's good to see you again, Jerry," he said heartily, "mighty good!" And with his hand gripping mine, I had a moment of whimsical wonder that any woman born should have been able to threaten such a friendship for (or by!) the twinkling of an eye.

We talked of our plans, mine, such as they were, being only too ready to merge into his, which included a stiff climb through the Swiss Alps; of my Oxford sojourn; of Margarita's music and his readiness to get back to America as soon as she should feel equal to it. It amused me a little to discover how simply Roger accepted his role of indulgent American husband: those men are born to it, I believe—there seems no crisis, no period of instruction, even. I never pretended to half his real strength of character, but I could not have imagined myself stopping in circumstances more or less distasteful to me until my wife's whim should release us! I had spoken to no woman for many months, you must remember, but my landlady and the Professor's trained nurse, and unflattering though it may sound to the much-desired sex, I had not been conscious of any special lack, after the first few weeks.

To this day I have never known the name of the street nor the number of that Paris appartement. We were deep in our plans for mountaineering, and except that I noted the wheezy little lift of Mrs. Upgrove's letter, I remember literally nothing about that excursion but the familiar odour of the Paris asphalt, the snapping and cracking of the Gallic horsewhip, and the smoke of my own cigarette which blew into my eyes as I threw it away on entering the house.

The late afternoon sun poured into the gay little drawing-room, all buff and dull rose, in the charming French style, and full of sweet spring flowers in bowls and square jars of Majolica ware. The height of the appartement made it delightfully airy and bright, and through the western windows I glimpsed the feathery tips of the delicate new green of the trees. A small grand piano stood near an open window and a gorgeous length of Chinese embroidery on the opposite wall was reflected in a tall, narrow mirror that doubled the apparent size of the room and gave a pleasant depth and richness to all the airy clearness of the spring that seemed to fairly incarnate itself in the spot and the hour. I have never liked Oriental embroideries since that day, and the clogging scent of hyacinth is a thing I would take some trouble to avoid; those sad little spires of violet, pink and white spell only sorrow to one man, at least: sorrow and memories of pitiful and unmanly weakness.

For standing by the piano, one hand with its cloudy, flashing sapphire white among the pale stiff spikes, her deer-like head dark against the fantastic rose and orange of the embroidered dragons, was Margarita, a lovely smile curving her lips and the warm light in her deep slate-coloured eyes burning down, down into my very vitals. In that one rich, welcome smile all my calm English months melted like wax in a furnace, and Oxford was a drab dream and Surrey a stupid sick-bay! As I faced her, the old wound burst and widened, with that torturing sweet shock that I had relegated sagely to poets and youthful heats, and I knew that I loved her hopelessly, with a love that put out my love for Roger and my mother as the sun puts out the small and steady stars.

I had left a bewitching, unlikely elf; I found a magnificent woman. She seemed to my gloating eyes to have grown tall, though that might have been the effect of her loosely flowing, long-trained gown, which was as if she had put on a garment of shot green and blue silk and then another over it of rich, yellowish lace. The neck was cut in a sort of square, such as one sees in the pictures of Venetian ladies in the cinque cento, and at the base of her full throat lay an antique necklace of aqua marines. Heavens! How perfect she was! As she moved over in her grand free stride and took my hands in both of hers, vitality and glowing strength seemed to pour along her veins into mine; she seemed almost extravagantly alive, and I a pallid, stupid dabbler on the shore of things. Her figure was much fuller; her arm, where the loose lace sleeve fell back from it, was plump and round, and this and the increased softness of her throat and chin added a year or two—yes, three or four—to what I had hitherto believed to be her age. She was a fit mate for Roger now; no longer a captured child-witch.

I bent over her hands, to cover my emotion, and ceremoniously kissed the backs of them; there was a creamy dimple below each finger now. As I lifted my head and heard Roger's chuckle of delight at my amazement at her, I saw for the first time that we three were not alone in the room, and found myself bowing to a neat, chill British spinster, big and white of tooth, big and flat of waist, big and bony of knuckle. She wore sensible, square-toed boots and the fashion of her clothing suggested a conscientious tailor who had momentarily lost sight of her sex. She bore a pince-nez upon her flat chest, the necessity for which was obvious, but her short-sighted blue eyes were kind and the grasp of her knuckly hand was human. She was a thorough-going lady if she was a trifle grotesque, and my respectful friendship for Barbara Jencks, late of the household of the Governor-General of Canada, has never waned.

"You find Mrs. Bradley somewhat changed, I dare say," she remarked, by way of breaking a rather strained silence, for Roger, never talkative, was hunting among a pile of guide-books and Margarita was staring dreamily into the sunset, now a miracle of golden rose.

"Somewhat, indeed," I responded politely, my mind darting back to that girl in the red jersey who had sat cross-legged like a Turk on the sand, and told me that I loved her. What would the Governor-General have thought of that girl?

Again a pause, and now Miss Jencks addressed Margarita, affectionately, but firmly—oh, very firmly!

"What do you find so absorbing out of the window, my dear?"

Margarita started like a forgetful child, blushed a little, murmured impatiently in French and then smiled delightfully at me.

"But this is Jerry, Miss Jencks, Roger's and my Jerry," she said beseechingly. "You do not mean that I must be polite to Jerry?"

"Most assuredly," returned Miss Jencks. "When a gentleman, even though he be an old friend, makes a journey to see one after a long absence, he expects and deserves to be entertained!"

Roger caught my eye, made his old whimsical grimace, and rooted deeper into the guide-books. Margarita sighed gently, seated herself in a high carved chair and inquired, with her lips, adorably, after my health and my journey, but laughed naughtily with her eyes, an accomplishment so foreign to my knowledge of her as to reduce me to utter banality; which suited Miss Jencks perfectly, however, so that she resigned the conversational rudder to her pupil and concerned herself with knitting a hideous grey comforter (for the Seaman's Home, I learned later), giving the occupation a character worthy the most comme-il-faut clubman.

A neat, black uniformed bonne brought in tea, in the English fashion, and Margarita served us most charmingly under the eagle eye of Miss Jencks, eating, herself, like a hungry school-girl, and stealing Roger's cakes impudently when the sometime directress of the Governor-General's household affected a well-bred deafness to her request for more. After tea Miss Jencks departed with her knitting and we three were comfortably silent; Margarita dreamy, I all in a maze at her, Roger relishing my wonder. The hyacinths smelled strong in the growing dusk, the Chinese dragons burned against the wall: colour and odour were alike a frame for her beauty and her richness. I can never wholly separate that hour in my memory from the visions of a fever and the burning heat of worse than the African Desert.

Later we sat about the candle-shaded dinner table, a meal where English service faded in the greater glory of French cooking, and I rebelled with Roger at Miss Jencks's curtailment of her charge's appetite.

"Surely, Miss Jencks, this escarole is harmless," Roger protested, with a smile at Margarita's empty plate, but when that lady repeated, nodding wisely:

"I assure you, Mr. Bradley, she is better without it," he succumbed meekly, even slavishly, I thought, and shook his head at Margarita's pleading eyes.

In the centre of the table was a graceful silver dish, filled with fruit, and as the attendant bonne left the room, Margarita, with a little cooing throaty cry, reached over to it, seized with incredible swiftness two great handfuls of the fruit, and leaping from her seat retreated with her booty to the salon. For a second she stood in the doorway, two yellow bananas hugged to her breast among the rich lace, an orange in her elbow, her teeth plunged into a great black Hamburg grape, her eyes two dark blue mutinies.

Roger burst into a Homeric laugh and even Miss Jencks smiled apologetically.

"I suppose we must let her have the fruit," she conceded, "an old friend like Mr. Jerrolds will make allowance—"

"We expect the child in June," said Roger simply, and then something seemed literally to give way in my brain and I clutched the table-cloth as a sharp hard pain darted through my temples. Strange, unbelievable though it may seem, I had never thought of such a thing as this!



My face must have excused my brusque departure, my utter inability to eat or drink another mouthful. I muttered something about a rough voyage and my land-legs (I, who never knew the meaning of mal-de-mer!) and I know my forehead must have been drawn, for Miss Jencks pressed sal volatile upon me solicitously. Roger, manlike, let me get off immediately and alone, as I begged, and once at the bottom of the interminable stairs, I flung myself into a wandering fiacre, and drove through the merry, lighted Paris boulevards, a helpless prey to passions black and bitter—to a wicked, seething jealousy such as I had never dreamed possible to a decent man.

That was the deep throat, the large and lovely arm! That was the dreamy, full-fed calm, the woman ruminant! God! how the thought tortured and tore at me! I, who had thought myself cured and a philosopher—a kindly philosopher! My first fit of love for her had carried its exaltation with it, but in this grinding, physical rage there was only shame and madness.

I caught, somehow, a train for Calais, I stumbled onto a boat there in a driving rain, and walked the deck in it all night. I travelled blindly to Oxford and tramped through soggy, steaming lanes, through sheets of drizzle, through icy runnels and marshy grass. For hours and hours I walked, muttering and cursing, my teeth chattering in my head, my brain on fire, my feet slushing in my soaking boots. I did not know clearly where I was, I did not know why I was walking nor where, but walk I must, like the convicts on the treadmill. Something laughed horribly in the air just behind me and said like a parrot, over and over again:

"We expect the child in June! We expect the child in June! We expect the child—"

I hit out with my blackthorn stick. "Damn you and your child!" I cried wildly, and fell face forward in a marshy puddle.



CHAPTER XIX

FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS

Long periods of time passed; days perhaps, perhaps years. Some one, I know, turned with difficulty on his side, so that the puddle did not choke his mouth and nostrils. Some one, by and by, felt something warm and wet and rough against his icy cheek and was grateful for the feeling. Some one was reading to me from a book which described the sensations of a man lifted up and carried in a broken balloon that could only ride a foot from the ground, bumping and jarring horribly, and I was that man, in some strange way, and at the same time I was the illustrations that accompanied the tale. I read the story myself finally, aloud and very shrilly, as that unfortunate man bumped along. After days of this cold journey, the man fell out of the balloon into a warm lake and was delighted with the change, for his very soul was chilled—until he realised, at first dimly, that the water was growing hotter every minute and that the intention was to torture him to death! I was that man, moreover, and I kicked and screamed wildly, though every motion in the boiling water was agony. Just at the point when my breath was failing and my heart slowed, they turned off the water in the lake from a tap, and as it slowly receded, I was safe again, and knew I could fall asleep.

Long I slept, and dreamed inexpressibly, and then I would feel the insidious lapping of the warm lake, rejoice a moment in the comforting heat, then realise with horror that the temperature was rising slowly but surely, and the inferno would begin all over again. Every joint and muscle was red-hot, each burning breath cut me like a knife.

I could not count how many times this happened, but I prayed loudly for the man to die (he had been confirmed, so he had a legal right to pray) and after a long time I began to have hopes that he would, for he discovered a way of drawing his face down under the boiling water and ceasing to breathe. Whenever he did this, a cold, smarting rain drove through the water on his face and forced him to breathe, but he managed to sink deeper and deeper, till at last he felt the throb of the great world on its axle going round, and saw the stars below him, and knew he was nearly free.

"More oxygen!" said a tiny, dry voice far off in infinite space, "more oxygen!"

I grew light and rose to the surface; the stars went out.

"More oxygen!" said the voice again, louder now and close to me. I fought to sink back again but it was useless; I burst up to the surface and breathed the sweet, icy air against my will.

"Now the mustard again, over the heart," said the voice, "and try the brandy."

Something ran like fire through my veins, I opened my eyes, stared into a black, bearded face and said distinctly:

"You nearly lost that man. He heard the thing going round."

Then I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

I was very weak and tired when I woke, but quite composed. That feeling of gentleness and conscious pathos that floods the weak and empty and lately racked body was mine, and I looked pensively at the white, blue-veined hand that lay so lax on the counterpane. What a siege it had been for the poor devil that owned that hand! For I realised that I had been very, very ill indeed.

As I studied the hand it was lifted gently from the counterpane by another and clasped lightly but firmly at the wrist. The arm above this hand was clad in striped blue and white gingham; a full white apron fell just at the limit of my sidewise vision. I was far too weak to raise my eyes, but it occurred to me that this must be my landlady, for I recognised the footboard of my bed. And yet it was not at all like my room. The arm-chair was gone, the books were gone, the student lamp was gone, although it was my sitting-room. Then why was the bed there? I frowned impatiently and then the white apron lowered itself, a white collar appeared, and above it a face which was perfectly familiar to me, though I could not attach any name to it.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Jerrolds? a drink, perhaps?" said a clear, competent voice, and I knew at once who she was—the Professor's sister's trained nurse. For one dreadful moment I feared I was the Professor's sister—it seemed to me it must be so, that there was no other course open to me, for that was the person Miss Buxton nursed! Then, as she repeated my name quietly, it was as if a veil had been drawn, and I understood everything. My bed had been moved into the study; her bed was in my room. Doubtless the Professor had sent for her.

I felt thirsty, and hungry, too, a fact known to her, apparently, for in a moment she brought me a bowl of delicious broth, which she fed me very neatly by the spoonful. It made another man of me, that broth, and I watched her record it on a formidable chart, devoted to my important affairs, with great interest.

"Have I been ill long?" I asked, and my voice sounded hollow and rather high to my critical sense.

"Two weeks, Mr. Jerrolds," she said promptly, "quite long enough, wasn't it? It has been most interesting: a very pretty case, indeed."

"What was it?"

"Inflammatory rheumatism," she said, with a gratifying absence of doubt or delay (such a relief to a sick person!) "and a great deal of fever, very high. You ran a remarkable temperature, Mr. Jerrolds."

I received this information with the peculiar complacence of the invalid. It seemed to me to denote marked ability and powers beyond the common, that fever!

"How did I get here?"

She sat in a low chair by the bed and regarded me pleasantly out of the kind, wise, brown eyes.

"I will tell you all about it," she said, "because I am sure you will be easier, but after I am through I want you to try to compose yourself and go off to sleep, because this will be enough talking for now, and I want you to be fresh for the doctor. Do you understand?"

I dropped my eyelids in token of agreement and she went on.

"You remember that you complained of feeling unwell in Paris at Mr. Bradley's house. You probably had quite a temperature then, though you might not have known it. You came directly back to Oxford, but for forty-eight hours no one knew where you were, for the people here supposed you there. Finally, when Mr. Bradley telegraphed, they grew anxious here, and while they were wondering what to do, your dog ran in, acting so strangely that they suspected something and followed him. He led them directly to you and they found you unconscious in a marshy old lane about six miles out from the town. They brought you here in a horse blanket, the Professor sent for me, and we have been taking care of you ever since. Mr. Bradley has been here twice, but you were too ill to see anybody; he saw that everything possible was being done. I shall write him directly that you are on the uphill road now, and that care and patience are all you need.

"Now, take this medicine, Mr. Jerrolds, and repay me for this long story by going directly to sleep."

I took it, lay for a moment in a dreamy wonder, and drifted off. As she had said, the uphill journey had begun.

That afternoon I saw the doctor, a grizzled, kindly man, and it was he who told me what I had already somehow divined—that I owed my life to Harriet Buxton.

"I never saw such nursing," he said frankly; "the woman has a real genius. It was nip and tuck with you, Mr. Jerrolds, and she simply set her teeth and wouldn't give up! One can't wonder the American nurses get such prices—they're worth it. Now it's hold hard and cultivate your patience, and get back that two or three stone we lost during the siege, and then good-bye to me!"

But oh, how long it was! Day after day, and night after night, and day after day again I counted the pieces of furniture in the bare, dull room and read faces into the hideous wall-paper and stared into the empty window. The little night-light punctuated the dark; the feeble sunlight struggled through the rain. The few kindly friends who called upon me I could not see; their sympathetic commonplaces were unendurable to my weakened nerves. Had it not been for the return, now and then, of the pains I had suffered in my delirium, mercifully less and less violent, which made the periods of their absence hours of comparative pleasure, I think I should have grown into a hopeless nervous invalid from sheer ennui. I had never been ill that I remember since the days of my childish maladies, and I fretted as only such an one can and must fret under the irksome novelty of pain, weakness and irritation.

How Harriet Buxton bore with my whims and fads and downright rudeness, I cannot tell. When in a fit of contrition I asked her this, she smiled and said that men were generally irritable.

"But I should go mad if I were obliged to humour the caprices of such a bear as I!"

"But you are not a nurse!" she answered quietly.

After ten days of steady convalescence, when I was propped up a little upon my pillows and could feed myself very handily from an ever-increasingly varied menu, I asked suddenly if she had heard from Roger lately.

"Yes," she said promptly, "only yesterday. I was waiting till you asked. Before I give you the letter I must tell you that they are no longer in Paris: they have gone back to America."

"America?" I echoed vaguely, with a half-shocked consciousness that I did not care very much one way or the other where they were.

"Yes, Mr. Bradley came in the day before they sailed, but you were far too ill to see him. At the same time I saw no reason why you should not pull through, and told him so. Mrs. Bradley suddenly expressed a wish to go to her old home, and though for some reasons they did not like to let her begin a sea voyage, for other reasons they wanted to gratify her. She grew quite determined and they decided to allow it. You know she expects her baby in June."

"Yes I know," I said quietly. I remembered the man who had tramped the wet lanes, but to-day he seemed to me a wicked fool, justly punished for his folly. For I knew, though no one had told me, that I should never be the same after this sickness. The very fibres of my soul had been twisted and burned in that white-hot furnace of my delirium, and though Nature might forgive me, she could never forget. Every winter she would take her toll, every damp season she would audit my account, after every exposure or fatigue she would lightly tap some shrinking nerve and whisper "Remember!" A passion whose strength I had never suspected had brought me to this bed, and in this bed that same passion had struggled and shrivelled and died. It was with no mock philosophy that I thought of Margarita. No, the fool knew his folly now. But it was a folly of which I had no need, I verily believe, to feel ashamed. It was not that I was the sort of monk we are told the Devil would be, when he was sick, although my physical weakness may have lain—God knows!—at the root of it, once. No, I had changed. Those who have gone through some such change (and I wonder, sometimes, how many of the passive, unremarkable people I pass on the street, in the fields, in hotels, have gone through such) know how well I knew the truth of this matter and how little likely I was to deceive myself. I loved her, yes, and shall love her while consciousness remains with me, but it would never again be bitter in my mouth and black in my heart.

"Let me see the letter, please, Miss Buxton," I asked, and she brought it, cutting it for me with her neat accuracy of motion and conservation of energy. I spread the single sheet open and began, but I never read more than one line of that letter.

For it began,

Dear old Jerry:

Ever since Kitchener found you, I have changed—

"Kitch! Kitch!" I cried, overcome with shame and penitence. "Oh, Miss Buxton, do you—does anybody—"

"He is just outside," she said, "I will have him sent up at once. I thought you would want him soon, Mr. Jerrolds. And don't worry—he has never been neglected."

I clutched the sheet in my impatience. Very soon there was a scurrying through the hall, a little gasping snuffle, a small, sharp bark. Then he was on the bed before I saw his good brindled head, almost, and in my arms. I pressed my face against his dear, quivering coat, I surrendered my cheek to his warm, rough tongue, I translated each happy convulsive wriggle.

"Dear old Kitch—good fellow!" I muttered, none too steadily, for I was not strong yet, and he seemed suddenly the only friend on whom I could unreservedly count. Roger had wished to stay with me, I knew, but of course he must go with his wife, and I am glad that I never grudged his absence a moment. For this cause shall a man leave his life-long friend and cleave only to her, and there is no other way. But nothing, nothing could separate Kitch and me!

Miss Buxton left us alone together and we discussed the situation gravely and thoroughly and assured each other that it was only a matter of patience, now, and then, away together!

My spirits rose from the day he came in, and in another week I had advanced to a deep cushioned chair in the window for an hour a day. But it was not a very interesting window, commanding as it did my neighbour's eight-foot garden wall crowned with inhospitable broken glass, and though I appreciate the marvel of the spring as much, I suppose, as most of us, I could never occupy myself very long with natural beauties exclusively, and the trees and the grass could not satisfy my craving for human interest. Now that I was ready for them, all my friends were off for their Easter holiday, and I would not keep the Professor from his spring gardening, though he offered manfully. I have never cared for games, with the single exception of his beloved chess, and my eyes soon tired of reading.

And so at last, in default of something more to my mind, I turned to my nurse and determined to make that silent woman talk. At first it was difficult, for I tried to discover her feelings, her attitude, her history. As to the first two of these I met only failure and the last was pathetically simple. An orphan she was, a bread-winner, an observer. I say it was pathetic, but not that she was. Things are changing rapidly with women, I can see that plainly, but twenty years ago a man still felt, ridiculously perhaps, that a kindly, competent woman, however successful in her chosen profession, must needs be, in the very nature of the case, even more kindly and more competent with a child on her lap and an arm about her waist. If in the new doctrine of the Brotherhood of Man it is admitted that we owe each our debt to humanity and posterity, I, for one, have never been able to understand why women should not pay that debt in the coinage most obviously provided them for the purpose. The Brotherhood of Man is a great idea, but surely without the Motherhood of Woman it would grow a little shadowy and impractical. (I speak as a fool!)

And so, I repeat, there was something a little pathetic to me in Harriet Buxton's life, though nothing in the least pathetic in her personality or her actions. Do not turn on me too fiercely, dear ladies, and demand of me with your well-known remorseless logic, what would have become of me if Harriet Buxton had not been beside me in my delirium, with nothing but a clinical thermometer on her knee, and a white apron around her waist. Do not, I beg you, for I shall shock all your strict habits of mind by taking refuge in blind, illogical instinct and reiterating my firm conviction that though I perish, truth is so, and that Nature had a better use for Harriet's lap and waist. She had! (as you used to say in the old emotional era) she had!! She had!!!

Well, in despair of eliciting anything romantic from her, I languidly inquired as to her travels. They were not extensive: this was her first "trip abroad." It had been rather a failure, in a way, for although she had been engaged with the understanding that her passage was to be paid both ways, her patient on recovery had decided to spend the summer abroad, and had made it very evident that she did not consider herself any longer responsible for her nurse under these circumstances!