"Mrs. Failing—" said Agnes, who had not expected such a speedy end to their chat.

"Call me Aunt Emily. My dear?"

"Aunt Emily, what did you think of that story Rickie sent you?"

"It is bad," said Mrs. Failing. "But. But. But." Then she escaped, having told the truth, and yet leaving a pleasurable impression behind her.



XII

The excursion to Salisbury was but a poor business—in fact, Rickie never got there. They were not out of the drive before Mr. Wonham began doing acrobatics. He showed Rickie how very quickly he could turn round in his saddle and sit with his face to Aeneas's tail. "I see," said Rickie coldly, and became almost cross when they arrived in this condition at the gate behind the house, for he had to open it, and was afraid of falling. As usual, he anchored just beyond the fastenings, and then had to turn Dido, who seemed as long as a battleship. To his relief a man came forward, and murmuring, "Worst gate in the parish," pushed it wide and held it respectfully. "Thank you," cried Rickie; "many thanks." But Stephen, who was riding into the world back first, said majestically, "No, no; it doesn't count. You needn't think it does. You make it worse by touching your hat. Four hours and seven minutes! You'll see me again." The man answered nothing.

"Eh, but I'll hurt him," he chanted, as he swung into position. "That was Flea. Eh, but he's forgotten my fists; eh, but I'll hurt him."

"Why?" ventured Rickie. Last night, over cigarettes, he had been bored to death by the story of Flea. The boy had a little reminded him of Gerald—the Gerald of history, not the Gerald of romance. He was more genial, but there was the same brutality, the same peevish insistence on the pound of flesh.

"Hurt him till he learns."

"Learns what?"

"Learns, of course," retorted Stephen. Neither of them was very civil. They did not dislike each other, but they each wanted to be somewhere else—exactly the situation that Mrs. Failing had expected.

"He behaved badly," said Rickie, "because he is poorer than we are, and more ignorant. Less money has been spent on teaching him to behave."

"Well, I'll teach him for nothing."

"Perhaps his fists are stronger than yours!"

"They aren't. I looked."

After this conversation flagged. Rickie glanced back at Cadover, and thought of the insipid day that lay before him. Generally he was attracted by fresh people, and Stephen was almost fresh: they had been to him symbols of the unknown, and all that they did was interesting. But now he cared for the unknown no longer. He knew.

Mr. Wilbraham passed them in his dog-cart, and lifted his hat to his employer's nephew. Stephen he ignored: he could not find him on the map.

"Good morning," said Rickie. "What a lovely morning!"

"I say," called the other, "another child dead!" Mr. Wilbraham, who had seemed inclined to chat, whipped up his horse and left them.

"There goes an out and outer," said Stephen; and then, as if introducing an entirely new subject—"Don't you think Flea Thompson treated me disgracefully?"

"I suppose he did. But I'm scarcely the person to sympathize." The allusion fell flat, and he had to explain it. "I should have done the same myself,—promised to be away two hours, and stopped four."

"Stopped-oh—oh, I understand. You being in love, you mean?"

He smiled and nodded.

"Oh, I've no objection to Flea loving. He says he can't help it. But as long as my fists are stronger, he's got to keep it in line."

"In line?"

"A man like that, when he's got a girl, thinks the rest can go to the devil. He goes cutting his work and breaking his word. Wilbraham ought to sack him. I promise you when I've a girl I'll keep her in line, and if she turns nasty, I'll get another."

Rickie smiled and said no more. But he was sorry that any one should start life with such a creed—all the more sorry because the creed caricatured his own. He too believed that life should be in a line—a line of enormous length, full of countless interests and countless figures, all well beloved. But woman was not to be "kept" to this line. Rather did she advance it continually, like some triumphant general, making each unit still more interesting, still more lovable, than it had been before. He loved Agnes, not only for herself, but because she was lighting up the human world. But he could scarcely explain this to an inexperienced animal, nor did he make the attempt.

For a long time they proceeded in silence. The hill behind Cadover was in harvest, and the horses moved regretfully between the sheaves. Stephen had picked a grass leaf, and was blowing catcalls upon it. He blew very well, and this morning all his soul went into the wail. For he was ill. He was tortured with the feeling that he could not get away and do—do something, instead of being civil to this anaemic prig. Four hours in the rain was better than this: he had not wanted to fidget in the rain. But now the air was like wine, and the stubble was smelling of wet, and over his head white clouds trundled more slowly and more seldom through broadening tracts of blue. There never had been such a morning, and he shut up his eyes and called to it. And whenever he called, Rickie shut up his eyes and winced.

At last the blade broke. "We don't go quick, do we" he remarked, and looked on the weedy track for another.

"I wish you wouldn't let me keep you. If you were alone you would be galloping or something of that sort."

"I was told I must go your pace," he said mournfully. "And you promised Miss Pembroke not to hurry."

"Well, I'll disobey." But he could not rise above a gentle trot, and even that nearly jerked him out of the saddle.

"Sit like this," said Stephen. "Can't you see like this?" Rickie lurched forward, and broke his thumb nail on the horse's neck. It bled a little, and had to be bound up.

"Thank you—awfully kind—no tighter, please—I'm simply spoiling your day."

"I can't think how a man can help riding. You've only to leave it to the horse so!—so!—just as you leave it to water in swimming."

Rickie left it to Dido, who stopped immediately.

"I said LEAVE it." His voice rose irritably. "I didn't say 'die.' Of course she stops if you die. First you sit her as if you're Sandow exercising, and then you sit like a corpse. Can't you tell her you're alive? That's all she wants."

In trying to convey the information, Rickie dropped his whip. Stephen picked it up and rammed it into the belt of his own Norfolk jacket. He was scarcely a fashionable horseman. He was not even graceful. But he rode as a living man, though Rickie was too much bored to notice it. Not a muscle in him was idle, not a muscle working hard. When he returned from the gallop his limbs were still unsatisfied and his manners still irritable. He did not know that he was ill: he knew nothing about himself at all.

"Like a howdah in the Zoo," he grumbled. "Mother Failing will buy elephants." And he proceeded to criticize his benefactress. Rickie, keenly alive to bad taste, tried to stop him, and gained instead a criticism of religion. Stephen overthrew the Mosaic cosmogony. He pointed out the discrepancies in the Gospels. He levelled his wit against the most beautiful spire in the world, now rising against the southern sky. Between whiles he went for a gallop. After a time Rickie stopped listening, and simply went his way. For Dido was a perfect mount, and as indifferent to the motions of Aeneas as if she was strolling in the Elysian fields. He had had a bad night, and the strong air made him sleepy. The wind blew from the Plain. Cadover and its valley had disappeared, and though they had not climbed much and could not see far, there was a sense of infinite space. The fields were enormous, like fields on the Continent, and the brilliant sun showed up their colours well. The green of the turnips, the gold of the harvest, and the brown of the newly turned clods, were each contrasted with morsels of grey down. But the general effect was pale, or rather silvery, for Wiltshire is not a county of heavy tints. Beneath these colours lurked the unconquerable chalk, and wherever the soil was poor it emerged. The grassy track, so gay with scabious and bedstraw, was snow-white at the bottom of its ruts. A dazzling amphitheatre gleamed in the flank of a distant hill, cut for some Olympian audience. And here and there, whatever the surface crop, the earth broke into little embankments, little ditches, little mounds: there had been no lack of drama to solace the gods.

In Cadover, the perilous house, Agnes had already parted from Mrs. Failing. His thoughts returned to her. Was she, the soul of truth, in safety? Was her purity vexed by the lies and selfishness? Would she elude the caprice which had, he vaguely knew, caused suffering before? Ah, the frailty of joy! Ah, the myriads of longings that pass without fruition, and the turf grows over them! Better men, women as noble—they had died up here and their dust had been mingled, but only their dust. These are morbid thoughts, but who dare contradict them? There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarreling on the line, and some of us have Rickie's temperament, or his experiences, and admit it.

So he mused, that anxious little speck, and all the land seemed to comment on his fears and on his love.

Their path lay upward, over a great bald skull, half grass, half stubble. It seemed each moment there would be a splendid view. The view never came, for none of the inclines were sharp enough, and they moved over the skull for many minutes, scarcely shifting a landmark or altering the blue fringe of the distance. The spire of Salisbury did alter, but very slightly, rising and falling like the mercury in a thermometer. At the most it would be half hidden; at the least the tip would show behind the swelling barrier of earth. They passed two elder-trees—a great event. The bare patch, said Stephen, was owing to the gallows. Rickie nodded. He had lost all sense of incident. In this great solitude—more solitary than any Alpine range—he and Agnes were floating alone and for ever, between the shapeless earth and the shapeless clouds. An immense silence seemed to move towards them. A lark stopped singing, and they were glad of it. They were approaching the Throne of God. The silence touched them; the earth and all danger dissolved, but ere they quite vanished Rickie heard himself saying, "Is it exactly what we intended?"

"Yes," said a man's voice; "it's the old plan." They were in another valley. Its sides were thick with trees. Down it ran another stream and another road: it, too, sheltered a string of villages. But all was richer, larger, and more beautiful—the valley of the Avon below Amesbury.

"I've been asleep!" said Rickie, in awestruck tones.

"Never!" said the other facetiously. "Pleasant dreams?"

"Perhaps—I'm really tired of apologizing to you. How long have you been holding me on?"

"All in the day's work." He gave him back the reins.

"Where's that round hill?"

"Gone where the good niggers go. I want a drink."

This is Nature's joke in Wiltshire—her one joke. You toil on windy slopes, and feel very primeval. You are miles from your fellows, and lo! a little valley full of elms and cottages. Before Rickie had waked up to it, they had stopped by a thatched public-house, and Stephen was yelling like a maniac for beer.

There was no occasion to yell. He was not very thirsty, and they were quite ready to serve him. Nor need he have drunk in the saddle, with the air of a warrior who carries important dispatches and has not the time to dismount. A real soldier, bound on a similar errand, rode up to the inn, and Stephen feared that he would yell louder, and was hostile. But they made friends and treated each other, and slanged the proprietor and ragged the pretty girls; while Rickie, as each wave of vulgarity burst over him, sunk his head lower and lower, and wished that the earth would swallow him up. He was only used to Cambridge, and to a very small corner of that. He and his friends there believed in free speech. But they spoke freely about generalities. They were scientific and philosophic. They would have shrunk from the empirical freedom that results from a little beer.

That was what annoyed him as he rode down the new valley with two chattering companions. He was more skilled than they were in the principles of human existence, but he was not so indecently familiar with the examples. A sordid village scandal—such as Stephen described as a huge joke—sprang from certain defects in human nature, with which he was theoretically acquainted. But the example! He blushed at it like a maiden lady, in spite of its having a parallel in a beautiful idyll of Theocritus. Was experience going to be such a splendid thing after all? Were the outside of houses so very beautiful?

"That's spicy!" the soldier was saying. "Got any more like that?"

"I'se got a pome," said Stephen, and drew a piece of paper from his pocket. The valley had broadened. Old Sarum rose before them, ugly and majestic.

"Write this yourself?" he asked, chuckling.

"Rather," said Stephen, lowering his head and kissing Aeneas between the ears.

"But who's old Em'ly?" Rickie winced and frowned.

"Now you're asking.

"Old Em'ly she limps, And as—"

"I am so tired," said Rickie. Why should he stand it any longer?

He would go home to the woman he loved. "Do you mind if I give up Salisbury?"

"But we've seen nothing!" cried Stephen.

"I shouldn't enjoy anything, I am so absurdly tired."

"Left turn, then—all in the day's work." He bit at his moustache angrily.

"Good gracious me, man!—of course I'm going back alone. I'm not going to spoil your day. How could you think it of me?"

Stephen gave a loud sigh of relief. "If you do want to go home, here's your whip. Don't fall off. Say to her you wanted it, or there might be ructions."

"Certainly. Thank you for your kind care of me."

"'Old Em'ly she limps, And as—'"

Soon he was out of earshot. Soon they were lost to view. Soon they were out of his thoughts. He forgot the coarseness and the drinking and the ingratitude. A few months ago he would not have forgotten so quickly, and he might also have detected something else. But a lover is dogmatic. To him the world shall be beautiful and pure. When it is not, he ignores it.

"He's not tired," said Stephen to the soldier; "he wants his girl." And they winked at each other, and cracked jokes over the eternal comedy of love. They asked each other if they'd let a girl spoil a morning's ride. They both exhibited a profound cynicism. Stephen, who was quite without ballast, described the household at Cadover: he should say that Rickie would find Miss Pembroke kissing the footman.

"I say the footman's kissing old Em'ly."

"Jolly day," said Stephen. His voice was suddenly constrained. He was not sure whether he liked the soldier after all, nor whether he had been wise in showing him his compositions.

"'Old Em'ly she limps, And as—'"

"All right, Thomas. That'll do."

"Old Em'ly—'"

"I wish you'd dry up, like a good fellow. This is the lady's horse, you know, hang it, after all."

"In-deed!"

"Don't you see—when a fellow's on a horse, he can't let another fellow—kind of—don't you know?"

The man did know. "There's sense in that." he said approvingly. Peace was restored, and they would have reached Salisbury if they had not had some more beer. It unloosed the soldier's fancies, and again he spoke of old Em'ly, and recited the poem, with Aristophanic variations.

"Jolly day," repeated Stephen, with a straightening of the eyebrows and a quick glance at the other's body. He then warned him against the variations. In consequence he was accused of being a member of the Y.M.C.A. His blood boiled at this. He refuted the charge, and became great friends with the soldier, for the third time.

"Any objection to 'Saucy Mr. and Mrs. Tackleton'?"

"Rather not."

The soldier sang "Saucy Mr. and Mrs. Tackleton." It is really a work for two voices, most of the sauciness disappearing when taken as a solo. Nor is Mrs. Tackleton's name Em'lv.

"I call it a jolly rotten song," said Stephen crossly. "I won't stand being got at."

"P'r'aps y'like therold song. Lishen.

"'Of all the gulls that arsshmart, There's none line pretty—Em'ly; For she's the darling of merart'"

"Now, that's wrong." He rode up close to the singer.

"Shright."

"'Tisn't."

"It's as my mother taught me."

"I don't care."

"I'll not alter from mother's way."

Stephen was baffled. Then he said, "How does your mother make it rhyme?"

"Wot?"

"Squat. You're an ass, and I'm not. Poems want rhymes. 'Alley' comes next line."

He said "alley" was—welcome to come if it liked.

"It can't. You want Sally. Sally—alley. Em'ly-alley doesn't do."

"Emily-femily!" cried the soldier, with an inspiration that was not his when sober. "My mother taught me femily.

"'For she's the darling of merart, And she lives in my femily.'"

"Well, you'd best be careful, Thomas, and your mother too."

"Your mother's no better than she should be," said Thomas vaguely.

"Do you think I haven't heard that before?" retorted the boy. The other concluded he might now say anything. So he might—the name of old Emily excepted. Stephen cared little about his benefactress's honour, but a great deal about his own. He had made Mrs. Failing into a test. For the moment he would die for her, as a knight would die for a glove. He is not to be distinguished from a hero.

Old Sarum was passed. They approached the most beautiful spire in the world. "Lord! another of these large churches!" said the soldier. Unfriendly to Gothic, he lifted both hands to his nose, and declared that old Em'ly was buried there. He lay in the mud. His horse trotted back towards Amesbury, Stephen had twisted him out of the saddle.

"I've done him!" he yelled, though no one was there to hear. He rose up in his stirrups and shouted with joy. He flung his arms round Aeneas's neck. The elderly horse understood, capered, and bolted. It was a centaur that dashed into Salisbury and scattered the people. In the stable he would not dismount. "I've done him!" he yelled to the ostlers—apathetic men. Stretching upwards, he clung to a beam. Aeneas moved on and he was left hanging. Greatly did he incommode them by his exercises. He pulled up, he circled, he kicked the other customers. At last he fell to the earth, deliciously fatigued. His body worried him no longer.

He went, like the baby he was, to buy a white linen hat. There were soldiers about, and he thought it would disguise him. Then he had a little lunch to steady the beer. This day had turned out admirably. All the money that should have fed Rickie he could spend on himself. Instead of toiling over the Cathedral and seeing the stuffed penguins, he could stop the whole thing in the cattle market. There he met and made some friends. He watched the cheap-jacks, and saw how necessary it was to have a confident manner. He spoke confidently himself about lambs, and people listened. He spoke confidently about pigs, and they roared with laughter. He must learn more about pigs. He witnessed a performance—not too namby-pamby—of Punch and Judy. "Hullo, Podge!" cried a naughty little girl. He tried to catch her, and failed. She was one of the Cadford children. For Salisbury on market day, though it is not picturesque, is certainly representative, and you read the names of half the Wiltshire villages upon the carriers' carts. He found, in Penny Farthing Street, the cart from Wintersbridge. It would not start for several hours, but the passengers always used it as a club, and sat in it every now and then during the day. No less than three ladies were these now, staring at the shafts. One of them was Flea Thompson's girl. He asked her, quite politely, why her lover had broken faith with him in the rain. She was silent. He warned her of approaching vengeance. She was still silent, but another woman hoped that a gentleman would not be hard on a poor person. Something in this annoyed him; it wasn't a question of gentility and poverty—it was a question of two men. He determined to go back by Cadbury Rings where the shepherd would now be.

He did. But this part must be treated lightly. He rode up to the culprit with the air of a Saint George, spoke a few stern words from the saddle, tethered his steed to a hurdle, and took off his coat. "Are you ready?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," said Flea, and flung him on his back.

"That's not fair," he protested.

The other did not reply, but flung him on his head.

"How on earth did you learn that?"

"By trying often," said Flea.

Stephen sat on the ground, picking mud out of his forehead. "I meant it to be fists," he said gloomily.

"I know, sir."

"It's jolly smart though, and—and I beg your pardon all round." It cost him a great deal to say this, but he was sure that it was the right thing to say. He must acknowledge the better man. Whereas most people, if they provoke a fight and are flung, say, "You cannot rob me of my moral victory."

There was nothing further to be done. He mounted again, not exactly depressed, but feeling that this delightful world is extraordinarily unreliable. He had never expected to fling the soldier, or to be flung by Flea. "One nips or is nipped," he thought, "and never knows beforehand. I should not be surprised if many people had more in them than I suppose, while others were just the other way round. I haven't seen that sort of thing in Ingersoll, but it's quite important." Then his thoughts turned to a curious incident of long ago, when he had been "nipped"—as a little boy. He was trespassing in those woods, when he met in a narrow glade a flock of sheep. They had neither dog nor shepherd, and advanced towards him silently. He was accustomed to sheep, but had never happened to meet them in a wood before, and disliked it. He retired, slowly at first, then fast; and the flock, in a dense mass, pressed after him. His terror increased. He turned and screamed at their long white faces; and still they came on, all stuck together, like some horrible jell—. If once he got into them! Bellowing and screeching, he rushed into the undergrowth, tore himself all over, and reached home in convulsions. Mr. Failing, his only grown-up friend, was sympathetic, but quite stupid. "Pan ovium custos," he sympathetic, as he pulled out the thorns. "Why not?" "Pan ovium custos." Stephen learnt the meaning of the phrase at school, "A pan of eggs for custard." He still remembered how the other boys looked as he peeped at them between his legs, awaiting the descending cane.

So he returned, full of pleasant disconnected thoughts. He had had a rare good time. He liked every one—even that poor little Elliot—and yet no one mattered. They were all out. On the landing he saw the housemaid. He felt skittish and irresistible. Should he slip his arm round her waist? Perhaps better not; she might box his ears. And he wanted to smoke on the roof before dinner. So he only said, "Please will you stop the boy blacking my brown boots," and she with downcast eyes, answered, "Yes, sir; I will indeed."

His room was in the pediment. Classical architecture, like all things in this world that attempt serenity, is bound to have its lapses into the undignified, and Cadover lapsed hopelessly when it came to Stephen's room. It gave him one round window, to see through which he must lie upon his stomach, one trapdoor opening upon the leads, three iron girders, three beams, six buttresses, no circling, unless you count the walls, no walls unless you count the ceiling and in its embarrassment presented him with the gurgly cistern that supplied the bath water. Here he lived, absolutely happy, and unaware that Mrs. Failing had poked him up here on purpose, to prevent him from growing too bumptious. Here he worked and sang and practised on the ocharoon. Here, in the crannies, he had constructed shelves and cupboards and useless little drawers. He had only one picture—the Demeter of Onidos—and she hung straight from the roof like a joint of meat. Once she was in the drawing-room; but Mrs. Failing had got tired of her, and decreed her removal and this degradation. Now she faced the sunrise; and when the moon rose its light also fell on her, and trembled, like light upon the sea. For she was never still, and if the draught increased she would twist on her string, and would sway and tap upon the rafters until Stephen woke up and said what he thought of her. "Want your nose?" he would murmur. "Don't you wish you may get it" Then he drew the clothes over his ears, while above him, in the wind and the darkness, the goddess continued her motions.

Today, as he entered, he trod on the pile of sixpenny reprints. Leighton had brought them up. He looked at the portraits in their covers, and began to think that these people were not everything. What a fate, to look like Colonel Ingersoll, or to marry Mrs. Julia P. Chunk! The Demeter turned towards him as he bathed, and in the cold water he sang—

"They aren't beautiful, they aren't modest; I'd just as soon follow an old stone goddess,"

and sprang upward through the skylight on to the roof. Years ago, when a nurse was washing him, he had slipped from her soapy hands and got up here. She implored him to remember that he was a little gentleman; but he forgot the fact—if it was a fact—and not even the butler could get him down. Mr. Failing, who was sitting alone in the garden too ill to read, heard a shout, "Am I an acroterium?" He looked up and saw a naked child poised on the summit of Cadover. "Yes," he replied; "but they are unfashionable. Go in," and the vision had remained with him as something peculiarly gracious. He felt that nonsense and beauty have close connections,—closer connections than Art will allow,—and that both would remain when his own heaviness and his own ugliness had perished. Mrs. Failing found in his remains a sentence that puzzled her. "I see the respectable mansion. I see the smug fortress of culture. The doors are shut. The windows are shut. But on the roof the children go dancing for ever."

Stephen was a child no longer. He never stood on the pediment now, except for a bet. He never, or scarcely ever, poured water down the chimneys. When he caught the cat, he seldom dropped her into the housekeeper's bedroom. But still, when the weather was fair, he liked to come up after bathing, and get dry in the sun. Today he brought with him a towel, a pipe of tobacco, and Rickie's story. He must get it done some time, and he was tired of the six-penny reprints. The sloping gable was warm, and he lay back on it with closed eyes, gasping for pleasure. Starlings criticized him, snots fell on his clean body, and over him a little cloud was tinged with the colours of evening. "Good! good!" he whispered. "Good, oh good!" and opened the manuscript reluctantly.

What a production! Who was this girl? Where did she go to? Why so much talk about trees? "I take it he wrote it when feeling bad," he murmured, and let it fall into the gutter. It fell face downwards, and on the back he saw a neat little resume in Miss Pembroke's handwriting, intended for such as him. "Allegory. Man = modern civilization (in bad sense). Girl = getting into touch with Nature."

In touch with Nature! The girl was a tree! He lit his pipe and gazed at the radiant earth. The foreground was hidden, but there was the village with its elms, and the Roman Road, and Cadbury Rings. There, too, were those woods, and little beech copses, crowning a waste of down. Not to mention the air, or the sun, or water. Good, oh good!

In touch with Nature! What cant would the books think of next? His eyes closed. He was sleepy. Good, oh good! Sighing into his pipe, he fell asleep.



XIII

Glad as Agnes was when her lover returned for lunch, she was at the same time rather dismayed: she knew that Mrs. Failing would not like her plans altered. And her dismay was justified. Their hostess was a little stiff, and asked whether Stephen had been obnoxious.

"Indeed he hasn't. He spent the whole time looking after me."

"From which I conclude he was more obnoxious than usual." Rickie praised him diligently. But his candid nature showed everything through. His aunt soon saw that they had not got on. She had expected this—almost planned it. Nevertheless she resented it, and her resentment was to fall on him.

The storm gathered slowly, and many other things went to swell it. Weakly people, if they are not careful, hate one another, and when the weakness is hereditary the temptation increases. Elliots had never got on among themselves. They talked of "The Family," but they always turned outwards to the health and beauty that lie so promiscuously about the world. Rickie's father had turned, for a time at all events, to his mother. Rickie himself was turning to Agnes. And Mrs. Failing now was irritable, and unfair to the nephew who was lame like her horrible brother and like herself. She thought him invertebrate and conventional. She was envious of his happiness. She did not trouble to understand his art. She longed to shatter him, but knowing as she did that the human thunderbolt often rebounds and strikes the wielder, she held her hand.

Agnes watched the approaching clouds. Rickie had warned her; now she began to warn him. As the visit wore away she urged him to be pleasant to his aunt, and so convert it into a success.

He replied, "Why need it be a success?"—a reply in the manner of Ansell.

She laughed. "Oh, that's so like you men—all theory! What about your great theory of hating no one? As soon as it comes in useful you drop it."

"I don't hate Aunt Emily. Honestly. But certainly I don't want to be near her or think about her. Don't you think there are two great things in life that we ought to aim at—truth and kindness? Let's have both if we can, but let's be sure of having one or the other. My aunt gives up both for the sake of being funny."

"And Stephen Wonham," pursued Agnes. "There's another person you hate—or don't think about, if you prefer it put like that."

"The truth is, I'm changing. I'm beginning to see that the world has many people in it who don't matter. I had time for them once. Not now." There was only one gate to the kingdom of heaven now.

Agnes surprised him by saying, "But the Wonham boy is evidently a part of your aunt's life. She laughs at him, but she is fond of him."

"What's that to do with it?"

"You ought to be pleasant to him on account of it."

"Why on earth?"

She flushed a little. "I'm old-fashioned. One ought to consider one's hostess, and fall in with her life. After we leave it's another thing. But while we take her hospitality I think it's our duty."

Her good sense triumphed. Henceforth he tried to fall in with Aunt Emily's life. Aunt Emily watched him trying. The storm broke, as storms sometimes do, on Sunday.

Sunday church was a function at Cadover, though a strange one. The pompous landau rolled up to the house at a quarter to eleven. Then Mrs. Failing said, "Why am I being hurried?" and after an interval descended the steps in her ordinary clothes. She regarded the church as a sort of sitting-room, and refused even to wear a bonnet there. The village was shocked, but at the same time a little proud; it would point out the carriage to strangers and gossip about the pale smiling lady who sat in it, always alone, always late, her hair always draped in an expensive shawl.

This Sunday, though late as usual, she was not alone. Miss Pembroke, en grande toilette, sat by her side. Rickie, looking plain and devout, perched opposite. And Stephen actually came too, murmuring that it would be the Benedicite, which he had never minded. There was also the Litany, which drove him into the air again, much to Mrs. Failing's delight. She enjoyed this sort of thing. It amused her when her Protege left the pew, looking bored, athletic, and dishevelled, and groping most obviously for his pipe. She liked to keep a thoroughbred pagan to shock people. "He's gone to worship Nature," she whispered. Rickie did not look up. "Don't you think he's charming?" He made no reply.

"Charming," whispered Agnes over his head.

During the sermon she analysed her guests. Miss Pembroke—undistinguished, unimaginative, tolerable. Rickie—intolerable. "And how pedantic!" she mused. "He smells of the University library. If he was stupid in the right way he would be a don." She looked round the tiny church; at the whitewashed pillars, the humble pavement, the window full of magenta saints. There was the vicar's wife. And Mrs. Wilbraham's bonnet. Ugh! The rest of the congregation were poor women, with flat, hopeless faces—she saw them Sunday after Sunday, but did not know their names—diversified with a few reluctant plough-boys, and the vile little school children row upon row. "Ugh! what a hole," thought Mrs. Failing, whose Christianity was the type best described as "cathedral." "What a hole for a cultured woman! I don't think it has blunted my sensations, though; I still see its squalor as clearly as ever. And my nephew pretends he is worshipping. Pah! the hypocrite." Above her the vicar spoke of the danger of hurrying from one dissipation to another. She treasured his words, and continued: "I cannot stand smugness. It is the one, the unpardonable sin. Fresh air! The fresh air that has made Stephen Wonham fresh and companionable and strong. Even if it kills, I will let in the fresh air."

Thus reasoned Mrs. Failing, in the facile vein of Ibsenism. She imagined herself to be a cold-eyed Scandinavian heroine. Really she was an English old lady, who did not mind giving other people a chill provided it was not infectious.

Agnes, on the way back, noted that her hostess was a little snappish. But one is so hungry after morning service, and either so hot or so cold, that he would be a saint indeed who becomes a saint at once. Mrs. Failing, after asserting vindictively that it was impossible to make a living out of literature, was courteously left alone. Roast-beef and moselle might yet work miracles, and Agnes still hoped for the introductions—the introductions to certain editors and publishers—on which her whole diplomacy was bent. Rickie would not push himself. It was his besetting sin. Well for him that he would have a wife, and a loving wife, who knew the value of enterprise.

Unfortunately lunch was a quarter of an hour late, and during that quarter of an hour the aunt and the nephew quarrelled. She had been inveighing against the morning service, and he quietly and deliberately replied, "If organized religion is anything—and it is something to me—it will not be wrecked by a harmonium and a dull sermon."

Mrs. Failing frowned. "I envy you. It is a great thing to have no sense of beauty."

"I think I have a sense of beauty, which leads me astray if I am not careful."

"But this is a great relief to me. I thought the present day young man was an agnostic! Isn't agnosticism all the thing at Cambridge?"

"Nothing is the 'thing' at Cambridge. If a few men are agnostic there, it is for some grave reason, not because they are irritated with the way the parson says his vowels."

Agnes intervened. "Well, I side with Aunt Emily. I believe in ritual."

"Don't, my dear, side with me. He will only say you have no sense of religion either."

"Excuse me," said Rickie, perhaps he too was a little hungry,—"I never suggested such a thing. I never would suggest such a thing. Why cannot you understand my position? I almost feel it is that you won't."

"I try to understand your position night and day dear—what you mean, what you like, why you came to Cadover, and why you stop here when my presence is so obviously unpleasing to you."

"Luncheon is served," said Leighton, but he said it too late. They discussed the beef and the moselle in silence. The air was heavy and ominous. Even the Wonham boy was affected by it, shivered at times, choked once, and hastened anew into the sun. He could not understand clever people.

Agnes, in a brief anxious interview, advised the culprit to take a solitary walk. She would stop near Aunt Emily, and pave the way for an apology.

"Don't worry too much. It doesn't really matter."

"I suppose not, dear. But it seems a pity, considering we are so near the end of our visit."

"Rudeness and Grossness matter, and I've shown both, and already I'm sorry, and I hope she'll let me apologize. But from the selfish point of view it doesn't matter a straw. She's no more to us than the Wonham boy or the boot boy."

"Which way will you walk?"

"I think to that entrenchment. Look at it." They were sitting on the steps. He stretched out his hand to Cadsbury Rings, and then let it rest for a moment on her shoulder. "You're changing me," he said gently. "God bless you for it."

He enjoyed his walk. Cadford was a charming village and for a time he hung over the bridge by the mill. So clear was the stream that it seemed not water at all, but some invisible quintessence in which the happy minnows and the weeds were vibrating. And he paused again at the Roman crossing, and thought for a moment of the unknown child. The line curved suddenly: certainly it was dangerous. Then he lifted his eyes to the down. The entrenchment showed like the rim of a saucer, and over its narrow line peeped the summit of the central tree. It looked interesting. He hurried forward, with the wind behind him.

The Rings were curious rather than impressive. Neither embankment was over twelve feet high, and the grass on them had not the exquisite green of Old Sarum, but was grey and wiry. But Nature (if she arranges anything) had arranged that from them, at all events, there should be a view. The whole system of the country lay spread before Rickie, and he gained an idea of it that he never got in his elaborate ride. He saw how all the water converges at Salisbury; how Salisbury lies in a shallow basin, just at the change of the soil. He saw to the north the Plain, and the stream of the Cad flowing down from it, with a tributary that broke out suddenly, as the chalk streams do: one village had clustered round the source and clothed itself with trees. He saw Old Sarum, and hints of the Avon valley, and the land above Stone Henge. And behind him he saw the great wood beginning unobtrusively, as if the down too needed shaving; and into it the road to London slipped, covering the bushes with white dust. Chalk made the dust white, chalk made the water clear, chalk made the clean rolling outlines of the land, and favoured the grass and the distant coronals of trees. Here is the heart of our island: the Chilterns, the North Downs, the South Downs radiate hence. The fibres of England unite in Wiltshire, and did we condescend to worship her, here we should erect our national shrine.

People at that time were trying to think imperially, Rickie wondered how they did it, for he could not imagine a place larger than England. And other people talked of Italy, the spiritual fatherland of us all. Perhaps Italy would prove marvellous. But at present he conceived it as something exotic, to be admired and reverenced, but not to be loved like these unostentatious fields. He drew out a book, it was natural for him to read when he was happy, and to read out loud,—and for a little time his voice disturbed the silence of that glorious afternoon. The book was Shelley, and it opened at a passage that he had cherished greatly two years before, and marked as "very good."

"I never was attached to that great sect Whose doctrine is that each one should select Out of the world a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion,—though it is the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world,—and so With one sad friend, perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go."

It was "very good"—fine poetry, and, in a sense, true. Yet he was surprised that he had ever selected it so vehemently. This afternoon it seemed a little inhuman. Half a mile off two lovers were keeping company where all the villagers could see them. They cared for no one else; they felt only the pressure of each other, and so progressed, silent and oblivious, across the land. He felt them to be nearer the truth than Shelley. Even if they suffered or quarrelled, they would have been nearer the truth. He wondered whether they were Henry Adams and Jessica Thompson, both of this parish, whose banns had been asked for the second time in the church this morning. Why could he not marry on fifteen shillings a-week? And be looked at them with respect, and wished that he was not a cumbersome gentleman.

Presently he saw something less pleasant—his aunt's pony carriage. It had crossed the railway, and was advancing up the Roman road along by the straw sacks. His impulse was to retreat, but someone waved to him. It was Agnes. She waved continually, as much as to say, "Wait for us." Mrs. Failing herself raised the whip in a nonchalant way. Stephen Wonham was following on foot, some way behind. He put the Shelley back into his pocket and waited for them. When the carriage stopped by some hurdles he went down from the embankment and helped them to dismount. He felt rather nervous.

His aunt gave him one of her disquieting smiles, but said pleasantly enough, "Aren't the Rings a little immense? Agnes and I came here because we wanted an antidote to the morning service."

"Pang!" said the church bell suddenly; "pang! pang!" It sounded petty and ludicrous. They all laughed. Rickie blushed, and Agnes, with a glance that said "apologize," darted away to the entrenchment, as though unable to restrain her curiosity.

"The pony won't move," said Mrs. Failing. "Leave him for Stephen to tie up. Will you walk me to the tree in the middle? Booh! I'm tired. Give me your arm—unless you're tired as well."

"No. I came out partly in the hope of helping you."

"How sweet of you." She contrasted his blatant unselfishness with the hardness of Stephen. Stephen never came out to help you. But if you got hold of him he was some good. He didn't wobble and bend at the critical moment. Her fancy compared Rickie to the cracked church bell sending forth its message of "Pang! pang!" to the countryside, and Stephen to the young pagans who were said to lie under this field guarding their pagan gold.

"This place is full of ghosties," she remarked; "have you seen any yet?"

"I've kept on the outer rim so far."

"Let's go to the tree in the centre."

"Here's the path." The bank of grass where he had sat was broken by a gap, through which chariots had entered, and farm carts entered now. The track, following the ancient track, led straight through turnips to a similar gap in the second circle, and thence continued, through more turnips, to the central tree.

"Pang!" said the bell, as they paused at the entrance.

"You needn't unharness," shouted Mrs. Failing, for Stephen was approaching the carriage.

"Yes, I will," he retorted.

"You will, will you?" she murmured with a smile. "I wish your brother wasn't quite so uppish. Let's get on. Doesn't that church distract you?"

"It's so faint here," said Rickie. And it sounded fainter inside, though the earthwork was neither thick nor tall; and the view, though not hidden, was greatly diminished. He was reminded for a minute of that chalk pit near Madingley, whose ramparts excluded the familiar world. Agnes was here, as she had once been there. She stood on the farther barrier, waiting to receive them when they had traversed the heart of the camp.

"Admire my mangel-wurzels," said Mrs. Failing. "They are said to grow so splendidly on account of the dead soldiers. Isn't it a sweet thought? Need I say it is your brother's?"

"Wonham's?" he suggested. It was the second time that she had made the little slip. She nodded, and he asked her what kind of ghosties haunted this curious field.

"The D.," was her prompt reply. "He leans against the tree in the middle, especially on Sunday afternoons and all the worshippers rise through the turnips and dance round him."

"Oh, these were decent people," he replied, looking downwards—"soldiers and shepherds. They have no ghosts. They worshipped Mars or Pan-Erda perhaps; not the devil."

"Pang!" went the church, and was silent, for the afternoon service had begun. They entered the second entrenchment, which was in height, breadth, and composition, similar to the first, and excluded still more of the view. His aunt continued friendly. Agnes stood watching them.

"Soldiers may seem decent in the past," she continued, "but wait till they turn into Tommies from Bulford Camp, who rob the chickens."

"I don't mind Bulford Camp," said Rickie, looking, though in vain, for signs of its snowy tents. "The men there are the sons of the men here, and have come back to the old country. War's horrible, yet one loves all continuity. And no one could mind a shepherd."

"Indeed! What about your brother—a shepherd if ever there was? Look how he bores you! Don't be so sentimental."

"But—oh, you mean—"

"Your brother Stephen."

He glanced at her nervously. He had never known her so queer before. Perhaps it was some literary allusion that he had not caught; but her face did not at that moment suggest literature. In the differential tones that one uses to an old and infirm person he said "Stephen Wonham isn't my brother, Aunt Emily."

"My dear, you're that precise. One can't say 'half-brother' every time."

They approached the central tree.

"How you do puzzle me," he said, dropping her arm and beginning to laugh. "How could I have a half-brother?"

She made no answer.

Then a horror leapt straight at him, and he beat it back and said, "I will not be frightened." The tree in the centre revolved, the tree disappeared, and he saw a room—the room where his father had lived in town. "Gently," he told himself, "gently." Still laughing, he said, "I, with a brother-younger it's not possible." The horror leapt again, and he exclaimed, "It's a foul lie!"

"My dear, my dear!"

"It's a foul lie! He wasn't—I won't stand—"

"My dear, before you say several noble things, remember that it's worse for him than for you—worse for your brother, for your half-brother, for your younger brother."

But he heard her no longer. He was gazing at the past, which he had praised so recently, which gaped ever wider, like an unhallowed grave. Turn where he would, it encircled him. It took visible form: it was this double entrenchment of the Rings. His mouth went cold, and he knew that he was going to faint among the dead. He started running, missed the exit, stumbled on the inner barrier, fell into darkness—

"Get his head down," said a voice. "Get the blood back into him. That's all he wants. Leave him to me. Elliot!"—the blood was returning—"Elliot, wake up!"

He woke up. The earth he had dreaded lay close to his eyes, and seemed beautiful. He saw the structure of the clods. A tiny beetle swung on the grass blade. On his own neck a human hand pressed, guiding the blood back to his brain.

There broke from him a cry, not of horror but of acceptance. For one short moment he understood. "Stephen—" he began, and then he heard his own name called: "Rickie! Rickie!" Agnes hurried from her post on the margin, and, as if understanding also, caught him to her breast.

Stephen offered to help them further, but finding that he made things worse, he stepped aside to let them pass and then sauntered inwards. The whole field, with concentric circles, was visible, and the broad leaves of the turnips rustled in the gathering wind. Miss Pembroke and Elliot were moving towards the Cadover entrance. Mrs. Failing stood watching in her turn on the opposite bank. He was not an inquisitive boy; but as he leant against the tree he wondered what it was all about, and whether he would ever know.



XIV

On the way back—at that very level-crossing where he had paused on his upward route—Rickie stopped suddenly and told the girl why he had fainted. Hitherto she had asked him in vain. His tone had gone from him, and he told her harshly and brutally, so that she started away with a horrified cry. Then his manner altered, and he exclaimed: "Will you mind? Are you going to mind?"

"Of course I mind," she whispered. She turned from him, and saw up on the sky-line two figures that seemed to be of enormous size.

"They're watching us. They stand on the edge watching us. This country's so open—you—you can't they watch us wherever we go. Of course you mind."

They heard the rumble of the train, and she pulled herself together. "Come, dearest, we shall be run over next. We're saying things that have no sense." But on the way back he repeated: "They can still see us. They can see every inch of this road. They watch us for ever." And when they arrived at the steps there, sure enough, were still the two figures gazing from the outer circle of the Rings.

She made him go to his room at once: he was almost hysterical. Leighton brought out some tea for her, and she sat drinking it on the little terrace. Of course she minded.

Again she was menaced by the abnormal. All had seemed so fair and so simple, so in accordance with her ideas; and then, like a corpse, this horror rose up to the surface. She saw the two figures descend and pause while one of them harnessed the pony; she saw them drive downward, and knew that before long she must face them and the world. She glanced at her engagement ring.

When the carriage drove up Mrs. Failing dismounted, but did not speak. It was Stephen who inquired after Rickie. She, scarcely knowing the sound of her own voice, replied that he was a little tired.

"Go and put up the pony," said Mrs. Failing rather sharply.

"Agnes, give me some tea."

"It is rather strong," said Agnes as the carriage drove off and left them alone. Then she noticed that Mrs. Failing herself was agitated. Her lips were trembling, and she saw the boy depart with manifest relief.

"Do you know," she said hurriedly, as if talking against time—"Do you know what upset Rickie?"

"I do indeed know."

"Has he told any one else?"

"I believe not."

"Agnes—have I been a fool?"

"You have been very unkind," said the girl, and her eyes filled with tears.

For a moment Mrs. Failing was annoyed. "Unkind? I do not see that at all. I believe in looking facts in the face. Rickie must know his ghosts some time. Why not this afternoon?"

She rose with quiet dignity, but her tears came faster. "That is not so. You told him to hurt him. I cannot think what you did it for. I suppose because he was rude to you after church. It is a mean, cowardly revenge.

"What—what if it's a lie?"

"Then, Mrs. Failing, it is sickening of you. There is no other word. Sickening. I am sorry—a nobody like myself—to speak like this. How COULD you, oh, how could you demean yourself? Why, not even a poor person—Her indignation was fine and genuine. But her tears fell no longer. Nothing menaced her if they were not really brothers.

"It is not a lie, my clear; sit down. I will swear so much solemnly. It is not a lie, but—"

Agnes waited.

"—we can call it a lie if we choose."

"I am not so childish. You have said it, and we must all suffer. You have had your fun: I conclude you did it for fun. You cannot go back. He—" She pointed towards the stables, and could not finish her sentence.

"I have not been a fool twice."

Agnes did not understand.

"My dense lady, can't you follow? I have not told Stephen one single word, neither before nor now."

There was a long silence.

Indeed, Mrs. Failing was in an awkward position.

Rickie had irritated her, and, in her desire to shock him, she had imperilled her own peace. She had felt so unconventional upon the hillside, when she loosed the horror against him; but now it was darting at her as well. Suppose the scandal came out. Stephen, who was absolutely without delicacy, would tell it to the people as soon as tell them the time. His paganism would be too assertive; it might even be in bad taste. After all, she had a prominent position in the neighbourhood; she was talked about, respected, looked up to. After all, she was growing old. And therefore, though she had no true regard for Rickie, nor for Agnes, nor for Stephen, nor for Stephen's parents, in whose tragedy she had assisted, yet she did feel that if the scandal revived it would disturb the harmony of Cadover, and therefore tried to retrace her steps. It is easy to say shocking things: it is so different to be connected with anything shocking. Life and death were not involved, but comfort and discomfort were.

The silence was broken by the sound of feet on the gravel. Agnes said hastily, "Is that really true—that he knows nothing?"

"You, Rickie, and I are the only people alive that know. He realizes what he is—with a precision that is sometimes alarming. Who he is, he doesn't know and doesn't care. I suppose he would know when I'm dead. There are papers."

"Aunt Emily, before he comes, may I say to you I'm sorry I was so rude?"

Mrs. Failing had not disliked her courage. "My dear, you may. We're all off our hinges this Sunday. Sit down by me again."

Agnes obeyed, and they awaited the arrival of Stephen. They were clever enough to understand each other. The thing must be hushed up. The matron must repair the consequences of her petulance. The girl must hide the stain in her future husband's family. Why not? Who was injured? What does a grown-up man want with a grown brother? Rickie upstairs, how grateful he would be to them for saving him.

"Stephen!"

"Yes."

"I'm tired of you. Go and bathe in the sea."

"All right."

And the whole thing was settled. She liked no fuss, and so did he. He sat down on the step to tighten his bootlaces. Then he would be ready. Mrs. Failing laid two or three sovereigns on the step above him. Agnes tried to make conversation, and said, with averted eyes, that the sea was a long way off.

"The sea's downhill. That's all I know about it." He swept up the money with a word of pleasure: he was kept like a baby in such things. Then he started off, but slowly, for he meant to walk till the morning.

"He will be gone days," said Mrs. Failing. "The comedy is finished. Let us come in."

She went to her room. The storm that she had raised had shattered her. Yet, because it was stilled for a moment, she resumed her old emancipated manner, and spoke of it as a comedy.

As for Miss Pembroke, she pretended to be emancipated no longer. People like "Stephen Wonham" were social thunderbolts, to be shunned at all costs, or at almost all costs. Her joy was now unfeigned, and she hurried upstairs to impart it to Rickie.

"I don't think we are rewarded if we do right, but we are punished if we lie. It's the fashion to laugh at poetic justice, but I do believe in half of it. Cast bitter bread upon the waters, and after many days it really will come back to you." These were the words of Mr. Failing. They were also the opinions of Stewart Ansell, another unpractical person. Rickie was trying to write to him when she entered with the good news.

"Dear, we're saved! He doesn't know, and he never is to know. I can't tell you how glad I am. All the time we saw them standing together up there, she wasn't telling him at all. She was keeping him out of the way, in case you let it out. Oh, I like her! She may be unwise, but she is nice, really. She said, 'I've been a fool but I haven't been a fool twice.' You must forgive her, Rickie. I've forgiven her, and she me; for at first I was so angry with her. Oh, my darling boy, I am so glad!"

He was shivering all over, and could not reply. At last he said, "Why hasn't she told him?"

"Because she has come to her senses."

"But she can't behave to people like that. She must tell him."

"Because he must be told such a real thing."

"Such a real thing?" the girl echoed, screwing up her forehead. "But—but you don't mean you're glad about it?"

His head bowed over the letter. "My God—no! But it's a real thing. She must tell him. I nearly told him myself—up there—when he made me look at the ground, but you happened to prevent me."

How Providence had watched over them!

"She won't tell him. I know that much."

"Then, Agnes, darling"—he drew her to the table "we must talk together a little. If she won't, then we ought to."

"WE tell him?" cried the girl, white with horror. "Tell him now, when everything has been comfortably arranged?"

"You see, darling"—he took hold of her hand—"what one must do is to think the thing out and settle what's right, I'm still all trembling and stupid. I see it mixed up with other things. I want you to help me. It seems to me that here and there in life we meet with a person or incident that is symbolical. It's nothing in itself, yet for the moment it stands for some eternal principle. We accept it, at whatever costs, and we have accepted life. But if we are frightened and reject it, the moment, so to speak, passes; the symbol is never offered again. Is this nonsense? Once before a symbol was offered to me—I shall not tell you how; but I did accept it, and cherished it through much anxiety and repulsion, and in the end I am rewarded. There will be no reward this time. I think, from such a man—the son of such a man. But I want to do what is right."

"Because doing right is its own reward," said Agnes anxiously.

"I do not think that. I have seen few examples of it. Doing right is simply doing right."

"I think that all you say is wonderfully clever; but since you ask me, it IS nonsense, dear Rickie, absolutely."

"Thank you," he said humbly, and began to stroke her hand. "But all my disgust; my indignation with my father, my love for—" He broke off; he could not bear to mention the name of his mother. "I was trying to say, I oughtn't to follow these impulses too much. There are others things. Truth. Our duty to acknowledge each man accurately, however vile he is. And apart from ideals" (here she had won the battle), "and leaving ideals aside, I couldn't meet him and keep silent. It isn't in me. I should blurt it out."

"But you won't meet him!" she cried. "It's all been arranged. We've sent him to the sea. Isn't it splendid? He's gone. My own boy won't be fantastic, will he?" Then she fought the fantasy on its own ground. "And, bye the bye, what you call the 'symbolic moment' is over. You had it up by the Rings. You tried to tell him, I interrupted you. It's not your fault. You did all you could."

She thought this excellent logic, and was surprised that he looked so gloomy. "So he's gone to the sea. For the present that does settle it. Has Aunt Emily talked about him yet?"

"No. Ask her tomorrow if you wish to know. Ask her kindly. It would be so dreadful if you did not part friends, and—"

"What's that?"

It was Stephen calling up from the drive. He had come back. Agnes threw out her hand in despair.

"Elliot!" the voice called.

They were facing each other, silent and motionless. Then Rickie advanced to the window. The girl darted in front of him. He thought he had never seen her so beautiful. She was stopping his advance quite frankly, with widespread arms.

"Elliot!"

He moved forward—into what? He pretended to himself he would rather see his brother before he answered; that it was easier to acknowledge him thus. But at the back of his soul he knew that the woman had conquered, and that he was moving forward to acknowledge her. "If he calls me again—" he thought.

"Elliot!"

"Well, if he calls me once again, I will answer him, vile as he is."

He did not call again.

Stephen had really come back for some tobacco, but as he passed under the windows he thought of the poor fellow who had been "nipped" (nothing serious, said Mrs. Failing), and determined to shout good-bye to him. And once or twice, as he followed the river into the darkness, he wondered what it was like to be so weak,—not to ride, not to swim, not to care for anything but books and a girl.

They embraced passionately. The danger had brought them very near to each other. They both needed a home to confront the menacing tumultuous world. And what weary years of work, of waiting, lay between them and that home! Still holding her fast, he said, "I was writing to Ansell when you came in."

"Do you owe him a letter?"

"No." He paused. "I was writing to tell him about this. He would help us. He always picks out the important point."

"Darling, I don't like to say anything, and I know that Mr. Ansell would keep a secret, but haven't we picked out the important point for ourselves?"

He released her and tore the letter up.



XV

The sense of purity is a puzzling and at times a fearful thing. It seems so noble, and it starts as one with morality. But it is a dangerous guide, and can lead us away not only from what is gracious, but also from what is good. Agnes, in this tangle, had followed it blindly, partly because she was a woman, and it meant more to her than it can ever mean to a man; partly because, though dangerous, it is also obvious, and makes no demand upon the intellect. She could not feel that Stephen had full human rights. He was illicit, abnormal, worse than a man diseased. And Rickie remembering whose son he was, gradually adopted her opinion. He, too, came to be glad that his brother had passed from him untried, that the symbolic moment had been rejected. Stephen was the fruit of sin; therefore he was sinful, He, too, became a sexual snob.

And now he must hear the unsavoury details. That evening they sat in the walled garden. Agues, according to arrangement, left him alone with his aunt. He asked her, and was not answered.

"You are shocked," she said in a hard, mocking voice, "It is very nice of you to be shocked, and I do not wish to grieve you further. We will not allude to it again. Let us all go on just as we are. The comedy is finished."

He could not tolerate this. His nerves were shattered, and all that was good in him revolted as well. To the horror of Agnes, who was within earshot, he replied, "You used to puzzle me, Aunt Emily, but I understand you at last. You have forgotten what other people are like. Continual selfishness leads to that. I am sure of it. I see now how you look at the world. 'Nice of me to be shocked!' I want to go tomorrow, if I may."

"Certainly, dear. The morning trains are the best." And so the disastrous visit ended.

As he walked back to the house he met a certain poor woman, whose child Stephen had rescued at the level-crossing, and who had decided, after some delay, that she must thank the kind gentleman in person. "He has got some brute courage," thought Rickie, "and it was decent of him not to boast about it." But he had labelled the boy as "Bad," and it was convenient to revert to his good qualities as seldom as possible. He preferred to brood over his coarseness, his caddish ingratitude, his irreligion. Out of these he constructed a repulsive figure, forgetting how slovenly his own perceptions had been during the past week, how dogmatic and intolerant his attitude to all that was not Love.

During the packing he was obliged to go up to the attic to find the Dryad manuscript which had never been returned. Leighton came too, and for about half an hour they hunted in the flickering light of a candle. It was a strange, ghostly place, and Rickie was quite startled when a picture swung towards him, and he saw the Demeter of Cnidus, shimmering and grey. Leighton suggested the roof. Mr. Stephen sometimes left things on the roof. So they climbed out of the skylight—the night was perfectly still—and continued the search among the gables. Enormous stars hung overhead, and the roof was bounded by chasms, impenetrable and black. "It doesn't matter," said Rickie, suddenly convinced of the futility of all that he did. "Oh, let us look properly," said Leighton, a kindly, pliable man, who had tried to shirk coming, but who was genuinely sympathetic now that he had come. They were rewarded: the manuscript lay in a gutter, charred and smudged.

The rest of the year was spent by Rickie partly in bed,—he had a curious breakdown,—partly in the attempt to get his little stories published. He had written eight or nine, and hoped they would make up a book, and that the book might be called "Pan Pipes." He was very energetic over this; he liked to work, for some imperceptible bloom had passed from the world, and he no longer found such acute pleasure in people. Mrs. Failing's old publishers, to whom the book was submitted, replied that, greatly as they found themselves interested, they did not see their way to making an offer at present. They were very polite, and singled out for special praise "Andante Pastorale," which Rickie had thought too sentimental, but which Agnes had persuaded him to include. The stories were sent to another publisher, who considered them for six weeks, and then returned them. A fragment of red cotton, Placed by Agnes between the leaves, had not shifted its position.

"Can't you try something longer, Rickie?" she said; "I believe we're on the wrong track. Try an out—and—out love-story."

"My notion just now," he replied, "is to leave the passions on the fringe." She nodded, and tapped for the waiter: they had met in a London restaurant. "I can't soar; I can only indicate. That's where the musicians have the pull, for music has wings, and when she says 'Tristan' and he says 'Isolde,' you are on the heights at once. What do people mean when they call love music artificial?"

"I know what they mean, though I can't exactly explain. Or couldn't you make your stories more obvious? I don't see any harm in that. Uncle Willie floundered hopelessly. He doesn't read much, and he got muddled. I had to explain, and then he was delighted. Of course, to write down to the public would be quite another thing and horrible. You have certain ideas, and you must express them. But couldn't you express them more clearly?"

"You see—" He got no further than "you see."

"The soul and the body. The soul's what matters," said Agnes, and tapped for the waiter again. He looked at her admiringly, but felt that she was not a perfect critic. Perhaps she was too perfect to be a critic. Actual life might seem to her so real that she could not detect the union of shadow and adamant that men call poetry. He would even go further and acknowledge that she was not as clever as himself—and he was stupid enough! She did not like discussing anything or reading solid books, and she was a little angry with such women as did. It pleased him to make these concessions, for they touched nothing in her that he valued. He looked round the restaurant, which was in Soho and decided that she was incomparable.

"At half-past two I call on the editor of the 'Holborn.' He's got a stray story to look at, and he's written about it."

"Oh, Rickie! Rickie! Why didn't you put on a boiled shirt!"

He laughed, and teased her. "'The soul's what matters. We literary people don't care about dress."

"Well, you ought to care. And I believe you do. Can't you change?"

"Too far." He had rooms in South Kensington. "And I've forgot my card-case. There's for you!"

She shook her head. "Naughty, naughty boy! Whatever will you do?"

"Send in my name, or ask for a bit of paper and write it. Hullo! that's Tilliard!"

Tilliard blushed, partly on account of the faux pas he had made last June, partly on account of the restaurant. He explained how he came to be pigging in Soho: it was so frightfully convenient and so frightfully cheap.

"Just why Rickie brings me," said Miss Pembroke.

"And I suppose you're here to study life?" said Tilliard, sitting down.

"I don't know," said Rickie, gazing round at the waiters and the guests.

"Doesn't one want to see a good deal of life for writing? There's life of a sort in Soho,—Un peu de faisan, s'il vows plait."

Agnes also grabbed at the waiter, and paid. She always did the paying, Rickie muddled with his purse.

"I'm cramming," pursued Tilliard, "and so naturally I come into contact with very little at present. But later on I hope to see things." He blushed a little, for he was talking for Rickie's edification. "It is most frightfully important not to get a narrow or academic outlook, don't you think? A person like Ansell, who goes from Cambridge, home—home, Cambridge—it must tell on him in time."

"But Mr. Ansell is a philosopher."

"A very kinky one," said Tilliard abruptly. "Not my idea of a philosopher. How goes his dissertation?"

"He never answers my letters," replied Rickie. "He never would. I've heard nothing since June."

"It's a pity he sends in this year. There are so many good people in. He'd have afar better chance if he waited."

"So I said, but he wouldn't wait. He's so keen about this particular subject."

"What is it?" asked Agnes.

"About things being real, wasn't it, Tilliard?"

"That's near enough."

"Well, good luck to him!" said the girl. "And good luck to you, Mr. Tilliard! Later on, I hope, we'll meet again."

They parted. Tilliard liked her, though he did not feel that she was quite in his couche sociale. His sister, for instance, would never have been lured into a Soho restaurant—except for the experience of the thing. Tilliard's couche sociale permitted experiences. Provided his heart did not go out to the poor and the unorthodox, he might stare at them as much as he liked. It was seeing life.

Agnes put her lover safely into an omnibus at Cambridge Circus. She shouted after him that his tie was rising over his collar, but he did not hear her. For a moment she felt depressed, and pictured quite accurately the effect that his appearance would have on the editor. The editor was a tall neat man of forty, slow of speech, slow of soul, and extraordinarily kind. He and Rickie sat over a fire, with an enormous table behind them whereon stood many books waiting to be reviewed.

"I'm sorry," he said, and paused.

Rickie smiled feebly.

"Your story does not convince." He tapped it. "I have read it with very great pleasure. It convinces in parts, but it does not convince as a whole; and stories, don't you think, ought to convince as a whole?"

"They ought indeed," said Rickie, and plunged into self-depreciation. But the editor checked him.

"No—no. Please don't talk like that. I can't bear to hear any one talk against imagination. There are countless openings for imagination,—for the mysterious, for the supernatural, for all the things you are trying to do, and which, I hope, you will succeed in doing. I'm not OBJECTING to imagination; on the contrary, I'd advise you to cultivate it, to accent it. Write a really good ghost story and we'd take it at once. Or"—he suggested it as an alternative to imagination—"or you might get inside life. It's worth doing."

"Life?" echoed Rickie anxiously.

He looked round the pleasant room, as if life might be fluttering there like an imprisoned bird. Then he looked at the editor: perhaps he was sitting inside life at this very moment. "See life, Mr. Elliot, and then send us another story." He held out his hand. "I am sorry I have to say 'No, thank you'; it's so much nicer to say, 'Yes, please.'" He laid his hand on the young man's sleeve, and added, "Well, the interview's not been so alarming after all, has it?"

"I don't think that either of us is a very alarming person," was not Rickie's reply. It was what he thought out afterwards in the omnibus. His reply was "Ow," delivered with a slight giggle.

As he rumbled westward, his face was drawn, and his eyes moved quickly to the right and left, as if he would discover something in the squalid fashionable streets some bird on the wing, some radiant archway, the face of some god beneath a beaver hat. He loved, he was loved, he had seen death and other things; but the heart of all things was hidden. There was a password and he could not learn it, nor could the kind editor of the "Holborn" teach him. He sighed, and then sighed more piteously. For had he not known the password once—known it and forgotten it already? But at this point his fortunes become intimately connected with those of Mr. Pembroke.



PART 2 — SAWSTON

XVI

In three years Mr. Pembroke had done much to solidify the day-boys at Sawston School. If they were not solid, they were at all events curdling, and his activities might reasonably turn elsewhere. He had served the school for many years, and it was really time he should be entrusted with a boarding-house. The headmaster, an impulsive man who darted about like a minnow and gave his mother a great deal of trouble, agreed with him, and also agreed with Mrs. Jackson when she said that Mr. Jackson had served the school for many years and that it was really time he should be entrusted with a boarding-house. Consequently, when Dunwood House fell vacant the headmaster found himself in rather a difficult position.

Dunwood House was the largest and most lucrative of the boarding-houses. It stood almost opposite the school buildings. Originally it had been a villa residence—a red-brick villa, covered with creepers and crowned with terracotta dragons. Mr. Annison, founder of its glory, had lived here, and had had one or two boys to live with him. Times changed. The fame of the bishops blazed brighter, the school increased, the one or two boys became a dozen, and an addition was made to Dunwood House that more than doubled its size. A huge new building, replete with every convenience, was stuck on to its right flank. Dormitories, cubicles, studies, a preparation-room, a dining-room, parquet floors, hot-air pipes—no expense was spared, and the twelve boys roamed over it like princes. Baize doors communicated on every floor with Mr. Annison's part, and he, an anxious gentleman, would stroll backwards and forwards, a little depressed at the hygienic splendours, and conscious of some vanished intimacy. Somehow he had known his boys better when they had all muddled together as one family, and algebras lay strewn upon the drawing room chairs. As the house filled, his interest in it decreased. When he retired—which he did the same summer that Rickie left Cambridge—it had already passed the summit of excellence and was beginning to decline. Its numbers were still satisfactory, and for a little time it would subsist on its past reputation. But that mysterious asset the tone had lowered, and it was therefore of great importance that Mr. Annison's successor should be a first-class man. Mr. Coates, who came next in seniority, was passed over, and rightly. The choice lay between Mr. Pembroke and Mr. Jackson, the one an organizer, the other a humanist. Mr. Jackson was master of the Sixth, and—with the exception of the headmaster, who was too busy to impart knowledge—the only first-class intellect in the school. But he could not or rather would not, keep order. He told his form that if it chose to listen to him it would learn; if it didn't, it wouldn't. One half listened. The other half made paper frogs, and bored holes in the raised map of Italy with their penknives. When the penknives gritted he punished them with undue severity, and then forgot to make them show the punishments up. Yet out of this chaos two facts emerged. Half the boys got scholarships at the University, and some of them—including several of the paper-frog sort—remained friends with him throughout their lives. Moreover, he was rich, and had a competent wife. His claim to Dunwood House was stronger than one would have supposed.

The qualifications of Mr. Pembroke have already been indicated. They prevailed—but under conditions. If things went wrong, he must promise to resign.

"In the first place," said the headmaster, "you are doing so splendidly with the day-boys. Your attitude towards the parents is magnificent. I—don't know how to replace you there. Whereas, of course, the parents of a boarder—"

"Of course," said Mr. Pembroke.

The parent of a boarder, who only had to remove his son if he was discontented with the school, was naturally in a more independent position than the parent who had brought all his goods and chattels to Sawston, and was renting a house there.

"Now the parents of boarders—this is my second point—practically demand that the house-master should have a wife."

"A most unreasonable demand," said Mr. Pembroke.

"To my mind also a bright motherly matron is quite sufficient. But that is what they demand. And that is why—do you see?—we HAVE to regard your appointment as experimental. Possibly Miss Pembroke will be able to help you. Or I don't know whether if ever—" He left the sentence unfinished. Two days later Mr. Pembroke proposed to Mrs. Orr.

He had always intended to marry when he could afford it; and once he had been in love, violently in love, but had laid the passion aside, and told it to wait till a more convenient season. This was, of course, the proper thing to do, and prudence should have been rewarded. But when, after the lapse of fifteen years, he went, as it were, to his spiritual larder and took down Love from the top shelf to offer him to Mrs. Orr, he was rather dismayed. Something had happened. Perhaps the god had flown; perhaps he had been eaten by the rats. At all events, he was not there.

Mr. Pembroke was conscientious and romantic, and knew that marriage without love is intolerable. On the other hand, he could not admit that love had vanished from him. To admit this, would argue that he had deteriorated.

Whereas he knew for a fact that he had improved, year by year. Each year be grew more moral, more efficient, more learned, more genial. So how could he fail to be more loving? He did not speak to himself as follows, because he never spoke to himself; but the following notions moved in the recesses of his mind: "It is not the fire of youth. But I am not sure that I approve of the fire of youth. Look at my sister! Once she has suffered, twice she has been most imprudent, and put me to great inconvenience besides, for if she was stopping with me she would have done the housekeeping. I rather suspect that it is a nobler, riper emotion that I am laying at the feet of Mrs. Orr." It never took him long to get muddled, or to reverse cause and effect. In a short time he believed that he had been pining for years, and only waiting for this good fortune to ask the lady to share it with him.

Mrs. Orr was quiet, clever, kindly, capable, and amusing and they were old acquaintances. Altogether it was not surprising that he should ask her to be his wife, nor very surprising that she should refuse. But she refused with a violence that alarmed them both. He left her house declaring that he had been insulted, and she, as soon as he left, passed from disgust into tears.

He was much annoyed. There was a certain Miss Herriton who, though far inferior to Mrs. Orr, would have done instead of her. But now it was impossible. He could not go offering himself about Sawston. Having engaged a matron who had the reputation for being bright and motherly, he moved into Dunwood House and opened the Michaelmas term. Everything went wrong. The cook left; the boys had a disease called roseola; Agnes, who was still drunk with her engagement, was of no assistance, but kept flying up to London to push Rickie's fortunes; and, to crown everything, the matron was too bright and not motherly enough: she neglected the little boys and was overattentive to the big ones. She left abruptly, and the voice of Mrs. Jackson arose, prophesying disaster.

Should he avert it by taking orders? Parents do not demand that a house-master should be a clergyman, yet it reassures them when he is. And he would have to take orders some time, if he hoped for a school of his own. His religious convictions were ready to hand, but he spent several uncomfortable days hunting up his religious enthusiasms. It was not unlike his attempt to marry Mrs. Orr. But his piety was more genuine, and this time he never came to the point. His sense of decency forbade him hurrying into a Church that he reverenced. Moreover, he thought of another solution: Agnes must marry Rickie in the Christmas holidays, and they must come, both of them, to Sawston, she as housekeeper, he as assistant-master. The girl was a good worker when once she was settled down; and as for Rickie, he could easily be fitted in somewhere in the school. He was not a good classic, but good enough to take the Lower Fifth. He was no athlete, but boys might profitably note that he was a perfect gentleman all the same. He had no experience, but he would gain it. He had no decision, but he could simulate it. "Above all," thought Mr. Pembroke, "it will be something regular for him to do." Of course this was not "above all." Dunwood House held that position. But Mr. Pembroke soon came to think that it was, and believed that he was planning for Rickie, just as he had believed he was pining for Mrs. Orr.

Agnes, when she got back from the lunch in Soho, was told of the plan. She refused to give any opinion until she had seen her lover. A telegram was sent to him, and next morning he arrived. He was very susceptible to the weather, and perhaps it was unfortunate that the morning was foggy. His train had been stopped outside Sawston Station, and there he had sat for half an hour, listening to the unreal noises that came from the line, and watching the shadowy figures that worked there. The gas was alight in the great drawing-room, and in its depressing rays he and Agnes greeted each other, and discussed the most momentous question of their lives. They wanted to be married: there was no doubt of that. They wanted it, both of them, dreadfully. But should they marry on these terms?

"I'd never thought of such a thing, you see. When the scholastic agencies sent me circulars after the Tripos, I tore them up at once."

"There are the holidays," said Agnes. "You would have three months in the year to yourself, and you could do your writing then."

"But who'll read what I've written?" and he told her about the editor of the "Holborn."

She became extremely grave. At the bottom of her heart she had always mistrusted the little stories, and now people who knew agreed with her. How could Rickie, or any one, make a living by pretending that Greek gods were alive, or that young ladies could vanish into trees? A sparkling society tale, full of verve and pathos, would have been another thing, and the editor might have been convinced by it.

"But what does he mean?" Rickie was saying. "What does he mean by life?"

"I know what he means, but I can't exactly explain. You ought to see life, Rickie. I think he's right there. And Mr. Tilliard was right when he said one oughtn't to be academic."

He stood in the twilight that fell from the window, she in the twilight of the gas. "I wonder what Ansell would say," he murmured.

"Oh, poor Mr. Ansell!"

He was somewhat surprised. Why was Ansell poor? It was the first time the epithet had been applied to him.

"But to change the conversation," said Agnes.

"If we did marry, we might get to Italy at Easter and escape this horrible fog."

"Yes. Perhaps there—" Perhaps life would be there. He thought of Renan, who declares that on the Acropolis at Athens beauty and wisdom do exist, really exist, as external powers. He did not aspire to beauty or wisdom, but he prayed to be delivered from the shadow of unreality that had begun to darken the world. For it was as if some power had pronounced against him—as if, by some heedless action, he had offended an Olympian god. Like many another, he wondered whether the god might be appeased by work—hard uncongenial work. Perhaps he had not worked hard enough, or had enjoyed his work too much, and for that reason the shadow was falling.

"—And above all, a schoolmaster has wonderful opportunities for doing good; one mustn't forget that."

To do good! For what other reason are we here? Let us give up our refined sensations, and our comforts, and our art, if thereby we can make other people happier and better. The woman he loved had urged him to do good! With a vehemence that surprised her, he exclaimed, "I'll do it."

"Think it over," she cautioned, though she was greatly pleased.

"No; I think over things too much."

The room grew brighter. A boy's laughter floated in, and it seemed to him that people were as important and vivid as they had been six months before. Then he was at Cambridge, idling in the parsley meadows, and weaving perishable garlands out of flowers. Now he was at Sawston, preparing to work a beneficent machine. No man works for nothing, and Rickie trusted that to him also benefits might accrue; that his wound might heal as he laboured, and his eyes recapture the Holy Grail.



XVII

In practical matters Mr. Pembroke was often a generous man. He offered Rickie a good salary, and insisted on paying Agnes as well. And as he housed them for nothing, and as Rickie would also have a salary from the school, the money question disappeared—if not forever, at all events for the present.

"I can work you in," he said. "Leave all that to me, and in a few days you shall hear from the headmaster. He shall create a vacancy. And once in, we stand or fall together. I am resolved on that."

Rickie did not like the idea of being "worked in," but he was determined to raise no difficulties. It is so easy to be refined and high-minded when we have nothing to do. But the active, useful man cannot be equally particular. Rickie's programme involved a change in values as well as a change of occupation.

"Adopt a frankly intellectual attitude," Mr. Pembroke continued. "I do not advise you at present even to profess any interest in athletics or organization. When the headmaster writes, he will probably ask whether you are an all-round man. Boldly say no. A bold 'no' is at times the best. Take your stand upon classics and general culture."

Classics! A second in the Tripos. General culture. A smattering of English Literature, and less than a smattering of French.

"That is how we begin. Then we get you a little post—say that of librarian. And so on, until you are indispensable."

Rickie laughed; the headmaster wrote, the reply was satisfactory, and in due course the new life began.

Sawston was already familiar to him. But he knew it as an amateur, and under an official gaze it grouped itself afresh. The school, a bland Gothic building, now showed as a fortress of learning, whose outworks were the boarding-houses. Those straggling roads were full of the houses of the parents of the day-boys. These shops were in bounds, those out. How often had he passed Dunwood House! He had once confused it with its rival, Cedar View. Now he was to live there—perhaps for many years. On the left of the entrance a large saffron drawing-room, full of cosy corners and dumpy chairs: here the parents would be received. On the right of the entrance a study, which he shared with Herbert: here the boys would be caned—he hoped not often. In the hall a framed certificate praising the drains, the bust of Hermes, and a carved teak monkey holding out a salver. Some of the furniture had come from Shelthorpe, some had been bought from Mr. Annison, some of it was new. But throughout he recognized a certain decision of arrangement. Nothing in the house was accidental, or there merely for its own sake. He contrasted it with his room at Cambridge, which had been a jumble of things that he loved dearly and of things that he did not love at all. Now these also had come to Dunwood House, and had been distributed where each was seemly—Sir Percival to the drawing-room, the photograph of Stockholm to the passage, his chair, his inkpot, and the portrait of his mother to the study. And then he contrasted it with the Ansells' house, to which their resolute ill-taste had given unity. He was extremely sensitive to the inside of a house, holding it an organism that expressed the thoughts, conscious and subconscious, of its inmates. He was equally sensitive to places. He would compare Cambridge with Sawston, and either with a third type of existence, to which, for want of a better name, he gave the name of "Wiltshire."

It must not be thought that he is going to waste his time. These contrasts and comparisons never took him long, and he never indulged in them until the serious business of the day was over. And, as time passed, he never indulged in them at all. The school returned at the end of January, before he had been settled in a week. His health had improved, but not greatly, and he was nervous at the prospect of confronting the assembled house. All day long cabs had been driving up, full of boys in bowler hats too big for them; and Agnes had been superintending the numbering of the said hats, and the placing of them in cupboards, since they would not be wanted till the end of the term. Each boy had, or should have had, a bag, so that he need not unpack his box till the morrow, One boy had only a brown-paper parcel, tied with hairy string, and Rickie heard the firm pleasant voice say, "But you'll bring a bag next term," and the submissive, "Yes, Mrs. Elliot," of the reply. In the passage he ran against the head boy, who was alarmingly like an undergraduate. They looked at each other suspiciously, and parted. Two minutes later he ran into another boy, and then into another, and began to wonder whether they were doing it on purpose, and if so, whether he ought to mind. As the day wore on, the noises grew louder-trampings of feet, breakdowns, jolly little squawks—and the cubicles were assigned, and the bags unpacked, and the bathing arrangements posted up, and Herbert kept on saying, "All this is informal—all this is informal. We shall meet the house at eight fifteen."

And so, at eight ten, Rickie put on his cap and gown,—hitherto symbols of pupilage, now to be symbols of dignity,—the very cap and gown that Widdrington had so recently hung upon the college fountain. Herbert, similarly attired, was waiting for him in their private dining-room, where also sat Agnes, ravenously devouring scrambled eggs. "But you'll wear your hoods," she cried. Herbert considered, and them said she was quite right. He fetched his white silk, Rickie the fragment of rabbit's wool that marks the degree of B.A. Thus attired, they proceeded through the baize door. They were a little late, and the boys, who were marshalled in the preparation room, were getting uproarious. One, forgetting how far his voice carried, shouted, "Cave! Here comes the Whelk." And another young devil yelled, "The Whelk's brought a pet with him!"

"You mustn't mind," said Herbert kindly. "We masters make a point of never minding nicknames—unless, of course, they are applied openly, in which case a thousand lines is not too much." Rickie assented, and they entered the preparation room just as the prefects had established order.

Here Herbert took his seat on a high-legged chair, while Rickie, like a queen-consort, sat near him on a chair with somewhat shorter legs. Each chair had a desk attached to it, and Herbert flung up the lid of his, and then looked round the preparation room with a quick frown, as if the contents had surprised him. So impressed was Rickie that he peeped sideways, but could only see a little blotting-paper in the desk. Then he noticed that the boys were impressed too. Their chatter ceased. They attended.

The room was almost full. The prefects, instead of lolling disdainfully in the back row, were ranged like councillors beneath the central throne. This was an innovation of Mr. Pembroke's. Carruthers, the head boy, sat in the middle, with his arm round Lloyd. It was Lloyd who had made the matron too bright: he nearly lost his colours in consequence. These two were grown up. Beside them sat Tewson, a saintly child in the spectacles, who had risen to this height by reason of his immense learning. He, like the others, was a school prefect. The house prefects, an inferior brand, were beyond, and behind came the indistinguishable many. The faces all looked alike as yet—except the face of one boy, who was inclined to cry.