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To Love

by Margaret Peterson · English · Gutenberg #26519 · 471,486 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: To Love

Author: Margaret Peterson


        
Release date: September 3, 2008 [eBook #26519]
                Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TO LOVE ***




Produced by David Clarke, Carla Foust and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net





Transcriber's note


Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without notice. Several
words were spelled in two different ways and not corrected; they
are listed at the end of this book. A few obvious typographical errors
have been corrected, and they are also listed at the end.



"_To Love_"

    "_To love is the great amulet which makes
              the world a garden._"

                                             _R. L. STEVENSON_

"_TO LOVE_"

_By Margaret Peterson : Author of_

"_The Lure of the Little Drum," "Tony Bellew," etc._

_LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, LTD.
PATERNOSTER HOUSE, E.C. :: :: 1917_

"TO LOVE"




CHAPTER I

    "Oh, but the door that waits a friend
       Swings open to the day.
     There stood no warder at my gate
       To bid love stand or stay."


"You don't believe in marriage, and I can't afford to marry"--Gilbert
Stanning laughed, but the sound was not very mirthful and his eyes, as
he glanced at his companion, were uneasy and not quite honest. "We are
the right sort of people to drift together, aren't we, Joan?" His hands
as he spoke were restless, fidgeting with a piece of string which he
tied and untied repeatedly.

Joan Rutherford sat very straight in her chair, her eyes looking out in
front of her. His words had called just the faintest tinge of colour to
her cheeks. It was not exactly a beautiful face, but it was above
everything else lovable and appealing. Joan was twenty-three, yet she
looked still a child; the lines of her face were all a little
indefinite, except the obstinacy of her chin and the frankness of her
eyes. Her one claim to beauty, indeed, lay in those eyes; wide,
innocent, unfathomable, sometimes green, sometimes brown flecked with
gold. They seemed to hint at tragedy, yet they were far more often
laughter-filled than anything else. For the rest, Joan was an ordinary
independent young lady of the twentieth century who had lived in London
"on her own" for six months.

How her independence had come about is a complicated story. It had not
been with the approval of her people; the only people she possessed
being an old uncle and aunt who lived in the country. All Joan's nearer
relations were dead; had died when she was still a child; Uncle John and
Aunt Janet had seen to her bringing up. But at twenty-two and a-half
Joan had suddenly rebelled against the quiet monotony of their home
life. She had broken it to them gently at first, with an obstinate
resolve to get her own way at the back of her mind; in the end, as is
usually the case when youth pits itself against age, she had won the
day. Uncle John had agreed to a small but adequate allowance, Aunt Janet
had wept a few rather bitter tears in private, and Joan had come to
London to train as a secretary, according to herself. They had taken
rooms for her in the house of a lady Aunt Janet had known in girlhood,
and there Joan had dutifully remained. It was not very lively, but she
had a sense of gratitude in her heart towards Aunt Janet which prevented
her from moving. Joan was not thinking of all this as she sat there, nor
was she exactly seeing the sweep of grass that spread out in front of
them, nor the flowering shrubs on every side. Hyde Park was ablaze with
flowers on this hot summer's day and in addition a whole bed of
heliotrope was in bloom just behind their chairs. The faint sweet scent
of the flowers mixed with Joan's thoughts and brought a quick vision of
Aunt Janet. But more deeply still her mind was struggling with a desire
to know what exactly it was that swayed her when Gilbert Stanning spoke
to her, or when--as more often than not--he in some way or other
contrived to touch her. She had met him first at a dance that she had
been taken to by another girl and she had known him now about four
months. It was strange and a little disturbing the tumult his eyes waked
in her heart. The first time he had kissed her, one evening when they
had been driving home from the theatre in a taxi, she had turned and
clung to him, because suddenly it had seemed as if the whole world was
sweeping away from her. Gilbert had taken the action to mean that she
loved him; he had never wavered from that belief since. He possessed
every spare minute of her days, he kissed her whenever he could, and
Joan never objected. Only oddly, at moments such as this, her mind would
suddenly push forward the terse argument:

"Do you love him, or is it just the little animal in you that likes all
he has to give?"

Joan was often greatly disturbed about what she called the beast side of
her. During her year in London, under the guidance of another girl far
older and wiser than herself, she had plunged recklessly into all sorts
of knowledge, gleaned mostly from books such as Aunt Janet and even
Uncle John had never heard of, far less read. So Joan knew that there is
a beast side to all human nature, and she was for ever pausing to probe
this or that sensation down to its root. Her books had taught her other
theories too, and very young, very impetuous by nature, Joan rushed to a
full acceptance of the facts over which older women were debating. The
sanctity of marriage, for instance, was a myth invented by man because
he wished to keep women enslaved. Free love was the only beautiful
relationship that could exist between the sexes. Frankness and free
speech between men and women was another rule Joan asserted, in
pursuance of which she had long since threshed out the complicated
question of marriage with Gilbert. It was all rather childish and silly,
yet pathetic beyond the scope of tears, if you looked into Joan's sunlit
eyes and caught the play of dimples round her mouth. Rather as if you
were to come suddenly upon a child playing with a live shell.

What Gilbert Stanning thought of it all is another matter; Joan with all
her book-learned wisdom had not fathomed his character. He was a man
about thirty-two, good-looking, indolent and selfish. He had just enough
money to be intensely comfortable, provided he spent it all on himself,
and Gilbert certainly succeeded in being comfortable. There had been a
good many women in Gilbert's life of one kind and another, but he had
never known anyone like Joan before. At times her startling mixture of
knowledge and innocence amazed him, and she had fascinated him from the
first. He was a man easily fascinated by the little feminine things in a
woman. The way Joan's hair grew in curls at the nape of her neck
fascinated him, the soft red of her mouth, the way the lashes lay like a
spread-out fan on her cheeks and the quick changing lights and colours
in those eyes themselves. With Gilbert, when he wanted a thing he
generally got it, by fair means or foul; for the moment he wanted Joan
passionately, almost insanely. But the way in which she made the path
easy for his desire sometimes startled him; he could not make up his
mind whether she was playing some very deep game at his expense or
whether she really loved him to the exclusion of all caution.

It was this problem which he had been more or less trying to solve this
afternoon. At Joan's continued silence he leaned forward and put his
hand over hers where they lay on her lap.

"What are you dreaming of, little girl?" he asked.

The odd flutter which his touch always caused was shaking Joan's heart;
she tried, however, to face him indifferently, summoning up a smile.

"I was thinking," she corrected, "not dreaming."

"Well, the thoughts, then," asked the man, his fingers moved caressingly
up and down her hand, "what were they?"

"I was thinking," began Joan slowly; her eyes fell from his and she
stirred restlessly. "What did you mean just now when you spoke about
drifting together?" she asked.

"Little Miss Pretence," he whispered, "as if you didn't know what I
meant. If I were well off," he said suddenly (perhaps for the moment he
really meant it), "I would make you marry me whether you had new ideas
about it or not."

"Being well off wouldn't have anything to do with it," Joan answered,
"it is more degrading to marry for money than anything else."

"Sometimes I believe you think that we are degrading altogether," the
man said; he watched the colour creep into her face, "God knows we are
not much to boast of, and that is the truth."

Joan struggled with the problem in her mind. "There ought not to be
anything degrading about love," she said finally, and this time it was
his eyes that fell away from hers.

For a little they sat silent, Joan, for some reason known only to
herself, fighting against a strong inclination to cry. Gilbert had taken
away his hands, he sat back in his chair, his feet thrust out, head
down, eyes glooming at the dust. Joan stole a glance at him and felt a
sudden intense admiration for the beauty of his clean-cut profile, his
sleek, well-groomed head. Instinctively she put out a timid hand and
touched him.

"Are you angry with me about something?" she asked.

It may have been that during that pause Gilbert had been forming a good
resolution with all that was best in him to keep from spoiling this
girl's life. Her eyes perhaps had touched on some slumbering chord of
conscience. Her movement though, the little whispered words, drove all
thoughts except the ones which centred round his desire from his mind.

"Joan," he said quickly, his hands caught at hers again, "let us stop
playing this game of make-believe. Let us face the future one way or
another. I love you, I want you. If you love me, come to me, dear, as
you say there can be nothing degrading in love. Let us live our lives
together in the new best way."

It was all clap-trap nonsense and he did not believe a word of it, but
the force of his passion was unmistakable. It frightened and held Joan.

"You mean----" she whispered.

"I mean that I want you to come and live at my place," he answered. "I
have a decent little flat, as you know. That is not living on my money,
O proud and haughty one"--he was so sure of his victory that he could
afford to laugh--"you shall buy your own food if you like. And you shall
be free, as free as you are now, and--I, Joan," his voice thrilled
through her, "I shall love you and love you and love you till you waken
to see the world in quite a new light. Joan!"

His face was very close against hers, the scent of the heliotrope had
grown on the sudden stronger and more piercingly sweet, perhaps because
the sun had vanished behind the distant line of trees and a little
breeze from the oncoming night was blowing across the flower-beds
towards them. The quick-gathering twilight seemed to be shutting them
in; people passed along the path, young sweethearting couples too happy
in each other to notice anyone else. The tumult in Joan's mind died down
and grew very still, a sense of well-being and content invaded her
heart.

"Yes"--she spoke the word so softly he hardly heard--"I'll come,
Gilbert." Then she threw back her head a little and laughed, gay,
confident laughter. "It will be rather fun, won't it?" she said.




CHAPTER II

    "Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold,
     And the great price we pay for it full worth.
     We have it only when we are half earth,
     Little avails that coinage to the old."

                                             GEORGE MEREDITH.


It was not quite so much "rather fun" as Joan had expected. It had, she
discovered, its serious and unpleasant side. Serious, because of the
strange undreamt-of woman that it awoke within her, and unpleasant
because of the deceit and the telling of lies which Gilbert insisted it
must involve. Joan hated deceit, she had one of those natures that can
never be really happy with an unconfessed lie on their mind.

Gilbert won her to do as he thought necessary, first by persuasion and
then by using the power which he had discovered he could wield over her
by his touch.

"For my sake, darling," he argued, "it is all right for us because we
understand each other, but the world would certainly describe me as a
cad."

So for his sake Joan told Mrs. Thomas, with whom she had been living,
that she had accepted a residential post as private secretary; packed up
her boxes and took her departure amidst a shower of good wishes and
warnings as to how she was to hold her own and not be put upon. To Aunt
Janet, with a painful twinge of regret, Joan wrote the same lie. She
wanted to tell the truth to Aunt Janet more even than she wanted to live
it out aloud to herself. The memory of Aunt Janet's face with its kindly
deep-set eyes kept her miserable and uncomfortable, and the home letters
brought no more a feeling of pleasure, only a sense of shame and
distaste.

How silly it was to connect shame with what she and Gilbert had chosen
as life! Yet, unfortunately for her peace of mind, the word was
constantly reverting to her thoughts. "It is the telling lies that I am
ashamed of," she would argue hotly to herself, and she would shut her
heart to the still small voice and throw herself because of it with more
zest than ever into their life together.

Gilbert's flat was high up in one of the top stories of a block of
buildings which fronts on to Knightsbridge, bright, airy and cheerful.
Not too big, "Just room for the two of us and we shut the world
outside," as Gilbert took pleasure in saying. It only consisted of four
rooms, their bedroom and dressing-room, the sitting-room and Gilbert's
smoking-room, a place that he talked vaguely of working in and where he
could entertain his men friends, without bothering Joan, when they
called to see him.

The windows of their bedroom opened out over the green of the Park.
Sometimes the scent of the heliotrope crept up even as far as that;
whenever it did Joan would have to hold her breath and stand quite still
because the fragrance brought--not Aunt Janet now--but Gilbert before
her. It had blown in just like that the first night she had been in the
room; the memories it could rouse were bewildering, intoxicating, and
yet ... Joan would have to push the disturbing thoughts from her and run
to find Gilbert if he were anywhere in their tiny domain, to perch on
the arm of his chair and rub her face against his coat. His presence
could drive away the vague feeling of uneasiness, his hands could win
her back to placid contentment or wake in her the restless passionate
desire which she judged to be love.

It had been on one of these occasions that, running to find Gilbert, she
had flung open the door of his smoking-room and got well inside before
she discovered that he had some men with him. Gilbert lifted his head
with a frown, that she noticed, while the guests struggled to their
feet. There was a little silence while they all looked at her, then,
with a muttered excuse, she retreated, closing the door behind her. But
before it quite shut she heard one of the men laugh and say:

"Hulloa, Stanning, so that is the secret of our bachelor flat is it?
thought you had been lying very low this last two months."

She did not catch Gilbert's reply, she only knew that the sense of shame
which had been but a fleeting vision before had suddenly taken sharp,
strong hold of her. She stood almost as it were battling against tears.

That evening across their small dining-table, after the waiter from the
restaurant downstairs had served the coffee and left them, she spoke to
Gilbert, crumbling her bread with nervous fingers, finding it difficult
to meet his eyes.

"Those men," she said, "who were here this afternoon, what do they
think of me? I mean," she flushed quickly, "what do they think I am?"

"Think you are," Gilbert repeated, "my dear girl, I suppose they could
see you were a woman."

"I mean, had you told them, did they know about us?"

"Silly kid," he smiled at her indulgently, "the world is not so
fearfully interested in our doings."

"No, but they are your friends," the hazel eyes meeting his held some
wistful question. "Wouldn't they wonder, doesn't it seem funny that they
shouldn't be my friends too?"

Gilbert rose, conscious of a little impatience. The strange thing was
that since the very commencement of their life together his conscience
had not been as easy as he would have liked to have had it. Joan's ideas
had been so ridiculously simple and straightforward, she was almost a
child, he had discovered, in her knowledge and thoughts. Not that he was
a person to pay much attention to principles when they came in contact
with his desires, only it annoyed and irritated him to find she could
waken an undreamt of conscience in this way. He shook off the feeling,
however, with a little laugh, and, rising from the table, crossed over
to her, standing behind her, drawing her head back against his heart.

"Not satisfied with our solitude," he teased; "find it dull?"

"No, it's not that," she answered; she had to fight against the
temptation to let things go, to lift up her lips for his kiss. "It's
because--well, you didn't introduce me, they must have thought it
queer."

"Oh, hang it all, dear," he remonstrated, "I could not pass you off as
my wife or sister, they would know it was not true. What do you want to
know them for anyhow? Sclater works at the office with me and the other
man is a pal of his, I have never met him before."

"I see," she agreed; he had not at all understood her, but she doubted
if she could quite explain herself. "It doesn't matter, Gilbert." She
sat a little away from him, sweeping the crumbs together with her
fingers.

Behind her back Gilbert shrugged his shoulders and allowed the frown to
show for a second on his face. Then he turned aside and lit a cigarette.

"Let's do a theatre to-night, Joan," he suggested, "I am just in the
mood for it."

She was not just in the mood for it, but she went; and after the theatre
they had supper at the Monico and Gilbert ordered a bottle of champagne
to cheer them up; with the lights and music all round them and Gilbert's
face opposite her, his lips smiling at her, his eyes caressing her, Joan
forgot her mood of uneasiness. In the taxi going home she crept close up
against him, liking to feel the strong hold of his arms.

"You love me, and I love you, don't I, Gilbert?" she whispered; "that is
all that really counts."

"It counts more than all the world," he answered, and stooped to kiss
her upturned lips.

She made no new friends in her life with him, the old ones naturally
fell rather into the background; it was impossible to keep up girl
friendships when she was never able to ask any of them home with her.
Once she went back to see Mrs. Thomas, but the torrent of questions,
none of which could be answered truthfully, had paralysed her. She had
sat dumb and apparently sulky. Mrs. Thomas had written afterwards to
Aunt Janet:

     "I do not think Joan can be really happy in her new post. She
     is quite changed, no longer her bright, cheery self."

And that had called forth a long letter from Aunt Janet to Joan. If she
was not happy and did not feel well she was to leave at once. It had
been her own wish to go to London, they had never liked the idea. "You
would not believe, Joan, how dull the house is with only John and me in
it, we miss your singing and laughter about the place. Come back home,
dear; even if it is only for a holiday, we shall be delighted."

There was a hint behind the letter that unless she had a satisfactory
reply at once she or Uncle John would come up to London to see Joan for
themselves! Joan could imagine the agitation and yet firm purpose which
would preface the journey. She wrote hastily. She was perfectly happy
and ridiculously underworked. Everyone was so good to her, one day soon
she would take a day off and run down and see them, they should see how
well she was looking.

But the writing of the letter brought tears to her eyes, and when it was
sealed up and pushed safely out of harm's way she sat and cried and
cried. Once or twice lately she had had these storms of tears, she was
so unused to crying that she could not account for them in any way
except that she hated having to tell lies. That was it, she hated having
to tell lies.

It was about a fortnight later that Gilbert at breakfast one morning
looked up from a letter which the early post had brought him with a
frown of intense annoyance on his face. Also he said "Damn!" very
clearly and distinctly.

Joan pushed aside the paper and looked at him.

"Anything wrong?" she asked; "is it business, or money, or----"

"No, it is only the mater," he answered quickly; "she writes to say she
is coming to pay me a little visit, that I am to see if I can get her a
room somewhere in the building, she is going to spend two or three days
shopping in town and hopes to see a lot of me."

"Oh," said Joan rather blankly. Gilbert never talked very much of his
people; once he had shown her a photograph of his mother because she had
teased him till he produced it. "Don't you like the idea? Gilbert, was
that what you said 'damn' about?"

"Not exactly," his eyes travelled round the room; "you'll have to clear
out, you know," he said abruptly.

"You mean you want her to have our room and take another one in the
building for yourself?" asked Joan. "I daresay Mrs. Thomas would give me
a bed for a night or two."

"Yes, that is it," he agreed; "and you will have to hide away all traces
of yourself, mustn't leave anything suspicious lying about. The old lady
might have given me a day or two's notice;" he had returned to his
letter, "hang it all, she says she will be here to-morrow."

Joan had pushed her chair back and stood up, her breakfast unfinished.
She was staring at his down-bent head, struggling with a wild desire to
scream, to cry out against the curtain of shame he was so wilfully
sweeping across their life together. She fought down the impulse though
and moved over to the window.

"You want me to go away and hide?" she asked from there, her voice
dangerously quiet.

He glanced up at her. "Keep out of the mater's way," he acknowledged,
"she would have seven fits."

"Why?" asked Joan.

"Why," he repeated, "good Lord, you don't know the mater. She----"

Joan interrupted. "You are ashamed of me," she spoke quickly, her face
had flushed. "You have always been a little ashamed of me. You have
never really looked at it as I did. I thought----" she broke off and
turned away from him, stupid hot tears were blinding her eyes, she did
not want to cry, it was so useless and childish.

Gilbert stuffed his mother's letter into his pocket and rose to his
feet, stretching a little as he moved.

"Don't be ridiculous, kiddie," he said, "you must see it would not do
for you to meet the mater. She is old-fashioned and--well, she would not
understand."

"We could make her understand," Joan whispered, "if she saw we both
really meant it."

"Well, I don't want you to try," he answered bluntly.

"Don't you feel the same about me as if I were your wife?" She knew he
was close beside her, but she did not turn to look at him.

Gilbert put an arm round her and drew her close. "Of course I do," he
said, "but mother wouldn't. One does not exactly introduce one's mother
to one's mistress."

The inclination to tears had left Joan, a very set calm had taken its
place. Suddenly she knew, as she stood there stiff held within the
circle of his arms, that it was all ended. The dream, if it had been a
dream, was finished, she could not live in it any longer.

"Very well," she agreed listlessly. "I will see about going away, the
place shall be all ready for her to-morrow."

She moved away from him, he did not notice how purposely she shook the
touch of his hands from off her.




CHAPTER III

    "Out of my dreams,
       I fashioned a flower;
     Nursed it within my heart,
       Thought it my dower.
     What wind is this that creeps within and blows
     Roughly away the petals of my rose?"

                                              M. P.


"That is the end of lying," whispered Joan.

She threw down her cloak to keep the corner seat in the carriage and
stepped out on to the platform to see if she could catch sight of a
paper boy.

She had not seen Gilbert since the morning. He had had an appointment in
the city, he had left it to her to get the flat ready for his mother.
And she had done everything, there was nothing that she could reproach
herself with. She had engaged an extra room for Gilbert on the next
floor, she had bought fresh flowers, she had made the place look as
pretty as possible. It had not taken her long to do her own packing,
there was nothing of hers left anywhere about. And all morning she had
kept the window overlooking the Park tight shut. The scent of flowers
should bring no disturbing memories to weaken her resolve. Then when
everything had been quite settled she had sat down to write just a short
note to Gilbert.

     "I have tried to make you understand a little of all I felt
     this morning, but it was not any use. You cannot understand.
     It is just that we have always looked at things differently. I
     cannot live with you any more, Gilbert; what is the use of
     trying to explain. It is better just to say--as we agreed that
     either of us should be free to say--it is all finished, and
     good-bye."

She had propped the letter up for him to find, where she knew he would
look first of all, by his pipe and matches on the mantelpiece. Now she
had taken her ticket to Wrotham and wired Aunt Janet to say she was
coming. But as she stood waiting for the train to start it occurred to
her that she was really watching to see Gilbert's slim, well-built
figure push its way through the crowd towards her. The thought made her
uneasy, she hoped he would have been late getting home; she doubted her
strength of will to stand against him should he appear in person to
persuade her.

He did not come, however, and presently with a great deal of noise and
excitement, whistles blowing and doors slamming, the train was off and
she could sit back in her corner seat with a strange sense of
pleasurable excitement at having so far achieved her purpose.

Uncle John was at the station to meet her. A straight-held old
figure--in his young days he had been in the army and very
good-looking--now the bristling moustache was white and the hair grew in
little tufts either side of an otherwise bald head. Ever since Joan
could first remember him Uncle John had moved in a world separate from
the rest of the household and entirely his own. It was not that he took
no interest in them, it was just that he appeared to forget them for
long intervals, talking very seldom, and when he did always about the
days that were past. He had never married, but there had been one great
love in his life. Aunt Janet had told Joan all about it, a girl who had
died many years ago; after her death Uncle John had lived for nothing
but his regiment. Then he had had to leave it because old age had called
for retirement, and he had sent for Aunt Janet to come and keep house
for him and together they had settled down in the old home at
Wrotham--both unmarried, both very quiet and content to live in the
past. Then Joan had descended on them, a riotous, long-legged,
long-haired girl of eight, the child of a very much younger, little
known brother.

With the coming of Joan, new life and new surprising interest had
awakened in Aunt Janet's heart, but Uncle John had remained impervious
to the influence. He was very fond of Joan in his way, but he scarcely
ever noticed and he certainly knew nothing about her. He had realized
her less and less as she grew up; when he spoke or thought of her now it
was always as still a child.

"You are a nice young lady," he greeted her good-humouredly, stooping to
kiss Joan at the station; "your Aunt Janet was sure this sudden return
meant a breakdown. She is all of a twitter, so to speak, and would have
been here to meet you herself only we have got a Miss Abercrombie
staying with us. Where's the luggage?"

"I have only brought my small things with me," Joan explained, "the rest
are coming on. I am sorry Aunt Janet is worried, and who is Miss
Abercrombie?"

"Friend of your aunt's," he answered; he took her bag from her. "I have
brought the trap, Janet thought you might be too delicate to walk." He
chuckled to himself at the thought and picking up the reins climbed
into the cart beside her. "Don't think Sally has been out twice since
you left, see how fat she has got."

The little brown pony certainly answered to the implication. Her sides
bulged against the shafts and bald patches were manifesting themselves,
caused by the friction.

"What have you been doing then?" asked Joan; "why haven't you been out?"

"Nothing to go for," he answered, "and I have been too busy in the
garden. Extended that bit down through the wood." The garden was his one
great hobby.

"And Aunt Janet," Joan questioned, "she always used to like taking Sally
out."

"I suppose that was when you were here;" he looked down at her sideways,
"she missed you, I think, but she potters about the village sometimes."
He relapsed into silence, and Joan could see that his thoughts were once
more far away.

Several of the villagers came out as they passed through the little
village street to bob greetings to the young lady of the manor, as they
had always called Joan. Wrotham did not boast many county families;
there was no squire, for instance. The Rutherfords occupied the old
manor house and filled the position to a great extent, but they owned
none of the land in the neighbourhood, and the villagers were not really
their tenants. And beyond the Rutherfords there was no one in the
village who could undertake parochial work except the vicar, a
hard-working, conscientiously mild gentleman, with a small income and a
large family. He could give plenty of spiritual advice and assistance,
but little else; the old people and the invalids of the parish looked to
Aunt Janet for soups and warm clothes and kindly interest.

Wrotham boasted a doctor too. As Joan remembered him he had been a
gentleman of very rubicund complexion and rough manners. Village gossip
had held that he was too fond of the bottle, but when sober he was
kindly and efficient enough for their small needs. He had been
unmarried and had lived under the charge of a slovenly housekeeper. As
the Rutherfords drove past his house, a square brick building with a
front door that opened on to the village street, Joan noticed an
unfamiliar air of spruce cleanliness about the front door and the window
blinds.

"Dr. Simpson has had a spring cleaning," she said, pointing out the
transformation to Colonel Rutherford.

He came out of his reverie, whatever it was, and glanced at the house.
"No," he said, "Simpson has left. There are new people in there. Grant
is their name, I think. Young chap and his sister and their old mother.
Came to call the other day; nice people, but very ignorant about
gardens. Your aunt has taken a great fancy to the young man."

With that the trap turned into the wide open gates of the manor, and
Joan, seeing the old house, was conscious of a quick rush of
contentment. She had come home; how good it was to be home.

The house, a beautiful grey building of the Tudor days, stood snug and
warm amid a perfect bower of giant trees. Ivy and creepers of all sorts
clung to its stones and crept up its walls, long tendrils of vivid
green. The drive swept round a beautifully kept lawn and vanished
through a stone gateway leading into the stable-yard. It was only a
pretence at a garden in front. Uncle John always held that the open
space which lay at the back of the house and on to which the
drawing-room windows opened was the real thing. There, was more green
grass, which centuries of care and weeding and rolling had transformed
into a veritable soft velvet carpet of exquisite colour that stretched
out and down till it met the wood of tall trees that fringed the garden.
Flowers were encouraged to grow wild under those trees; in spring it was
a paradise of wild daffodils and tulips. That was Aunt Janet's
arrangement; Uncle John liked his gardens to be orderly. He was
responsible for the straight, tidy flower-beds, for the rose gardens,
for the lavender clumps that grew down at the foot of the vegetable
garden. For lavender is not really an ornamental flower and Uncle John
only tolerated it because of Aunt Janet's scent-sachets.

Beautiful and old and infinitely peaceful, the sight and colour of it
could bring back childhood and a sense of safety to Joan, a sense that
Uncle John's figure and face--dear and familiar as they were--had been
quite unable to do. London, her life with Gilbert, the rack and tumult
of her thoughts during the past six months appeared almost as a dream
when seen against this dear old background.

Aunt Janet was waiting their arrival in the hall, and Joan, clambering
down out of the trap, ran straight into those outstretched arms.

"Oh, Aunt Janet, it is good to be back," she gasped. Then she drew away
a little to take in the tall, trim figure dressed all in black save for
a touch of white at neck and wrists; the face stern and narrow, lit by a
pair of very dark eyes, the firm, thin-cut mouth, the dark hair, showing
grey in places, brushed back so smooth and straight and wound in little
plaits round and round the neat head. "You are just the same as ever,"
Joan said. "Oh, Aunt Janet, it is good to get back."

The dark eyes, softened for the moment by something like tears, smiled
at her. "Of course I am just the same, child. What did you expect? And
you?"

"Oh, I am I," Joan answered; her laughter sounded unreal even to
herself.

"You have been ill," contradicted Miss Rutherford, "it is plain to see
all over your face. Thank God, I have got you back."

She brushed aside the sentiment, since it was a thing she did not always
approve of.

"Come away in and have your tea. John, leave Mary to carry up Joan's
boxes; she will get Dick to help her; they are too heavy for you. Your
uncle is getting old," she went on, talking brusquely as she helped
Joan off with her coat, "he feels things these days."

"I haven't been away more than a year, Aunt Janet," laughed Joan; "you
talk as if it had been centuries."

"It has seemed long," the other woman answered; her eyes were hungry on
the girl's face as if she sought for something that kept eluding her. "A
year is a long time to people of our age."

"Dear, silly, old Aunt Janet." Joan hugged her. "You are not a second
older nor the tiniest fragment different to what you used to be. I know
you don't like being hugged; it makes you untidy; but you have simply
got to be just once more."

"You always were harum-scarum," remonstrated Aunt Janet, under this
outburst. She did not, however, offer any real objection and they went
into the drawing-room hand-in-hand.

A small, thin lady rose to greet them at their entrance and Joan was
introduced to Miss Abercrombie. Everything about Miss Abercrombie,
except her size, seemed to denote strength--strength of purpose,
strength of will, strength of love and hate. She gave Joan the
impression--and hers was a face that demanded study, Joan found herself
looking at it again and again--of having come through great battles
against fate. And if she had not won--the tell-tale lines of discontent
that hung about her mouth did not betoken victory--at least she had not
been absolutely defeated. She had carried the banner of her convictions
through thick and thin.

Joan was roused to a sudden curiosity to know what those convictions
were and a desire to have the same courage granted to herself. It gave
her a thrill of pleasure to hear that Miss Abercrombie would be staying
on for some time. She was a schoolmistress, it appeared, only just
lately health had interfered with her duties and it was then that Aunt
Janet had persuaded her, after many attempts, to take a real holiday and
spend it at Wrotham.

"Sheer vice on my part, agreeing," Miss Abercrombie told Joan with a
laugh; "but everyone argued with me all at once and I succumbed."

"Just in time," Aunt Janet reminded her; "I was going to have given up
asking you; even friendship has its limits."

They had tea in the drawing-room with the windows open on to the garden
and a small, bright fire burning in the grate. Aunt Janet said she had
discovered a nip in the air that morning and was sure Joan would feel
cold after London. Uncle John wandered in and drank a cup of tea and
wandered out again without paying much attention to anyone.

Aunt Janet sat and watched Joan, and the girl, conscious of the scrutiny
and restless under those brown eyes as she had always been restless in
the old days with a childish, unconfessed sin on her conscience, talked
as lightly and as quickly as she could upon every topic under the sun to
Miss Abercrombie. And Miss Abercrombie rose like a sportswoman to the
need. She was too clever a reader of character not to feel the strain
which rested between her two companions. She knew Aunt Janet through and
through, the stern loyalty, the unbending precision of a nature slow to
anger, full of love, but more inclined to justice than mercy where
wrongdoing was concerned. And Joan--well, she had only known Joan half
an hour, but Aunt Janet had been talking of nothing else for the last
fortnight.

They kept the subject of Joan's life in London very well at bay for some
time, but presently Aunt Janet, breaking a silence that had held her,
leaned forward and interrupted their discussion.

"You have not told us why you left, Joan," she said, "or what has been
settled about your plans. Are you on leave, or have you come away for
good?"

Miss Abercrombie watched the faint pink rise up over the girl's face and
die away again, leaving a rather unnatural pallor.

"I have left," Joan was answering. "I----" Suddenly she looked up and
for a moment she and Miss Abercrombie stared at each other. It was as if
Joan was asking for help and the other woman trying to give it by the
very steadiness of her eyes. Then Joan turned. "Aunt Janet," she said,
hurrying a little over the words, "I want to ask you to let us not talk
of my time in London. It--it was not what I meant it to be, perhaps
because of my own fault, but----"

"You were not happy," said Aunt Janet; her love rose to meet the appeal.
"I never really thought you were. I am content to have you back, Joan;
we will let the rest slip away into the past."

"Thank you," whispered Joan; the burden of lying, it seemed, had
followed her, even into this safe retreat; "perhaps some day, later on,
I will try and tell you about it, Aunt Janet."

"Just as you like, dear." Aunt Janet pressed the hand in hers and at
that moment Mary, the servant-girl, appeared in the doorway with a
somewhat perturbed countenance.

"Please, mum, there is that Bridget girl from the village and her
mother; will you see them a minute?"

The charity and sweetness left Miss Rutherford's face as if an artist
had drawn a sponge across some painting. "I'll come directly," she said
stiffly; "make them wait in my little room, Mary."

"The village scandal," Miss Abercrombie remarked, as the door closed
behind the servant; "how are you working it out, Janet? Don't be too
hard on the unrighteous; it is your one little failing."

"I hardly think it is a subject which can be discussed before Joan,"
Miss Rutherford answered. She rose and moved to the door. "I have always
kept her very much a child, Ann; will you remember that in talking to
her."

Miss Abercrombie waited till the door shut, then her eyes came back to
Joan. The child had grown into a woman, she realized; what would that
knowledge cost her old friend? Then she laughed, but not unkindly.

"I know someone else who has kept herself a child," she said, "and it
makes the outlook of her mind a little narrow. Oh, well! you won't like
me to speak disrespectfully of that very dear creature, your aunt. Will
you come for a stroll down to the woods or are you longing to unpack?"

Joan chose the latter, because, for a second, despite her instantaneous
liking for Miss Abercrombie, she was a little afraid. She wanted to set
her thoughts in order too, to try and win back to the glad joy which she
had first felt at being home, and which had been dispelled by Aunt
Janet's questions and her own evasive replies.

"I will do my unpacking, I think," she said, "and put my room straight."
She met the blue eyes again, kindly yet keen in their scrutiny. "I
understand what you mean about Aunt Janet," she added; "I have felt it
too, and, Miss Abercrombie, I am not quite such a child as she thinks; I
could not help growing up."

"I know that, my dear," the other answered, "and God gave us our eyes to
see both good and evil with; that is a thing your Aunt Janet is apt to
forget. Well, run away and do your unpacking; we will meet later on at
dinner."




CHAPTER IV

    "I have forgotten you! Wherefore my days
        Run gladly, as in those white hours gone by
        Before I learnt to love you. Now have I
     Returned to that old freedom, where the rays
     Of your strange wonder no more shall amaze
        My spirit."

                                             ANON.


If you see trouble in the back of a girl's eyes look always for a man in
the case. That was Miss Abercrombie's philosophy of life. Girls do not
as a rule get into trouble over money, for debts or gambling. She had
spent the whole of her practical life in studying girls; she knew fairly
well the ins and outs of their complicated natures. Joan was in trouble
of sorts; what then had become of the man? Until the time came when the
girl would be driven to speak--and Miss Abercrombie was sure the time
would come sooner or later--she was content to stay silent and observant
in the background of events. Often Joan felt as though the shrewd eyes
were drawing the unwilling truth from behind her mask of indifference,
and she was, in a way, afraid of the little, alert woman who seemed to
be taking such an intense though silent interest in her.

For the first fortnight Gilbert wrote every day. To begin with, his
letters were cheerful. He was inclined, indeed, to chaff her for losing
her temper over his mother's visit.

     "The old lady is gone," he wrote on the third day. "You can
     come back with perfect safety. She never smelt a rat, but
     tried to talk to me very seriously about taking unto myself a
     wife. It was on the tip of my tongue once or twice to tell her
     that I was already as good as married. Don't keep on being
     stuffy, Joan, hurry up and come back. You can't think what a
     lot I miss you, little girl, or how much I want you."

It was the first of his letters that she made any attempt to answer and
her reply was not easy to write. She had come very suddenly to her
decision as she had stood within the circle of Gilbert's arms that
morning and answered his arguments about his mother. Now she was
realizing that for weeks before that her allegiance had been wavering.
She had no wish to go back to him. She could not understand herself, but
the fact was self-evident, even though the scent of heliotrope haunted
her days and crept into the land of her dreams. Her letter, when it was
finished, struck her as cold and stupid, yet she let it go; she could
not somehow make her meaning any clearer.

     "Dear Gilbert," she wrote, "I am sorry you do not seem to be
     understanding that what I wrote in my first letter is really
     true. It is all finished between us and I am not coming back.
     There is not anything else to say, except that I should be
     happier if you did not go on writing. Nothing can change me,
     and it only keeps open old thoughts."

He wrote in answer to that a furiously angry, altogether unpleasant
letter. Joan read it with shrinking horror, it seemed to lay bare all
that she had been only half aware of before, the ugliness, the smallness
of what she had at first thought was love.

     "If you try to marry anyone else," the letter ended on a
     cruelly ugly note, "remember I can spoil your little game for
     you, Joan. There is no man who will marry you when they learn
     the truth."

She tore up his other letters after that; the very sight of his
handwriting brought hot shame to her heart.

How much the people of the house noticed she hardly knew. Aunt Janet
had fallen into the habit of watching her covertly, pathetically; she
was trying in her own way to read the secret hidden away behind a
changed Joan. But she did her best to keep her curiosity out of sight;
she was very gentle, very anxious to divert Joan's thoughts and keep her
happy.

Uncle John, of course, noticed nothing. Joan helped him to potter about
in the garden--they were building a rookery down by the woods--or
sometimes she would take him for long walks and he would stump along
beside her wrapped in indifferent silence, or else, carried away by some
reminiscence of the old days, would start talking about the regiment and
the places where he had been stationed. It was only Miss Abercrombie
that Joan was really uneasy with, and the end of Miss Abercrombie's
visit was in sight.

One afternoon, on a day which had seen one of Gilbert's unopened letters
destroyed, Joan and Miss Abercrombie started out together soon after tea
to take a basin of jelly to one of Aunt Janet's pet invalids who lived
in a cottage away out at what was called the Four Cross Roads.

It was one of those very fine blue days common to September. Just a nip
of cold in the air, the forerunner of winter, and overhead the leaves on
the trees turning all their various reds and golds for autumn.

"The sky gives one a great sense of distance this afternoon," Miss
Abercrombie said presently. "You never see a sky like this in towns;
that is why you get into the habit of thinking things out of
proportion."

"What makes you say that?" asked Joan; "I mean, how does the distance of
the sky affect it?"

"Oh, well, it makes one feel small," the other answered, "unimportant;
as if the affairs that worry our hearts out are, after all, of very
little consequence in the scheme of existence."

"They are our life," Joan argued, "one has to worry and work things out
for oneself."

"You are a Browningite," laughed Miss Abercrombie; she glanced up
sideways at her companion.

"'As it were better youth
  Should strive through acts uncouth
  Towards making, than repose on aught found made.'

He is right in a way, though, mind you, I don't know that it pays women
to do much in the struggling line."

"I do wonder why you say that," said Joan; "you have always struck me as
being, above everything else, a fighter."

"Probably why my advice lies along other directions," admitted Miss
Abercrombie; "it is extremely uncomfortable to be a pioneer."

"But in the end, even if you have won nothing, it brings you the courage
of having stuck to your convictions."

"Yes," Miss Abercrombie answered dryly, "it certainly brings you that."

They walked in silence again for a while, turning into a short cut to
their destination across the fields.

"Your aunt has got convictions too." Miss Abercrombie reopened the
conversation, evidently her thoughts had been working along the same
lines. "They are uncomfortable things; witness the judgment she metes
out to that unfortunate girl in the village."

"You mean Bridget?" Joan's voice had suddenly a touch of fear in it;
Miss Abercrombie stole a quick look at her. "I was asking Mary about her
the other day."

"Immorality, your aunt calls it," sniffed Miss Abercrombie, "and for
that she would quite willingly, good, kind woman as she is, make this
child--Bridget is seventeen, you know--an outcast for the rest of her
life. Immorality!"

"What would you call it?" questioned Joan; she spoke stiffly, for she
was singularly uneasy under the discussion, yet she had always wanted to
argue the matter out with Miss Abercrombie.

"I hate the word 'immoral' to begin with," the little woman went on;
"not that I am exactly out against regulations. Laws and customs have
come into being, there is little doubt about that, to protect the weak
against the strong. The peculiar thing about them is that they always
wreak their punishments on the weak. Poor Bridget, even without your
aunt's judgment, she pays the penalty, doesn't she?"

"I suppose Aunt Janet is a little hard about these things," Joan
admitted. "You see, the idea of going against laws and things has never
occurred to her. She has always obeyed, she has never wanted to do
anything else."

"Quite so," agreed Miss Abercrombie; "my dear, don't let us talk about
it any more. I always lose my temper, and I hate losing my temper with
someone whom I love as much as I do your Aunt Janet."

"But I am interested in what you think," Joan went on slowly; the red
crept into her cheeks. "I don't believe in marriage myself; I think
people ought to live together if and when they want to, and leave each
other when they like."

Miss Abercrombie stared with dismay at the flushed face. "My dear," she
said, and her tone had fallen upon far greater seriousness than the
former discussion had evoked, "both of those are very rash statements.
The problem of life is unfortunately not quite so easily settled."

"But marriage," Joan argued, "marriage, which tries to tie down in hard
bonds something which ought only to be of the spirit--I think it is
hideous, hideous! I could never marry."

"No," agreed Miss Abercrombie, "a great many of us feel like that when
we are young and hot-headed. I nearly said empty-headed. Then we read
fat books about the divine right of Motherhood, Free Love and State
Maternity. All very well in the abstract and fine theories to argue
about, but they do not work in real life. Believe me, the older you get
the more and more you realize how far away they all are from the ideal.
Marriage may be sometimes a mistaken solution, but at present it is the
only one we have."

"Why do you say that?" asked Joan; for the first time she turned and
looked at her companion. "Do you really believe it is true?"

"Yes," nodded Miss Abercrombie. "My dear," she put a hand on Joan's arm,
"we women have got to remember that our actions never stand by
themselves alone. Someone else has always to foot the bill for what we
do. I said just now that laws had been evolved to protect the weak;
well, marriage protects the child."

"But if two people love each other," Joan tried to argue, but her words
were bringing a cold chill of fear to her heart even as she spoke, "what
other protection can be needed?"

"Love is something that no one can define," stated Miss Abercrombie;
"but centuries have gone to prove that it is not as binding as marriage,
and for the sake of the children the man and woman must be bound. That
is the long and short of all the arguments."

"If there is no child?" Joan's fear prompted her to the question; she
spoke it almost in a whisper.

Miss Abercrombie paused in her act of unlatching the gate, for they had
arrived at the cottage by now, to look up at her. "Ah, there you open
wider fields," she assented, "only childless people are and must be the
exceptions. One cannot lay down laws for the exceptions."

Mrs. Starkey, the invalid old lady, was garrulous, and delighted to see
them. So anxious to tell them all her ailments and scraps of gossip that
by the time they got away it was quite late and already the sun was
sinking behind the range of hills at the back of the village.

"We will have to hurry," Joan said. "Aunt Janet gets so fussed if one is
out after dark."

Hurrying precluded any reopening of the subject they had been
discussing, but Joan's mind was busy with all the thoughts it had roused
as they walked. The faint hint of fear that had stirred to life in her
when Miss Abercrombie had spoken of Bridget was fast waking to very
definite panic. She could feel it tugging at her heart and making her
breathing fast and difficult. Supposing that the vaguely-dreamed-of
possibility had crystallized into fact in her case? How would Aunt Janet
think of it; what changes would it bring into her life?

As they turned into the little village street they came straight into a
crowd of people standing round an open cottage door. The crowd was
strangely quiet, talking amongst themselves in whispers, but from within
the cottage came the sound of wailing, the hysterical crying of old age.

Miss Abercrombie, with Joan following, pushed her way to the front, and
with awed faces the villagers drew back to let them pass. At the open
door Sam Jones, the village constable, an old man who had known Joan in
her very young days, put out his hand.

"Don't you go in now, miss," he said, "it is not for the likes of you to
see, and you can do no good. Besides which, your aunt is there already."

But Joan paid no attention to him and, pushing past his outstretched
hand, followed Miss Abercrombie.

The inside of the cottage was dimly lit, and scattered with a profuse
collection of what appeared to be kitchen utensils, dishes and clothes,
all flung about in confusion. The only light in the place glinted on the
long deal table and the stiff dead figure stretched out on it, still and
quiet, with white, vacant face and lifeless arms that hung down on
either side. Water was oozing out of the clothes and dripping from the
unbound hair; it had gathered already into little pools on the floor. In
the darkest corner of the room a crouched-up form sat sobbing
hopelessly, and by the figure on the table Aunt Janet stood, her face in
shadow, since she was above the shade of the lamp, but her hands
singularly white and gentle-looking as they moved about drying the dead
girl's face, pushing the wet, clogged hair from eyes and mouth.

Joan paused just within the door, the terror of that figure on the table
holding her spellbound, but Miss Abercrombie moved brusquely forward so
that she stood in the lamplight confronting Aunt Janet.

"So," she said, quick and sharp, yet not over loud, the people outside
could not have heard, "Bridget has found this way out. A kinder way than
your stern judgment, Janet. Poor little girl."

"I did not judge," Miss Rutherford answered stiffly, "'the wages of sin
is death.'"

"Yet you can be kind to her now," snorted Miss Abercrombie; "it would
not have been wasted had you been a little kinder before. Forgive me,
Janet, I speak quickly, without thinking. You live up to your precepts;
everyone has to do that."

The old woman in the corner lifted her face to look at them; perhaps she
thought that in some way or other they were reviling the dead, for she
staggered to her feet and crossed over to the table.

"It was fear made her do it," she wailed; "fear, and because we spoke
her harsh. I hated the shame of it all. Yet, God knows, I would have
stood by her in the end. My little girl, my little Bridget!" Sobs choked
her, she fell to her knees, pressing her lips to one of the cold, stiff
hands.

Joan saw Aunt Janet stoop and lay a gentle hand on the heaving
shoulders, she heard, too, a movement of the crowd outside and saw the
Vicar's good-natured, perturbed face appear in the doorway. Behind him
again was a younger man, stern-faced, with quiet, very steady blue eyes
and a firm-lined mouth. All this she noticed, why she could not have
explained, for the man was a perfect stranger to her; then the fear and
giddiness which all this time she had been fighting against gained the
upper hand and, swaying a little, she moved forward with the intention
of getting outside, only to fall in a dead faint across the doorway of
the cottage.




CHAPTER V

    "Love wakes men, once a lifetime each
     They lift their heavy heads and look.

       *     *     *     *     *

     And some give thanks, and some blaspheme,
       And most forget, but either way
     That, and the child's unheeded dream
       Is all the light of all their day."


The Grants were sitting at breakfast in their small, red-walled
dining-room. Richard, commonly called Dick, at the end of the table,
Mabel at the one side and Mrs. Grant in the seat of honour at the top.
Wherever Mrs. Grant sat was the seat of honour; she was that kind of old
lady. Marvellously handsome still, despite her age, with a commanding
presence and a nature which had sublime contempt for everyone and
everything except herself, she sailed through life exacting service from
all and obedience from her children. Why they obeyed her they could not
have themselves explained; perhaps it was an inheritance from the dead
Mr. Grant, who had worshipped his wife as if she had been some divinity.
In her own way Mrs. Grant had always been gracious and kindly to her
husband, but he had been altogether a nonentity in her life. Before the
children were old enough to see why, they realized that Daddy was only
the man who made the money in their house. Mother spent it, buying the
luxuries with which they were surrounded, the magnificent toys which
they disregarded, as is the way of children, the splendidly expensive
clothes, which were a perfect burden to them. Then, just when Dick was
beginning to understand, Mr. Grant died.

       *     *     *     *     *

He had sent for his son--Dick was about eighteen then--and spoken to him
just before the end came.

"You will have to look after your mother, Dick," he had said, clutching
at the young, strong hands; "she has always been looked after. She has
never had to rough things in her life. And you won't be any too well
off. Promise me, promise me, you will always give her of your best."

"Of course, I promise, Dad," he had answered.

Further conversation between then had ceased because Mrs. Grant swept
into the room, regal even in the face of death. Dick remembered the
incident afterwards with a little twitch of his lips because it was so
typical of his mother and it was just at this period that he had begun
to criticize her. The sick-room had been in shadowed gloom until her
entry; the lights hurt the fast-failing eyes.

"I cannot sit in the dark," stated Mrs. Grant, as she settled herself,
with a delightful rustle of silk and a wave of perfume, beside the bed.
"You know that, Harry. It always has depressed me, hasn't it?"

"Turn up the lights, Dick," whispered the man, his hand had closed on
one of hers; happiness flooded his heart at her presence.

"But you know they hurt your eyes," Dick expostulated; he was new to
death, yet he could read the signs well enough to know his father was
dying.

"Harry can lie with his eyes shut," answered Mrs. Grant calmly. There
was no disagreeableness in her tone: her selfishness was on too gigantic
a scale for her ever to be disagreeable.

And Dick had turned up the lights and gone fuming from the room,
conscious for the time being of a sense of dislike for his mother's
perfection!

It soon faded though; he had been trained too thoroughly in his youth.
Once he said to Mabel hotly:

"Why does Mother cry for Dad? She did not really love him, and she just
delighted in buying all that expensive and becoming mourning."

And Mabel had surprised him by replying: "Mother does not really love
anyone but herself."

The remark sounded odd from Mabel, who spent her life slaving with
apparent devotion in her mother's service. She was a tall, rather
colourless girl, with big grey eyes and a quaint-shaped mouth that was
always very silent. She moved through the background of their lives
doing things for mother. She had always done that; Dick wondered
sometimes whether the soul within her would ever flame into open
rebellion, but it never did.

By the time Dick had passed his various exams, and was ready to take up
a practice somewhere, Mrs. Grant and Mabel had been practically
everywhere on the Continent.

"Money is running short," Mabel wrote crisply to Dick; "cannot you do
anything in the way of taking a house and settling down, so as to make a
home for Mother and me?"

Dick's ambitions lay in the direction of bachelor's diggings and work in
London. He thrust them aside and bought what was supposed to be a very
good and flourishing practice at Birmingham. Unfortunately Mrs. Grant
took a violent dislike to Birmingham. Their house was gloomy and got on
her nerves; the air, she said, was laden with smoke which irritated her
throat. She developed a cough, quite the most annoying sound that Dick
had ever imagined, and he was not easy to irritate. Mother coughed from
the time she woke till the time she went to sleep--coughed and
remembered old times and wept for Harry, who would at least have taken
care not to expose her to such overwhelming discomfort.

At the end of six months Dick threw up the practice in despair and
placed himself at her disposal. They put in a year in London, but what
Dick earned was quite insufficient to cope with what Mrs. Grant spent
and things went from bad to worse.

Mabel never offered any advice until she was asked but when Dick spoke
to her finally she was quite definite.

"You have got to take Mother in hand," she said. "Father never did. He
spent his life making money for her to spend, but there is no reason why
you should. Get a small practice somewhere in the country where there
are no shops and just tell Mother you are going to settle there for five
years at least."

"She will get another cough," argued Dick.

"You must let her cough, it won't hurt her," answered Mabel.

Undoubtedly Mrs. Grant did not approve of Wrotham to begin with, but it
had its advantages, even for her. She settled very quickly into the role
of Lady Bountiful; the villagers gazing upon her with such unmixed
admiration that she was moved to remark to Mabel that it was really
pleasant doing things for such grateful people. Dick provided her with a
victoria and horse in place of the usual doctor's trap, and she could
drive abroad to visit this or that protege in truly regal style. It
meant that Dick had to pay all his visits, and some of them very far off
and at all sorts of unseasonable hours, on a bicycle, but he never
grudged making sacrifices of that kind for her. No one admired his
mother in the abstract more than Dick did.

Mabel perhaps resented the extra work it entailed on him, for she loved
Dick with the whole force of her self-restrained heart. But, as usual,
she kept silent. The villagers could see that she drove out in
attendance on Mrs. Grant, but to them she was only an uninteresting
shadow that waited on the other's splendour. They often wondered among
themselves how Mrs. Grant could have a daughter as drab and
uninteresting as Miss Grant; they did not realize how, like a vampire,
the older woman lived upon the younger one's vitality. People like Mrs.
Grant exist at the expense of those they come in contact with. You
either have to live for them or away from them.

On this particular morning Dick finished his breakfast before either his
mother or sister, and pushing back his chair, asked, as he had always
asked since the days of his childhood, if he might rise.

"Before I am finished, Dick?" remonstrated Mrs. Grant; "it is not very
polite, dear."

"I know," Dick apologized, "but the truth is I have an early call to pay
this morning. The people of the Manor House have sent for me; Miss
Rutherford the younger is not awfully well, or something."

"Miss Rutherford the younger?" repeated his mother; "I did not know
there was a younger; I have never seen her, have I, Mabel?"

"I don't suppose so," Dick answered for his sister; "she has been away
in London."

"What is the matter with her?" asked Mrs. Grant. "Why do they want you
to see her?"

"I can't know that till I have seen her, can I? Last night she happened
to come into the Rendle cottage just after they had brought that poor
girl home, and the sight must have upset her; anyway she fainted. I
expect that is what Miss Rutherford is worried about."

"It is hardly polite of her not to have brought her niece to call on
me," said Mrs. Grant. "Still, if you are going there, dear, and the girl
doesn't seem well, tell them I shall be only too happy to come and fetch
her for a drive some afternoon. I daresay my carriage is more
comfortable than that ramshackle old trap of theirs."

"You are a dear to think of it," he said, stooping to kiss her good-bye.
"If you can spare Mabel this afternoon, Mother, I thought perhaps she
might come into Sevenoaks with me. I have got to attend a meeting there,
and it will be an outing for her."

"If Mabel would like to go, of course she must," Mrs. Grant agreed. "I
shall be a little lonely, and to-day is the day I am supposed to have my
hair shampooed. Not that it really matters."

"I could not go any way," Mabel put in for herself. "Mr. Jarvis is
coming to tea, Dick; he asked himself last week."

She followed her brother out to the front door.

"The day is going to be full of disagreeables for you," he said, as they
stood waiting for his bicycle to be brought round. "Mother's shampoo, I
know what that involves, and Mr. Jarvis. Nuisance the fellow is; why
can't he see that you dislike him?"

"Oh, I don't exactly," she answered, without meeting his eyes.

She hated him like poison, Dick knew. He wondered rather vaguely why
Mabel had lied to him, generally speaking they were too good friends for
that to be necessary. Then he dismissed the subject, and his thoughts
turned again to the girl he was on his way to see. He had been thinking
a great deal of Joan since he had first seen her. The startled,
child-like face, the wide frightened eyes, had impressed themselves on
his mind the night before. He had lifted her in his arms and carried her
outside; the poise of her thrown-back head against his arm stayed in his
mind, a very warm memory. Poor little girl, it must have been horrible
for her to have come in from the gay placidness of her own life and
thoughts to the stark tragedy of Bridget Rendle's death.

He was very ignorant and very reverent in his thoughts about women. He
could imagine Joan's sweet, well-ordered life, the fragrance of youth
hung about his idea of her. Bridget Rendle had been a girl too, younger
perhaps than the other one; but Bridget had dipped into the waters of
life, and sorrow and sin had closed over her. The two girls were as far
apart as the poles, it seemed almost irreverent to think of them in the
same breath.

Aunt Janet met him in the hall when she heard of his arrival.

"I have not told my niece about sending for you," she said; "it might
only make her nervous. I am very alarmed about her, Dr. Grant. She has
been home now three weeks and she is really not at all like herself.
Then that faint last night. I am afraid of fainting-fits; my mother, I
may as well tell you, died very suddenly from a heart-attack."

"It is not likely to be anything of that sort," he told her.
"Yesterday's tragedy was quite sufficient to upset very strong nerves."

"I hope not," Aunt Janet agreed; "anyway, I shall feel happier once you
have seen her. Will you come this way?"

She led him through the house to a room on the other side of the
drawing-room which had been fitted up as a special sanctum for Joan
since her return from London.

"I am nervous," she admitted to the doctor with her hand on the
door-knob, "she will perhaps be annoyed at my having sent for you." Then
she opened the door and they passed in.

Joan was sitting in the far corner near the open window, a book on her
lap. But she was not pretending to read; Dick could have sworn that she
had been crying as they came in. As she saw her aunt was not alone she
stood up quickly and the book fell unheeded to the floor.

"This is the doctor, dear," Aunt Janet began nervously. "I asked him to
call and see you. You need a tonic, I am sure you do."

"You sent for him," whispered Joan. Dick felt horribly uncomfortable; it
was impossible not to sense the tragedy which hung heavy in the air.
"Why, oh why, have you done that, Aunt Janet?"

"I was afraid," the other began; "last night you----" Rather waveringly
she came to a full stop, staring at Joan.

The girl had drawn herself up to her full height. She faced them as
someone brought suddenly to bay, her hands clenched at her sides, two
flags of colour flaming in her cheeks.

"I was going to have told you," she said, addressing herself solely to
Aunt Janet, "now you have brought him in he must know it too. But I do
not need him to tell me what is the matter with me; I found it out for
myself last night. I am not ashamed, I do not even hold that I have done
anything wrong; I would have told you before only I did not know it was
going to come to this, and for the rest it was like a shut book in my
life that I did not want to have to open or look at again. I am like
Bridget Rendle," she said, head held very high. "I am going to have a
baby. Bridget was afraid and ashamed, but I am neither. I have done
nothing to be ashamed of."

The telling of it sapped at her much boasted courage, and left her
whiter than the white wall-paper; Dick could see that she had some ado
to keep back her tears.

Aunt Janet seemed to have been paralysed; she stayed where she was,
stiff, stricken, and Dick, glancing at her, thought he had never seen
such anguish and terror combined on a human face. He felt himself
completely forgotten in this crisis. The two women stared at each other.
Twice Aunt Janet moistened her lips and tried to speak, but the words
died in her throat. When she succeeded at last her voice was scarce
recognizable.

"You said--like Bridget Rendle," she whispered; "did you mean what you
said?"

"Yes," answered Joan.

The older woman turned towards the door. She walked as if blind, her
hands groping before her. "God!" Dick heard her say under her breath,
"Dear God, what have I done that this should come upon me?"

As she reached the door Joan called to her, her voice sharp with fear.
"Aunt Janet, Aunt Janet, aren't you going to say anything to me?"

"I must hold my tongue," the other answered stiffly, "or I shall curse
that which I have loved." Suddenly the anguish in her flamed to white
beat. "I would rather have known you dead," she said, and passed swiftly
from the room.

Joan took a step forward, and her foot touched on the book she had let
fall. Mechanically she stooped to pick it up, then, because her knees
were in reality giving way under her, she stumbled to the chair and sat
down again. She seemed to have forgotten the man standing by the door,
she just sat there, hands folded in her lap, with her white face and
great brown eyes looking unseeingly at the garden.

Dick moved uneasily. He had not the slightest idea what he ought to do;
he felt horribly like an intruder. And he was intensely sorry for the
girl, even though behind this sorrow lay the shock of a half-formed
ideal which she had shattered in his mind. Finally he submerged the man
in the doctor and moved towards her.

"I am most awfully sorry for you," he said, "will you let me help you if
I can? There may be some mistake, and anyway I could give you something
to help with those fainting-fits."

Joan brought her eyes away from the garden and looked at him. "No," she
said, "there is no mistake and I do not make a habit of fainting.
Yesterday it was different, perhaps I realized definitely and for the
first time what it would all mean. I saw Aunt Janet's face as she spoke
of the dead girl, and ... I do not know why I am telling you all this,"
she broke off, "it cannot be very interesting, but I do not want you to
think that I feel as Bridget Rendle felt."

"No," he agreed, "you are facing it with more courage than she had been
taught to have."

"It is not a question of courage," Joan answered. He was not
understanding her, she realized, and for some stupid reason it hurt that
he should not, but she must not stoop to further explanations. She stood
up, making a stern effort at absolute calmness.

"Good-bye," she said, "I am sorry you should have been troubled to come
and that you should have had to go through this sort of scene."

"Good-bye," was all he could answer.

At the door he turned to look back at her. "If you should need help of
any sort at any time," he said, "will you send for me? I should like to
feel you were going to do that."

"I cannot promise," she answered, "you see, I shall probably be leaving
here quite soon."

And with that he had to be content to leave her.




CHAPTER VI

    "And bending down beside the glowing bars
     Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
     And paced upon the mountains overhead,
     And hid his face amid a crowd of stars."


Mabel had shampooed her mother's hair, following out with unending
patience the minute instructions which the process always involved. She
had rinsed it in four relays of hot water, two of lukewarm and one of
cold; she had dried it with the hard towel for the scalp and the soft
towel for the hair. She had rubbed brilliantine in to give it the
approved gloss. The whole proceeding had lasted fully two hours; now she
stood and brushed out the long fine threads of grey turning to silver
with just the steady gentle pressure which was necessary and which,
according to Mrs. Grant, no one but Mabel was capable of producing.

Mrs. Grant liked to have her hair brushed for half an hour after a
shampoo, it soothed the irritated nerves. From behind her mother's back
Mabel could see her own face in the glass, the sallow cheeks flushed
from her exertions, the grey, black-lashed eyes tired and a little
angry. Once, long ago, during one of their journeys on the continent,
there had been a young naval officer who had loved Mabel for those grey
eyes of hers. He had raved about the way the lashes lay like a fringe of
shadow round them. He had called them "Dream Eyes," and once he had
kissed the lids close shut over them with hard, passionate kisses.
Whenever Mabel looked at her eyes in the glass she thought of Jack
Donald. She had loved him and she had sent him away because of Mother.
He had only been able to offer her his love and the pay of a lieutenant
in the Navy; he had not even shown that he liked Mother, he had resented
the way Mabel slaved for her. Of course the outlook had been absurd, and
Mrs. Grant had said so very plainly. If Mabel married it would have to
be someone wealthy someone elderly enough to understand that Mother must
live with them. But when he went he took with him all the dreams of
Mabel's life; she never looked out into the future to make plans now,
she could only look back into the past that held her memories.

"I hope," said Mrs. Grant suddenly breaking in on her thoughts, "that
Dick does not fall in love with this young lady at the Manor."

"Why not?" asked Mabel, "he must fall in love sooner or later."

"Well, then, it must be later and with someone who has a great deal of
money. We are quite badly enough off as it is."

"You and I could go away again on our own," suggested Mabel, "you know
you said the other day that Wrotham was getting on your nerves."

"Don't be ridiculous," snapped Mrs. Grant, "I should like to know what
you think we should live on once Dick has a wife. You say you won't
marry Mr. Jarvis or anyone else."

"No," Mabel admitted, "but because I won't marry it hardly seems fair
that we should stand in the way of Dick's doing so."

"What do you intend to imply by 'standing in the way'? Really Mabel,
sometimes I wonder if you have any love for me, you so habitually and
wilfully misconstrue my sentences. Surely it is permissible" (Mrs.
Grant's sigh was a model of motherly affection) "for a mother to wish
to keep her son, her eldest born, to herself for a little longer. One
loses them so once they marry."

Mabel concealed a swift, rather bitter, smile. "I did not mean to
misconstrue anything," she said, "only just the other day I was thinking
that perhaps we did rather hamper Dick. He is twenty-seven, you know; it
is funny he has never wanted to marry."

"He is waiting for the right girl," Mrs. Grant sighed again.

"And if he happens to find her," thought Mabel to herself, there was no
use saying the words aloud, "we are to do our best to prevent him having
her. Poor old Dick." Her eyes waked to sudden, vivid affection as she
thought of him.

She ran downstairs presently, Mrs. Grant having retired to rest after
exertions, to meet Dick just coming in. He had done a round of visits
after his call at the Manor house. Visits which had included one to the
Rendles' cottage, where he had seen the principal figure of last night's
tragedy laid out, as her mother said, for decent burial, "even though it
baint a going to be Christian."

The girl had been dressed in something white; white flowers, great
beautiful-headed chrysanthemums, lay between her folded hands and
against her face. She had been a handsome girl, death had robbed her of
her vivid colouring, but it had given her in its stead something
dignified and withdrawn, a look of suffering and yet great peace.

Mrs. Rendle was more resigned too this morning; she had cried her heart
quiet through the night.

"Bridget is better so," she could confide to Dick as he stood looking
down at the girl, "the shame is done away with, sir, and God will look
to the sin. I hold there ain't much to fear there, even though they
won't bury her in the churchyard."

"No, I don't think there is much to fear," he agreed. "I am sorry about
the burial, Mrs. Rendle, I have tried to argue the matter out with the
vicar."

"Oh, that is not to be helped," she answered. "God will rest her soul
wherever she be. Miss Rutherford sent those flowers," she added, "she
was rare set agin Bridget to begin with, but she be softened down."

That brought the other tragedy which he had witnessed this morning back
to his mind. Not that he had really forgotten it. The picture of Joan,
her head high, her cheeks flushed, was one that had imprinted itself
very strongly upon his memory. He had given up trying to understand how
such a thing could have happened, his own vague happy thoughts of her
stirred wistfully behind the new knowledge. And he could not dismiss her
altogether from the throne he had designed for her to occupy. There must
be some explanation; if only he had not been such an absolute stranger
perhaps she would have told him a little more, have given him a chance
to understand.

"Well," asked Mabel, "is she nice, Dick, did you like her?" Her eyes
were quick to notice the new shadow of trouble on his face.

"Very nice, I think," he answered, hoping his voice sounded as
indifferent as he meant it to, "but I really did not see much of her and
she is going back to London almost at once." He went past her on into
the dining-room. "Is lunch nearly ready," he asked, "I have got to catch
that 2.5, you know."

"I'll see about it," Mabel said, "Mother is having hers upstairs."

She turned away to comply, but all the time she was hurrying up the
maidservant, and later, while she and Dick sat opposite each other,
rather silent, through lunch, her eyes and mind were busy trying to read
the secret of Dick's manner. The girl had impressed him strongly, that
was evident, but why should she have occasioned this gloom in Dick who
so very rarely allowed anything or anybody to ruffle his cheery good
humour?

He rode off without letting her glean any explanation, and Mabel
wandered into the drawing-room to get it ready for Mrs. Grant's
descent. Had Dick really fallen in love? She remembered once before when
he had been about eighteen or nineteen, how there had been a girl whom
he had rather shyly confessed himself enamoured of. But since the damsel
had been quite five years his senior the romance, to Mabel's relief, had
faded away. Yet if Dick were ever really to fall in love it would be a
deep and unshakable tie; he would be as his father had been, all
faithful to the one woman in his life.

It was remembering her father that suddenly brought Mabel's thoughts
back to her mother whose absorbing personality had stood so like a giant
shadow across all their lives. Would Dick's love be strong enough to
fight against his sense of duty and mother's selfishness, for most
certainly mother would not help him to achieve his desire unless it ran
along the same lines as her own. And if mother prevailed what would life
mean for Dick? The same dry empty dreariness that her own days
contained, the restless hopes that died too hard, the unsatisfied, cruel
dreams? No, no! She had not fought to save her own happiness, but she
would fight to the last inch to save Dick's.

Almost as if in answer to her heart's wild outcry the front-door bell
rang, and looking up she saw the short stout figure which of late had
taken to haunting her thoughts on the door-step.

Mr. Jarvis was an elderly man inclined to be fat, with round, heavy
face, very thick about the jaws and unpleasantly small eyes. Yet the
expression of the man's face was not altogether disagreeable and a
certain shrewd humour showed in the lines of his mouth. He had lived for
forty-two years in Wrotham, travelling twice a year to London in
connection with his business, but never venturing further afield. His
house, a magnificent farm building, lay about twelve miles away on the
other side of Wrotham station. It had come down to him through
generations of Jarvises, he was reputed to be marvellously wealthy, and
he had no shyness about admitting the fact. His favourite topics of
conversation were money and horses. He had never married, village gossip
could have given you lurid details as to the why and the wherefore had
you been willing to listen. Mr. Jarvis himself would have put it more
plainly. The only woman he had ever had the least affection for had
neither expected nor desired matrimony; she had been content to live
with him as his housekeeper. This woman had been dead three years when
Jarvis first met Mabel. Quite apart from the fact that of late he had
been feeling that it was time he got married, Jarvis had been attracted
to Mabel from the first. She was such a contrast to the other women he
had known; he admired enormously her slim delicacy, her faintly coloured
face, her grey eyes. He liked her way of talking, too, and the long
silences which held her; her quiet dignity, the way she moved. He placed
her on a pedestal in his thoughts, which was a thing he had never dreamt
of doing for any other woman, and before long his admiration melted into
love. Then being forty-two the disease took rapid and tense possession.
He was only happy when he was with her, able to talk to her now and
again, to watch her always.

Dick's impression was that Mabel hated the man. He disliked him himself,
which perhaps coloured his view, for hate was not quite what Mabel felt.
Had Mr. Jarvis been content to just like her she would have tolerated
and more or less liked him. She had thought him, to begin with, a funny,
in a way rather pathetic, little man. Ugly, and Mabel had such an
instinctive sympathy for anything ugly or unloved. So, to begin with,
she had been kind to him; then one day Mrs. Grant had opened her eyes to
the evident admiration of the man, mentioning at the same time that from
the money point of view he would be a good match, and suddenly Mabel had
known that she was afraid. Afraid, without exactly knowing why, very
much as is the hapless sheep on his way to the slaughter-house.

As the maid ushered in Mr. Jarvis a minute or two later this feeling of
fear caught at Mabel's heart, and in answer to its summons the warm
blood flushed to face and neck as she stood up to receive him.

"I am early," stammered the man, his eyes on her new-wakened beauty, for
it was only in her lack of colour that Mabel's want of prettiness lay,
"but I came on purpose, I wanted to catch you alone."

Mabel took what was almost a despairing look at the clock. "Mother won't
be down for quite half an hour," she said, "so you have succeeded. Shall
we stay here or will you come down to the garden? I want to show you my
Black Prince rose, it is not doing at all well."

She moved to the window which opened doorways on to the garden, but Mr.
Jarvis made no attempt to follow her.

"Let us stay here," he said, "what I have got to say won't take long and
we can do the roses afterwards when Mrs. Grant is about. I guess you
could help me a bit if you only chose to," he went on, his voice
curiously gruff and unready, "but you won't, you won't even look at me.
I suppose those great grey eyes of yours hate the sight of me, and I am
a damned fool to put my heart into words. But I have got to," she heard
him move close to her and how quickly he was breathing, "I love you, you
pale, thin slip of a girl, I want you as a wife, will you marry me?"

The silence when he had finished speaking lay heavy between them. Mabel
let him take her hand, though the moist warmth of his gave her a little
shudder of aversion, but by no strength of will could she lift her eyes
to look at him. She stood as immovable as a statue and the man, watching
her from out of his small shrewd eyes, smiled a little bitterly.

"You hate the thought like poison," he said, "yet you don't throw off my
hand or yell out your 'No.' Something is in the balance then. Well,
marry me for my money, Mabel. I had rather it were love, but if there is
anything about me that can win you, I am not going to give you up."

That flicked at her pride and the honesty of it appealed to her. She
lifted her eyes and for the first time she became aware of the real
kindness that lay in his.

"I have never hated you," she said slowly, "but I don't and can't love
you. Will you take that as your answer?"

The man shook his head. "I was not fool enough to ask--'Do you love
me?'" he reminded her; "what I want to know is, 'Will you marry me?'"

"Without love?"--her eyes besought him--"marriage must be hideous."

"I will risk it if you will," he answered. "Sit down, let us talk it
out."

He had won back his self-possession, though his eyes were still eager in
their demand. Mabel sat down on the window-seat and he pulled up a chair
at a little distance from her.

"Look here," he began, "it is like this. I am not a young man, probably
I am twelve to fourteen years older than you. If you have heard what the
village scandal says about me you can take it from me that it is true;
it is better that you should know the worst at once. But until I met
you, this I can swear before God, I have never really loved. It is not a
question of money this time; I would give my soul to win you. And I
don't want you as I have wanted the other women in my life; I want you
as my wife."

"Yet you can buy me just as you could them," Mabel whispered.

"No"--again he shook his head. "I am not making that mistake either. I
know just why I can buy you. Anyway, let us put that aside. This is the
case as I see it. I have money, heaps of it; I have a good large house
and servants eating their heads off. I will make Mrs. Grant comfortable;
she will live with us, of course, and she is welcome to everything I
have got; and I love you. That is the one great drawback, isn't it? The
question is. Will you be able to put up with it?"

Away in the back of Mabel's mind another voice whispered, "I love you."
She had to shut her lids over the "Dream Eyes," to hold back the tears.

"Even if things were different," she said, "I could not love you; I have
always loved someone else."

Mr. Jarvis sat back in his chair with a quick frown. "Any chance of his
marrying you?" he asked.

"No," she had to admit, "there has never been any chance of that."

"I see"--he looked up at her and down again at his podgy, fat hands,
clenched together. "My offer still holds good," he said abruptly.

"Oh, I don't know what to say or what to do." Mabel's calm broke, she
stood up nervously. It almost seemed as if the walls of the room were
closing in on her. "There are so many things to think of; Mother and
Dick and----"

Perhaps he understood the softening of her voice as she spoke of Dick,
for he looked up at her quickly.

"Yes, there is your brother," he agreed. "I guess he is pretty tired
having to look after you two, and he is a clever lad; there ought to be
a future before him if he has his chance. Put the weight on to my
shoulders, Mabel; they are better able to bear it."

She turned to him breathlessly; it was quite true what he was saying
about Dick. Dick had his own life to make. "I have told you the truth,"
she said. "I don't love you, probably there will be times when I shall
hate you. If you are not afraid of that, if you are ready to take Mother
and me and let us spend your money in return for that, then--I will
marry you."

Mr. Jarvis got quickly to his feet. "You mean it?" he gasped; his face
was almost purple, he came to her, catching her hands in his. "You mean
it? Mind you, Mabel, you have got to put up with my loving you. I am
not pretending that I am the kind of man who will leave you alone."

"I mean it," she answered, very cold and quiet, because it seemed as if
all the tears in her heart had suddenly hardened into a lump of stone.




CHAPTER VII

    "I ride to a tourney with sordid things,
     They grant no quarter, but what care I?

       *     *     *     *     *

     I have bartered and begged, I have cheated and lied,
     But now, however the battle betide,
     Uncowed by the clamour, I ride ride, ride!"

                                             VICTOR STARBUCK.


Joan did not see Aunt Janet again. Miss Abercrombie carried messages
backwards and forwards between the two, but even Miss Abercrombie's
level-headed arguments could not move Aunt Janet from the position she
had taken up. And Miss Abercrombie was quite able to realize how much
her old friend was suffering.

"I never knew a broken heart could bring so much pain," she told Joan;
"but every time I look at your aunt I realize that physical suffering is
as nothing compared to the torture of her thoughts."

"Why cannot she try to understand. Let me go to her," Joan pleaded. "If
only I can speak to her I shall make her understand."

But Miss Abercrombie shook her head. "No, child," she said, "it would be
quite useless and under the circumstances you must respect her wishes. I
am fearfully sorry for both of you; I know that it is hurting you, too,
but when you have wilfully or inadvertently killed a person's belief in
you the only thing you can do is to keep out of their way. Time is the
one healer for such wounds."

The tears smarted in Joan's eyes, yet up till now she had not cried
once. Hurt pride, hurt love, struggled for expression, but words seemed
so useless.

"I had better hurry up and get away," she said; "I suppose Aunt Janet
hates the thought of my being near her even."

Miss Abercrombie watched her with kindly eyes. The tragedy she had
suspected on the first night was worse even than she had imagined. It
stared at her out of the old, fierce face upstairs, it slipped into her
thoughts of what this girl's future was going to be.

"Have you made any plans?" she asked; "do you know at all where to go?"

"Does it matter very much?" Joan answered bitterly.

"My dear," Miss Abercrombie spoke gently, "I am making no attempt to
criticize, and I certainly have no right to judge, but you have a very
hard fight before you and you will not win through if you go into it in
that spirit. I do not want to ask questions, you would probably resent
them, but will you tell me one thing. Does the man know about what is
going to happen?"

"No," answered Joan. "It wouldn't make any difference if he did. It is
not even as if he had persuaded me to go and live with him; I want you
to understand that I went of my own free will because I thought it was
right."

"You will write and tell him," suggested Miss Abercrombie. "That is only
fair to him and yourself."

"No," Joan said again, "it was the one thing he was most afraid of; I
would not stoop to ask him to share it with me."

Miss Abercrombie put out a quick hand. "You are forgetting that now
there is someone else who is dependent on how you fight and whether you
win through. You may say, 'I stand alone in this,' yet there is someone
else who will have to share in paying the cost."

The colour swept from Joan's cheek; she choked back the hard lump in her
throat. "We will have to pay it together," she said. "I cannot ask
anyone else to help."

The tears, long held back, came then and she turned away quickly. Miss
Abercrombie watched her in silence for a minute or two. At last she
spoke. "You poor thing," she said slowly and quietly; "you poor, foolish
child."

Joan turned to her quickly. "You are thinking that I am a coward," she
said, "that I am making but a poor beginnings to my fight. But it isn't
that, not exactly. I shall have courage enough when it comes to the
time. But just now it is hurting me so to hurt Aunt Janet; I had not
reckoned on that, I did not know that you could kill love so quickly."

"You can't," Miss Abercrombie answered. "If her love were dead all this
would not be hurting her any more."

So Joan packed up her trunks again, fighting all the time against the
impulse which prompted her to do nothing but cry and cry and cry. The
chill of Aunt Janet's attitude seemed to have descended on the whole
household. They could have no idea of the real trouble, but they felt
the shadow and moved about limply, talking to each other in whispers.
Miss Janet was reputed to be ill, anyway, she was keeping her room, and
Miss Joan was packing up to go away; two facts which did not work in
well together. No wonder the servants were restless and unhappy.

Uncle John met Joan on her way upstairs late that evening. His usually
grave, uninterested face wore an expression of absolute amazement, it
almost amounted to fear.

"Will you come into my room for a minute," he said, holding the door
open for her to pass.

Once inside, he turned and stared at her; she had never imagined his
face could have worn such an expression. She saw him trying to speak,
groping for words, as it were, and she stayed tongue-tied before him.
Her day had been so tumultuous that now she was tired out, indifferent
as to what might happen next.

"Your aunt has told me," he said at last. "I find it almost impossible
to believe, and in a way I blame myself. We should never have allowed
you to go away as we did." He paused to breathe heavily. "I am an old
man, but not too old to make a fight for our honour. Will you give me
this man's name and address, Joan?"

She had not paused to think that they would look on it as their honour
which she had played with. His rather pitiful dignity hurt her more than
anything that had gone before.

"I cannot do that," she answered; "there is nothing exactly that you
could blame him for. I did what I did out of my own free will and
because I thought it was right."

He still stared at her. "Right," he repeated; "you use the word in a
strange sense, surely; and as for blaming him"--she saw how suddenly his
hands clenched, the knuckles standing out white--"if you will let me
know where to find him, I will settle that between us."

Joan moved towards the door. "I cannot," she said; "please, Uncle John,
don't ask me any more. I have hurt your honour; it must be me that you
punish. I am going away to-morrow, let me go out of your life
altogether. I shall not make any attempt to come back."

"You are going to him?" he questioned. "Before God, if you do that I
will find you out and----"

"No," she interrupted, "you need not be afraid; I am not going back to
him."

With her hand on the door she heard him order her to come back as he had
not finished what he had to say, and she stayed where she was, not
turning again to look at him.

"You are being stubborn in your sin." How strange the words sounded from
Uncle John, who had never said a cross word to her in his life. "Very
well, then, there is nothing for us to do except, as you say, to try and
forget that we have ever loved you. When you go out of our house
to-morrow it shall be the end. Your aunt is with me in this. But you
shall have money; it shall be paid to you regularly through my
solicitor, and to-night I am writing to him to tell him to render you
every assistance he can. You can go there whenever you are in need of
help. Miss Abercrombie has also promised your aunt, I believe, to do
what she can for you."

"I would rather not take any money from you," whispered Joan; "I will be
able to earn enough to keep myself."

"When you are doing that," he answered grimly, "you may communicate with
the solicitor and he will put the money aside for such time as you may
need it. But until then you owe it to us to use our money in preference
to what could only be given to you in charity or disgrace."

She waited in silence for some minutes after his last words. If she
could have run to him then and cried out her fear and dismay and regret,
perhaps some peace might have been achieved between them which would
have helped to smooth out the tangle of their lives. But Joan was
hopelessly dumb. She had gone into her escapade with light laughter on
her lips, now she was paying the cost. One cannot take the world and
readjust it to one's own beliefs. That was the lesson she was to learn
through loneliness and tears. This breaking of home ties was only the
first step in the lesson.

She stole out of his presence at last and up to her own room. Her
packing was all finished, she had dismantled the walls of her pictures,
the tables of her books. Everything she possessed had been given to her
by either Uncle John or Aunt Janet. Christmas presents, Easter presents,
birthday presents, presents for no particular excuse except that she was
their little girl and they loved her. It seemed to Joan as if into the
black box which contained all these treasures she had laid away also
their love for her. It took on almost the appearance of a coffin and
she hated it.

Miss Abercrombie saw her off at the station next morning. She had given
Joan several addresses where she could look for rooms and was coming up
to London in about a month herself, and would take Joan back with her
into the country. "I want you to remember, though," she added, "that you
can always come to me any time before that if you feel inclined. You
need not even write; just turn up; you have my address; I shall always
be glad to have you. I want to help you through what I know is going to
be a very bitter time."

"Thank you," Joan answered; but even at the time she had a ridiculous
feeling that Miss Abercrombie was very glad to be seeing the last of
her.

After the train had slid out of the station and the small, purposeful
figure had vanished from sight she sat back and tried to collect her
thoughts to review the situation. She was feeling tired and desperately
unhappy. They had let her see, even these dear people whom of all others
in the world she loved, that she had gone outside their pale. She was in
their eyes an outcast, a leper. She was afraid to see in other people's
eyes the look of horror and agony which she had read in Aunt Janet's. Of
what use was her book-learned wisdom in the face of this, it vanished
into thin air. Hopeless, ashamed, yet a little defiant, Joan sat and
stared at the opposite wall of the railway carriage.

At Victoria Station she put her luggage into the cloak-room, deciding to
see what could be done in the way of rooms, without the expense of going
from place to place in a cab. The places Miss Abercrombie had
recommended her to struck her as being expensive, and it seemed to her
tortured nerves as if the landladies viewed her with distrustful eyes.
She finally decided to take a bus down to Chelsea; she remembered having
heard from someone that Chelsea was a cheap and frankly Bohemian place
to live in.

London was not looking its very best on this particular morning. A
green-grey fog enshrouded shops and houses, the Park was an invisible
blur and the atmosphere smarted in people's eyes and irritated their
throats. Despite the contrariness of the weather, Joan clambered on to
the top of the bus, she felt she could not face the inside stuffiness.
She was tired and, had she but owned to it, hungry. It was already late
afternoon and she had only had a cup of coffee and a bun since her
arrival.

As the bus jolted and bumped down Park Lane and then along
Knightsbridge, she sat huddled up and miserable on the back seat, the
day being well in accord with her mood. She was only dimly aware that
they were passing the flat where she and Gilbert had lived, she was more
acutely conscious of the couple who sat just in front of her--the man's
arm flung round the girl's shoulders, her head very close to his.

Waves of misery closed round Joan. A memory, which had not troubled her
for some time, of Gilbert's hands about her and the scent of heliotrope,
stirred across her mind. She could feel the hot tears splashing on her
ungloved hands, a fit of sobbing gulped at her throat. Lest she should
altogether lose control of herself she rose quickly and fumbled her way
down the steps. The bus had just reached the corner of Sloane Street.
She would go across the Park, she decided, and have her cry out. It was
no use going to look for rooms in her present state, no landlady would
dream of having her.

Half blinded by her tears and the fog combined, she turned and started
to cross the road. Voices yelled at her from either side, a motor car
with enormous headlights came straight at her out of the fog. Joan
hesitated, if she had stayed quite still the danger would have flashed
past her, but she was already too unnerved to judge of what her action
should be. As if fascinated by the lights she shut her eyes and moved
blindly towards them.

There were more sharp shouts, a great grinding noise of brakes and
rushing wheels brought to a sudden pause, then the darkness of black,
absolute night surged over and beyond the pain which for a moment had
held Joan. She floated out, so it seemed, on to a sea of nothingness,
and a great peace settled about her heart.




CHAPTER VIII

    "With heart made empty of delight
       And hands that held no more fair things;
     I questioned her;--'What shall requite
       The savour of my offerings?'"

                                             E. NESBIT.


"You have got your back against the wall, you have got to fight, you
have got to fight, to fight!"

The words pounded across Joan's mind over and over again. She struggled
in obedience to their message against the waves of sleep that lapped her
round. Struggled and fought, till at last, after what seemed like
centuries of darkness, she won back to light and opened her eyes.

She was lying in a long narrow bed, one of many, ranged on both sides
down the hospital walls. Large windows, set very high up, opened on to
grey skies and a flood of rather cold sunshine. At the foot of her bed,
watching her with impartial eyes, stood a man, and beside him two
nurses, their neat pink dresses and starched aprons rustling a little as
they moved.

Joan's eyes, wide and bewildered, met the doctor's, and he leant forward
and smiled.

"That's better," he said, "you have got to make an effort towards living
yourself, young lady." He nodded and turned to the nurse at his right
hand. "How long has she been in now, Nurse?"

"Ten days to-morrow," the woman answered, "and except for the first day,
when she moaned a good deal and talked about having to fight, she has
scarce seemed to be conscious."

Joan's lips, prompted by the insistent voice within her, repeated, "I
have got to fight," stiffly.

The doctor came a little nearer and stooped to hear the words, "Yes," he
agreed, "that is right, you have got to fight. See if you can get her to
talk now and again, Nurse," he added; "she wants rousing, otherwise
there is nothing radically to keep her back."

Joan's face, however, seemed to linger in his mind, for, as he was about
to leave the ward after his tour of inspection, he turned again to the
elder nurse in charge.

"Have you been able to find out anything about bed 14?" he asked.

"No, sir. We have had no inquiries and there was nothing in any of her
pockets except a cloak-room ticket for Victoria Station."

"Humph," he commented, "yet she must have relations. She does not look
the friendless waif type."

Nurse Taylor pursed up her lips. She had her own opinion as to the
patient in bed 14. "There was the unfortunate circumstance of her
condition," she mentioned; "the girl may very well have been desperate
and lonely."

"Anyway, she hasn't any right to be left like this," the doctor
retorted. "If you can get her to talk about relations, find out where
they are and send for them. That is my advice."

Nurse Taylor owned a great many excellent qualities; tact and compassion
were not among them. Long years spent in a profession which brought her
daily into contact with human sin and human suffering had done nothing
to soften her outlook or smooth down the hard, straight lines which she
had laid down for her own and everyone else's guidance. She disapproved
of Joan, but obedience to the doctor's orders was a religion to her;
even where she disapproved she always implicitly carried them out.

Next day, therefore, she stopped for quite a long time at Joan's bed,
talking in her toneless, high voice. Had Joan any people who could be
written to, what was her home address, would they not be worried at
hearing nothing from her?

Joan could only shake her head to all the questions. Very vaguely and in
detached fragments she was beginning to remember the time that had
preceded her accident. The memory of Aunt Janet's face and Uncle John's
parting words was like an open wound, it bled at every touch and she
shrank from Nurse Taylor's pointed questions. She remembered how she had
sat on the top of the bus with the black weight of misery on her heart
and of how the tears had come. She had been looking for rooms; that
recollection followed hard on the heels of the other.

When she was well enough to get about she would have to start looking
for rooms again, for she had quite definitely made up her mind not to be
a burden to Miss Abercrombie. It was her own fight; when she had
gathered her strength about her, she would fight it out alone and make a
success of it. Half wistfully she looked into the future and dreamt
about the baby that was coming into her life. She would have to learn to
live down this feeling of shame that burnt at her heart as she thought
of him. He would be all hers, a small life to make of it what she
pleased. Well, she would have to see that she made it fine and gay and
brave. Shame should not enter into their lives, not if she fought hard
enough.

Nurse Taylor described her to the junior afterwards as a most stubborn
and hardened type of girl.

"The poor thing has hardly got her wits about her yet," the other
answered; "she is very little trouble in the wards, we have had worse."

"Well, the doctor can question her himself next time," Nurse Taylor
snorted. "I am not here to be snubbed by her sort."

She did not, however, let the matter drop entirely. At the end of her
third week Joan was promoted to an armchair in the verandah and there
one afternoon, after the teas had been handed round, Nurse Taylor
brought her a visitor. A tall, sad-faced, elderly woman, who walked
with a curiously deprecating movement, seeming to apologize for every
step she took. Yet kindliness and a certain strength shone at Joan from
behind the large, round-rimmed glasses she wore, and her mouth was clean
cut and sharp.

"This is Mrs. Westwood." Nurse Taylor introduced them briefly. "She
wants to have a little talk with you, Miss Rutherford. If I were you I
should tell her about things," she added pointedly. "I do not know if
you have any plans made, but you are up for discharge next week."

She bustled off and Mrs. Westwood drew up a chair and sat down close to
Joan, staring at the girl with short-sighted, pink-lidded eyes.

"You will wonder who I am," she said at last. "Perhaps you have never
noticed me before, but I am a very frequent visitor. We run a mission in
the South-West of London, with the object of helping young girls. I want
you to talk to me about yourself, to be quite frank with me and to
remember, if I seem to usurp on your privacy, that I am an older woman
and that my only wish is to help you."

"It is very kind of you," began Joan, "but----"

"You may not need material help," the woman put in hastily; "but,
spiritually, who is not in need of help from God."

Joan could think of no suitable reply for this and they sat in silence,
the woman studying her face intently. Then presently, flushing with the
earnestness of her purpose, she put out a cold hand and took Joan's.

"I think they have left it to me to tell you," she said. "The little
life that was within you has been killed by your accident."

The colour flamed to Joan's face. A sense of awe and a feeling of
intense relief surged up in her. "Oh, what a good thing!" she gasped,
almost before she realized what she said.

Mrs. Westwood sat back in her chair, her eyes no longer looked at Joan.
"The child which God had given you even in your sin," she said stiffly.

Joan leaned forward quickly. "I did not mean just that," she said, "and
yet I did. You do not know, you can't guess, how afraid I was getting.
Everyone's hand against me, and even the people who had most loved me
seeming to hate me because of this."

Her voice trailed into silence before the stern disapproval of the other
woman's face. Yet once having started, she was driven on to speak all
the jumble of thoughts that had lain in her mind these last two months.

"I was not ashamed or afraid, to begin with," she hurried the words out.
"It had not seemed to me wrong. I lived with him because I thought I
loved him and we did not want to get married. Then one day he let me
see--oh, no, I am not being quite truthful, for I had seen it
before--that he was in reality ashamed of our life together. He was
acting against his convictions because it amused him. I could not bear
that, it seemed to drag our life together through the mud, and I left
him."

She could see that Mrs. Westwood was not making the slightest attempt to
understand her; still she went wildly on:

"I went home and it seemed all right. My life with him faded away; I
suppose I had never really loved him. Then, then they found out about
what was going to happen and they turned against me, even Aunt Janet;"
her voice broke on the words, she buried her face in her arms, crying
like a child. "Aunt Janet, Aunt Janet," she whispered again and again
through her tears.

Mrs. Westwood waited till the storm had spent itself, there was no sign
of softening upon her face. Remorse and regret she could understand and
condone, but this excusing of self, as she called Joan's explanation,
struck her as being inexcusably bad.

"And do you now congratulate yourself that by this accident," she laid
special stress on the word, "you are to escape the punishment of your
sin?"

Joan raised tear-drowned eyes. "Haven't I been punished enough," she
asked, "for something that I did not think was a sin?"

"We cannot make or unmake God's laws in our thoughts," the other
answered; "you were wilfully blind to the knowledge that was in your
heart."

"Oh, no," Joan began. Mrs. Westwood swept the remark aside and stood up.

"We will not argue about it," she said; "I realize that you are not yet
looking for the comfort or promise of pardon which I could lead you to.
But, my child, do not delude yourself into the belief that thus easily
have you set aside the consequences of your evil. God is not mocked,
neither does He sleep. If you should ever be in any real need of help,"
she ended abruptly, "help which would serve to make you strong in the
face of temptation, come to us, our doors are always open."

She dropped a card bearing the address of the mission on Joan's lap and
turned to go. Joan saw her call Nurse Taylor and say a few words to her
on the way out. For herself she sat on in the dusk. Outside the lamps
had been lit, they shone on wet pavements and huge, lurching omnibuses,
on fast-driven taxis and a policeman standing alone in the middle of the
road. To-morrow she would have to write to Miss Abercrombie and tell her
there was no further need for her very kindly assistance; then she would
have to make new plans and arrangements for herself in the future. She
would try for a room in one of the girls' clubs that Miss Abercrombie
had given her a letter to. She had been shy of going there before, but
it would be different now. She could slip back into life and take up her
share, forgetting, since the fear was past, the nightmare of terror
which had held her heart before. For she had been afraid, what was the
use of trying to blind her eyes to the truth? She had not had the
courage of her convictions, she had not even wanted to carry her banner
through the fight. She was glad, to the very bottom of her heart she was
glad, that there was no more need for fighting.




CHAPTER IX

    "Let this be said between us here,
       One's love grows green when one turns grey;
     This year knows nothing of last year,
       To-morrow has no more to say
              To yesterday."

                                             A. SWINBURNE.


Dick could not bring himself to approve of his sister's marriage. He
made no attempt to conceal his real opinion on the subject. In one very
heated interview with Mabel herself he labelled it as disgusting to
marry a man whom you disliked for his money, or for the things his money
can give you.

"But I do not dislike him," Mabel answered, as once before. She was
sitting in a low armchair by the window, a piece of sewing in her hands.
She laid her work down to look up at him. "He is very fond of me and he
will be very good to Mother and myself. There are worse reasons than
that for marrying, surely."

"It is Mother, then," stormed Dick. "You are doing it because of
Mother."

Mabel shook her head. "No," she said; "I am doing it because to me it
seems right and as if it would bring most happiness to all of us. I am
not even quite sure that Mother approves."

She need not have had any misgivings on that point. Mrs. Grant was
absolutely in her element arranging for the marriage. Mabel had never
been quite the beautiful daughter that Mrs. Grant would have liked, that
she should marry a Mr. Jarvis was to be expected; he had at least got
money, which was always something to be thankful for. She took over the
refurnishing and redecorating of his house with eager hands.

"Mabel has always been accustomed to luxury, Tom," she told Mr. Jarvis;
"until Harry died she never wanted for a thing which money could give
her."

"And she shall not want now," he answered gravely.

Only once he remarked to Mabel afterwards, showing perhaps the trend of
his thoughts: "We appear to be furnishing our house to please your
mother, Mabel; seems a pity I cannot save you the trouble of marrying me
by asking her instead."

Mabel stirred a little uneasily. "In pleasing her you are pleasing me,"
she answered, and with a shrug of his shoulders he turned away from the
subject.

Mrs. Grant had her own rooms papered with white satin paper and very
delicately outlined in gold; she ransacked the Jarvis heirlooms to find
appropriate furniture for such a setting, and succeeded very well. The
bills for her various suggested improvements passed through Mr. Jarvis'
hands, and he commented on them to Mabel with a grim smile.

"She knows how to spend money," he said. "Dick must certainly have found
the responsibility heavy."

"She has never learned how not to spend," Mabel explained; "but you must
not pass what you think unnecessary."

"My dear, it is part of our bargain," he answered; "I shall not shrink
from my share any more than you will."

Mrs. Grant fought very strenuously for a wedding in London, but here for
once Mabel opposed her firmly, and the idea had to be abandoned.

"It means, of course, that most of my dearest friends will not be able
to come, but I suppose I need not expect that to weigh against your
determination," was one of the many arguments she tried, and: "I never
dreamed that a daughter of mine would insist upon this hole-and-corner
way of getting married" another.

"It almost looks as if you were ashamed of the man," she said somewhat
spitefully to Mabel, the day the wedding-dress was tried on. "When your
father and I were married the church was simply packed. I had a lovely
gown"--her thoughts wandered into kindlier channels--"and Harry was very
much in love. I remember his hand shaking as he tried to slip the ring
on to my finger. I suppose you love Mr. Jarvis?"

The abrupt question coming after the vague memories startled Mabel into
sudden rigidness. "I suppose I do," she answered, her white-clad figure
mocked her from the glass. "One does love one's husband, doesn't one?"

"Mabel"--Mrs. Grant's voice sounded righteous indignation--"you do say
such extraordinary things sometimes and about such solemn subjects. But
if you do really love him, then why this desire for secrecy?"

"Dear Mother, being married in the parish church instead of in St.
Paul's is not exactly secrecy or a wild desire to hide something on my
part. I have always hated big fashionable weddings."

She slipped out of the dress and laid it down on the bed. Mrs. Grant
viewed her with discontented eyes.

"I cannot pretend to understand you," she grumbled, "and I don't know
why you talk of St. Paul's. I never suggested such a place; Harry and I
were married at St. Mary's, Kensington."

Dick, when consulted on the matter, proved even less amenable. "I
dislike the whole affair," he answered gruffly; "please don't ask me
where it should take place."

He ran up to London himself the week before the wedding. A vague and
rather incoherent wish to meet Joan again had kept him restless ever
since her abrupt departure. He did not attempt to define his thoughts in
any way. The girl had interested him, and startled him out of the even
tenor of his beliefs. He hated to think of her turned adrift and left,
as the possibility was she had been left, to fend for herself. He had
not seen the elder Miss Rutherford since his visit, but rumour in the
village ran that Miss Joan had got into disgrace of sorts and been sent
away. The servants from the Manor spoke with bated breath of the change
which had come over the household; of how Miss Joan's rooms had been
locked and her pictures taken down. The world is horribly hard to women
when they leave the beaten paths of respectability; he could not bear to
think of what she might be suffering, of where it might lead her.

He walked about somewhat aimlessly for his few days in town, but the
chance of meeting anyone in this way is very remote, and of course he
did not succeed. He could not, however, shake away the depression which
the thought of her brought him.

Mabel came to sit in his smoking-room the night before her wedding, Mrs.
Grant having gone early to bed.

"Did you see anyone up in town?" she asked.

Dick shook his head, puffing at his pipe. "Not a soul I knew," he
commented, "except Mathews about my job. Wish I hadn't gone; London is a
depressing place."

"You rather hoped to meet someone, didn't you?" asked Mabel.

Dick glanced up at her and away again quickly. "What makes you ask
that?" he said.

Mabel let the curtain fall back into place; she had been peering out
into the street, and turned to face him. "You have shut me outside
things, Dick," she spoke slowly, "this last month, ever since my
engagement; but shutting me out can't keep me from knowing. You only saw
that girl over at the Manor once, but she has been in your thoughts ever
since." She came forward, perching herself on the arm of his chair as
had been her habit in the old days, one arm thrown round his shoulders
to support herself. "Little brother," she asked, "did you think I should
not know when you fell in love?"

Fell in love! How completely the thought startled him. Of course Mabel
was utterly mistaken in her wild conjectures. To throw aside the doubt
he turned quickly, and put a hand over hers where it lay near him.

"Why do you say I have shut you out?" he parried her question. "Because
I lost my temper over your engagement?"

"No." Mabel shook her head. "It was not exactly because of that. I know
you have not understood, Dick; I am not even sure that I want you to;
and I know that that helped to build a wall between us, but that was not
what began it. Never mind"--she bent and kissed the top of his head--"if
your secret is not ready to share you shall keep it a little longer to
yourself. You will go up to London, won't you, Dick, after Tom and I
have come back and Mother has settled down?"

"I suppose so," he agreed; "but I want to get away for a bit first, if I
can. Spoke to Mathews when I was in town and he has promised to keep his
eyes open for a job on one of those P. and O. liners for me."

"I see," she said; "but when you come back you will settle in town and
sometimes you will spare us week-ends from your very strenuous career,
won't you?"

"Of course," he answered; his hand tightened on hers. "Mabel," he said
suddenly, "you are happy, aren't you; it isn't because of me or anyone
else that you are getting married, is it?"

He was not looking at her, therefore she did not have to lie with her
eyes. "I am quite happy," she answered softly. "Dear, stupid Dick, how
you have fretted your heart out about my happiness."

"I know," he admitted, "I could not bear to think--I mean, love somehow
stands for such a lot in people's lives, I----" he broke off, and stood
up abruptly. "You will think I am a sentimental ass, but I have always
wanted you to have the best of things, Mabel, and I have been horribly
afraid that Fate, or Mother, or perhaps even I, were shoving you into
taking the second best."

"You have wanted the best for me, Dick," she answered, "that counts for
a lot."

Then one of those dull silences fell between them that come sometimes to
two people who love with their whole hearts and who have been trying to
speak some of their thoughts to each other--a silence that stood between
them almost as it were with a drawn sword, while Dick puffed at his pipe
and Mabel stared at her white hands, showing up against the darkness of
her dress. Then finally she moved, standing up, and just for a second
their eyes met.

"Good-night," she said across the silence, "it is late, Dick, I meant to
be in bed ages ago."

"Good-night," he answered, and she turned quickly and went from the
room.

Mrs. Grant kept everyone, including herself, in a state of unexplained
fuss from the moment when early morning light woke her on the day of
Mabel's marriage till the moment when, much to Dick's embarrassment, she
collapsed into his arms, sobbing bitterly, in the vestry where they had
all gone to sign their names.

At the reception she slightly recovered her spirits, but broke down
again when the time came for the couple to depart. They were going to
Paris for a fortnight's honey-moon; Mabel had stipulated that they
should not be away for longer than that. Jarvis Hall was ready for their
return; already Mrs. Grant was using one of the motors and ordering
crested paper with the address on it for her own letters. But Dick,
Mabel knew, was simply aching to be quit of it all, and away on his own.
He had arranged to hand over the practice and proposed to take a two
years' trip abroad. It was only in the complete freedom of Dick that she
would know that part of her plan was being fulfilled.

When she drew back her head after the final farewells had been waved and
the house was out of sight it was to meet Jarvis' intent, short-sighted
stare. His glasses magnified the pupils of his eyes to an unusual extent
when he was looking straight at anyone.

"Well," he said, "that's done. Till the last moment, Mabel, I rather
wondered if you would go through with it. But I might have known," he
went on quickly, "you are not the sort to shrink from a bargain once it
is made."

Her hand lay passive in his, she did not even stir when he leaned
forward to kiss her. What he had said was perfectly true, the bargain
had been made, she was not one of those who shirk payment.




CHAPTER X

    "And you shall learn how salt his food who fares
     Upon another's bread; how steep his path,
     Who treadeth up and down another's stairs."

                                             D. G. ROSSETTI.


There are some natures which cannot live with any happiness in drab
surroundings. Atmosphere affects everyone more or less; but whereas
there are a few fortunate ones who can rise triumphant to a certain
contentment through squalor and ugliness, there are a great many more
who find even cheerfulness very hard to attain to under like
circumstances.

The shut-in dinginess of Digby Street, the gloomy aspect of Shamrock
House, cast such a chill across Joan's spirits that, as she stood
hesitating with her hand on the bell, the instinct came to her to
scramble back into the cab and tell the man to drive her anywhere away
from such a neighbourhood. Of course it was absurd, and the cabman did
not look as if he would be in the least willing to comply. He had
treated her with a supercilious disbelief in there being any tip for him
as soon as he had heard of her destination. Joan had gone to Victoria
Station to collect her luggage, and it had been both late and dark
before the need for a cab had arisen. She had elected not to leave the
hospital till after tea; somehow, when it had come near to going, her
courage, which she had been bolstering up with hope and promises of what
she should do in her new life, had vanished into thin air. Perhaps more
than anything else she lacked the physical strength which would have
enabled her to look cheerfully into the future. The hospital had been a
place of refuge, she hated to leave it.

This feeling grew upon her more and more as she sat back in a corner of
the cab while it rumbled along the Vauxhall Bridge Road. There seemed
always to be a tram passing, huge giant vehicles that shook the earth
and made a great deal of noise in their going. The houses on either side
were dingy, singularly unattractive-looking buildings, and the further
the cab crawled away from Victoria Street the deeper the shade of
poverty and dirt that descended on the surroundings. Digby Street and
Shamrock House were the culminating stroke to Joan's depression.

Miss Abercrombie had written recommending it to her as a Girls' Club
where she would probably get companionship and advice on the question of
work. "You won't like it," she had added, "but it is very conveniently
situated and ridiculously cheap." So Joan had described her destination
to the cabman as a ladies' club, somewhere in Digby Street. He had
answered with a sniff, for it was here that he had lost sight of his
tip, that he supposed she meant the Home for Working Girls that lay in
those parts. Looking up at the large, red-fronted building, with its
countless uncurtained windows, Joan realized that the man's description
was probably nearer the truth than her own.

She was to learn later that on this particular occasion she saw Digby
Street at its very worst, for it was Saturday night, and barrows of
fish, meat and vegetables stood along the pavements, illuminated by
flares of light so that all the ugliness was only too apparent. Little
children played in and out, under the barrows and along the gutters; a
public-house stood at the corner near Shamrock House, and exactly
opposite the Salvation Army added its brass band and shrill voices to
the general tumult.

Joan's first timid attempt at the bell produced no answer, nor her
second. By this time the cabman had dismounted her box and stood staring
at her in sullen disapproval, while a couple of very drunk but cheerful
costers argued with each other as to whether they ought not to help the
young lady to get in. Her third effort was perhaps more violent, for, to
her relief, she could see the dim light in the hall being turned up and
the door was opened on the chain and very slightly ajar. A couple of
bright eyes peered at her through this opening, then, having apparently
satisfied their owner that Joan was neither dangerous nor drunk, the
door was further opened, and Joan could see into the red-tiled hall and
passage with its numbered, white-painted doors.

"What do you want?" asked the lady of the eyes; a small, plump person
with grey hair brushed back very straight from an apple-red face.

"I want a room," Joan explained. "I have been recommended to come here.
I do hope you have one to spare."

The little lady moved aside and beckoned to the cabman. "You can come
in," she said, "and the man had better fetch in your box. I thought it
was one of those troublesome children when you first rang, it was so
very violent, and they make a point of trying to break the bells."

"I am so sorry," Joan murmured meekly, an apology she realized was
expected from her. "I was so dreadfully tired and no one seemed to be
going to answer."

"We do not keep a staff of servants to answer the bell day and night,"
the woman answered. "Still, I am sorry you were kept waiting. Will you
come in here"--she opened a door a little way down the passage--"this is
my office. I must see your letter of recommendation before I let you
talk about the rooms, that is one of our rules."

Joan paid the cabman and followed her inquisitor into the office. Miss
Nigel let down the front of the desk, opened a large ledger and donned a
pair of spectacles. "Now," she said, "who are you, what are your
references, and who recommended you?"

Fortunately Miss Abercrombie had remembered to send a letter of
introduction. Joan produced it and handed it to Miss Nigel. "My name is
Joan Rutherford," she added; "I did not know about having to have
references."

Miss Nigel peered at her over the tops of her glasses; she only used
them for reading and could not see out of them for other purposes. "We
have to make a point of it in most cases," she answered, "but also I
judge by appearances. In your case this letter from Miss
Abercrombie--her name is in our books although I do not know her
personally--will be quite sufficient. Now, how much do you want to pay?"

"As little as possible," Joan confessed, "only I would like to have a
room to myself."

"Quite so," the other agreed, "and in any case, all our cubicles are
taken. They are, of course, cheaper than anything else." She ran her
finger down the lines of the ledger. "I can let you have a room on the
top floor which will work out to fifteen and six a week. That includes
breakfast, late dinner, lights and baths. There is a certain amount of
attendance, but we expect the girls to make their own beds and keep the
rooms tidy."

Fifteen and six a week. Joan attempted to make a rapid calculation in
her head, but gave up the idea. It sounded at least quite absurdly
cheap, she would not have to spend very much of Uncle John's allowance
before she got some work to do for herself. The future seemed suddenly
to shut her in to a life enclosed by the brick walls of Shamrock House
with its attendant neighbourhood of Digby Street.

"That will do," she answered, "it sounds very nice."

"Yes," agreed Miss Nigel; she closed the desk and stood up, "for the
price, we offer exceptional advantages. If you will carry up what you
need for to-night, I will show you to your rooms."

It occurred to Joan as she followed her guide up flights of carpetless
stone stairs that her new abode resembled a prison more than anything
else. The long bare passages were broken up by countless doors all
numbered and painted white in contrast to the brick-coloured walls. The
sound of their footsteps echoed mournfully through the bareness and
seeming desolation of the place. From one of the landing windows she
caught a blurred picture of the streets outside, the lit-up barrows, the
crowd just emerging from the public-house. She was to get very used and
very hardened to the life in Digby Street, but on this, her first
evening, it caught at her senses with a cold touch of fear.

On the top floor of all Miss Nigel opened the first door along the
passage and ushered Joan into the room that was to be hers. It was so
small that its one window occupied practically the whole space of the
front wall. A narrow bed stood along one side, and between this and the
opposite wall there was scarce room for a chair. At the foot of the bed
stood the wash-stand and the chest of drawers facing each other, with a
very narrow space in between them. But it was all scrupulously clean,
with white-washed walls and well-scrubbed furniture, and the windows
opened over the roofs of the neighbouring houses. Very far up in the
darkness of the sky outside a star twinkled and danced.

Miss Nigel looked round at the room with evident satisfaction. "You will
be comfortable here, I think," she said; "we do our best to make the
girls happy. We expect them, however, to conform to our rules; you will
find them explained in this book." She placed a little blue pamphlet on
the dressing-table. "Lights are put out at ten, and if you are later
than that, you have to pay a small fine for being let in, a threepenny
door fee, we call it. Everyone is requested to make as little noise as
possible in their rooms or along the passages, and to be punctual for
dinner."

With one more look round she turned to go. Half-way out, however, a
kindly thought struck her, and she looked back at Joan.

"Dinner is at seven-thirty," she said. "I expect you will be glad to
have it and get to bed. You look very tired."

Joan would have liked to ask if she could have dinner upstairs, but one
glance at the book of rules and regulations decided her against the
idea. Shamrock House evidently admitted of no such luxury, and on second
thoughts, how ridiculous it was to suppose that dinner could be carried
up five flights of stairs for the benefit of someone paying fifteen and
six a week all told. She was too tired and too depressed to face the
prospect of a meal downstairs, she would just have to go to bed without
dinner, she concluded.

The House woke to life as she lay there, evidently the inhabitants
returned about this time. Joan remembered the cabman's somewhat blunt
description and smiled at the memory. A Home for Working Girls. That was
why it had seemed so silent and deserted before, shops and offices do
not shut till after six. But now the workers were coming home, she could
hear their feet along the passages, the slamming of doors, voices and
laughter from the room next hers. Home! This narrow, cold room, those
endless stairs and passages outside, they were to be home for the
future. The hot tears pricked in her eyes, but she fought against tears.
After all, she had been very lucky to find it, it was cheap, it was
clean; other girls lived here and were happy, someone had laughed next
door.

"I have got to take you firmly in hand," Joan argued with her
depression. "It is no use making a fuss about things that are all my own
fault. I tried to play with life and I did not succeed. It is too big
and hard. If I had wanted to work it out differently I ought to have
been very strong. But I am not strong, I am only just ordinary. This is
my chance again, and in the plain, straight way I must win through." She
spoke the words almost aloud, as if challenging fate: "I will win
through."




CHAPTER XI

    "Will my strength last me? Did not someone say
     The way was ever easier all the way?"

                                             H. C. BEECHING.


Youth can nearly always rely upon sleep to build up new strength, new
hope, new courage. If you have got to a stage in your life when sleep
fails you, if night means merely a long tortured pause from the noises
of the world, in which the beating of your heart seems unbearably loud,
then indeed you have reached to the uttermost edge of despair. Joan
slept, heavily and dreamlessly, save that there was some vague hint of
happiness in her mind, till she was wakened in the morning by a most
violent bell ringing. The dressing-bell at Shamrock House, which went at
seven o'clock, was carried by a maid up and down every passage, so that
there was not the slightest chance of anyone oversleeping themselves.

Joan dressed quickly; the faint aroma of happiness which her sleep had
brought her, and which amounted to cheerfulness, stayed with her. She
remembered how Miss Abercrombie had once said to her: "Oh, you are a
Browningite," and smiled at the phrase, repeating to herself another
verse of the same poem:

    "And I shall thereupon
     Take rest ere I be gone,
     Once more on my adventure brave and new."

She felt almost confident of success this morning; her mind was busy
with plans of the work she would find. She was glad to feel herself one
in a giant hive of workers, all girls like herself, cutting out their
lives for themselves, earning their own living.

Breakfast brought with it a slight disillusionment. The dining-room in
Shamrock House is in the basement; chill and dreary of aspect, its
windows always dirty and unopenable, because at the slightest excuse of
an open window the small boys of the neighbourhood will make it their
target for all kinds of filth. Rotting vegetables, apple-cores,
scrapings of mud; there is quite sufficient of all that outside the
windows without encouraging it to come in. Six long deal tables occupy
the space of the room, and it is one of the few amusements which the
children of Digby Street possess to gather at the railings and watch the
inhabitants of Shamrock House being fed.

It was the last flight of stairs into the basement which damped Joan's
enthusiasm for her new home. As she stood hesitating in the doorway, for
there were a great many people in the room, and the tables seemed
crowded, she caught Miss Nigel's eye.

"You will find a seat over there," the lady called out to her, waving a
hand in the direction of the furthest table. "Help yourself to bacon,
which is on the hot case near the fire, and come here for your tea or
coffee. By the way, which do you like?"

Joan asked for tea, and having secured her cup and a small piece of
unappetizing bacon, she found her way over to the indicated table. A
girl sat at the head of it, and since she was ensconced behind a
newspaper and apparently paying no attention to anybody, Joan chose the
chair next her. She felt on the sudden shy and unwilling to make friends
with anyone, the chill of the room was striking into her heart.

She had presently to rouse her neighbour, however, to ask her to pass
the salt, and at that the girl lifted a pair of penetrating eyes and
fixed Joan with an intent stare.

"New arrival?" she asked.

"Yes," Joan admitted. "I came last night."

"Humph!" the girl commented. "Well, don't touch the jam this morning. It
is peculiar to Shamrock House--plum-stones, raspberry-pips and glue."
She swept the information at Joan and returned to her paper.

She was a big girl with rather a heavy face and strong, capable-looking
hands. Despite her manners, which were undeniably bad, Joan would almost
have described her as distinguished but for the fact that the word
sounded ridiculous amid such surroundings.

"Looking for work?" the girl asked presently.

"Yes," Joan answered again, "only I am not sure what sort of work to
look for, or what I should like to do."

The girl lifted her eyes to stare at her once again. "It isn't generally
a case of 'like,'" she said, "more often it is necessity. In that
case"--she reached out a long arm for the bread--"Fate does not as a
rule give you much time in which to make up your mind; she pushes you
into something which you hate like hell for the rest of your life."

"You aren't very cheerful," remonstrated Joan.

"Oh, well, I never am that," agreed the other, "nor polite. You ask Miss
Nigel if you want a true estimate of my manners. But I have lived here
ten years now and I have seen girls like you drift in and out by the
score. The feeding or the general atmosphere doesn't agree with them,
and our ranks are maintained by beings of a coarser make, as you may see
for yourself."

She rose, crumpling her paper into a ball and throwing it under the
table.

"My name is Rose Brent," she said. "What is yours?"

"Rutherford," Joan answered, "Joan Rutherford. I hope I shan't drift
quite as quickly as you foretell," she added.

Secretarial work was what she had really made up her mind to try for,
though she had not had the courage to confess as much to her breakfast
companion. She had, after all, had a certain amount of training in that
and hoped not to find it so very impossible to get a post as a beginner
somewhere. Her first visit to the nearest registry office, however,
served to show her that her very slight experience was going to be of
little use to her. The registry lady was kind, sufficiently interested
to appear amiable, but not at all reassuring in her views as to Joan's
prospects.

"I am afraid I cannot hold out very much hope," she said, after five
minutes' crisp questioning of Joan. "You have, you see, so very few
qualifications, and the market is rather over-stocked with girls who can
do just a little. My strong advice to you is to continue your shorthand;
when you are a little more experienced in that we ought to have no
difficulty in placing you. Good morning; please see that the hall door
shuts properly, the latch is very weak."

Her business-like manner, the absolute efficiency which shone around
her, and the crowded aspect of the waiting-room--all girls who could do
just a little, Joan presumed--caused her heart to sink. Finding work was
not going to be as easy as she had first supposed.

She roamed from office to office after that for several days, to be met
everywhere with the same slight encouragement and frail promises to
help. Finally, thoroughly discouraged, she bought papers instead, and
turned to a strict perusal of their various advertisements.

One in particular caught her eye.

"Wanted a pupil shorthand typist. Tuition in return for services.--Apply
Miss Bacon, 2, Baker Street, W."

It was late in the afternoon of the day before Joan found her way to
Baker Street, for she had had several other places to call at and she
was in addition very tired. Going from place to place in search of work
had reduced her to a painful knowledge of her own absolute incompetency
and the general uselessness of life. A brass plate on the door of No. 2
conveyed the information: "Miss Bacon. Fourth floor. Shorthand and
Typing. Please ring and walk up."

Joan rang and followed the instructions. On the very top landing a girl
stood, holding a candle in her hand, for up here there was no light of
any sort. The grease dripped down her skirt and on to the floor.

"Do you want Miss Bacon?" she asked.

Joan nodded, too breathless to say anything.

The girl turned into the dim interior and threw open a door, snuffing
the candle at the same time.

"If you will wait here," she said, "Miss Bacon will be with you in a
minute."

Joan looked round on a moderately large, dust-smothered room. Dust, that
is to say, was the first thing to strike the eye of the beholder. The
windows were thick in dust, it lay on tables and chairs and on the two
typewriters standing unused in a corner of the room. The room gave one
the impression of being singularly uninhabited. Then the door opened and
shut again, and Joan turned to face the owner.

Miss Bacon's figure, like her furniture, seemed to have taken on a
coating of dust. Timid eyes looked out at Joan from behind pince-nez set
rather crookedly on a thin nose. One side of her face, from eye to chin,
was disfigured by an unsightly bruise. Miss Bacon dabbed a handkerchief
to it continually and started explaining its presence at once.

"You may be surprised at my face"--her voice, like her eyes, was
timid--"but I am short-sighted and last night stumbled on the stairs,
hitting my face against the top step. It was exceedingly painful, but it
is better now. What can I do for you?"

Joan murmured something sympathetic about the top step, and explained
that she had come in answer to the advertisement. Miss Bacon's face
fell. "I had hoped you were a client," she owned. Then she pulled
forward a chair for herself and asked Joan to be seated.

It appeared that Joan would receive excellent tuition in shorthand and
free use of the typewriters. If any typing work came in she would be
expected to help with it, but for the rest she could devote the whole
of her time to studying and practising on the machines. Miss Bacon was a
little vague as to the other pupils, but Joan gathered that there was a
shorthand class and two other typewriters in another room.

"My other pupils are, of course, on a different footing," Miss Bacon
told her. "Generally I require a fee of at least ten guineas, but in
your case, as I shall require you to do a little work for me, I shall be
content to take less. That is to say, four guineas, everything
included."

"There is nothing about paying in the advertisement," Joan ventured. "I
am afraid it is quite impossible for me to pay that."

Miss Bacon took off her glasses and polished them with nervous hands. "I
do not want to seem unreasonable," she said; "after you have worked for
me you will certainly be able to obtain a well-paid post elsewhere; my
pupils invariably move on in that way. I guarantee, of course, to find
situations. If I could meet you in any way--supposing you paid me two
guineas now and two guineas when you moved on?"

"It is awfully kind of you"--Joan hesitated on the words--"but I am
afraid I can't really afford it, not even that."

Miss Bacon relinquished the idea with a heartfelt sigh. "My dear," she
confided suddenly, "I know what poverty is. Shall we say one pound to
begin with?--you must remember that these are very exceptional terms."

Joan thought a moment. It seemed almost certain, from what she had
gleaned from the various agencies, that getting a post without training
was an impossibility, and most of the training centres asked for at
least twenty-five guineas. Perhaps in refusing this offer she was
letting a good chance slip by her, and, though she hated to make free
use of it, there was always Uncle John's money, to fall back on.

"I think I will come if you will let me do it in that way," she decided
finally; "when would you like me to start?--to-morrow?"

"The sooner the better." Miss Bacon rose with a smile of almost intense
relief. "I have had no one for the last fortnight and the place is
getting very untidy. You will pay the first pound in advance," she
added; "I hope you will bring it with you to-morrow."

She seemed painfully anxious for the money; if Joan had not been so
tired she might have thought the fact suspicious. As it was she went
back to Shamrock House with a lightened heart. It was not a very
attractive or promising post; if she were to judge by outside
appearances and by Miss Bacon's last remark her chief duties were to
include those of general cleaning up and dusting. But that would be all
in the day's work. Some little confidence and hope were beginning to
creep back into her heart. She had secured her first post; Miss Bacon
held out vague visions of the triumphs to which it might lead. Surely in
time she would get away from the nightmare of the last two months; in
time even Aunt Janet would forgive her, and meanwhile her foot was on
the lowest rung of the ladder; work should be her world in future. She
would work and fight and win. There was still, as Miss Abercrombie would
have said, a banner to be carried. She would carry it now to the end.




CHAPTER XII

    "Our life is spent in little things,
       In little cares our hearts are drowned;
     We move with heavy laden wings
       In the same narrow round."


For the first week in her new post Joan was kept very busy putting
things--as Miss Bacon described it--to rights. She had also, she
discovered, to run errands for Miss Bacon several times during the
course of a day; to buy paper for the typewriters, to fetch Miss
Bacon's lunch, on one occasion to buy some cooling lotion for Miss
Bacon's bruise. Of the other pupils she saw no sign, and even the girl
who had admitted her on the first night did not put in an appearance,
but this Miss Bacon explained by saying that Edith was delicate and
often forced to stay away through ill health.

Joan refrained from asking questions; she realized herself that she had
stumbled on to something that was nearly a tragedy. The hunted look in
Miss Bacon's face, the signs of poverty, the absolute lack of work told
their own tale. As a running business 2, Baker Street, was an evident
failure, but there was no reason why, with a little application, she
should not make it serve her purpose as a school. The lack of tuition
was its one great drawback; there seemed no signs whatsoever of the
promised shorthand lessons. Finally Joan plucked up her courage one
morning in the second week, and invaded Miss Bacon's private office.

"What about my shorthand?" she inquired from just within the doorway;
"when shall I begin?"

Miss Bacon had changed her shoes for a pair of bedroom slippers and was
occupying the arm-chair, immersed in the newspaper. She started at
Joan's abrupt question, the movement jerking the glasses from off her
nose. She picked them up nervously and blinked at Joan.

"What did you say?--shorthand? Oh, yes, of course! It is really Edith's
duty to take you in that; still, as she is not here, I propose to
dictate to you myself after lunch. My first duty in the mornings is to
master the newspaper; there might be some openings advertised." She
turned again to her news-sheet. "Why not employ yourself practising on
the typewriter?" she suggested.

Joan would have liked to reply that she was tired of practising
sentences on the typewriter and hungry for some real work to do, but she
had not the heart to be unkind to the poor little woman. She spent a
disconsolate morning and stayed out for lunch longer than usual. On her
return Miss Bacon was waiting for her on the top of the stairs.

"My dear," she said in an excited voice, "some work has come in. A man
has just brought it, and he must have it by to-morrow morning. I hope
you will be able to get it done, for I have promised, and a lot may
depend on it."

So much depended on it that she herself decided to help Joan with the
work. She was not, it appeared, even as experienced as Joan, and by 6.30
the two of them had only completed about half the typing. Joan's back
ached and her fingers tingled, but Miss Bacon's eyes behind the glasses
were strained to the verge of tears, two hectic spots of colour burned
in her cheeks and her fingers stumbled and faltered over the keys.

As the clock struck seven Joan straightened herself with a sigh of
relief.

"It is no use," she said, "we cannot get it done; he will have to wait
for his silly old papers."

The blood died suddenly out of Miss Bacon's face, her mouth trembled.
"It must be done," she answered; "you do not understand. It is the first
work that has been brought to us for weeks. The man is a stranger; if it
is well done and up to time he will give us some more; besides he will
pay"--for a second she lifted her eyes and looked at Joan--"I must have
the money," she said.

Her face, working under the stress of some strong emotion, was painful
to see. She was so weak, so useless, so driven. Joan looked away hastily
and went on with her work. From time to time, though, she stole a glance
at Miss Bacon. It was dreadful to know that the poor old woman was
crying; quietly, hopelessly, great drops that splashed on to her fingers
as they stumbled over the keys.

At last Joan could bear it no longer, she rose quickly and crossed over
to Miss Bacon, putting her hands over the useless fingers.

"Don't you bother with it any more, Miss Bacon," she said. "I am nearly
through with my share now and I can come early to-morrow and get it all
done before breakfast. It is silly to work away at it now when we are
both tired out."

Miss Bacon gulped down her tears and looked up nervously. "You think you
can," she asked; "you have realized how important it is?"

"Yes," Joan told her, "and I know I can. I won't disappoint you, really
I won't. Let us go across the road and get some tea before we go home,"
she suggested.

Miss Bacon looked away again hastily. "You go," she muttered, "I don't
need tea, I----"

"You are going to come and have tea with me," Joan interrupted. It had
flashed on her that Miss Bacon had not even the money for that.

Over the hot buttered toast and the tea Miss Bacon poured out her
troubles to Joan. They came, once she had started, in an unquenchable
flood of reminiscences. The little woman had reached the last inch of
endurance; the kindly sympathy, the touch of Joan's hands broke down all
barriers of reserve or caution. She had been a governess, it appeared,
and during all her years of service she had laid by enough money to buy
the business at Baker Street.

"I got it cheap," she owned. "I can see now that the other people must
have failed too, and I have no head for business. I am absolutely at the
end of things now; if I died to-morrow it would be a pauper's funeral. I
often think of that when I see a gorgeous hearse and procession passing
through the street."

Her words were ridiculous, but real tragedy looked out of her eyes.
"Ruin stares me in the face," she went on, "from every paper I read,
from every person I meet. I have no money, not even enough to buy food,
as you have guessed. Ruin! and I have not the courage to get out of it
all. I have never been very brave."

"But I think you have been brave," Joan tried to reassure her. "You
have held on for so long alone. And I expect we have turned a corner
now, things will be better to-morrow."

Miss Bacon stared at her teacup with hopeless eyes. "That is what I used
to think at first," she said, "to-morrow will be better than to-day--it
never has been yet."

She rose to go, and Joan, prompted by a sudden quick desire to help,
leant forward and caught hold of her coat. The tragedy of the withered
figure, the stupid, aimless face, struck her as the cruellest thing she
had yet seen in life. What were her own troubles compared to this
other's dull facing of loneliness, failure and death.

"You must cheer up, you really must," she begged; "and as for the money
part, let me pay down the rest of my fee now. I have got three pounds
out with me; do take it, please do, you see it really is yours."

Taking the money seemed to add an extra gloom to Miss Bacon's outlook;
none the less she did not require very much persuading, and Joan,
pressing it into her hand, piloted her across the road and saw her into
the Underground station.

It was the last glimpse she was to have of the quaint figure which had
crossed her life for so short a time, but that she did not realize. She
only knew that her heart ached because she had been able to do so little
to help, and because Miss Bacon's story had brought suddenly to her mind
a knowledge of how terribly hard life can be to those who are not strong
enough to stand against it.

True to her word, she arrived at Baker Street very early the next
morning and the momentous piece of typewriting was finished before Miss
Bacon's usual hour of arrival. Joan put it on the table with the old
lady's paper and went out to get some breakfast, as she had had to leave
Shamrock House before seven.

She was greeted on her return by the girl who had let her in on the
first night. There was a man with her who had taken possession of Miss
Bacon's chair and who was reading the paper morosely, both elbows on the
table.

He glanced up at Joan as she entered. "Is this Miss Bacon, by any
chance?" he asked, bringing out the words with a certain grim defiance.

Edith interrupted Joan's disclaimer by a shrill laugh. "Lor' bless you,
no, she is one of the pupils, same as me." She turned to Joan. "Did you
pay anything to join?" she asked. Joan resented the familiarity of her
tone. "Would have liked to have warned you the other night, but Bacon
was too nippy."

Joan flushed slightly. Disregarding the interruption she spoke quickly,
answering the man's question:

"Miss Bacon must be ill, I am afraid," she said; "it is so very late for
her, she is nearly always here by ten. She will probably be here
to-morrow if you care to come again."

Again Edith giggled and the man frowned heavily.

"Well, she probably won't," he answered. "She has done a bunk, that's
the long and short of it, and there is not a blasted penny of what she
owes me paid. Damn the woman with her whining, wheezing letters, 'Do
give me time--I'll pay in time.' Might have known it would end in her
bunking."

"I don't think you ought to speak of her like that," Joan attempted;
"after all, it is only that she does not happen to be here this morning.
She would have let me know if she had not been coming back."

"Oh, would she?" growled the man; "well, I don't care a blasted hell
what you think. I don't need to be taught my business by the likes of
you."

From the passage to which she had retired Edith attracted Joan's
attention by violent signs. "There is no use arguing with him," she
announced in an audible whisper, "he's fair mad; this is about the tenth
time he's missed her. Come out here a minute, I want to talk to you."

Joan went reluctantly. She disliked the girl instinctively, she
disliked the dirty white blouse from which the red neck rose, ornamented
by a string of cheap pearls, and the greasy black ribbon which bound up
Edith's head of curls.

"Are you being a fool?" the girl asked, "or are you trying to kid that
man? Haven't you cottoned to old Bacon's game yet?"

"I am sorry for Miss Bacon, if that is what you mean," Joan answered
stiffly.

"Sorry!" Edith's face was expressive of vast contempt. "That won't save
you from much in this world. I tell you one thing, if you lent the old
hag any money yesterday you won't see her again this side of the grave,
so there isn't any use your hanging about here waiting for that."

Joan favoured her with a little collected stare. "Thank you," she said,
"it is very thoughtful of you to think of warning me." She left her and
walked back deliberately into the room where the man was sitting. "There
were some typed sheets lying on the top of the paper," she said; "do you
mind letting me have them back."

"Yes I do," he answered briefly; "man called in for them a little while
back and that is five shillings towards what the old hag owes me,
anyhow."

It was in its way rather humorous that she should have worked so hard to
put five shillings into such an objectionable pocket. Joan felt strongly
tempted to argue the matter with him, but discretion proving wiser than
valour, she left him to his spoils and retired into the other room. She
would not leave the place, she decided, in case Miss Bacon did turn up;
it would be very disagreeable for her to have to face such a man by
herself.

By lunch time the man stalked away full of threats as to what he would
do, and Edith went with him. Joan stayed on till six, and there was
still no sign of Miss Bacon. It was strange that she should neither have
telephoned nor written.

Over dinner at Shamrock House that night she told Rose Brent the story
of her fortnight's adventure, ending up with the rash impulse which had
led her to pay up the four guineas because Miss Bacon had seemed in such
bitter need. The girl met her tale with abrupt laughter.

"I am afraid what your unpleasant acquaintance of this morning told you
is probably true," she said. "After all, if you went and handed out four
guineas it was a direct temptation to the poor old woman to get away
on."

"I don't believe she would take it just for that," Joan tried to argue.
"I know she wanted it awfully badly, but it was to help her pull through
and things were going to run better afterwards. I don't believe she
would just take it and slip away without saying a word to me."

"Faith in human nature is all very well," the other answered, "but it is
awfully apt to let you down, especially in the working world."

"I shall go on believing for a bit," Joan said; "she was looking so
awfully ill yesterday, it may just be that she could not come up to
office to-day."

"May be," Rose agreed. "When you are tired of waiting for the return of
the prodigal let me know and I will see if I cannot get you in
somewhere. I ought to be able to help. And look here, my child, never
you pay another penny for tuition on those lines; you could get all the
learning you need at the County Council Night Schools, and it is a good
deal cheaper."

Joan put in two days at No. 2, Baker Street, waiting for the return of
Miss Bacon or for some message which might explain her absence, but
nothing and no one came. On the morning of the third day she found that
the stout and bad-tempered man had carried out his vague threats. The
place had been taken possession of, already they were removing the
typewriters and tables under the direction of a bailiff. Even the plate
bearing Miss Bacon's name had vanished, and boards announcing the top
flat to let flaunted themselves from the area railings.

After that Joan gave up the hope. Sometimes she wondered if after all
Miss Bacon had found the necessary courage to be done with it all, and
if her silence betokened death. It was more likely though that the poor
old lady had merely sunk one rung lower on the ladder of self-esteem and
was dragging out a miserable existence somewhere in the outside purlieus
of London.




CHAPTER XIII

    "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
     Or what's a heaven for?"

                                             R. BROWNING.


Following Rose's suggestion, and because for the time being there really
seemed nothing for her to do, unless she could show herself a little
better trained, Joan joined the County Council Night Schools in the
neighbourhood. She would go there five evenings in the week; three for
shorthand and two for typing. Her fellow scholars were drawn from all
ages and all ranks--clerks, office boys, and grey-headed men; girls with
their hair still in pig-tails, and elderly women with patient, strained
faces, who would sit at their desks plodding through the intricacies of
shorthand and paying very little attention to what went on all round
them.

The boy and girl section of the community indulged in a little rough and
tumble love-making. Even long office hours and the deadly monotony of
standing behind desk or counter all day could not quite do away with the
riotous spirit of youth. They giggled and chattered among themselves,
and passed surreptitious notes from one form to the other when Mr.
Phillips was not looking.

Mr. Phillips, the shorthand master, was a red-faced, extremely irascible
little man. He came to these classes from some other school in the city
where he had been teaching all day, and naturally, by the time evening
arrived, his none too placid temper had been stretched to
breaking-point. He was extremely impatient with any non-comprehension
of his complicated method of instruction; and he would pass from row to
row, after his dictation had been finished, snatching away the papers
from his paralysed pupils and tearing them into fragments had the
exercise been badly done.

Joan noticed the man who sat next her on the first and every night. He
was quite the worst person she had ever seen at learning anything. He
was not by any means young, grey already showed in the hair above his
ears, and his forehead wrinkled with innumerable lines. He had, she
thought, the most pathetic eyes, large and honest, but quite
irredeemably stupid.

"I can't make head or tale of it," he confessed to her on the second
night. "And Mr. Phillips gets so annoyed with me, it only muddles me
more."

"Why do you bother to learn?" she asked. It seemed rather strange that a
man of his age should have to struggle with so elementary a subject.

"I have worked in an office for the last ten years," he explained. "The
new boss has suddenly decided that shorthand is necessary. I don't
know," he spoke rather vaguely, his eyes wandering round the room, "but
it is just possible he might ask me to go if I did not master it. I have
been there so long I hardly like to have to look for another place."

"It seems such a shame," Joan told Rose afterwards, "that these people
can never get a place where they feel really safe. They live always
expecting to be turned off at a moment's notice, or to have somebody put
in on top of them. Everybody seems to be fighting against everybody
else; doesn't anyone ever stop to help?"

The older girl laughed. "Why, yes," she said. "The world, or at least
the people in it, are not so bad as all that. Only life is a case of
push and struggle, and it is only natural that people should want to get
the best they can for their money. Also it wouldn't be fair if the ones
who worked best were not preferred to the others."

Mr. Simpson, Joan's perplexed friend of the shorthand class, was
certainly one of the stupidest people she had ever met, yet she was
terribly sorry for him. He was the butt of the class, which did not add
to the hilarity of his position, because of the torrent of abuse which
he always drew from Mr. Phillips at some stage in the evening.

"Now," Mr. Phillips would call out, starting the lesson by a blackboard
demonstration, "silence and attention, please."

He would draw a series of strokes and dashes on the blackboard, calling
out their various meanings, and the class would set itself to copy them.
The lesson would proceed for some time in silence, save for Mr.
Phillips' voice, but presently the bewilderment caused by so many new
outlines would terrify Mr. Simpson and he would lean forward to
interrupt, stammering, as he always did when nervous.

"Why is 'M' made like that?" he would say. "Wouldn't it be much better
if it were made the other way?"

"Why, why?" Mr. Phillips would thunder. "If you would just learn what
you are taught, sir, and not try to think, it would be a great deal
pleasanter for the rest of us."

Mr. Simpson would get a little red under the onslaught, but his eyes
always retained their patient, perplexed expression. He seemed
impervious to the impression he created in the back row. "Laughing-stock
of the whole class," Mr. Phillips called him in a moment of extreme
irritation, and the expression caught on.

"I am so silly," he said to Joan. "I really am not surprised that they
think me funny."

She was the one person who was ever nice to him or who did attempt to
explain things to him. Sometimes they would get there a little early and
she would go over his exercises with him. He might be thick-skinned to
the want of tolerance which the rest of the class meted out to him; he
was undoubtedly grateful to Joan for the kindness she showed him.

One evening on his way to class he plucked up courage to purchase a
small buttonhole for her, and blushed a very warm red when Joan took his
offering with a smile and pinned it into her coat.

"How nice of you," she said. "I love violets, and these smell so sweet."

"They are not half sweet enough for you," he managed to say, stuttering
furiously.

Joan had a moment's uneasiness. Surely the wretched little man was not
going to fall in love with her? She glanced sideways at him during the
class and what she saw reassured her. His clothes, his dirty hands, his
whole appearance, put him in a different world to herself. However kind
she might be to him, he surely could not fail to recognize that it was
only the same kindness which would prompt her to cross the road to give
a penny to a beggar?

Unfortunately Mr. Simpson belonged to a class which is very slow to
recognize any difference in rank save that of wealth. He was a humble
little man before Joan, but that was because he was by nature humble,
and also because he was in love. He thought her very wonderful and
beautiful beyond his range of words, but he imagined her as coming from
much the same kind of home as his own, and she seemed to exist in the
same strata of life.

A night or two after the flower episode he fixed adoring eyes on her and
asked if he might be allowed to see her home.

"Well, it is rather out of your way," Joan remonstrated, she had so
often seen him trudge off in the opposite direction.

"That is of no consequence," he replied, with his usual stutter.

The streets were dark, quiet, and deserted. Now and then as they hurried
along, for Joan walked as fast as she could to ward off conversation,
they passed a solitary policeman doing his beat, and dim, scarce seen
lovers emerged out of the shadows holding each other's hands.

"Will you not take my arm?" Mr. Simpson ventured presently. He was
slightly out of breath in his effort to keep up with her.

"No, thank you," Joan answered. The whole occurrence was too ridiculous,
yet for once in her life her sense of humour was failing her. "And I
wish you would not bother to come any further, it is quite unnecessary."

Her tone was more than chilly. Mr. Simpson, however remained undaunted.
His slow and ponderous mind had settled on a certain course; it would
need more than a little chilliness to turn it from its purpose.

"I was going to ask you," he went on, "whether you would do me the
honour of coming to the theatre one evening? If you have a mind that
turns that way sometimes."

"No, thank you," answered Joan once more. "I never go to theatres, and I
shouldn't go with you in any case," she added desperately, as a final
resource.

"I meant no offence," the man answered, humble as ever. "I should always
act straight by a girl, and for you----"

"Oh, don't, please don't," Joan interrupted. She stopped in her walk and
faced round on him. "Can't you see how impossible it would be for
me----" she broke off abruptly, rather ashamed of her outburst. "I am
going to be a snob in a minute, if I am not careful," she finished to
herself.

"I know I am not amusing, or anything," the man went on; "but you have
always seemed so kind and considerate. If I have offended in any way, I
am more than sorry."

Joan felt that he was frowning as he always frowned in hopeless
perplexity over his shorthand.

"I am not offended," she tried to explain more gently. "Only, please do
not ask me to go out with you again, or offer to walk home with me. Here
we are anyway, this is where I live." She turned at the bottom of
Shamrock House steps and held out her hand to him. "Good-night," she
said.

Simpson did not take her hand, instead he stared up at her; she could
see how shiny and red his face was under the lamp.

"You are not angry with me?" he stuttered.

"Why, no, of course not," Joan prevaricated. Then she ran up the steps
and let herself into the hall without looking back at him.

For two or three days she attempted to ignore the man's presence in
class next her, and Simpson himself in no way intruded. He had taken her
snubbing like a man; from the height of his dreams he had fallen into an
apathetic despair; the only effect it had on him was to make him
stupider than ever at his work. Then one evening, with a face working
rather painfully, he told her that he did not intend to come any more.

"I am going to another centre," he said, gathering his books together
and not looking at her.

"Has Mr. Phillips been too much for you?" she asked, wilfully ignoring
the deeper meaning behind his words.

"No," he answered, "it is not that. It may seem quite absurd," he went
on laboriously, "but I want to ask you to let me have your note-book. I
have got a new one to give you in its place." He produced a packet from
his pocket and held it out to her.

Later on, when she thought over the thing, she smiled. A note-book
seemed so singularly unromantic, but at the time she felt nearer tears.
The look in his eyes haunted her for many days. She had been the one
glimpse of romance in his dreary existence, and she had had to kill the
dream so ruthlessly.




CHAPTER XIV

    "It seems her heart was not washed clean
        Of tinted dreams of 'Might have been.'"

                                             RUTH YOUNG.


There followed a weary time for Joan. The poem she had repeated on her
first morning at Shamrock House had to be recalled again and again and
fell away finally from its glad meaning in the bitter disillusionment
which looking for work entailed. Wherein lay the value of cheerfulness
when day after day saw her weary and dispirited from a fruitless search,
from hope-chilling visits to registry offices, from unsuccessful
applications in answer to the advertisements which thronged the morning
papers? She went at it at first eagerly, hopefully. "To-day I shall
succeed," was her waking motto. But every evening brought its tale of
disappointment.

"There is no one in the world as useless as I am," she thought finally.

"It is only just a bad season," Rose Brent tried to cheer her up; "there
is lots of unemployment about; we will find something for you soon."

But to Joan it seemed as if the iron of being absolutely unwanted was
entering into her soul.

There was only one shred of comfort in all this dreariness. Life at
Shamrock House was so cheap that she was eating up but very little of
Uncle John's allowance. She wondered sometimes if the old people at home
ever asked at the Bank as to how her money matters stood, or had they
shut her so completely out of their lives that even that was of no
interest to them? Miss Abercrombie wrote fairly regularly, but though
she could give Joan news of the home people she had to admit that Aunt
Janet never mentioned or alluded to her niece in any way.

"She is harder than I thought she could be," wrote Miss Abercrombie; "or
is it perhaps that you have killed her heart?"

Once Joan's pride fell so low that she found herself writing Aunt Janet
a pathetic, vague appeal to be allowed to creep back into the shelter of
the old life. But she tore the letter up in the morning and scattered
its little pieces along the gutter of Digby Street. Digby Street was
sucking into its undercurrents her youth, her cheerfulness, her hope;
only pride was left, she must make a little struggle to hold on to
pride, and then news came from Miss Abercrombie that Aunt Janet had been
ill and that the Rutherfords had gone abroad. Apart from her fruitless
journeys in search of work, her days held nothing. She so dreaded the
atmosphere of Shamrock House that very often she would have to walk
herself tired out of all feeling before she could go back there;
sometimes she cried night after night, weak, stupid tears, shut up in
the dreariness of her little room, and very often her thoughts turned
back to Gilbert--the comfort of their little flat, the theatres, the
suppers, the dances and the passion-held nights when he had loved her.
More and more she thought of Gilbert as the dreariness of Digby Street
closed round her days.

If her baby had lived, would life have been easier for her, or would it
only have meant--as she had first believed in her days of panic that
it would mean--an added hardship, a haunting shame? It was the lack of
love in her life that left so aching a void, the fact that apparently no
one cared or heeded what became of her. The baby would at least have
brought love to her, in its little hands, in its weak strength that
looked to her for shelter.

"I should be happier," she said once stormily to Rose, "if I could have
a cat to keep. I think I shall buy a kitten."

The other girl had looked at her, smiling dryly. "Pets are strictly
against the rules in Shamrock House," she reminded her.

It was in one of her very despondent moods that Joan first met the young
man with blue eyes. She never knew him by any name, and their
acquaintance, or whatever it could be called, came to an abrupt end on
the first occasion when he ventured to speak to her. Womanlike, she had
been longing for him to do so for some time, but resented it bitterly
when he did. Perhaps something faintly contemptuous, a shadowed hint
that he had noticed her interest in him, flamed up the desire to snub
him in her heart, or perhaps it was a feeling of self-shame to find
herself so poor a beggar at friendship's gate.

For a week he had met her at the same place and followed her on her way
down Victoria Street. Then one night, just as they came under the lights
of Vauxhall Clock tower, he spoke to her.

"Doing anything to-night?" he said. "Shall we dine together?"

She turned from him in a white heat of anger, more with herself than
with him, though that, of course, it was not given him to know. But he
caught a glimpse of her face and read his answer, and since he was in
reality a nice boy, and insult had been the last thought in his mind, he
took off his hat quickly and apologized.

"I am sure I beg your pardon," he said; "I can see that I have made a
mistake."

Joan did not answer him, she had moved quickly away in the direction of
Digby Street, but as she passed by the dingy houses she knew that he was
not following any more, and she felt the hot, hard lump in her throat
which is so difficult to swallow. She had wanted to go to dinner with
him, she had wanted to, that was the thought that mocked at her all
night.

It was one evening about a fortnight after that episode that Rose called
Joan into her room on their way upstairs.

"I want to talk to you," she said, closing the door behind them. "Has
Miss Nigel spoken yet?"

"To me?" asked Joan; "what about?"

"I see, then, she hasn't," Rose answered, "but she will soon. Did you
notice that the night before last Miss Wembly, who sits at the next
table to ours, had a guest to dinner?"

"No," Joan admitted; "but why? What has it got to do with me?"

"I am coming to that," the other answered; she stood with her head
averted, looking for a cigarette. "I am always a damned silent person
myself," she went on, "and I do not think anyone can accuse me of being
curious about their pasts. I do not want to know a blessed thing about
yours, for instance, but that guest of Miss Wembly's was a nurse from
St. George's Hospital."

"Oh," said Joan blankly; she was standing just within the door, her back
against the clothes that hung on it.

"Well," Rose hurried on, "it has gone all round the place like
lightning. They aren't fond of you because they hate me and we are
friends. Yesterday one of them took the story to Miss Nigel and she is
going to ask you to leave."

"What story?" asked Joan; she had not followed the other's swift
deduction.

Rose lit a cigarette and held out the case to Joan. "Have one," she
said, "and come and sit down. As I said before, I am not asking for
personal history, I am telling you the facts as they affect this place.
They say you were to have had a baby, and you are not married."

She shrugged her shoulders and sank into a chair.

"You mean," whispered Joan, "that the nurse told them that?"

"I suppose so," Rose admitted; "anyway, Miss Nigel spoke of it to me
to-day. She is not a bad sort, Miss Nigel, she was very kind to me once,
but she is going to tell you to go."

"What have you thought of it?" asked Joan.

"I don't think about other people's affairs," Rose answered. "Come and
sit down, I have got some jam for you after the powder, for I believe I
have found a job for you. But first you must move into diggings, these
clubs are all in a league, every one of them will be shut to you."

"You are not bothering to ask if it is true," said Joan. She moved
forward and sat down, her hands clenched on her lap. "I suppose----"

Rose interrupted, putting a swift hand on hers. "Don't," she said,
"don't deny it or tell me the truth, whichever you were thinking of
doing. It does not matter to me. Because I like you I have interfered as
much as I have so that you may be prepared for Miss Nigel's attack." She
smiled. "It will be an attack too--having a baby and no husband to
people like Miss Nigel is worse than any criminal offence."

"Yes," Joan admitted. A vision of Aunt Janet's horror-stricken face came
across her mind. "When I heard that it had been killed in the accident,
I was glad, glad. I had not got the courage to go on and brave it out. I
was glad to think that I could start life again, that no one would know
or look at me like the people at home had looked at me when they knew.
And now----"

"And now?" Rose repeated; she was studying Joan's face with her eyes
half closed, a peculiar trick she had when her thoughts were unpleasant.

"And now it doesn't seem worth while going on any longer," Joan burst
forth. "There must be other lives that are better worth living than
this. Do you know that for the last ten days I have made fifteen
shillings addressing envelopes from nine till six. It would be better,
surely it would be better, to be what people call bad!"

Rose watched the flushed face. "If a life of that sort would give you
any pleasure," she spoke slowly, "I should say live it by all means. The
trouble is, it would not please you. If you care to listen, I will tell
you a bit of my own story. It is not altogether pleasant, but in your
present frame of mind it will not do you any harm to hear it."

She paused a moment, head thrown back, blowing smoke-rings to the
ceiling.

"I came to London ten years ago," she began presently, "and I was
twenty-one at the time. I had been keeping house for a brother in India,
and I had had a good time, but a spirit of restlessness had come upon me
and I would not leave him alone till he let me come home and start on my
own. I had, of course, no people. Poor brother, he gave way after many
arguments, knowing as little as I did about the life here, and I came.
He died the year afterwards of enteric. I had been on an allowance from
him before, but when he died that stopped and I was left absolutely
penniless. You have had a bad time in that way, but I had a worse one.
Still I was young and strong, and, above all, I was a fighter, so I won
through. I got a post as typist in a city office and I drifted to
Shamrock House. My working hours were lengthy, sometimes it was after
half-past seven before I came out of office. Then I would hurry through
the crowded streets, as you do now, and always that walk, through gaily
lighted pleasure-seeking crowds, would end for me in the dark dreariness
where Great Smith Street turns away from Victoria Street, a ten-minute
walk through one of London's poorest neighbourhoods, and--Shamrock
House! Those were the days in which I did my hardest kicking against
fate; it was so unjust, so unfair, and all the while youth and power to
enjoy, which is the heritage of youth, were slipping past me. That is
how you feel, isn't it?" she asked suddenly.

"Yes," Joan said.

"I know," Rose answered softly; "well, wait and hear. I was in this
mood, and feeling more than usually desperate, when I met the woman. I
need not give her a name, not even to you; I doubt if I ever knew her
real one. I had seen her several times, perhaps she had noticed me,
though she had quaint, unseeing eyes that appeared to gaze through you
blankly. She was a beautiful woman with an arresting beauty hard to
define, and she used, as far as I could see, neither paint nor powder.
One evening, just as I was turning into Great Smith Street, I found her
at my elbow.

"'You live down there,' she asked in a curious, expressionless way as if
she hardly expected an answer.

"I was startled at her talking to me and at the same time interested.

"'Yes,' I said.

"'It is dark and very dreary,' she went on, talking almost to herself,
'why do you choose such a life?'

"I think the bitterness of my mood must have sounded in my answer, for
suddenly she turned to me and laid a hand on my arm.

"'Leave it then,' she whispered, her face close up against mine, 'leave
it, come home with me.'

"'Home with you,' I repeated, thoroughly astonished, and at that moment
a policeman, tall and stolid, strolled across the road towards us.

"'Don't let him hear what we are saying,' whispered the extraordinary
woman; 'just turn back with me a little way and I will explain to you.'

"Well, I went. Perhaps you can realize why, and I saw for a little into
the outside edge of life as lived by these women. I wonder how I can
best convey to you the horror and pity of it, for we--despite the
greyness of our lives--have something within ourselves to which we can
turn, but they have weighed even hopes and dreams with the weights of
shame, and found their poor value in pounds, shillings and pence. That
is why their eyes as they pass you in the streets are so blank and
expressionless. Each new day brings them nothing, they have learnt all
things, and the groundwork of their knowledge is--sin."

She rose abruptly and moved across to the window, pulling aside the
blue-tinted curtains, staring out over miles and miles of roof-covered
London. From far in the distance Big Ben shone down on her, a round, dim
face in the darkness.

"You are wondering why I stayed with the woman," she went on presently.
"The answer is easy and may make you smile. I met a man, one of the many
she brought to the house, and fell in love with him. I was stupid enough
to forget my surroundings and the circumstances under which he had met
me, or I dreamt that to him also they were only the outside wrappers of
fate, easy to fling aside. Does it sound like a thrilling romance, and
am I making myself out to be the heroine of one crowded hour of glorious
life? Because my hour was never glorious."

She repeated the last word with a wry laugh and turned to face Joan. "I
don't know why I have raked up all this," she said. "I thought it had
lost its power to hurt; but I was mistaken. I have liked you, perhaps
that is the reason, and I have wanted to save you from making the same
mistake as myself. For before you plunge out of monotony you must see
that there is nothing in your heart that can be hurt, as these women
have to be hurt every hour of their lives."

Joan could find nothing to say; the other girl's confidence had been so
overpowering, it left her tongue-tied and stupid. Rose came back after a
little silence and sat down opposite her again.

"I am sorry," she said, "I have talked you into a mood of black
depression; never mind, perhaps you will have learnt something from it
none the less. And meanwhile, things are going to be better for you; it
is no loss having to leave Shamrock House, otherwise you might grow into
the house as I have. You will have to see about getting a room
to-morrow, and then if you can meet me in the afternoon, I will take you
and introduce you to your job. It is quite a nice one, I hope you will
like it."

Joan stood up. "I don't know what to say," she began; "you--oh, if only
we could wipe out the past," she flamed into sudden rebellion, "and
start afresh."

Rose laughed. "I don't know about that," she said--the inevitable
cigarette was in her mouth again--"_I_ for one would be very unwilling
to lose a wisdom which has been so dearly bought."




CHAPTER XV

    "No one has any more right to go about unhappy than he has to go
     about ill bred."

                                             R. L. STEVENSON.


Joan was not to start her new work till the following Monday. She was to
be typist--her first real post filled her with some degree of
self-conscious pride--to the Editor of the _Evening Herald_. Rose had
herself worked on the paper some years ago and was a friend of the
Editor's.

"I want you to give a girl I know a chance, Mr. Strangman," she had
pleaded; "she is clever and well-educated, but she needs experience.
Take her, there is a good man, while your slack time is on, and she will
be game for anything when you get busy again."

Mr. Strangman twisted long nervous fingers into strange positions.

"I don't know about this girl," he said; "we are never slack at the
office."

It was a pet fallacy of his that he was the hardest-worked man in
London. Rose smiled. "But her typing is quite good," she argued, "and
you are such an easy dictator, I am sure she will get on all right."

She had been exceptionally pleased when Mr. Strangman reluctantly gave
way. Joan would, she hoped, take kindly to newspaper work, and it might
open up new roads to her.

Meanwhile Joan had been out on her own and taken a room for herself in a
house standing in a quiet, withdrawn square in the neighbourhood of
King's Road, Chelsea. To call it a room was to dignify it by a title to
which it could lay no real claim. It was an attic, up the last rickety
flight of stairs, with roofs that sloped down within two feet of the
ground, and a diminutive window from which one could get but the barest
glimpse of the skies. Still it had possibilities, its aspect was not so
terribly common-place as had been that of the other rooms which Joan had
seen that morning. The sloping roofs, the small pane of glass which
looked out higher than the neighbouring chimney-tops, were in their way
attractive. She would take it, she told a somewhat surprised landlady,
and would pay--everything included--ten shillings a week for the noble
apartment. The "everything included" swept in breakfast--"Such as a
young lady like yourself would eat, Miss"--the woman told her, and
attendance. Suppers and fires she would have to provide for herself,
though Mrs. Carew was prepared to cook for her; lunch, of course, fell
in office hours.

On Saturday, therefore, and having forestalled Miss Nigel's request by
announcing that she was leaving for good, Joan moved her luggage over to
her new home and took possession.

"I am going to like it better than I liked being at Shamrock House," she
told Rose, who had come to assist in the moving. "It is more my own, I
can do just as I like here."

Rose was craning her neck to see out of the window's limited compass.
"Just as you like," she repeated, laughing as she spoke, "on twenty-five
shillings a week and an attic. You are not ambitious, my child."

She turned round to face the room; even in mid afternoon, with the sun
shining outside, it was dim--the corners in positive darkness. "I don't
think I should have chosen it," she said; "there is no sun, and"--she
shook the thought off--"who else is in the house, did you ask?"

"There was not any need to," Joan answered. "Mrs. Carew, that is my
landlady, you know, told me all their family histories while I was
making up my mind whether I would come or not. Wait a minute," she
paused in her unpacking to tick them off on her fingers. "There is the
ground floor lady, who is an artist's model. No need to work just now
though, for the last gentleman that painted her took a fancy to her and
is paying for her at present. Drawing-room floor, old foreign lady who
never seems to get out of bed. Second floor, retired army officer, 'fond
of drink, more's the pity,'" she mimicked Mrs. Carew's voice, "and
second floor back, young lady actress, who is not perhaps as good as she
might be, 'but there, you can't always be blaming people'; and third
floor, me! Doesn't sound respectable does it? But after Miss Nigel I am
afraid of respectability."

Rose watched her with narrowed eyes. "It sounds anything but
respectable," she agreed; "do not make a fool of yourself, kid, it won't
be worth it, it never is."

"I am not likely to," Joan answered her. "My one real regret in leaving
Shamrock House is that I shall not have you to talk to, oh, and the
baths. Mrs. Carew does not hold with carrying too much water up these
stairs."

"I am glad I rank before the baths," Rose laughed. She extricated
herself from behind the luggage. "I will come and look you up
sometimes," she announced, "though it probably won't be often; I am a
bad hand at stirring myself out to see anyone in the evenings.
Good-night, and I hope you will get on all right with Strangman, he is a
kind little man really."

She went. Joan sat listening to her feet echoing down the stairs; a
mouse could set the whole house creaking. She felt very much alone;
Shamrock House, full as it had been of uncongenial companions, had yet
been able to offer some distraction from one's own society.

The new office, to which she wended her way on the Monday morning, lay
in a side alley opening off Fleet Street, a rickety old building, busy
as a hive of bees in swarming time. The steep, wooden stairs, after she
had been asked her business by the janitor in the box office and put in
charge of a very small, very dirty boy, led her up and up into the heart
of the building--past wide-open doors where numerous men sat at desks,
the floor round them strewn with papers; up again, past rooms where the
engines throbbed and panted, shaking the building with their noisy
vibrations; up still further, till they landed her at that withdrawn and
sacred sanctum, the Editor's room. Here worked Mr. Strangman
and his satellites; spiders, in fact, in the centre of their
cleverly-constructed web, throwing out feelers in search of news to all
quarters of the globe.

Anything less like a spider than Mr. Strangman it would have been
difficult to imagine. He was an alert, nervous man, with bright, kind
eyes, a flexible mouth and very restless hands. His whole nature hung on
wires, as if--which was indeed the case--his mental capacity was too big
and overpowering for his physical strength. His manners under the strain
of work were jerky and abrupt, but otherwise he was a very kindly and
genial man. To Joan he was excessively polite, and so afraid that her
capabilities might not come up to his expectations that for the first
few days he left her practically with no work to do. She sat in a large,
well-lit--if draughty--room, opposite Mr. Strangman at his table.

It was one of her duties, she discovered, to keep the aforesaid table
tidy, and in time she learned that here more than anywhere else she
could be of service to the man. He had an awe-inspiring way of piling up
his desk with scraps of paper, cuttings, and slips, and stray
manuscripts, and it was always under the most appalling muddle that the
one small, indispensable news-slip would hide itself.

The Magazine Page-faker and the News-gleaner sat in the same room, the
latter at a table next Joan. He was a stout man with a beaming smile and
an inexhaustible supply of good temper. He would sit over his work,
which as far as she could see consisted solely of running his eye over
the day's papers and cutting out what appeared to be workable news,
making a great deal of noise with his feet on the floor, a gigantic
cutting-out scissors in his hand and a whistle which never varied its
tune from early morning till late in the evening--a soft, subdued,
under-his-breath whistle, Joan never even discovered what the tune was.
He was, despite this disadvantage, an indefatigable worker and an
ever-ready helper, always willing to do other people's work for them if
necessary.

Of the other people on the staff Joan saw very little; the reporters
came early in the morning to take their orders for the day, and threw in
their copy downstairs in the evening. Sometimes they would come upstairs
to discuss some feature of their day's work with Mr. Strangman, or to
put in an article to the Literary Editor, but, as a whole, she hardly
learned to know them, even by name. Then there were the office boys, a
moving, fluctuating crowd; always in mischief, always dirty, always
irrepressibly cheerful. For the rest, her work--one might almost say her
life--lay between the four walls of the office room, with the shaking
vibrations of the engines under her feet and the musty, curious smell of
papers in the making and pile upon pile of papers that had been made all
round her.

She arrived at 9.30 and left about 6 p.m., and by then she was too
numbed--for the working of a typewriter is monotonous work--to do
anything save walk with the hurrying crowds as far as Charing Cross and
take a bus from there to Montague Square. But since work filled her days
she had less time for discontent or depression. Sometimes she would be
tempted to wander off the direct route on her way home and she would
walk up to Piccadilly and past the region of brightly-lighted shops,
watching the faces in the crowd round her, envying those who met friends
and stopped to talk to them, following with rather wistful eyes the
couples who passed, hand clasped in hand; but generally speaking she was
too tired in the evenings to do anything save go straight home, eat a
hasty supper and tumble into bed.

Of Rose she saw, as the other had prophesied, very little. Joan realized
that friendship, if their brief companionship could have been called
such, counted for very little in Rose's life. The girl seemed entirely
to ignore her once she was from constant sight, and since Joan could not
herself call at Shamrock House and Rose habitually forgot to pay her
promised visits, the friendship, such as it had been, faded away into
the past.

The other inhabitants of 6, Montague Square, she saw very rarely.
Occasionally she would encounter Miss Drummond, the downstairs tenant,
paying off her taxi at the door--a tall, handsome girl, rather overblown
in her beauty, who invariably stared at Joan with haughty defiance and
stalked into her own room, calling loudly for Mrs. Carew. Once Joan had
stumbled over the retired military gentleman from the second floor,
sound asleep, in a very undignified position, half way up her own little
stairs. The incident had brought with it a shudder of fear, and from
that day onwards Joan was always careful to lock her door at night.

Miss Fanny Bellairs, the erring damsel on the second floor back, kept
such strange hours that she was never visible; but Mrs. Carew had a
large stock of not very savoury anecdotes about her which she would
recount to Joan during the process of laying supper. As not even an
earthquake would have stopped Mrs. Carew's desire to impart information,
Joan gave up the attempt to silence her. Indeed, she sometimes listened
with a certain amount of curiosity, and Fanny Bellairs assumed a
marvellous personality and appearance in her mind's eye.

That the original did not in the least come up to her expectations was
something of a surprise. About three months after her first arrival at
Montague Square Joan reached home rather late one evening to find her
room already occupied. A girl sat, her feet tucked underneath her, on
the principal chair under the lamplight; she had been crying, for a
tight, damp ball of a handkerchief lay on the floor, and at the sound of
Joan's entry she turned a tear-stained face to greet her.

"I thought you were never coming"--the voice held a plaintive sob in
it--"and I am that down-hearted and miserable."

Joan put down her things hastily and came across. "I am so sorry," she
said, groping through her mind to discover who her visitor might be;
"did Mrs. Carew tell you I was in?--how stupid of her."

The girl in the chair gulped back her tears and laughed. "No, she
didn't," she contradicted; "she told me that you wouldn't want to see me
if you were 

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