Could he have been a witness of events at the other end of the wire, his condition would have been one of less self-complacence. Long before the end of the first sentence his wife had come to the conclusion that this was a message from the dead. Why through a telephone did not greatly worry her. It seemed as reasonable a medium as any other she had ever heard of—indeed a trifle more so. Later, when she was able to review the matter calmly, it afforded her some consolation to reflect that things might have been worse. That "garden," together with the "silicial springs"—which she took to be "celestial," there was not much difference the way he pronounced it— was distinctly reassuring. The "eternal sunshine" and the "balmy breezes" likewise agreed with her knowledge of heavenly topography as derived from the Congregational Hymn-Book. That he should have needed to enquire concerning the health of herself and the children had puzzled her. The only explanation was that they didn't know everything, not even up. There—may be, not the new-comers. She had answered as coherently as her state of distraction would permit, and had then dropped limply to the floor. It was the sound of her falling against the umbrella-stand and upsetting it that brought them all trooping out from the dining-room.

It took her some time to get the thing home to them; and when she had finished, her brother Silas, acting on the impulse of the moment, rang up the Exchange, with some vague idea of getting into communication with St. Peter and obtaining further particulars, but recollected himself in time to explain to the "hulloa girl" that he had made a mistake.

The eldest boy, a practical youth, pointed out, very sensibly, that nothing could be gained by their not going on with their dinner, but was bitterly reproached for being able to think of any form of enjoyment at a moment when his poor dear father was in heaven. It reminded his mother of the special message to Cousin Jane, who up to that moment had been playing the part of comforter. With the collapse of Cousin Jane, dramatic in its suddenness, conversation disappeared. At nine o'clock the entire family went dinnerless to bed.

The eldest boy—as I have said, a practical youth—had the sense to get up early the next morning and send a wire, which brought the glad news back to them that their beloved one was not in heaven, but was still in Colorado. But the only reward my friend got for all his tender thoughtfulness was the vehement injunction never for the remainder of his life to play such a fool's trick again.

There were other cases I could have recited showing the ill recompense that so often overtakes the virtuous action; but, as I explained to Bute, it would have saddened me to dwell upon the theme.

It was quite a large party assembled at the St. Leonards', including one or two county people, and I should have liked, myself, to have made a better entrance. A large lady with a very small voice seemed to be under the impression that I had arranged the whole business on purpose. She said it was "so dramatic." One good thing came out of it: Janie, in her quiet, quick way, saw to it that Ethelbertha and Robina slipped into the house unnoticed by way of the dairy. When they joined the other guests, half an hour later, they had had a cup of tea and a rest, and were feeling calm and cool, with their hair nicely done; and Ethelbertha remarked to Robina on the way home what a comfort it must be to Mrs. St. Leonard to have a daughter so capable, one who knew just the right thing to do, and did it without making a fuss and a disturbance.

Everyone was very nice. Of course we made the usual mistake: they talked to me about books and plays, and I gave them my views on agriculture and cub-hunting. I'm not quite sure what fool it was who described a bore as a man who talked about himself. As a matter of fact it is the only subject the average man knows sufficiently well to make interesting. There's a man I know; he makes a fortune out of a patent food for infants. He began life as a dairy farmer, and hit upon it quite by accident. When he talks about the humours of company promoting and the tricks of the advertising agent he is amusing. I have sat at his table, when he was a bachelor, and listened to him by the hour with enjoyment. The mistake he made was marrying a broad-minded, cultured woman, who ruined him— conversationally, I mean. He is now well-informed and tiresome on most topics. That is why actors and actresses are always such delightful company: they are not ashamed to talk about themselves. I remember a dinner-party once: our host was one of the best-known barristers in London. A famous lady novelist sat on his right, and a scientist of world-wide reputation had the place of honour next our hostess, who herself had written a history of the struggle for nationality in South America that serves as an authority to all the Foreign Offices in Europe. Among the remaining guests were a bishop, the editor-in-chief of a London daily newspaper, a man who knew the interior of China as well as most men know their own club, a Russian revolutionist just escaped from Siberia, a leading dramatist, a Cabinet Minister, and a poet whose name is a household word wherever the English tongue is spoken. And for two hours we sat and listened to a wicked-looking little woman who from the boards of a Bowery music-hall had worked her way up to the position of a star in musical comedy. Education, as she observed herself without regret, had not been compulsory throughout the waterside district of Chicago in her young days; and, compelled to earn her own living from the age of thirteen, opportunity for supplying the original deficiency had been wanting. But she knew her subject, which was Herself—her experiences, her reminiscences: and bad sense enough to stick to it. Until the moment when she took "the liberty of chipping in," to use her own expression, the amount of twaddle talked had been appalling. The bishop had told us all he had learnt about China during a visit to San Francisco, while the man who had spent the last twenty years of his life in the country was busy explaining his views on the subject of the English drama. Our hostess had been endeavouring to make the scientist feel at home by talking to him about radium. The dramatist had explained at some length his views of the crisis in Russia. The poet had quite spoilt his dinner trying to suggest to the Cabinet Minister new sources of taxation. The Russian revolutionist had told us what ought to have been a funny story about a duck; and the lady novelist and the Cabinet Minister had discussed Christian Science for a quarter of an hour, each under the mistaken impression that the other one was a believer in it. The editor had been explaining the attitude of the Church towards the New Theology; and our host, one of the wittiest men at the Bar, had been talking chiefly to the butler. The relief of listening to anybody talking about something they knew was like finding a match-box to a man who has been barking his shins in the dark. For the rest of the dinner we clung to her.

I could have made myself quite interesting to these good squires and farmers talking to them about theatres and the literary celebrities I have met; and they could have told me dog stories and given me useful information as to the working of the Small Holdings Act. They said some very charming things about my books—mostly to the effect that they read and enjoyed them when feeling ill or suffering from mental collapse. I gathered that had they always continued in a healthy state of mind and body it would not have occurred to them to read me. One man assured me I had saved his life. It was his brain, he told me. He had been so upset by something that had happened to him that he had almost lost his reason. There were times when he could not even remember his own name; his mind seemed an absolute blank. And then one day by chance—or Providence, or whatever you choose to call it—he had taken up a book of mine. It was the only thing he had been able to read for months and months! And now, whenever he felt himself run down—his brain like a squeezed orange (that was his simile)—he would put everything else aside and read a book of mine— any one: it didn't matter which. I suppose one ought to be glad that one has saved somebody's life; but I should like to have the choosing of them myself.

I am not sure that Ethelbertha is going to like Mrs. St. Leonard; and I don't think Mrs. St. Leonard will much like Ethelbertha. I have gathered that Mrs. St. Leonard doesn't like anybody much—except, of course, when it is her duty. She does not seem to have the time. Man is born to trouble, and it is not bad philosophy to get oneself accustomed to the feeling. But Mrs. St. Leonard has given herself up to the pursuit of trouble to the exclusion of all other interests in life. She appears to regard it as the only calling worthy a Christian woman. I found her alone one afternoon. Her manner was preoccupied; I asked if I could be of any assistance.

"No," she answered, "I am merely trying to think what it can be that has been worrying me all the morning. It has clean gone out of my head."

She remembered it a little later with a glad sigh.

St. Leonard himself, Ethelbertha thinks charming. We are to go again on Sunday for her to see the children. Three or four people we met I fancy we shall be able to fit in with. We left at half-past six, and took Bute back with us to supper.



CHAPTER X



"She's a good woman," said Robina.

"Who's a good woman?" I asked.

"He's trying, I expect; although he is an old dear: to live with, I mean," continued Robina, addressing apparently the rising moon. "And then there are all those children."

"You are thinking of Mrs. St. Leonard," I suggested.

"There seems no way of making her happy," explained Robina. "On Thursday I went round early in the morning to help Janie pack the baskets for the picnic. It was her own idea, the picnic."

"Speaking of picnics," I said.

"You might have thought," went on Robina, "that she was dressing for her own funeral. She said she knew she was going to catch her death of cold, sitting on the wet grass. Something told her. I reminded her it hadn't rained for three weeks, and that everything was as dry as a bone, but she said that made no difference to grass. There is always a moisture in grass, and that cushions and all that only helped to draw it out. Not that it mattered. The end had to come, and so long as the others were happy—you know her style. Nobody ever thought of her. She was to be dragged here, dragged there. She talked about herself as if she were some sacred image. It got upon my nerves at last, so that I persuaded Janie to let me offer to stop at home with her. I wasn't too keen about going myself; not by that time."

"When our desires leave us, says Rochefoucauld," I remarked, "we pride ourselves upon our virtue in having overcome them."

"Well, it was her fault, anyhow," retorted Robina; "and I didn't make a virtue of it. I told her I'd just as soon not go, and that I felt sure the others would be all right without her, so that there was no need for her to be dragged anywhere. And then she burst into tears."

"She said," I suggested, "that it was hard on her to have children who could wish to go to a picnic and leave their mother at home; that it was little enough enjoyment she had in her life, heaven knows; that if there was one thing she had been looking forward to it was this day's outing; but still, of course, if everybody would be happier without her—"

"Something of the sort," admitted Robina; "only there was a lot of it. We had to all fuss round her, and swear that without her it wouldn't be worth calling a picnic. She brightened up on the way home."

The screech-owl in the yew-tree emitted a blood-curdling scream. He perches there each evening on the extreme end of the longest bough. Dimly outlined against the night, he has the appearance of a friendly hobgoblin. But I wish he didn't fancy himself as a vocalist. It is against his own interests, I am sure, if he only knew it. That American college yell of his must have the effect of sending every living thing within half a mile back into its hole. Maybe it is a provision of nature for clearing off the very old mice who have become stone deaf and would otherwise be a burden on their relatives. The others, unless out for suicide, must, one thinks, be tolerably safe. Ethelbertha is persuaded he is a sign of death; but seeing there isn't a square quarter of a mile in this county without its screech-owl, there can hardly by this time be a resident that an Assurance Society would look at. Veronica likes him. She even likes his screech. I found her under the tree the other night, wrapped up in a shawl, trying to learn it. As if one of them were not enough! It made me quite cross with her. Besides, it wasn't a bit like it, as I told her. She said it was better than I could do, anyhow; and I was idiot enough to take up the challenge. It makes me angry now, when I think of it: a respectable, middle-aged literary man, standing under a yew-tree trying to screech like an owl. And the bird was silly enough to encourage us.

"She was a charming girl," I said, "seven-and-twenty years ago, when St. Leonard fell in love with her. She had those dark, dreamy eyes so suggestive of veiled mysteries; and her lips must have looked bewitching when they pouted. I expect they often did. They do so still; but the pout of a woman of forty-six no longer fascinates. To a pretty girl of nineteen a spice of temper, an illogical unreasonableness, are added attractions: the scratch of a blue-eyed kitten only tempts us to tease her the more. Young Hubert St. Leonard—he had curly brown hair, with a pretty trick of blushing, and was going to conquer the world—found her fretfulness, her very selfishness adorable: and told her so, kneeling before her, gazing into her bewildering eyes—only he called it her waywardness, her imperiousness; begged her for his sake to be more capricious. Told her how beautiful she looked when displeased. So, no doubt, she did- -at nineteen."

"He didn't tell you all that, did he?" demanded Robina.

"Not a word," I reassured her, "except that she was acknowledged by all authorities to have been the most beautiful girl in Tunbridge Wells, and that her father had been ruined by a rascally solicitor. No, I was merely, to use the phrase of the French police courts, 'reconstructing the crime.'"

"It may be all wrong," grumbled Robina.

"It may be," I agreed. "But why? Does it strike you as improbable?"

We were sitting in the porch, waiting for Dick to come by the white path across the field.

"No," answered Robina. "It all sounds very probable. I wish it didn't."

"You must remember," I continued, "that I am an old playgoer. I have sat out so many of this world's dramas. It is as easy to reconstruct them backwards as forwards. We are witnessing the last act of the St. Leonard drama: that unsatisfactory last act that merely fills out time after the play is ended! The intermediate acts were probably more exciting, containing 'passionate scenes' played with much earnestness; chiefly for the amusement of the servants. But the first act, with the Kentish lanes and woods for a back-cloth, must have been charming. Here was the devout lover she had heard of, dreamed of. It is delightful to be regarded as perfection—not absolute perfection, for that might put a strain upon us to live up to, but as so near perfection that to be more perfect would just spoil it. The spots upon us, that unappreciative friends and relations would magnify into blemishes, seen in their true light: artistic shading relieving a faultlessness that might otherwise prove too glaring. Dear Hubert found her excellent just as she was in every detail. It would have been a crime against Love for her to seek to change herself."

"Well, then, it was his fault," argued Robina. "If he was silly enough to like her faults, and encourage her in them—"

"What could he have done," I asked, "even if he had seen them? A lover does not point out his mistress's shortcomings to her."

"Much the more sensible plan if he did," insisted Robina. "Then if she cared for him she could set to work to cure herself."

"You would like it?" I said; "you would appreciate it in your own case? Can you imagine young Bute—?"

"Why young Bute?" demanded Robina; "what's he got to do with it?"

"Nothing," I answered; "except that he happens to be the first male creature you have ever come across since you were six that you haven't flirted with."

"I don't flirt with them," said Robina; "I merely try to be nice to them."

"With the exception of young Bute," I persisted.

"He irritates me," Robina explained.

"I was reading," I said, "the other day, an account of the marriage customs prevailing among the Lower Caucasians. The lover takes his stand beneath his lady's window, and, having attracted her attention, proceeds to sing. And if she seems to like it—if she listens to it without getting mad, that means she doesn't want him. But if she gets upset about it—slams down the window and walks away, then it's all right. I think it's the Lower Caucasians."

"Must be a very silly people," said Robina; "I suppose a pail of water would be the highest proof of her affection he could hope for."

"A complex being, man," I agreed. "We will call him X. Can you imagine young X coming to you and saying: 'My dear Robina, you have many excellent qualities. You can be amiable—so long as you are having your own way in everything; but thwarted you can be just horrid. You are very kind—to those who are willing for you to be kind to them in your own way, which is not always their way. You can be quite unselfish—when you happen to be in an unselfish mood, which is far from frequent. You are capable and clever, but, like most capable and clever people, impatient and domineering; highly energetic when not feeling lazy; ready to forgive the moment your temper is exhausted. You are generous and frank, but if your object could only be gained through meanness or deceit you would not hesitate a moment longer than was necessary to convince yourself that the circumstances justified the means. You are sympathetic, tender- hearted, and have a fine sense of justice; but I can see that tongue of yours, if not carefully watched, wearing decidedly shrewish. You have any amount of grit. A man might go tiger-hunting with you—with no one better; but you are obstinate, conceited, and exacting. In short, to sum you up, you have all the makings in you of an ideal wife combined with faults sufficient to make a Socrates regret he'd ever married you.'"

"Yes, I would!" said Robina, springing to her feet. I could not see her face, but I knew there was the look upon it that made Primgate want to paint her as Joan of Arc; only it would never stop long enough. "I'd love him for talking like that. And I'd respect him. If he was that sort of man I'd pray God to help me to be the sort of woman he wanted me to be. I'd try. I'd try all day long. I would!"

"I wonder," I said. Robina had surprised me. I admit it. I thought I knew the sex better.

"Any girl would," said Robina. "He'd be worth it."

"It would be a new idea," I mused. "Gott im Himmel! what a new world might it not create!" The fancy began to take hold of me. "Love no longer blind. Love refusing any more to be the poor blind fool— sport of gods and men. Love no longer passion's slave. His bonds broken, the senseless bandage flung aside. Love helping life instead of muddling it. Marriage, the foundation of civilisation, no longer reared upon the sands of lies and illusions, but grappled to the rock of truth—reality. Have you ever read 'Tom Jones?'" I said.

"No," answered Robina; "I've always heard it wasn't a nice book."

"It isn't," I said. "Man isn't a nice animal, not all of him. Nor woman either. There's a deal of the beast in man. What can you expect? Till a few paltry thousands of years ago he WAS a beast, fighting with other beasts, his fellow denizens of the woods and caves; watching for his prey, crouched in the long grass of the river's bank, tearing it with claws and teeth, growling as he ate. So he lived and died through the dim unnamed ages, transmitting his beast's blood, his bestial instincts, to his offspring, growing ever stronger, fiercer, from generation to generation, while the rocks piled up their strata and the oceans shaped their beds. Moses! Why, Lord Rothschild's great-grandfather, a few score times removed, must have known Moses, talked with him. Babylon! It is a modern city, fallen into disuse for the moment, owing to alteration of traffic routes. History! it is a tale of to-day. Man was crawling about the world on all fours, learning to be an animal for millions of years before the secret of his birth was whispered to him. It is only during the last few centuries that he has been trying to be a man. Our modern morality! Why, compared with the teachings of nature, it is but a few days old. What do you expect? That he shall forget the lessons of the aeons at the bidding of the hours?"

"Then you advise me to read 'Tom Jones'?" said Robina.

"Yes," I said, "I do. I should not if I thought you were still a child, knowing only blind trust, or blind terror. The sun is not extinguished because occasionally obscured by mist; the scent of the rose is not dead because of the worm in the leaf. A healthy rose can afford a few worms—has got to, anyhow. All men are not Tom Joneses. The standard of masculine behaviour continues to go up: many of us make fine efforts to conform to it, and some of us succeed. But the Tom Jones is there in all of us who are not anaemic or consumptive. And there's no sense at all in getting cross with us about it, because we cannot help it. We are doing our best. In another hundred thousand years or so, provided all goes well, we shall be the perfect man. And seeing our early training, I flatter myself that, up to the present, we have done remarkably well."

"Nothing like being satisfied with oneself," said Robina.

"I'm not satisfied," I said; "I'm only hopeful. But it irritates me when I hear people talk as though man had been born a white-souled angel and was making supernatural efforts to become a sinner. That seems to me the way to discourage him. What he wants is bucking up; somebody to say to him, 'Bravo! why, this is splendid! Just think, my boy, what you were, and that not so very long ago—an unwashed, hairy savage; your law that of the jungle, your morals those of the rabbit-warren. Now look at yourself—dressed in your little shiny hat, your trousers neatly creased, walking with your wife to church on Sunday! Keep on—that's all you've got to do. In a few more centuries your own mother Nature won't know you.

"You women," I continued; "why, a handful of years ago we bought and sold you, kept you in cages, took the stick to you when you were not spry in doing what you were told. Did you ever read the history of Patient Griselda?"

"Yes," said Robina, "I have." I gathered from her tone that the Joan of Arc expression had departed. Had Primgate wanted to paint her at that particular moment I should have suggested Katherine—during the earlier stages—listening to a curtain lecture from Petruchio. "Are you suggesting that all women should take her for a model?"

"No," I said, "I'm not. Though were we living in Chaucer's time I might; and you would not think it even silly. What I'm impressing upon you is that the human race has yet a little way to travel before the average man can be regarded as an up-to-date edition of King Arthur—the King Arthur of the poetical legend, I mean. Don't be too impatient with him."

"Thinking what a beast he has been ought to make him impatient himself with himself," considered Robina. "He ought to be feeling so ashamed of himself as to be willing to do anything."

The owl in the old yew screamed, whether with indignation or amusement I cannot tell.

"And woman," I said, "had the power been hers, would she have used it to sweeter purpose? Where is your evidence? Your Cleopatras, Pompadours, Jezebels; your Catherines of Russia, late Empresses of China; your Faustines of all ages and all climes; your Mother Brownriggs; your Lucretia Borgias, Salomes—I could weary you with names. Your Roman task-mistresses; your drivers of lodging-house slaveys; your ladies who whipped their pages to death in the Middle Ages; your modern dames of fashion, decked with the plumage of the tortured grove. There have been other women also—noble women, their names like beacon-lights studding the dark waste of history. So there have been noble men—saints, martyrs, heroes. The sex-line divides us physically, not morally. Woman has been man's accomplice in too many crimes to claim to be his judge. 'Male and female created He them'—like and like, for good and evil."

By good fortune I found a loose match. I lighted a fresh cigar.

"Dick, I suppose, is the average man," said Robina.

"Most of us are," I said, "when we are at home. Carlyle was the average man in the little front parlour in Cheyne Row, though, to hear fools talk, you might think no married couple outside literary circles had ever been known to exchange a cross look. So was Oliver Cromwell in his own palace with the door shut. Mrs. Cromwell must have thought him monstrous silly, placing sticky sweetmeats for his guests to sit on—told him so, most likely. A cheery, kindly man, notwithstanding, though given to moods. He and Mrs. Cromwell seem to have rubbed along, on the whole, pretty well together. Old Sam Johnson—great, God-fearing, lovable, cantankerous old brute! Life with him, in a small house on a limited income, must have had its ups and downs. Milton and Frederick the Great were, one hopes, a little below the average. Did their best, no doubt; lacked understanding. Not so easy as it looks, living up to the standard of the average man. Very clever people, in particular, find it tiring."

"I shall never marry," said Robina. "At least, I hope I sha'n't."

"Why 'hope'?" I asked.

"Because I hope I shall never be idiot enough," she answered. "I see it all so clearly. I wish I didn't. Love! it's only an ugly thing with a pretty name. It will not be me that he will fall in love with. He will not know me until it is too late. How can he? It will be merely with the outside of me—my pink-and-white skin, my rounded arms. I feel it sometimes when I see men looking at me, and it makes me mad. And at other times the admiration in their eyes pleases me. And that makes me madder still."

The moon had slipped behind the wood. She had risen, and, leaning against the porch, was standing with her hands clasped. I fancy she had forgotten me. She seemed to be talking to the night.

"It's only a trick of Nature to make fools of us," she said. "He will tell me I am all the world to him; that his love will outlive the stars—will believe it himself at the time, poor fellow! He will call me a hundred pretty names, will kiss my feet and hands. And if I'm fool enough to listen to him, it may last"—she laughed; it was rather an ugly laugh—"six months; with luck perhaps a year, if I'm careful not to go out in the east wind and come home with a red nose, and never let him catch me in curl papers. It will not be me that he will want: only my youth, and the novelty of me, and the mystery. And when that is gone—"

She turned to me. It was a strange face I saw then in the pale light, quite a fierce little face. She laid her hands upon my shoulders, and I felt them cold. "What comes when it is dead?" she said. "What follows? You must know. Tell me. I want the truth."

Her vehemence had arisen so suddenly. The little girl I had set out to talk with was no longer there. To my bewilderment, it was a woman that was questioning me.

I drew her down beside me. But the childish face was still stern.

"I want the truth," she said; so that I answered very gravely:

"When the passion is passed; when the glory and the wonder of Desire- -Nature's eternal ritual of marriage, solemnising, sanctifying it to her commands—is ended; when, sooner or later, some grey dawn finds you wandering bewildered in once familiar places, seeking vainly the lost palace of youth's dreams; when Love's frenzy is faded, like the fragrance of the blossom, like the splendour of the dawn; there will remain to you, just what was there before—no more, no less. If passion was all you had to give to one another, God help you. You have had your hour of madness. It is finished. If greed of praise and worship was your price—well, you have had your payment. The bargain is complete. If mere hope to be made happy was your lure, one pities you. We do not make each other happy. Happiness is the gift of the gods, not of man. The secret lies within you, not without. What remains to you will depend not upon what you THOUGHT, but upon what you ARE. If behind the lover there was the man—behind the impossible goddess of his love-sick brain some honest, human woman, then life lies not behind you, but before you.

"Life is giving, not getting. That is the mistake we most of us set out with. It is the work that is the joy, not the wages; the game, not the score. The lover's delight is to yield, not to claim. The crown of motherhood is pain. To serve the State at cost of ease and leisure; to spend his thought and labour upon a hundred schemes, is the man's ambition. Life is doing, not having. It is to gain the peak the climber strives, not to possess it. Fools marry thinking what they are going to get out of it: good store of joys and pleasure, opportunities for self-indulgence, eternal soft caresses— the wages of the wanton. The rewards of marriage are toil, duty, responsibility—manhood, womanhood. Love's baby talk you will have outgrown. You will no longer be his 'Goddess,' 'Angel,' 'Popsy Wopsy,' 'Queen of his heart.' There are finer names than these: wife, mother, priestess in the temple of humanity. Marriage is renunciation, the sacrifice of Self upon the altar of the race. 'A trick of Nature' you call it. Perhaps. But a trick of Nature compelling you to surrender yourself to the purposes of God."

I fancy we must have sat in silence for quite a long while; for the moon, creeping upward past the wood, had flooded the fields again with light before Robina spoke.

"Then all love is needless," she said, "we could do better without it, choose with more discretion. If it is only something that worries us for a little while and then passes, what is the sense of it?"

"You could ask the same question of Life itself," I said; "'something that worries us for a little while, then passes.' Perhaps the 'worry,' as you call it, has its uses. Volcanic upheavals are necessary to the making of a world. Without them the ground would remain rock-bound, unfitted for its purposes. That explosion of Youth's pent-up forces that we term Love serves to the making of man and woman. It does not die, it takes new shape. The blossom fades as the fruit forms. The passion passes to give place to peace. The trembling lover has become the helper, the comforter, the husband."

"But the failures," Robina persisted; "I do not mean the silly or the wicked people; but the people who begin by really loving one another, only to end in disliking—almost hating one another. How do THEY get there?"

"Sit down," I said, "and I will tell you a story.

"Once upon a time there was a girl, and a boy who loved her. She was a clever, brilliant girl, and she had the face of an angel. They lived near to one another, seeing each other almost daily. But the boy, awed by the difference of their social position, kept his secret, as he thought, to himself; dreaming, as youth will, of the day when fame and wealth would bridge the gulf between them. The kind look in her eyes, the occasional seeming pressure of her hand, he allowed to feed his hopes; and on the morning of his departure for London an incident occurred that changed his vague imaginings to set resolve. He had sent on his scanty baggage by the carrier, intending to walk the three miles to the station. It was early in the morning, and he had not expected to meet a soul. But a mile from the village he overtook her. She was reading a book, but she made no pretence that the meeting was accidental, leaving him to form what conclusions he would. She walked with him some distance, and he told her of his plans and hopes; and she answered him quite simply that she should always remember him, always be more glad than she could tell to hear of his success. Near the end of the lane they parted, she wishing him in that low sweet woman's voice of hers all things good. He turned, a little farther on, and found that she had also turned. She waved her hand to him, smiling. And through the long day's journey and through many days to come there remained with him that picture of her, bringing with it the scent of the pine-woods: her white hand waving to him, her sweet eyes smiling wistfully.

"But fame and fortune are not won so quickly as boys dream, nor is life as easy to live bravely as it looks in visions. It was nearly twenty years before they met again. Neither had married. Her people were dead and she was living alone; and to him the world at last had opened her doors. She was still beautiful. A gracious, gentle lady, she had grown; clothed with that soft sweet dignity that Time bestows upon rare women, rendering them fairer with the years.

"To the man it seemed a miracle. The dream of those early days came back to him. Surely there was nothing now to separate them. Nothing had changed but the years, bringing to them both wider sympathies, calmer, more enduring emotions. She welcomed him again with the old kind smile, a warmer pressure of the hand; and, allowing a little time to pass for courtesy's sake, he told her what was the truth: that he had never ceased to love her, never ceased to keep the vision of her fair pure face before him, his ideal of all that man could find of help in womanhood. And her answer, until years later he read the explanation, remained a mystery to him. She told him that she loved him, that she had never loved any other man and never should; that his love, for so long as he chose to give it to her, she should always prize as the greatest gift of her life. But with that she prayed him to remain content.

"He thought perhaps it was a touch of woman's pride, of hurt dignity that he had kept silent so long, not trusting her; that perhaps as time went by she would change her mind. But she never did; and after awhile, finding that his persistence only pained her, he accepted the situation. She was not the type of woman about whom people talk scandal, nor would it have troubled her much had they done so. Able now to work where he would, he took a house in a neighbouring village, where for the best part of the year he lived, near to her. And to the end they remained lovers."

"I think I understand," said Robina. "I will tell you afterwards if I am wrong."

"I told the story to a woman many years ago," I said, "and she also thought she understood. But she was only half right."

"We will see," said Robina. "Go on."

"She left a letter, to be given to him after her death, in case he survived her; if not, to be burned unopened. In it she told him her reason, or rather her reasons, for having refused him. It was an odd letter. The 'reasons' sounded so pitiably insufficient. Until one took the pains to examine them in the cold light of experience. And then her letter struck one, not as foolish, but as one of the grimmest commentaries upon marriage that perhaps had ever been penned.

"It was because she had wished always to remain his ideal; to keep their love for one another to the end, untarnished; to be his true helpmeet in all things, that she had refused to marry him.

"Had he spoken that morning she had waited for him in the lane—she had half hoped, half feared it—she might have given her promise: 'For Youth,' so she wrote, 'always dreams it can find a new way.' She thanked God that he had not.

"'Sooner or later,' so ran the letter, 'you would have learned, Dear, that I was neither saint nor angel; but just a woman—such a tiresome, inconsistent creature; she would have exasperated you—full of a thousand follies and irritabilities that would have marred for you all that was good in her. I wanted you to have of me only what was worthy, and this seemed the only way. Counting the hours to your coming, hating the pain of your going, I could always give to you my best. The ugly words, the whims and frets that poison speech—they could wait; it was my lover's hour.

"'And you, Dear, were always so tender, so gay. You brought me joy with both your hands. Would it have been the same, had you been my husband? How could it? There were times, even as it was, when you vexed me. Forgive me, Dear, I mean it was my fault—ways of thought and action that did not fit in with my ways, that I was not large- minded enough to pass over. As my lover, they were but as spots upon the sun. It was easy to control the momentary irritation that they caused me. Time was too precious for even a moment of estrangement. As my husband, the jarring note would have been continuous, would have widened into discord. You see, Dear, I was not great enough to love ALL of you. I remember, as a child, how indignant I always felt with God when my nurse told me He would not love me because I was naughty, that He only loved good children. It seemed such a poor sort of love, that. Yet that is precisely how we men and women do love; taking only what gives us pleasure, repaying the rest with anger. There would have arisen the unkind words that can never be recalled; the ugly silences; the gradual withdrawing from one another. I dared not face it.

"'It was not all selfishness. Truthfully I can say I thought more of you than of myself. I wanted to keep the shadows of life away from you. We men and women are like the flowers. It is in sunshine that we come to our best. You were my hero. I wanted you to be great. I wanted you to be surrounded by lovely dreams. I wanted your love to be a thing holy, helpful to you.'

"It was a long letter. I have given you the gist of it."

Again there was a silence between us.

"You think she did right?" asked Robina.

"I cannot say," I answered; "there are no rules for Life, only for the individual."

"I have read it somewhere," said Robina—"where was it?—'Love suffers all things, and rejoices.'"

"Maybe in old Thomas Kempis. I am not sure," I said.

"It seems to me," said Robina, "that the explanation lies in that one sentence of hers: 'I was not great enough to love ALL of you.'"

"It seems to me," I said, "that the whole art of marriage is the art of getting on with the other fellow. It means patience, self- control, forbearance. It means the laying aside of our self-conceit and admitting to ourselves that, judged by eyes less partial than our own, there may be much in us that is objectionable, that calls for alteration. It means toleration for views and opinions diametrically opposed to our most cherished convictions. It means, of necessity, the abandonment of many habits and indulgences that however trivial have grown to be important to us. It means the shaping of our own desires to the needs of others; the acceptance often of surroundings and conditions personally distasteful to us. It means affection deep and strong enough to bear away the ugly things of life—its quarrels, wrongs, misunderstandings—swiftly and silently into the sea of forgetfulness. It means courage, good humour, commonsense."

"That is what I am saying," explained Robina. "It means loving him even when he's naughty."

Dick came across the fields. Robina rose and slipped into the house.

"You are looking mighty solemn, Dad," said Dick.

"Thinking of Life, Dick," I confessed. "Of the meaning and the explanation of it."

"Yes, it's a problem, Life," admitted Dick.

"A bit of a teaser," I agreed.

We smoked in silence for awhile.

"Loving a good woman must be a tremendous help to a man," said Dick.

He looked very handsome, very gallant, his boyish face flashing challenge to the Fates.

"Tremendous, Dick," I agreed.

Robina called to him that his supper was ready. He knocked the ashes from his pipe, and followed her into the house. Their laughing voices came to me broken through the half-closed doors. From the night around me rose a strange low murmur. It seemed to me as though above the silence I heard the far-off music of the Mills of God.



CHAPTER XI



I fancy Veronica is going to be an authoress. Her mother thinks this may account for many things about her that have been troubling us. The story never got far. It was laid aside for the more alluring work of play-writing, and apparently forgotten. I came across the copy-book containing her "Rough Notes" the other day. There is decided flavour about them. I transcribe selections; the spelling, as before, being my own.

"The scene is laid in the Moon. But everything is just the same as down here. With one exception. The children rule. The grown-ups do not like it. But they cannot help it. Something has happened to them. They don't know what. And the world is as it used to be. In the sweet old story-books. Before sin came. There are fairies that dance o' nights. And Witches. That lure you. And then turn you into things. And a dragon who lives in a cave. And springs out at people. And eats them. So that you have to be careful. And all the animals talk. And there are giants. And lots of magic. And it is the children who know everything. And what to do for it. And they have to teach the grown-ups. And the grown-ups don't believe half of it. And are far too fond of arguing. Which is a sore trial to the children. But they have patience, and are just.

"Of course the grown-ups have to go to school. They have much to learn. Poor things! And they hate it. They take no interest in fairy lore. And what would happen to them if they got wrecked on a Desert Island they don't seem to care. And then there are languages. What they will need when they come to be children. And have to talk to all the animals. And magic. Which is deep. And they hate it. And say it is rot. They are full of tricks. One catches them reading trashy novels. Under the desk. All about love. Which is wasting their children's money. And God knows it is hard enough to earn. But the children are not angry with them. Remembering how they felt themselves. When they were grown up. Only firm.

"The children give them plenty of holidays. Because holidays are good for everyone. They freshen you up. But the grown-ups are very stupid. And do not care for sensible games. Such as Indians. And Pirates. What would sharpen their faculties. And so fit them for the future. They only care to play with a ball. Which is of no help. To the stern realities of life. Or talk. Lord, how they talk!

"There is one grown-up. Who is very clever. He can talk about everything. But it leads to nothing. And spoils the party. So they send him to bed. And there are two grown-ups. A male and a female. And they talk love. All the time. Even on fine days. Which is maudlin. But the children are patient with them. Knowing it takes all sorts. To make a world. And trusting they will grow out of it. And of course there are grown-ups who are good. And a comfort to their children.

"And everything the children like is good. And wholesome. And everything the grown-ups like is bad for them. AND THEY MUSTN'T HAVE IT. They clamour for tea and coffee. What undermines their nervous system. And waste their money in the tuck shop. Upon chops. And turtle soup. And the children have to put them to bed. And give them pills. Till they feel better.

"There is a little girl named Prue. Who lives with a little boy named Simon. They mean well. But haven't much sense. They have two grown-ups. A male and a female. Named Peter and Martha. Respectively. They are just the ordinary grown-ups. Neither better nor worse. And much might be done with them. By kindness. But Prue and Simon GO THE WRONG WAY TO WORK. It is blame blame all day long. But as for praise. Oh never!

"One summer's day Prue and Simon take Peter for a walk. In the country. And they meet a cow. And they think this a good opportunity. To test Peter's knowledge. Of languages. So they tell him to talk to the cow. And he talks to the cow. And the cow don't understand him. And he don't understand the cow. And they are mad with him. 'What is the use,' they say. 'Of our paying expensive fees. To have you taught the language. By a first-class cow. And when you come out into the country. You can't talk it.' And he says he did talk it. But they will not listen to him. But go on raving. And in the end it turns out. IT WAS A JERSEY COW! What talked a dialect. So of course he couldn't understand it. But did they apologise? Oh dear no.

"Another time. One morning at breakfast. Martha didn't like her raspberry vinegar. So she didn't drink it. And Simon came into the nursery. And he saw that Martha hadn't drunk her raspberry vinegar. And he asked her why. And she said she didn't like it. Because it was nasty. And he said it wasn't nasty. And that she OUGHT to like it. And how it was shocking. The way grown-ups nowadays grumbled. At good wholesome food. Provided for them by their too-indulgent children. And how when HE was a grown-up. He would never have dared. And so on. All in the usual style. And to prove it wasn't nasty. He poured himself out a cupful. And drank it off. In a gulp.

And he said it was delicious. And turned pale. And left the room.

"And Prue came into the nursery. And she saw that Martha hadn't drunk her raspberry vinegar. And she asked her why. And Martha told her how she didn't like it. Because it was nasty. And Prue told her she ought to be ashamed of herself. For not liking it. Because it was good for her. And really very nice. And anyhow she'd GOT to like it. And not get stuffing herself up with messy tea and coffee. Because she wouldn't have it. And there was an end of it. And so on. And to prove it was all right. She poured herself out a cupful. And drank it off. In a gulp. And she said there was nothing wrong with it. Nothing whatever. And turned pale. And left the room.

"And it wasn't raspberry vinegar. But just red ink. What had got put into the raspberry vinegar decanter. By an oversight. And they needn't have been ill at all. If only they had listened. To poor old Martha. But no. That was their fixed idea. That grown-ups hadn't any sense. At all. What is a mistake. As one perceives."

Other characters had been sketched, some of them to be abandoned after a few bold touches: the difficulty of avoiding too close a portraiture to the living original having apparently proved irksome. Against one such, evidently an attempt to help Dick see himself in his true colours, I find this marginal, note in pencil: "Better not. Might make him ratty." Opposite to another—obviously of Mrs. St. Leonard, and with instinct for alliteration—is scribbled; "Too terribly true. She'd twig it."

Another character is that of a gent: "With a certain gift. For telling stories. Some of them NOT BAD." A promising party, on the whole. Indeed, one might say, judging from description, a quite rational person: "WHEN NOT ON THE RANTAN. But inconsistent." He is the grown-up of a little girl: "Not beautiful. But strangely attractive. Whom we will call Enid." One gathers that if all the children had been Enids, then surely the last word in worlds had been said. She has only this one grown-up of her very own; but she makes it her business to adopt and reform all the incorrigible old folk the other children have despaired of. It is all done by kindness. "She is EVER patient. And just." Prominent among her numerous PROTEGEES is a military man, an elderly colonel; until she took him in hand, the awful example of what a grown-up might easily become, left to the care of incompetent infants. He defies his own child, a virtuous youth, but "lacking in sympathy;" is rude to his little nephews and nieces; a holy terror to his governess. He uses wicked words, picked up from retired pirates. "Of course without understanding. Their terrible significance." He steals the Indian's fire-water. "What few can partake of. With impunity." Certainly not the Colonel. "Can this be he! This gibbering wreck!" He hides cigars in a hollow tree, and smokes on the sly. He plays truant. Lures other old gentlemen away from their lessons to join him. They are discovered in the woods, in a cave, playing whist for sixpenny points.

Does Enid storm and bullyrag; threaten that if ever she catches him so much as looking at a card again she will go straight out and tell the dragon, who will in his turn be so shocked that in all probability he will decide on coming back with her to kill and eat the Colonel on the spot? No. "Such are not her methods." Instead she smiles: "indulgently." She says it is only natural for grown- ups to like playing cards. She is not angry with him. And there is no need for him to run away and hide in a nasty damp cave. "SHE HERSELF WILL PLAY WHIST WITH HIM." The effect upon the Colonel is immediate: he bursts into tears. She plays whist with him in the garden: "After school hours. When he has been GOOD." Double dummy, one presumes. One leaves the Colonel, in the end, cured of his passion for whist. Whether as the consequence of her play or her influence the "Rough Notes" give no indication.

In the play, I am inclined to think, Veronica received assistance. The house had got itself finished early in September. Young Bute has certainly done wonders. We performed it in the empty billiard-room, followed by a one-act piece of my own. The occasion did duty as a house-warming. We had quite a crowd, and ended up with a dance. Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves, except young Bertie St. Leonard, who played the Prince, and could not get out of his helmet in time for supper. It was a good helmet, but had been fastened clumsily; and inexperienced people trying to help had only succeeded in jambing all the screws. Not only wouldn't it come off, it would not even open for a drink. All thought it an excellent joke, with the exception of young Herbert St. Leonard. Our Mayor, a cheerful little man and very popular, said that it ought to be sent to PUNCH. The local reporter reminded him that the late John Leech had already made use of precisely the same incident for a comic illustration, afterwards remembering that it was not Leech, but the late Phil May. He seemed to think this ended the matter. St. Leonard and the Vicar, who are rival authorities upon the subject, fell into an argument upon armour in general, with special reference to the fourteenth century. Each used the boy's head to confirm his own theory, passing it triumphantly from one to the other. We had to send off young Hopkins in the donkey-cart for the blacksmith. I have found out, by the way, how it is young Hopkins makes our donkey go. Young Hopkins argues it is far less brutal than whacking him, especially after experience has proved that he evidently does not know why you are whacking him. I am not at all sure the boy is not right.

Janie played the Fairy Godmamma in a white wig and panniers. She will make a beautiful old lady. The white hair gives her the one thing that she lacks: distinction. I found myself glancing apprehensively round the room, wishing we had not invited so many eligible bachelors. Dick is making me anxious. The sense of his own unworthiness, which has come to him quite suddenly, and apparently with all the shock of a new discovery, has completely unnerved him. It is a healthy sentiment, and does him good. But I do not want it carried to the length of losing her. The thought of what he might one day bring home has been a nightmare to me ever since he left school. I suppose it is to most fathers. Especially if one thinks of the women one loved oneself when in the early twenties. A large pale-faced girl, who served in a bun-shop in the Strand, is the first I can recollect. How I trembled when by chance her hand touched mine! I cannot recall a single attraction about her except her size, yet for nearly six months I lunched off pastry and mineral waters merely to be near her. To this very day an attack of indigestion will always recreate her image in my mind. Another was a thin, sallow girl, but with magnificent eyes, I met one afternoon in the South Kensington Museum. She was a brainless, vixenish girl, but the memory of her eyes would always draw me back to her. More than two- thirds of our time together we spent in violent quarrels; and all my hopes of eternity I would have given to make her my companion for life. But for Luck, in the shape of a well-to-do cab proprietor, as great an idiot as myself I might have done it. The third was a chorus girl: on the whole, the best of the bunch. Her father was a coachman, and she had ten brothers and sisters, most of them doing well in service. And she was succeeded—if I have the order correct- -by the ex-wife of a solicitor, a sprightly lady; according to her own account the victim of complicated injustice. I daresay there were others, if I took the time to think; but not one of them can I remember without returning thanks to Providence for having lost her. What is one to do? There are days in springtime when a young man ought not to be allowed outside the house. Thank Heaven and Convention it is not the girls who propose! Few women, who would choose the right moment to put their hands upon a young man's shoulders, and, looking into his eyes, ask him to marry them next week, would receive No for an answer. It is only our shyness that saves us. A wise friend of mine, who has observed much, would have all those marrying under five-and-twenty divorced by automatic effluxion of time at forty, leaving the few who had chosen satisfactorily to be reunited if they wished: his argument being that to condemn grown men and women to abide by the choice of inexperienced boys and girls is unjust and absurd. There were nice girls I could have fallen in love with. They never occurred to me. It would seem as if a man had to learn taste in women as in all other things, namely, by education. Here and there may exist the born connoisseur. But with most of us our first instincts are towards vulgarity. It is Barrie, I think, who says that if only there were silly women enough to go round, good women would never get a look in. It is certainly remarkable, the number of sweet old maids one meets. Almost as remarkable as the number of stupid, cross-grained wives. As I tell Dick, I have no desire for a daughter-in-law of whom he feels himself worthy. If he can't do better than that he had best remain single. Janie and he, if I know anything of life, are just suited for one another. Helpful people take their happiness in helping. I knew just such another, once: a sweet, industrious, sensible girl. She made the mistake of marrying a thoroughly good man. There was nothing for her to do. She ended by losing all interest in him, devoting herself to a Home in the East End for the reformation of newsboys. It was a pitiful waste: so many women would have been glad of him; while to the ordinary sinful man she would have been a life-long comfort. I must have a serious talk to Dick. I shall point out what a good thing it will be for her. I can see Dick keeping her busy and contented for the rest of her days.

Veronica played the Princess,—with little boy Foy—"Sir Robert of the Curse"—as her page. Anything more dignified has, I should say, rarely been seen upon the English stage. Among her wedding presents were: Two Votes for Women, presented by the local Fire Brigade; a Flying Machine of "proved stability. Might be used as a bathing tent;" a National Theatre, "with Cold Water Douche in Basement for reception of English Dramatists;" Recipe for building a Navy, without paying for it, "Gift of that great Financial Expert, Sir Hocus Pocus;" one Conscientious Income Taxpayer, "has been driven by a Lady;" two Socialists in agreement as to what it means, "smaller one slightly damaged;" one Contented Farmer, "Babylonian Period;" and one extra-sized bottle, "Solution of the Servant Problem."

Dick played the "Dragon without a Tail." We had to make him without a tail owing to the smallness of the stage. He had once had a tail. But that was a long story: added to which there was not time to tell it. Little Sally St. Leonard played his wife, and Robina was his mother-in-law. So much depends upon one's mood. What an ocean of boredom might be saved if science could but give us a barometer foretelling us our changes of temperament! How much more to our comfort we could plan our lives, knowing that on Monday, say, we should be feeling frivolous; on Saturday "dull to bad-tempered."

I took a man once to see The Private Secretary. I began by enjoying myself, and ended by feeling ashamed of myself and vexed with the scheme of creation. That authors should write such plays, that actors should be willing to degrade our common nature by appearing in them was explainable, he supposed, by the law of supply and demand. What he could not understand was how the public could contrive to extract amusement from them. What was there funny in seeing a poor gentleman shut up in a box? Why should everybody roar with laughter when he asked for a bun? People asked for buns every day—people in railway refreshment rooms, in aerated bread shops. Where was the joke? A month later I found myself by chance occupying the seat just behind him at the pantomime. The low comedian was bathing a baby, and tears of merriment were rolling down his cheeks. To me the whole business seemed painful and revolting. We were being asked to find delight in the spectacle of a father—scouring down an infant of tender years with a scrubbing-brush. How women—many of them mothers—could remain through such an exhibition without rising in protest appeared to me an argument against female suffrage. A lady entered, the wife, so the programme informed me, of a Baron! All I can say is that a more vulgar, less prepossessing female I never wish to meet. I even doubted her sobriety. She sat down plump upon the baby. She must have been a woman rising sixteen stone, and for one minute fifteen seconds by my watch the whole house rocked with laughter. That the thing was only a stage property I felt was no excuse. The humour—heaven save the mark—lay in the supposition that what we were witnessing was the agony and death—for no child could have survived that woman's weight—of a real baby. Had I been able to tap myself beforehand I should have learned that on that particular Saturday I was going to be "set-serious." Instead of booking a seat for the pantomime I should have gone to a lecture on Egyptian pottery which was being given by a friend of mine at the London Library, and have had a good time.

Children could tap their parents, warn each other that father was "going down;" that mother next week was likely to be "gusty." Children themselves might hang out their little barometers. I remember a rainy day in a country house during the Christmas holidays. We had among us a Member of Parliament: a man of sunny disposition, extremely fond of children. He said it was awfully hard lines on the little beggars cooped up in a nursery; and borrowing his host's motor-coat, pretended he was a bear. He plodded round on his hands and knees and growled a good deal, and the children sat on the sofa and watched him. But they didn't seem to be enjoying it, not much; and after a quarter of an hour or so he noticed this himself. He thought it was, maybe, that they were tired of bears, and fancied that a whale might rouse them. He turned the table upside down and placed the children in it on three chairs, explaining to them that they were ship-wrecked sailors on a raft, and that they must be careful the whale did not get underneath it and upset them. He draped a sheet over the towel-horse to represent an iceberg, and rolled himself up in a mackintosh and flopped about the floor on his stomach, butting his head occasionally against the table in order to suggest to them their danger. The attitude of the children still remained that of polite spectators. True, the youngest boy did make the suggestion of borrowing the kitchen toasting-fork, and employing it as a harpoon; but even this appeared to be the outcome rather of a desire to please than of any warmer interest; and, the whale objecting, the idea fell through. After that he climbed up on the dresser and announced to them that he was an ourang-outang. They watched him break a soup-tureen, and then the eldest boy, stepping out into the middle of the room, held up his arm, and the Member of Parliament, somewhat surprised, sat down on the dresser and listened.

"Please, sir," said the eldest boy, "we're awfully sorry. It's awfully good of you, sir. But somehow we're not feeling in the mood for wild beasts this afternoon."

The Member of Parliament brought them down into the drawing-room, where we had music; and the children, at their own request, were allowed to sing hymns. The next day they came of their own accord, and asked the Member of Parliament to play at beasts with them; but it seemed he had letters to write.

There are times when jokes about mothers-in-law strike me as lacking both in taste and freshness. On this particular evening they came to me bringing with them all the fragrance of the days that are no more. The first play I ever saw dealt with the subject of the mother-in- law—the "Problem" I think it was called in those days. The occasion was an amateur performance given in aid of the local Ragged School. A cousin of mine, lately married, played the wife; and my aunt, I remember, got up and walked out in the middle of the second act. Robina, in spectacles and an early Victorian bonnet, reminded me of her. Young Bute played a comic cabman. It was at the old Haymarket, in Buckstone's time, that I first met the cabman of art and literature. Dear bibulous, becoated creature, with ever-wrathful outstretched palm and husky "'Ere! Wot's this?" How good it was to see him once again! I felt I wanted to climb over the foot-lights and shake him by the hand. The twins played a couple of Young Turks, much concerned about their constitutions; and made quite a hit with a topical duet to the refrain: "And so you see The reason he Is not the Boss for us." We all agreed it was a pun worthy of Tom Hood himself. The Vicar thought he had heard it before, but this seemed improbable. There was a unanimous call for Author, giving rise to sounds of discussion behind the curtain. Eventually the whole company appeared, with Veronica in the centre. I had noticed throughout that the centre of the stage appeared to be Veronica's favourite spot. I can see the makings of a leading actress in Veronica.

In my own piece, which followed, Robina and Bute played a young married couple who do not know how to quarrel. It has always struck me how much more satisfactorily people quarrel on the stage than in real life. On the stage the man, having made up his mind—to have it out, enters and closes the door. He lights a cigarette; if not a teetotaller mixes himself a brandy-and-soda. His wife all this time is careful to remain silent. Quite evident it is that he is preparing for her benefit something unpleasant, and chatter might disturb him. To fill up the time she toys with a novel or touches softly the keys of the piano until he is quite comfortable and ready to begin. He glides into his subject with the studied calm of one with all the afternoon before him. She listens to him in rapt attention. She does not dream of interrupting him; would scorn the suggestion of chipping in with any little notion of her own likely to disarrange his train of thought. All she does when he pauses, as occasionally he has to for the purpose of taking breath, is to come to his assistance with short encouraging remarks, such, for instance, as: "Well." "You think that." "And if I did?" Her object seems to be to help him on. "Go on," she says from time to time, bitterly. And he goes on. Towards the end, when he shows signs of easing up, she puts it to him as one sportsman to another: Is he quite finished? Is that all? Sometimes it isn't. As often as not he has been saving the pick of the basket for the last.

"No," he says, "that is not all. There is something else!"

That is quite enough for her. That is all she wanted to know. She merely asked in case there might be. As it appears there is, she re- settles herself in her chair and is again all ears.

When it does come—when he is quite sure there is nothing he has forgotten, no little point that he has overlooked, she rises.

"I have listened patiently," she begins, "to all that you have said." (The devil himself could not deny this. "Patience" hardly seems the word. "Enthusiastically" she might almost have said). "Now"—with rising inflection—"you listen to me."

The stage husband—always the gentleman—bows;—stiffly maybe, but quite politely; and prepares in his turn to occupy the role of dumb but dignified defendant. To emphasise the coming change in their positions, the lady most probably crosses over to what has hitherto been his side of the stage; while he, starting at the same moment, and passing her about the centre, settles himself down in what must be regarded as the listener's end of the room. We then have the whole story over again from her point of view; and this time it is the gentleman who would bite off his tongue rather than make a retort calculated to put the lady off.

In the end it is the party who is in the right that conquers. Off the stage this is more or less of a toss-up; on the stage, never. If justice be with the husband, then it is his voice that, gradually growing louder and louder, rings at last triumphant through the house. The lady sees herself that she has been to blame, and wonders why it did not occur to her before—is grateful for the revelation, and asks to be forgiven. If, on the other hand, it was the husband who was at fault, then it is the lady who will be found eventually occupying the centre of the stage; the miserable husband who, morally speaking, will be trying to get under the table.

Now, in real life things don't happen quite like this. What the quarrel in real life suffers from is want of system. There is no order, no settled plan. There is much too much go-as-you-please about the quarrel in real life, and the result is naturally pure muddle. The man, turning things over in the morning while shaving, makes up his mind to have this matter out and have done with it. He knows exactly what he is going to say. He repeats it to himself at intervals during the day. He will first say This, and then he will go on to That; while he is about it he will perhaps mention the Other. He reckons it will take him a quarter of an hour. Which will just give him time to dress for dinner.

After it is over, and he looks at his watch, he finds it has taken him longer than that. Added to which he has said next to nothing— next to nothing, that is, of what he meant to say. It went wrong from the very start. As a matter of fact there wasn't any start. He entered the room and closed the door. That is as far as he got. The cigarette he never even lighted. There ought to have been a box of matches on the mantelpiece behind the photo-frame. And of course there were none there. For her to fly into a temper merely because he reminded her that he had spoken about this very matter at least a hundred times before, and accuse him of going about his own house "stealing" his own matches was positively laughable. They had quarrelled for about five minutes over those wretched matches, and then for another ten because he said that women had no sense of humour, and she wanted to know how he knew. After that there had cropped up the last quarter's gas-bill, and that by a process still mysterious to him had led them into the subject of his behaviour on the night of the Hockey Club dance. By an effort of almost supernatural self-control he had contrived at length to introduce the subject he had come home half an hour earlier than usual on purpose to discuss. It didn't interest her in the least. What she was full of by this time was a girl named Arabella Jones. She got in quite a lot while he was vainly trying to remember where he had last seen the damned girl. He had just succeeded in getting back to his own topic when the Cuddiford girl from next door dashed in without a hat to borrow a tuning-fork. It had been quite a business finding the tuning-fork, and when she was gone they had to begin all over again. They had quarrelled about the drawing-room carpet; about her sister Florrie's birthday present; and the way he drove the motor-car. It had taken them over an hour and a half, and rather than waste the tickets for the theatre, they had gone without their dinner. The matter of the cold chisel still remained to be thrashed out.

It had occurred to me that through the medium of the drama I might show how the domestic quarrel could so easily be improved. Adolphus Goodbody, a worthy young man deeply attached to his wife, feels nevertheless that the dinners she is inflicting upon him are threatening with permanent damage his digestive system. He determines, come what may, to insist upon a change. Elvira Goodbody, a charming girl, admiring and devoted to her husband, is notwithstanding a trifle en tete, especially when her domestic arrangements happen to be the theme of discussion. Adolphus, his courage screwed to the sticking-point, broaches the difficult subject; and for the first half of the act my aim was to picture the progress of the human quarrel, not as it should be, but as it is. They never reach the cook. The first mention of the word "dinner" reminds Elvira (quick to perceive that argument is brewing, and alive to the advantage of getting in first) that twice the month before he had dined out, not returning till the small hours of the morning. What she wants to know is where this sort of thing is going to end? If the purpose of Freemasonry is the ruin of the home and the desertion of women, then all she has to say—it turns out to be quite a good deal. Adolphus, when able to get in a word, suggests that eleven o'clock at the latest can hardly be described as the "small hours of the morning": the fault with women is that they never will confine themselves to the simple truth. From that point onwards, as can be imagined, the scene almost wrote itself. They have passed through all the customary stages, and are planning, with exaggerated calm, arrangements for the separation which each now feels to be inevitable, when a knock comes to the front-door, and there enters a mutual friend.

Their hasty attempts to cover up the traces of mental disorder with which the atmosphere is strewed do not deceive him. There has been, let us say, a ripple on the waters of perfect agreement. Come! What was it all about?

"About!" They look from one to the other. Surely it would be simpler to tell him what it had NOT been about. It had been about the parrot, about her want of punctuality, about his using the butter-knife for the marmalade, about a pair of slippers he had lost at Christmas, about the education question, and her dressmaker's bill, and his friend George, and the next-door dog -

The mutual friend cuts short the catalogue. Clearly there is nothing for it but to begin the quarrel all over again; and this time, if they will put themselves into his hands, he feels sure he can promise victory to whichever one is in the right.

Elvira—she has a sweet, impulsive nature—throws her arms around him: that is all she wants. If only Adolphus could be brought to see! Adolphus grips him by the hand. If only Elvira would listen to sense!

The mutual friend—he is an old stage-manager—arranges the scene: Elvira in easy-chair by fire with crochet. Enter Adolphus. He lights a cigarette; flings the match on the floor; with his hands in his pockets paces up and down the room; kicks a footstool out of his way.

"Tell me when I am to begin," says Elvira.

The mutual friend promises to give her the right cue.

Adolphus comes to a halt in the centre of the room.

"I am sorry, my dear," he says, "but there is something I must say to you—something that may not be altogether pleasant for you to hear."

To which Elvira, still crocheting, replies, "Oh, indeed. And pray what may that be?"

This was not Elvira's own idea. Springing from her chair, she had got as far as: "Look here. If you have come home early merely for the purpose of making a row—" before the mutual friend could stop her. The mutual friend was firm. Only by exacting strict obedience could he guarantee a successful issue. What she had got to say was, "Oh, indeed. Etcetera." The mutual friend had need of all his tact to prevent its becoming a quarrel of three.

Adolphus, allowed to proceed, explained that the subject about which he wished to speak was the subject of dinner. The mutual friend this time was beforehand. Elvira's retort to that was: "Dinner! You complain of the dinners I provide for you?" enabling him to reply, "Yes, madam, I do complain," and to give reasons. It seemed to Elvira that the mutual friend had lost his senses. To tell her to "wait"; that "her time would come"; of what use was that! Half of what she wanted to say would be gone out of her head. Adolphus brought to a conclusion his criticism of Elvira's kitchen; and then Elvira, incapable of restraining herself further, rose majestically.

The mutual friend was saved the trouble of suppressing Adolphus. Until Elvira had finished Adolphus never got an opening. He grumbled at their dinners. He! who can dine night after night with his precious Freemasons. Does he think she likes them any better? She, doomed to stay at home and eat them. What does he take her for? An ostrich? Whose fault is it that they keep an incompetent cook too old to learn and too obstinate to want to? Whose old family servant was she? Not Elvira's. It has been to please Adolphus that she has suffered the woman. And this is her reward. This! She breaks down. Adolphus is astonished and troubled. Personally he never liked the woman. Faithful she may have been, but a cook never. His own idea, had he been consulted, would have been a small pension. Elvira falls upon his neck. Why did he not say so before? Adolphus presses her to his bosom. If only he had known! They promise the mutual friend never to quarrel again without his assistance.

The acting all round was quite good. Our curate, who is a bachelor, said it taught a lesson. Veronica had tears in her eyes. She whispered to me that she thought it beautiful. There is more in Veronica than people think.



CHAPTER XII



I am sorry the house is finished. There is a proverb: "Fools build houses for wise men to live in." It depends upon what you are after. The fool gets the fun, and the wise men the bricks and mortar. I remember a whimsical story I picked up at the bookstall of the Gare de Lyon. I read it between Paris and Fontainebleau many years ago. Three friends, youthful Bohemians, smoking their pipes after the meagre dinner of a cheap restaurant in the Latin Quarter, fell to thinking of their poverty, of the long and bitter struggle that lay before them.

"My themes are so original," sighed the Musician. "It will take me a year of fete days to teach the public to understand them, even if ever I do succeed. And meanwhile I shall live unknown, neglected; watching the men without ideals passing me by in the race, splashed with the mud from their carriage-wheels as I beat the pavements with worn shoes. It is really a most unjust world."

"An abominable world," agreed the Poet. "But think of me! My case is far harder than yours. Your gift lies within you. Mine is to translate what lies around me; and that, for so far ahead as I can see, will always be the shadow side of life. To develop my genius to its fullest I need the sunshine of existence. My soul is being starved for lack of the beautiful things of life. A little of the wealth that vulgar people waste would make a great poet for France. It is not only of myself that I am thinking."

The Painter laughed. "I cannot soar to your heights," he said. "Frankly speaking, it is myself that chiefly appeals to me. Why not? I give the world Beauty, and in return what does it give me? This dingy restaurant, where I eat ill-flavoured food off hideous platters, a foul garret giving on to chimney-pots. After long years of ill-requited labour I may—as others have before me—come into my kingdom: possess my studio in the Champs Elysees, my fine house at Neuilly; but the prospect of the intervening period, I confess, appals me."

Absorbed in themselves, they had not noticed that a stranger, seated at a neighbouring table, had been listening with attention. He rose and, apologising with easy grace for intrusion into a conversation he could hardly have avoided overhearing, requested permission to be of service. The restaurant was dimly lighted; the three friends on entering had chosen its obscurest corner. The Stranger appeared to be well-dressed; his voice and bearing suggested the man of affairs; his face—what feeble light there was being behind him—remained in shadow.

The three friends eyed him furtively: possibly some rich but eccentric patron of the arts; not beyond the bounds of speculation that he was acquainted with their work, had read the Poet's verses in one of the minor magazines, had stumbled upon some sketch of the Painter's while bargain-hunting among the dealers of the Quartier St. Antoine, been struck by the beauty of the Composer's Nocturne in F heard at some student's concert; having made enquiries concerning their haunts, had chosen this method of introducing himself. The young men made room for him with feelings of hope mingled with curiosity. The affable Stranger called for liqueurs, and handed round his cigar-case. And almost his first words brought them joy.

"Before we go further," said the smiling Stranger, "it is my pleasure to inform you that all three of you are destined to become great."

The liqueurs to their unaccustomed palates were proving potent. The Stranger's cigars were singularly aromatic. It seemed the most reasonable thing in the world that the Stranger should be thus able to foretell to them their future.

"Fame, fortune will be yours," continued the agreeable Stranger. "All things delightful will be to your hand: the adoration of women, the honour of men, the incense of Society, joys spiritual and material, beauteous surroundings, choice foods, all luxury and ease, the world your pleasure-ground."

The stained walls of the dingy restaurant were fading into space before the young men's eyes. They saw themselves as gods walking in the garden of their hearts' desires.

"But, alas," went on the Stranger—and with the first note of his changed voice the visions vanished, the dingy walls came back—"these things take time. You will, all three, be well past middle-age before you will reap the just reward of your toil and talents. Meanwhile—" the sympathetic Stranger shrugged his shoulders—"it is the old story: genius spending its youth battling for recognition against indifference, ridicule, envy; the spirit crushed by its sordid environment, the drab monotony of narrow days. There will be winter nights when you will tramp the streets, cold, hungry, forlorn; summer days when you will hide in your attics, ashamed of the sunlight on your ragged garments; chill dawns when you will watch wild-eyed the suffering of those you love, helpless by reason of your poverty to alleviate their pain."

The Stranger paused while the ancient waiter replenished the empty glasses. The three friends drank in silence.

"I propose," said the Stranger, with a pleasant laugh, "that we pass over this customary period of probation—that we skip the intervening years—arrive at once at our true destination."

The Stranger, leaning back in his chair, regarded the three friends with a smile they felt rather than saw. And something about the Stranger—they could not have told themselves what—made all things possible.

"A quite simple matter," the Stranger assured them. "A little sleep and a forgetting, and the years lie behind us. Come, gentlemen. Have I your consent?"

It seemed a question hardly needing answer. To escape at one stride the long, weary struggle; to enter without fighting into victory! The young men looked at one another. And each one, thinking of his gain, bartered the battle for the spoil.

It seemed to them that suddenly the lights went out; and a darkness like a rushing wind swept past them, filled with many sounds. And then forgetfulness. And then the coming back of light.

They were seated at a table, glittering with silver and dainty chinaware, to which the red wine in Venetian goblets, the varied fruit and flowers, gave colour. The room, furnished too gorgeously for taste, they judged to be a private cabinet in one of the great restaurants. Of such interiors they had occasionally caught glimpses through open windows on summer nights. It was softly illuminated by shaded lamps. The Stranger's face was still in shadow. But what surprised each of the three most was to observe opposite him two more or less bald-headed gentlemen of somewhat flabby appearance, whose features, however, in some mysterious way appeared familiar. The Stranger had his wine-glass raised in his hand.

"Our dear Paul," the Stranger was saying, "has declined, with his customary modesty, any public recognition of his triumph. He will not refuse three old friends the privilege of offering him their heartiest congratulations. Gentlemen, I drink not only to our dear Paul, but to the French Academy, which in honouring him has honoured France."

The Stranger, rising from his chair, turned his piercing eyes—the only part of him that could be clearly seen—upon the astonished Poet. The two elderly gentlemen opposite, evidently as bewildered as Paul himself, taking their cue from the Stranger, drained their glasses. Still following the Stranger's lead, leant each across the table and shook him warmly by the hand.

"I beg pardon," said the Poet, "but really I am afraid I must have been asleep. Would it sound rude to you"—he addressed himself to the Stranger: the faces of the elderly gentlemen opposite did not suggest their being of much assistance to him—"if I asked you where I was?"

Again there flickered across the Stranger's face the smile that was felt rather than seen. "You are in a private room of the Cafe Pretali," he answered. "We are met this evening to celebrate your recent elevation into the company of the Immortals."

"Oh," said the Poet, "thank you."

"The Academy," continued the Stranger, "is always a little late in these affairs. Myself, I could have wished your election had taken place ten years ago, when all France—all France that counts, that is—was talking of you. At fifty-three"—the Stranger touched lightly with his fingers the Poet's fat hand—"one does not write as when the sap was running up, instead of down."

Slowly, memory of the dingy cafe in the Rue St. Louis, of the strange happening that took place there that night when he was young, crept back into the Poet's brain.

"Would you mind," said the Poet, "would it be troubling you too much to tell me something of what has occurred to me?"

"Not in the least," responded the agreeable Stranger. "Your career has been most interesting—for the first few years chiefly to yourself. You married Marguerite. You remember Marguerite?"

The Poet remembered her.

"A mad thing to do, so most people would have said," continued the Stranger. "You had not a sou between you. But, myself, I think you were justified. Youth comes to us but once. And at twenty-five our business is to live. Undoubtedly the marriage helped you. You lived an idyllic existence, for a time, in a tumble-down cottage at Suresnes, with a garden that went down to the river. Poor, of course you were; poor as church mice. But who fears poverty when hope and love are singing on the bough! I really think quite your best work was done during those years at Suresnes. Ah, the sweetness, the tenderness of it! There has been nothing like it in French poetry. It made no mark at the time; but ten years later the public went mad about it. She was dead then. Poor child, it had been a hard struggle. And, as you may remember, she was always fragile. Yet even in her death I think she helped you. There entered a new note into your poetry, a depth that had hitherto been wanting. It was the best thing that ever came to you, your love for Marguerite."