Shelton accepted gladly, feeling that the intonation in the parson's voice was necessary unto his calling, and that he did not want to patronise.

"You 're hungry, I expect, after your tramp. I'm very much afraid there 's—er—nothing in the house but bread; I could boil you water; hot lemonade is better than nothing."

Conducting them into the kitchen, he made a fire, and put a kettle on to boil; then, after leaving them to shed their soaking clothes, returned with ancient, greenish coats, some carpet slippers, and some blankets. Wrapped in these, and carrying their glasses, the travellers followed to the study, where, by doubtful lamp-light, he seemed, from books upon the table, to have been working at his sermon.

"We 're giving you a lot of trouble," said Shelton, "it's really very good of you."

"Not at all," the parson answered; "I'm only grieved the house is empty."

It was a truly dismal contrast to the fatness of the land they had been passing through, and the parson's voice issuing from bloodless lips, although complacent, was pathetic. It was peculiar, that voice of his, seeming to indicate an intimate acquaintanceship with what was fat and fine, to convey contempt for the vulgar need of money, while all the time his eyes—those watery, ascetic eyes—as plain as speech they said, "Oh, to know what it must be like to have a pound or two to spare just once a year, or so!"

Everything in the room had been bought for cheapness; no luxuries were there, and necessaries not enough. It was bleak and bare; the ceiling cracked, the wall-paper discoloured, and those books—prim, shining books, fat-backed, with arms stamped on them—glared in the surrounding barrenness.

"My predecessor," said the parson, "played rather havoc with the house. The poor fellow had a dreadful struggle, I was told. You can, unfortunately, expect nothing else these days, when livings have come down so terribly in value! He was a married man—large family!"

Crocker, who had drunk his steaming lemonade, was smiling and already nodding in his chair; with his black garment buttoned closely round his throat, his long legs rolled up in a blanket, and stretched towards the feeble flame of the newly-lighted fire, he had a rather patchy air. Shelton, on the other hand, had lost his feeling of fatigue; the strangeness of the place was stimulating his brain; he kept stealing glances at the scantiness around; the room, the parson, the furniture, the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by seeing legs that have outgrown their trousers. But there was something underlying that leanness of the landscape, something superior and academic, which defied all sympathy. It was pure nervousness which made him say:

"Ah! why do they have such families?"

A faint red mounted to the parson's cheeks; its appearance there was startling, and Crocker chuckled, as a sleepy man will chuckle who feels bound to show that he is not asleep.

"It's very unfortunate," murmured the parson, "certainly, in many cases."

Shelton would now have changed the subject, but at this moment the unhappy Crocker snored. Being a man of action, he had gone to sleep.

"It seems to me," said Shelton hurriedly, as he saw the parson's eyebrows rising at the sound, "almost what you might call wrong."

"Dear me, but how can it be wrong?"

Shelton now felt that he must justify his saying somehow.

"I don't know," he said, "only one hears of such a lot of cases—clergymen's families; I've two uncles of my own, who—"

A new expression gathered on the parson's face; his mouth had tightened, and his chin receded slightly. "Why, he 's like a mule!" thought Shelton. His eyes, too, had grown harder, greyer, and more parroty. Shelton no longer liked his face.

"Perhaps you and I," the parson said, "would not understand each other on such matters."

And Shelton felt ashamed.

"I should like to ask you a question in turn, however," the parson said, as if desirous of meeting Shelton on his low ground: "How do you justify marriage if it is not to follow the laws of nature?"

"I can only tell you what I personally feel."

"My dear sir, you forget that a woman's chief delight is in her motherhood."

"I should have thought it a pleasure likely to pall with too much repetition. Motherhood is motherhood, whether of one or of a dozen."

"I 'm afraid," replied the parson, with impatience, though still keeping on his guest's low ground, "your theories are not calculated to populate the world."

"Have you ever lived in London?" Shelton asked. "It always makes me feel a doubt whether we have any right to have children at all."

"Surely," said the parson with wonderful restraint, and the joints of his fingers cracked with the grip he had upon his chair, "you are leaving out duty towards the country; national growth is paramount!"

"There are two ways of looking at that. It depends on what you want your country to become."

"I did n't know," said the parson—fanaticism now had crept into his smile—"there could be any doubt on such a subject."

The more Shelton felt that commands were being given him, the more controversial he naturally became—apart from the merits of this subject, to which he had hardly ever given thought.

"I dare say I'm wrong," he said, fastening his eyes on the blanket in which his legs were wrapped; "but it seems to me at least an open question whether it's better for the country to be so well populated as to be quite incapable of supporting itself."

"Surely," said the parson, whose face regained its pallor, "you're not a Little Englander?"

On Shelton this phrase had a mysterious effect. Resisting an impulse to discover what he really was, he answered hastily:

"Of course I'm not!"

The parson followed up his triumph, and, shifting the ground of the discussion from Shelton's to his own, he gravely said:

"Surely you must see that your theory is founded in immorality. It is, if I may say so, extravagant, even wicked."

But Shelton, suffering from irritation at his own dishonesty, replied with heat:

"Why not say at once, sir, 'hysterical, unhealthy'? Any opinion which goes contrary to that of the majority is always called so, I believe."

"Well," returned the parson, whose eyes seemed trying to bind Shelton to his will, "I must say your ideas do seem to me both extravagant and unhealthy. The propagation of children is enjoined of marriage."

Shelton bowed above his blanket, but the parson did not smile.

"We live in very dangerous times," he said, "and it grieves me when a man of your standing panders to these notions."

"Those," said Shelton, "whom the shoe does n't pinch make this rule of morality, and thrust it on to such as the shoe does pinch."

"The rule was never made," said the parson; "it was given us."

"Oh!" said Shelton, "I beg your pardon." He was in danger of forgetting the delicate position he was in. "He wants to ram his notions down my throat," he thought; and it seemed to him that the parson's face had grown more like a mule's, his accent more superior, his eyes more dictatorial: To be right in this argument seemed now of great importance, whereas, in truth, it was of no importance whatsoever. That which, however, was important was the fact that in nothing could they ever have agreed.

But Crocker had suddenly ceased to snore; his head had fallen so that a peculiar whistling arose instead. Both Shelton and the parson looked at him, and the sight sobered them.

"Your friend seems very tired," said the parson.

Shelton forgot all his annoyance, for his host seemed suddenly pathetic, with those baggy garments, hollow cheeks, and the slightly reddened nose that comes from not imbibing quite enough. A kind fellow, after all!

The kind fellow rose, and, putting his hands behind his back, placed himself before the blackening fire. Whole centuries of authority stood behind him. It was an accident that the mantelpiece was chipped and rusty, the fire-irons bent and worn, his linen frayed about the cuffs.

"I don't wish to dictate," said he, "but where it seems to me that you are wholly wrong in that your ideas foster in women those lax views of the family life that are so prevalent in Society nowadays."

Thoughts of Antonia with her candid eyes, the touch of freckling on her pink-white skin, the fair hair gathered back, sprang up in Shelton, and that word—"lax" seemed ridiculous. And the women he was wont to see dragging about the streets of London with two or three small children, Women bent beneath the weight of babies that they could not leave, women going to work with babies still unborn, anaemic-looking women, impecunious mothers in his own class, with twelve or fourteen children, all the victims of the sanctity of marriage, and again the word "lax" seemed to be ridiculous.

"We are not put into the world to exercise our wits,"—muttered Shelton.

"Our wanton wills," the parson said severely.

"That, sir, may have been all right for the last generation, the country is more crowded now. I can't see why we should n't decide it for ourselves."

"Such a view of morality," said the parson, looking down at Crocker with a ghostly smile, "to me is unintelligible."

Cracker's whistling grew in tone and in variety.

"What I hate," said Shelton, "is the way we men decide what women are to bear, and then call them immoral, decadent, or what you will, if they don't fall in with our views."

"Mr. Shelton," said the parson, "I think we may safely leave it in the hands of God."

Shelton was silent.

"The questions of morality," said the parson promptly, "have always lain through God in the hands of men, not women. We are the reasonable sex."

Shelton stubbornly replied

"We 're certainly the greater humbugs, if that 's the same."

"This is too bad," exclaimed the parson with some heat.

"I 'm sorry, sir; but how can you expect women nowadays to have the same views as our grandmothers? We men, by our commercial enterprise, have brought about a different state of things; yet, for the sake of our own comfort, we try to keep women where they were. It's always those men who are most keen about their comfort"—and in his heat the sarcasm of using the word "comfort" in that room was lost on him—"who are so ready to accuse women of deserting the old morality."

The parson quivered with impatient irony.

"Old morality! new morality!" he said. "These are strange words."

"Forgive me," explained Shelton; "we 're talking of working morality, I imagine. There's not a man in a million fit to talk of true morality."

The eyes of his host contracted.

"I think," he said—and his voice sounded as if he had pinched it in the endeavour to impress his listener—"that any well-educated man who honestly tries to serve his God has the right humbly—I say humbly—to claim morality."

Shelton was on the point of saying something bitter, but checked himself. "Here am I," thought he, "trying to get the last word, like an old woman."

At this moment there was heard a piteous mewing; the parson went towards the door.

"Excuse me a moment; I 'm afraid that's one of my cats out in the wet." He returned a minute later with a wet cat in his arms. "They will get out," he said to Shelton, with a smile on his thin face, suffused by stooping. And absently he stroked the dripping cat, while a drop of wet ran off his nose. "Poor pussy, poor pussy!" The sound of that "Poor pussy!" like nothing human in its cracked superiority, the softness of that smile, like the smile of gentleness itself, haunted Shelton till he fell asleep.



CHAPTER XVIII

ACADEMIC

The last sunlight was playing on the roofs when the travellers entered that High Street grave and holy to all Oxford men. The spirit hovering above the spires was as different from its concretions in their caps and gowns as ever the spirit of Christ was from church dogmas.

"Shall we go into Grinnings'?" asked Shelton, as they passed the club.

But each looked at his clothes, for two elegant young men in flannel suits were coming out.

"You go," said Crocker, with a smirk.

Shelton shook his head. Never before had he felt such love for this old city. It was gone now from out his life, but everything about it seemed so good and fine; even its exclusive air was not ignoble. Clothed in the calm of history, the golden web of glorious tradition, radiant with the alchemy of memories, it bewitched him like the perfume of a woman's dress. At the entrance of a college they glanced in at the cool grey patch of stone beyond, and the scarlet of a window flowerbox—secluded, mysteriously calm—a narrow vision of the sacred past. Pale and trencher-capped, a youth with pimply face and random nose, grabbing at his cloven gown, was gazing at the noticeboard. The college porter—large man, fresh-faced, and small-mouthed—stood at his lodge door in a frank and deferential attitude. An image of routine, he looked like one engaged to give a decorous air to multitudes of pecadilloes. His blue eyes rested on the travellers. "I don't know you, sirs, but if you want to speak I shall be glad to hear the observations you may have to make," they seemed to say.

Against the wall reposed a bicycle with tennis-racquet buckled to its handle. A bull-dog bitch, working her snout from side to side, was snuffling horribly; the great iron-studded door to which her chain was fastened stayed immovable. Through this narrow mouth, human metal had been poured for centuries—poured, moulded, given back.

"Come along," said Shelton.

They now entered the Bishop's Head, and had their dinner in the room where Shelton had given his Derby dinner to four-and-twenty well-bred youths; here was the picture of the racehorse that the wineglass, thrown by one of them, had missed when it hit the waiter; and there, serving Crocker with anchovy sauce, was the very waiter. When they had finished, Shelton felt the old desire to rise with difficulty from the table; the old longing to patrol the streets with arm hooked in some other arm; the old eagerness to dare and do something heroic—and unlawful; the old sense that he was of the forest set, in the forest college, of the forest country in the finest world. The streets, all grave and mellow in the sunset, seemed to applaud this after-dinner stroll; the entrance quad of his old college—spaciously majestic, monastically modern, for years the heart of his universe, the focus of what had gone before it in his life, casting the shadow of its grey walls over all that had come after-brought him a sense of rest from conflict, and trust in his own important safety. The garden-gate, whose lofty spikes he had so often crowned with empty water-bottles, failed to rouse him. Nor when they passed the staircase where he had flung a leg of lamb at some indelicate disturbing tutor, did he feel remorse. High on that staircase were the rooms in which he had crammed for his degree, upon the system by which the scholar simmers on the fire of cramming, boils over at the moment of examination, and is extinct for ever after. His coach's face recurred to him, a man with thrusting eyes, who reeled off knowledge all the week, and disappeared to town on Sundays.

They passed their tutor's staircase.

"I wonder if little Turl would remember us?" said Crocker; "I should like to see him. Shall we go and look him up?"

"Little Turl?" said Shelton dreamily.

Mounting, they knocked upon a solid door.

"Come in," said the voice of Sleep itself.

A little man with a pink face and large red ears was sitting in a fat pink chair, as if he had been grown there.

"What do you want?" he asked of them, blinking.

"Don't you know me, sir?"

"God bless me! Crocker, isn't it? I didn't recognise you with a beard."

Crocker, who had not been shaved since starting on his travels, chuckled feebly.

"You remember Shelton, sir?" he said.

"Shelton? Oh yes! How do you do, Shelton? Sit down; take a cigar"; and, crossing his fat little legs, the little gentleman looked them up and down with drowsy interest, as who should say, "Now, after, all you know, why come and wake me up like this?"

Shelton and Crocker took two other chairs; they too seemed thinking, "Yes, why did we come and wake him up like this?" And Shelton, who could not tell the reason why, took refuge in the smoke of his cigar. The panelled walls were hung with prints of celebrated Greek remains; the soft, thick carpet on the floor was grateful to his tired feet; the backs of many books gleamed richly in the light of the oil lamps; the culture and tobacco smoke stole on his senses; he but vaguely comprehended Crocker's amiable talk, vaguely the answers of his little host, whose face, blinking behind the bowl of his huge meerschaum pipe, had such a queer resemblance to a moon. The door was opened, and a tall creature, whose eyes were large and brown, whose face was rosy and ironical, entered with a manly stride.

"Oh!" he said, looking round him with his chin a little in the air, "am I intruding, Turl?"

The little host, blinking more than ever, murmured,

"Not at all, Berryman—take a pew!"

The visitor called Berryman sat down, and gazed up at the wall with his fine eyes.

Shelton had a faint remembrance of this don, and bowed; but the newcomer sat smiling, and did not notice the salute.

"Trimmer and Washer are coming round," he said, and as he spoke the door opened to admit these gentlemen. Of the same height, but different appearance, their manner was faintly jocular, faintly supercilious, as if they tolerated everything. The one whose name was Trimmer had patches of red on his large cheek-bones, and on his cheeks a bluish tint. His lips were rather full, so that he had a likeness to a spider. Washer, who was thin and pale, wore an intellectual smile.

The little fat host moved the hand that held the meerschaum.

"Crocker, Shelton," he said.

An awkward silence followed. Shelton tried to rouse the cultured portion of his wits; but the sense that nothing would be treated seriously paralysed his faculties; he stayed silent, staring at the glowing tip of his cigar. It seemed to him unfair to have intruded on these gentlemen without its having been made quite clear to them beforehand who and what he was; he rose to take his leave, but Washer had begun to speak.

"Madame Bovary!" he said quizzically, reading the title of the book on the little fat man's bookrest; and, holding it closer to his boiled-looking eyes, he repeated, as though it were a joke, "Madame Bovary!"

"Do you mean to say, Turl, that you can stand that stuff?" said Berryman.

As might have been expected, this celebrated novel's name had galvanised him into life; he strolled over to the bookcase, took down a book, opened it, and began to read, wandering in a desultory way about the room.

"Ha! Berryman," said a conciliatory voice behind—it came from Trimmer, who had set his back against the hearth, and grasped with either hand a fistful of his gown—"the book's a classic!"

"Classic!" exclaimed Berryman, transfixing Shelton with his eyes; "the fellow ought to have been horsewhipped for writing such putridity!"

A feeling of hostility instantly sprang up in Shelton; he looked at his little host, who, however, merely blinked.

"Berryman only means," explains Washer, a certain malice in his smile, "that the author is n't one of his particular pets."

"For God's sake, you know, don't get Berryman on his horse!" growled the little fat man suddenly.

Berryman returned his volume to the shelf and took another down. There was something almost godlike in his sarcastic absent-mindedness.

"Imagine a man writing that stuff," he said, "if he'd ever been at Eton! What do we want to know about that sort of thing? A writer should be a sportsman and a gentleman"; and again he looked down over his chin at Shelton, as though expecting him to controvert the sentiment.

"Don't you—" began the latter.

But Berryman's attention had wandered to the wall.

"I really don't care," said he, "to know what a woman feels when she is going to the dogs; it does n't interest me."

The voice of Trimmer made things pleasant:

"Question of moral standards, that, and nothing more."

He had stretched his legs like compasses,—and the way he grasped his gown-wings seemed to turn him to a pair of scales. His lowering smile embraced the room, deprecating strong expressions. "After all," he seemed to say, "we are men of the world; we know there 's not very much in anything. This is the modern spirit; why not give it a look in?"

"Do I understand you to say, Berryman, that you don't enjoy a spicy book?" asked Washer with his smile; and at this question the little fat man sniggered, blinking tempestuously, as if to say, "Nothing pleasanter, don't you know, before a hot fire in cold weather."

Berryman paid no attention to the impertinent inquiry, continuing to dip into his volume and walk up and down.

"I've nothing to say," he remarked, stopping before Shelton, and looking down, as if at last aware of him, "to those who talk of being justified through Art. I call a spade a spade."

Shelton did not answer, because he could not tell whether Berryman was addressing him or society at large. And Berryman went on:

"Do we want to know about the feelings of a middle-class woman with a taste for vice? Tell me the point of it. No man who was in the habit of taking baths would choose such a subject."

"You come to the question of-ah-subjects," the voice of Trimmer genially buzzed he had gathered his garments tight across his back—"my dear fellow, Art, properly applied, justifies all subjects."

"For Art," squeaked Berryman, putting back his second volume and taking down a third, "you have Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Ossian; for garbage, a number of unwashed gentlemen."

There was a laugh; Shelton glanced round at all in turn. With the exception of Crocker, who was half asleep and smiling idiotically, they wore, one and all, a look as if by no chance could they consider any subject fit to move their hearts; as if, one and all, they were so profoundly anchored on the sea of life that waves could only seem impertinent. It may have been some glimmer in this glance of Shelton's that brought Trimmer once more to the rescue with his compromising air.

"The French," said he, "have quite a different standard from ourselves in literature, just as they have a different standard in regard to honour. All this is purely artificial."

What he, meant, however, Shelton found it difficult to tell.

"Honour," said Washer, "'l'honneur, die Ehre' duelling, unfaithful wives—"

He was clearly going to add to this, but it was lost; for the little fat man, taking the meerschaum with trembling fingers, and holding it within two inches of his chin, murmured:

"You fellows, Berryman's awf'ly strong on honour."

He blinked twice, and put the meerschaum back between his lips.

Without returning the third volume to its shelf, Berryman took down a fourth; with chest expanded, he appeared about to use the books as dumb-bells.

"Quite so," said Trimmer; "the change from duelling to law courts is profoundly—"

Whether he were going to say "significant" or "insignificant," in Shelton's estimate he did not know himself. Fortunately Berryman broke in:

"Law courts or not, when a man runs away with a wife of mine, I shall punch his head!"

"Come, come!" said Turner, spasmodically grasping his two wings.

Shelton had a gleam of inspiration. "If your wife deceived you," he thought, looking at Trimmer's eyes, "you 'd keep it quiet, and hold it over her."

Washer passed his hand over his pale chaps: his smile had never wavered; he looked like one for ever lost in the making of an epigram.

The punching theorist stretched his body, holding the books level with his shoulders, as though to stone his hearers with his point of view. His face grew paler, his fine eyes finer, his lips ironical. Almost painful was this combination of the "strong" man and the student who was bound to go to pieces if you hit him a smart blow.

"As for forgiving faithless wives," he said, "and all that sort of thing, I don't believe in sentiment."

The words were high-pitched and sarcastic. Shelton looked hastily around. All their faces were complacent. He grew red, and suddenly remarked, in a soft; clear voice:

"I see!"

He was conscious that he had never before made an impression of this sort, and that he never would again. The cold hostility flashing out all round was most enlightening; it instantly gave way to the polite, satirical indulgence peculiar to highly-cultivated men. Crocker rose nervously; he seemed scared, and was obviously relieved when Shelton, following his example, grasped the little fat man's hand, who said good-night in a voice shaken by tobacco.

"Who are your unshaven friends?" he heard as the door was closed behind them.



CHAPTER XIX

AN INCIDENT

"Eleven o'clock," said Crocker, as they went out of college. "I don't feel sleepy; shall we stroll along the 'High' a bit?"

Shelton assented; he was too busy thinking of his encounter with the dons to heed the soreness of his feet. This, too, was the last day of his travels, for he had not altered his intention of waiting at Oxford till July.

"We call this place the heart of knowledge," he said, passing a great building that presided, white and silent, over darkness; "it seems to me as little that, as Society is the heart of true gentility."

Crocker's answer was a grunt; he was looking at the stars, calculating possibly in how long he could walk to heaven.

"No," proceeded Shelton; "we've too much common-sense up here to strain our minds. We know when it's time to stop. We pile up news of Papias and all the verbs in 'ui' but as for news of life or of oneself! Real seekers after knowledge are a different sort. They fight in the dark—no quarter given. We don't grow that sort up here."

"How jolly the limes smell!" said Crocker.

He had halted opposite a garden, and taken hold of Shelton by a button of his coat. His eyes, like a dog's, stared wistfully. It seemed as though he wished to speak, but feared to give offence.

"They tell you," pursued Shelton, "that we learn to be gentlemen up here. We learn that better through one incident that stirs our hearts than we learn it here in all the time we're up."

"Hum!" muttered Crocker, twisting at the button; "those fellows who seemed the best sorts up here have turned out the best sorts afterwards."

"I hope not," said Shelton gloomily; "I was a snob when I was up here. I believed all I was told, anything that made things pleasant; my "set" were nothing but—"

Crocker smiled in the darkness; he had been too "cranky" to belong to Shelton's "set."

"You never were much like your 'set,' old chap," he said.

Shelton turned away, sniffing the perfume of the limes. Images were thronging through his mind. The faces of his old friends strangely mixed with those of people he had lately met—the girl in the train, Ferrand, the lady with the short, round, powdered face, the little barber; others, too, and floating, mysterious,—connected with them all, Antonia's face. The scent of the lime-trees drifted at him with its magic sweetness. From the street behind, the footsteps of the passers-by sounded muffled, yet exact, and on the breeze was borne the strain: "For he's a jolly good fellow!"

"For he's a jolly good fellow! For he's a jolly good fe-ellow! And so say all of us!"

"Ah!" he said, "they were good chaps."

"I used to think," said Crocker dreamily, "that some of them had too much side."

And Shelton laughed.

"The thing sickens me," said he, "the whole snobbish, selfish business. The place sickens me, lined with cotton-wool-made so beastly comfortable."

Crocker shook his head.

"It's a splendid old place," he said, his eyes fastening at last on Shelton's boots. "You know, old chap," he stammered, "I think you—you ought to take care!"

"Take care? What of?"

Crocker pressed his arm convulsively.

"Don't be waxy, old boy," he said; "I mean that you seem somehow—to be—to be losing yourself."

"Losing myself! Finding myself, you mean!"

Crocker did not answer; his face was disappointed. Of what exactly was he thinking? In Shelton's heart there was a bitter pleasure in knowing that his friend was uncomfortable on his account, a sort of contempt, a sort of aching. Crocker broke the silence.

"I think I shall do a bit more walking to-night," he said; "I feel very fit. Don't you really mean to come any further with me, Bird?"

And there was anxiety in his voice, as though Shelton were in danger of missing something good. The latter's feet had instantly begun to ache and burn.

"No!"? he said; "you know what I'm staying here for."

Crocker nodded.

"She lives near here. Well, then, I'll say good-bye. I should like to do another ten miles to-night."

"My dear fellow, you're tired and lame."

Crocker chuckled.

"No," he said; "I want to get on. See you in London. Good-bye!" and, gripping Shelton's hand, he turned and limped away.

Shelton called after him: "Don't be an idiot: You 'll only knock yourself up."

But the sole answer was the pale moon of Crocker's face screwed round towards him in the darkness, and the waving of his stick.

Shelton strolled slowly on; leaning over the bridge, he watched the oily gleam of lamps, on the dark water underneath the trees. He felt relieved, yet sorry. His thoughts were random, curious, half mutinous, half sweet. That afternoon five years ago, when he had walked back from the river with Antonia across the Christchurch meadows, was vivid to his mind; the scent of that afternoon had never died away from him-the aroma of his love. Soon she would be his wife—his wife! The faces of the dons sprang up before him. They had wives, perhaps. Fat, lean, satirical, and compromising—what was it that through diversity they had in common? Cultured intolerance! . . . Honour! . . . A queer subject to discuss. Honour! The honour that made a fuss, and claimed its rights! And Shelton smiled. "As if man's honour suffered when he's injured!" And slowly he walked along the echoing, empty street to his room at the Bishop's Head. Next morning he received the following wire:

Thirty miles left eighteen hours heel bad but going strong CROCKER

He passed a fortnight at the Bishop's Head, waiting for the end of his probation, and the end seemed long in coming. To be so near Antonia, and as far as if he lived upon another planet, was worse than ever. Each day he took a sculling skiff, and pulled down to near Holm Oaks, on the chance of her being on the river; but the house was two miles off, and the chance but slender. She never came. After spending the afternoons like this he would return, pulling hard against the stream, with a queer feeling of relief, dine heartily, and fall a-dreaming over his cigar. Each morning he awoke in an excited mood, devoured his letter if he had one, and sat down to write to her. These letters of his were the most amazing portion of that fortnight. They were remarkable for failing to express any single one of his real thoughts, but they were full of sentiments which were not what he was truly feeling; and when he set himself to analyse, he had such moments of delirium that he was scared, and shocked, and quite unable to write anything. He made the discovery that no two human beings ever tell each other what they really feel, except, perhaps, in situations with which he could not connect Antonia's ice-blue eyes and brilliant smile. All the world was too engaged in planning decency.

Absorbed by longings, he but vaguely realised the turmoil of Commemoration, which had gathered its hundreds for their annual cure of salmon mayonnaise and cheap champagne. In preparation for his visit to Holm Oaks he shaved his beard and had some clothes sent down from London. With them was forwarded a letter from Ferrand, which ran as follows:

IMPERIAL PEACOCK HOTEL, FOLKESTONE,

June 20. MY DEAR SIR,

Forgive me for not having written to you before, but I have been so bothered that I have felt no taste for writing; when I have the time, I have some curious stories to tell you. Once again I have encountered that demon of misfortune which dogs my footsteps. Being occupied all day and nearly all night upon business which brings me a heap of worries and next to no profit, I have no chance to look after my things. Thieves have entered my room, stolen everything, and left me an empty box. I am once again almost without clothes, and know not where to turn to make that figure necessary for the fulfilment of my duties. You see, I am not lucky. Since coming to your country, the sole piece of fortune I have had was to tumble on a man like you. Excuse me for not writing more at this moment. Hoping that you are in good health, and in affectionately pressing your hand, I am, Always your devoted LOUIS FERRAND.

Upon reading this letter Shelton had once more a sense of being exploited, of which he was ashamed; he sat down immediately and wrote the following reply:

BISHOPS HEAD HOTEL, OXFORD,

June 25. MY DEAR FERRAND,

I am grieved to hear of your misfortunes. I was much hoping that you had made a better start. I enclose you Post Office Orders for four pounds. Always glad to hear from you.

Yours sincerely, RICHARD SHELTON.

He posted it with the satisfaction that a man feels who nobly shakes off his responsibilities.

Three days before July he met with one of those disturbing incidents which befall no persons who attend quietly to their, property and reputation.

The night was unbearably hot, and he had wandered out with his cigar; a woman came sidling up and spoke to him. He perceived her to be one of those made by men into mediums for their pleasure, to feel sympathy with whom was sentimental. Her face was flushed, her whisper hoarse; she had no attractions but the curves of a tawdry figure. Shelton was repelled by her proprietary tone, by her blowzy face, and by the scent of patchouli. Her touch on his arm startled him, sending a shiver through his marrow; he almost leaped aside, and walked the faster. But her breathing as she followed sounded laboured; it suddenly seemed pitiful that a woman should be panting after him like that.

"The least I can do," he thought, "is to speak to her." He stopped, and, with a mixture of hardness and compassion, said, "It 's impossible."

In spite of her smile, he saw by her disappointed eyes that she accepted the impossibility.

"I 'm sorry," he said.

She muttered something. Shelton shook his head.

"I 'm sorry," he said once more. "Good.-night."

The woman bit her lower lip.

"Good-night," she answered dully.

At the corner of the street he turned his head. The woman was hurrying uneasily; a policeman coming from behind had caught her by the arm.

His heart began to beat. "Heavens!" he thought, "what shall I do now?" His first impulse was to walk away, and think no more about it—to act, indeed, like any averagely decent man who did not care to be concerned in such affairs.

He retraced his steps, however, and halted half a dozen paces from their figures.

"Ask the gentleman! He spoke to me," she was saying in her brassy voice, through the emphasis of which Shelton could detect her fear.

"That's all right," returned the policeman, "we know all about that."

"You—police!" cried the woman tearfully; "I 've got to get my living, have n't I, the same as you?"

Shelton hesitated, then, catching the expression in her frightened face, stepped forward. The policeman turned, and at the sight of his pale, heavy jowl, cut by the cheek-strap, and the bullying eyes, he felt both hate and fear, as if brought face to face with all that he despised and loathed, yet strangely dreaded. The cold certainty of law and order upholding the strong, treading underfoot the weak, the smug front of meanness that only the purest spirits may attack, seemed to be facing him. And the odd thing was, this man was only carrying out his duty. Shelton moistened his lips.

"You're not going to charge her?"

"Aren't I?" returned the policeman.

"Look here; constable, you 're making a mistake."

The policeman took out his note-book.

"Oh, I 'm making a mistake? I 'll take your name and address, please; we have to report these things."

"By all means," said Shelton, angrily giving it. "I spoke to her first."

"Perhaps you'll come up to the court tomorrow morning, and repeat that," replied the policeman, with incivility.

Shelton looked at him with all the force at his command.

"You had better be careful, constable," he said; but in the act of uttering these words he thought how pitiable they sounded.

"We 're not to be trifled with," returned the policeman in a threatening voice.

Shelton could think of nothing but to repeat:

"You had better be careful, constable."

"You're a gentleman," replied the policeman. "I'm only a policeman. You've got the riches, I've got the power."

Grasping the woman's arm, he began to move along with her.

Shelton turned, and walked away.

He went to Grinnings' Club, and flung himself down upon a sofa. His feeling was not one of pity for the woman, nor of peculiar anger with the policeman, but rather of dissatisfaction with himself.

"What ought I to have done?" he thought, "the beggar was within his rights."

He stared at the pictures on the wall, and a tide of disgust surged up in him.

"One or other of us," he reflected, "we make these women what they are. And when we've made them, we can't do without them; we don't want to; but we give them no proper homes, so that they're reduced to prowl about the streets, and then we run them in. Ha! that's good—that's excellent! We run them in! And here we sit and carp. But what do we do? Nothing! Our system is the most highly moral known. We get the benefit without soiling even the hem of our phylacteries—the women are the only ones that suffer. And why should n't they—inferior things?"

He lit a cigarette, and ordered the waiter to bring a drink.

"I'll go to the Court," he thought; but suddenly it occurred to him that the case would get into the local papers. The press would never miss so nice a little bit of scandal—"Gentleman v. Policeman!" And he had a vision of Antonia's father, a neighbouring and conscientious magistrate, solemnly reading this. Someone, at all events, was bound to see his name and make a point of mentioning it too good to be missed! And suddenly he saw with horror that to help the woman he would have to assert again that he had spoken to her first. "I must go to the Court!" he kept thinking, as if to assure himself that he was not a coward.

He lay awake half the night worrying over this dilemma.

"But I did n't speak to her first," he told himself; "I shall only be telling a lie, and they 'll make me swear it, too!"

He tried to persuade himself that this was against his principles, but at the bottom of his heart he knew that he would not object to telling such a lie if only guaranteed immune from consequences; it appeared to him, indeed, but obvious humanity.

"But why should I suffer?" he thought; "I've done nothing. It's neither reasonable nor just."

He hated the unhappy woman who was causing him these horrors of uncertainty. Whenever he decided one way or other, the policeman's face, with its tyrannical and muddy eyes, rose before him like a nightmare, and forced him to an opposite conviction. He fell asleep at last with the full determination to go and see what happened.

He woke with a sense of odd disturbance. "I can do no good by going," he thought, remembering, aid lying very still; "they 're certain to believe the policeman; I shall only blacken myself for nothing;" and the combat began again within him, but with far less fury. It was not what other people thought, not even the risk of perjury that mattered (all this he made quite clear)—it was Antonia. It was not fair to her to put himself in such a false position; in fact, not decent.

He breakfasted. In the room were some Americans, and the face of one young girl reminded him a little of Antonia. Fainter and fainter grew the incident; it seemed to have its right proportions.

Two hours later, looking at the clock, he found that it was lunch-time. He had not gone, had not committed perjury; but he wrote to a daily paper, pointing out the danger run by the community from the power which a belief in their infallibility places in the hands of the police—how, since they are the sworn abettors of right and justice, their word is almost necessarily taken to be gospel; how one and all they hang together, from mingled interest and esprit de corps. Was it not, he said, reasonable to suppose that amongst thousands of human beings invested with such opportunities there would be found bullies who would take advantage of them, and rise to distinction in the service upon the helplessness of the unfortunate and the cowardice of people with anything to lose? Those who had in their hands the sacred duties of selecting a practically irresponsible body of men were bound, for the sake of freedom and humanity, to exercise those duties with the utmost care and thoroughness . . . .

However true, none of this helped him to think any better of himself at heart, and he was haunted by the feeling that a stout and honest bit of perjury was worth more than a letter to a daily paper.

He never saw his letter printed, containing, as it did, the germs of an unpalatable truth.

In the afternoon he hired a horse, and galloped on Port Meadow. The strain of his indecision over, he felt like a man recovering from an illness, and he carefully abstained from looking at the local papers. There was that within him, however, which resented the worsting of his chivalry.



CHAPTER XX

HOLM OAKS

Holm Oaks stood back but little from the road—an old manor-house, not set upon display, but dwelling close to its barns, stables, and walled gardens, like a good mother; long, flat-roofed, red, it had Queen Anne windows, on whose white-framed diamond panes the sunbeams glinted.

In front of it a fringe of elms, of all trees the tree of most established principle, bordered the stretch of turf between the gravel drive and road; and these elms were the homes of rooks of all birds the most conventional. A huge aspen—impressionable creature—shivered and shook beyond, apologising for appearance among such imperturbable surroundings. It was frequented by a cuckoo, who came once a year to hoot at the rules of life, but seldom made long stay; for boys threw stones at it, exasperated by the absence of its morals.

The village which clustered in the dip had not yet lost its dread of motor-cars. About this group of flat-faced cottages with gabled roofs the scent of hay, manure, and roses clung continually; just now the odour of the limes troubled its servile sturdiness. Beyond the dip, again, a square-towered church kept within grey walls the record of the village flock, births, deaths, and marriages—even the births of bastards, even the deaths of suicides—and seemed to stretch a hand invisible above the heads of common folk to grasp the forgers of the manor-house. Decent and discreet, the two roofs caught the eye to the exclusion of all meaner dwellings, seeming to have joined in a conspiracy to keep them out of sight.

The July sun had burned his face all the way from Oxford, yet pale was Shelton when he walked up the drive and rang the bell.

"Mrs. Dennant at home, Dobson?" he asked of the grave butler, who, old servant that he was, still wore coloured trousers (for it was not yet twelve o'clock, and he regarded coloured trousers up to noon as a sacred distinction between the footmen and himself).

"Mrs. Dennant," replied this personage, raising his round and hairless face, while on his mouth appeared that apologetic pout which comes of living with good families—"Mrs. Dennant has gone into the village, sir; but Miss Antonia is in the morning-room."

Shelton crossed the panelled, low-roofed hall, through whose far side the lawn was visible, a vision of serenity. He mounted six wide, shallow steps, and stopped. From behind a closed door there came the sound of scales, and he stood, a prey to his emotions, the notes mingling in his ears with the beating of his heart. He softly turned the handle, a fixed smile on his lips.

Antonia was at the piano; her head was bobbing to the movements of her fingers, and pressing down the pedals were her slim monotonously moving feet. She had been playing tennis, for a racquet and her tam-o'-shanter were flung down, and she was dressed in a blue skirt and creamy blouse, fitting collarless about her throat. Her face was flushed, and wore a little frown; and as her fingers raced along the keys, her neck swayed, and the silk clung and shivered on her arms.

Shelton's eyes fastened on the silent, counting lips, on the fair hair about her forehead, the darker eyebrows slanting down towards the nose, the undimpled cheeks with the faint finger-marks beneath the ice-blue eyes, the softly-pouting and undimpled chin, the whole remote, sweet, suntouched, glacial face.

She turned her head, and, springing up, cried:

"Dick! What fun!" She gave him both her hands, but her smiling face said very plainly, "Oh; don't let us be sentimental!"

"Are n't you glad to see me?" muttered Shelton.

"Glad to see you! You are funny, Dick!—as if you did n't know! Why, you 've shaved your beard! Mother and Sybil have gone into the village to see old Mrs. Hopkins. Shall we go out? Thea and the boys are playing tennis. It's so jolly that you 've come!" She caught up the tam-o'-shanter, and pinned it to her hair. Almost as tall as Shelton, she looked taller, with arms raised and loose sleeves quivering like wings to the movements of her fingers. "We might have a game before lunch; you can have my other racquet."

"I've got no things," said Shelton blankly.

Her calm glance ran over him.

"You can have some of old Bernard's; he's got any amount. I'll wait for you." She swung her racquet, looked at Shelton, cried, "Be quick!" and vanished.

Shelton ran up-stairs, and dressed in the undecided way of men assuming other people's clothes. She was in the hall when he descended, humming a tune and prodding at her shoe; her smile showed all her pearly upper teeth. He caught hold of her sleeve and whispered:

"Antonia!"

The colour rushed into her cheeks; she looked back across her shoulder.

"Come along, old Dick!" she cried; and, flinging open the glass door, ran into the garden.

Shelton followed.

The tennis-ground was divided by tall netting from a paddock. A holm oak tree shaded one corner, and its thick dark foliage gave an unexpected depth to the green smoothness of the scene. As Shelton and Antonia came up, Bernard Dennant stopped and cordially grasped Shelton's hand. From the far side of the net Thea, in a shortish skirt, tossed back her straight fair hair, and, warding off the sun, came strolling up to them. The umpire, a small boy of twelve, was lying on his stomach, squealing and tickling a collie. Shelton bent and pulled his hair.

"Hallo, Toddles! you young ruffian!"

One and all they stood round Shelton, and there was a frank and pitiless inquiry in their eyes, in the angle of their noses something chaffing and distrustful, as though about him were some subtle poignant scent exciting curiosity and disapproval.

When the setts were over, and the girls resting in the double hammock underneath the holm oak, Shelton went with Bernard to the paddock to hunt for the lost balls.

"I say, old chap," said his old school-fellow, smiling dryly, "you're in for a wigging from the Mater."

"A wigging?" murmured Shelton.

"I don't know much about it, but from something she let drop it seems you've been saying some queer things in your letters to Antonia"; and again he looked at Shelton with his dry smile.

"Queer things?" said the latter angrily. "What d' you mean?"

"Oh, don't ask me. The Mater thinks she's in a bad way—unsettled, or what d' you call at. You've been telling her that things are not what they seem. That's bad, you know"; and still smiling he shook his head.

Shelton dropped his eyes.

"Well, they are n't!" he said.

"Oh, that's all right! But don't bring your philosophy down here, old chap."

"Philosophy!" said Shelton, puzzled.

"Leave us a sacred prejudice or two."

"Sacred! Nothing's sacred, except—" But Shelton did not finish his remark. "I don't understand," he said.

"Ideals, that sort of thing! You've been diving down below the line of 'practical politics,' that's about the size of it, my boy"; and, stooping suddenly, he picked up the last ball. "There is the Mater!" Shelton saw Mrs. Dennant coming down the lawn with her second daughter, Sybil.

By the time they reached the holm oak the three girls had departed towards the house, walking arm in arm, and Mrs. Dennant was standing there alone, in a grey dress, talking to an undergardener. Her hands, cased in tan gauntlets, held a basket which warded off the bearded gardener from the severe but ample lines of her useful-looking skirt. The collie, erect upon his haunches, looked at their two faces, pricking his ears in his endeavour to appreciate how one of these two bipeds differed from the other.

"Thank you; that 'll do, Bunyan. Ah, Dick! Charmin' to see you here, at last!"

In his intercourse with Mrs. Dennant, Shelton never failed to mark the typical nature of her personality. It always seemed to him that he had met so many other ladies like her. He felt that her undoubtable quality had a non-individual flavour, as if standing for her class. She thought that standing for herself was not the thing; yet she was full of character. Tall, with nose a trifle beaked, long, sloping chin, and an assured, benevolent mouth, showing, perhaps, too many teeth—though thin, she was not unsubstantial. Her accent in speaking showed her heritage; it was a kind of drawl which disregarded vulgar merits such as tone; leaned on some syllables, and despised the final 'g'—the peculiar accent, in fact, of aristocracy, adding its deliberate joys to life.

Shelton knew that she had many interests; she was never really idle, from the time (7 A.M.) when her maid brought her a little china pot of tea with a single biscuit and her pet dog, Tops, till eleven o'clock at night, when she lighted a wax candle in a silver candlestick, and with this in one hand, and in the other a new novel, or, better still, one of those charming volumes written by great people about the still greater people they have met, she said good-night to her children and her guests. No! What with photography, the presidency of a local league, visiting the rich, superintending all the poor, gardening, reading, keeping all her ideas so tidy that no foreign notions might stray in, she was never idle. The information she collected from these sources was both vast and varied, but she never let it flavour her opinions, which lacked sauce, and were drawn from some sort of dish into which, with all her class, she dipped her fingers.

He liked her. No one could help liking her. She was kind, and of such good quality, with a suggestion about her of thin, excellent, and useful china; and she was scented, too—not with verbena, violets, or those essences which women love, but with nothing, as if she had taken stand against all meretricity. In her intercourse with persons not "quite the thing" (she excepted the vicar from this category, though his father had dealt in haberdashery), her refinement, gently, unobtrusively, and with great practical good sense, seemed continually to murmur, "I am, and you—well, are you, don't you know?" But there was no self-consciousness about this attitude, for she was really not a common woman. She simply could not help it; all her people had done this. Their nurses breathed above them in their cradles something that, inhaled into their systems, ever afterwards prevented them from taking good, clear breaths. And her manner! Ah! her manner—it concealed the inner woman so as to leave doubt of her existence!

Shelton listened to the kindly briskness with which she dwelt upon the under-gardener.

"Poor Bunyan! he lost his wife six months ago, and was quite cheerful just at first, but now he 's really too distressin'. I 've done all I can to rouse him; it's so melancholy to see him mopin'. And, my dear Dick, the way he mangles the new rose-trees! I'm afraid he's goin' mad; I shall have to send him away; poor fellow!"

It was clear that she sympathised with Bunyan, or, rather, believed him entitled to a modicum of wholesome grief, the loss of wives being a canonised and legal, sorrow. But excesses! O dear, no!

"I 've told him I shall raise his wages," she sighed. "He used to be such a splendid gardener! That reminds me, my dear Dick; I want to have a talk with you. Shall we go in to lunch?"

Consulting the memorandum-book in which she had been noting the case of Mrs. Hopkins, she slightly preceded Shelton to the house.

It was somewhat late that afternoon when Shelton had his "wigging"; nor did it seem to him, hypnotised by the momentary absence of Antonia, such a very serious affair.

"Now, Dick," the Honourable Mrs. Dennant said, in her decisive drawl, "I don't think it 's right to put ideas into Antonia's head."

"Ideas!" murmured Shelton in confusion.

"We all know," continued Mrs. Dennant, "that things are not always what they ought to be."

Shelton looked at her; she was seated at her writing-table, addressing in her large, free writing a dinner invitation to a bishop. There was not the faintest trace of awkwardness about her, yet Shelton could not help a certain sense of shock. If she—she—did not think things were what they ought to be—in a bad way things must be indeed!

"Things!" he muttered.

Mrs. Dennant looked at him firmly but kindly with the eyes that would remind him of a hare's.

"She showed me some of your letters, you know. Well, it 's not a bit of use denyin', my dear Dick, that you've been thinkin' too much lately."

Shelton perceived that he had done her an injustice; she handled "things" as she handled under-gardeners—put them away when they showed signs of running to extremes.

"I can't help that, I 'm afraid," he answered.

"My dear boy! you'll never get on that way. Now, I want you to promise me you won't talk to Antonia about those sort of things."

Shelton raised his eyebrows.

"Oh, you know what I mean!"

He saw that to press Mrs. Dennant to say what she meant by "things" would really hurt her sense of form; it would be cruel to force her thus below the surface!

He therefore said, "Quite so!"

To his extreme surprise, flushing the peculiar and pathetic flush of women past their prime, she drawled out:

"About the poor—and criminals—and marriages—there was that wedding, don't you know?"

Shelton bowed his head. Motherhood had been too strong for her; in her maternal flutter she had committed the solecism of touching in so many words on "things."

"Does n't she really see the fun," he thought, "in one man dining out of gold and another dining in the gutter; or in two married people living on together in perfect discord 'pour encourages les autres', or in worshipping Jesus Christ and claiming all her rights at the same time; or in despising foreigners because they are foreigners; or in war; or in anything that is funny?" But he did her a certain amount of justice by recognising that this was natural, since her whole life had been passed in trying not to see the fun in all these things.

But Antonia stood smiling in the doorway. Brilliant and gay she looked, yet resentful, as if she knew they had been talking of her. She sat down by Shelton's side, and began asking him about the youthful foreigner whom he had spoken of; and her eyes made him doubt whether she, too, saw the fun that lay in one human being patronising others.

"But I suppose he's really good," she said, "I mean, all those things he told you about were only—"

"Good!" he answered, fidgeting; "I don't really know what the word means."

Her eyes clouded. "Dick, how can you?" they seemed to say.

Shelton stroked her sleeve.

"Tell us about Mr. Crocker," she said, taking no heed of his caress.

"The lunatic!" he said.

"Lunatic! Why, in your letters he was splendid."

"So he is," said Shelton, half ashamed; "he's not a bit mad, really—that is, I only wish I were half as mad."

"Who's that mad?" queried Mrs. Dennant from behind the urn—"Tom Crocker? Ah, yes! I knew his mother; she was a Springer."

"Did he do it in the week?" said Thea, appearing in the window with a kitten.

"I don't know," Shelton was obliged to answer.

Thea shook back her hair.

"I call it awfully slack of you not to have found out," she said.

Antonia frowned.

"You were very sweet to that young foreigner, Dick," she murmured with a smile at Shelton. "I wish that we could see him."

But Shelton shook his head.

"It seems to me," he muttered, "that I did about as little for him as I could."

Again her face grew thoughtful, as though his words had chilled her.

"I don't see what more you could have done," she answered.

A desire to get close to her, half fear, half ache, a sense of futility and bafflement, an inner burning, made him feel as though a flame were licking at his heart.



CHAPTER XXI

ENGLISH

Just as Shelton was starting to walk back to Oxford he met Mr. Dennant coming from a ride. Antonia's father was a spare man of medium height, with yellowish face, grey moustache, ironical eyebrows, and some tiny crow's-feet. In his old, short grey coat, with a little slit up the middle of the back, his drab cord breeches, ancient mahogany leggings, and carefully blacked boats, he had a dry, threadbare quality not without distinction.

"Ah, Shelton!" he said, in his quietly festive voice; "glad to see the pilgrim here, at last. You're not off already?" and, laying his hand on Shelton's arm, he proposed to walk a little way with him across the fields.

This was the first time they had met since the engagement; and Shelton began to nerve himself to express some sentiment, however bald, about it. He squared his shoulders, cleared his throat, and looked askance at Mr. Dennant. That gentleman was walking stiffly, his cord breeches faintly squeaking. He switched a yellow, jointed cane against his leggings, and after each blow looked at his legs satirically. He himself was rather like that yellow cane-pale, and slim, and jointed, with features arching just a little, like the arching of its handle.

"They say it'll be a bad year for fruit," Shelton said at last.

"My dear fellow, you don't know your farmer, I 'm afraid. We ought to hang some farmers—do a world of good. Dear souls! I've got some perfect strawberries."

"I suppose," said Shelton, glad to postpone the evil moment, "in a climate like this a man must grumble."

"Quite so, quite so! Look at us poor slaves of land-owners; if I couldn't abuse the farmers I should be wretched. Did you ever see anything finer than this pasture? And they want me to lower their rents!"

And Mr. Dennant's glance satirically wavered, rested on Shelton, and whisked back to the ground as though he had seen something that alarmed him. There was a pause.

"Now for it!" thought the younger man.

Mr. Dennant kept his eyes fixed on his boots.

"If they'd said, now," he remarked jocosely, "that the frost had nipped the partridges, there 'd have been some sense in it; but what can you expect? They've no consideration, dear souls!"

Shelton took a breath, and, with averted eyes, he hurriedly began:

"It's awfully hard, sir, to—"

Mr. Dennant switched his cane against his shin.

"Yes," he said, "it 's awfully hard to put up with, but what can a fellow do? One must have farmers. Why, if it was n't for the farmers, there 'd be still a hare or two about the place!"

Shelton laughed spasmodically; again he glanced askance at his future father-in-law. What did the waggling of his head mean, the deepening of his crow's-feet, the odd contraction of the mouth? And his eye caught Mr. Dennant's eye; its expression was queer above the fine, dry nose (one of the sort that reddens in a wind).

"I've never had much to do with farmers," he said at last.

"Have n't you? Lucky fellow! The most—yes, quite the most trying portion of the human species—next to daughters."

"Well, sir, you can hardly expect me—" began Shelton.

"I don't—oh, I don't! D 'you know, I really believe we're in for a ducking."

A large black cloud had covered up the sun, and some drops were spattering on Mr. Dennant's hard felt hat.

Shelton welcomed the shower; it appeared to him an intervention on the part of Providence. He would have to say something, but not now, later.

"I 'll go on," he said; "I don't mind the rain. But you'd better get back, sir."

"Dear me! I've a tenant in this cottage," said Mr. Dennant in his, leisurely, dry manner "and a beggar he is to poach, too. Least we can do 's to ask for a little shelter; what do you think?" and smiling sarcastically, as though deprecating his intention to keep dry, he rapped on the door of a prosperous-looking cottage.

It was opened by a girl of Antonia's age and height.

"Ah, Phoebe! Your father in?"

"No," replied the girl, fluttering; "father's out, Mr. Dennant."

"So sorry! Will you let us bide a bit out of the rain?"

The sweet-looking Phoebe dusted them two chairs, and, curtseying, left them in the parlour.

"What a pretty girl!" said Shelton.

"Yes, she's a pretty girl; half the young fellows are after her, but she won't leave her father. Oh, he 's a charming rascal is that fellow!"

This remark suddenly brought home to Shelton the conviction that he was further than ever from avoiding the necessity for speaking. He walked over to the window. The rain was coming down with fury, though a golden line far down the sky promised the shower's quick end. "For goodness' sake," he thought, "let me say something, however idiotic, and get it over!" But he did not turn; a kind of paralysis had seized on him.

"Tremendous heavy rain!" he said at last; "coming down in waterspouts."

It would have been just as easy to say: "I believe your daughter to be the sweetest thing on earth; I love her, and I 'm going to make her happy!" Just as easy, just about the same amount of breath required; but he couldn't say it! He watched the rain stream and hiss against the leaves and churn the dust on the parched road with its insistent torrent; and he noticed with precision all the details of the process going on outside how the raindrops darted at the leaves like spears, and how the leaves shook themselves free a hundred times a minute, while little runnels of water, ice-clear, rolled over their edges, soft and quick. He noticed, too, the mournful head of a sheltering cow that was chewing at the hedge.

Mr. Dennant had not replied to his remark about the rain. So disconcerting was this silence that Shelton turned. His future father-in-law, upon his wooden chair, was staring at his well-blacked boots, bending forward above his parted knees, and prodding at the carpet; a glimpse at his face disturbed Shelton's resolution. It was not forbidding, stern, discouraging—not in the least; it had merely for the moment ceased to look satirical. This was so startling that Shelton lost his chance of speaking. There seemed a heart to Mr. Dennant's gravity; as though for once he were looking grave because he felt so. But glancing up at Shelton, his dry jocosity reappeared at once.

"What a day for ducks!" he said; and again there was unmistakable alarm about the eye. Was it possible that he, too, dreaded something?

"I can't express—" began Shelton hurriedly.

"Yes, it's beastly to get wet," said Mr. Dennant, and he sang—

"For we can wrestle and fight, my boys, And jump out anywhere."

"You 'll be with us for that dinner-party next week, eh? Capital! There's the Bishop of Blumenthal and old Sir Jack Buckwell; I must get my wife to put you between them—"

"For it's my delight of a starry night—"

"The Bishop's a great anti-divorce man, and old Buckwell 's been in the court at least twice—"

"In the season of the year!"

"Will you please to take some tea, gentlemen?" said the voice of Phoebe in the doorway.

"No, thank you, Phoebe. That girl ought to get married," went on Mr. Dennant, as Phoebe blushingly withdrew. A flush showed queerly on his sallow cheeks. "A shame to keep her tied like this to her father's apron-strings—selfish fellow, that!" He looked up sharply, as if he had made a dangerous remark.

The keeper he was watching us, For him we did n't care!

Shelton suddenly felt certain that Antonia's father was just as anxious to say something expressive of his feelings, and as unable as himself. And this was comforting.

"You know, sir—" he began.

But Mr. Dennant's eyebrows rose, his crow's-feet twinkled; his personality seemed to shrink together.

"By Jove!" he said, "it's stopped! Now's our chance! Come along, my dear fellow; delays are dangerous!" and with his bantering courtesy he held the door for Shelton to pass out. "I think we'll part here," he said—"I almost think so. Good luck to you!"

He held out his dry, yellow hand. Shelton seized it, wrung it hard, and muttered the word:

"Grateful!"

Again Mr. Dennant's eyebrows quivered as if they had been tweaked; he had been found out, and he disliked it. The colour in his face had died away; it was calm, wrinkled, dead-looking under the flattened, narrow brim of his black hat; his grey moustache drooped thinly; the crow's-feet hardened round his eyes; his nostrils were distended by the queerest smile.

"Gratitude!" he said; "almost a vice, is n't it? Good-night!"

Shelton's face quivered; he raised his hat, and, turning as abruptly as his senior, proceeded on his way. He had been playing in a comedy that could only have been played in England. He could afford to smile now at his past discomfort, having no longer the sense of duty unfulfilled. Everything had been said that was right and proper to be said, in the way that we such things should say. No violence had been done; he could afford to smile—smile at himself, at Mr. Dennant, at to-morrow; smile at the sweet aroma of the earth, the shy, unwilling sweetness that only rain brings forth.



CHAPTER XXII

THE COUNTRY HOUSE

The luncheon hour at Holm Oaks, was, as in many well-bred country houses—out of the shooting season, be it understood—the soulful hour. The ferment of the daily doings was then at its full height, and the clamour of its conversation on the weather, and the dogs, the horses, neighbours, cricket, golf, was mingled with a literary murmur; for the Dennants were superior, and it was quite usual to hear remarks like these "Have you read that charmin' thing of Poser's?" or, "Yes, I've got the new edition of old Bablington: delightfully bound—so light." And it was in July that Holm Oaks, as a gathering-place of the elect, was at its best. For in July it had become customary to welcome there many of those poor souls from London who arrived exhausted by the season, and than whom no seamstress in a two-pair back could better have earned a holiday. The Dennants themselves never went to London for the season. It was their good pleasure not to. A week or fortnight of it satisfied them. They had a radical weakness for fresh air, and Antonia, even after her presentation two seasons back, had insisted on returning home, stigmatising London balls as "stuffy things."

When Shelton arrived the stream had only just begun, but every day brought fresh, or rather jaded, people to occupy the old, dark, sweet-smelling bedrooms. Individually, he liked his fellow-guests, but he found himself observing them. He knew that, if a man judged people singly, almost all were better than himself; only when judged in bulk were they worthy of the sweeping criticisms he felt inclined to pass on them. He knew this just as he knew that the conventions, having been invented to prevent man following his natural desires, were merely the disapproving sums of innumerable individual approvals.

It was in the bulk; then, that he found himself observing. But with his amiability and dread of notoriety he remained to all appearance a well-bred, docile creature, and he kept his judgments to himself.

In the matter of intellect he made a rough division of the guests—those who accepted things without a murmur, those who accepted them with carping jocularity; in the matter of morals he found they all accepted things without the semblance of a kick. To show sign of private moral judgment was to have lost your soul, and, worse, to be a bit of an outsider. He gathered this by intuition rather than from conversation; for conversation naturally tabooed such questions, and was carried on in the loud and cheerful tones peculiar to people of good breeding. Shelton had never been able to acquire this tone, and he could not help feeling that the inability made him more or less an object of suspicion. The atmosphere struck him as it never had before, causing him to feel a doubt of his gentility. Could a man suffer from passion, heart-searchings, or misgivings, and remain a gentleman? It seemed improbable. One of his fellow-guests, a man called Edgbaston, small-eyed and semi-bald, with a dark moustache and a distinguished air of meanness, disconcerted him one day by remarking of an unknown person, "A half-bred lookin' chap; did n't seem to know his mind." Shelton was harassed by a horrid doubt.

Everything seemed divided into classes, carefully docketed and valued. For instance, a Briton was of more value than a man, and wives than women. Those things or phases of life with which people had no personal acquaintance were regarded with a faint amusement and a certain disapproval. The principles of the upper class, in fact, were strictly followed.

He was in that hypersenstive and nervous state favourable for recording currents foreign to itself. Things he had never before noticed now had profound effect on him, such as the tone in which men spoke of women—not precisely with hostility, nor exactly with contempt best, perhaps, described as cultured jeering; never, of course, when men spoke of their own wives, mothers, sisters, or immediate friends, but merely when they spoke of any other women. He reflected upon this, and came to the conclusion that, among the upper classes, each man's own property was holy, while other women were created to supply him with gossip, jests, and spice. Another thing that struck him was the way in which the war then going on was made into an affair of class. In their view it was a baddish business, because poor hack Blank and Peter Blank-Blank had lost their lives, and poor Teddy Blank had now one arm instead of two. Humanity in general was omitted, but not the upper classes, nor, incidentally, the country which belonged to them. For there they were, all seated in a row, with eyes fixed on the horizon of their lawns.

Late one evening, billiards and music being over and the ladies gone, Shelton returned from changing to his smoking-suit, and dropped into one of the great arm-chairs that even in summer made a semicircle round the fendered hearth. Fresh from his good-night parting with Antonia, he sat perhaps ten minutes before he began to take in all the figures in their parti-coloured smoking jackets, cross-legged, with glasses in their hands, and cigars between their teeth.

The man in the next chair roused him by putting down his tumbler with a tap, and seating himself upon the cushioned fender. Through the mist of smoke, with shoulders hunched, elbows and knees crooked out, cigar protruding, beak-ways, below his nose, and the crimson collar of his smoking jacket buttoned close as plumage on his breast, he looked a little like a gorgeous bird.

"They do you awfully well," he said.

A voice from the chair on Shelton's right replied,

"They do you better at Verado's."

"The Veau d'Or 's the best place; they give you Turkish baths for nothing!" drawled a fat man with a tiny mouth.

The suavity of this pronouncement enfolded all as with a blessing. And at once, as if by magic, in the old, oak-panelled room, the world fell naturally into its three departments: that where they do you well; that where they do you better; and that where they give you Turkish baths for nothing.

"If you want Turkish baths," said a tall youth with clean red face, who had come into the room, and stood, his mouth a little open, and long feet jutting with sweet helplessness in front of him, "you should go, you know, to Buda Pesth; most awfully rippin' there."

Shelton saw an indescribable appreciation rise on every face, as though they had been offered truffles or something equally delicious.

"Oh no, Poodles," said the man perched on the fender. "A Johnny I know tells me they 're nothing to Sofia." His face was transfigured by the subtle gloating of a man enjoying vice by proxy.

"Ah!" drawled the small-mouthed man, "there 's nothing fit to hold a candle to Baghda-ad."

Once again his utterance enfolded all as with a blessing, and once again the world fell into its three departments: that where they do you well; that where they do you better; and—Baghdad.

Shelton thought to himself: "Why don't I know a place that's better than Baghdad?"

He felt so insignificant. It seemed that he knew none of these delightful spots; that he was of no use to any of his fellow-men; though privately he was convinced that all these speakers were as ignorant as himself, and merely found it warming to recall such things as they had heard, with that peculiar gloating look. Alas! his anecdotes would never earn for him that prize of persons in society, the label of a "good chap" and "sportsman."

"Have you ever been in Baghdad?" he feebly asked.

The fat man did not answer; he had begun an anecdote, and in his broad expanse of face his tiny mouth writhed like a caterpillar. The anecdote was humorous.

With the exception of Antonia, Shelton saw but little of the ladies, for, following the well-known custom of the country house, men and women avoided each other as much as might be. They met at meals, and occasionally joined in tennis and in croquet; otherwise it seemed—almost Orientally—agreed that they were better kept apart.

Chancing one day to enter the withdrawing room, while searching for Antonia, he found that he had lighted on a feminine discussion; he would have beaten a retreat, of course, but it seemed too obvious that he was merely looking for his fiancee, so, sitting down, he listened.

The Honourable Charlotte Penguin, still knitting a silk tie—the sixth since that she had been knitting at Hyeres—sat on the low window-seat close to a hydrangea, the petals of whose round flowers almost kissed her sanguine cheek. Her eyes were fixed with languid aspiration on the lady who was speaking. This was a square woman of medium height, with grey hair brushed from her low forehead, the expression of whose face was brisk and rather cross. She was standing with a book, as if delivering a sermon. Had she been a man she might have been described as a bright young man of business; for, though grey, she never could be old, nor ever lose the power of forming quick decisions. Her features and her eyes were prompt and slightly hard, tinged with faith fanatical in the justice of her judgments, and she had that fussy simpleness of dress which indicates the right to meddle. Not red, not white, neither yellow nor quite blue, her complexion was suffused with a certain mixture of these colours, adapted to the climate; and her smile had a strange sour sweetness, like nothing but the flavour of an apple on the turn.

"I don't care what they tell you," she was saying—not offensively, though her voice seemed to imply that she had no time to waste in pleasing—"in all my dealings with them I've found it best to treat them quite like children."

A lady, behind the Times, smiled; her mouth—indeed, her whole hard, handsome face—was reminiscent of dappled rocking-horses found in the Soho Bazaar. She crossed her feet, and some rich and silk stuff rustled. Her whole personality seemed to creak as, without looking, she answered in harsh tones:

"I find the poor are most delightful persons."

Sybil Dennant, seated on the sofa, with a feathery laugh shot a barking terrier dog at Shelton.

"Here's Dick," she said. "Well, Dick, what's your opinion?"

Shelton looked around him, scared. The elder ladies who had spoken had fixed their eyes on him, and in their gaze he read his utter insignificance.

"Oh, that young man!" they seemed to say. "Expect a practical remark from him? Now, come!"

"Opinion," he stammered, "of the poor? I haven't any."

The person on her feet, whose name was Mrs. Mattock, directing her peculiar sweet-sour smile at the distinguished lady with the Times, said:

"Perhaps you 've not had experience of them in London, Lady Bonington?"

Lady Bonington, in answer, rustled.

"Oh, do tell us about the slums, Mrs. Mattock!" cried Sybil.

"Slumming must be splendid! It's so deadly here—nothing but flannel petticoats."

"The poor, my dear," began Mrs. Mattock, "are not the least bit what you think them—"

"Oh, d' you know, I think they're rather nice!" broke in Aunt Charlotte close to the hydrangea.

"You think so?" said Mrs. Mattock sharply. "I find they do nothing but grumble."

"They don't grumble at me: they are delightful persons", and Lady Bonington gave Shelton a grim smile.

He could not help thinking that to grumble in the presence of that rich, despotic personality would require a superhuman courage.

"They're the most ungrateful people in the world," said Mrs. Mattock.

"Why, then," thought Shelton, "do you go amongst them?"

She continued, "One must do them good, one, must do one's duty, but as to getting thanks—"

Lady Bonington sardonically said,

"Poor things! they have a lot to bear."

"The little children!" murmured Aunt Charlotte, with a flushing cheek and shining eyes; "it 's rather pathetic."

"Children indeed!" said Mrs. Mattock. "It puts me out of all patience to see the way that they neglect them. People are so sentimental about the poor."

Lady Bonington creaked again. Her splendid shoulders were wedged into her chair; her fine dark hair, gleaming with silver, sprang back upon her brow; a ruby bracelet glowed on the powerful wrist that held the journal; she rocked her copper-slippered foot. She did not appear to be too sentimental.

"I know they often have a very easy time," said Mrs. Mattock, as if some one had injured her severely. And Shelton saw, not without pity, that Fate had scored her kind and squashed-up face with wrinkles, whose tiny furrows were eloquent of good intentions frustrated by the unpractical and discontented poor. "Do what you will, they are never satisfied; they only resent one's help, or else they take the help and never thank you for it!"

"Oh!" murmured Aunt Charlotte, "that's rather hard."

Shelton had been growing, more uneasy. He said abruptly:

"I should do the same if I were they."

Mrs. Mattock's brown eyes flew at him; Lady Bonington spoke to the Times; her ruby bracelet and a bangle jingled.

"We ought to put ourselves in their places."

Shelton could not help a smile; Lady Bonington in the places of the poor!

"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Mattock, "I put myself entirely in their place. I quite understand their feelings. But ingratitude is a repulsive quality."

"They seem unable to put themselves in your place," murmured Shelton; and in a fit of courage he took the room in with a sweeping glance.

Yes, that room was wonderfully consistent, with its air of perfect second-handedness, as if each picture, and each piece of furniture, each book, each lady present, had been made from patterns. They were all widely different, yet all (like works of art seen in some exhibitions) had the look of being after the designs of some original spirit. The whole room was chaste, restrained, derived, practical, and comfortable; neither in virtue nor in work, neither in manner, speech, appearance, nor in theory, could it give itself away.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE STAINED-GLASS MAN

Still looking for Antonia, Shelton went up to the morning-room. Thea Dennant and another girl were seated in the window, talking. From the look they gave him he saw that he had better never have been born; he hastily withdrew. Descending to the hall, he came on Mr. Dennant crossing to his study, with a handful of official-looking papers.

"Ah, Shelton!" said he, "you look a little lost. Is the shrine invisible?"

Shelton grinned, said "Yes," and went on looking. He was not fortunate. In the dining-room sat Mrs. Dennant, making up her list of books.

"Do give me your opinion, Dick," she said. "Everybody 's readin' this thing of Katherine Asterick's; I believe it's simply because she's got a title."

"One must read a book for some reason or other," answered Shelton.

"Well," returned Mrs. Dennant, "I hate doin' things just because other people do them, and I sha'n't get it."

"Good!"

Mrs. Dennant marked the catalogue.

"Here 's Linseed's last, of course; though I must say I don't care for him, but I suppose we ought to have it in the house. And there's Quality's 'The Splendid Diatribes': that 's sure to be good, he's always so refined. But what am I to do about this of Arthur Baal's? They say that he's a charlatan, but everybody reads him, don't you know"; and over the catalogue Shelton caught the gleam of hare-like eyes.

Decision had vanished from her face, with its arched nose and slightly sloping chin, as though some one had suddenly appealed to her to trust her instincts. It was quite pathetic. Still, there was always the book's circulation to form her judgment by.

"I think I 'd better mark it," she said, "don't you? Were you lookin' for Antonia? If you come across Bunyan in the garden, Dick, do say I want to see him; he's gettin' to be a perfect nuisance. I can understand his feelin's, but really he 's carryin' it too far."

Primed with his message to the under-gardener, Shelton went. He took a despairing look into the billiard-room. Antonia was not there. Instead, a tall and fat-cheeked gentleman with a neat moustache, called Mabbey, was practising the spot-stroke. He paused as Shelton entered, and, pouting like a baby, asked in a sleepy voice,

"Play me a hundred up?"

Shelton shook his head, stammered out his sorrow, and was about to go.

The gentleman called Mabbey, plaintively feeling the places where his moustaches joined his pink and glossy cheeks, asked with an air of some surprise,

"What's your general game, then?"

"I really don't know," said Shelton.

The gentleman called Mabbey chalked his cue, and, moving his round, knock-kneed legs in their tight trousers, took up his position for the stroke.

"What price that?" he said, as he regained the perpendicular; and his well-fed eyes followed Shelton with sleepy inquisition. "Curious dark horse, Shelton," they seemed to say.

Shelton hurried out, and was about to run down the lower lawn, when he was accosted by another person walking in the sunshine—a slight-built man in a turned-down collar, with a thin and fair moustache, and a faint bluish tint on one side of his high forehead, caused by a network of thin veins. His face had something of the youthful, optimistic, stained-glass look peculiar to the refined English type. He walked elastically, yet with trim precision, as if he had a pleasant taste in furniture and churches, and held the Spectator in his hand.

"Ah, Shelton!" he said in high-tuned tones, halting his legs in such an easy attitude that it was impossible to interrupt it: "come to take the air?"

Shelton's own brown face, nondescript nose, and his amiable but dogged chin contrasted strangely with the clear-cut features of the stained-glass man.

"I hear from Halidome that you're going to stand for Parliament," the latter said.

Shelton, recalling Halidome's autocratic manner of settling other people's business, smiled.

"Do I look like it?" he asked.

The eyebrows quivered on the stained-glass man. It had never occurred to him, perhaps, that to stand for Parliament a man must look like it; he examined Shelton with some curiosity.

"Ah, well," he said, "now you mention it, perhaps not." His eyes, so carefully ironical, although they differed from the eyes of Mabbey, also seemed to ask of Shelton what sort of a dark horse he was.

"You 're still in the Domestic Office, then?" asked Shelton.

The stained-glass man stooped to sniff a rosebush. "Yes," he said; "it suits me very well. I get lots of time for my art work."

"That must be very interesting," said Shelton, whose glance was roving for Antonia; "I never managed to begin a hobby."

"Never had a hobby!" said the stained-glass man, brushing back his hair (he was walking with no hat); "why, what the deuce d' you do?"

Shelton could not answer; the idea had never troubled him.

"I really don't know," he said, embarrassed; "there's always something going on, as far as I can see."

The stained-glass man placed his hands within his pockets, and his bright glance swept over his companion.

"A fellow must have a hobby to give him an interest in life," he said.

"An interest in life?" repeated Shelton grimly; "life itself is good enough for me."

"Oh!" replied the stained-glass man, as though he disapproved of regarding life itself as interesting.

"That's all very well, but you want something more than that. Why don't you take up woodcarving?"

"Wood-carving?"

"The moment I get fagged with office papers and that sort of thing I take up my wood-carving; good as a game of hockey."

"I have n't the enthusiasm."

The eyebrows of the stained-glass man twitched; he twisted his moustache.

"You 'll find not having a hobby does n't pay," he said; "you 'll get old, then where 'll you be?"

It came as a surprise that he should use the words "it does n't pay," for he had a kind of partially enamelled look, like that modern jewellery which really seems unconscious of its market value.

"You've given up the Bar? Don't you get awfully bored having nothing to do?" pursued the stained-glass man, stopping before an ancient sundial.

Shelton felt a delicacy, as a man naturally would, in explaining that being in love was in itself enough to do. To do nothing is unworthy of a man! But he had never felt as yet the want of any occupation. His silence in no way disconcerted his acquaintance.

"That's a nice old article of virtue," he said, pointing with his chin; and, walking round the sundial, he made its acquaintance from the other side. Its grey profile cast a thin and shortening shadow on the turf; tongues of moss were licking at its sides; the daisies clustered thick around its base; it had acquired a look of growing from the soil. "I should like to get hold of that," the stained-glass man remarked; "I don't know when I 've seen a better specimen," and he walked round it once again.

His eyebrows were still ironically arched, but below them his eyes were almost calculating, and below them, again, his mouth had opened just a little. A person with a keener eye would have said his face looked greedy, and even Shelton was surprised, as though he had read in the Spectator a confession of commercialism.

"You could n't uproot a thing like that," he said; "it would lose all its charm."

His companion turned impatiently, and his countenance looked wonderfully genuine.

"Couldn't I?" he said. "By Jove! I thought so. 1690! The best period." He ran his forger round the sundial's edge. "Splendid line-clean as the day they made it. You don't seem to care much about that sort of thing"; and once again, as though accustomed to the indifference of Vandals, his face regained its mask.

They strolled on towards the kitchen gardens, Shelton still busy searching every patch of shade. He wanted to say "Can't stop," and hurry off; but there was about the stained-glass man a something that, while stinging Shelton's feelings, made the showing of them quite impossible. "Feelings!" that person seemed to say; "all very well, but you want more than that. Why not take up wood-carving? . . . . Feelings! I was born in England, and have been at Cambridge."

"Are you staying long?" he asked Shelton. "I go on to Halidome's to-morrow; suppose I sha'n't see you there? Good, chap, old Halidome! Collection of etchings very fine!"

"No; I 'm staying on," said Shelton.

"Ah!" said the stained-glass man, "charming people, the Dennants!"

Shelton, reddening slowly, turned his head away; he picked a gooseberry, and muttered, "Yes."

"The eldest girl especially; no nonsense about her. I thought she was a particularly nice girl."

Shelton heard this praise of Antonia with an odd sensation; it gave him the reverse of pleasure, as though the words had cast new light upon her. He grunted hastily,

"I suppose you know that we 're engaged?"

"Really!" said the stained-glass man, and again his bright, clear, iron-committal glance swept over Shelton—"really! I didn't know. Congratulate you!"

It was as if he said: "You're a man of taste; I should say she would go well in almost any drawing-room!"

"Thanks," said Shelton; "there she' is. If you'll excuse me, I want to speak to her."



CHAPTER XXIV

PARADISE

Antonia, in a sunny angle of the old brick wall, amid the pinks and poppies and cornflowers, was humming to herself. Shelton saw the stained-glass man pass out of sight, then, unobserved, he watched her smelling at the flowers, caressing her face with each in turn, casting away spoiled blossoms, and all the time humming that soft tune.

In two months, or three, all barriers between himself and this inscrutable young Eve would break; she would be a part of him, and he a part of her; he would know all her thoughts, and she all his; together they would be as one, and all would think of them, and talk of them, as one; and this would come about by standing half an hour together in a church, by the passing of a ring, and the signing of their names.

The sun was burnishing her hair—she wore no hat flushing her cheeks, sweetening and making sensuous her limbs; it had warmed her through and through, so that, like the flowers and bees, the sunlight and the air, she was all motion, light, and colour.

She turned and saw Shelton standing there.

"Oh, Dick!" she said: "Lend me your hand-kerchief to put these flowers in, there 's a good boy!"

Her candid eyes, blue as the flowers in her hands, were clear and cool as ice, but in her smile was all the warm profusion of that corner; the sweetness had soaked into her, and was welling forth again. The sight of those sun-warmed cheeks, and fingers twining round the flower-stalks, her pearly teeth, and hair all fragrant, stole the reason out of Shelton. He stood before her, weak about the knees.

"Found you at last!" he said.

Curving back her neck, she cried out, "Catch!" and with a sweep of both her hands flung the flowers into Shelton's arms.

Under the rain of flowers, all warm and odorous, he dropped down on his knees, and put them one by one together, smelling at the pinks, to hide the violence of his feelings. Antonia went on picking flowers, and every time her hand was full she dropped them on his hat, his shoulder, or his arms, and went on plucking more; she smiled, and on her lips a little devil danced, that seemed to know what he was suffering. And Shelton felt that she did know.

"Are you tired?" she asked; "there are heaps more wanted. These are the bedroom-flowers—fourteen lots. I can't think how people can live without flowers, can you?" and close above his head she buried her face in pinks.

He kept his eyes on the plucked flowers before him on the grass, and forced himself to answer,

"I think I can hold out."

"Poor old Dick!" She had stepped back. The sun lit the clear-cut profile of her cheek, and poured its gold over the bosom of her blouse. "Poor old Dick! Awfully hard luck, is n't it?" Burdened with mignonette, she came so close again that now she touched his shoulder, but Shelton did not look; breathless, with wildly beating heart, he went on sorting out the flowers. The seeds of mignonette rained on his neck, and as she let the blossoms fall, their perfume fanned his face. "You need n't sort them out!" she said.