The moon had risen by this time; its first beams shone in at the unshuttered window. Julia went to the door and, opening it, looked out. There was a little mist about and the moon, quite a young one, was struggling through it, shining with a soft, diffused light that made the landscape very unearthly.

It was wonderfully still out of doors, quiet and damp with belts of unexplained shadow here and there, and a sense of illimitable space and silence. Julia sat down on the door steps and smelt the good smell of the earth and felt the nearness of it. But it did not comfort her; she was not in tune with the night; she had neither part nor lot with these things. "Thief, and daughter of a thief;" the words kept coming to her—and he, the man whom she never named to herself, had called her his good comrade! She bowed her face to her knees and sat motionless.

She had told him the truth about herself; she had not been ashamed; she would not have been even if she had taken the daffodil. But her father! She was ashamed for him with a bitter shame; ashamed of herself and him too, in thought and intention at least they were one, double-dealers. "Two grubby little people," as she had seen them long ago when they first stood in company with that man.

"But you don't know; you have not our temptations." She almost spoke aloud, unconsciously addressing the dewy silence as her mind called the man plainly before her. "You have never wanted money as I wanted it, or wanted things as father wanted them. Oh, you would despise the things he wanted—so do I; they are miserable and mean and sordid; you couldn't want whisky and comfort as he wanted them, but you can't think how he did! He would have justified it to himself too; you wouldn't, couldn't do that, while we—we could justify the devil if we tried. It is not right, any the more for that, I know it is not; it is dishonest and disgraceful, I know that as well as you; but I know how it came about and you—you can never understand!" Her voice sank away. That was the great difference between herself and this man; it did not lie in what she did; that was a remedial matter—but rather in what she knew and felt. Things that did not exist for him were not only possible but sometimes almost necessary to her and hers. The gulf between them which had almost seemed bridged in the early summer was suddenly opened again by the day's work; opened beyond all passage for her—thief, and daughter of a thief.

She sat on the doorstone looking out with unseeing eyes while the moon rose higher and the light grew so that the belts of shadow melted and the misty land was all silver, a world of dreams, very pure and still. But neither her dreams nor her thoughts were pure and still; they were full of passion and pain, longing and regret and shame, and yet an underlying hopeless desire that all could be known and understood.

At last she rose and went in. The pink woolly thing Captain Polkington had bought her lay on the kitchen-table, half out of its paper wrappings, a silly, useless thing. As her eyes fell on it they grew dim and hot while the colour crept up in her cheek. Her father had bought it for her; he had thought to please her with the foolish thing; it was like a child's or a fool's gift; she hated herself for hating it. But he had deceived himself into thinking he was generous to make it with his illgotten gains; he had salved conscience with it—it was a liar's gift, a self-deceiver's, a thief's. There was no kindness, no generosity in it, and she despised him—and he was her father!

She picked up the thing, paper and all, and crammed it into the dying fire. Then suddenly she burst into tears. The world was all wrong, justice was wrong and suffering was wrong and mankind wrong, all was wrong and inexplicable and pitiful too.

For a minute she sobbed chokingly, then she forced back the tears with the angry impatience of a hurt animal, and fetching a sheet of paper and pencil, sat down to write. He was her father and he was a man with a warped idea of honour, one whose self-respect had been taken away; it was too late to teach him, one could only safeguard him now. Opportunity did not make thieves of such as her, but it did of such as him, and she had left the opportunity—or what he took to be it—open. She would close it now for ever; she would be rid of the bulb, the cause of so much trouble. So she wrote hurriedly, a mere scrawl, while the passion was still upon her, and her eyes were still dim with tears—

"Joost, if you have ever cared for me, take back the daffodil; take it back and don't ask me why."

The next morning Julia posted a small parcel, and at dinner time told Johnny and her father that she had sent the famous daffodil back to its native land.

Johnny looked up in mild surprise; he had been to the outhouse that morning to see if the bulbs were keeping dry. "Why," he said, "it's in the shed!"

"No, it is not," Julia answered, "and it never was. The one you think it is one of the large double pale ones; I told you at the time we put them away, but you have got mixed, I expect."

"Ah, yes, of course," Mr. Gillat said; "I remember now; of course, I remember."

The Captain swallowed something, but contrived to keep quiet, and only darted a glance at Johnny, the muddler, whose information could never be depended on.

When the meal was over and Mr. Gillat in the back kitchen, Captain Polkington spoke to his daughter.

"Julia," he said, moistening his dry lips, "that man Cross thought it was the streaked daffodil that I, that—"

His voice tailed away, but Julia only said, "Well?"

"I pledged by word of honour that it was the true one."

Again Julia said, "Well?"

"What is to be done?" the Captain asked.

She showed no signs of grasping his meaning or at all events of helping him out. He burst out irritably, "What on earth have you sold it for? Nothing would induce you to do so before when I asked you to; now, all at once you have taken a freak and parted with it without any consideration whatever. I never saw anything like women, so utterly irrational!"

"I have not sold it," Julia told him; "only sent it away."

"What for? It is perfectly absurd! I suppose you can get it back? You must get it back."

Julia asked "What for?" in her turn.

The Captain enlightened her. "There is Cross," he said; "I told him that was the daffodil, and it is not. Something must be done; we can't cheat him; we must send him the daffodil, or else refund the five pounds. We should have to do that—and we can't."

"No," Julia agreed grimly; "and we would not if we could."

"But what are you going to do?" her father asked.

"Nothing."

"Nothing! But I pledged my word! You don't understand, I am in honour bound."

Julia forbore to make and comment on her father's notion of honour; indeed, it struck her as almost pathetic in its grotesqueness and certainly very characteristic of the Polkingtons.

"Cross paid five pounds for the streaked daffodil," the Captain went on to say, believing that he was stating the case with incontrovertible plainness, "and if he does not have the true bulb he must have the money back; otherwise he will, with justice, say he has been cheated, for I guaranteed the thing."

"He paid five pounds for a speculation," Julia said; "your guarantee was nothing, and though he may have asked for it, it was just a form and did not count one way or the other. He knew there was a chance that you had come by the true bulb somehow and so had it to sell; he risked five pounds on that—and lost it."

Captain Polkington looked bewildered. "He paid five pounds for the bulb," he persisted; "he said it was worth no more to him."

"Very likely not, if he could get it for that," Julia said; "but if he could have been sure of it, it would have been worth two hundred pounds."

"Two hundred!" Captain Polkington gasped, turning rather white.

Julia nodded. "With my guarantee," she said. "You had not got that; I suppose you let him see it when you wrote first so he knew that, though you might have the real bulb, you were not in a position to sell it well."

The Captain flushed as suddenly as he had paled. "You think he thought I had not come by it honestly, that I had no right in my daughter's affairs?"

"I don't see it matters what he thought," Julia answered, taking up the dishes. "He risked his money, and lost it, knowing very well what he did; he does not mind doing business in that way; I don't admire it myself, but I guessed he would do it when I first made his acquaintance."

"You ——" the Captain said.

"I have nothing to do with it, and shall have nothing."

"But the money must be paid; it is a debt of honour; I must clear myself."

Julia shrugged her shoulders.

"You do not wish me cleared?" her father demanded haughtily.

"Paying the five pounds would not clear you," she said; "neither that nor anything else. No, I am not going to pay it; I don't feel any obligation in the matter. If Mr. Cross goes in for those sort of dealings he must put up with the consequence, and I am afraid you must, too." And with that she went away.

This was the last reference that was made to the sale of the daffodil and the expedition to town; after that the matter was left out of conversation and Julia behaved as if it had never existed. But Captain Polkington was very unhappy; he could not get over the affair and his own failure; he brooded over it in silence, feeling and resenting that he could not speak to either Johnny or Julia, they being quite unable to understand his emotions. Once or twice he raged weakly against Cross, who had given him five pounds when he had asked twenty for a thing worth two hundred; who had doubted his word, who had behaved as if he were a common thief—who would, doubtless, think him one. More often his indignation burnt up against Julia who would do nothing to remedy this last catastrophe, and clear him and reinstate his honour in the eyes of this man and himself. Most often of all his quarrel was with fate, and then his anger broke down into self-pity as he thought of all the troubles that were crowding about his later years; of his lost reputation, his lack of sympathy and comprehension; the failure of all his plans and hopes, the poverty and feeble health that oppressed him. In these gloomy days he had one ray of comfort only; it lay in the purchase he had made on that day that he went shopping. That whisky was the solitary thing in the day's adventure about which Julia had not heard; everything else she had been told, but somehow that had escaped. One reason of this, no doubt, lay in the fact that Captain Polkington had not brought his purchase home with him that evening. He had meant to; when the carrier set him and his property down just outside Halgrave, he had fully meant to carry it to the cottage. But he found it so heavy and cumbersome in his weak and dejected state that he had to give it up. So he found a suitable hiding-place in the deep overgrown ditch beside the road, and, thrusting it as much out of sight as he could, left it there and went home unburdened. He meant to tell Julia and Johnny about it, they of course were to have shared, and one or both of them would go with him to fetch it home in the morning. But he did not tell them; it did not seem suitable at first; they, each in a different way, were too unsympathetic about the expedition to town; he determined to wait for a fitting opportunity. The opportunity did not come; but in course of time the whisky was moved and gave comfort of sorts during the autumn days to the Captain's drooping spirits, if it had a less beneficial effect on his failing health.

In the meantime the daffodil, "The Good Comrade," had gone back to its native land, and with it an appeal, written in English, badly written, scrawled almost—but not likely to be refused. Joost read it through once, twice, more times than that; it said little, only, take back the bulb and ask no questions, yet he felt he had been honoured by Julia's confidence. The very style and haste of the letter seemed an honour to him; it showed him she had need and had turned to him in it. Of course he would do as she asked; he would have done things far harder than that. He folded the slip of paper and put it away where he kept some few treasures, and for a time he put with it the bulb she had sent; and sometimes when he went to bed of a night—he had no other free time—he took both out and looked at them.

But "The Good Comrade" did not remain locked away from the light of day. Joost was a sentimentalist, it is true, and the bulb had come from Julia, winged by an appeal from her. But he was also a bulb grower, and he was that before he was anything else and afterwards too, and the daffodil was a marvel of nature, a novelty, a thing beyond words to a connoisseur. The lover asked that the token should be kept hidden from the eyes of men; but the grower cried that the flower should be given to the light of heaven and should grow and bloom according to Nature's plan. For days the lover was uppermost and the old pain back. But in time the bitter-sweet madness died down again and, in the atmosphere which was saturated with the beloved work, the old love, the first and last and soundly abiding one, reasserted itself. The daffodil must bloom, the little brown bulb must go back to the brown earth, the strange flower must unfold itself to the sun and wind and rain.

So he went to his father. "My father," he said, and it is to be feared he had learnt something of guile from the source of his bitter-sweet madness. "My father, I have heard from Miss Julia; she would wish us to have the narcissus 'The Good Comrade.'"

Mijnheer was pleased. "That is as it should be," he said; he had felt strongly about the gift of the bulb in the first instance, but that was an affair over and done with long ago between him and his son. He did not reopen it now, he was only gratified to think there was a likelihood of the daffodil coming back to its birthplace, where it certainly ought to be. "How much does Miss Julia ask for it?" he inquired.

"Nothing," Joost answered; "she does not wish to sell it; she wishes to give it back."

"But, but!" Mijnheer exclaimed, pushing up his spectacles in astonishment; he knew the value of the thing and the offers that must have been made for it; this way was not at all his notion of doing business; also he found it hard to reconcile with the Julia he remembered. He recollected talk he had had with her when she had proved herself an apt pupil in trade and trade dealings, and shown, not only a very good comprehension of such things, but also an eye to the main chance. "This is nonsense," he said; "it is not business."

Joost looked distressed. "I gave her the bulb," he ventured; "she does not want to sell me back my present."

Mijnheer did not recognise any such distinction in business transactions, and for a little it looked as if "The Good Comrade" would be sent wandering again, sacrificed to his old-fashioned notions of integrity. Joost should not have it unless he paid for it, he said so with decision. He himself would buy it if Joost would not, and if she would not sell it to him then neither of them should have it.

And Joost could not, even if he would, explain why and how the paying was so difficult. He used all the arguments he could; indeed, for one of his nature, he spoke with considerable diplomacy.

"Supposing," he said at last, "that it was only a sport, and that next year it reverts and is blue as are the others, the parent bulbs? Miss Julia thinks of that—she would not like to be paid for it now in case of such a thing, will you not at least wait until the spring? She has given nothing for it herself; it is not as if she had sunk money and wants an immediate return."

Mijnheer did not consider that made any difference and he said so, reading his son a lecture on business morality according to his standard, of a very severe order. Joost listened with meekness to the entirely undeserved reproof for meanness and dishonourable views; then the old man announced finally what he should do. He should write to Julia and offer her a smallish sum down in case the bulb proved to be of no great worth, and a promise of a proportional percentage afterwards if it proved valuable. This idea pleased him very well; it satisfied his notions of integrity and fair dealing and also his thrifty soul, which found trying the otherwise unavoidable duty of paying a long price for what had been freely given. From this Joost could not move him, so there was nothing for him to do but write distressfully to Julia and explain and apologise.



CHAPTER XXII

THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE

Julia was at work in the kitchen; it was ten o'clock on a November morning and she was busy; Captain Polkington had had breakfast up-stairs, he often did now, and it delayed the morning's work. Mr. Gillat brought in two letters which the postman had left; both were for Julia, but she had not time to read them now, so she put them down on the table; they would keep; she did not feel greatly interested to know what was inside them. Things did not interest her as they used; in some imperceptible way she had aged; some of the elasticity and youth was gone, perhaps because hope was gone. It had been dying all the summer, ever since the day when she crouched behind the chopping-block; but gently and gradually, as the year dies, with some beauties unknown in early days and little recurrent spurts of hope and youth, like the flowers that bloom into winter's lap. But it was dead now; there had come to her, as it were, a sudden frost, and, as befalls in the years, too, the late blooming flowers, the coloured leaves, the last beautiful clinging remnants of life withered all at once and fell away. It was unreasonable, perhaps, that the Captain's theft of the daffodil and what arose from it should have had this result; but then it was possibly unreasonable that hope and youth should have had any autumn at all and not died right off when she said "No" and meant it that afternoon in the early summer. But then the mind of man—and woman—is unreasonable.

It was nearly half-an-hour later when Julia picked up the letters; both were from Holland; one, she fancied, was from Mijnheer, one from his son. She opened the latter first; she rather wondered what Joost could have to write about; he had acknowledged the receipt of the daffodil bulb long ago. The matter was soon explained; the letter was as formal and precise as ever, but the emotion that dictated it, the distress and regret, was quite clear to Julia in spite of the primness of expression. Clear, too, to her were the conflicting feelings that lay behind the lover's contrition for what he feared was abuse of his mistress's trust, and the grower's desire that the treasured token should be resolved into, what it was, a wonderful bulb, a triumph of the horticulturist. Julia smiled a little sadly as she read; not that she regretted the existence of the grower with the lover; she was glad to see it and to know that it was triumphing. But the whole affair seemed so far off, so unimportant, so almost childish. She did not care who knew he had the daffodil, or whether it bloomed or rotted. In these days, when her self-apportioned burden was beginning to press heavily upon her shoulders, such things did not seem to matter. She had a sense almost of disloyalty in feeling how little it mattered to her when it appeared to be so much to this loyal friend.

Captain Polkington had of late had several sudden attacks of a faintness which more often than not amounted to unconsciousness. "Heart," the doctor had said when he was summoned after the first one; he had not regarded them as very dangerous, that is to say not likely to prove fatal at any moment if properly treated at the time. He had given instructions as to suitable treatment, emphasising the fact that the patient ought never to be long out of ear-shot of some one, as the attacks required immediate remedy. He forbade excitement and much exertion, orders easy to fulfil in this case, and also stimulants of all sorts, an order not quite so easy. Captain Polkington was much displeased about this last; he said it plainly showed the doctor a fool who did not know his business; stimulant, as every one knew, being the first necessity for a weak heart. Julia pointed out that that must vary with the constitution, nature and disease; she also recalled the fact that alcohol never had suited her father. He was naturally not convinced by her logic, and so was decidedly sulky; even in time, by dint of dwelling upon the subject, came to regard the treatment as a conspiracy to annoy him. Julia regretted this but did not think it mattered very much, seeing that she had the keys; but then she did not know of that purchase made in the town. The Captain, rebelling against the doctor's order, hugged himself as he thought of it and of the comparatively sparing use he had made of it so far—for fear of being found out. There was no need of him to die by inches while he had that store of life and comfort; so he told himself, and secretly made use of it, with anything but good result. Julia, marking the disimprovement in his health, thought it was the natural course and saved him all work, carrying out the doctor's instructions more carefully than ever. The hidden whisky remained unknown to her, for although in the larger affairs of duplicity and diplomacy she easily outmatched her father, in matters requiring small cunning he was much nearer her equal. In this one he showed almost preternatural skill; his whole heart was in it, and his wits, where it was concerned, were sharpened above the average; he clung to his secret as a man clings to his one chance of life, made only the more pertinacious by the contrary advice he had received. But on that November morning, after Julia had brought her father round by the proper remedies, she began to have suspicions. They were not founded on anything definite; she could not imagine how he should have got stimulant, and his condition hardly justified her in suspecting it, yet she did. And Captain Polkington knew by experience that that was enough to prove unpleasant; it did not matter much at which end Julia got hold of his affairs, she had a knack of arriving at the middle before he was at all ready for her. He resented what she said to him that morning very much indeed. He denied everything and defended himself well; although he was in fear all the time that some unwary word or unwise denial should betray him to his cross-examiner who, being herself no mean expert in the double-dealing arts, could frequently learn as much from a lie as from the truth. In the end, what between anxiety and annoyance, he lost control of his temper and from peevish irritability broke out suddenly into a fit of weak ungovernable rage. Julia was obliged at once to desist, seeing with regret that she had transgressed one of the doctor's rules and excited the patient very much indeed.

She left him to recover control of himself and went to look for Mr. Gillat.

"Johnny," she said, when she found him. "I believe father has got whisky. I don't know where, but I shall have to find out; you must help me."

Johnny professed his willingness, looking puzzled and unhappy; he looked so at times, again now, for even he had begun to discern a shadow coming on the life which for a year had been so happy to him.

"You will have to keep a watch on father," Julia said. "He won't do much while I am watching; he will wait till he is alone with you. Don't try to prevent him; that is no good; just watch and tell me."

Mr. Gillat said he would, though he did not like the job, and certainly was ill-fitted for it. Julia knew that, but knew also that to discover anything she must depend a good deal upon him, unless she could by searching light upon the store of spirit which she could not help thinking her father had in or near the house. She determined to make a systematic search; but before she did so she found time to open Mijnheer's letter.

It was rather a long letter and very neat. It set forth in formal Dutch the old man's ideas concerning the daffodil bulb and his offer regarding it. It should be kept, he said, if it was paid for, not otherwise. Something now, she was to name her terms, while it was still uncertain whether its flower would be blue or streaked or even common yellow—more later, in accordance with the flowering and the profits likely to arise.

So Julia read and sat staring. An offer for "The Good Comrade." Money from the people to whom it had always practically belonged in her estimation. She could not take it from them, it was impossible; the thing was virtually their own! But if she did not. She re-read Joost's letter with its protestations, and Mijnheer's with its offer—if she did not, the little brown bulb would be sent back to her. Mijnheer, now that he knew of its coming, would insist on its return unless it were paid for; and Joost, she knew very well, would not deceive his father and keep it secretly, or defy his father and keep it openly; the money or the bulb she must have. And the bulb she could not, would not have again; so the money, unearned, distasteful, having a not too pleasant savour, must be hers. At last, in this way, without her contrivance, against her will, there had come a way to pay the debt of honour!

She sat down and wrote to Mijnheer and named her price. Thirty pounds she asked for, no more in the future, no less now; that was the only price she could take for "The Good Comrade," it was the sum Rawson-Clew had paid to his cousin two years ago.

Johnny posted the letter that afternoon while Julia began her search for her father's hidden whisky.

All the afternoon Captain Polkington sat in the easy-chair, watching her contemptuously when she was in sight and moving uneasily when she was not. He did not think she would find anything, at least not at once, though he was afraid she would if she kept on long enough and he left his treasure in its present hiding-place. It would not last so much longer—he dared not contemplate the time when it should all be gone; it was characteristic of him that he was easily able to avoid doing so. The principal thought in his mind was a determination that it should not be found while any remained. That could not and should not happen; the last little which he had carefully hoarded, which he had stinted and deprived himself to save—to have that taken away, to be robbed of that—the tears gathered in his eyes at the pathos of the thought.

But the whisky was not found that day, and the Captain, who slept but badly at this time, lay awake long in the night planning how and when he could move it to a place of safety further away from the house. He would have gone down then and there, in spite of the fact that it was a blustering night of wind and rain and he not fitted to go out in such weather, but he was afraid of Julia. She was certain to hear and follow; she had almost an animal's alertness when once she was on the trail of anything. So he lay and planned and waited, hoping that a chance would come during the next day.

It did not. Julia was at home all day and, as she had foreseen, he made no move while she was about. But the following morning she had to go to Halgrave about the killing of a pig; Johnny was hardly equal to making the necessary arrangements and certainly could not do so good as she. Accordingly, she went herself, not very reluctantly, for she was nearly certain her father would make an effort to get at his whisky, if he had any, as soon as her back was turned, and so give Johnny a chance of finding out about it. Of course it was quite likely that Johnny, being Johnny, would miss the chance, but he might not, and even if he did they would not be much worse off than before. So she thought as she started, leaving the Captain, who was still in bed, with a very vague idea as to when she would be back.

He was a good deal annoyed by this vagueness; it meant he would have to hurry, a thing he hated and did very badly; and, perhaps, entirely without reason, too, for she might be three hours gone; though, equally of course, only two, or perhaps—she was capable of anything unpleasant and unexpected—only one. He began to dress as quickly as he could; but, owing to long habit of doing it as slowly as he could so as to postpone more arduous tasks, that was not very fast. He wished he had known sooner that Julia was going to Halgrave, he would have begun getting up before this; he would even have got to breakfast if only she had let him know; so he fumed to himself as he shuffled about, dropping things with his shaking fingers. At last he was dressed and came down-stairs to find Johnny, pink and apologetic as he used to be in the Marbridge days, laboriously doing odd jobs which did not need doing.

There was not a detective lost in Mr. Gillat, he had not the making of a sleuth-hound in him; or even a watch-dog, except, perhaps, of that well-meaning kind which gets itself perennially kicked for incessant and incurable tail wagging at inopportune times. The half-hour which followed Captain Polkington's coming down-stairs was a trying one. The Captain went to the back door to look out; Mr. Gillat followed him, though scarcely like his shadow; he was not inconspicuous, and neither he nor his motive were easy to overlook. The Captain said something approbious about the weather and the high wind and occasional heavy swishes of rain; then he went to the sitting-room which lay behind the kitchen, and near to the front door. Johnny followed him, and the Captain faced round on him, irritably demanding what the devil he wanted.

"To—to see if the register is shut," Mr. Gillat said, beaming at his own deep diplomacy and the brilliancy of the idea which had come to him—rather tardily, it is true, still in time to pass muster.

The Captain flung himself into a chair with a sigh of irritation. "It is a funny thing I can't be let alone a moment," he said. "I came in here for a little quiet and coolness, I didn't want you dodging after me."

"No," Johnny agreed amiably; "no, of course not." Then, after a long pause, as if he had just made sure of the fact, "It is cool in here."

It was, very; it might even have been called cold and raw, for there had not been a fire there for days, but the Captain did not move, and Johnny, stooping by the fire-place, examined the register of the chimney, fondly believing in his own impenetrable deceptiveness.

"I can't help thinking it ought to be shut," he observed, looking thoughtfully up the chimney; "the rain will come down; it might rain a good deal if the wind were to drop."

"The wind is not going to drop for hours," the Captain snapped; "it is getting higher."

A great gust rumbled in the chimney as he spoke, and flung itself with the thud of a palpable body against the window-pane. Mr. Gillat heard it; he could not well do otherwise. "Still," he said, "it might rain; one never knows."

He took hold of the register with the tongs and tried to shut it. It was obstinate, and he pulled this way and that, working in his usual laborious and conscientious way. At last it slipped and he managed to get it jammed crossways. Thus he had to leave it, for Captain Polkington, apparently cool enough now, wandered back into the kitchen.

Mr. Gillat, of course, followed and arranged and rearranged pots on the stove till the Captain said he had left his handkerchief up-stairs. Stairs were trying to his heart, so Johnny had to go for it. Up he went as fast as he could, and came down again almost faster, for he tumbled on the second step and slipped the rest of the way with considerable noise and bumping.

After that Captain Polkington gave up his efforts to get rid of his guard and resigned himself to fate. At least, so thought Mr. Gillat, who no amount of experience could instruct in the guilt of the human race in general and the Polkingtons in particular. The first hour of Julia's absence had passed when Johnny went into the back kitchen to clean knives. He left the door between the rooms open, but from habit more than from any thought of keeping an eye on his charge. They had been talking in the ordinary way for some time now, the Captain sitting so peacefully by the fire that Mr. Gillat had begun to forget he was supposed to watch. And really it would seem he was justified, for the Captain, of his own accord, left the easy-chair and followed him into the back kitchen, standing watching the knife-cleaning. He had been talking of old times, recalling far back incidents regretfully; he continued to do so as he watched Johnny at work until he was interrupted by a loud sizzling in the kitchen.

"Hullo!" he said, "there's a pot boiling over!" and he made as if he would go to it but half stopped. "It is the big one," he said, "perhaps you had better take it off; I'm not good at lifting weights now-a-days."

"No, no!" Johnny said hastily; "don't you do it, you leave it to me," and he hurried into the kitchen to take from the fire a pot which, had he only remembered it, had not been so near the blaze when he left it.

"It is too heavy for you," he went on as he lifted it; "I don't know what is inside, only water, I think; it will be all right here by the side."

A gust of wind swept round the kitchen, fluttering the herbs which hung from the ceiling and blowing the dust and flame from the front of the fire.

"Dear, dear!" Mr. Gillat exclaimed as he drew back, "What a wind!" Then, as he caught the whisper and whistle of the leafless things which whisper to one another out of doors even in the dead winter time, he realised that the outer door must be open.

"Shut it!" he said. "The latch is so old, it is beginning to get worn out, and the wind is so strong, too. Let me see if I can shut it." He went to the back kitchen for that purpose and found that he was talking to empty air, the Captain was gone.

In great consternation he went out after his charge. He had not had a minute's start; he could not have got far, not much more than round the corner of the house. So thought Mr. Gillat, and started round the nearest corner after him. Julia would not have done that; with the instinct of the wild animal and the rogue for cover, and for the value of the obvious in concealment, she would have looked by the water butt first. It was not a hiding-place; the bush beside did not half conceal Captain Polkington, yet he stood dark and unobtrusive against it and so close to the door that in looking out for him one naturally looked beyond him. As Johnny went round one side of the house the Captain left the meagre shelter of the butt and went round the other, bent now on finding some better hiding-place till it should be safe for him to go to his precious store. And seeing that he was braced by an insatiable whisky thirst and so possessed by one idea that he had almost a madman's cunning in achieving his purpose, it is not wonderful that he succeeded. While Johnny hastily searched the out-buildings he lay hid. And when at last Mr. Gillat went back to the house, being convinced that his charge must have gone back before him, he, nerved and strengthened by a dose of the precious spirit, carefully climbed over the garden wall, carrying with him all that was left of his store. It was rather heavy, and the rising wind was strong, but he was strong, too, and he bore more strength with him. He could carry a weight and fight with the wind if he wanted to; his heart was well enough when it was properly treated. And it should be properly treated as long as he had his comfort, his precious medicine safe and in a place where prying hands could not touch it.

* * * * *

Julia came home from Halgrave later than she expected, but the wind had increased to a gale, so that walking along the exposed road had been no easy matter. Johnny by this time was almost desperate with alarm, for Captain Polkington had not come back and, in spite of a continuous search in likely and unlikely places, he had not been able to find any trace of him or his whisky. It is true his search was not very systematic at the best of times; it is not likely to have been now; as his alarm increased, it grew worse, until, by the time Julia came in, it had become little more than a repeated looking in the same unlikely places and an incessant toiling up and down-stairs and across the garden in the howling wind.

His account of the Captain's vanishing was much obscured by self-condemnation and anxiety, still she managed to make it out and she did not at first think so very seriously of it. She concluded from it that her father had succeeded in getting at his whisky and Johnny had failed to prevent him or find out the whereabouts of the store—a not very astonishing occurrence. The fact that the Captain had not returned or shown himself for so long was surprising and to be regretted, seeing the badness of the weather. But it was not inexplicable; he might be anxious to demonstrate his freedom, or, by frightening them, to pay them out for the watch lately kept on him; or—and this was the one serious aspect of the matter—he might have taken more of the spirit than he could stand in his weak state and be too stupid and muddled to come back alone. Julia reassured Johnny as well as she could, and then, accompanied by him, set to work to search thoroughly the house, garden and out-buildings.

It was dinner time before they had finished. Julia came to the doorway of the bulb shed uneasy and perplexed. "It is clear he is not here," she said, and turned to fasten the door. A gust of wind tore it from her hand, flinging it back noisily. She caught it again and secured it. "It is dinner time," she said; "come along indoors, there is no reason why you should go hungry because father chooses to."

Johnny followed her to the house. When they were indoors he said, "Do you think—you don't think he has had an attack?—that he is lying unconscious somewhere?" That was precisely what Julia was beginning to think; there seemed no other possible explanation. Johnny read her mind in her face and was overwhelmed with the sense of his own shortcomings and their possible consequences.

"It is not your fault," Julia assured him; "you might as well say it is father's for being so foolish and obstinate about his whisky—a great deal better and more truly say it is mine for leaving you, and for driving him into this corner, for not having managed the whole thing better."

Johnny, though a little relieved that she did not think him to blame, was not comforted. "Let us go and find him," he said; "we must find him; never mind about dinner—we must go and look for him—though I don't know where."

"We must look beyond the garden," Julia said; "he must have got further than we first thought—but I don't see how he can be far in this weather. Cut some cheese and bread; we can eat it as we go along."

In a little while they set out together, Julia taking restoratives with her, though she was also careful to leave some on the kitchen-table in case Captain Polkington should make his way back and feel in need of them in her absence. Outside the garden wall one felt the force of the wind more fully, and realised how impossible it was that the Captain should have gone far. Julia stood a moment by the gate. Before her lay the road to Halgrave; her father might have gone down it a little way; but if he had he must have turned off and sought concealment somewhere for she had seen no sign of any one when she came home. To the left stretched the heath-land, brown and bare, to the belt of wildly tossing pines; it was hard to imagine her father choosing that way. To the right lay the sandhills, a place of unsteady outline, earth and sky alike pale and blurred as the north-west wind fled seawards, lifting and whirling the fine particles till the air seemed full of them; it was impossible to think of any one choosing that way.

"We will go down the road to begin with," Julia said, and started.

All through the early part of the afternoon they searched; sometimes stopped for a moment by a gust of wind; Julia caught and whirled, Johnny brought to a panting standstill. But on again directly, struggling down the road, looking in ditches and behind scant bushes, leaving the track first on the right hand then on the left, searching in likely and unlikely places. But always with the same result, there was no sign of the missing man. At last, when they had reached a greater distance than it was possible to imagine the Captain could have gone, they turned towards the house across the heath. It was difficult to think of the Captain going that way, seeing he would have been walking in the teeth of the wind, but it almost seemed he must have done it.

The short day was already beginning to close in when they reached the belt of pines. It had grown much colder; one could almost believe there would be frost in the air by and by. The wind was lulling a little; it still roared with strange rushings and half-demented tearings at the tree-tops, almost like some great spirit prisoned there, but it had spent its first strength. The rain clouds were going, too; already in places the sky was swept clear so that a pale light gleamed behind the trees.

Julia stood in the vibrant shelter of the pines, pushing back her hair; she was bareheaded; a hat had been an impossible superfluity when she started out.

"Johnny," she said, "we have come too far; father could not have got to the trees in such weather as it was when he started; we must go back. I expect he is somewhere nearer home; we have not half searched the possible radius yet."

Johnny said "Yes." He was dog-tired, so tired that his anxiety was now little more than dull despair animated by an unquestioning determination to continue the search.

He would have done so somehow, and with his flagging energies been more hindrance than help, had not Julia prevented him; as they neared the house, now almost merged in the dusk, she said—

"I am going to fetch a lantern; the moon will be up soon, but until then I shall want a light. I am just coming in to get it, then I shall go out again; but you must stop at home; father may come back, and if he found us both out after dark he would think something was wrong and start to look for us; then we should be worse off than ever."

Johnny said "Yes"; but suggested, "I think we'd better look round about the house once more. I think I'll take a light and look round again."

Julia did not think it would be much use; however she consented, though she had to go with Johnny; she did not trust him with a lantern among the out-buildings. They looked round once more, in the sheds and in the dark garden; afterwards they went out and looked beyond the wall all round, on the side where the heather grew and also on the side where the loose sand came close. It took time; Johnny was too tired to move quickly or even to understand quickly what was said to him. At last Julia stopped and spoke decisively.

"You had better go in now," she said; "it won't do for us both to be out any longer; one of us must go in, and I think it had better be you. Make a good fire, see that there is plenty of hot water and get something to eat so as to be ready to do things when I come back."

Johnny acquiesced and Julia, having watched him into the house, took up her lantern and set out in the direction of the sandhills.

It was her last resource; it did not seem to her likely that her father could have gone there; at the best of times he disliked the place, finding it very tiring. Still, with the wind behind him as it would have been this morning, it is possible he would have found it the easiest way—if he could have managed to forget what the coming back would be. At all events she determined to try it, so she set out for the waste.

By this time the moon was rising, and, in spite of the driving clouds which had not all dispersed, at times it shone clear. Beneath it the stretch of sand lay pale and desolate, a new-formed landscape of fresh contours, loosely-piled hills and shallow scooped hollows shaped by to-day's wind. An easy place for a man to miss his way with a gale blowing and the sand dancing blinding reels. A hard place for a man to travel far when he had to face the wind; a strong man would have found it very tiring, a weak man might well have given it up, driven to waiting for a lull in the weather. As for a man in the Captain's health—when Julia thought of it she hurried on, although she knew if her father had to-day, as he had all through his life, followed the line of least resistance, the chances were that her help would be of little avail to him now.

She carried her lantern low, looking carefully for footprints; soon, however, she put it out; she would do better without in the increasing moon-light. But she found no prints; after all, as she remembered, she was hardly likely to; the wind and blowing sand would have obliterated them. Over the first level of sand she went to the nearest rise without seeing anything; up to that and down the following hollow, looking in every curve and indentation, still without seeing anything. Then she began to climb the next rise. The moon was struggling through a long cloud, one moment eclipsed, the next shining with a half radiance which made the landscape unevenly black and white. For a second it looked out clear, and the sand showed like silver, tear-spotted with ink in the hollows; then the cloud swept up and all turned to a level grey. She had climbed to the top of a rise by now, sinking deep and noiseless into the soft sand. It was too dark to see what was below; all was shadow, black shadow—or was it a blackness more substantial than shadow?

The cloud passed from off the moon's face, the light shone out once more, turning the sand to silver. All the great empty space, where the dying wind still throbbed, was white silver, except down in the hollow where, black and still, lay the man who had followed the line of least resistance.



CHAPTER XXIII

PAYMENT AND RECEIPT

On the day of Captain Polkington's funeral, a letter was brought to White's Cottage. Julia herself took it in, and when she saw that it was from Holland she asked the postman to wait a minute as she would be glad if he would post a letter for her. He sat down, nothing loth; the cottage was the last place on his round and he never minded a rest there. He waited while Julia went up-stairs with her letter. She opened it before she got to her room and barely read the contents; there was enclosed a cheque for thirty pounds, the price of "The Good Comrade."

It had come, then, at last, this money for which she had been waiting two years—but too late. The man in whose name she would have paid the debt lay dead. She had planned to clear him without his knowledge, reinstate him in the good opinion of his debtor without letting her hand be seen; and she could not, for he was dead, and there was no hand but hers, and no name to clear. It was not a week too late, yet so much, so bitterly much. Too late for her cherished plan, too late for any of the things she had hoped, too late for triumph, or joy, or satisfaction; too late to demonstrate the once hoped for equality; too late for the fulfilling of anything but a dogged purpose. For a moment she looked at the cheque, feeling the irony which had sent her the means of paying his debt now that her father lay in his coffin, indifferent to his good name and his honour; unable, alike, to clear or be cleared, to wrong or be wronged; removed by kindly death from the scope of earthly judgment, even the just thoughts of one who had suffered on his account.

She put down the cheque and pencilled some hasty words—"In payment of Captain Polkington's debt (to Mr. Rawson-Clew) discharged by Hubert Farquhar Rawson-Clew on the—November 19—"

So she wrote, then she put the slip with the cheque in an envelope and addressed it to the London club where the explosive had been sent.

"It will be posted before the funeral," she thought; "I'm glad—it will all end together—poor father!"

She went down-stairs and gave the letter to the postman. Mrs. Polkington came into the kitchen as she was doing so, for Mrs. Polkington was at the cottage now.

There are some women who seem designed by nature for widows, just as there are others designed for grandmothers and yet others for old maids. Mrs. Polkington was of the first sort; she seemed specially created to adorn the position of widow-hood; she certainly did adorn it; she was a pattern to all widows and did not miss a single point of the situation. Of course she came to the cottage as soon as possible after receiving news of her husband's death. The journey was long and expensive, the weather somewhat bad; that weighed for nothing with her; she was there as soon as might be, feeling, saying and doing just what a bereaved widow ought. The fact that she and her husband had been obliged through the force of circumstances, to live separate the past year did not alter her emotions, her real tears or her real grief. Considering the practice and experience she had had it would have been surprising if she had not succeeded in deceiving herself as well as most of her world in these things. So acute were her feelings that when she came into the kitchen and saw Julia dispatching the letter, she felt quite a shock.

"What is it?" she asked; "What is the matter?"

"Only a letter that could not wait," Julia answered.

"Surely it could have waited till to-morrow," her mother said; "under the circumstances surely one would be excused."

Julia thought differently but did not say so, and in silence set about some necessary preparation.

The Reverend Richard Frazer came to the funeral; Violet was unable to do so; he represented her and supported his mother-in-law too. The banker, Mr. Ponsonby, also made the tedious journey to Halgrave; he came out of respect for death in the abstract, and also because he expected affairs would want looking to, and it would suit him better to do it now than later. These two with Johnny, Julia and her mother, were the only mourners at the funeral; a few village folk, moved by curiosity, attended, but no one else; there was not even an empty carriage, representative of a good family, following the humble cortege. Mrs. Polkington observed this and felt it; an empty carriage and good livery following would have given her satisfaction, without in any way diminishing her sorrow and proper feeling. It is conceivable she would have found satisfaction in being shipwrecked in aristocratic company, without at the same time, suffering less than she ought to suffer.

After the funeral they returned to the cottage and had a repast of Julia's providing, eminently suitable to the occasion. Everything was eminently suitable, every one's behaviour, every one's clothes; Mr. Frazer's grave face, the banker's jerky manner—the manner of a man concerned with the world's money market and ill at ease in the intrusive presence of death. Mrs. Polkington's voice, face, feelings, sayings, everything. Julia's own behaviour was perfect, though all the time she saw how it looked as plainly as if she had been another and disinterested person, and once or twice she had an hysterical desire to applaud a good stroke of her mother's or prompt a backward speech of her uncle's. Mr. Gillat, of course, did nothing suitable; he never did. He kept up a preternaturally cheerful appearance during the meal, stopping his mouth with large corks of bread, answering "Ah, yes, yes, just so," indiscriminately whenever he was spoken to, and starting three separate conversations on the weather on his own account. As soon as the table was cleared, he fled into the back kitchen, shut himself in with the dishes, and was seen no more. The others remained in the sitting-room and talked things over, arranging plans for the future and for the immediate present. And when the time came and the conveyance was brought to the gate, they set out on the homeward journey together. Johnny did not come out of the kitchen to say good-bye; only Julia came to the gate.

Mr. Ponsonby was going back home; Mr. Frazer and Mrs. Polkington were going with him to spend the night in town and go on westwards the next morning. Mr. Frazer was anxious to get back to his parish, and Mrs. Polkington to her daughter, who was expecting her first baby shortly. It was this expected event which prevented the young rector from asking Julia to stay with him and Violet until such time as she and her mother could settle somewhere together. It was this same event which prevented Mrs. Polkington from remaining at White's Cottage and sharing Julia's solitude until their plans were settled. All this was explained to Julia in the best Polkington manner and she seemed quite satisfied with the explanation. Mr. Ponsonby had to be perforce; there seemed no alternative; all the same he was not quite pleased. It was all sensible enough, of course, only as he saw Julia standing at the gate in the November afternoon, he did not quite like it.

"Look here," he said shortly, "you shut up this place here, send Mr. Gillat to his friends, or his rooms, or wherever he came from, and come to me. You can come and make your home with me, and welcome, till things are settled; there's plenty of room."

This was a good deal for Mr. Ponsonby to say, considering what an annoyance the Polkington family had been to him, how—not without wisdom—he had set his face against letting them into his house for more than twenty-four hours at a stretch, and how much this particular member had thwarted and exasperated him at their last meeting. Julia recognised this and recognised also the kindness of the brusque suggestion. She thanked him warmly for the offer though she refused it, assuring him that she and Johnny would be all right at the cottage.

"We do not find it lonely," she said; "we are quite happy here, happier than anywhere else, I think."

The banker grunted, not convinced; Mr. Frazer shook hands with Julia and said he hoped it would not be long before he saw her; Mrs. Polkington reiterated the remark, kissing her the while; then they drove away and Julia went into the house. She went into the back kitchen; Mr. Gillat was not there; the dishes were all put away and the place was quite tidy. Julia went through to the front kitchen; there she saw Johnny; he was kneeling by the Captain's old chair, his arms thrown across the seat, his silly pink face buried in them, his rounded shoulders shaking with sobs.

Johnny loved as a dog loves, without reason, without thought of return; not for wisdom, worth or deserts, just because he did love and, having once loved, loved always; forgiving everything, expecting nothing—foolish, faithful, true. So he loved his friend, so he mourned him now, be-blubbering the seat of the shabby chair which spoke so eloquently to him of the irritable, exacting presence now gone for ever.

"Johnny," Julia said softly; "Johnny dear."

She put a hand on the round shoulders and somehow slipped herself into the shabby chair.

"Johnny," she said, "let us sit by the fire awhile and not talk of anything at all."

So they sat together till twilight fell.

The next day there came another to Julia, one who knew nothing of what had befallen in these last days. It was almost twilight when he came; Johnny had gone out to collect fir-cones; Julia sent him, partly because their stock was low and partly because she thought it would do him good. She did not expect him back much before five o'clock; it would be dark by then certainly, but not very dark for the day was clear, with a touch of frost in the air; one of those days when the last of the sunset burns low down in the sky long after the stars are out. It was not much after four o'clock when Julia heard something approaching, certainly not Johnny nor anything connected with him, for it was the throb of a motor coming fast. Only once before since she had been at the cottage had she heard that sound on the lonely road, on the day when Rawson-Clew came. It could not be him now, she was sure of that. He might have received the money this morning certainly, but he would not come because of that, rather he would keep away; there was no reason why he should come. She told herself it was impossible, and then went to the door to see, puzzled in her own mind what she should say if the impossible had happened and it was he.

The throbbing had ceased by now; there was the click of the gate even as she opened the door, and he—it was he and no other—was coming up the little brick path in the twilight. His face was curiously clear in the light which lingered low down; and when she saw it and the look it wore, all plans of what she should say fled, and the feeling came upon her which was like that which came when she crouched behind the chopping-block and he barred the way. It seemed as if he had been pursuing and she escaping and eluding for a long time, but now—he was coming up the path and she was standing in the doorway with the pale light strong on her face and nowhere to fly to and no way of escape.

"Why did you not tell me before?" he said without any greeting at all, and he spoke as if he had right and authority. "Why did you let this thing weigh on you for two years and never say a word of it to me?"

"I was ashamed," she answered with truth. Then the spirit which still inhabits some women, making them willing to be won by capture, prompted her to struggle against the capitulation she was ready to make. "There was nothing to speak of to you or any one else," she said, with an effort at her old assurance, and she led the way in as she spoke. "I never meant to speak of it at all, I meant just to pay the debt as from father, and not myself appear in it. I did not do it that way, I know; I could not; I did not get the money till yesterday and—and"—the assurance faded away pathetically—"that was too late."

Rawson-Clew looked down, and for the first time noticed her mourning dress, and realising what it meant, remembered that convention demanded that a man, whose claim depends on another's death, should not push it as soon as the funeral is over. However he did not go away, the pathos of Julia's voice kept him.

"Late or early would have made little difference," he said; "it is just the same now as if it had been early. Do you think I should not have known who sent the money at whatever time and in whatever circumstances it was paid? Do you think I know two people who would pay a debt, which can hardly be said to exist, in such a way?"

But Julia was not comforted. "It is too late," she re-repeated; "too late for any satisfaction. I thought I would prove that we were honest and honourable by paying it; I wanted to show father—that I—that our standard was the same as yours, and I have not."

"No," he answered, "you have not and you never will; your standard is not the same as mine; mine is the honour of an accepted convention, and yours is the honour of a personal truth, a personal experience, the honour of the soul."

But she shook her head. "It is not really," she said; "and father—"

"As to your father," he interrupted gently, "do you not think that sometimes the potter's thumb slips in the making of a vessel?"

She looked up with a feeling of gratitude. "Yes," she said; "yes, that is it, if only we could realise it—poor father. It was partly our fault, too, mother's, all of ours—and he is dead now."

"I know. Let him rest in peace; we are concerned no more with his doings or misdoings; our concern, yours and mine is with the living."

She did not answer; a piece of wood had fallen from the fire and lay blazing and spluttering on the hearth; she stooped to pick it up and he watched her.

"I know I have no business here now," he said. "Had I known of his death before, I would not have come to-day; I would have waited, but since I have come—Julia—"

She was standing straight now, the wood safely back in the fire; he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to him. "Julia, you and I have always dealt openly, without regarding appearances, let us deal so now—since I have come. Won't you let me give you a receipt?"

* * * * *

Julia said afterwards that receipts for the payment of such debts were unnecessary and never given; which was perhaps as well, for the one she received in the dusk was not of a kind recognised at law. Could it afterwards have been produced it would not have proved the payment of money, though at the time it proved several things, principally the fact that, though friendship and comradeship are fine and excellent things, there are simple primitive passions which leap up through them and transfigure them and forget them, and it is these which make man man, and woman woman, and life worth living, and the world worth winning and losing, too, and bring the kingdom of heaven to earth again.

It also proved how exceedingly firmly a man who is in the habit of wearing a single eyeglass must screw it into his eye, for, as Julia remarked with some surprise, the one which interested her did not fall out.

* * * * *

Mr. Gillat came home with his fir-cones at a quarter to five. And when he came he saw that, to him, most fascinating sight—a motor-car, standing empty and quiet by the gate. He looked at it with keen interest, then he looked round the empty landscape for its owner, and not seeing him, wondered if he was in the house. He put away the cones and came to the conclusion that the owner was not there and the car was an abandoned derelict. For which, perhaps, he may be forgiven, for there was no light at the parlour window and no sound of voices that he could hear from the kitchen; even when he opened the door and walked in he did not in the firelight see any one besides Julia at first.

"Julia," he said, bringing in the astonishing news, "there is a motor-car outside!"

"Yes," Julia answered composedly; "but it is going away soon."

"Not very soon," another voice spoke out of the gloom of the chimney corner, and Johnny jumped as he recognised it.

"Dear me!" he said; "dear me! Mr. Rawson-Clew! How do you do? I am pleased to see you."

The motor did not go away very soon; it stayed quite as long, rather longer, in fact, than Mr. Gillat expected. And when it did go, he did not have the pleasure of seeing it start; he somehow got shut in the kitchen while Julia went out to the gate.

When she came back she shut the door carefully, then turned to him, and he noticed how her eyes were shining. "Johnny," she said, "I am a selfish beast; I am going to leave you. Not yet, oh, not yet, but one day."

Johnny stared a moment, then said, "Of course, oh, of course, to be sure—to live with your mother, she'll want you. A wonderful woman."

"Not to live with my mother," Julia said emphatically. "Sit down and I will tell you all about it."

And she told, slowly and suitably, fearing that he would hardly understand the wonderful goodness of fate to her. But she need not have been afraid; he took her meaning at once, far quicker than she expected, for he saw no wonder in it, only a very great goodness for the man who had won her, and a great and radiant happiness for himself in the happiness that had come to her. As for his loneliness, he never thought of that, why should he? Of course she would leave him, it was the right and proper thing to do; she would leave him anyhow.

"You couldn't go on living with me here," he said; "I mean, I couldn't go on living with you; it wouldn't be the thing, you know; you must think of that."

Julia caught her breath between tears and laughter, but he went on stoutly: "I shall go back to town, to Mrs. Horn; I shall like it—at least when I get used to it. It is quite time I went back to town; a man ought not to stay too long in the country; he gets rusty."

"You won't go back to town," Julia said; "you will never do that. You will stay here in the cottage, and Mrs. Gray from next door to the shop will come and live here as your housekeeper; I am going to arrange it with her. She will come and she will bring her little grand-daughter and you will keep on living here always."

For a moment Johnny's face beamed; the prospect was exquisite; but he sternly put it from him. "No," he said, "I shouldn't like that; it's kind of you, but—"

"Johnny," Julia interrupted, "you should always speak the truth—you do anything else so badly! I don't mind if you like my plan or not, you will have to put up with it to help me; some one must take care of the cottage."

"But you will want to come yourself," Mr. Gillat protested.

"Never, unless you are here."

In the end Julia had her way. Johnny lived at the cottage, and Mrs. Gray and her grandchild came to keep house. And Billy, Mrs. Gray's nephew, came to help in the garden and take care of the donkey; in the spring there was a donkey added to the establishment, and a little tub-cart which held four children easily, besides Mr. Gillat. And it is doubtful if, in all the country round, there was a happier man than he who tended Julia's plants in Julia's garden, and drove parties of chattering children along the quiet lanes, and sat on warm summer evenings beside his old friend's grave in Halgrave churchyard. He had forgotten many things, old slights and old pains, and old losses; forgotten, perhaps, most things except love. Foolish Johnny, God's fool, basking in God's sunshine.

And Julia and Rawson-Clew were married, very quietly, without any pomp or ostentation at all. And if, on the honeymoon, he did not show her all the places he had thought of on the day when he travelled north with the girl with the carnations, it was because he had not several years at his disposal just then. Afterwards he made up for it as work allowed and time could be found. In the record of their lives there are many days noted down as holidays, even such holidays as that first one spent on the Dunes. In the springtime, when the bulb flowers were in bloom, they went once more to the Dunes and to the little old town where the Van Heigens lived. They were received with much ceremony by Mijnheer and his wife, and entertained at a dinner which lasted from four till half-past six. It is true that afterwards state had to be lain aside, for Julia insisted on helping to wash the priceless Nankeen china while her husband smoked long cigars with Mijnheer on the veranda, but that was all her own fault. Denah came to tea drinking, she and her lately-wed husband, the bashful son of a well-to-do shipowner. She was very smiling and all bustling and greatly pleased with herself and all things, and if she thought poorly of Julia for washing the plates, she thought very well of the glittering rings she had left on the veranda-table and well, too, of her husband, who she recognised as the mysterious "man of good family" they had seen on the day they drove to the wood. And afterwards when the tea drinking was done and the dew was falling, Julia walked with Joost among his flowers, and heard him speak of his hopes and ambitions, and knew that in his work he had found all the satisfaction that a man may reasonably hope for here.

Later, Julia and her husband walked through the tidy streets of the town, looking in at lighted windows, listening to the patois of the peasants and recalling past times. It was then that he told her how he had that day tried to buy back the streaked daffodil.

"And Mijnheer would not sell it?" she asked.

"No," he answered; "not at any price, so I am afraid that you will have to do without 'The Good Comrade' after all."

"I?" she said; "I can do quite well. Thank you for trying to get it; all the same I am not sure I want it back."

"Do you not? Then I am quite sure that I do not, indeed, I rather fancy I already have the real 'Good Comrade.'"

THE END