"Philippa—how can you? How would such a thing be possible? Really—really! ..."

"Well, really really as much as you like, but any woman could propose to a blind man—a little way off, certainly—only I don't know that Gwen ..." However, the Countess stopped short of her daughter's reference to a respectful distance and card-leaving.

It was at this point that Gwen and Irene were audible on the stairs, suggesting the lateness of the hour. The Earl said:—"I think I shall go and see Torrens as soon as there's quiet. I have gone to him every evening till now. I may speak to him about this." To which her ladyship replied:—"Now mind you put your foot down. What I am always afraid of with you is indecision." He made no answer, but listened, waiting for the last disappearance couchwards. Then he went to his room for his hand-lamp, as described, and after satisfying himself about that conflagration's non-existence, was just in time to cross Miss Dickenson, a waif overdue, and wonder what on earth had made that very spirit and image of all conformity guilty of such a lapse.

Then followed his interview with Mr. Torrens already detailed. Perhaps the foregoing should have come first. If ever you retell the tale you can make it do so. But whatever you do be careful to insist on that point of not talking before the servants. Dwell on the fact that Miss Lutwyche went straight to the Servants' Hall, after putting a finishing touch on her young ladyship, and said to the housekeeper:—"You'll be very careful, Mrs. Masham, to say nothing whatever about her young ladyship and Mr. Torrenson"; it being one of her peculiarities to alter the names of visitors on the strength of alleged secret information, to prove that she was in the confidence of the family. To which Mrs. Masham replied:—"Why not be outspoken, Anne Lutwyche?" provoking, or licensing, further illumination on the subject; with the result that in half an hour the household was observing discreet silence about it, and exacting solemn promises of equal discretion from acquaintances as discreet as itself. But there were words between Mrs. Starfield, the Countess's abettor in dressing, and Miss Lutwyche; the former having found herself forestalled in her theory of the argument in the Lib'ary, which she had reported as the cause of delay, by the latter's prompt expression of cautious reserve, and having accused her of throwing out hints and nothing to go upon. Whereupon the young woman had indignantly repudiated the idea that a frank nature like hers could be capable of an underhand insinuendo, and had felt a great and just satisfaction with her powers of handling her mother-tongue.



CHAPTER XXIII

PSYCHOLOGIES ABOUT THE COUNTESS. HOW GWEN WOULDN'T GO TO ATHENS, OR ROME, OR TO STONE GRANGE. BUT SHE WOULD GO WITH HER COUSIN CLO TO CAVENDISH SQUARE. HOW THEY DROVE OVER TO GRANNY MARRABLE'S, AND DAVE'S LETTER WAS TALKED ABOUT. HIS AMANUENSIS. OH, BUT HOW STRANGE THAT PHOEBE SHOULD READ MAISIE'S WRITING AGAIN! AN ODIOUS LITTLE GIRL, WITH A STYE IN HER EYE. AN IMPRESSIONIST PICTURE. HOW MICHAEL'S FRIENDS SHOULD BE ESCHEWED, IF NOT HIMSELF. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE AND HER SISTER HAD MADE SLIDES ON ICE THAT THAWED SEVENTY YEARS AGO. HOW A LADY AND GENTLEMAN JUMPED FARTHER OFF

The Countess of Ancester was mistaken when she said to Gwen's mother that that young lady was sure to cool down, as other young ladies, noteworthily her own mother's daughter, had done under like circumstances. The story prefers this elaborate way of referring to what that august lady said to herself, to more literal and commonplace formulas of speech; because it emphasizes the official, personal, and historical character of the speaker, the hearer, and the instance she cited, respectively. She spoke as a Countess, a Woman of the World, one who knew what her duty was to herself and her daughter, and had made up her mind to perform it, and not be influenced by sentimental nonsense. She listened as a parent, really very fond of this beautiful creature for which she was responsible, and painfully conscious of a bias towards sentimental nonsense, which taxed her respect for her official adviser. She referred to her historical precedent—her own early experience—with a confidence akin to that of the passenger in sight of Calais, who dares to walk about the deck because he knows how soon it will be safe to say he was always a very good sailor.

But just as that very good sailor is never quite free from painful memories of moments on the voyage, over which he might have had to draw a veil, so this lady had to be constantly on her guard against recurrent images of her historical precedent, during her periods of wavering between her two suitors. Could she not remember—could she ever forget rather?—Romeo's passionate epistles and Juliet's passionate answers, during that period of enforced separation; when the latter had not begun to cool down, and was still able to speak of Gwen's father—undeveloped then in that capacity—as a tedious, middle-aged prig whom her ridiculous aunt wanted to force upon her? Was it a sufficient set-off against all this fiery correspondence that she had burned one preposterous—and red-hot—effusion, and started seriously on cooling, because a friend brought her news that Romeo was not pining at all, but had, on the contrary, danced three waltzes with a fascinating cousin of hers? Of course it was, said the Countess officially, and she had behaved like a good historical precedent, which Gwen would follow in due course. Give her time.

Nevertheless her unofficial self was grave and reflective more than once over the likeness of this young Adrian to Hamilton, his father, especially in his faculty for talking nonsense. Some people seemed to think his verses good. Perhaps the two things were not incompatible. Hamilton had never written verses, as far as she knew. No doubt that Miss Abercrombie his father married was responsible for the poetry. If he had married another Miss Abercrombie it might have been quite different. She found it convenient to utilise a second example of the same name; some suppositions are more convenient than others. She shirked one which would have cancelled Gwen, as an impossibility. One must look accomplished facts in the face.

The cooling down did not start with the alacrity which her ladyship had anticipated. She had expected a fall of at least one degree in the thermometer within a couple of months. Time seems long or short to us in proportion as we are, so to speak, brought up against it. Only the unwatched pot boils over; and, broadly speaking, pudding never cools, and blowing really does very little good. This lady would have blown her daughter metaphorically—perhaps thrown cold water on her passion would be a better metaphor—if her husband had not earnestly dissuaded her from doing so. It would only make matters worse. If Gwen was to marry a blind man, at least do not let her do it in order to contradict her parents. Fights and Love Affairs alike are grateful to bystanders who do not interfere; but interference is admissible in the former, to assist waverers up to the scratch. In the latter, the sooner time is called, the better for all parties. But if time is called too soon, ten to one the next round will last twice as long.

The Earl also interposed upon his wife's attempt to stipulate for a formal declaration of reciprocal banishment. "Very well, my dear Philippa!" said he. "Forbid their meeting, if you like! You can do it, because Adrian is bound in honour to forward it if we insist. But in my opinion you will by doing so destroy the last chance of the thing dying a natural death." Said Philippa:—"I don't believe you want it to"—a construction denounced, we believe, by sensitive grammarians. The Earl let it pass, replying:—"I do not wish it to die a violent death." Her ladyship dropped the portcullis of her mind against a crowd of useless reflections. One was, whether her own relation with this young man's father had died a violent death; and, if so, was she any the worse? The rest were a motley crowd, with "might have been!" tattooed upon their brows and woven into the patterns of the garments. Among them, two images—a potential Adrian and a potential Gwen—each with one variation of parentage, but quite out of court for St. George's, Hanover Square. Are the Countess's thoughts obscure to you? They were, to her. So she refused to entertain them.

In the Earl's mind there was an element bred of his short daily visits to the young man, whose disaster had been a constant source of self-reproach to him. If only its victim had been repugnant to him, he would have been greatly helped in the continual verdicts of the Court of his own conscience, which frequently discharged him without a stain on his character. How came it, then, that he so soon found himself back in the dock, or re-arguing the case as counsel for the prisoner? Probably his sentiments towards the young man himself were responsible for some of his discontent with his own impartial justice, however emphatically he rejected the idea. There is nothing like a course of short attendances at the bedside of a patient to generate an affection for its occupant, and in this case everything was in its favour. All question of responsibility for Adrian's accident apart, there was enough in his personality to get at the Earl's soft corners, especially the one that constantly reminded its owner that he was now without a son and heir. For, since his son Frank was drowned, he was the father of daughters only. It was not surprising that he should enter some protest against any but a spontaneous cancelling of Gwen's trothplight. It was only fair that spontaneity should have a chance. He did not much believe that the cooling down process would be materially assisted by a spell of separation; but if Philippa would not be content without it, try it, by all means! If she could persuade her daughter to go with her to Paris, Rome, Athens—New York, for that matter!—why, go! But the Earl's shrug as he said this meant that her young ladyship had still to be reckoned with, and that pig-headed young beauties in love were kittle cattle to shoe behind. Those were the words his brain toyed with, over the case, for a moment.

The reckoning bristled with difficulties, and every unit was disputed. Paris was not fit to be visited, with the present government; and was not safe, for that matter. Cholera was raging in Rome. Athens was a mass of ruins from the recent earthquakes. Gwen wavered a moment over New York, not seriously suggested. It was so absurd as to be worth a thought. This seems strange to us, nowadays; but it was then nearly as far a cry to Broadway as it is now to Tokio.

Appeals to Gwen to go abroad with her mother failed. She also made difficulties—good big ones—about going with her parents to Scotland. Her scheme was transparent, though she indignantly disclaimed it. How could anything be more absurd than to accuse her of conspiring with Irene towards a visit to that young lady at Pensham Steynes? Had she not promised to live without seeing Adrian for six months, and was she not to be trusted to keep her word?

She really wished to convince her father of the reality of her attachment, apart from compensation due to loss of sight. So she agreed to accompany Cousin Clotilda to London, and to stay with her at the town-mansion of the Macganister More, who had just departed this life, leaving the whole of his property to the said Cousin, his only daughter and heiress. She rather looked forward to a sojourn in the great house in Cavendish Square, a mysterious survival of the Early Georges, which had not been really tenanted for years, though Sister Nora had camped in it on an upstairs floor you could see Hampstead Heath from. It would be fun to lead a gypsy life there, building castles in the air with Sister Nora's great inheritance, and sometimes peeping into the great unoccupied rooms, all packed-up mirrors and chandeliers and consoles and echoes and rats—a very rough inventory, did you say? But admit that you know the house! Its individuality is unimportant here, except in so far as it supplied an attraction to London for a love-sick young lady. Its fascination and mystery were strong. So were the philanthropies that Sister Nora was returning to, refreshed by a twelve-month of total abstinence, with more power to her elbow from a huge balance at her banker's, specially contrived to span the period needed for the putting of affairs in order.

So when Miss Grahame—that was the family name—went on to London, after a month's stay at the Towers, Gwen was to accompany her. That was the arrangement agreed upon. But before they departed, they paid a visit to Granny Marrable at Chorlton, who was delighted at the reappearance of Sister Nora, and was guilty of some very transparent insincerity in her professions of heartfelt sorrow for the Macganister More. He, however, was very soon dismissed from the conversation, to make way for Dave Wardle.

Her young ladyship from the Castle hardly knew anything about Dave. In fact, his fame reached her for the first time as they drove past the little church at Chorlton on their way to Strides Cottage, Mrs. Marrable's residence. Sister Nora was suddenly afraid she had "forgotten Dave's letter after all." But she found it, in her bag; and rejoiced, for had she not promised to return it to Granny Marrable, to whom—not to herself—it was addressed, after Dave's return last year to his parents. Lady Gwendolen was, or professed to be, greatly interested; reading the epistle carefully to herself while her cousin and Granny Marrable talked over its writer. But she was fain to ask for an occasional explanation of some obscurity in the text.

It was manifestly a dictated letter, written in a shaky hand as of an old person, but not an uneducated one by any means; the misspellings being really intelligent renderings of the pronunciation of the dictator. As, for instance, the opening:—"Dear Granny Marrowbone," which caused the reader to remark:—"I suppose that doesn't mean that the writer thinks you spell your name that way, Mrs. Marrable, only that the child says Marrowbone." The owner of the name assented, saying:—"That would be so, my lady, yes." And her ladyship proceeded: "I like you. I like Widow Thrale. I like Master Marmaduke!"—This was the other small convalescent, he who had an unnatural passion for Dave's crutch, likened to Ariadne—"I like Sister Nora. I like the Lady. I like Farmer Jones, but not much. I am going to scrool on Monday, and shall know how to read and write with a peng my own self." "Quite a love-letter," said Gwen, after explanations of the persons referred to—as that "the lady" was the mother of her own personal ladyship; that is, the Countess herself. Gwen continued, identifying one of the characters:—"But that was hypocrisy about Farmer Jones. He didn't like Farmer Jones at all. I don't.... That's not all. What's this?" She went on, reading aloud:—"'Writited for me by Mrs. Picture upstairs on her decks with hink.' I see he has signed it himself, rather large. I wonder who is Mrs. Picture, who writes for him."

"We heard a great deal about Mrs. Picture, my lady." Sister Nora thought her name might be Mrs. Pitcher, though odd. "I could hardly say myself," said Granny Marrable diffidently.

Gwen speculated. "Pilcher, or Pilchard, perhaps! It couldn't be Picture. What did he tell you about her?"

"Oh dear—a many things! Mrs. Picture had been out to sea, in a ship. But she will be very old, too, Mrs. Picture. I call to mind now, that the dear child couldn't tell me from Mrs. Picture when he first came, by reason of the white hair. So she may be nigh my own age."

Gwen was looking puzzled over something in the letter. "'Out to sea in a ship!'" she repeated. "I wonder, has 'decks' anything to do with that?... N-n-no!—it must be 'desk.' It can't be anything else." It was, of course, Mrs. Prichard's literal acceptance of Dave's pronunciation. But it had a nautical air for the moment, and seemed somehow in keeping with that old lady's marine experience.

Widow Thrale then came in, bearing an armful of purchases from the village. With her were two convalescents; who must have nearly done convalescing, they shouted so. The ogress abated them when she found her granny had august company, and removed them to sup apart with an anaemic eight-year-old little girl; in none of whom Sister Nora showed more than a lukewarm interest, comparing them all disparagingly with Dave. In fact, she was downright unkind to the anaemic sample, likening her to knuckle of veal. It was true that this little girl had a stye in her eye, and two corkscrew ringlets, and lacked complete training in the use of the pocket-handkerchief. All the ogress seemed to die out of Widow Thrale in her presence, and the visitors avoided contact with her studiously. She seemed malignant, too, driving her chin like a knife into the nuque of one of the small boys, who kicked her shins justifiably. However, they all went away to convalesce elsewhere, as soon as their guardian the ogress had transplanted from a side-table a complete tea-possibility; a tray that might be likened to Minerva, springing fully armed from the head of Jove. "Your ladyship will take tea," said Granny Marrable, in a voice that betrayed a doubt whether the Norman Conquest could consistently take tea with Gurth the Swineherd.

Her ladyship had no such misgiving. But an aristocratic prejudice dictated a reservation:—"Only it must be poured straight off before it gets like ink.... Oh, stop!—it's too black already. A little hot water, thank you!" And then Mrs. Thrale, in cold blood, actually stood her Rockingham teapot on the hob; to become an embittered deadly poison, a slayer of the sleep of all human creatures above a certain standard of education. When all other class distinctions are abolished, this one will remain, like the bones of the Apteryx.

"We'll pay a visit to Dave," said Sister Nora. "Perhaps he'll introduce us to Mrs. Picture." Nothing hung on the conversation, and Mrs. Picture, always under that name—there being indeed none to correct it—cropped up and vanished as often as Dave was referred to. One knows how readily the distortions of speech of some lovable little man or maid will displace proper names, whose owners usually surrender them without protest. That Granny Marrowbone and Mrs. Picture were thereafter accepted as the working designations of the old twins was entirely owing to Dave Wardle.

"Mrs. Picture lives upstairs, it seems," said Gwen, referring to the letter. "I wonder you saw nothing of her, Cousin Chloe."

"Why should I, dear? I never went upstairs. I heard of her because the little sister-poppet wanted to take the doll I gave her to show to a person the old prizefighter spoke of as the old party two-pair-up. But I thought the name was Bird."

"A prizefighter!" said Gwen. "How interesting! We must pay a visit to the Wardle family. Is it a very awful place they live in?" This question was asked in the hope of an affirmative answer, Gwen having been promised exciting and terrible experiences of London slums.

"Sapps Court?" said Miss Grahame, speaking from experience. "Oh no!—quite a respectable place. Not like places I could show you out of Drury Lane. I'll show you the place where Jo was, in this last Dickens." Which would fix the date of this story, if nothing else did.

Granny Marrowbone looked awestruck at this lady's impressive knowledge of the wicked metropolis, and was, moreover, uneasy about Dave's surroundings. She had had several other letters from Dave; the latter ones to some extent in his own caligraphy, which often rendered them obscure. But the breadth of style which distinguished his early dictated correspondence was always in evidence, and such passages as lent themselves to interpretation sometimes contained suggestions of influences at work which made her uneasy about his future. These were often reinforced by hieroglyphs, and one of these in particular appeared to refer to persons or associations she shrank from picturing to herself as making part of the child's life. She handed the letter which contained it to Sister Nora, and watched her face anxiously as she examined it.

Sister Nora interpreted it promptly. "A culprit running away from the Police, evidently. His legs are stiff, but the action is brisk. I should say he would get away. The police seem to threaten, but not to be acting promptly. What do you think, Gwen?"

"Unquestionably!" said Gwen. "The Police are very impressive with their batons. But what on earth is this thing underneath the malefactor?" Sister Nora went behind her chair, and they puzzled over it, together. It was inscrutable.

At last Sister Nora said slowly, as though still labouring with perplexity:—"Is it possible?—but no, it's impossible—possible he means that?..."

"Possible he means what?"

"My idea was—but I think it's quite out of the question—— Well!—you know there is a prison called 'The Jug,' in that sort of class?"

"I didn't know it. It looks very like a jug, though—the thing does.... Yes—he's a prisoner that's got out of prison. He must have had the Jug all to himself, though, it's so small!"

"I do believe that's what it is, upon my word. There was an escape from Coldbath Fields—which is called the Stone Jug—some time back, that was in the papers. It made a talk. That's it, I do believe!" Sister Nora was pleased at the solution of the riddle; it was a feather in Dave's cap.

Said Gwen:—"He did escape, though! I'm glad. He must have been a cheerful little culprit. I should have been sorry for him to get into the hands of those wooden police." Her acceptance of Dave's Impressionist Art as a presentment of facts was a tribute to the force of his genius. Some explanatory lettering, of mixed founts of type, had to be left undeciphered.

The ogress came back from the convalescents; having assigned them their teas, and enjoined peace. "You should ask her ladyship to read what's on the back, Granny," she said; not to presume overmuch by direct speech to the young lady from the Towers. The old lady said acquiescingly:—"Yes, child, that would be best. If you please, my lady!"

"This writing here?" said Gwen, turning the paper. "Oh yes—this is Mrs. Picture again. 'Dave says I am to write for him what this is he has drawed for Granny Marrowbone to see. The lady may see it, too.' ... That's not me; he doesn't know me.... Oh, I see!—it's my mother...."

"Yes—that's Cousin Philippa. Go on."

Gwen went on:—"'It is the Man in High Park at the Turpentine Micky'—some illegible name—'knew and that is Michael in the corner larfing at the Spolice. The Man has got out of sprizzing and the Spolice will not cop him.' There was no room for Michael Somebody, and he hasn't worked out well," said Gwen, turning the image of Michael several ways up, to determine its components. But it was too Impressionist. "I suppose 'cop' means capture?" said she.

"That's it," said Sister Nora. "I think I know who Michael is. He's Michael Rackstraw, a boy. Dave's Uncle had a bad impression of him—said he would live to be hanged at an early date. He wouldn't be surprised to hear that that young Micky had been pinched, any minute. 'Pinched' is the same as 'copped.' Uncle Moses' slang is out-of-date."

She looked again at the undeciphered inscription. "I think 'Michael' explains this lot of big and little letters," she said; and read them out as: "'m, i, K, e, y, S, f, r, e, N, g.' Mickey's friend, evidently!"

"Oh, dearie me!" said the old lady. "To think now that that dear child should be among such dreadful ways. I do wonder now—and, indeed, my lady and Miss Nora, I've been thinking a deal about him, with his blue eyes and curly brown hair, and him but just turned of seven.... I have been thinking, my lady, only perhaps it's hardly for me to say ... I have been a wondering whether this ... elderly person ... only God forgive me if I do her wrong!... whether this Mrs. Picture...." Granny Marrable wavered in her indictment—hoped perhaps that one of the ladies would catch her meaning and word her interpretation.

Sister Nora understood, and was quite ready with one. "Oh yes, I see what you mean, Mrs. Marrable—whether the old woman is the right sort of old woman for Dave. And it's very natural and quite right of you to wonder. I should if I hadn't seen the boy's parents—his uncle and aunt.... Oh yes, of course, they are not his parents in the vulgar sense! Don't be commonplace, Gwen!... nice, quiet, old-fashioned sort of folk, devoted to the children. As for the prizefighting, I don't think anything of that. I'm sure he fought fair; and it was the same for both anyhow! He's an old darling, I think. I'll show him to you, Gwen, down his native court. Really, dear Granny Marrable, I don't think you need be the least uneasy. We'll go and see Dave the moment we get up to London—won't we, Gwen?"

"We'll go there first," said Gwen. But for all this reassurance the old lady was clearly uneasy. "With regard to the boy Michael," said she hesitatingly, "did you happen, ma'am, to see the boy Michael.... I mean, did he?..."

"Did he turn up when I was there, you mean? Well—no, he didn't! But after all, what does the boy Michael come to in it? He'd made a slide down the middle of the Court, and Uncle Moses prophesied his death on the gallows! But, dear me, all children make slides—girls as well as boys. I used to make slides, all by myself, in Scotland."

Granny Marrable's mind ran back seventy years or so. "Yes, indeed, that is true; and so did I." She nodded towards the chimneyshelf, where the mill-model stood—Dave's model. "There's the mill where I had my childhood, and it's there to this day, they tell me, and working. And the backwater above the dam, it's there, too, I lay, where my sister Maisie and I made a many slides when it froze over in the winter weather. And there's me and Maisie in our lilac frocks and white sun-bonnets. Five-and-forty years ago she died, out in Australia. But I've not forgotten Maisie."

She could mention Maisie more serenely than Mrs. Prichard, per contra, could mention Phoebe. But, then, think how differently the forty-five years had been filled out in either case. Maisie had been forced to ricordarsi del tempo felice through so many years of miseria. Phoebe's journey across the desert of Life had paused at many an oasis, and their images remained in her mind to blunt the tooth of Memory. The two ladies at least heard nothing in the old woman's voice that one does not hear in any human voice when it speaks of events very long past.

Gwen showed an interest in the mill. "You and your sister were very much alike," she said.

"We were twins," said Granny Marrable. But, as it chanced, Gwen at this moment looked at her watch, and found it had stopped. She missed the old woman's last words. When she had satisfied herself that the watch was still going she found that Granny Marrable's speech had lost its slight trace of sadness. She had become a mere recorder, viva voce. "Maisie married and went abroad—oh dear, near sixty years ago! She died out there just after our father—yes, quite forty-five—forty-six years ago!" Her only conscious suppression was in slurring over the gap between Maisie's departure and her husband's; for both ladies took her meaning to be that her sister married to go abroad, and did not return.

It was more conversation-making than curiosity that made Gwen ask:—"Where was 'abroad'? I mean, where did your sister go?" The old lady repeated:—"To where she met her death, in Australia. Five-and-forty years ago. But I have never forgotten Maisie." Gwen, looking more closely at the mill-model as one bound to show interest, said:—"And this is where you used to slide on the ice with her, on the mill-dam, all that time ago. Just fancy!" The reference to Maisie was the merest chat by the way; and the conversation, at this mention of the ice, harked back to Sapps Court.

"Of course you made slides, Granny Marrable," said Sister Nora; "and very likely somebody else tumbled down on the slides. But you have never been hanged, and Michael won't be hanged. It was only Uncle Moses's fun. And as for old Mrs. Picture, I daresay if the truth were known, Mrs. Picture's a very nice old lady? I like her for taking such pains with Dave's letter-writing. But we'll see Mrs. Picture, and find out all about it. Won't we, Gwen?" Gwen assented con amore, to reassure the Granny, who, however, was evidently only silenced, not convinced, about this elderly person in London, that sink of iniquities.

Gwen resumed her seat and took another cup of tea, really to please her hosts, as the tea was too strong for anything. Then Feudalism asserted itself as it so often does when County magnates foregather with village minimates—is that the right word? Landmarks, too, indisputable to need recognition were ignored altogether, and all the hearsays of the countryside were reviewed. The grim severance between class and class that up-to-date legislation makes every day more and more well-defined and bitter had no existence in fifty-four at Chorlton-under-Bradbury. Granny Marrable and the ogress, for instance, could and did seek to know how the gentleman was that met with the accident in July. Of course, they knew the story of the gentleman's relation with "Gwen o' the Towers," and both visitors knew they knew it; but that naturally did not come into court. It underlay the pleasure with which they heard that Mr. Adrian Torrens was all but well again, and that the doctors said his eyesight would not be permanently affected. Gwen herself volunteered this lie, with Sir Coupland's assurance in her mind that, if Adrian's sight returned, it would probably do so outright, as a salve to her conscience.

"There now!" said Widow Thrale. "There will be good hearing for Keziah when she comes nigh by us next, maybe this very day. For old Stephen he's just gone near to breaking his heart over it, taking all the fault to himself." Keziah was Keziah Solmes, Stephen Solmes's old wife, whose sentimentalism would have saved Adrian Torrens's eyesight if she had not had such an obstinate husband. Stephen was a connection of the departed saddler, the speaker's husband.

Said Sister Nora as they rose to rejoin the carriage:—"Now remember!—you're not to fuss over Dave, Mrs. Thrale. We'll see that he comes to no harm." The ogress did not seem so uneasy about the child, saying:—"It's the picture of the man running from the Police Granny goes by, and 'tis no more than any boy might draw." Whereat Sister Nora said, laughing: "You needn't get scared about Mickey, if that's it. He's just a young monkey." But the old woman seemed still to be concealing disquiet, saying only:—"I had no thought of the boy." She had formed some misapprehension of Dave's surrounding influences, which seemed hard to clear up.

Riding home Gwen turned suddenly to her cousin, after reflective silence, saying:—"What makes the old Goody so ferocious against the little boy's Mrs. Picture?" To which the reply was:—"Jealousy, I suppose. What a beautiful sunset! That means wind." But Sister Nora was talking rather at random, and there may have been no jealousy of old Maisie in the heart of old Phoebe.

Moreover, Gwen's was not an inquiry-question demanding an answer. It was interrogative chat. She was thinking all the while how amused Adrian would have been with Dave's letter and the escaped prisoner. Then her thought was derailed by one of the sudden jerks that crossed the line so often in these days. Chat with herself must needs turn on the mistakes she had made in not borrowing that letter to enclose with her next one to Adrian, for him to ... to what? There came the jerk! What could he see? Indeed, one of the sorest trials of this separation from him was the way her correspondence—for she had insisted on freedom in this respect—was handicapped by his inability to read it. How could she allow all she longed to say to pass under the eyes even of Irene, dear friend though she had become? She would have given worlds for an automaton that could read aloud, whose speech would repeat all its eyes saw, without passing the meaning of it through an impertinent mind.

Sister Nora was quite in her confidence about her love-affair; in fact, she had seen Adrian for a moment, her arrival at the Towers on her way from Scotland after her father's death having overlapped his departure—which had been delayed a few days by pretexts of a shallow nature—just long enough to admit of the introduction. She inclined to partisanship with the Countess. Why—see how mad the whole thing was! The girl had fancied herself in love with him after seeing him barely once, for five minutes. It never could last. She was, however, quite prepared to back Gwen if it did show signs of being, or becoming, a grande passion. Meanwhile, evidently the kindest thing was to turn her mind in another direction, and the inoculation of an Earl's daughter with the virus of an enthusiasm which has been since called slumming presented itself to her in the light of an effort-worthy end. Sister Nora was far ahead of her time; it should have fallen twenty years later.

But she was not going to imperil her chances of success by using too strong a virus at the first injection. Caution was everything. This projected visit to Sapps Court was a perfect stepping-stone to a stronger regimen, such as an incursion into the purlieus of Drury Lane. Tom-all-alone's might overtax the nervous system of a neophyte. The full-blown horrors which civilisation creates wholesale, and remedies retail, were not to be grappled with by untrained hands. A time might come for that; meanwhile—Sapps Court, clearly!

The two ladies had a quiet drive back to the Towers. How very quiet the latter end of a drive often is, as far as talk goes! Does the Ozymandian silence on the box react upon the rank and file of the expedition, or is it the hypnotic effect of hoof-monotony? Lady Gwen and Miss Grahame scarcely exchanged a word until, within a mile of the house, they identified two pedestrians. Of whom their conversation was precisely what follows, not one word more or less:—

"There they are, Cousin Chloe, exactly as I prophesied."

"Well—why shouldn't they be?"

"I didn't say anything about shoulds and shouldn't. I merely referred to facts.... Come—say you think it ridiculous!"

"I can't see why. Their demeanour appears to me unexceptionable, and perfectly dignified. Everything one would expect, knowing the parties...."

"Are they going to walk about like that to all eternity, being unexceptionable? That's what I want to know?"

"You are too impatient, dear!"

"They have been going on for months like that; at least, it seems months. And never getting any nearer! And then when you talk to them about each other, they speak of each other respectfully! They really do. He says she is a shrewd observer of human nature, and she says he appears to have had most interesting experiences. Indeed, I'm not exaggerating."

"My dear Gwen, what do you expect?"

"Oh—you know! You're only making believe. Why, when I said to him that she had been a strikingly pretty girl in her young days, and had refused no end of offers of marriage, he ... What do you say?"

"I said 'not no end.'"

"Well—of course not! But I thought it as well to say so."

"And what did he say to that?"

"He got his eyeglass right to look at her, as if he had never seen her before, and came to a critical decision:—'Ye-es, yes, yes—so I should have imagined. Quite so!' It amounted to acquiescing in her having gone off, and was distinctly rude. She's better than that when I speak to her about him certainly. This morning she said he smoked too many cigars."

"How absurd you are, Gwen! Why was that better?"

"H'm—it's a little difficult to say! But it is better, distinctly. There—they've heard us coming!"

"Why?"

"Because they both jumped farther off. They were far enough already, goodness knows!... Good evening, Percy! Good evening, Aunt Constance! We've had such a lovely drive home from Chorlton. I suppose the others are on in front." And so forth. Every modus vivendi, at arm's length, between any and every single lady and gentleman, was to be fooled to the top of its bent, in their service.

The carriage was aware it was de trop, but was also alive to the necessity of pretending it was not. So it interested itself for a moment in some palpable falsehoods about the cause of the pedestrians figuring as derelicts; and then, representing itself as hungering for the society of their vanguard, started professedly to overtake it. It was really absolutely indifferent on the subject.

"I suppose," said Miss Grahame enigmatically, as soon as inaudibility became a certainty, "I suppose that's why you wanted Miss Smith-Dickenson to come to Cavendish Square?"

Gwen did not treat this as a riddle; but said, equally inexplicably:—"He could call." And very little light was thrown on the mystery by the reply:—"Very well, Gwen dear, go your own way." Perhaps a little more, though not much, by Gwen's marginal comment:—"You know Aunt Constance lives at an outlandish place in the country?"

"Do you know, Gwen dear," said Miss Grahame, after reflection, "I really think we ought to have offered them a lift up to the house. Stop, Blencorn!" Blencorn stopped, without emotion. Gwen said:—"What nonsense, Cousin Chloe! They're perfectly happy. Do leave them alone. Go on, Blencorn!" Who, utterly unmoved, went on. But Sister Nora said:—"No, Gwen dear, we really ought! Because I know Mr. Pellew has to catch his train, and he'll be late. Don't go on, Blencorn!" Gwen appearing to assent reluctantly, the arrangement stood; as did the horses, gently conversing with each other's noses about the caprices of the carriage.



CHAPTER XXIV

HOW IT CAME ABOUT THAT THE LADY AND GENTLEMAN COULD JUMP FARTHER OFF. WHAT MISS DICKENSON WANTED TO SAY AND DIDN'T, AND THE REPLY MR. PELLEW DIDN'T MAKE, IN FULL. OF A SPLIT PATHWAY, AND THE SHREWDNESS OF RABBITS. BUT THERE WAS NO RABBIT, AND WHEN BLENCORN STOPPED AGAIN, THEY OVERTOOK THE CARRIAGE. THEIR FAREWELL, AND HOW MR. PELLEW RAN AGAINST THE EARL

The Hon. Percival was called away to town that evening, and was to catch the late train at Grantley Thorpe, where it stopped by signal. There was no need to hurry, as he belonged to the class of persons that catch trains. This class, when it spends a holiday at a country-house, dares to leave its packing-up, when it comes away, to its valet or lady's-maid pro tem., and knows to a nicety how low it is both liberal and righteous to assess their services.

If this gentleman had not belonged to this class, it is, of course, possible that he would still have joined the party that had walked over, that afternoon, to see the Roman Villa at Ticksey, the ancient Coenobantium, in company with sundry Antiquaries who had lunched at the Towers, and had all talked at once in the most interesting possible way on the most interesting possible subjects. It was the presence of these gentlemen that, by implication, supplied a reason why Gwen and Sister Nora should prefer the others, on in front, to the less pretentious stragglers whom they had overtaken.

Archaic Research has an interest short of the welfare of Romeo and Juliet; or, perhaps, murders. But neither of these topics lend themselves, at least until they too become ancient history, to discussion by a Society, or entry on its minutes. Perhaps it was the accidental occurrence of the former one, just as the party started to walk back to the Towers, that had caused Mr. Percival and Aunt Constance to lag so far behind it, and substitute their own interest in a contemporary drama for the one they had been professing, not very sincerely, in hypocausts and mosaics and terra-cottas.

For this lady had then remarked that, for her part, she thought the Ancient Romans were too far removed from our own daily life for any but Antiquarians to enter sympathetically into theirs. She herself doted on History, but was inclined to draw the line at Queen Ann. It would be mere affectation in her to pretend to sympathize with Oliver Cromwell or the Stuarts, and as for Henry the Eighth he was simply impossible. But the Recent Past touched a chord. Give her the four Georges. This was just as she and the Hon. Percival began to let the others go on in front, and the others began to use their opportunity to do so.

Three months ago the gentleman might have decided that the lady was talking rot. Her position now struck him as original, forcible, and new. But he was so keenly alive to the fact that he was not in the least in love with her, that it is very difficult to account for his leniency towards this rot. It showed itself as even more than leniency, if he meant what he said in reply:—"By Jove, Miss Dickenson, I shouldn't wonder if you were right. I never thought of it that way before!"

"I'm not quite sure I ever did," she answered; telling the truth; and not seeming any the worse, in personality, for doing so. "At least, until I got rather bored by having to listen. I really hate speeches and lectures and papers and things. But what I said is rather true, for all that. I'm sure I shall be more interested in the house the Prince Regent was drunk in, where I'm going to stay in town, than in any number of atriums. It does go home to one more—now, doesn't it?"

Mr. Pellew did not answer the question. He got his eyeglass right, and looked round—he had contracted a habit of doing this—to see if Aunt Constance was justifying the tradition of her youth, reported by her adopted niece. He admitted that she was. Stimulated by this conviction, he decided on:—"Are you going to stay in town? Where?"

"At Clotilda's—Sister Nora, you know. In Cavendish Square. I hope it's like what she says. Scarcely anything has been moved since her mother died, when she was a baby, and for years before that the drawing-rooms were shut up. Why did you ask?" This was a perfectly natural question, arising out of the subject before the house.

Nevertheless it frightened the gentleman into modifying what he meant to say next, which was:—"May I call on you there?" He gave it up, as too warm on the whole, considering the context, and said instead:—"I could leave your book." Something depended on the lady's answer to this. So she paused, and worded it:—"By all means bring it, if you prefer doing so," instead of:—"You needn't take any trouble about returning the book."

Only the closest analysis can be even with the contingencies of some stages in the relativities of grown-ups, however easily one sees through the common human girl and boy. Miss Dickenson's selected answer just saved the situation by the skin of its teeth. For there certainly was a situation of a sort. Nobody was falling in love with anybody, that saw itself; but for all that a fatality dictated that Mr. Pellew and Aunt Constance were in each other's pockets more often than not. Neither had any wish to come out, and popular observation supplied the language the story has borrowed to describe the fact.

The occupant of Mr. Pellew's pocket was, however, dissatisfied with her answer about the book. Her tenancy might easily become precarious. She felt that the maintenance of Cavendish Square, as a subject of conversation, would soften asperities and dispel misunderstandings, if any. So, instead of truncating the subject of the book-return, she interwove it with the interesting mansion of Sister Nora's family, referring especially to the causes of her own visit to it. "Gwen and Cousin Clo, as she calls her, very kindly asked me to go there if I came to London; and I suppose I shall, if my sister Georgie and her husband are not at Roehampton. Anyway, even if I am not there, I am sure they will be delighted to see you.... Oh no!—Roehampton's much too far to come with it, and I can easily call for it." This was most ingenious, for it requested Mr. Pellew to make his call a definite visit, while depersonalising that visit by a hint at her own possible absence. This uncertainty also gave latitude of speech, her hypothetical presence warranting an attitude which would almost have implied too warm a welcome from a certainty. She even could go so far as to add:—"However, I should like to show you the Prince's drawing-room—they call it so because he got drunk there; it's such an honour, you see!—so I hope I shall be there."

"Doosid int'ristin'—shall certainly come! Gwen's to go to London to get poor Torrens out of her head—that's the game, isn't it?"

"That sort of thing, I believe. Change of scene and so on." Miss Dickenson spoke as one saturated with experience of refractory lovers, not without a suggestion of having in her youth played a leading part in some such drama.

"Well—I'm on his side. P'r'aps that's not the right way to put it; I suppose I ought to say their side. Meaning, the young people's, of course! Yes, exactly."

"One always takes part against the stern parent." The humour of this received a tributary laugh. "But do you really think Philippa wrong, Mr. Pellew? I must say she seems to me only reasonable. The whole thing was so absurdly sudden."

Mr. Pellew was selecting a cigar—why does one prefer smoking the best one first?—and was too absorbed to think of anything but "Dessay!" as an answer. His choice completed, he could and did postpone actually striking a match to ask briefly:—"Think anything'll come of it?"

Miss Dickenson, being a lady and non-smoker, could converse consecutively, as usual. "Come of what, Mr. Pellew? Do you mean come of sending Gwen to London to be out of the young man's way, or come of ... come of the ... the love-affair?"

"Well—whichever you like! Either—both!" The cigar, being lighted, drew well, and the smoker was able to give serious attention. "What do you suppose will be the upshot?"

"Impossible to say! Just look at all the circumstances. She sees him first of all for five minutes in the Park, and then he gets shot. Then she sees him when he's supposed to be dead, just long enough to find out that he's alive. Then she doesn't see him for a fortnight—or was it three weeks? Then she sees him and finds out that his eyesight is destroyed...."

"That's not certain."

"Perhaps not. We'll hope not. She finds out—what she finds out, suppose we say! Then they get left alone at the piano the whole of the afternoon, and ..."

"And all the fat was in the fire?"

"What a coarse and unfeeling way of putting it, Mr. Pellew!"

"Well—I saw it was, the moment I came into the room. So did you, Miss Dickenson! Don't deny it."

"I certainly had an impression they had been precipitate."

"Exactly. Cut along!"

"And then, you know, he was to have gone home next day, and didn't. He was really here four days after that; and, of course, all that time it got worse."

"They got worse?"

"I was referring to their infatuation. It comes to the same thing. Anyhow, there was plenty of time for it, or for them—which ever one calls it—to get up to fever-heat. Four days is plenty, at their time of life. But the question is, will it last?"

"I should say no!... Well, no—I should say yes!"

"Which?"

"H'm—well, perhaps no! Yes—no! At the same time, the parties are peculiar. He'll last—there's no doubt of that!... And I don't see any changed conditions ahead.... Unless...."

"Unless what?"

"Unless he gets his eyesight again."

"Do you mean that Gwen will put him off, if he sees her?"

"No—come now—I say, Miss Dickenson—hang it all!"

"Well, I didn't know! How was I to?"

Some mysterious change in the conditions of the conversation came about unaccountably, causing a laugh both joined in with undisguised cordiality; they might almost be said to have hob-nobbed over a unanimous appreciation of Gwen. Its effect was towards a mellower familiarity—an expurgation of starch, which might even hold good until one of them wrote an order for some more. For this lady and gentleman, however much an interview might soften them, had always hitherto restiffened for the next one. At this exact moment, Mr. Pellew entered on an explanation of his meaning in a lower key, for seriousness; and walked perceptibly nearer the lady. Because a dropped voice called for proximity.

"What I meant to say was, that pity for the poor chap's misfortune may have more to do with Gwen's feelings towards him—you understand?—than she herself thinks."

"I quite understand. Go on."

"If he were to recover his sight outright there would be nothing left to pity him for. Is it not conceivable that she might change altogether?"

"She would not admit it, even to herself."

"That is very likely—pride and amour propre, and that sort of thing! But suppose that he suspected a change?"

"I see what you mean."

"These affairs are so confoundedly ... ticklish. Heaven only knows sometimes which way the cat is going to jump! It certainly seems to me, though, that the peculiar conditions of this case supply an element of insecurity, of possible disintegration, that does not exist in ordinary everyday life. You must admit that the circumstances are ... are abnormal."

"Very. But don't you think, Mr. Pellew, that circumstances very often are abnormal?—more often than not, I should have said. Perhaps that's the wrong way of putting it, but you know what I mean." Mr. Pellew didn't. But he said he did. He recognised this way of looking at the unusual as profound and perspicuous. She continued, reinforced by his approval:—"What I was driving at was that when two young folks are very—as the phrase goes—spooney, they won't admit that peculiar conditions have anything to do with it. They have always been destined for one another by Fate."

"How does that apply to Gwen and Torrens?"

"Merely that when Mr. Torrens's sight comes back.... What?"

"Nothing. I only said I was glad to hear you say when, not if. Go on."

"When his sight comes back—unless it comes back very quickly—they will be so convinced they were intended for one another from the beginning of Time, that they won't credit the accident with any share in the business."

"Except as an Agent of Destiny. I think that quite likely. It supplies a reason, though, for not getting his sight back in too great a hurry. How long should you say would be safe?"

"I should imagine that in six months, if it is not broken off, it will have become chronic. At present they are rather ... rather ..."

"Rather underdone. I see. Well—I don't understand that anyone wants to take them off the hob...."

"I think her mother does."

"Not exactly. She only wishes them to stand on separate hobs for three months. They will hear each other simmer. My own belief is that they will be worked up to a sort of frenzy, compared to which those two parties in Dante ... you know which I mean?..."

"Paolo and Francesca?"

Mr. Pellew thought to himself how well enformed Miss Dickenson was. He said aloud:—"Yes, them. Paolo and Francesca would be quite lukewarm—sort of negus!—compared to our young friends. Correspondence is the doose. Not so bad in this case, p'r'aps, because he can't read her letters himself.... I don't know, though—that might make it worse.... Couldn't say!" And he seemed to find that cigar very good, and, indeed, to be enjoying himself thoroughly.

Had Aunt Constance any sub-intent in her next remark? Had it any hinterland of discussion of the ethics of Love, provocative of practical application to the lives of old maids and old bachelors—if the one, then the other, in this case—strolling in a leisurely way through bracken and beechmast, fancy-free, no doubt? If she had, and her companion suspected it, he was not seriously alarmed, this time. But then he was off to London in a couple of hours.

Her remark was:—"You seem to be quite an authority on the subject, Mr. Pellew."

"No—you don't mean that? Does me a lot of credit, though! Guessin', I am, all through. No experience—honour bright!"

"You don't expect me to believe that, Mr. Pellew?"

"Needn't believe it, unless you like, Miss Dickenson. But it's true, for all that. Never was in love in my life!"

"You must have found life very dull, Mr. Pellew. How a man can contrive to exist without.... Isn't that wheels?" It didn't matter whether it was or not, but the lady's speech had stumbled into a pitfall—she was exploring a district full of them—and she thought the wheels might rescue her.

But the gentleman was not going to let her off, though he was ready to suppose the wheels were the carriage coming back. "It won't catch us up for ever so long, you'll see! Such a quiet evening as this, one hears miles off...." He interrupted his own speech by a variation of tone, repeating the pitfall words:—"'Contrive to exist without'"—and then supplied as sequel:—"'womankind somehow or other.' That's what you mean to say, isn't it?"

"Yes." No qualification!—more pitfalls, perhaps.

"Only I never said anything of the sort! Never meant it, anyhow. What I meant was that I had never caught the disorder like my blind friend. He went off at score like Orlando in 'Winter's Tale.'"

"In 'As You Like It.'"

"I meant 'As You Like It.' I suppose it was because he happened to come across thingummybob—Rosalind."

"It always is."

"P'r'aps I never came across Rosalind. Anyhow, I give you my honour I never had any experience to make me an authority on the subject. I expect you are a much better one than I."

"Why?" Miss Dickenson's share of the conversation had become very dry and monosyllabic.

What was passing in her mind, and reducing her to monosyllables, was the thought that she was a woman, and, as such, handicapped in speech with a man; while he could say all he pleased about himself, and expect her to listen to it with interest. They had been gradually becoming intimate friends, and this intimacy had ripened sensibly even during this short chat, the sequel of the separation from the Archaeological Congress, which it suited them to believe only just out of sight and hearing: quite within shot considered as chaperons. Their familiarity had got to such a pitch that the Hon. Percival had contrived to take her into his confidence about his own life, and she had to remain tongue-tied about hers, being a woman.

How could she say to him:—"I have never had the ghost of a love-affair in the whole of my colourless, but irreproachable, life. A mystic usage of my family of four sisters, a nervous invalid mother, and an absent-minded father, determined my status in early girlhood. I was to show a respectful interest in the love-affairs of my sisters, who were handsome and pretty and charming and attractive and piquantes, while I was relatively plain and backward, besides having an outcrop on one cheek which has since been successfully removed. I was not to presume upon my position as a sister to express opinions about these said love-affairs, because I was not supposed to know anything about such matters. They were not in my department. My role was a domestic one, and I had a high moral standpoint; which I would gladly have dispensed with, but the force of family tradition overpowered me. It has been a poor consolation to me to carry about this standpoint like a campstool to the houses of the friends I visit at intervals, now that my sisters are all married, and my mother has departed this life, and my father has married a Mrs. Dubosc, with whom I don't agree. I lead a life of constant resentment against unattached mankind, who decide, after critical inspection, that they won't, when I have really never asked them to. You and I have been more companionable—more like keeping company, as Lutwyche would say—than any man I ever came across, and I should like to be able to say to you that, even as you never met with Rosalind, even so I never met with Orlando, but without any phase of my career to correspond with the one you so delicately hinted at just now, in your own. For I fancied I read between your lines that your scheme of life had not been precisely that of an anchorite. Pray understand that I have never supposed it was so, and that I rather honour your attempt to indicate the fact to me without outraging my maidenly—old maidish, if you will—susceptibilities"?

It was because Miss Constance Dickenson, however improbable it may seem, had wanted to say all this and a great deal more, and could not see her way to any of it, that she had become dry and monosyllabic. It was because of this compulsory silence that she felt that even her brief:—"Why?" in answer to Mr. Pellew's suggestion that an Orlando must have come on her stage though no Rosalind had come on his, struck her after it had passed her lips as a false step.

He in his turn was at a loss to get something worded so as not to overstep his familiarity-licence. Rough-hewn, it might have run thus:—"Because no girl, as pretty as you must have been, fifteen or twenty years ago, ever goes without a lover in posse, though he may never work out as a husband in esse, nor even a fiance." He did not see his way to polishing and finishing it so that it would be safe. He could manage nothing better than "Obviously!" He said it twice certainly, and threw away the end of his cigar to repeat it. But he might not have done this if he had not been so near departure.

Somehow, it left them both silent. Sauntering along on the new-fallen beechmast, struck by the gleams of a sunset that seemed to be giving satisfaction to the ringdoves overhead, it could not be necessary to prosecute the conversation. All the same, if it had paused on a different note, an incredibly slight incident that counted for something quite measurable in the judgment of each, might have had no importance whatever.

But really it was so slight an incident that the story is almost ashamed to mention it. It was this. An island of bracken, with briars in its confidence, not negotiable by skirts—especially in those days—must needs split a path of turf-velvet wide enough for acquaintances, into two paths narrow enough for lovers. Practically, the choice between walking in one of these at the risk of some little rabbit misinterpreting their relations, and going round the island, lay with the gentleman. The Hon. Percival did not mince the matter, as he might have done last week, but diminished his distance from his companion in order that one narrow pathway should accommodate both. It was just after they had passed the island that Miss Dickenson exclaimed:—"There's the carriage," and Gwen perceived their consciousness of its proximity. The last episode of the story comes abreast of the present one.

The story is ashamed of its own prolixity. But how is justice to be done to the gradual evolution of a situation if hard-and-fast laws are to be laid down, restricting the number of words that its chronicler shall employ? Condemn him by all means, but admit at least that every smallest incident of the foregoing narrative had its share of influence on the future of its actors.

It is true that nothing very crucial followed. For when, after the carriage had pulled up and interrupted the current of conversation, and gone on again leaving it doubtful how it should be resumed, it again stopped for the pedestrians to overtake it, it became morally incumbent on them to do so, and also prudent to accept its statement that it was nearly half-past six, and to take advantage of a lift that it offered. For Mr. Pellew must not miss that train. The carriage may have noticed that it never overtook the Archaeological Congress, which must have walked very quick, unless indeed the two stragglers walked very slow.

* * * * *

Miss Dickenson must have dressed for dinner much quicker than they walked along the avenue. For when Mr. Pellew, after a short snack, on his way to put himself in the gig beside his traps, looked in at the drawing-room to see if there was anyone he had failed to say good-bye to, he found that lady very successfully groomed in spite of her alacrity, and suggesting surprise at its success. Fancy her being down before everyone else after all! Here is the conversation:

"Well, good-bye! I'll remember the book. I've enjoyed my visit enormously."

"It has been quite delightful. We've had such wonderful weather. Don't put yourself out of the way to bring the book, though. I don't want it back yet a while."

"All right. Thursday morning you leave here, didn't I hear you say? I shall have read it by then. I could drop round Thursday evening. Just suit me!"

"That will do perfectly. Only not if it's the least troublesome to bring it."

"Oh no; not the very slightest! Nine?—half-past?"

"Nine—any time. I would say come to dinner, only I haven't mentioned it to Miss Grahame, and I don't know her arrangements...."

"Bless me, no—the idea! I'll drop round after dinner at the Club. Nine or half-past."

"We shall expect you. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!" But Mr. Pellew, turning to go and leaving his eyes behind him, collided with the Earl, who was adhering to a conscientious rule of always being punctual for dinner.

"Oh—Percy! You'll lose your train. Stop a minute!—there was something I wanted to say. What was it?... Oh, I know. Gwen's address in London—have you got it? She's going to stay with her cousin, you know—hundred-and-two, Cavendish Square. She'll be glad to see you if you call, I know." This was founded on a misapprehension, which the family resented, that it was not able to take care of itself in his absence. The Countess would have said:—"Fancy Gwen wanting to be provided with visitors!"

This estimable nobleman was destined to suspect he had put his foot in it, this time, from the way in which his suggestion was received. An inexplicable nuance of manner pervaded his two guests, somewhat such as the Confessional might produce in a penitent with a sense of humour, who had committed a funny crime. It was, you see, difficult to assign a plausible reason why Mr. Pellew and Miss Dickenson should have already signed a treaty on the subject.

Perhaps it was not altogether disinterested in the gentleman to look at his watch, and accept its warning that nothing short of hysterical haste would catch his train for him. However, the grey mare said, through her official representative in the gig behind her, that we should do it if the train was a minute or so behind. So possibly he was quite sincere.



CHAPTER XXV

CONCERNING CAVENDISH SQUARE, AND ITS WHEREABOUTS IN THE EARLY FIFTIES. MRS. FITZHERBERT AND PRINCESS CAROLINE. TWO LONG-FORGOTTEN CARD-PACKS. DUMMY, AND HOW MR. PELLEW TOOK HIS HAND. GWEN'S PERVERTED WHIST-SENSE. THE DUST OF AGES, AT ITS FINEST. HOW IT TURNED THE TALK, AND MOULDED EVENT. HOW GWEN'S PEN SCRATCHED ON INTO THE NIGHT

Aesthetic Topography is an interesting study. Seen by its light, at the date of this story, Oxford Street was certainly at one and the same time the South of the North of London, and the North of the South. For whereas Hanover Square, which is only a stone's throw to the south of it, is, so to speak, saturated with Piccadilly—and when you are there you may just as well be in Westminster at once—it is undeniable that Cavendish Square is in the zone of influence of Regent's Park, and that Harley and Wimpole Streets, which run side by side north from it, never pause to breathe until they all but touch its palings. Once in Regent's Park, how can Topography—the geometric fallacy apart—ignore St. John's Wood? And once St. John's Wood is admitted, how is it possible to turn a cold shoulder to Primrose Hill? Cross Primrose Hill, and you may just as well be out in the country at once.

But there!—our impressions may be but memories of fifty years ago, and our reader may wonder why Cavendish Square suggests them.

He himself, probably very much our junior—a bad habit other people acquire as Time goes on—may consider Harley Street and Wimpole Street just as much town as Hanover Square, and St. John's Wood—even Primrose Hill!—as on all fours with both. We forgive him. One, or possibly we ought to say several, should learn to be tolerant of the new-fangled opinions of hot-headed youth. We were like that ourself, when a boy. But let him have his own way. These streets shall be unmitigated Town now, to please him, in spite of the walks Dr. Johnson had in Marylebone Fields. To be sure, Marylebone Fields soon became Gardens then-abouts, like Ranelagh, and you drove along Harley Street to a musical entertainment there, with music by Pergolesi and Galuppi.

The time of this story is post-Johnsonian, but it is older than its readers; unless, indeed, a chance oldster now and then opens it to see if it is a proper book to have in the house. The world in the early fifties was very unlike what it is in the present century, and that isn't yet in its teens. It was also very unlike what it had been in the days when the family mansion in Cavendish Square, that had not had a family in it then for forty years, was as good as new. It was so, no doubt, for a good while after George the Third ceased to be King, because the thorough griming it has had since had hardly begun, and fields were sweet at Paddington, and the Regent could be bacchanalian in that big drawing-room on the first floor without any consciousness that he had a Park in the neighbourhood. Oh dear—how near the country Cavendish Square was in those days!

By the time Queen Victoria was on the throne the grime had set in in earnest, and was hard at work long before the fifty-one Exhibition reported progress—progress in bedevilment, says the Pessimist? Never mind him! Let him sulk in a corner while the Optimist dwells on the marvellous developments of which fifty-one was only symptomatic—the quick-firing guns and smokeless powder; the mighty ships, a dozen of them big enough to take all the Athenians of the days of Pericles to the bottom at once; the machines that turn out books so cheap that their contents may be forgotten in six months, and no one be a penny the worse; the millionaires who have so much money they can't spend it—heaps and heaps of wonders up-to-date that no one ever feels surprised at nowadays. The Optimist will tell you all about them. For the moment, let's pretend that none of them have come to pass, and get back to Cavendish Square at the date of the story, and the suite of rooms on the second floor that had been Sister Nora's town anchorage when she first made Dave Wardle's acquaintance as an unconscious Hospital patient, and that had been renovated since her father's death to serve as a pied-a-terre until she could be sure of her arrangements in the days to come.

Her friends were not the least too tired, thank you, after the journey, to be shown the great drawing-room, on which the touching incident in the life of a Royal Personage had conferred an historical dignity. "I think—" said she "—only I haven't quite made up my mind yet—that I shall call this ward Mrs. Fitzherbert, and the next room Princess Caroline. Or the other way round. Which do you think?" For one of her schemes was to turn the old family mansion into a Hospital.

"Let me see!" said Gwen. "I've forgotten my history. Mrs. Fitzherbert was his wife, wasn't she?"

Miss Dickenson was always to be relied on for general information. "Unquestionably," said she. "But he repudiated her for political reasons, a course open to him as heir to the throne. Legally, Princess Caroline of Brunswick was his lawful wife...."

"And, lawfully," said Gwen, "Mrs. Fitzherbert was his legal wife. Nothing can be clearer. Yes—I should say certainly call the big room Mrs. Fitzherbert. Whom shall you call the other rooms after, Clo?"

"All the others. There's any number! Mrs. Robinson, Lady Jersey, Lady Conyngham ... one for every room in the house, and several over. Just fancy!—the room has never been altered, since those days. It was polished up for my poor mother—whom no doubt I saw in my youth, but took no notice of. You see, I wasn't of an age to take notice, when she departed to Kingdom-come, and my father exiled himself to Scotland...."

"And he kept it packed up like this—how long?"

"Well—you know how old I am. Twenty-seven."

Aunt Constance corrected dates. "George the Fourth," said she chronologically, "ascended the throne in 1820. Consequently he cannot have become intoxicated in this room...."

Sister Nora interrupted. Of course he couldn't—not in her father's time. The cards and dice were going in her great-uncle's time, who drank himself to death forty years ago. "There used to be some packs of cards," said she, "in one of these drawers. I know I saw some there, only it's a long time back—almost the only time I ever came into the room. I'll look.... Take care of the dust!"

It was lucky that the cabinet-maker who framed that inlaid table knew his business—they did, in his day—or the rounded front might have called for a jerk, instead of giving easily to the pull it had awaited so patiently, through decades. "There they are!" said Gwen, "with nobody to deal them. Poor cards—locked up in the dark all these years! Do let's have them out and play dummy to-night."

A spirit of Conservatism suggested that it would be impious to disturb a status quo connected with Royalty. But Gwen said, touching a visible ace:—"Just think, Clo, if you were an ace, and had a chance of being trumps, how would you like to be shut up in a drawer again?" This appeal to our common humanity had its effect, and a couple of packs were brought out for use. No language could describe the penetrating powers of the dust that accompanied their return to active duties. It ended the visit en passant of these three ladies, who were not sorry to find themselves in an upstairs suite of rooms with a kitchen and a miniature household, just established regardless of expense. Because three hundred a year was what Miss Grahame was "going to" live upon, as soon as she had "had time to turn round," and for the moment it was absurd to draw hard and fast lines. Just wait and give her time, to get a little settled!

The fatigue of the journey was enough to negative any idea of going out anywhere, and indeed there was nothing in the way of theatre or concert that was at all tempting. But it was not enough to cause collapse, and whist became plausible within half an hour after dinner. There was something delightful in the place, too, with its windows opening on the tree-tops of the Square, and the air of a warm autumn evening bringing in the sound of a woebegone brass band from afar, mixed with the endless hum of wheels with hoof-beats in the heart of it, like currants in a cake. The air was all the sweeter that a whiff of chimney-smoke broke into it now and again, and emphasized its quality. When the band left off the "Bohemian Girl" and rested, and imagination was picturing the trombone in half, at odds with condensation, a barrel-organ was able to make itself heard, with Il Pescatore, till the band began again with The Sicilian Bride, and drowned it.

Miss Dickenson had been discreet about her expectation of a visitor. She maintained her discretion even when the sound of a hansom's lids, followed by "Yes—this house!" and a double knock below, turned out not to be a mistake, but the Hon. Percival Pellew, Carlton Club. She nevertheless roused the interested suspicion of Gwen and her hostess, who looked at each other, and said respectively:—"Oh, it's my cousin Percy," and "Oh, Mr. Pellew"; the former adding:—"He can take Dummy's hand"; the latter,—"Oh, of course, ask him to come up, Maggie! Don't let him go away on any account." But neither of these ladies expressed any surprise at the rather prompt recrudescence of Mr. Pellew, last seen at the Towers two days since.

The only flaw in a pretext that Mr. Pellew had come to leave Tennyson's "Princess," with his card in it, and run away as if the book-owner would bite him, was perhaps the ostentation with which that lady left his detention to her hostess. It would have been at once more candid and more skilful to say, "Oh yes, it's my book. But I didn't want Mr. Pellew to bother about bringing it back," with a judicious infusion of enthusiasm that the visitor's efforts to get away should fail. However, the flaw was slight, and no one cared about the transparency of the pretext. Moreover, Maggie, a new importation from the Highlands, thought that her young ladyship, whose beauty had overwhelmed her, was at the bottom of it—not Aunt Constance.

"Now you are here, Percy, you had better make yourself useful. Sit as we are. I'm not sorry you're come, because I hate playing dummy." This was Gwen, naturally.

The impersonality of Dummy furnished a topic to tide over the assimilation of things, and help the social fengshui to plausibility. There was a fillah—said Mr. Pellew—at the Club, who wouldn't take Dummy unless that fiction was accommodated with a real chair. And there was another fillah who couldn't play unless the vacant chair was taken away. Something had happened to this fillah when he was a boy, and anything like a ghost was uncongenial to him. You shouldn't lock up children in the dark or make grimaces at them if you wanted them not to be nervous in after-life ... and so forth.

Gwen was a bad whist-player, sometimes taking a very perverted view of the game. As, for instance, when, after Mr. Pellew had dealt, she asked her partner how many trumps she held. "Because, Clo," said she, "I've only got two, and unless you've got at least four, I don't see the use of going on." Public opinion condemned this attitude as unsportsmanlike, and demanded another deal. Gwen welcomed the suggestion, having only a Knave and a Queen in all the rest of her hand.

Her partner expressed disgust. "I think," she said, "you might have held your tongue, Gwen, and played it out. But I shan't tell you why."

"Oh, I know, of course, without your telling me. You're made of trumps. I'm so sorry, dear! There—see!—I've led." She played Knave.

"This," said Mr. Pellew, with shocked gravity, "is not whist."

"Well," said Gwen, "I can not see why one shouldn't say how many cards one has of any suit. Everyone knows, so it must be fair. Everyone sees Dummy's hand."

"I see your point. But it's not whist."

"Am I to play, or not?" said Aunt Constance. She looked across at her partner, as a serious player rather amused at the childish behaviour of their opponents. A sympathetic bond was thereby established—solid seriousness against frivolity.

"Fire away!" said Gwen. "Second player plays lowest." Miss Dickenson played the Queen. "That's not whist, aunty," said Gwen triumphantly. Her partner played the King. "There now, you see!" said Gwen. She belonged to the class of players who rejoice aloud, or show depression, after success or failure.

This time her exultation was premature. Mr. Pellew, without emotion, pushed the turn-up card, a two, into the trick, saying to his partner:—"Your Queen was all right. Quite correct!" The story does not vouch for this. It may have been wrong.

"Do you mean to say, Cousin Percy"—thus Gwen, with indignant emphasis—"that you've not got a club in your hand, at the very first round. You cannot expect us to believe that!" Mr. Pellew pointed out that if he revoked he would lose three tricks. "Very well," said Gwen. "I shall keep a very sharp look out." But no revoke came, and she had to console herself as a loser with the reflection that it was only the odd trick, after all—one by cards and honours divided.

This is a fair sample of the way this game went on establishing a position of moral superiority for Mr. Pellew and his partner, who looked down on the irregularities of their opponents from a pinnacle of True Whist. Their position as superior beings tended towards mutual understandings. A transition state from their relations in that easy-going life at the Towers to the more sober obligations of the metropolis was at least acceptable; and this isolation by a better understanding of tricks and trumps, a higher and holier view of ruffing and finessing, appeared to provide such a state. There was partnership of souls in it, over and above mere vulgar scoring.

Nothing of interest occurred until, in the course of the second rubber, Gwen made a misdeal. Probably she did so because she was trying at the same time to prove that having four by honours was absurd in itself—an affront to natural laws. It was the merest accident, she maintained, when all the court-cards were dealt to one side—no merit at all of the players. Her objection to whist was that it was a mixture of skill and chance. She was inclined to favour games that were either quite the one or quite the other. Roulette was a good game. So was chess. But whist was neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring.... Misdeal! The analysis of games stopped with a jerk, the dealer being left without a turn-up card.

"But what a shame!" said Gwen. "Is it fair I should lose my deal when the last card's an ace? How would any of you like it?" The appeal was too touching to resist, though Mr. Pellew again said this wasn't whist. A count of the hands showed that Aunt Constance held one card too few and Gwen one too many. A question arose. If a card were drawn from the dealer's hand, was the trump to remain on the table? Controversy ensued. Why should not the drawer have her choice of thirteen cards, as in every analogous case? On the other hand, said Gwen, that ace of hearts was indisputably the last card in the pack; and therefore the trump-card, by predestination.

Mr. Pellew pointed out that it mattered less than Miss Dickenson thought, as if she pitched on this very ace to make up her own thirteen, its teeth would be drawn. It would be no longer a turn-up card, and some new choice of trumps would have to be made, somehow; by sortes Virgilianae, or what not. Better have another deal. Gwen gave up the point, under protest, and Miss Dickenson dealt. Spades were trumps, this time.

It chanced that Gwen, in this deal, held the Knave and Queen of hearts. She led the Knave, and only waiting for the next card, to be sure that it was a low one, said deliberately to her partner:—"Don't play your King, Cousin Clo; Percy's got the ace," in defiance of all rule and order.

"Can't help it," said Cousin Clo. "Got nothing else!" Out came the King, and down came the ace upon it, naturally.

"There now, see what I've done," said Gwen. "Got your King squashed!" But she was consoled when Mr. Pellew pointed out that if Miss Grahame had played a small card her King would almost certainly have fallen to a trump later. "It was quite the right play," said he, "because now your Queen makes. You couldn't have made with both."

"I believe you've been cheating, and looking at my hand," said Gwen. "How do you know I've got the Queen?"

"How did you know I had got the ace?" said Mr. Pellew. And really this was a reasonable question.

"By the mark on the back. I noticed it when I turned it up, when hearts were trumps, last deal. I don't consider that cheating. All the same, I enjoy cheating, and always cheat whenever I can. Card games are so very dull, when there's no cheating."

"But, Gwen dear, I don't see any mark." This was Miss Grahame, examining the last trick. She put the ace, face down, before this capricious whist-player, who, however, adhered to her statement, saying incorrigibly:—"Well, look at it!"

"I only see a shadow," said Mr. Pellew. But it wasn't a shadow. A shadow moves.

Explanation came, on revision of the ace's antecedents. It had lain in that drawer five-and-twenty years at least, with another card half-covering it. In the noiseless air-tight darkness where it lay, saying perhaps to itself:—"Shall I ever take a trick again?" there was still dust, dust of thought-baffling fineness! And it had fallen, fallen steadily, with immeasurable slowness and absolute impartiality, on all the card above had left unsheltered. There was the top-card's silhouette, quite recognisable as soon as the shadow was disestablished.

"It will come out with India-rubber," said Miss Grahame.

"I shouldn't mess it about, if I were you," said Gwen. "I know India-rubber. It grimes everything in, and makes black streaks." Which was true enough in those days. The material called bottle-rubber was notable for its power of defiling clean paper, and the sophisticated sort for becoming indurated if not cherished in one's trouser-pockets. The present epoch in the World's history can rub out quite clean for a penny, but then its dramatis personae have to spend their lives dodging motor-cars and biplanes, and holding their ears for fear of gramophones. Still, it's something!

Mr. Pellew suggested that the best way to deal with the soiled card would be for whoever got it to exhibit it, as one does sometimes when a card's face is seen for a moment, to make sure everyone knows. We were certainly not playing very strictly. This was accepted nem. con.

But the chance that had left that card half-covered was to have its influence on things, still. Who can say events would have run in the same grooves had it not directed the conversation to dust, and caused Mr. Pellew to recollect a story told by one of those Archaeological fillahs, at the Towers three days ago? It was that of the tomb which, being opened, showed a forgotten monarch of some prehistoric race, robed, crowned, and sceptred as of old; a little shrunk, perhaps, a bit discoloured, but still to be seen by his own ghost, if earth-bound and at all interested. Still to be seen, even by Cook's tourists, had he but had a little more staying-power. But he was never seen, as a matter of fact, by any man but the desecrator of his tomb. For one whiff of fresh air brought him down, a crumbling heap of dust with a few imperishable ornaments buried in it. His own ghost would not have known him again; and, in less time than it takes to tell, the wind blew him about, and he had to take his chance with the dust of the desert.

"I suppose it isn't true," said Gwen incredulously. "Things of that sort are generally fibs."

"Don't know about this one," said Mr. Pellew, sorting his cards. "Funny coincidence! It was in the Quarterly Review—very first thing I opened at—Egyptian Researches.... That's our trick, isn't it?"

"Yes—my ten. I'll lead.... Yes!—I think I'll lead a diamond. I always envy you men your Clubs. It must be so nice to have all the newspapers and reviews...." Aunt Constance said this, of course.

"It wasn't at the Club. Man left it at my chambers three months ago—readin' it by accident yesterday evening—funny coincidence—talkin' about it same morning! Knave takes. No—you can't trump. You haven't got a trump."

"Now, however did you know that?" said Gwen.

"Very simple. All the trumps are out but two, and I've got them here in my hand. See?"

"Yes, I see. But I prefer real cheating, to taking advantages of things, like that.... What are you putting your cards down for, Cousin Percy?"

"Because that's game. Game and the rubber. We only want two by cards, and there they are!"

When rubbers end at past ten o'clock at night, well-bred people wait for their host to suggest beginning another. Ill-bred ones, that don't want one, say suddenly that it must be getting late—as if Time had slapped them—and get at their watches. Those that do, say that that clock is fast. In the present case no disposition existed, after a good deal of travelling, to play cards till midnight. But there was no occasion to hustle the visitor downstairs.

Said Miss Dickenson, to concede a short breathing pause:—"Pray, Mr. Pellew, when a gentleman accidentally leaves a book at your rooms, do you make no effort to return it to him?"

"Well!" said Mr. Pellew, tacitly admitting the implied impeachment. "It is rather a jolly shame, when you come to think of it. I'll take it round to him to-morrow. Gloucester Place, is it—or York Place—end of Baker Street?... Can't remember the fillah's name to save my life. Married a Miss Bergstein—rich bankers. Got his card at home, I expect. However, that's where he lives—York Place. He's a Sir Somebody Something.... What were you going to say?"

"Oh—nothing.... Only that it would have been very interesting to read that account. However, Sir Somebody Something must be wanting his Quarterly Review.... Never mind!"

Gwen said:—"What nonsense! He's bought another copy by this time. He can afford it, if he's married a Miss Bergstein. Bring it round to-morrow, Percy, to keep Aunt Constance quiet. We shan't take her with us to see Clo's little boy. We should make too many." Then, in order to minimise his visit next day, Mr. Pellew sketched a brief halt in Cavendish Square at half-past three precisely to-morrow afternoon, when Miss Dickenson could "run her eye" through the disintegration of that Egyptian King, without interfering materially with its subsequent delivery at Sir Somebody Something's. It was an elaborate piece of humbug, welcomed with perfect gravity as the solution of a perplexing and difficult problem. Which being so happily solved, Mr. Pellew could take his leave, and did so.

"Didn't I do that capitally, Clo?"

"Do which, dear?"

"Why—making her stop here to see him. Or giving her leave to stop; it's the same thing, only she would rather do it against her will. I mean saying we should make too many at Scraps Court, or whatever it is."