"About Huggo?"

"Yes, it's about Huggo."

Nothing more. They were beginning to have exchanges terse as that.

She said presently, "I suppose it would interest me, wouldn't it?"

His face was very hard. "Do you want to know the answer I feel like giving to that?"

"I've asked for it, haven't I, Harry?"

"You shall have it. The answer is that I think what the letter says implicates you."

She preserved her composure. She by now had had practice in preserving her composure. "What's the matter, Harry?"

"Hammond says—as good as says—that Huggo will have to be withdrawn from Tidborough."

She knew perfectly well that this was only leading up to something. "May I hear?"

"You may." He took up the letter and read from it. "'Apart from that, and it would of course be the reason given—the other, I am confident, is susceptible of change—apart from that, the boy has now twice failed to keep his place in the school. If he does not get his remove in the coming term I shall be compelled to ask you to remove him.'" He put down the letter and looked at her. "That'll be nice, won't it?"

She made an appeal. "Harry, don't. I mean, don't talk like that. It won't happen."

He softened in no degree. He said sternly: "It will happen."

She persevered. "I'm quite sure it won't. You've only got to talk seriously to Huggo. This coming holidays you can get him some coaching. He's got brains."

There was a steely note in Harry's voice: "Oh, he's got brains. He can have coaching. It's what he hasn't got and what he can't get that's going to get Huggo withdrawn."

"What is it you mean?"

"A home."

She slightly raised the fingers of her hands and dropped them. This subject!

Harry said: "Hammond says more than I've told you."

"I supposed he did. 'Apart from that.' Apart from what?"

"It's Huggo's character he's writing to me about. This is what he says. 'The boy, though young, has not a good influence in his house. If I may suggest it, he does not, during the holidays, see enough of his home.'"

He folded the letter and returned it to its envelope. "Does it strike you that is going to be easy for me to answer?"

"It might be easier, Harry, if your tone made it possible for us to discuss it."

He gave a sound that was glint, as it were, of the blade in his voice: "Our discussions! I am a little tired of that blind alley, Rosalie."

She said sombrely, "And I."

"Will you suggest how the letter is to be answered?"

She said: "It's plain. If you agree with Mr. Hammond, it's plain. You can say you will stop Huggo's invitations. Harry, we're not by any means the only family that doesn't spend the whole of its holidays together. It's rather the practice nowadays, young people visiting their friends. If you think Huggo shouldn't—you can say so."

"Yes, I can say that. Tell me this. Is it going to give him a home?"

Her voice sprung from a sudden higher note. "Oh, you insist, you insist!" she cried. "You speak of blind alleys, but you insist."

He touched the letter. "This gives me ground for my insistence. This is an outsider, a stranger, appreciating how we live. This is my son, at my old school, condemned by how we live."

She interjected, "A schoolmaster's primeval animosity—blame the parent."

"Rosalie, a parent's primeval duty. We are responsible for the children. We have a duty towards them."

She softly struck her hands together. "Ah, how often, how often, and always worse! You said just now that I am implicated. It's always I. You say we have a responsibility towards the children. But you don't mean us, you mean me. Why I more than you? Why am I the accused?"

He began, "Because you—"

"Ah, don't, don't!"

But he concluded. "Because you are a woman."

Her voice that had gone high went numb. She made a gesture, as to the same reason and with the same words she'd made before, of weariness with this thing, "Ah, my God, that reason!"

Strike on!

Look, there's Huggo, failing again to get his remove, superannuated, withdrawn. There's Harry having a scene with the boy. There ought to be tears. There are tears. But they're in Harry's voice and twice he wipes his eyes. They're not in Huggo's.

Harry says to Huggo: "I say, I'm not going to be harsh; but, I say, can't you understand the disgrace; can't you understand the shame, old man? You've been at the finest school in England and you've had to leave. You're sixteen. Old man, when I was sixteen I got my footer colours. I was the youngest chap in the team. You're sixteen and you've never even got a house cap and you've had to leave. Huggo, I've never missed going down to a Founders' Day since I went to Oxford. It's always been the day of the year for me. I don't say I've ever done much in life, but every time I've been down to Founders' Day I've thought over, in the train, any little thing I may have pulled out in the year and I've felt, I've felt awfully proud to be taking it down to the old school, so to speak. Old chap, the proudest, far the proudest of all, was the year I went down when first you were there. I was proud. I'd given a son to the place. I'd got a boy there. Another Occleve was going to write the name up on the shields and rolls and things. It was the year Garnett first came down as a Cabinet Minister. Huggo, I looked old Garnett in the face with a grin. Whatever he'd done I'd got this much up on him—he hadn't given a son to the place. He hadn't got a boy there. That's how I always felt. Well, old man, it's all over. I can't go down to Founders' Day ever again. I've never missed. Now—I've had to withdraw my boy. I can't go again. I couldn't face it."

He wiped his eyes. No tears in Huggo's eyes. On Huggo's face only a look sullen and aggrieved; and sullen and aggrieved his mutter, "Well, perhaps it was different for you. I couldn't stick the place."

She gasped out, "Huggo!" but Harry had heard, and Harry, perhaps in offset to the emotion he had displayed, smashed his hand down on the table before him and cried out, "Well, keep your mouth shut about it then! Couldn't stick it! What can you be? What can be the matter with you? Couldn't stick it! Tidborough! The finest school in the world! Couldn't stick it!"

She interposed, "Harry, dear! Huggo; Huggo, tell your father you didn't mean that."

Huggo's mumble: "I'm sorry, father."

Harry's deep, kind voice: "I'm sorry too, old man. It rather jarred. Look here, this is all over. It's just been a side-slip. I've forgotten it. So has your mother. You just think over sometimes what I've said, my boy. We're fixing up this tutor's for you. You start in fresh and go like steam. Finest thing in the world a fresh start. Makes a side-slip worth while. I'm going to be—I am—prouder of you than anything on earth. My eldest boy! Like steam from now, old chap, eh?"

Strike on!

After that interview and when the boy had left the room—shambled out of the room in that sullen, aggrieved air he would always assume under correction—after that she and Harry had talked, most fondly. It was all, the talk, that poignantly affecting "fresh start" business that he'd begun with Huggo. Poignantly affecting because Harry, piling upon his love for Huggo and his pride in Huggo, which she shared, his love for his old school and his pride in it, which she could understand but could not share, had been so bravely, cheerfully earnest and assured about the future. "One who never turned his back but marched breast forward." The boy would be all right. Mice and Mumps, old lady, he'd be all right! It was just a mistake, just a side-slip. He'd got the right stuff in him, Huggo had, eh, old lady? They must just pull together to help the boy, eh?

He paused the tiniest space at that and pressed her hand and looked at her. She knew his meaning. If only....

He went on: This was a good place, this tutor's down in Norfolk they were sending him to, Harry was sure it was. It was a pity, of course, he couldn't go to another public school; but of course he couldn't; they wouldn't take him; no use worrying about that. This tutor, this man they were sending him to, was a first-class chap. Only took six pupils. Was a clergyman. Understood boys and youths who hadn't quite held their own and wanted special coaching and attention. Huggo was keen on the idea. After all, why shouldn't he have disliked Tidborough? There were such boys who didn't like public-school life. There, there! Perhaps it was the best thing that could have happened. Bet your life this was going to be the making of old Huggo, this change. This tutor and the quiet, self-reliant life there, each chap with his own jolly little bed-sitting room, would prop him up and get him into Oxford when the time came and make him no end happy and splendid.

"There, there, old lady," said Harry, and patted her and kissed her (she'd been affected). "There, there, it's going to be fine. The rest is just up to us, eh? We know the boy's weaknesses. We know what Hammond's told us about him—home life and home influences and all that stuff, and that's easy; we'll see the boy gets that, won't we?"

She used to wring her hands at that, and crying "If only!" cry again in desperation of excuse: "If only the war hadn't come! If only the war hadn't come!"

The war was on then. It was 1915. "You see," she used to appeal to the arbitrament before which, watching these pictures, she found herself, "you see, the war made everything so difficult, so impossible, so frightful, so confused, so blinding. Sturgiss had left the Bank to do war service in the Treasury. More than half the clerks had gone. We were understaffed and badly staffed at every turn. How could I give it up then? I don't say I would have. I'm on my knees. I've thrown in my hand. I'm not pretending anything or anyway trying to delude myself. I don't say I would have given it up and come home to make home life for the boy and for them all. I don't say I would. I'm only saying how infinitely harder, how impossibly harder, the war conditions made it. There was the understaffing—that alone. There was the cry about releasing a man for the front—that alone. I was releasing half a dozen men. Field said I was. I knew I was. How could I go back and be one of the women sitting at home? That alone! How could I? And there was more than that. It wasn't only the understaffing. It was Sturgiss going. I'd been absorbing the banking business for years. It was meat and drink to me. I'd had a bent for it ever since the Bagehot 'Lombard Street' days. I'd nourished my bent. I'd been encouraged to nourish my bent. The work was just a passion with me. Sturgiss went. I went practically into his place. I'd a position in banking that no woman had ever held, nor no banker ever imagined a woman ever holding, before. It was Sturgiss, a partner, I'd released for war service. It was Sturgiss's, a partner's, place I'd got. How could I give that up? How could I? How could I? If only the war hadn't come. If only...." Strike on!

It isn't all going as it should with the boy at the tutor's. But wasn't it impossible to observe, at the time, that it wasn't all going as it should? Of course (her thoughts would go) it was her fault; but was not the world, spiritual and material, in conspiracy against her, and against Huggo, and against her other darlings, to make easy her fault? Ah, that war, that war! Didn't it unsettle everybody and everything? Naturally it unsettled the boy down at the tutor's. Naturally one did not notice or foresee the trend of his unsettlement. Naturally it made plausible the excuses that he made.

There he is, down there at the tutor's. He wanted to do war work, not sitting there grinding lessons. All the tutor's pupils did. Naturally they did. The boy couldn't go in the army. He was too young. He was in a rural district. He got doing land-work. They all did. It was supposed to be done in leisure hours. Naturally it encroached on, and unfitted for, work hours. "After all," as the tutor wrote, "how can you blame the boys? After all, it's very hard to seem to try to check this patriotic spirit." After all! Oh, why do people say "after all" when they mean quite the contrary? This was before all, this seductive escape from uncongenial duties, precedent of all, influencing to all that happened—after all. Naturally it interfered with scholastic work. That was condoned. As naturally it interfered with discipline. That was not mentioned by the tutor. If he was cognisant of it was not domestic discipline everywhere relaxed "on account of the war"?

There Huggo is. These are his holidays. After the setback at Tidborough he was to have spent all his holidays at home. He was not, for the future, to go away on invitations. That war! He never spent any of his holidays at home. How could the boy be tied down in London with this war on? He made his land-work his excuse, most plausible. He spent all his holidays with friends whose homes were in rural districts.

Then it turned out that he had not, as he had given out, been always at the house of friends. He was found in cottage lodgings living with a friend, a fellow-pupil at the tutor's; on land-work truly, but in gross deception, and in worse.

It came out quite by chance and in a way very horrible. Harry discovered it. Harry, early in 1915, had been absorbed into the Home Office. His work was very largely in connection with a special secret service body dealing with spies. He examined in private arrested suspects. He advised and he directed on criminal matters therewith connected. He was working, under immense pressure, terrible hours. He was hardly ever in to dinner. He often was away all night. He frequently was away travelling for days together. When he was seen he showed signs of strain to Rosalie.

He came in one evening about nine o'clock. It was early in 1916. Huggo was then seventeen. Rosalie heard him in the hall and heard that some one was with him. She heard him, by the dining-room door, say, "You'd better go in there and get something to eat. I'll attend to you presently."

His voice was iron hard. Who was with him? What was the matter?

He came in to her. His face was iron hard. He shut the door. "Do you know who I've got here with me? Do you know where I've been? Do you know what's happened?"

His manner was extraordinary. His voice was like heavy axes, thudding. His face was dark and passionate, menacing. Happened? Things were always happening in these appalling days. She said, "Oh, what is it, Harry?"

"It's Huggo."

"Huggo?"

"Huggo!"

Like axes! It seemed that, of his passion (and she never before had seen passion in his face), he scarcely could speak. He fought for words. When they came out they thudded out.

"Do you know where Huggo's been this past month?"

"With the Thorntons, his friends."

"He's not. He's lied. He's been living with some blackguard friend in rooms in Turnhampton, in Buckinghamshire."

"Harry! Doing what? Land-work?"

"Land-work! Loafing! Drinking!"

"Drinking? Huggo?"

"Listen to me. This is what I've come to. This is what that boy's come to. I had to go down to this place Turnhampton about a spy they'd arrested. He was to come up in the police court there this morning. They took the other cases first. Court going to be cleared for my man. I sat there, waiting. The second case—this is what I've come to—was my son, my boy, Huggo, brought up from the cells where he'd spent the night. My son! Drunk and disorderly. He didn't see me. The police gave him a character. I sat there and listened to it. My son! A visitor, the police described him. Supposed to be working on some farm. Not a desirable character in the village. My son! Always loafing about. Always in the inn. Last night drunk. Assaulted the landlady. My son! Arrested. My son!"

He turned away.

She cried, "Harry! What happened?"

He turned on her in a violence renewed. "I declare to you that if he had gone to prison I would not have raised a hand to stop him. He'd had the grace—or he'd all the time had the guile—to give an assumed name. Would I have confessed, to save him, that he was my son? I believe I couldn't. He got off with a fine. I got hold of him. I've brought him back. He's here."

She went to the bell. "I must get you some food."

He stayed her. "Food! I'll tell you what to get me. I'll tell you what to get that boy. Get me a home. Get him a home. That's what's caused this. Do you know what he said to me coming up in the train? I said to him, 'Why are you always away like this? Why, in the holidays, are you never at home?' He said, 'What home is there for me to come to? Who's ever there?' He's right. Who is? Are you?"

She said quietly, "Harry, not now. Dear, you are not yourself."

He was not and continued not to be. "Well, answer my question. Are you ever in the home?"

She implored, "Oh, my dear!"

He was not to be placated. "Where is the home?"

"Harry!"

"Where's Doda?"

She began in her spirit to move. "Staying with friends."

"Where's Benji?"

"You perfectly well know. Staying with friends."

"Where are you?"

She put her hand to her bosom. "Oh, beware me, Harry. Here."

"For the night. Are you ever in the children's home?"

"Are you?"

"That sophistry! I have my work!"

"I've mine."

He smote his hand upon the mantelshelf by which he stood and turned and left the room.

Strike on!

Of course it healed and was obliterated and all passed over. Of course Harry forgave the boy. Of course he was handsome to the boy's excuses. Drunk! Of course it was just a slightly tipsy ebullition. Had been in the hot sun in the fields all day and was affected by a too long slake of beer. Assaulted the landlady! She'd been rough mannered and objected to his noise and got in the way and he had pushed her. "The boy's all right," Harry said to Rosalie after, the boy forgiven, he sat and talked with her. "He's got no vice. How could he have? It was wrong, it was deceitful, going off like that to that place without telling us. But he meant no harm. He's explained. He's genuinely sorry. He's just got out of hand a bit. They all have, the young people, in this war time. The boy's all right. He's eighteen in a few months. I'll see if I can speed it up a bit getting him into the army. He's magnificently keen. He'll do fine, God bless him. Think no more about it, old lady. In the whole business I'm only sick with myself that I lost my temper with him as I did—and with you, my dear, and with you." And he put out his hand to her.

"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward."

"And with you." Of course he was distressed he had been violent with her. Of course that painful outbreak was healed, obliterated, put away. He had expressed his utter regret. He'd been badly rattled with this infernal war all that week; this business on the top of it had been a most frightful shock to him. What had he said? Forgive, Rosalie, forgive! Of course she had nothing to forgive. Forgiveness also was for her to ask. As to the point thus violently raised, he saw, didn't he, the clear impossibility of her giving up her work, war work as much as his own, at such a time? Not to say the unnecessity of it—the children were growing up... it clearly could be done now. The position she held...

He said, "I know, old lady." He said, "I know, I know," and sighed.

Ah, from that vision of him saying, "I know," and sighing, and from the mute appeal that then was in his eyes, from that—strike on!

Most retentive to her, as it had passed, of Huggo's share in all that episode had been that she from her expostulation with Huggo had not come away with the same satisfaction as seemingly had Harry. She put before the boy how terribly his father had felt the shame of it, how almost broken-hearted he had been. "He idolises you, Huggo. You're always his eldest son. He thinks the world of you."

Huggo took it all with that familiar air of his of being the party that was aggrieved. He listened with impatience that was not concealed and he had no contrition to display. "Well, mother, it's all over. What is the good of going on and on about it? I've had it by the hour from father. He's understood. What is the good?"

She very lovingly talked to him. He all the time had an argument. He kept up his own case. He presently said, "And I do wish, mother, especially now I'm going into the army soon, I do wish you'd drop that 'Huggo.' You can't tell how I hate it. You might just as well call me Baby. It's a baby's name."

"Oh, Huggo, it was the name we loved you by."

"Well, I can't stick it. My name's Hugh."

Strike on!

There he is. He's in the army. He's utterly splendid in his uniform. How proud of him she is! They no longer gave commissions direct from civil life; but he'd been in the cadet corps at Tidborough and Harry was able to get him direct into an officer cadet battalion. He's off to France in what seems next to no time. He's home on leave and there's nothing that's too good for him and her purse at his disposal when he's run through Harry's generous allowance. He seems to get through an immense amount of money on leave. He's never at home. He's often out all night. Well, he's on leave. He's fighting for his country. You can't be anything but utterly lenient with a boy that's fighting for his country. He went back. Three days after he was supposed to have gone back Rosalie came face to face with him in Piccadilly. He was with some flapper type of girl, in the detestable phrase (as she thought it) by which the detestable products of the war (as she thought them) were called. He was just getting into a cab. She called out to him, astounded. She heard him swear and he jumped into the cab and was driven away. She didn't tell Harry. Harry found out. It came out that the boy for overstaying his leave was to be court-martialled. She did not know what Harry did. She noticed in those days what a beaten look Harry's face was getting. It was, of course, the war strain; but it only was first evident to her in that time of the court-martial. He scarcely spoke to her. She did not know what he did, but she knew he had much influence and exerted it at no sparing of himself. The boy got off with a severe reprimand and was returned to France. And to be in France, out there, in that ever-present shadow of death, was to be excused everything and to be forgiven everything.

Miraculously the war ended. The boy had had rather more than two years of it. He applied for immediate demobilisation as being a student, and he was one of the batch that got away immediately on that ground. He was nearly twenty then. Now what was he going to do? Oxford, of course, Harry said, and then the Bar, as always intended. Huggo, larking about in uniform long after he ought to have been out of it, was in immense feather with himself. He didn't say No and he didn't say Yes to the Oxford idea. All he said was that he voted all that wasn't discussed the very day he got back (it was more than six weeks since he had got back). He surely, he said, was entitled to a bit of a holiday first, after all he had been through. London seemed to be swarming with thousands of young men who claimed they were entitled to a bit of a holiday first after all they had been through. Huggo was never in the house. He had picked up with a man, Telfer, whom he had met in France, a big business man, Huggo described him as, and he seemed to spend all his time with this man. Telfer was a much older man than Huggo. Huggo brought him to dinner one night. It was rather a shock to Rosalie, meeting the man of whom she had heard so much. Huggo had never said anything about his age. He must have been quite forty. He had dull, cloudy eyes and a bad mouth. He called Huggo "Kid," using the word in every sentence, and it was easy to see from Harry's manner that Telfer was repellent to him. Easy, also, and not nice, to see Telfer's dominion over Huggo. Not nice to hear Huggo's loud, delighted laughter at everything addressed to him by Telfer. Harry spoke less and less as the meal advanced. The two left early; they were going to a music hall. When they had gone Rosalie and Harry looked at one another across the table and by their look exchanged a great deal.

"That's a detestable companion for Huggo," Harry said. "Rosalie, there's been enough of this. The boy must get to work."

It appeared, in interviews following that evening, that Huggo was not a bit keen on the Oxford idea. He wanted to go into business. He was not clear as to precisely what kind of business, but he wanted the freedom and the excitement of earning his own living, not to be cooped up at the "Varsity" like back at school again. Harry took a firm line. The boy resented the firm line. Well, anyway, he argued, he couldn't go till October, it was only June now; all right, he'd go in October—if he had to. Harry made arrangements for some reading through the summer preparatory to Oxford. It upset plans made by Huggo. He thought it "uncommonly hard" that he should have to spend the whole summer "swotting." Oh, well, if he had to, he had to. He had an invitation for a month for that immediate time to Scotland. The reading was arranged to start a month ahead. He didn't in the least want to be out of London just when there was so much going on and all his pals here; but anything was better than sticking this kind of life at home, father always at him; so he'd go to Scotland; he supposed he was entitled to a bit of country holiday before they cooped him up? He went to Scotland.

Twice during that month Rosalie thought she saw Huggo in the West End. But London was full of young men of the Huggo type. It wasn't likely.

It turned out to have been very likely. It turned out that Huggo had never been in Scotland at all but in London all the time. And much worse than that. One evening, towards the end of the so-called Scotland month, Huggo unexpectedly walked into the house. Rosalie was sitting with Harry in the dining-room over the end of dinner. Doda was upstairs putting last touches to herself before going out to a dance. Doda was eighteen then (it was 1919), had left school, and, with a large circle of friends, was going out a great deal. Benji was still at school, at Milchester. Harry had never resumed relations with beloved Tidborough.

The door opened and Huggo walked in. His face was very flushed and his articulation a little odd. When, after greetings, he sat down, he sat down with a curiously unsteady thud and gave a little laugh and said, "Whoa, mare, steady!"

It appeared, after explanations, that he had come to talk about "this Oxford business." "I really can't very well go to Oxford now, father. I really ought to start in some money-making business now, and I've got a jolly good opening promised me. I really ought to take it."

The decanters were on the table. He had already taken a glass of port. He filled another and drank it.

"The fact is, I'm—married."

There were some hard and bitter things said between his father and the boy. The boy fumbled—he obviously had been drinking—between would not or could not say very much as to who it was that he had married.

Harry said, "Who are her people? That's a plain question, isn't it?"

Huggo, very red, increasingly difficult to understand, said, "It's a plain enough question. It's a plain enough question. I've come here to be perfectly frank and plain and plain enough question. The fact is I don't know very much about her plain enough people."

Rosalie broke out of the frozen stupefaction that had numbed her. "Huggo, you must know. You must know who her people are."

Huggo turned a very slow gaze around from his father to his mother. He looked at her. He said with astonishing violence, "Well, I tell you I don't. People! What have her people got to do with it? I haven't married her people. She's my little girl and I've married her, not her people. Isn't that enough for you?"

Harry got up and went over to him. "Look here, you'd better run along. You're not in a fit state to talk to your mother. I'm not sure you're in a fit state to talk to any-body or to know what you're saying. You'd better go, my boy. We'll go into this in the morning. Come round early in the morning. We'll settle it then."

He was passing with Huggo through the door when Doda, equipped for her dance, came running down the stairs. "Hull-o, Huggo! Why, I haven't seen you for weeks. Where have you been?"

Huggo, standing unsteadily, unsteadily regarded her. "Point is, where are you going? All dressed up and somewhere to go! I'll bet you have! I've seen you jazzing about the place when you haven't seen me, Dods. And heard about you! There was a chap with me watching you at the Riddle Club the other night told me some pretty fierce—"

"Oh, dash, I've left my fan," cried Doda, and turned and ran back up the stairs.

Huggo called, "I say, Dods. I'm in a row. So'll you be one day, if you don't look out for yourself."

Doda's voice: "Oh, dry up—you fool!"

Strike on!



CHAPTER IV.



Her Doda! The one that was her baby girl, that was her tiny daughter! The one that was to be her woman treasury in which she'd pour her woman love; that was to be her self's own self, her heart's own heart, her tiny woman-bud to be a woman with her in the house of Harry and of Huggo! Her Doda!

Look, there she is! There's lovely Doda! She's fourteen. It's early in 1915, in the first twelve months of the war. (That war!) She's at that splendid school. She's been there nearly three years. She loves it. She's never so happy as when she's there, except, judging by her chatter, when she's away in the holidays at the house of one of her friends. It's at home—when she is at home—that she's never really happy. She's so dull, she always says, at home. She always wants to be doing something, to be seeing something, to be playing with somebody. She can't bear being in the house. She can't bear being, of an evening, just alone with Rosalie. "Oh, dear!" she's always saying. "Oh, dear, I do wish it would hurry up and be term time again."

"Darling, you are a restless person," Rosalie says.

"Well, mother, it is dull just sticking here."

"You know how Benji loves to have you home, Doda. Benji simply lives for you. I've never known a brother so devoted. You ought to think of Benji sometimes, Doda."

"Well, I can't be always thinking of Benji. I'm surely entitled to be with my own friends sometimes. I don't ask Benji to be devoted to me."

She's strangely given to expressions like that: "I didn't ask for"—whatever circumstance or obligation it might be that was irksome to her. "Not traditions—precedents!" The watchword of the school was strangely to be traced in her attitude, still in her childish years, towards a hundred commonplaces of the daily life. She was always curiously older than her years. She seemed to have a natural bent away from traditionally childish things and towards attractions not associated with childhood. She did excellently well at the school. She was, her reports said, uncommonly quick and vivid at her lessons. She was always in a form above her years. Her friends, while she was smallish, were always the elder girls, and the elder girls gave her welcome place among them. "Perhaps a shade precocious," wrote the lady principal in one of the laconic, penetrating sentences with which, above her signature, each girl's report was terminated: and, in a later term, "Has 'Forward!' for her banner, but should remember 'not too fast'."

"Gripes! I know what she's referring to," said Doda, seeing it, and laughed, obviously flattered.

"Your expressions, Doda!"

"Huggo uses it."

"They're wretched even in Huggo. But Huggo's a boy. You're a girl."

"Well, mother, I didn't ask to be a girl."

"Doda, that's merely silly."

"A lot of us say it, that's all I know."

"Then, darling, a lot of you are silly."

"Oh, I shall be glad when next week I go to the Fergussons. It is dull."

Look, there she is. She's sixteen. She's beautiful. She's pretty as a picture, and she knows she is. She's grown out of the rather early fullness of figure that had been hers. She's slim and tall and straight and supple and slender as a willow wand. If she had her hair up and her skirts lengthened (skirts then were only starting on their diminution to the knees), she'd pass for twenty anywhere, and a twenty singularly attractive, curiously self-possessed, strikingly suggestive in her pale and beautiful countenance, and in an alternating sleepiness and glinting in her eyes; strikingly suggestive of, well, strikingly suggestive according to the predilictions and the principles of the beholder.

This was in 1917. She was beginning rather to hate school now. She wanted to be out and doing some war work of some kind. Oh, those sickening scarves and things they were eternally knitting, that wasn't war work. It was fun at first. They were fed to death with doing them now. She didn't much want to go into a hospital or into any of these women's corps. They were a jolly sight too cooped up in those things from what she'd heard. She wanted to go into one of the Government offices and do clerical work. Several of the school Old Girls who had been there with her were doing that and it was the most ripping rag. Of course you had to work, and of course it was jolly good patriotic work, but you had a topping time in many ways. That was what she wanted to do. Oh, mother, do let her chuck school now and get to it! Not till she was seventeen? Well, it was sickening. Well, it was only another term, thank goodness.

It was in the holidays—in her brief days at home of the holidays—in which these wishes were expressed, that Rosalie found Doda was corresponding with officers at the front.

Doda was appallingly untidy in her habits. She was out one evening to a party—she managed to get a considerable number of parties into her dull days at home. Rosalie, come in from Field's, peeped into her bedroom to find her. She had not known that Doda was going out. The bedroom cried aloud that Doda had gone out. Drawers were open and articles of dress hanging out of them. One drawer, no doubt stubborn in its yieldings, was bodily out in the middle of the room. Clothes were on the floor. Clothes strewed the bed. Powder was all over the mirror. It was as if a whirlwind had passed through the room.

"Powder!" murmured Rosalie.

The state of the room dismayed her. The intense orderliness of her own character forbade her ringing for a maid. She simply could not look at untidiness like that without tidying it. She started to tidy. Doda's box was open. Its contents looked as if a dog had burrowed in it, throwing up the things as he worked down. If anything was to go in, everything must first come out. Rosalie lifted out an initial clearance.

There lay scattered beneath it quite half a dozen photographs of officers in khaki.

There were all inscribed. "To the school kid." "Wishing you were here." "With kisses." "Till we meet." And with slangy nicknames of the writers. There lay with them a number of letters, all in their envelopes. There lay also a sheet of paper covered in Doda's bold handwriting. It began "Wonderful Old Thing."

Rosalie had not touched these evidences of an unknown interest in Doda's life. She stooped, staring upon them, the lifted bundle of clothes in her hand. The stare that took in "Wonderful Old Thing" took in also the first few lines. They were not nice. But she oughtn't to read it. One didn't do that kind of thing. She replaced the bundle and closed the box. Then she tidied the room and wiped the mirror.

Early next morning, immediately on coming out of her bath, she went in to Doda. She opened the door softly and she distinctly saw the lids of Doda's eyes flash up and close again.

"Doda!"

Doda pretended to be asleep. Rosalie had sat up for Doda the previous night but had said nothing to her either of her discovery or of going to an invitation without having told her. Doda wasn't pretending to be asleep because she feared trouble. She was pretending to be asleep just because she had no wish for an early talk with her mother.

There was a little pang at the heart of Rosalie.

But it was just that the child wasn't demonstrative of her affections. None of them were. Even Benji not really what you would call demonstrative. How beautiful the child was! Her Doda! How little she ever saw of her!

She called her again.

Doda opened her eyes. "Hullo, mother."

Just that. No more. They were different, the children.

She sat down on Doda's bed and began to talk to her. Tidiness! "Doda, your room as you left it last night when you went out was simply terrible. How can you?"

"Oh, I can't be tidy," said Doda. "I simply can't. It's no good trying."

"Darling, you ought to try. It's so odd. I'm so fearfully tidy. It's almost a vice with me. One would have thought you'd have had it too."

Doda said indifferently, "I don't see why." She said, "Oh, I am sleepy. It's a matter of teaching when you're a kid, that sort of thing. You're tidy, but you never taught me to be tidy."

Rosalie said some more of encouragement to tidiness. She then said, "And there's another thing, Doda. I think you ought not to have rushed off like that to the Trevors last night without telling me."

"Mother, you knew where I was. I told the maids."

"You should have consulted me, Doda."

The child assumed the Huggo look. "Mother, how could I? They only asked me on the telephone at tea-time. How could I have consulted you?"

"In the same way as you were invited. On the telephone."

"Well, I never thought about it. Why should I if I had? I knew you'd have agreed. You wouldn't have stopped me, would you? It's dull enough, goodness knows."

"Doda, what I've come in to talk about is this. When I was tidying your room last night—"

Doda sat up. "Did you tidy my room?"

"I couldn't possibly leave a room like that. Well, I went to tidy your box—"

"I'll get up," said Doda. She jumped very quickly out of bed and put on a wrapper and her slippers. "Yes, well?"

"Are you writing to men at the front, Doda?"

"Every girl is. It's a thing to do. It helps them."

"Are they friends of yours, dear? Personal friends."

"They're brothers of girls I've stayed with."

"All?"

"Practically all. There're not more than two or three. Lonely soldiers, they're called. They used to advertise. It helps them. There's no harm in it, is there?"

"I haven't suggested there is, Doda."

"I can see you're going to, though. If you ask me—" She stopped.

"I don't think I like the idea, quite. I never did when I heard of it being done. Why should they send you their photographs?"

"But what's the harm? Why shouldn't they?"

"Darling, it's I am asking you. I'm your mother."

"Well, if you ask me—" Doda walked over to the window. She stood there a moment looking out. She suddenly turned. "If you ask me, I don't think it's right to—Of course if you think it right to—if you've been reading my letters—"

"Doda, I haven't. I just saw them there. But I'd like to read them, Doda. May I?"

"They're private letters. I don't see how you can expect me to show you private letters."

Rosalie went over to Doda and stood by her and stroked her hair. "Doda, I think we'll look at it like this. Let me read the letters and we'll talk about them and see if it's nice to go on writing to the men, in each individual case. That certainly you shall do, continue writing, if it all seems nice to us, together, Doda. If you won't show them to me—well, let us say if you'd rather not show them to me—then I'll ask you just to burn them and we'll forget it."

Doda stepped violently away from the hand that stroked her hair. "No. I won't show them."

"Then it's to burn them, Doda."

Doda looked slowly around the room. Her face was not nice. She said sullenly, "There's no fire here."

"Bring them down with you to the breakfast-room. Your father will have gone. We'll see Benji's not there."

She went to Doda and kissed her on the forehead. Doda shut her eyes. Her hand on Doda's shoulder could feel Doda quivering. She went to the door and at the door said, "And the photographs, dear. I should bring them too."

She had long finished breakfast when at last Doda came down. The tall, slim, beautiful and pale creature appeared in the doorway. She walked towards the fire, her head held high, her brown hair in a thick tail to her waist. She had a packet in her hands. As she began to stoop over the fire she suddenly uprighted herself and turned upon her mother. She said violently, "Perhaps you'd like to count them?"

Rosalie said very softly, "Doda!"

Doda bent to the flames and pressed the packet down upon them. She stood watching them mount about it. A half-burnt photograph slid onto the hearth. She gave a sound that was a catching at her breath and swiftly stooped and snatched the burning fragment up and cast it on its fellows. The leaping flames died down. She turned violently towards Rosalie, seated at the table watching her, her heart sick. That tall, slim, beautiful creature whose face had been pale and was habitually pale was in her face crimson, her slight young bosom heaving, her eyes, so often sleepy, flashing, her young hands clenched. "I call it a shame!" Her voice was high and raw. "I call it a shame! I call it wicked! I call it abominable! I call it an—an outrage!"

Rosalie said, "Doda! Doda, I haven't reproached you. I haven't reproved you. If they had been letters you could have shown me, yes, then a shame—"

The child called out, "I'm nearly seventeen! I call it an outrage!"

Rosalie got up and went to her. "Darling, they couldn't be shown. They're just burnt. They're forgotten." She put out inviting arms. "My poor Doda!"

That child, almost touched by her arms, brushed herself from the arms. "Why should I have things like this done to me by you?"

"Doda, I am your mother. You have a duty—"

"Well, I won't have a duty! Why should I have a duty? I didn't ask to be born, did I? You chose for me to be born, didn't you? I didn't choose it. I'll never forget this. Never, never, never!"

Tears rushed into her eyes and leapt from her eyes. She gave an impassioned gesture. She rushed from the room.

Strike on!

Look at her. There she is. She's only eighteen but she's woman now. Grown-up. "Out," as one would have said in the old and stupid days, but out much wider than the freest budding woman then. It's 1919. They've caught, the rising generation, the flag of liberty that the war flamed across the world; license, the curmudgeons call it; liberty, the young set free. It's 1919. She's been a year war-working in one of the huge barracks run up all over London for the multitudes of women clerks the Government departments needed and, the war over, not too quickly can give up. She loves it. She's made a host of friends. Her friends are all the girls of wealthy parents, like herself, or of parents of position if not of means; and all, like her, are far from with complaint against the war that's given them this priceless avenue away from home. She loves it. Of course she doesn't love the actual work. Who would? What she loves is the constant titillation of it. The titillation of getting down there of a morning and of the greetings and the meetings and the rapt resumptions of the past day's fun; the titillation of watching the clock for lunch and of those lunches, here to-day, to-morrow there, and of the rush to get back not too late. The titillation of watching the clock for tea, and of tea, and then, most sharpest titillation of them all, watching the clock for—time!; for—off!; for—out!; away! That is the charm of it in detail. The charm in general, as once expressed to Rosalie by one of Doda's friends brought in to tea one Sunday is, "You see, it gets you through the day."

That's it. The night's all right. There's nearly always something doing for the night. It's just the day would be so hopeless were there not this lively way of "getting through the day." That's it, for Doda.

Until she found her feet—not in her office, but at home at first emergence from her school—until she found her feet she often used to be kept uncommonly late at office. In a very short while she found her feet and that excuse no longer was put forward. Every girl of Doda's association was on her feet in 1919; and for Doda very much easier, at that, than for the generality, to establish her position in the house. By 1920, when she was nineteen, she was conducting her life as she pleased, as nineteen manifestly should. In 1921, when she was twenty, the war work was over and she was "getting through the day" much as she lived the night. It was pretty easy to get through the day in 1921. That which the curmudgeons called license, and liberty the free, was in 1921 held by charter and by right prescriptive.

Look at her. There she is. She's lovelier yet, if that which was her budding loveliness could bear a lovelier hue. She's always out somewhere, or she's always off somewhere, or she's always coming in from somewhere. Her eyes, in presentation more pronounced, have always got that sleepy look or got that glinting look. She never talks much at home. She seems to keep her talking for her friends and she never brings her friends home. She's on good terms with Rosalie. That's the expression for it. She was to have been a woman treasury into which was to be poured by Rosalie all her woman love. She was to have been a woman with her mother in the house of Harry and of Huggo. But that's all done. She's not a daughter to her mother. She never asked to be born to her mother, as once she told her mother, and though that never now again is said it is the basis of her stand. She owes no obligations. They just meet. They get on very pleasantly. She's on good terms with Rosalie.

It is odd—or else it isn't odd but only natural—that in all the pictures seen by Rosalie there scarcely is a picture that ever shows the children all together. They hardly ever, within the compass of her pictures, were together. As in their schoolhood, so much more in adolescence, they never showed a least desire for one another's company. They had their friends, each one, and much preferred their friends. You'd not, it's true, say that of Benji; but Benji in fraternal wish had to take what was offered him and there was nothing offered him by Doda; by Huggo less than nothing.

Benji!

Look, here's the Benji one; the good, the quiet, gentle one; the one that never gave a thought of trouble, Benji.

Her Benji! The one that came after disfavour, after remorse; that came with tears, with thank God, charged-with-meaning tears. The littlest one. The one that was so tiny wee beside the big and sturdy others. Her last one! Her Benji!

Look, there he is. Always so quiet, gentle, good. Always, though snubbed, so passionately fond of Doda. Look, there he is. He's at Milchester, in his spectacles, the darling! He's always in his books. He isn't good at games. He does so well at school. Oh, isn't Harry proud of him and fond of him! Oh, doesn't Harry often sigh and wish he could have gone to Tidborough to win those prizes and those honours there. But Tidborough's closed to Harry, Harry says. Look, there goes Benji! It's 1919. He's sixteen. It's Speech Day at Milchester. He's in the Sixth. He's won all those prizes. She's holding two and Harry's holding three, and there he goes to take the Heriot Gold Medal. All the great hall is simply cheering Benji! The Head is saying that he's the youngest boy that's ever won the Heriot. Look, there's the Bishop handing it, and shaking Benji by the hand, and patting Benji on the back, and saying something to him. You can't possibly hear what it is, every one is cheering so. Look, here he comes with the medal, in his spectacles, the darling! She can scarcely see, her eyes are brimming so. Harry's quite shameless. Harry's got tears standing on his cheeks and he's set down the prizes and is stretching both his hands out to the boy. Feel, that's his hand—her Benji's hand—snuggled a moment in hers, and then he turns to his father and is eagerly whispering to his father, his spectacles rubbing his father's head, the darling! He's more demonstrative to his father than he is to her. She feels it rather sometimes. He's awfully sweet to her, but, you can't help noticing it, it's more his gracious manner than the outpouring she'd give anything to have. It's funny how he always seems the tiniest atom strange with her as if he didn't know her very well or hadn't known her very long. It sometimes pains a little. He's different with his father. He loves being with his father. And doesn't Harry love having the boy with him! Harry idolises the boy. Of course Huggo is Harry's eldest, and whatever Huggo's disappointments, these men—at least these perfect Harry type of men—have for their eldest boy within their hearts a place no other child can quite exactly fill. There's some especial yearning that the eldest seems to call. There's some incorporation of the father's self, there's some reflection that he sees, there's some communion that he seems to find, that makes "My eldest son" a thing apart. But, with that reservation, and that's ingrained in men, it's Benji that's the world to Harry. He's going to Ox-ford. He's going to have the Bar career that Huggo wouldn't take. But Harry thinks there's some especial wonders going to come to Benji. He says the boy's a dreamer. He says the boy's a thinker. "Benji's got something rare about him, Rosalie," he says. "That boy's got a mark on him that genius has. You wait and see, old lady. It's Benji's going to make the old name shine!" Strike on!

It is odd, sad, significant, that there is scarcely a picture that shows together those three children, or even two of them. It's 1921 now and drawing very close to Finis; but always the old detachment, the seeming want of mutual love, appears to hold the three apart. Doda is sometimes glimpsed, no more, with Benji, always putting off or chilling off her brother for her friends; sometimes she's seen with Huggo, meeting him and he her, more like an acquaintance of their sets than like fruit of the same parents; familiar, apparently, with one another's lives: referring to places of amusement by both frequented, as had been done, in instance, on that night of Huggo's announcement of his marriage when with a note that rung sinister he had bantered Doda and she had turned and run upstairs. But no more than that. The children seem to have no mutual love. They're different.

It's 1921. Huggo was scarcely ever seen now. He had married in haste and had in haste repented. He also had played a trick, involving a sum of money, on his father. His wife, as it appeared, had been met at some dancing club and the brief courtship had continued anywhere but at her home. Of her home Huggo knew only what she told him; and what she told him was only what she could invent. She was then, at their first meeting, in the uniform of a war service corps to which she belonged. She said her father was a clergyman.

"A clergyman's daughter!" cried Huggo bitterly, acquainting Rosalie only three months after his marriage of his marriage's failure. "A clergyman's daughter! That's what they all say—those! Wasn't I a fool to be caught out by that! Oh, wasn't I a fool! If you want to know what she really was, she was a teashop waitress, in the city somewhere. If you want to know what her reverend father in the country was, is, he doesn't live in the country; he lives in Holloway, and he doesn't live in a rectory in Holloway, he lives in a baker's shop. That's what he is, a baker! That's what I've done for myself, married a waitress! Yes, and then you, you and father, when she comes whining here and complains I ill-treat her and keep her without money, you two take her part and send her back to me with your championship and get me here to pijaw me about my duty to my pretty young wife! Well, now you know, now you know, and you can tell father what my pretty young wife is—how she deceived me. Deceived me! Now you know."

Rosalie said, "Huggo, you deceived her."

Huggo had been leaving and now very violently went. "That's your tone, is it? I might have known! That's all you can say, is it? To see me ruin my life and then reproach me! Ruin my life! It's not I that's ruined my life. It's you. There, now I've told you! I can see things now. What sort of a chance have I ever had? What sort of a home have I ever had? Have I ever had a mother? When I was a kid did I ever have a mother like other kids have? I can see things now. A mother! I can't ever remember a time when I wasn't in the charge of some servant or governess or other. You said this afternoon before father that I didn't love you. Did you ever teach me to love you? By God, I can't remember it. By God, I can't."

Strike on!

Also that trick, touching a sum of money, upon his father. When he first made known his marriage, and it was obvious he must have his way and be set up to start in life, he had also, as he had said, the chance of a lucrative business. It was the kind of thing he liked. It was the kind of thing he was keen on. It was a motor-car business. There was a little syndicate that was putting a new car on the market. They'd got works, just outside London somewhere. They'd got show-rooms in the West End. And they'd got an absolutely first-class article. That chap Telfer was one of the directors; a first-class chap called Turner was another; they'd let him in for eight thousand pounds and he'd be absolutely set up for life and be pulling in an immense fortune in no time. You will, won't you, father?

Of course Harry forgave the boy, his eldest son. The marriage was done, what was the use of being unkind or stupid about it? Of course Rosalie welcomed the wife, Lucy, the prettiest creature, a tiny shade common, perhaps, but a sweet little soul with always about her a pathetic air of being afraid of something (of when it should come out precisely what she was, as the event proved). Of course Harry paid over the eight thousand pounds. Huggo took, "to start with," as he said, a tiny furnished flat in Bayswater. Rosalie installed him and his bride therein and left him, on their first night there, ever so gay, so confident, so happy. Her Huggo!

In two months it all came out. Lawyers are notoriously lax in making their own wills. Harry, who could master a case quicker than any man at the Bar, and could see to the soul and beyond it of a hostile witness a minute after getting on his feet to cross-examine, was fooled blind by the syndicate that was going to put the absolutely first-class article on the market. Whether it was that there never had been a business, and that Harry's inspection of works, visits to show-rooms, and examination of books, was all part of an elaborate swindle carried out with the aid of some one who possessed these accessories; or whether it was that the whole thing was bought up cheap merely to sell at a profit, was never clearly known to Harry and to Rosalie. Harry was too grieved to pursue the shock. "I'll take not a step further in the matter, Rosalie," Harry said. "I can't bear to find the boy out deeper. It's done. There's no sense in being stupid or unkind about it."

What happened was that the car enterprise never was an enterprise at all except an enterprise to get eight thousand pounds into the possession of the syndicate. Nothing ever was properly announced by Huggo. It just "came out." It "came out" that the syndicate was not established in the West End show-rooms but in three rather dingy offices in the city. It "came out" that the syndicate was not running a motor-car business but a business cryptically described as "Agents." Huggo said disaster had overtaken the car enterprise and that the syndicate, rescuing what remained of the smash, had pluckily set up on another line. He thought he could scrape along. It was a knockout of course, but he thought he could scrape along.

"But what I can't make out, old man," said Harry, when Huggo had stumbled through an entirely non-explanatory explanation of the syndicate's business in its new capacity as agents, "What I can't make out, old man, is why you should trade under another name. Why, 'So-and-So, and So-and-So, and So-and-So, Agents'—I can't ever remember the names? Why not 'Telfer, Occleve and Turner'?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, father—I want you to know everything without any concealment—"

"I know you do, old man. I know you do."

"Well, as a matter of fact, that's just a bit of useful swank. The names we're trading under are swagger names and we think it sounds better."

"Occleve sounds pretty good to me, Huggo. We've been a good long way on Occleve, the Occleves."

"Well, that's what they think, father, and of course, as I've told you, they know infinitely more about business than I do. They'll explain the whole thing to you any time you like. It's all absolutely above-board, father."

"My dearest old boy, don't talk like that. Of course it is. We're only so grieved, your mother and I, that you should have had such a setback so early. But remember, old man, the great thing is not to let your wife suffer. No pinching or screwing for her, Huggo. Always your wife first, Huggo. We'll give you at the rate of three hundred a year just until all's going swimmingly, and that's to keep Lucy merry and bright, see?"

It was shortly after that it all came out that the thing was a ramp, the motor-car business never in existence; shortly after that it came out Huggo was neglecting his wife; shortly after that the high words to Rosalie, telling her how his wife had deceived him; shortly after that that the syndicate, amazingly prosperous, moved into offices better situated and handsomely appointed; shortly after that it came out that the business of the syndicate was in some way connected with company promotion.

Harry, seen among these developments, was not the man he used to be. He was at the crest of his career at the Bar, working enormously and earning richly, but the old bright, cheery way had gone from Harry. There was permanently upon his face, and there was intensified, the beaten look that Rosalie first had seen on that night, in the war, when there had been the Huggo drinking business and when for the first and only time he had spoken passionately to Rosalie. When he now was at home he used to sit for long periods doing nothing, just thinking. When sometimes, home earlier than he, Rosalie saw him coming up the street towards the gamboge door she noticed, terribly, the bowed shoulders, the weary gait, the set, careworn face. She used to run down then to the famous gamboge door and open it and greet him and his face used to light up in the old way, but it was not the same face, and the effect of its radiation therefore not the same. It was not that the face was older. It was that its aspect was changed.

He used to look up from that chair where he sat just thinking, when Doda, butterflied for the evening, butterflied across the room, and used to say, "Out again, Doda?" He then would relapse back into his thoughts. He had a habit of getting up suddenly and rather strangely wandering about from room to room of all the principal rooms of the house, just standing at the door of each, and looking in (they were all empty of inhabitants), and then coming back and sitting again in the chair and just sit, thinking.

It used to pain the heart of Rosalie.

She said more than once when he returned from such a tour, "Dear Harry, looking for anything?"

He'd say rather heavily, "No; no, dear. Just having a look around."

It used to pain the heart of Rosalie.

But he used to be enormously brightened up when Benji came home. Benji was just at Oxford then, eighteen. He was a different man when Benji was at home. He used to say, "Rosalie, that boy's going to make a name for himself in the world. My heart's wrapped round that boy, Rosalie. Ay, me! I wish he'd been our eldest, Rosalie."

That was because he couldn't tear away the wrappings of his heart from about his eldest. Men can't.

It used to pain the heart of Rosalie.

Of course, with everything now known, Huggo was forgiven. Huggo was prosperous now, almost aggressively prosperous. He kept a car. The syndicate, whatever it actually did, was obviously doing enormously well. What was the good of being stupid and unkind to the boy now that, at last, he had found his feet? But Huggo scarcely ever came to the house. He had virtually left Lucy. Lucy lived on in the originally-taken furnished flat in Bayswater. Huggo had rooms somewhere, no one quite knew where, and lived there. Rosalie used to get Lucy to the house sometimes, but Lucy was never at her ease on these visits, and Doda, who sympathized entirely with Huggo in the matter, very much disliked her and would not meet her. Lucy was in bad health and she was going to have a baby. Her health and her condition made her look much more common than she used to look.

Then the baby was born; a little girl. Poor, grateful Lucy called it Rosalie. She told Rosalie that Huggo said he didn't care what the baby was called. He was very angry about the baby. "He was worse than usual when he was here last week," said Lucy. "I think he's got something on his mind. I think he's worrying about something. Oh, he was sharp."

Lucy was very ill with the birth of her baby. She didn't seem able to pick up again from her confinement. She kept her bed. Then, suddenly, she developed pneumonia. The maternity nurse, paid by Rosalie, was still in attendance. Rosalie sent in another nurse, and on that same night, going straight to the sick bed from Field's, and then coming home very late, told Harry, who was waiting up for her, that the worst was feared for Lucy. She then said, "Harry, if anything happens, I think we'll have that baby here. It will practically be a case of adopting the child."

Harry agreed.

"I'd get in a nurse for her, the new little Rosalie." She sighed.

"Yes, yes," said Harry.

She said after a little, "Harry, the nurseries in use again!"

He sat there as he was always sitting, thinking.

She went over to him. "Dear, won't you like the nurseries to be in use again?"

He said slowly, "I will, very much, Rosalie. It's lonely, these empty rooms. I will very much—in some ways."

Rosalie knew what Harry meant. She touched his hand. "Dear, I think it can be made different."

Harry knew what Rosalie meant. He pressed the hand that touched his own. "That's all right, Rosalie. That's all right, dearest."

Rosalie was down early next morning. She desired an early breakfast and to go on to see Lucy before Field's. It might be necessary to stay the day with Lucy. There was also Huggo. What was Huggo doing? Overnight Rosalie had seen Doda, come in late from an evening with a very intimate friend of hers always known, through some private joke of Doda's, as "the foreign friend." The foreign friend, not in the least foreign but English, was a young married woman living apart from her husband. Doda had brought her to the house once. She was very pretty and a cheery soul. She would have been called fast when Rosalie was a girl. In 1921 she would almost, in the manner she presented to Rosalie, have been called slow. Doda and she were greatly attached.

Doda, overnight, going straight upstairs to bed, had said, "Have you seen Huggo to-day? He's in a scrape of some sort."

"Oh, Doda, what kind of a scrape?"

"He didn't tell me. I ran into him quite by chance coming away from a theatre with the foreign friend. We both thought he was rather badly rattled."

"Was he going on to Lucy? Did he know Lucy was very ill indeed?"

Doda said, "I don't know. He didn't tell me. Is she?" and indifferently passed upstairs.

Rosalie at her early breakfast was thinking what news the day would give of Lucy and of Huggo. She was suddenly, by Huggo in person, brought intelligence of both. She heard the door bell ring and in a minute Huggo surprisingly broke into the room. He had kept his hat on. He looked white, drawn and very agitated. He shut the door behind him. "Lucy's dead."

Tears sprang into the eyes of Rosalie, "Oh, my poor Huggo!"

He made a gesture. "Oh, that's no good! Look here, mother, will you look after things over there for me? That's all I've come in to say. Will you see to everything and will you take the kid? I can't stop."

He made to go.

"Huggo, of course I will. But you'll be there? Are you going there now?"

"I'm not. I'm going away."

"Going away?"

His hand was on the door. "Yes, going away. Look here, there's another thing. If any one comes here for me will you say you haven't seen me? It's important. It's vital."

"Huggo, what is the matter?"

"You'll jolly soon know. You may as well know now. Then you'll realise. If you want to know—the police are after me."

He was gone.



CHAPTER V



In the Book of Job it all happened, to Job, in the apparent compass of one piece of time not broken by diurnal intervals, not mitigated by recuperative cessations between blow and blow. It seemed to Rosalie that it was like that it happened also to her. There seemed no interval. It seemed to her wrath on wrath, visitation upon visitation, judgment upon judgment.

It seemed to her that she was no sooner come down out of the Old Bailey—her hand touching at things for support, her vision vertiginous, causing the solid ground to be in motion, her ears resonant, crying through her brain the words she saw in Huggo's look as they removed him; it seemed to her she was no sooner out from there than she was at the telephone and summoned by the foreign friend and was there with Doda and was in process of "Oh, Doda!"—"Oh, mother!"; it seemed to her she was no sooner out from that than she was with that burly messenger, going with him, returning from him. There were days and nights walled up in weeks and months between these things, but that is how they seemed to Rosalie.

The syndicate was laid by the heels, one here, one there, Huggo in France, very shortly after the warning that had put Huggo in flight. The syndicate went through the police court where was unfolded a story sensational with surprising sums of money, captivating with ingenuity of fraud covered up by fraud to help new fraud again. The syndicate stood in the dock at the Old Bailey. Those two of the syndicate described by the prosecution and by the judge as the principals were sentenced to three years' penal servitude. "You," said the judge, addressing with a new note in his voice the third prisoner, "You, Occleve, stand in a different—"

Rosalie began to pray.

Harry would not attend the trial. He had done all that could be done, and of his position there was very much that he was able to do, and had attended the police court during the initial proceedings. He would not go to the Old Bailey. He would not go out. He would not read the papers. He used to sit about the house. "My son a felon.... My boy a felon. My son.... My eldest son...."

Rosalie was given a seat in the floor of the court on the first days of the hearing. On the day when the verdict was to be given and sentence passed she could not bear that. An usher, much pitying, obtained her a place in the gallery. She looked down immediately upon her Huggo. Her hands, upon the ledge before her, were all the time clasped. Her eyes alternately were in her hands and on her Huggo. Her heart moved between her Huggo and her God.

"You, Occleve, stand in a different position. . . ."

She began to pray. All of her being, all of her soul, all of her life, with a spiritual and a physical intensity transcending all that her body and her mind had ever known, was in apotheosis of supplication. "O God the Father! O God the Father! O God the Father!"

Her Huggo! Those words that only in snatches she heard were being addressed to her Huggo.

"... Your counsel has most eloquently pleaded for you.... You bear an honoured name.... You bear a name held in these precincts in honour, in esteem, in love, in admiration.... You have had a good home, a great and a noble father, a distinguished and devoted mother...."

That suppliant crouched lower in her supplication.

"... You have been the dupe, you have been the tool, you have been in large part, as your counsel has pleaded, and as I believe, the unsuspecting agent.... Nevertheless, the least sentence I can pass on you—"

"O God the Father, the Father!"

"... is six months' imprisonment."

That boy, whose head had been hung and eyes downcast, lifted his head and raised his eyes and gave one look into the eyes of that suppliant for him that sat above him. There was recalled by that suppliant a look that had passed from the place of accusation to the place of assembly in the place called the Sanhedrin.

Her Huggo!

They took him away.

Doda didn't stop going out. She seemed to go out more. The pain within that house, brought there by Huggo, seemed to make that house more than before unbearable to Doda. She often spent the night, or the week end away, staying with the foreign friend, she generally said. She would have nothing whatever to do with the baby now installed in the house. She never would go near it. Once she passed it in the hall in its perambulator. She stopped and stooped over the face of lovely innocence that lay there and gazed upon it with an extraordinary intensity. She drew back with a sharp catch at her breath and sharply stepped away and turned and ran very quickly upstairs. After that. when she chanced to pass the child, she turned aside and would not look upon the child. She began not to look well, Rosalie thought. There often was upon her lovely face a pinched and drawn expression, disfiguring it. On the rare occasions when she was in to dinner she sat strangely moody. There only was a moodiness about that table then; but the moodiness of Doda was noticeable to Rosalie. She ate hardly at all. She sometimes would get up suddenly before a meal was ended and go away, generally to her own room. Very many times Rosalie would seek anxiously to question her, but apart from the independence which commonly she maintained towards Rosalie, Doda seemed very much to resent solicitude upon her health. "What should be the matter? I look perfectly well, don't I?"

"Doda, you don't. I've noticed it a long time."

"Well, I am perfectly well. If I wasn't I'd say so."

Strike on!

Rosalie was called up on the telephone by the foreign friend. It was the evening, about ten o'clock. Doda was away for a week at Brighton with the foreign friend. She was due back to-morrow. Harry was out with Benji. Benji was nineteen then and was home on vacation from Oxford. Harry never could bear Benji out of his sight when Benji was home. In the affliction that had come upon them, he seemed to cling to Benji. Rosalie had persuaded him that evening to go with Benji to a concert. Harry said the idea of anything like that was detestable to him, but Rosalie had pleaded with him. Just a little chamber concert was different. It would do him so much good to have an evening away and to hear a little music and Benji would love it. Harry allowed himself to be persuaded and went off arm-in-arm with Benji. He always put his arm in Benji's when he walked with Benji.

Rosalie was waiting for them when the telephone bell rang and she was spoken to by the foreign friend.

It then happened like this.

The voice of the foreign friend was very alarmingly urgent. "Would she come and see Doda at once, at once, at once?"

The voice struck a chill to the heart of Rosalie. "But where are you? You're at Brighton, aren't you? Are you speaking from Brighton?"

"No, no. At my flat. At my flat."

"But what is it? What is it? Why don't you tell me what it is?"

"It's an—it's an—." The voice stammered and hesitated.

"Oh, speak! Oh, speak."

She could hear the voice gulping.

"Oh, please do speak!"

"Doda isn't very well. Doda's very ill. It's an—it's an accident."

"I'll come. I'll come."

"Is Mr. Occleve there?"

"He isn't. He's out."

"Can you get him?"

"No. Yes. I don't know. I can't think. Oh, tell me. Tell me."

"Will you leave a message for him to come at once?"

"At once. At once."

She wrote a message for Harry and she picked up a wrap and she ran out hatless to find a cab.

She found a cab and went to Doda.

This all happened as quickly as bewilderingly. It was not like a dream, and it was not like a nightmare. It was like a kind of trance to Rosalie.

The foreign friend was not seen at the flat. She was in some other room and did not appear. She said afterwards, and proved, that she had been away the previous night, leaving Doda at the flat, and had returned to find her—as she was found; and had immediately called the nearest doctor and then Doda's mother.

It was the doctor that opened the door to Rosalie. He was a Scotchman; a big and rugged man, all lines and whiskers and with a rugged accent.

He said, "You'rre her mother, arren't ye? Where's her father?"

"He's coming. Where is my child?"

The doctor jerked his head towards a wall. "She's yon."

"Tell me, please."

He pushed a chair towards her but she shook her head. "Please tell me."

"Ye'll want your courage." He again indicated the chair. She again shook her head. "It'll try ye. She's dying."

The lips of Rosalie formed the words: "Tell me." There was no sound in her.

The doctor said, "I cannot tell ye. It is for your husband to hear."

The heart of Rosalie stood still. She put both her hands upon her heart and she said to the doctor, "Tell me. I am strong."

The doctor looked upon Rosalie intently and he said: (he was perhaps dexterously giving her time that she might weld herself) he said, "Ye'll need be strong. Ye look sensible. Ye'll need be sensible." He said, "There's been before me here another—There's been a creature here before me. There's been blackguarrd work here. There's been—that poor child there..." He told her.

She moaned: "O God, be merciful!"

That child, as that night went, was in delirium. She seemed to lie upon a bed. She lay, in fact, upon the altar of her gods, of self, of what is vain, of liberty undisciplined, of restless itch for pleasure, and of the gods of Rosalie, a piteous sacrifice to them. You that have tears to shed prepare to shed them now. Or if you have no tears, but for emotion only sneers, do stop and put the thing away. It is intolerable to think to have beside that bed, beside that child, beside that Rosalie, your sneers. It's not for you, and you do but exacerbate the frightful pain there's been in feeling it with them.

Rosalie was all night with that child. Harry was there upon the other side upon his knees and never raised his head. Benji was there that loved his sister so. Across the unblinded window strove a moon that fought with mass on mass of fierce, submerging clouds as it might be a soul that rose through infinite calamity to God. That child was in much torment. That child was in delirium and often cried aloud. That child burned with a fever, incredible, at touch of her poor flesh, to think that human flesh such flame could hold and not incinerate. That child in her delirium moaned often names and sometimes cried them out. Nicknames that in the sexless jargon of her day and of her kind might have been names of women and might be names of men. Darkie, Topsy, Skipper, Kitten, Bluey, Tip, Bill, Kid. Names, sometimes, more familiar. Once Huggo; once father; once loud and very piteously, "Benji, Benji, Benji, Benji, Benji!"

She never once said mother.

She calmed and a long space was mute. The moon, its duress passed, stood high, serene, alone. The doctor breathed, "She's passing." That child raised her lids and her eyes looked out upon her watchers.

Rosalie cried, "Oh, Doda!"

That child sighed. "Oh, mother!"

There was no note of love. There was of tenderness no note. There only was in that child's sigh a deathly weariness. "Oh, mother!" That child passed out.

They came home in the very early morning. Rosalie was in her working room. She had some things to do. She wrote to Mr. Field a letter of her resignation from Field's Bank. She only wrote two lines. They ended, "This is Final. I have done."

She sealed that letter and she moved about the room unlaying and as she unlaid, destroying, all evidences, all treasures, all landmarks, all that in any way referred to or touched upon her working life. There were cherished letters, there were treasured papers. She destroyed them all. From one bundle, not touched for years, dust-covered and time-discoloured, there came out a battered volume. She turned it over. "Lombard Street." She opened it and saw the eager underlinings and saw the eager margin notes, and ghosts... (it's written earlier in these pages). She rent the book across its perished cover and pressed it on the fire and on to the flames in the fire. "I have done."

But she was not done with and she had the feeling that she was not done with. She said to Harry, "This is not the children's tragedy. This is my tragedy. These were not the children's faults. These were my transgressions. Life is sacrifice. I never sacrificed. Sacrifice is atonement. It now is not possible for me to atone."

She was on her knees beside his chair. He stroked her hair.

There was an inquest. Harry went. She stayed at home and Benji stayed with her to be with her. Benji was not to be consoled. His mood was very dreadful. A report was printed in the evening paper before Harry came home. Benji read it and told Rosalie a witness, a man, had been arrested on the coroner's warrant. Benji said, "I think I'll go out now, mother, for a little."

Later in the afternoon when Rosalie was with Harry a maid came into the room and looked at Harry and saw how sunk he was in his chair and so went to Rosalie and whispered to her. Rosalie went out. There was a man wished to see the master. Rosalie spoke to him. He was a large, burly man with a strong face. He looked like, and was, a police officer in plain clothes. Rosalie heard what he began to say and said she would go with him. In the cab, the man told her about it. All his sentences began with or contained "The young gentleman."

"The young gentleman... the prisoner, when the young gentleman came rushing in, happened to be in the charge-room writing out a statement.... The young gentleman, before any one could stop him, rushed at this prisoner and caught him by the throat and threw him and the table over and banged the man's head against the floor, fair trying to kill him. They got the young gentleman off. They ought to have arrested the young gentleman, and they did most earnestly wish they had of arrested him, and blamed themselves properly that they didn't arrest him. But they felt cruelly sorry for the young gentleman and they got him outside and let him go and no more said. Of course, as madam knew, the police office wasn't very far from Gower Street station, the underground station with them steep stairs leading straight down from the street to the platform, as madam might be aware.... The young gentleman was seen by witnesses, whose names were took, to come rushing down these stairs on to the platform as if some one was after him.... The young gentleman come rushing down and there was a train just coming in, and whether he couldn't stop or whether he.... There's some say one thing and some say the other.... Whichever way it was the young gentleman...."

Rosalie did her errand with the man and then came back to Harry. She had to tell Harry.

He was sitting in his chair. He had an open book on his knees. She saw, as one notices these things, it was a Shakespeare. She stood up there at the door before him and she said, "Harry—Benji!"

He saw it in her face.

He groaned.

He took the book off his knees and fumbled it, and with a groaning mutter dropped it: "'Unarm, Eros, the long day's work is done.'"

She came to him and saw, as one sees things, above his head the picture he had hung when raven was his hair and radiant his face, and had hit his thumb, and jumped, and cried out, "Mice and Mumps!" and had laughed and wrung his hands, and cried out, "Mice and Mumps!" and laughed again. She came to him and saw him wilt and crumple in his chair, and could have sworn she saw the iron of his head, that had been raven, go grey anew and greyer yet. She came to him and she said, "Harry—Benji—an accident—not an accident—on the railway—killed."

His voice went, not exclamatorily, but in a thick mutter, as one agrope, in sudden darkness, befogged, betrayed. "My God, my God, my God, my God, my God!"

She fell on her knees; and on her arms and on his lap she buried then her face.

He suddenly stooped to her, and caught his arms about her, and raised her to him, and pressed his face to hers, and held her there; and his cry was as once before, passionately holding her, his cry had been; then from his heart to her heart, now from the abysses of his soul to her soul's depths, "Rosalie! Rosalie!"



POSTSCRIPT.



There was to have been some more of it; but there, they're in each other's arms, and one has suffered so with them one cannot any more go on. One's suffered so! One has looked backward with her. The heart must break but for a forward glimpse:—

They're all right now. Huggo's in Canada. He writes every week. They're all right now. That other Rosalie that they brought in is looking after them. She's looking after them, that elf, that sprite, that tricksy scrap, that sunshine thing. She calls Harry father and Rosalie she calls mother. She has all her meals with them. There's no nurse. It's breakfast she loves best. She's on the itch all breakfast. When breakfast's done she's off her chair and hopping. She trumpets in her tiny voice, "Lessons! Lessons!" She trumpets in her tiny voice, "Lessons, lessons! On mother's knee! On mother's knee!"

THE END