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Studies in love and in terror

by Marie Belloc Lowndes · English · Gutenberg #26702 · 355,577 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Studies in love and in terror

Author: Marie Belloc Lowndes


        
Release date: September 26, 2008 [eBook #26702]
                Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN LOVE AND IN TERROR ***




Produced by Suzanne Shell, and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at https://www.pgdp.net









    STUDIES IN LOVE
    AND IN TERROR

    BY

    MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES

    (Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes)

    _Short Story Index Reprint Series_


    BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS
    FREEPORT, NEW YORK


    First Published 1913

    PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




CONTENTS

                                 PAGE

    PRICE OF ADMIRALTY              1

    THE CHILD                      99

    ST. CATHERINE'S EVE           131

    THE WOMAN FROM PURGATORY      187

    WHY THEY MARRIED              227




PRICE OF ADMIRALTY

    "O mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps! levons l'ancre!
     Ce pays nous ennuie, O mort! Appareillons!"


I

Claire de Wissant, wife of Jacques de Wissant, Mayor of Falaise, stood
in the morning sunlight, graceful with a proud, instinctive grace of
poise and gesture, on a wind-blown path close to the edge of the cliff.

At some little distance to her left rose the sloping, mansard roofs of
the Pavillon de Wissant, the charming country house to which her husband
had brought her, a seventeen year old bride, ten long years ago.

She was now gazing eagerly out to sea, shielding her grey, heavy-lidded
eyes with her right hand. From her left hand hung a steel chain, to
which was attached a small key.

A hot haze lay heavily over the great sweep of deep blue waters. It
blotted out the low grey line on the horizon which, on the majority of
each year's days, reminds the citizens of Falaise how near England is to
France.

Jacques de Wissant had rejoiced in the _entente cordiale_, if only
because it brought such a stream of tourists to the old seaport town of
which he was now Mayor. But his beautiful wife thought of the English as
gallant foes rather than as friends. Was she not great-granddaughter to
that admiral who at Trafalgar, when both his legs were shattered by
chain-shot, bade his men place him in a barrel of bran that he might go
on commanding, in the hour of defeat, to the end?

And yet as Claire stood there, her eyes sweeping the sea for an as yet
invisible craft, her heart seemed to beat rhythmically to the last verse
of a noble English poem which the governess of her twin daughters had
made them recite to her that very morning. How did it run? Aloud she
murmured:

    "Yet this inconstancy is such,
     As you too shall adore--"

and then she stopped, her quivering lips refusing to form the two
concluding lines.

To Claire de Wissant, that moving cry from a man's soul was not dulled
by familiarity, or hackneyed by common usage, and just now it found an
intolerably faithful echo in her sad, rebellious heart, intensifying the
anguish born of a secret and very bitter renunciation.

With an abrupt, restless movement she turned and walked on till her way
along the path was barred by a curious obstacle. This was a small
red-brick tower, built within a few feet of the edge of the cliff. It
was an ugly blot on the beautiful stretch of down, all the uglier that
the bricks and tiles had not yet had time to lose their hardness of line
and colour in the salt wind.

On the cliff side, the small circular building, open to wind, sky and
sea, formed the unnatural apex of a natural stairway which led steeply,
almost vertically, down to a deep land-locked cove below. The irregular
steps carved by nature out of the chalk had been strengthened, and a
rough protection added by means of knotted ropes fixed on either side of
the dangerous descent.

In the days when the steps had started sheer from a cleft in the cliff
path, Jacques de Wissant had never used this way of reaching a spot
which till last year had been his property, and his favourite
bathing-place; and he had also, in those same quiet days which now
seemed so long ago, forbidden his daughters to use that giddy way. But
Claire was a fearless woman; and she had always preferred the
dangerous, ladder-like stairs which seemed, when gazed at from below, to
hang 'twixt sky and sea.

Now, however, she rarely availed herself of the right retained by her
husband of using one of the two keys which unlocked the door set in the
new brick tower, for the cove--only by courtesy could it be called a
bay--had been chosen, owing to its peculiar position, naturally remote
and yet close to a great maritime port, to be the quarters of the
Northern Submarine Flotilla.

Jacques de Wissant--and it was perhaps the only time in their joint life
that his wife had entirely understood and sympathized with any action of
her husband's--had refused the compensation his Government had offered
him; more, in his cold, silent way, he had shown himself a patriot in a
sense comparatively few modern men have the courage to be, namely, in
that which affected both his personal comfort and his purse.

       *       *       *       *       *

After standing for a moment on the perilously small and narrow platform
which made the floor of the tower, Claire grasped firmly a strand of the
knotted rope and began descending the long steps cut in the cliff side.
She no longer gazed out to sea, instead she looked straight down into
the pale green, sun-flecked waters of the little bay, where seven out of
the nine submarines which composed the flotilla were lying
half-submerged, as is their wont in harbour.

A landsman, coming suddenly upon the cliff-locked pool, might have
thought that the centuries had rolled back, and that the strange sight
before him was a school of saurians lazily sunning themselves in the
placid waters of a sea inlet where time had stood still.

But no such vision came to Claire de Wissant. As she went down the
cliff-side her lovely eyes rested on these sinister, man-created
monsters with a feeling of sisterly, possessive affection. She had
become so familiarly acquainted with each and all of them in the last
few months; she knew with such a curious, intimate knowledge where they
differed, both from each other and also from other submarine craft, not
only here, in these familiar waters, but in the waters of France's great
rival on the sea....

It ever gave her a thrill of pride to remember that it was France which
first led the way in this, the most dangerous as also the most
adventurous new arm of naval warfare: and she rejoiced as fiercely, as
exultantly as any of her sea-fighting forbears would have done in the
terrible potentialities of destruction which each of these strange,
grotesque-looking craft bore in their narrow flanks.

It was now the hour of the crews' midday meal; there were fewer men
standing about than usual; and so, after she had stepped down on the
sandy strip of shore, and climbed the ladder leading to the old
Napoleonic hulk which served as workshop and dwelling-place of the
officers of the flotilla, Madame de Wissant for a few moments stood
solitary, and looked musingly down into the waters of the bay.

Each submarine, its long, fish-like shape lying prone in the almost
still, transparent water, differed not only in size, but in make, from
its fellows, and no two conning towers even were alike.

Lying apart, as if sulking in a corner, was an example of the old
"Gymnote" type of under-sea boat. She went by the name of the _Carp_,
and she was very squat, small and ugly, her telescopic conning tower
being of hard canvas.

To Claire, the _Carp_ always recalled an old Breton woman she had known
as a girl. That woman had given thirteen sons to France, and of the
thirteen five had died while serving with the colours--three at sea and
two in Tonkin--and a grateful country had given her a pension of ten
francs a week, two francs for each dead son.

Like that Breton woman, the ugly, sturdy little _Carp_ had borne heroes
in her womb, and like her, too, she had paid terrible toll of her sons
to death.

Occasionally, but very seldom now, the _Carp_ was taken out to sea, and
the men, strange to say, liked being in her, for they regarded her as a
lucky boat; she had never had what they called a serious accident.

Sunk deeper in the water was the broad-backed _Abeille_, significantly
named "La Pétroleuse," the heroine of four explosions, no favourite with
either crews or commanders; and, cradled in a low dock on the farther
strip of beach, was stretched the _Triton_, looking like a huge fish
which had panted itself to death. The _Triton_ also was not a lucky
boat; she had been the theatre of a terrible mishap when, for some
inexplicable cause, the conning tower had failed to close. Claire was
always glad to see her safe in dock.

Out in the middle of the bay was _La Glorieuse_, a submarine of the
latest type. Had she not lain so low, little more than her flying bridge
being above the water, she would have put her elder sisters to shame, so
exquisitely shaped was she. Everything about _La Glorieuse_ was made
delicately true to scale, and she could carry a crew of over twenty men.
But somehow Claire de Wissant did not care for this miniature leviathan
as she did for the older kind of submarine, and, with more reason for
his prejudice, the officer in charge of the flotilla shared her feeling.
Commander Dupré thought _La Glorieuse_ difficult to handle under water.
But he had had the same opinion of the _Neptune_, one of the two
submarines which were out this fine August morning....

An eager "Bonjour, madame," suddenly sounded in Claire de Wissant's ear,
and she turned quickly to find one of the younger officers at her elbow.

"The _Neptune_ is a few minutes late," he said smiling. "I hope your
sister has enjoyed her cruise!" He was looking with admiring and
grateful eyes at the young wife of the Mayor of Falaise, for Claire de
Wissant and her widowed sister, Madeleine Baudoin, were very kind and
hospitable to the officers of the submarine flotilla.

The life of both officers and men who volunteer for this branch of the
service is grim and arduous. And if this is generally true of them all,
it was specially so of those who served under Commander Dupré. By a
tacit agreement with their chief, they took no part in the summer
gaieties of the watering-place which has grown up round the old port of
Falaise, and out of duty hours they would have led dull lives indeed had
it not been for the hospitality shown them by the owners of the Pavillon
de Wissant, and for the welcome which awaited them in the freer, gayer
atmosphere of Madame Baudoin's villa, the Châlet des Dunes.

Madeleine Baudoin was a lively, cheerful woman, younger in nature if not
in years than her beautiful sister, and so she was naturally more
popular with the younger officers. They had felt especially flattered
when Madame Baudoin had allowed herself to be persuaded to go out for a
couple of hours in the _Neptune_; till this morning neither of the
sisters had ever ventured out to sea in a submarine.

And now 'twas true that the _Neptune_ had been out longer than her
commander had said she would be, but no touch of fear brushed Claire de
Wissant; she would have trusted what she held most precious in the
world--her children--to Commander Dupré's care, and a few moments after
her companion had spoken she suddenly saw the little tricolor, for which
her keen eyes had for long swept the sea, bravely riding the waves, and
making straight for the bay.

The flag moving swiftly over the surface of the blue water was a
curious, almost an uncanny sight; one which never failed to fill Claire
with a kind of spiritual exaltation. For the tiny strip of waving colour
was a symbol of the gallantry, of the carelessness of danger, lying
under the dancing, sun-flecked ripples which alone proved that the
tricolor was not some illusion of sorcery.

And then, as if the submarine had been indeed a sentient, living thing,
the _Neptune_ lifted her great shield-like back up out of the sea and
glided through the narrow neck of the bay, and so close under the long
deck on which Madame de Wissant and her companion were standing.

The eager, busy hum of work slackened--discipline is not perhaps quite
so taut in the French as it is in the British Navy--for both men and
officers were one and all eager to see the lady who had ventured out in
the _Neptune_ with their commander. Only those actually on board had
seen Madame Baudoin embark; there was a long, rough jetty close to her
house, the lonely Châlet des Dunes, and it was from there the submarine
had picked up her honoured passenger.

But when Commander Dupré's stern, sun-burnt face suddenly appeared above
the conning tower, the men vanished as if by enchantment, while the
eager, busy hum began again, much as if a lever, setting this human
machinery in motion, had been touched by some titanic finger.

The officers naturally held their ground.

There was a look of strain in the Commander's blue eyes, and his mouth
was set in hard lines; a thoughtful onlooker would have suspected that
the exciting, dangerous life he led was trying his nerves. His men knew
better; still, though they had no clue to the cause which had changed
him, they all knew he had changed greatly of late; to them individually
he had become kinder, more human, and that heightened their regret that
he was now quitting the Northern Flotilla.

Commander Dupré had asked to be transferred to the Toulon Submarine
Station; some experiments were being made there which he was anxious to
watch. He was leaving Falaise on the morrow.

Claire de Wissant reddened, and a gleam leapt into her eyes as she met
the naval officer's grave, measuring glance. But very soon he looked
away from her, for now he was bending down, putting out a hand to help
his late passenger to step from the conning tower.

Smiling, breathless, a little dishevelled, her grey linen skirt
crumpled, Madame Baudoin looked round her, dazed for the moment by the
bright sunlight. Then she called out gaily:

"Well, Claire! Here I am--alive and very, very hot!"

And as she jumped off the slippery flank of the _Neptune_, she gave
herself and her crumpled gown a little shake, and made a slight, playful
grimace.

The bright young faces round her broke into broad grins--those officers
who volunteer for the submarine services of the world are chosen young,
and they are merry boys.

"You may well laugh, messieurs,"--she threw them all a lively
challenging glance--"when I tell you that to-day, for the first time in
my life, I acknowledge masculine supremacy! I think that you will admit
that we women are not afraid of pain, but the discomfort, the--the
stuffiness? Ah, no--I could not have borne much longer the horrible
discomfort and stuffiness of that dreadful little _Neptune_ of yours!"

Protesting voices rose on every side. The _Neptune_ was not
uncomfortable! The _Neptune_ was not stuffy!

"And I understand"--again she made a little grimace--"that it is quite
an exceptional thing for the crew to be consoled, as I was to-day, by
an ice-pail!"

"A most exceptional thing," said the youngest lieutenant, with a sigh.
His name was Paritot, and he also had been out with the _Neptune_ that
morning. "In fact, it only happens in that week which sees four
Thursdays--or when we have a lady on board, madame!"

"What a pity it is," said another, "that the old woman who left a legacy
to the inventor who devises a submarine life-saving apparatus didn't
leave us instead a cream-ice allowance! It would have been a far more
practical thing to do."

Madame Baudoin turned quickly to Commander Dupré, who now stood silent,
smileless, at her sister's side.

"Surely you're going to try for this extraordinary prize?" she cried.
"I'm sure that you could easily devise something which would gain the
old lady's legacy."

"I, madame?" he answered with a start, almost as if he were wrenching
himself free from some deep abstraction. "I should not think of trying
to do such a thing! It would be a mere waste of time. Besides, there is
no real risk--no risk that we are not prepared to run." He looked
proudly round at the eager, laughing faces of the youngsters who were,
till to-morrow night, still under his orders.

"The old lady meant very well," he went on, and for the first time since
he had stepped out of the conning tower Commander Dupré smiled. "And I
hope with all my heart that some poor devil will get her money! But I
think I may promise you that it will not be an officer in the submarine
service. We are too busy, we have too many really important things to
do, to worry ourselves about life-saving appliances. Why, the first
thing we should do if pressed for room would be to throw our
life-helmets overboard!"

"Has one of the life-helmets ever saved a life?"

It was Claire who asked the question in her low, vibrating voice.

Commander Dupré turned to her, and he flushed under his sunburn. It was
the first time she had spoken to him that day.

"No, never," he answered shortly. And then, after a pause, he added,
"the conditions in which these life-helmets could be utilized only occur
in one accident in a thousand----"

"Still, they would have saved our comrades in the _Lutin_," objected
Lieutenant Paritot.

The _Lutin_? There was a moment's silence. The evocation of that
tricksy sprite, the Ariel of French mythology, whose name, by an
ironical chance, had been borne by the most ill-fated of all submarine
craft, seemed to bring the shadow of death athwart them all.

Madeleine Baudoin felt a sudden tremor of retrospective fear. She was
glad she had not remembered the _Lutin_ when she was sitting, eating
ices, and exchanging frivolous, chaffing talk with Lieutenant Paritot in
that chamber of little ease, the drum-like interior of the _Neptune_,
where not even she, a small woman, could stand upright.

"Well, well! We must not keep you from your _déjeuner_!" she cried,
shaking off the queer, disturbing sensation. "I have to thank you
for--shall I say a very interesting experience? I am too honest to say
an agreeable one!"

She shook hands with Commander Dupré and Lieutenant Paritot, the
officers who had accompanied her on what had been, now that she looked
back on it, perhaps a more perilous adventure than she had realized.

"You're coming with me, Claire?" She looked at her sister--it was a
tender, anxious, loving look; Madeleine Baudoin had been the eldest, and
Claire de Wissant the youngest, of a Breton admiral's family of three
daughters and four sons; they two were devoted to one another.

Claire shook her head. "I came to tell you that I can't lunch with you
to-day," she said slowly. "I promised I would be back by half-past
twelve."

"Then we shall not meet till to-morrow?"

Claire repeated mechanically, "No, not till to-morrow, dear Madeleine."

"May I row you home, madame?" Lieutenant Paritot asked Madeleine
eagerly.

"Certainly, _mon ami_."

And so, a very few minutes later, Claire de Wissant and Commander Dupré
were left alone together--alone, that is, save for fifty inquisitive, if
kindly, pairs of eyes which saw them from every part of the bay.

At last she held out her hand. "Good-bye, then, till to-morrow," she
said, her voice so low as to be almost inaudible.

"No, not good-bye yet!" he cried imperiously. "You must let me take you
up the cliff to-day. It may be--I suppose it is--the last time I shall
be able to do so."

Hardly waiting for her murmured word of assent, he led the way up the
steep, ladder-like stairway cut in the cliff side; half-way up there
were some very long steps, and it was from above that help could best be
given. He longed with a fierce, aching longing that she would allow him
to take her two hands in his and draw her up those high, precipitous
steps. But of late Claire had avoided accepting from him, her friend,
this simple, trifling act of courtesy. And now twice he turned and held
out a hand, and twice she pretended not to see it.

At last, within ten feet of the top of the cliff, they came to the
steepest, rudest step of all--a place some might have thought very
dangerous.

Commander Dupré bent down and looked into Claire's uplifted face. "Let
me at least help you up here," he said hoarsely.

She shook her head obstinately--but suddenly he felt her tremulous lips
touch his lean, sinewy hand, and her hot tears fall upon his fingers.

He gave a strangled cry of pain and of pride, of agony and of rapture,
and for a long moment he battled with an awful temptation. How easy it
would be to gather her into his arms, and, with her face hidden on his
breast, take a great leap backwards into nothingness....

But he conquered the persuasive devil who had been raised--women do not
know how easy it is to rouse this devil--by Claire's moment of piteous
self-revelation.

And at last they stood together on the narrow platform where she, less
than an hour ago, had stood alone.

Sheltered by the friendly, ugly red walls of the little tower, they were
as remote from their kind as if on a rock in the midst of the sea. More,
she was in his power in a sense she had never been before, for she had
herself broken down the fragile barrier with which she had hitherto
known how to keep him at bay. But he felt rather than saw that it was
herself she would despise if now, at the eleventh hour, he took
advantage of that tremulous kiss of renunciation, of those hot tears of
anguished parting--and so--"Then at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning?"
he said, and he felt as if it was some other man, not he himself, who
was saying the words. He took her hand in farewell--so much he could
allow himself--and all unknowing crushed her fingers in his strong,
convulsive grasp.

"Yes," she said, "at eleven to-morrow morning Madeleine and I will be
waiting out on the end of the jetty."

He thought he detected a certain hesitancy in her voice.

"Are you sure you still wish to come?" he said gravely. "I would not
wish you to do anything that would cause you any fear--or any
discomfort. Your sister evidently found it a very trying experience
to-day----"

Claire smiled. Her hand no longer hurt her; her fingers had become quite
numb.

"Afraid?" she said, and there was a little scorn in her voice. And then,
"Ah me! I only wish that there were far more risk than there is about
that which we are going to do together to-morrow." She was in a
dangerous mood, poor soul--the mood that raises a devil in men. But
perhaps her good angel came to help her, for suddenly, "Forgive me," she
said humbly. "You know I did not mean that! Only cowards wish for
death."

And then, looking at him, she averted her eyes, for they showed her
that, if that were so, Dupré was indeed a craven.

"_Au revoir_," she whispered; "_au revoir_ till to-morrow morning."

When half-way through the door, leading on to the lonely stretch of
down, she turned round suddenly. "I do not want you to bring any ices
for me to-morrow."

"I never thought of doing so," he said simply. And the words pleased
Claire as much as anything just then could pleasure her, for they proved
that her friend did not class her in his mind with those women who fear
discomfort more than danger.

It had been her own wish to go out with Commander Dupré for his last
cruise in northern waters. She had not had the courage to deny herself
this final glimpse of him--they were never to meet again after
to-morrow--in his daily habit as he lived.


II

At nine o'clock the next morning Jacques de Wissant stood in his wife's
boudoir.

It was a strange and beautiful room, likely to linger in the memory of
those who knew its strange and beautiful mistress.

The walls were draped with old Persian shawls, the furniture was of red
Chinese lacquer, a set acquired in the East by some Norman sailing man
unnumbered years ago, and bought by Claire de Wissant out of her own
slender income not long after her marriage.

Pale blue and faded yellow silk cushions softened the formal angularity
of the wide cane-seated couch and low, square chairs. There was a deep
crystal bowl of midsummer flowering roses on the table, laden with
books, by which Claire often sat long hours reading poetry and volumes
written by modern poets and authors of whom her husband had only
vaguely heard and of whom he definitely disapproved.

The window was wide open, and there floated in from the garden, which
sloped away to the edge and indeed over the crumbling cliff, fragrant,
salt-laden odours, dominated by the clean, sharp scent thrown from huge
shrubs of red and white geraniums. The balls of blossom set against the
belt of blue sea, formed a band of waving tricolor.

But Jacques de Wissant was unconscious, uncaring of the beauty round
him, either in the room or without, and when at last he walked forward
to the window, his face hardened as his eyes instinctively sought out
the spot where, if hidden from his sight, he knew there lay the deep
transparent waters of the little bay which had been selected as
providing ideal quarters for the submarine flotilla.

He had eagerly assented to the sacrifice of his land, and, what meant
far more to him, of his privacy; but now he would have given much--and
he was a careful man--to have had the submarine station swept away,
transferred to the other side of Falaise.

Down there, out of sight of the Pavillon, and yet but a few minutes away
(if one used the dangerous cliff-stairway), dwelt Jacques de Wissant's
secret foe, for the man of whom he was acutely, miserably jealous was
Commander Dupré, of whose coming departure he as yet knew nothing.

The owner of the Pavillon de Wissant seldom entered the room where he
now stood impatiently waiting for his wife, and he never did so without
looking round him with distaste, and remembering with an odd, wistful
feeling what it had been like in his mother's time. Then "le boudoir de
madame" had reflected the tastes and simple interests of an
old-fashioned provincial lady born in the year that Louis Philippe came
to the throne. Greatly did the man now standing there prefer the room as
it had been to what it was now!

The heavy, ugly furniture which had been there in the days of his lonely
youth, for he had been an only child, was now in the schoolroom where
the twin daughters of the house, Clairette and Jacqueline, did their
lessons with Miss Doughty, their English governess.

Clairette and Jacqueline? Jacques de Wissant's lantern-jawed,
expressionless face quickened into feeling as he thought of his two
little girls. They were the pride, as well as the only vivid pleasure,
of his life. All that he dispassionately admired in his wife was, so he
sometimes told himself with satisfaction, repeated in his daughters.
Clairette and Jacqueline had inherited their mother's look of race, her
fastidiousness and refinement of bearing, while fortunately lacking
Claire's dangerous personal beauty, her touch of eccentricity, and her
discontent with life--or rather with the life which Jacques de Wissant,
in spite of a gnawing ache and longing that nothing could still or
assuage, yet found good.

The Mayor of Falaise looked strangely out of keeping with his present
surroundings, at least so he would have seemed to the eye of any
foreigner, especially of any Englishman, who had seen him standing
there.

He was a narrowly built man, forty-three years of age, and his
clean-shaven, rather fleshy face was very pale. On this hot August
morning he was dressed in a light grey frock-coat, under which he wore a
yellow waistcoat, and on his wife's writing-table lay his tall hat and
lemon-coloured gloves.

As mayor of his native town--a position he owed to an historic name and
to his wealth, and not to his very moderate Republican opinions--his
duties included the celebration of civil marriages, and to-day, it being
the 14th of August, the eve of the Assumption, and still a French
national fête, there were to be a great many weddings celebrated in the
Hôtel de Ville.

Jacques de Wissant considered that he owed it to himself, as well as to
his fellow-citizens, to appear "correctly" attired on such occasions. He
had a deep, wordless contempt for those of his acquaintances who dressed
on ceremonial occasions "à l'anglaise," that is, in loose lounge suits
and straw hats.

       *       *       *       *       *

Suddenly there broke on his ear the sound of a low, full voice, singing.
It came from the next room, his wife's bedroom, and the mournful
passionate words of an old sea ballad rang out, full of a desolate pain
and sense of bitter loss.

The sound irritated him shrewdly, and there came back to him a fragment
of conversation he had not thought of for ten years. During a discussion
held between his father and mother in this very room about their adored
only son's proposed marriage with Claire de Kergouët, his father had
said: "There is one thing I do not much care for; she is, they say, very
musical, and Jacques, even as a baby, howled like a dog whenever he
heard singing!" And his mother had laughed, "_Mon ami_, you cannot
expect to get perfection, even for our Jacques!" And Claire, so he now
admitted unwillingly to himself, had never troubled him overmuch with
her love of music....

He knocked twice, sharply, on his wife's door.

The song broke short with an almost cruel suddenness, and yet there
followed a perceptible pause before he heard her say, "Come in."

And then, as Jacques de Wissant slowly turned the handle of the door, he
saw his wife, Claire, before she saw him. He had a vision, that is, of
her as she appeared when she believed herself to be, if not alone, then
in sight of eyes that were indifferent, unwatchful. But Jacques' eyes,
which his wife's widowed sister, the frivolous Parisienne, Madeleine
Baudoin, had once unkindly compared to fishes' eyes, were now filled
with a watchful, suspicious light which gave a tragic mask to his
pallid, plain-featured face.

Claire de Wissant was standing before a long, narrow mirror placed at
right angles to a window looking straight out to sea. Her short, narrow,
dark blue skirt and long blue silk jersey silhouetted her slender
figure, the figure which remained so supple, so--so girlish, in spite of
her nine-year-old daughters. There was something shy and wild, untamed
and yet beckoning, in the oval face now drawn with pain and
sleeplessness, in the grey, almond-shaped eyes reddened with secret
tears, and in the firm, delicately modelled mouth.

She was engaged in tucking up her dark, curling hair under a grey
yachting cap, and, for a few moments, she neither spoke nor looked round
to see who was standing framed in the door. But when, at last, she
turned away from the mirror and saw her husband, the colour, rushing
into her pale face, caused an unbecoming flush to cover it.

"I thought it was one of the children," she said, a little breathlessly.
And then she waited, assuming, or so Jacques thought, an air at once of
patience and of surprise which sharply angered him.

Then her look of strain, nay, of positive illness, gave him an uneasy
twinge of discomfort. Could it be anxiety concerning her second sister,
Marie-Anne, who, married to an Italian officer, was now ill of scarlet
fever at Mantua? Two days ago Claire had begged very earnestly to be
allowed to go and nurse Marie-Anne. But he, Jacques, had refused, not
unkindly, but quite firmly. Claire's duty of course lay at Falaise, with
her husband and children; not at Mantua, with her sister.

Suddenly she again broke silence. "Well?" she said. "Is there anything
you wish to tell me?" They had never used the familiar "thee" and "thou"
the one to the other, for at the time of their marriage an absurd whim
of fashion had ordained on the part of French wives and husbands a
return to eighteenth-century formality, and Claire had chosen, in that
one instance, to follow fashion.

She added, seeing that he still did not speak, "I am lunching with my
sister to-day, but I shall be home by three o'clock." She spoke with the
chill civility a lady shows a stranger. Claire seldom allowed herself to
be on the defensive when speaking to her husband.

Jacques de Wissant frowned. He did not like either of his wife's
sisters, neither the one who was now lying ill in Italy, nor his widowed
sister-in-law, Madeleine Baudoin. In the villa which she had hired for
the summer, and which stood on a lonely stretch of beach beyond the bay,
Madeleine often entertained the officers of the submarine flotilla, and
this, from her brother-in-law's point of view, was very far from
"correct" conduct on the part of one who could still pass as a young
widow.

In response to his frown there had come a slight, mocking smile on
Claire's face.

"I suppose you are on your way to some important town function?"

She disliked the town of Falaise, the town-folk bored her, and she hated
the vast old family house in the Market Place, where she had to spend
each winter.

"To-day is the fourteenth of August," observed Jacques de Wissant in his
deliberate voice; "and I have a great many marriages to celebrate this
morning."

"Yes, I suppose that is so." And again Claire de Wissant spoke with the
courteous indifference, the lack of interest in her husband's concerns,
which she had early schooled him to endure.

But all at once there came a change in her voice, in her manner. "Why
to-day--the fourteenth of August--is our wedding day! How stupid of me
to forget! We must tell Jacqueline and Clairette. It will amuse
them----"

She uttered the words a little breathlessly, and as she spoke, Jacques
de Wissant walked quickly forward into the room. As he did so his wife
moved abruptly away from where she had been standing, thus maintaining
the distance between them.

But Claire de Wissant need not have been afraid; her husband had his own
strict code of manners, and to this code he ever remained faithful. He
possessed a remarkable mastery of his emotions, and he had always showed
with regard to herself so singular a power of self-restraint that
Claire, not unreasonably, doubted if he had any emotions to master, any
passionate feeling to restrain.

All he now did was to take a shagreen case out of his breast pocket and
hold it out towards her.

"Claire," he said quietly, "I have brought you, in memory of our wedding
day, a little gift which I hope you will like. It is a medallion of the
children." And as she at last advanced towards him, he pressed a spring,
and revealed a dull gold medal on which, modelled in high relief, and
superposed the one on the other, were Clairette's and Jacqueline's
childish, delicately pure profiles.

A softer, kindlier light came into Claire de Wissant's sad grey eyes.
She held out a hesitating hand--and Jacques de Wissant, before placing
his gift in it, took that soft hand in his, and, bending rather
awkwardly, kissed it lightly. In France, even now, a man will often kiss
a woman's hand by way of conventional, respectful homage. But to Claire
the touch of her husband's lips was hateful--so hateful indeed that she
had to make an instant effort to hide the feeling of physical repulsion
with which that touch had suddenly engulfed her in certain dark recesses
of memory and revolt.

"It is a charming medallion," she said hurriedly, "quite a work of art,
Jacques; and I thank you for having thought of it. It gives me
great--very great pleasure."

And then something happened which was to her so utterly unexpected that
she gave a stifled cry of pain--almost it seemed of fear.

As she forced herself to look straight into her husband's face, the
anguish in her own sore heart unlocked the key to his, and she perceived
with the eyes of the soul, which see, when they are not holden, so much
that is concealed from the eyes of the body, the suffering, the dumb
longing she had never allowed herself to know were there.

For the first time since her marriage--since that wedding day of which
this was the tenth anniversary--Claire felt pity for Jacques as well as
for herself. For the first time her rebellious heart acknowledged that
her husband also was enmeshed in a web of tragic circumstance.

"Jacques?" she cried. "Oh, Jacques!" And as she so uttered his name
twice, there came a look of acute distress and then of sudden resolution
on her face. "I wish you to know," she exclaimed, "that--that--if I
were a wicked woman I should perhaps be to you a better wife!" Thanks to
the language in which she spoke, there was a play on the word--that word
which in French signifies woman as well as wife.

He stared at her, and uttered no word of answer, of understanding, in
response to her strange speech.

At one time, not lately, but many years ago, Claire had sometimes tried
his patience by the odd, unreasonable things she said, and once, stung
beyond bearing, he had told her so. Remembering those cold, measured
words of rebuke, she now caught with quick, exultant relief at the idea
that Jacques had not understood the half-confession wrung from her by
her sudden vision of his pain; and she swung back to a belief she had
always held till just now, the belief that he was dull--dull and
unperceptive.

With a nervous smile she turned again to her mirror, and then Jacques de
Wissant, with his wife's enigmatic words ringing in his ears, abruptly
left the room.

       *       *       *       *       *

As if pursued by some baneful presence, he hastened through Claire's
beautiful boudoir, across the dining-room hung with the Gobelins
tapestries which his wife had brought him as part of her slender dower,
and so into the oval hall which formed the centre of the house.

And there Jacques de Wissant waited for a while, trying to still and to
co-ordinate his troubled thoughts and impressions.

Ah yes, he had understood--understood only too well Claire's strange,
ambiguous utterance! There are subtle, unbreathed temptations which all
men and all women, when tortured by jealousy, not only understand but
divine before they are actually in being.

Jacques de Wissant now believed that he was justified of the suspicions
of which he had been ashamed. His wife--moved by some obscure desire for
self-revelation to which he had had no clue--had flung at him the truth.

Yes, without doubt Claire could have made him happy--so little would
have contented his hunger for her--had she been one of those light women
of whom he sometimes heard, who go from their husbands' kisses to those
of their lovers.

But if he sometimes, nay, often heard of them, Jacques de Wissant knew
nothing of such women. The men of his race had known how to acquire
honest wives, aye, and keep them so. There had never been in the de
Wissant family any of those ugly scandals which stain other clans, and
which are remembered over generations in French provincial towns. Those
scandals which, if they provoke a laugh and cruel sneer when discussed
by the indifferent, are recalled with long faces and anxious whisperings
when a young girl's future is being discussed, and which make the
honourable marriage of daughters difficult of achievement.

Jacques de Wissant thanked the God of his fathers that Claire had
nothing in common with such women as those: he thought he did not need
her assurance to know that his honour, in the usual, narrow sense of the
phrase, was safe in her hands, but still her strange, imprudent words of
half-avowal racked him with jealous and, yes, suspicious pain.

Fortunately for him, he was a man burdened with much business, and so at
last he looked at his watch. Why, it was getting late--terribly late,
and he prided himself on his punctuality. Still, if he started now, at
once, he would be at the Hôtel de Ville a few minutes before ten
o'clock, the time when the first of the civil marriages he had to
celebrate that morning was timed to take place.

Without passing through the house, he made his way rapidly round by the
gardens to the road, winding ribbon-wise behind the cliffs, where his
phaeton was waiting for him; for Jacques de Wissant had as yet resisted
the wish of his wife and the advice of those of his friends who
considered that he ought to purchase an automobile: driving had been
from boyhood one of his few pleasures and accomplishments.

But as he drove, keeping his fine black bays well in hand, the five
miles into the town, and tried to fix his mind on a commercial problem
of great importance with which he would be expected to deal that day,
Jacques de Wissant found it impossible to think of any matter but that
which for the moment filled his heart to the exclusion of all else. That
matter concerned his own relations to his wife, and his wife's relations
to Commander Dupré.

This gentleman of France was typical in more than one sense of his
nation and of his class--quite unlike, that is, to the fancy picture
which foreigners draw of the average Frenchman. Reserved and cold in
manner; proud, with an intense but never openly expressed pride in his
name and of what the bearers of it had achieved for their country;
obstinate and narrow as are apt to be all human beings whose judgment is
never questioned by those about them, Jacques de Wissant's fetish was
his personal honour and the honour of his name--of the name of Wissant.

In his distress and disturbance of mind--for his wife's half confession
had outraged his sense of what was decorous and fitting--his memory
travelled over the map of his past life, aye, and even beyond the
boundaries of his own life.

Before him lay spread retrospectively the story of his parents'
uneventful, happy marriage. They had been mated in the good old French
way, that is, up to their wedding morning they had never met save in the
presence of their respective parents. And yet--and yet how devoted they
had been to each other! So completely one in thought, in interest, in
sympathy had they grown that when, after thirty-three years of married
life, his father had died, Jacques' mother had not known how to go on
living. She had slipped out of life a few months later, and as she lay
dying she had used a very curious expression: "My faithful companion is
calling me," she had said to her only child, "and you must not try, dear
son, to make me linger on the way."

Now, to-day, Jacques de Wissant asked himself with perplexed pain and
anger, why it was that his parents had led so peaceful, so dignified, so
wholly contented a married life, while he himself----?

And yet his own marriage had been a love match--or so those about him
had all said with nods and smiles--love marriages having suddenly become
the fashion in the rich provincial world of which he had then been one
of the heirs-apparent.

His old-fashioned mother would have preferred as daughter-in-law any one
of half a dozen girls who belonged to her own good town of Falaise, and
whom she had known from childhood. But Jacques had been difficult to
please, and he was already thirty-two when he had met, by a mere chance,
Claire de Kergouët at her first ball. She was only seventeen, with but
the promise of a beauty which was now in exquisite flower, and he had
decided, there and then, in the course of two hours, that this
demoiselle de Kergouët was alone worthy of becoming Madame Jacques de
Wissant.

And on the whole his prudent parents had blessed his choice, for the
girl was of the best Breton stock, and came of a family famed in the
naval annals of France. Unluckily Claire de Kergouët had had no dowry to
speak of, for her father, the Admiral, had been a spendthrift, and, as
is still the reckless Breton fashion, father of a large family--three
daughters and four sons. But Jacques de Wissant had not allowed his
parents to give the matter of Claire's fortune more than a regretful
thought--indeed, he had done further, he had "recognized" a larger dowry
than she brought him to save the pride of her family.

But Claire--he could not help thinking of it to-day with a sense of
bitter injury--had never seemed grateful, had never seemed to understand
all that had been done for her....

Had he not poured splendid gifts upon her in the beginning of their
married life? And, what had been far more difficult, had he not, within
reason, contented all her strange whims and fantasies?

But nought had availed him to secure even a semblance of that steadfast,
warm affection, that sincere interest and pride in his concerns which is
all such a Frenchman as was Jacques de Wissant expects, or indeed
desires, of his wedded wife. Had Claire been such a woman, Jacques' own
passion for her would soon have dulled into a reasonable, comfortable
affection. But his wife's cool aloofness had kept alive the hidden
fires, the more--so ironic are the tricks which sly Dame Nature
plays--that for many years past he had troubled her but very little with
his company.

Outwardly Claire de Wissant did her duty, entertaining his friends and
relations on such occasions as was incumbent on her, and showing
herself a devoted and careful mother to the twin daughters who formed
the only vital link between her husband and herself. But inwardly?
Inwardly they two were strangers.

And yet only during the last few months had Jacques de Wissant ever felt
jealous of his wife. There had been times when he had been angered by
the way in which her young beauty, her indefinable, mysterious charm,
had attracted the very few men with whom she was brought into contact.
But Claire, so her husband had always acknowledged to himself, was no
flirt; she was ever perfectly "correct."

Correct was a word dear to Jacques de Wissant. It was one which he used
as a synonym for great things--things such as honour, fineness of
conduct, loyalty.

But fate had suddenly introduced a stranger into the dull, decorous life
of the Pavillon de Wissant, and it was he, Jacques himself, who had
brought him there.

How bitter it was to look back and remember how much he had liked--liked
because he had respected--Commander Dupré! He now hated and feared the
naval officer, and he would have given much to have been able to despise
him. But that Jacques de Wissant could not do. Commander Dupré was still
all that he had taken him to be when he first made him free of his
house--a brilliant officer, devoted to his profession, already noted in
the Service as having made several important improvements in submarine
craft.

From the first it had seemed peculiar, to Jacques de Wissant's mind
unnatural, that such a man as was Dupré should be so keenly interested
in music and in modern literature. But so it was, and it had been owing
to these strange, untoward tastes that Commander Dupré and Claire had
become friends.

He now reminded himself, for the hundredth time, that he had begun by
actually approving of the acquaintance between his wife and the naval
officer--an acquaintance which he had naturally supposed would be of the
most "correct" nature.

Then, without warning, there came an hour--nay, a moment, when in that
twilight hour which the French call "'Twixt dog and wolf," the most
torturing and shameful of human passions, jealousy, had taken possession
of Jacques de Wissant, disintegrating, rather than shattering, the
elaborate fabric of his House of Life, that house in which he had always
dwelt so snugly and unquestioningly ensconced.

He had come home after a long afternoon spent at the Hôtel de Ville to
learn with tepid pleasure that there was a visitor, Commander Dupré, in
the house, and as he had come hurrying towards his wife's boudoir,
Jacques had heard Claire's low, deep voice and the other's ardent, eager
tones mingling together....

And then as he, the husband, had opened the door, they had stopped
speaking, their words clipped as if a sword had fallen between them. At
the same moment a servant had brought a lamp into the twilit room, and
Jacques had seen the ravaged face of Commander Dupré, a fair, tanned
face full of revolt and of longing leashed. Claire had remained in
shadow, but her eyes, or so the interloper thought he perceived, were
full of tears.

Since that spring evening the Mayor of Falaise had not had an easy
moment. While scorning to act the spy upon his wife, he was for ever
watching her, and keeping an eager and yet scarcely conscious count of
her movements.

True, Commander Dupré had soon ceased to trouble the owner of the
Pavillon de Wissant by his presence. The younger officers came and went,
but since that hour, laden with unspoken drama, their commander only
came when good breeding required him to pay a formal call on his nearest
neighbour and sometime host. But Claire saw Dupré constantly at the
Châlet des Dunes, her sister's house, and she was both too proud and too
indifferent, it appeared, to her husband's view of what a young married
woman's conduct should be, to conceal the fact.

This openness on his wife's part was at once Jacques' consolation and
opportunity for endless self-torture.

For three long miserable months he had wrestled with those ignoble
questionings only the jealous know, now accepting as probable, now
rejecting with angry self-rebuke, the thought that his wife suffered,
perhaps even returned, Dupré's love. And to-day, instead of finding his
jealousy allayed by her half-confidence, he felt more wretched than he
had ever been.

His horses responded to his mood, and going down the steep hill which
leads into the town of Falaise they shied violently at a heap of stones
they had passed sedately a dozen times or more. Jacques de Wissant
struck them several cruel blows with the whip he scarcely ever used, and
the groom, looking furtively at his master's set face and blazing eyes,
felt suddenly afraid.


III

It was one o'clock, and the last of the wedding parties had swept gaily
out of the great _salle_ of the Falaise town hall and so to the
Cathedral across the market place.

Jacques de Wissant, with a feeling of relief, took off his tricolor
badge of office. With the instinctive love of order which was
characteristic of the man, he gathered up the papers that were spread on
the large table and placed them in neat piles before him. Through the
high windows, which by his orders had been prised open, for it was
intensely hot, he could hear what seemed an unwonted stir outside. The
picturesque town was full of strangers; in addition to the usual
holiday-makers from the neighbourhood, crowds of Parisians had come down
to spend the Feast of the Assumption by the sea.

The Mayor of Falaise liked to hear this unwonted stir and movement, for
everything that affected the prosperity of the town affected him very
nearly; but he was constitutionally averse to noise, and just now he
felt very tired. The varied emotions which had racked him that morning
had drained him of his vitality; and he thought with relief that in a
few moments he would be in the old-fashioned restaurant just across the
market place, where a table was always reserved for him when his town
house happened to be shut up, and where all his tastes and dietetic
fads--for M. de Wissant had a delicate digestion--were known.

He took up his tall hat and his lemon-coloured gloves--and then a look
of annoyance came over his weary face, for he heard the swinging of a
door. Evidently his clerk was coming back to ask some stupid question.

He always found it difficult to leave the town hall at the exact moment
he wished to do so; for although the officials dreaded his cold
reprimands, they were far more afraid of his sudden hot anger if
business of any importance were done without his knowledge and sanction.

But this time it was not his clerk who wished to intercept the mayor on
his way out to _déjeuner_; it was the chief of the employés in the
telephone and telegraph department of the building, a forward, pushing
young man whom Jacques de Wissant disliked.

"M'sieur le maire?" and then he stopped short, daunted by the mayor's
stern look of impatient fatigue. "Has m'sieur le maire heard the news?"
The speaker gathered up courage; it is exciting to be the bearer of
news, especially of ill news.

M. de Wissant shook his head.

"Alas! there has been an accident, m'sieur le maire! A terrible
accident! One of the submarines--they don't yet know which it is--has
been struck by a big private yacht and has sunk in the fairway of the
Channel, about two miles out!"

The Mayor of Falaise uttered an involuntary exclamation of horror. "When
did it happen?" he asked quickly.

"About half an hour ago more or less. _I_ said that m'sieur le maire
ought to be informed at once of such a calamity. But I was told to wait
till the marriages were over."

Looking furtively at the mayor's pale face, the young man regretted that
he had not taken more on himself, for m'sieur le maire looked seriously
displeased.

There was an old feud between the municipal and the naval authorities of
Falaise--there often is in a naval port--and the mayor ought certainly
to have been among the very first to hear the news of the disaster.

The bearer of ill news hoped m'sieur le maire would not blame him for
the delay, or cause the fact to postpone his advancement to a higher
grade--that advancement which is the perpetual dream of every French
Government official.

"The admiral has only just driven by," he observed insinuatingly, "not
five minutes ago----"

But still Jacques de Wissant did not move. He was listening to the
increasing stir and tumult going on outside in the market place. The
sounds had acquired a sinister significance; he knew now that the
tramping of feet, the loud murmur of voices, meant that the whole
population belonging to the seafaring portion of the town was emptying
itself out and hurrying towards the harbour and the shore.

Shaking off the bearer of ill news with a curt word of thanks, the Mayor
of Falaise strode out of the town hall into the street and joined the
eager crowd, mostly consisting of fisher folk, which grew denser as it
swept down the tortuous narrow streets leading to the sea.

The people parted with a sort of rough respect to make way for their
mayor; many of them, nay the majority, were known by name to Jacques de
Wissant, and the older men and women among them could remember him as a
child.

Rising to the tragic occasion, he walked forward with his head held
high, and a look of deep concern on his pale, set face. The men who
manned the Northern Submarine Flotilla were almost all men born and bred
at Falaise--Falaise famed for the gallant sailors she has ever given to
France.

The hurrying crowd--strangely silent in its haste--poured out on to the
great stone-paved quays in which is set the harbour so finely encircled
on two sides by the cliffs which give the town its name.

Beyond the harbour--crowded with shipping, and now alive with eager
little craft and fishing-boats making ready to start for the scene of
the calamity--lay a vast expanse of glistening sea, and on that
sun-flecked blue pall every eye was fixed.

The end of the harbour jetty was already roped off, only those
officially privileged being allowed through to the platform where now
stood Admiral de Saint Vilquier impatiently waiting for the tug which
was to take him out to the spot where the disaster had taken place. The
Admiral was a naval officer of the old school--of the school who called
their men "my children"--and who detested the Republican form of
government as being subversive of discipline.

As Jacques de Wissant hurried up to him, he turned and stiffly saluted
the Mayor of Falaise. Admiral de Saint Vilquier had no liking for M. de
Wissant--a cold prig of a fellow, and yet married to such a beautiful,
such a charming young woman, the daughter, too, of one of the Admiral's
oldest friends, of that Admiral de Kergouët with whom he had first gone
to sea a matter of fifty years ago! The lovely Claire de Kergouët had
been worthy of a better fate than to be wife to this plain, cold-blooded
landsman.

"Do they yet know, Admiral, which of the submarines has gone down?"
asked Jacques de Wissant in a low tone. He was full of a burning
curiosity edged with a longing and a suspense into whose secret sources
he had no wish to thrust a probe.

The Admiral's weather-beaten face was a shade less red than usual; the
bright blue eyes he turned on the younger man were veiled with a film of
moisture. "Yes, the news has just come in, but it isn't to be made
public for awhile. It's the submarine _Neptune_ which was struck, with
Commander Dupré, Lieutenant Paritot, and ten men on board. The craft is
lying eighteen fathoms deep----"

Jacques de Wissant uttered an inarticulate cry--was it of horror or only
of surprise? And yet, gifted for that once and that once only with a
kind of second sight, he had known that it was the _Neptune_ and
Commander Dupré which lay eighteen fathoms deep on the floor of the sea.

The old seaman, moved by the mayor's emotion, relaxed into a
confidential undertone. "Poor Dupré! I had forgotten that you knew him.
He is indeed pursued by a malignant fate. As of course you are aware, he
applied a short time ago to be transferred to Toulon, and his
appointment is in to-day's _Gazette_. In fact he was actually leaving
Falaise this very evening in order to spend a week with his family
before taking up his new command!"

The Mayor of Falaise stared at the Admiral. "Dupré going away?--leaving
Falaise?" he repeated incredulously.

The other nodded.

Jacques de Wissant drew a long, deep breath. God! How mistaken he had
been! Mistaken as no man, no husband, had ever been mistaken before. He
felt overwhelmed, shaken with conflicting emotions in which shame and
intense relief predominated.

The fact that Commander Dupré had applied for promotion was to his mind
absolute proof that there had been nothing--nothing and less than
nothing--between the naval officer and Claire. The Admiral's words now
made it clear that he, Jacques de Wissant, had built up a huge
superstructure of jealousy and base thoughts on the fact that poor Dupré
and Claire had innocently enjoyed certain tastes in common. True, such
friendships--friendships between unmarried men and attractive young
married women--are generally speaking to be deprecated. Still, Claire
had always been "correct;" of that there could now be no doubt.

As he stood there on the pier, staring out, as all those about him and
behind him were doing, at the expanse of dark blue sun-flecked sea,
there came over Jacques de Wissant a great lightening of the spirit....

But all too soon his mind, his memory, swung back to the tragic business
of the moment.

Suddenly the Admiral burst into speech, addressing himself, rather than
the silent man by his side.

"The devil of it is," he exclaimed, "that the nearest salvage appliances
are at Cherbourg! Thank God, the Ministry of Marine are alone
responsible for that blunder. Dupré and his comrades have, it seems,
thirty-six hours' supply of oxygen--if, indeed, they are still living,
which I feel tempted to hope they are not. You see, Monsieur de Wissant,
I was at Bizerta when the _Lutin_ sank. A man doesn't want to remember
two such incidents in his career. One is quite bad enough!"

"I suppose it isn't yet known how far the _Neptune_ is injured?"
inquired the Mayor of Falaise.

But he spoke mechanically; he was not really thinking of what he was
saying. His inner and real self were still steeped in that strange
mingled feeling of shame and relief--shame that he should have suspected
his wife, exultant relief that his jealousy should have been so entirely
unfounded.

"No, as usual no one knows exactly what did happen. But we shall learn
something of that presently. The divers are on their way. But--but even
if the craft did sustain no injury, what can they do? Ants might as well
attempt to pierce a cannon-ball"--he shrugged his shoulders, oppressed
by the vision his homely simile had conjured up.

And then--for no particular reason, save that his wife Claire was very
present to him--Jacques de Wissant bethought himself that it was most
unlikely that any tidings of the accident could yet have reached the
Châlet des Dunes, the lonely villa on the shore where Claire was now
lunching with her sister. But at any moment some casual visitor from the
town might come out there with the sad news. He told himself uneasily
that it would be well, if possible, to save his wife from such a shock.
After all, Claire and that excellent Commander Dupré had been good
friends--so much must be admitted, nay, now he was eager to admit it.

Jacques de Wissant touched the older man on the arm.

"I should be most grateful, Admiral, for the loan of your motor-car. I
have just remembered that I ought to go home for an hour. This terrible
affair made me forget it; but I shall not be long--indeed, I must soon
be back, for there will be all sorts of arrangements to be made at the
town hall. Of course we shall be besieged with inquiries, with messages
from Paris, with telegrams----"

"My car, monsieur, is entirely at your disposal."

The Admiral could not help feeling, even at so sad and solemn a moment
as this, a little satirical amusement. Arrangements at the town hall,
forsooth! If the end of the world were in sight, the claims of the
municipality of Falaise would not be neglected or forgotten; in as far
as Jacques de Wissant could arrange it, everything in such a case would
be ready at the town hall, if not on the quarter-deck, for the Great
Assize!

What had a naval disaster to do with the Mayor of Falaise, after all?
But in this matter the old Admiral allowed prejudice to get the better
of him; the men now immured in the submarine were, with two
exceptions--their commander and his junior officer--all citizens of the
town. It was their mothers, wives, children, sweethearts, who were now
pressing with wild, agonized faces against the barriers drawn across the
end of the pier....

As Jacques de Wissant made his way through the crowd, his grey
frock-coat was pulled by many a horny hand, and imploring faces gazed
with piteous questioning into his. But he could give them no comfort.

Not till he found himself actually in the Admiral's car did he give his
instructions to the chauffeur.

"Take me to the Châlet des Dunes as quickly as you can drive without
danger," he said briefly. "You probably know where it is?"

The man nodded and looked round consideringly. He had never driven so
elegantly attired a gentleman before. Why, M. de Wissant looked like a
bridegroom! The Mayor of Falaise should be good for a handsome tip.

The chauffeur did not need to be told that on such a day time was of
importance, and once they were out of the narrow, tortuous streets of
the town, the Admiral's car flew.

And then, for the first time that day, Jacques de Wissant began to feel
pleasantly cool, nay, there even came over him a certain exhilaration.
He had been foolish to hold out against motor-cars. There was a great
deal to be said for them, after all. He owed his wife reparation for his
evil thoughts of her. He resolved that he would get Claire the best
automobile money could buy. It is always a mistake to economize in such
matters....

His mind took a sudden turn--he felt ashamed of his egoism, and the
sensation disturbed him, for the Mayor of Falaise very seldom had
occasion to feel ashamed, either of his thoughts or of his actions. How
could he have allowed his attention to stray from the subject which
should just now be absorbing his whole mind?

Thirty-six hours' supply of oxygen? Well, it might have been worse, for
a great deal can be done in thirty-six hours.

True, all the salvage appliances, so the Admiral had said, were at
Cherbourg. What a shameful lack of forethought on someone's part! Still,
there was little doubt but that the _Neptune_ would be raised in--in
time. The British Navy would send her salvage appliances. Jacques de
Wissant had a traditional distrust of the English, but at such moments
all men are brothers, and just now the French and the English happened
to be allies. He himself felt far more kindly to his little girls'
governess, Miss Doughty, than he would have done five years ago.

Yes, without doubt the gallant English Navy would send salvage
appliances....

There would be some hours of suspense--terrible hours for the wives and
mothers of the men, but those poor women would be upheld by the
universal sympathy shown them. He himself as mayor of the town would do
all he could. He would seek these poor women out, say consoling, hopeful
things, and Claire would help him. She had, as he knew, a very tender
heart, especially where seamen were concerned.

Indeed, it was a terrible thought--that of those brave fellows down
there beneath the surface of the waters. Terrible, that is, if they were
alive--alive in the same measure as he, Jacques de Wissant, was now
alive in the keen, rushing air. Alive, and waiting for a deliverance
that might never come. The idea made him feel a queer, interior tremor.

Then his mind, in spite of himself, swung back to its old moorings. How
strange that he had not been told that Commander Dupré had applied for
a change of command! Doubtless the Mediterranean was better suited,
being a tideless sea, for submarine experiments. Keen, clever Dupré,
absorbed as he was in his profession, had doubtless thought of that.

But, again, how odd of Claire not to have mentioned that Dupré was
leaving Falaise! Of course it was possible that she also had been
ignorant of the fact. She very seldom spoke of other people's affairs,
and lately she had been so dreadfully worried about her sister's,
Marie-Anne's, illness.

If his wife had known nothing of Commander Dupré's plans, it proved as
hardly anything else could have done how little real intimacy there
could have been between them. A man never leaves the woman he loves
unless he has grown tired of her--then, as all the world knows, except
perchance the poor soul herself, no place is too far for him to make
for.

Such was Jacques de Wissant's simple, cynical philosophy concerning a
subject to which he had never given much thought. The tender passion had
always appeared to him in one of two shapes--the one was a grotesque and
slightly improper shape, which makes men do silly, absurd things; the
other came in the semblance of a sinister demon which wrecks the honour
and devastates, as nothing else can do, the happiness of respectable
families. It was this second and more hateful form which had haunted him
these last few weeks.

He recalled with a sick feeling of distaste the state of mind and body
he had been in that very morning. Why, he had then been in the mood to
kill Dupré, or, at any rate, to welcome the news of his death with
fierce joy! And then, simultaneously with his discovery of how
groundless had been his jealousy, he had learnt the awful fact that the
man whom he had wrongly accused lay out there, buried and yet alive,
beneath the glistening sea, which was stretched out, like a great blue
pall, on his left.

Still, it was only proper that his wife should be spared the shock of
hearing in some casual way of this awful accident. Claire had always
been sensitive, curiously so, to everything that concerned the Navy.
Admiral de Saint Vilquier had recalled the horrible submarine disaster
of Bizerta harbour; Jacques de Wissant now remembered uncomfortably how
very unhappy that sad affair had made Claire. Why, one day he had found
her in a passion of tears, mourning over the tragic fate of those poor
sailor men, the crew of the _Lutin_, of whose very names she was
ignorant! At the time he had thought her betrayal of feeling very
unreasonable, but now he understood, and even shared to a certain
extent, the pain she had shown; but then he knew Dupré, knew and liked
him, and the men immured in the _Neptune_ were men of Falaise.

These were the thoughts which jostled each other in Jacques de Wissant's
brain as he sat back in the Admiral's car.

They were now rushing past the Pavilion de Wissant. What a pity it was
that Claire had not remained quietly at home to-day! It would have been
so much pleasanter--if one could think of anything being pleasant in
such a connection--to have gone in and told her the sad news at home.
Her sister, Madeleine Baudoin, though older than Claire, was foolishly
emotional and unrestrained in the expression of her feelings. Madeleine
was sure to make a scene when she heard of Commander Dupré's peril, and
Jacques de Wissant hated scenes.

He now asked himself whether there was any real necessity for his
telling his wife before her sister. All he need do was to send Claire a
message by the servant who opened the door to him. He would say that she
was wanted at home; she would think something had happened to one of the
children, and this would be a good thing, for it would prepare her in a
measure for ill tidings.

From what Jacques knew of his wife he believed she would receive the
news quietly, and he, her husband, would show her every consideration;
again he reminded himself that it would be ridiculous to deny the fact
that Claire had made a friend, almost an intimate, of Commander Dupré.
It would be natural, nay "correct," for her to be greatly distressed
when she heard of the accident.

       *       *       *       *       *

There came a familiar cutting in the road, and again the sea lay spread
out, an opaque, glistening sheet of steel, before him. He gazed across,
with a feeling of melancholy and fearful curiosity, to the swarm of
craft great and small collected round the place where the _Neptune_ lay,
eighteen fathoms deep....

He hoped Claire would not ask to go back into the town with him in order
to hear the latest news. But if she did so ask, then he would raise no
objection. Every Falaise woman, whatever her rank in life, was now full
of suspense and anxiety, and as the mayor's wife Claire had a right to
share that anxious suspense.

The car was now slowing on the sharp decline leading to the shore, and
Jacques de Wissant got up and touched the chauffeur on the shoulder.

"Stop here," he said. "You needn't drive down to the Châlet. I want you
to turn and wait for me at the Pavillon de Wissant. Ask my servants to
give you some luncheon. I may be half an hour or more, but I want to get
back to Falaise as soon as I can."

The Châlet des Dunes had been well named. It stood enclosed in rough
palings in a sandy wilderness. An attempt had been made to turn the
immediate surroundings of the villa into the semblance of a garden;
there were wind-blown flowers set in sandy flower-beds, and coarse,
luxuriant creepers flung their long, green ropes about the wooden
verandah. In front, stretching out into the sea, was a stone pier, built
by Jacques' father many a year ago.

The Châlet looked singularly quiet and deserted, for all the shutters
had been closed in order to shut out the midday heat.

Jacques de Wissant became vaguely uneasy. He reconsidered his plan of
action. If the two sisters were alone together--as he supposed them to
be--he would go in and quietly tell them of the accident. It would be
making altogether too much of the matter to send for Claire to come out
to him; she might very properly resent it. For the matter of that, it
was quite possible that Madeleine Baudoin had some little sentiment for
Dupré. That would explain so much--the officer's constant presence at
the Châlet des Dunes added to his absence from the Pavillon. It was odd
he had never thought of the possibility before.

But this new idea made Jacques grow more and more uneasy at the thought
of the task which now lay before him. With slow, hesitating steps he
walked up to the little front door of the Châlet.

He pulled the rusty bell-handle. How absurd to have ironwork in such a
place!

There followed what seemed to him a very long pause. He rang again.

There came the sound of light, swift steps; he could hear them in spite
of the rhythmical surge of the sea; and then the door was opened by his
sister-in-law, Madame Baudoin, herself.

In the midst of his own agitation and unease, Jacques de Wissant saw
that there was a look of embarrassment on the face which Madeleine tried
to make amiably welcoming.

"Jacques?" she exclaimed. "Forgive me for having made you ring twice! I
have sent the servants into Falaise to purchase a railway time-table.
Claire will doubtless have told you that I am starting for Italy
to-night. Our poor Marie-Anne is worse; and I feel that it is my duty
to go to her."

She did not step aside to allow him to come in. In fact, doubtless
without meaning to do so, she was actually blocking up the door.

No, Claire had not told Jacques that Marie-Anne was worse. That of
course was why she had looked so unhappy this morning. He felt hurt and
angered by his wife's reserve.

"I am sure you will agree, Madeleine," he said stiffly--he was not sorry
to gain a little time--"that it would not be wise for Claire to
accompany you to Italy. After all, she is still quite a young woman, and
poor Marie-Anne's disease is most infectious. I have ascertained, too,
that there is a regular epidemic raging in Mantua."

Madeleine nodded. Then she turned, with an uneasy side-look at her
brother-in-law, and began leading the way down the short passage. The
door of the dining-room was open; Jacques could not help seeing that
only one place was laid at the round table, also that Madeleine had just
finished her luncheon.

"Isn't Claire here?" he asked, surprised. "She said she was going to
lunch with you to-day. Hasn't she been here this morning?"

"No--I mean yes." Madeleine spoke confusedly. "She did not stay to
lunch. She was only here for a very little while."

"But has she gone home again?"

"Well--she may be home by now; I really don't know"--Madeleine was
opening the door of the little drawing-room.

It was an ugly, common-looking room; the walls were hung with Turkey
red, and ornamented with cheap coloured prints. There were cane and
basket chairs which Madame Baudoin had striven to make comfortable with
the help of cushions and rugs.

Jacques de Wissant told himself that it was odd that Claire should like
to spend so much of her time here, in the Châlet des Dunes, instead of
asking her sister to join her each morning or afternoon in her own
beautiful house on the cliff.

"Forgive me," he said stiffly, "but I can't stay a moment. I really came
for Claire. You say I shall find her at home?"

He held his top hat and his yellow gloves in his hand, and his
sister-in-law thought she had never seen Jacques look so plain and
unattractive, and--and tiresome as he looked to-day.

Madame Baudoin had a special reason for wishing him away; but she knew
the slow, sure workings of his mind. If Jacques found that his wife had
not gone back to the Pavillon de Wissant, and that there was no news of
her there, he would almost certainly come back to the Châlet des Dunes
for further information.

"No," she said reluctantly, "Claire has not gone back to the Pavillon. I
believe that she has gone into the town. She had something important
that she wished to do there."

She looked so troubled, so--so uncomfortable that Jacques de Wissant
leapt to the sudden conclusion that the tidings he had been at such
pains to bring had already been brought to the Châlet des Dunes.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "then I am too late! Ill news travels fast."

"Ill news?" Madeleine repeated affrightedly. "Is anything the matter?
Has anything happened to one of the children? Don't keep me in suspense,
Jacques. I am not cold-blooded--like you!"

"The children are all right," he said shortly. "But there has been, as
you evidently know, an accident. The submarine _Neptune_ has met with a
serious mishap. She now lies with her crew in eighteen fathoms of water
about two miles out."

He spoke with cold acerbity. How childishly foolish of Madeleine to try
and deceive him! But all women of the type to which she belonged make
foolish mysteries about nothing.

"The submarine _Neptune_?" As she stammered out the question which had
already been answered, there came over Madame Baudoin's face a look of
measureless terror. Twice her lips opened--and twice she closed them
again.

At last she uttered a few words--words of anguished protest and revolt.
"No, no," she cried, "that can't be--it's impossible!"

"Command yourself!" he said sternly. "Remember what would be thought by
anyone who saw you in this state."

But she went on looking at him with wild, terror-stricken eyes. "My poor
Claire!" she moaned. "My little sister Claire----"

All Jacques de Wissant's jealousy leapt into eager, quivering life. Then
he had been right after all? His wife loved Dupré. Her sister's
anguished sympathy had betrayed Claire's secret as nothing Claire
herself was ever likely to say or do could have done.

"You are a good sister," he said ironically, "to take Claire's distress
so much to heart. Identifying yourself as entirely as you seem to do
with her, I am surprised that you did not accompany her into Falaise: it
was most wrong of you to let her go alone."

"Claire is not in Falaise," muttered Madeleine. She was grasping the
back of one of the cane chairs with her hand as if glad of even that
slight support, staring at him with a dazed look of abject misery which
increased his anger, his disgust.

"Not in Falaise?" he echoed sharply. "Then where, in God's name, is
she?"

A most disagreeable possibility had flashed into his mind. Was it
conceivable that his wife had had herself rowed to the scene of the
disaster? If she had done that, if her sister had allowed her to go
alone, or accompanied maybe by one or other of the officers belonging to
the submarine flotilla, then he told himself with jealous rage that he
would find it very difficult ever to forgive Claire. There are things a
woman with any self-respect, especially a woman who is the mother of
daughters, refrains from doing.

"Well?" he said contemptuously. "Well, Madeleine? I am waiting to hear
the truth. I desire no explanations--no excuses. I cannot, however,
withhold myself from telling you that you ought to have accompanied your
sister, even if you found it impossible to control her."

"I was there yesterday," said Madeleine Baudoin, with a pinched, white
face, "for over two hours."

"What do you mean?" he asked suspiciously. "Where were you yesterday for
over two hours?"

"In the _Neptune_."

She gazed at him, past him, with widely open eyes, as if she were
staring, fascinated, at some scene of unutterable horror--and there
crept into Jacques de Wissant's mind a thought so full of shameful dread
that he thrust it violently from him.

"You were in the _Neptune_," he said slowly, "knowing well that it is
absolutely forbidden for any officer to take a friend on board a
submarine without a special permit from the Minister of Marine?"

"It is sometimes done," she said listlessly.

Madame Baudoin had now sat down on a low chair, and she was plucking at
the front of her white serge skirt with a curious mechanical movement of
the fingers.

"Did the submarine actually put out to sea with you on board?"

She nodded her head, and then very deliberately added, "Yes, I have told
you that I was out for two hours. They all knew it--the men and officers
of the flotilla. I was horribly frightened, but--but now I am glad
indeed that I went. Yes, I am indeed glad!"

"Why are you glad?" he asked roughly--and again a hateful suspicion
thrust itself insistently upon him.

"I am glad I went, because it will make what Claire has done to-day
seem natural, a--a simple escapade."

There was a moment of terrible silence between them.

"Then do all the officers and men belonging to the flotilla know that my
wife is out there--in the _Neptune_?" Jacques de Wissant asked in a low,
still voice.

"No," said Madeleine, and there was now a look of shame, as well as of
terror, on her face. "They none of them know--only those who are on
board." She hesitated a moment--"That is why I sent the servants away
this morning. We--I mean Commander Dupré and I--did not think it
necessary that anyone should know."

"Then no one--that is, only a hare-brained young officer and ten men
belonging to the town of Falaise--were to be aware of the fact that my
wife had accompanied her lover on this life-risking expedition? You and
Dupré were indeed tender of her honour--and mine."

"Jacques!" She took her hand off the chair, and faced her brother-in-law
proudly. "What infamous thing is this that you are harbouring in your
mind? My sister is an honest woman, aye, as honest, as high-minded as
was your own mother----"

He stopped her with a violent gesture. "Do not mention Claire and my
mother in the same breath!" he cried.

"Ah, but I will--I must! You want the truth--you said just now you
wanted only the truth. Then you shall hear the truth! Yes, it is as you
have evidently suspected. Louis Dupré loves Claire, and she"--her voice
faltered, then grew firmer--"she may have had for him a little
sentiment. Who can tell? You have not been at much pains to make her
happy. But what is true, what is certain, is that she rejected his love.
To-day they were to part--for ever."

Her voice failed again, then once more it strengthened and hardened.

"That is why he in a moment of folly--I admit it was in a moment of
folly--asked her to come out on his last cruise in the _Neptune_. When
you came I was expecting them back any moment. But, Jacques, do not be
afraid. I swear to you that no one shall ever know. Admiral de Saint
Vilquier will do anything for us Kergouëts; I myself will go to him,
and--and explain."

But Jacques de Wissant scarcely heard the eager, pitiful words.

He had thrust his wife from his mind, and her place had been taken by
his honour--his honour and that of his children, of happy,
light-hearted Clairette and Jacqueline. For what seemed a long while he
said nothing; then, with all the anger gone from his voice, he spoke,
uttered a fiat.

"No," he said quietly. "You must leave the Admiral to me, Madeleine. You
were going to Italy to-night, were you not? That, I take it, _is_ true."

She nodded impatiently. What did her proposed journey to Italy matter
compared with her beloved Claire's present peril?

"Well, you must carry out your plan, my poor Madeleine. You must go away
to-night."

She stared at him, her face at last blotched with tears, and a look of
bewildered anguish in her eyes.

"You must do this," Jacques de Wissant went on deliberately, "for
Claire's sake, and for the sake of Claire's children. You haven't
sufficient self-control to endure suspense calmly, secretly. You need
not go farther than Paris, but those whom it concerns will be told that
Claire has gone with you to Italy. There will always be time to tell the
truth. Meanwhile, the Admiral and I will devise a plan. And perhaps"--he
waited a moment--"the truth will never be known, or only known to a very
few people--people who, as you say, will understand."

He had spoken very slowly, as if weighing each of his words, but it was
quickly, with a queer catch in his voice, that he added--"I ask you to
do this, my sister"--he had never before called Madeleine Baudoin "my
sister"--"because of Claire's children, of Clairette and Jacqueline.
Their mother would not wish a slur to rest upon them."

She looked at him with piteous, hunted eyes. But she knew that she must
do what he asked.


IV

Jacques de Wissant sat at his desk in the fine old room which is set
aside for the mayor's sole use in the town hall of Falaise.

He was waiting for Admiral de Saint Vilquier, whom he had summoned on
the plea of a matter both private and urgent. In his note, of which he
had written more than one draft, he had omitted none of the punctilio
usual in French official correspondence, and he had asked pardon, in the
most formal language, for asking the Admiral to come to him, instead of
proposing to go to the Admiral.

The time that had elapsed since he had parted from his sister-in-law had
seemed like years instead of hours, and yet every moment of those hours
had been filled with action.

From the Châlet des Dunes Jacques had made his way straight to the
Pavillon de Wissant, and there his had been the bitter task of lying to
his household.

They had accepted unquestioningly his statement that their mistress,
without waiting even to go home, had left the Châlet des Dunes with her
sister for Italy owing to the arrival of sudden worse news from Mantua.

While Claire's luggage was being by his orders hurriedly prepared, he
had changed his clothes; and then, overcome with mortal weariness, with
sick, sombre suspense, he had returned to Falaise, taking the railway
station on his way to the town hall, and from there going through the
grim comedy of despatching his wife's trunks to Paris.

Since the day war was declared by France on Germany, there had never
been at the town hall of Falaise so busy an afternoon. Urgent messages
of inquiry and condolence came pouring in from all over the civilized
world, and the mayor had to compose suitable answers to them all.

To him there also fell the painful duty of officially announcing to the
crowd surging impatiently in the market place--though room in front was
always made and kept for those of the fisher folk who had relatives in
the submarine service--that it was the _Neptune_ which had gone down.

He had seen the effect of that announcement painted on rough, worn,
upturned faces; he had heard the cries of anger, the groans of despair
of the few, and had witnessed the relief, the tears of joy of the many.
But his heart felt numb, and his cold, stern manner kept the emotions
and excitement of those about him in check.

At last there had come a short respite. It was publicly announced that
owing to the currents the divers had had to suspend their work awhile,
but that salvage appliances from England and from Cherbourg were on
their way to Falaise, and that it was hoped by seven that evening active
operations would begin. With luck the _Neptune_ might be raised before
midnight.

Fortunate people blessed with optimistic natures were already planning a
banquet at which the crew of the _Neptune_ were to be entertained within
an hour of the rescue.

       *       *       *       *       *

Jacques de Wissant rose from the massive First Empire table which formed
part of the fine suite of furniture presented by the great Napoleon
just a hundred years ago to the municipality of Falaise.

With bent head, his hands clasped behind him, the mayor began walking up
and down the long room.

Admiral de Saint Vilquier might now come at any moment, but the man
awaiting him had not yet made up his mind how to word what he had to
say--how much to tell, how much to conceal from, his wife's old friend.
He was only too well aware that if the desperate attempts which would
soon be made to raise the _Neptune_ were successful, and if its human
freight were rescued alive, the fact that there had been a woman on
board could not be concealed. Thousands would know to-night, and
millions to-morrow morning.

Not only would the amazing story provide newspaper readers all over the
world with a thrilling, unexpected piece of news, but the fact that
there had been a woman involved in the disaster would be perpetuated, as
long as our civilization endures, in every account of subsequent
accidents to submarine craft.

More intimately, vividly agonizing was the knowledge that the story, the
scandal, would be revived when there arose the all-important question of
a suitable marriage for Clairette or Jacqueline.

As he paced up and down the room, longing for and yet dreading the
coming of the Admiral, he visualized what would happen. He could almost
hear the whispered words: "Yes, dear friend, the girl is admirably
brought up, and has a large fortune, also she and your son have taken
quite a fancy for one another, but there is that very ugly story of the
mother! Don't you remember that she was with her lover in the submarine
_Neptune_? The citizens of Falaise still laugh at the story and point
her out in the street. Like mother like daughter, you know!" Thus the
miserable man tortured himself, turning the knife in his wound.

But stay---- Supposing the salvage appliances failed, as they had failed
at Bizerta, to raise the _Neptune_? Then with the help of Admiral de
Saint Vilquier the awful truth might be kept secret.

       *       *       *       *       *

At last the door opened.

Jacques de Wissant took a step forward, and as his hand rested loosely
for a moment in the old seaman's firmer grasp, he would have given many
years of his life to postpone the coming interview.

"As you asked me so urgently to do so, I have come, M. de Wissant, to
learn what you have to tell me. But I'm afraid the time I can spare you
must be short. As you know, I am to be at the station in half an hour to
meet the Minister of Marine. He will probably wish to go out at once to
the scene of the calamity, and I shall have to accompany him."

The Admiral was annoyed at having been thus sent for to the town hall.
It was surely Jacques de Wissant's place to have come to him.

And then, while listening to the other's murmured excuses, the old naval
officer happened to look straight into the face of the Mayor of Falaise,
and at once a change came over his manner, even his voice softened and
altered.

"Pardon my saying so, M. de Wissant," he exclaimed abruptly, "but you
look extremely ill! You mustn't allow this sad business to take such a
hold on you. It is tragic no doubt that such things must be, but
remember"--he uttered the words solemnly--"they are the Price of
Admiralty."

"I know, I know," muttered Jacques de Wissant.

"Shall we sit down?"

The deadly pallor, the look of strain on the face of the man before him
was making the Admiral feel more and more uneasy. "It would be very
awkward," he thought to himself, "were Jacques de Wissant to be taken
ill, here, now, with me---- Ah, I have it!"

Then he said aloud, "You have doubtless had nothing to eat since the
morning?" And as de Wissant nodded--"But that's absurd! It's always
madness to go without food. Believe me, you will want all your strength
during the next few days. As for me, I had fortunately lunched before I
received the sad news. I keep to the old hours; I do not care for your
English _déjeuners_ at one o'clock. Midday is late enough for me!"

"Admiral?" said the wretched man, "Admiral----?"

"Yes, take your time; I am not really in such a hurry. I am quite at
your disposal."

"It is a question of honour," muttered Jacques de Wissant, "a question
of honour, Admiral, or I should not trouble you with the matter."

Admiral de Saint Vilquier leant forward, but Jacques de Wissant avoided
meeting the shrewd, searching eyes.

"The honour of a naval family is involved." The Mayor of Falaise was now
speaking in a low, pleading voice.

The Admiral stiffened. "Ah!" he exclaimed. "So you have been asked to
intercede with me on behalf of some young scapegrace. Well, who is it?
I'll look into the matter to-morrow morning. I really cannot think of
anything to-day but of this terrible business----"

"----Admiral, it concerns this business."

"The loss of the _Neptune_? In what way can the honour of a naval family
be possibly involved in such a matter?" There was a touch of hauteur as
well as of indignant surprise in the fine old seaman's voice.

"Admiral," said Jacques de Wissant deliberately, "there was--there is--a
woman on board the _Neptune_."

"A woman in the _Neptune_? That is quite impossible!" The Admiral got up
from his chair. "It is one of our strictest regulations that no stranger
be taken on board a submarine without a special permit from the Minister
of Marine, countersigned by an admiral. No such permit has been issued
for many months. In no case would a woman be allowed on board. Commander
Dupré is far too conscientious, too loyal, an officer to break such a
regulation."

"Commander Dupré," said Jacques de Wissant in a low, bitter tone, "was
not too conscientious or too loyal an officer to break that regulation,
for there is, I repeat it, a woman in the _Neptune_."

The Admiral sat down again. "But this is serious--very serious," he
muttered.

He was thinking of the effect, not only at home but abroad, of such a
breach of discipline.

He shook his head with a pained, angry gesture--"I understand what
happened," he said at last. "The woman was of course poor Dupré's"--and
then something in Jacques de Wissant's pallid face made him substitute,
for the plain word he meant to have used, a softer, kindlier
phrase--"poor Dupré's _bonne amie_," he said.

"I am advised not," said Jacques de Wissant shortly. "I am told that the
person in question is a young lady."

"Do you mean an unmarried girl?" asked the Admiral. There was great
curiosity and sincere relief in his voice.

"I beg of you not to ask me, Admiral! The family of the lady have
implored me to reveal as little of the truth as possible. They have
taken their own measures, and they are good measures, to account for
her--her disappearance." The unhappy man spoke with considerable
agitation.

"Quite so! Quite so! They are right. I have no wish to show indiscreet
curiosity."

"Do you think anything can be done to prevent the fact becoming known?"
asked Jacques de Wissant--and, as the other waited a moment before
answering, the suspense became almost more than he could endure.

He got up and instinctively stood with his back to the light. "The
family of this young lady are willing to make any pecuniary
sacrifice----"

"It is not a question of pecuniary sacrifice," the Admiral said stiffly.
"Money will never really purchase either secrecy or silence. But honour,
M. de Wissant, will sometimes, nay, often, do both."

"Then you think the fact can be concealed?"

"I think it will be impossible to conceal it if the _Neptune_ is
raised"--he hesitated, and his voice sank as he added the poignant words
"_in time_. But if that happens, though I fear that it is not likely to
happen, then I promise you that I will allow it to be thought that I had
given this lady permission, and her improper action will be accepted for
what it no doubt was--a foolish escapade. If Dupré and little Paritot
are the men of honour I take them to be, one or other of them will of
course marry her!"

"And if the _Neptune_ is not raised--" the Mayor's voice also dropped
to a whisper--"_in time_--what then?"

"Then," said the Admiral, "everything will be done by me--so you can
assure your unlucky friends--to conceal the fact that Commander Dupré
failed in his duty. Not for his sake, you understand--he, I fear,
deserves what he has suffered, what he is perhaps still suffering,"--a
look of horror stole over his old, weather-roughened face--"but for the
sake of the foolish girl and for the sake of her family. You say it is a
naval family?"

"Yes," said Jacques de Wissant. "A noted naval family."

The Admiral got up. "And now I, on my side, must exact of you a pledge,
M. de Wissant--" he looked searchingly at the Government official
standing before him. "I solemnly implore you, monsieur, to keep this
fact you have told me absolutely secret for the time being--secret even
from the Minister of Marine."

The Mayor of Falaise bent his head. "I intend to act," he said slowly,
"as if I had never heard it."

"I ask it for the honour, the repute, of the Service," muttered the old
officer. "After all, M. de Wissant, the poor fellow did not mean much
harm. We sailors have all, at different times of our lives, had some
_bonne amie_ whom we found it devilish hard to leave on shore!"

The Admiral walked slowly towards the door. To-day had aged him years.
Then he turned and looked benignantly at Jacques de Wissant; the man
before him might be stiff, cold, awkward in manner, but he was a
gentleman, a man of honour.

And as he drove to the station to meet the Minister of Marine, Admiral
de Saint Vilquier's shrewd, practical mind began to deal with the
difficult problem which was now added to his other cares. It was
simplified in view of the fact--the awful fact--that according to his
private information it was most unlikely that the submarine would be
raised within the next few hours. He hoped with all his heart that the
twelve men and the woman now lying beneath the sea had met death at the
moment of the collision.

       *       *       *       *       *

All that summer night the cafés and eating-houses of Falaise remained
open, and there was a constant coming and going to the beach, where many
people, even among those visitors who were not directly interested in
the calamity, camped out on the stones.

The mayor sent word to the Pavillon de Wissant that he would sleep in
his town house, but though he left the town hall at two in the morning
he was back at his post by eight, and he spent there the whole of the
next long dragging day.

Fortunately for him there was little time for thought. In addition to
the messages of inquiry and condolence which went on pouring in,
important members of the Government arrived from Paris and the
provinces.

There also came to Falaise the mother of Commander Dupré, and the father
and brother of Lieutenant Paritot. De Wissant made the latter his
special care. They, the two men, were granted the relief of tears, but
Madame Dupré's silent agony could not be assuaged.

Once, when he suddenly came upon her sitting, her chin in her hand, in
his room at the town hall, Jacques de Wissant shrank from her blazing
eyes and ravaged face, so vividly did they recall to him the eyes, the
face, he had seen that April evening "'twixt dog and wolf," when he had
first leapt upon the truth.

On the third day all hope that there could be anyone still living in the
_Neptune_ was being abandoned, and yet at noon there ran a rumour
through the town that knocking had been heard in the submarine....

The mayor himself drew up an official proclamation, in which it was
pointed out that it was almost certain that all on board had perished at
the time of the collision, and that, even if any of them had survived
for a few hours, not one could be alive now.

And then, as one by one the days of waiting began to wear themselves
away, the world, apart from the town which numbered ten of her sons
among the doomed men, relaxed its painful interest in the fate of the
French submarine. Indeed, Falaise took on an almost winter stillness of
aspect, for the summer visitors naturally drifted away from a spot which
was still the heart of an awful tragedy.

But Jacques de Wissant did not relax in his duties or in his efforts on
behalf of the families of the men who still lay, eighteen fathoms deep,
encased in their steel tomb; and the townspeople were deeply moved by
their mayor's continued, if restrained, distress. He even put his
children, his pretty twin daughters, Jacqueline and Clairette, into deep
mourning; this touched the seafaring portion of the population very
much.

It also became known that M. de Wissant was suffering from domestic
distress of a very sad and intimate kind; his sister-in-law was
seriously ill in Italy from an infectious disease, and his wife, who
had gone away at a moment's notice to help to nurse her, had caught the
infection.

The Mayor of Falaise and Admiral de Saint Vilquier did not often have
occasion to meet during those days spent by each of them in entertaining
official personages and in composing answers to the messages and
inquiries which went on dropping in, both by day and by night, at the
town hall and at the Admiral's quarters. But there came an hour when
Admiral de Saint Vilquier at last sought to have a private word with the
Mayor of Falaise.

"I think I have arranged everything satisfactorily," he said briefly,
"and you can convey the fact to your friends. I do not suppose, as
matters are now, that there is much fear that the truth will ever come
out."

The old man did not look into Jacques de Wissant's face while he uttered
the comforting words. He had become aware of many things--including
Madeleine Baudoin's cruise in the _Neptune_ the day before the accident,
and of her own and Claire de Wissant's reported departure for Italy.

Alone, among the people who sometimes had friendly speech of the mayor
during those sombre days of waiting, Admiral de Saint Vilquier did not
condole with the anxious husband on the fact that he could not yet leave
Falaise for Mantua.


V

Jacques de Wissant woke with a start and sat up in bed. He had heard a
knock--but, awake or sleeping, his ears were never free of the sound of
knocking,--of muffled, regular knocking....

It was the darkest hour of the summer night, but with a sharp sense of
relief he became aware that what had wakened him this time was a real
sound, not the slow, patient, rhythmical, tapping which haunted him
incessantly. But now the knocking had been followed by the opening of
his bedroom door, and vaguely outlined before him was the short, squat
form of an old woman who had entered his mother's service when he was a
little boy, and who always stayed in his town house.

"M'sieur l'Amiral de Saint Vilquier desires to see M'sieur Jacques on
urgent business," she whispered. "I have put him to wait in the great
drawing-room. It is fortunate that I took all the covers off the
furniture yesterday."

Then the moment of ordeal, the moment he had begun to think would never
come--was upon him? He knew this summons to mean that the _Neptune_ had
been finally towed into the harbour, and that now, in this still, dark
hour before dawn, was about to begin the work of taking out the bodies.

Every day for a week past it had been publicly announced that the
following night would see the final scene of the dread drama, and each
evening--even last evening--it had been as publicly announced that
nothing could be done for the present.

Jacques de Wissant had put all his trust in the Admiral and in the
arrangements the Admiral was making to avoid discovery. But now, as he
got up and dressed himself--strange to say that phantom sound of
knocking had ceased--there came over him a frightful sensation of doubt
and fear. Had he been right to trust wholly to the old naval officer?
Would it not have been better to have taken the Minister of Marine into
his confidence?

How would it be possible for Admiral de Saint Vilquier, unless backed by
Governmental authority, to elude the vigilance, not only of the
Admiralty officials and of all those that were directly interested, but
also of the journalists who, however much the public interest had
slackened in the disaster, still stayed on at Falaise in order to be
present at the last act of the tragedy?

These thoughts jostled each other in Jacques de Wissant's brain. But
whether he had been right or wrong it was too late to alter now.

He went into the room where the Admiral stood waiting for him.

The two men shook hands, but neither spoke till they had left the house.
Then, as they walked with firm, quick steps across the deserted
market-place, the Admiral said suddenly, "This is the quietest hour in
the twenty-four, and though I anticipate a little trouble with the
journalists, I think everything will go off quite well."

His companion muttered a word of assent, and the other went on, this
time in a gruff whisper: "By the way, I have had to tell Dr. Tarnier--"
and as Jacques de Wissant gave vent to a stifled exclamation of
dismay--"of course I had to tell Dr. Tarnier! He has most nobly offered
to go down into the _Neptune_ alone--though in doing so he will run
considerable personal risk."

Admiral de Saint Vilquier paused a moment, for the quick pace at which
his companion was walking made him rather breathless. "I have simply
told him that there was a young woman on board. He imagines her to have
been a Parisienne,--a person of no importance, you understand,--who had
come to spend the holiday with poor Dupré. But he quite realizes that
the fact must never be revealed." He spoke in a dry, matter-of-fact
tone. "There will not be room on the pontoon for more than five or six,
including ourselves and Dr. Tarnier. Doubtless some of our newspaper
friends will be disappointed--if one can speak of disappointment in such
a connection--but they will have plenty of opportunities of being
present to-morrow and the following nights. I have arranged with the
Minister of Marine for the work to be done only at night."

As the two men emerged on the quays, they saw that the news had leaked
out, for knots of people stood about, talking in low hushed tones, and
staring at the middle of the harbour.

Apart from the others, and almost dangerously close to the unguarded
edge below which was the dark lapping water, stood a line of women
shrouded in black, and from them came no sound.

As the Admiral and his companion approached the little group of
officials who were apparently waiting for them, the old naval officer
whispered to Jacques de Wissant, using for the first time the familiar
expression, "_mon ami_," "Do not forget, _mon ami_, to thank the
harbour-master and the pilot. They have had a very difficult task, and
they will expect your commendation."

Jacques de Wissant said the words required of him. And then, at the last
moment, just as he was on the point of going down the steps leading to
the flat-bottomed boat in which they were to be rowed to the pontoon,
there arose an angry discussion. The harbour-master had, it seemed,
promised the representatives of two Paris newspapers that they should be
present when the submarine was first opened.

But the Admiral stiffly asserted his supreme authority. "In such matters
I can allow no favouritism! It is doubtful if any bodies will be taken
out to-night, gentlemen, for the tide is already turning. I will see if
other arrangements can be made to-morrow. If any of you had been in the
harbour of Bizerta when the _Lutin_ was raised, you would now thank me
for not allowing you to view the sight which we may be about to see."

And the weary, disappointed special correspondents, who had spent long
days watching for this one hour, realized that they would have to
content themselves with describing what could be seen from the quays.

       *       *       *       *       *

It will, however, surprise no one familiar with the remarkable
enterprise of the modern press, when it is recorded that by far the most
accurate account of what occurred during the hour that followed was
written by a cosmopolitan war correspondent, who had had the good
fortune of making Dr. Tarnier's acquaintance during the dull fortnight
of waiting.

He wrote:

    None of those who were there will ever forget what they saw last
    night in the harbour of Falaise.

    The scene, illumined by the searchlight of a destroyer, was at
    once sinister, sombre, and magnificent. Below the high, narrow
    pontoon, on the floor of the harbour, lay the wrecked submarine;
    and those who gazed down at the _Neptune_ felt as though they
    were in the presence of what had once been a sentient being done
    to death by some huge Goliath of the deep.

    Dr. Tarnier, the chief medical officer of the port--a man who is
    beloved and respected by the whole population of Falaise--stood
    ready to begin his dreadful task. I had ascertained that he had
    obtained permission to go down alone into the hold of death--an
    exploration attended with the utmost physical risk. He was clad
    in a suit of india-rubber clothing, and over his arm was folded
    a large tarpaulin sheet lined with carbolic wool, one of half a
    dozen such sheets lying at his feet.

    The difficult work of unsealing the conning tower was then
    proceeded with in the presence of Admiral de Saint Vilquier,
    whose prowess as a midshipman is still remembered by British
    Crimean veterans--and of the Mayor of Falaise, M. Jacques de
    Wissant.

    At last there came a guttural exclamation of "_Ça y est!_" and
    Dr. Tarnier stepped downwards, to emerge a moment later with the
    first body, obviously that of the gallant Commander Dupré, who
    was found, as it was expected he would be, in the conning tower.

    Once more the doctor's burly figure disappeared, once more he
    emerged, tenderly bearing a slighter, lighter burden, obviously
    the boyish form of Lieutenant Paritot, who was found close to
    Commander Dupré.

    The tide was rising rapidly, but two more bodies--this time with
    the help of a webbed band cleverly designed by Dr. Tarnier with
    a view to the purpose--were lifted from the inner portion of the
    submarine.

    The four bodies, rather to the disappointment of the large crowd
    which had gradually gathered on the quays, were not taken
    directly to the shore, to the great hall where Falaise is to
    mourn her dead sons; one by one they were reverently conveyed,
    by the Admiral's orders, to a barge which was once used as a
    hospital ward for sick sailors, and which is close to the mouth
    of the harbour. Thence, when all twelve bodies have been
    recovered--that is, in three or four days, for the work is only
    to be proceeded with at night,--they will be taken to the Salle
    d'Armes, there to await the official obsequies.

On the morning following the night during which the last body was lifted
from within the _Neptune_, there ran a curious rumour through the
fishing quarter of the town. It was said that thirteen bodies--not
twelve, as declared the official report--had been taken out of the
_Neptune_. It was declared on the authority of one of the seamen--a
Gascon, be it noted--who had been there on that first night, that five,
not four, bodies had been conveyed to the hospital barge.

But the rumour, though it found an echo in the French press, was not
regarded as worth an official denial, and it received its final quietus
on the day of the official obsequies, when it was at once seen that the
number of ammunition wagons heading the great procession was twelve.

       *       *       *       *       *

As long as tradition endures in the life of the town, Falaise will
remember the _Neptune_ funeral procession. Not only was every navy in
the world represented, but also every strand of that loosely woven human
fabric we civilized peoples call a nation.

Through the long line of soldiers, each man with his arms reversed,
walked the official mourners, while from the fortifications there boomed
the minute gun.

First the President of the French Republic, with, to his right, the
Minister of Marine; and close behind them the stiff, still vigorous,
figure of old Admiral de Saint Vilquier. By his side walked the Mayor of
Falaise--so mortally pale, so what the French call undone, that the
Admiral felt fearful lest his neighbour should be compelled to fall out.

But Jacques de Wissant was not minded to fall out.

The crowd looking on, especially the wives of those substantial citizens
of the town who stood at their windows behind half-closed shutters and
drawn blinds, stared down at the mayor with pitying concern.

"He has a warm heart though a cold manner," murmured these ladies to one
another, "and just now, you know, he is in great anxiety, for his
wife--that beautiful Claire with whom he doesn't get on very well--is in
Italy, seriously ill of scarlet fever." "Yes, and as soon as this sad
ceremony is over, he will leave for the south--I hear that the President
has offered him a seat in his saloon as far as Paris."

As the head of the procession at last stopped on the great parade ground
where the last honours were to be rendered to the lowly yet illustrious
dead, Jacques de Wissant straightened himself with an instinctive
gesture, and his lips began to move. He was muttering to himself the
speech he would soon have to deliver, and which he had that morning,
making a great mental effort, committed to memory.

And after the President had had his long, emotional, and flowery say;
and when the oldest of French admirals had stepped forward and, in a
quavering voice, bidden the dead farewell on behalf of the Navy, it came
to the turn of the Mayor of Falaise.

He was there, he said, simply as the mouth-piece of his fellow-townsmen,
and they, bowed as they were by deep personal grief, could say but
little--they could indeed only murmur their eternal gratitude for the
sympathy they had received, and were now receiving, from their
countrymen and from the world.

Then Jacques de Wissant gave a brief personal account of each of the ten
seamen whom this vast concourse had gathered together to honour. It was
noted by the curious in such things that he made no allusion to the two
officers, to Commander Dupré and Lieutenant Paritot; doubtless he
thought that they, after all, had been amply honoured in the preceding
speeches.

But though his care for the lowly heroes proved the Mayor of Falaise a
good republican, he showed himself in the popular estimation also a
scholar, for he wound up with the old tag--the grand old tag which
inspired so many noble souls in the proudest of ancient empires and
civilizations, and which will retain the power of moving and thrilling
generations yet unborn in both the Western and the Eastern worlds:

    "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."




THE CHILD


I

It was close on eleven o'clock; the July night was airless, and the last
of that season's great balls was taking place in Grosvenor Square.

Mrs. Elwyn's brougham came to a sudden halt in Green Street. Encompassed
behind and before with close, intricate traffic, the carriage swung
stiffly on its old-fashioned springs, responding to every movement of
the fretted horse.

Hugh Elwyn, sitting by his mother's side, wondered a little impatiently
why she remained so faithful to the old brougham which he could
remember, or so it seemed to him, all his life. But he did not utter his
thoughts aloud; he still went in awe of his mother, and he was proud, in
a whimsical way, of her old-fashioned austerity of life, of her
narrowness of vision, of her dislike of modern ways and new fashions.

Mrs. Elwyn after her husband's death had given up the world. This was
the first time since her widowhood that she and her son had dined out
together; but then the occasion was a very special one--they had been to
dinner with the family of Elwyn's fiancée, Winifred Fanshawe.

Hugh Elwyn turned and looked at his mother. As he saw in the
half-darkness the outlines of the delicately pure profile, framed in
grey bands of hair covering the ears as it had been worn when Mrs. Elwyn
was a girl upwards of forty years ago, he felt stirred with an unwonted
tenderness, added to the respect with which he habitually regarded her.

Since leaving Cavendish Square they had scarcely spoken the one to the
other. The drive home was a short one, for they lived in South Street.
It was tiresome that they should be held up in this way within a hundred
yards of their own door.

Suddenly the mother spoke. She put out her frail hand and laid it across
her son's strong brown fingers. She gazed earnestly into the
good-looking face which was not as radiantly glad as she would have
wished to see it--as indeed she had once seen her son's face look, and
as she could still very vividly remember her own husband's face had
looked during their short formal engagement nearly fifty years ago. "I
could not be better pleased, Hugh, if I had myself chosen your future
wife."

Elwyn was a little amused as well as touched; he was well aware that his
mother, to all intents and purposes, _had_ chosen Winifred. True, she
had been but slightly acquainted with the girl before the engagement,
but she had "known all about her," and had been on terms of friendly
acquaintance with Winifred's grandmother all her long life. Elwyn
remembered how his mother had pressed him to accept an invitation to a
country house where Winifred Fanshawe was to be. But Mrs. Elwyn had
never spoken to her son of her wishes until the day he had come and told
her that he intended to ask Winifred to marry him, and then her
unselfish joy had moved him and brought them very near to one another.

When Hugh Elwyn was in London--he had been a great wanderer over the
earth--he lived with his mother, and they were outwardly on the closest,
most intimate terms of affection. But then Mrs. Elwyn never interfered
with Hugh, as he understood his friends' mothers so often interfered
with them and with their private affairs. This doubtless was why they
were, and remained, on such ideal terms together.

Suddenly Mrs. Elwyn again spoke, but she did not turn round and look
tenderly at her son as she had done when speaking of his future
wife--this time she gazed straight before her: "Is not Winifred a cousin
of Mrs. Bellair?"

"Yes, there's some kind of connection between the Fanshawes and the
Bellairs."

Hugh Elwyn tried to make his voice unconcerned, but he failed, and he
knew that he had failed. His mother's question had disturbed him, and
taken him greatly by surprise.

"I wondered whether they are friends?"

"I have never heard Winifred mention her," he said shortly. "Yes, I
have--I remember now that she told me the Bellairs had sent her a
present the very day after our engagement was in the _Morning Post_."

"Then I suppose you will have to see something of them after your
marriage?"

"You mean the Bellairs? Yes--no. I don't think that follows, mother."

"Do you see anything of them now?"

"No"--he again hesitated, and again ate his word--"that is--yes. I met
them some weeks ago. But I don't think we are likely to see much of them
after our marriage."

He would have given the world to feel that his voice was betraying
nothing of the discomfort he was feeling.

"I hope not, Hugh. Mrs. Bellair would not be a suitable friend for
Winifred--or--or for any young married woman."

"Mother!" Elwyn only uttered the one word, but anger, shame, and
self-reproach were struggling in the tone in which he uttered that one
word. "You are wrong, indeed, you are quite wrong--I mean about Fanny
Bellair."

"My dear," she said gently, but her voice quivered, "I do not think I am
wrong. Indeed, I know I am right." Neither had ever seen the other so
moved. "My dear," again she said the two quiet words that may mean so
much or so little, "you know that I never spoke to you of the matter. I
tried never even to think of it, and yet, Hugh, it made me very anxious,
very unhappy. But to-night, looking at that sweet girl, I felt I must
speak."

She waited a moment, and then added in a constrained voice, "I do not
judge you, Hugh."

"No!" he cried, "but you judge her! And it's so unfair, mother--so
horribly unfair!"

He had turned round; he was forcing his mother to look at his now moody,
unhappy face.

Mrs. Elwyn shrank back and closed her lips tightly. Her expression
recalled to her son the look which used to come over her face when, as a
petted, over cared-for only child, he asked her for something which she
believed it would be bad for him to have. From that look there had been,
in old days, no appeal. But now he felt that he must say something more.
His manhood demanded it of him.

"Mother," he said earnestly, "as you have spoken to me of the matter, I
feel I must have it out with you! Please believe me when I say that you
are being unjust--indeed, cruelly so. I was to blame all through--from
the very beginning to the very end."

"You must allow me," she said in a low tone, "to be the judge of that,
Hugh." She added deprecatingly, "This discussion is painful, and--and
very distasteful to me."

Her son leant back, and choked down the words he was about to utter. He
knew well that nothing he could say would change or even modify his
mother's point of view. But oh! why had she done this? Why had she
chosen to-night, of all nights, to rend the veil which had always hung,
so decently, between them. He had felt happy to-night--not madly,
foolishly happy, as so many men feel at such moments, but reasonably,
decorously pleased with his present and his future. He was making a
_mariage de convenance_, but there had been another man on the lists, a
younger man than himself, and that had added a most pleasing zest to the
pursuit. He, aided of course by Winifred Fanshawe's prudent parents, had
won--won a very pretty, well-bred, well-behaved girl to wife. What more
could a man of forty-one, who had lived every moment of his life, ask of
that providence which shapes our ends?

The traffic suddenly parted, and the horse leapt forward.

As they reached their own front door, Mrs. Elwyn again spoke: "Perhaps I
ought to add," she said hurriedly, "that I know one thing to Mrs.
Bellair's credit. I am told that she is a most devoted and careful
mother to that little boy of hers. I heard to-day that the child is
seriously ill, and that she and the child's nurse are doing everything
for him."

Mrs. Elwyn's voice had softened, curiously. She had an old-fashioned
prejudice against trained nurses.

Hugh Elwyn helped his mother into the house; then, in the hall, he bent
down and just touched her cheek with his lips.

"Won't you come up into the drawing-room? Just for a few minutes?" she
asked; there was a note of deep, yearning disappointment in her voice,
and her face looked grey and tired, very different from the happy,
placid air it had worn during the little dinner party.

"No, thank you, mother, I won't come up just now. I think I'll go out
again for half an hour. I haven't walked at all to-day, and it's so
hot--I feel I shouldn't sleep if I turn in now."

He was punishing his mother as he had seen other sons punishing their
mothers, but as he himself had never before to-night been tempted to
punish his. Nay, more, as Hugh Elwyn watched her slow ascent up the
staircase, he told himself that she had hurt and angered him past entire
forgiveness. He had sometimes suspected that she knew of that fateful
episode in his past life, but he had never supposed that she would speak
of it to him, especially not now, after years had gone by, and when,
greatly to please her, he was about to make what is called a "suitable"
marriage.

He was just enough to know that his mother had hurt herself by hurting
him, but that did not modify his feelings of anger and of surprise at
what she had done. Of course she thought she knew everything there was
to know, but how much there had been that she had never even suspected!

Those words--that admission--as to Fanny Bellair being a good mother
would never have passed Mrs. Elwyn's lips--they would never even have
been credited by her had she known the truth--the truth, that is, as to
the child to whom Mrs. Bellair was so passionately devoted, and who now,
it seemed, was ailing. That secret, and Hugh Elwyn thanked God, not
irreverently, that it was so, was only shared by two human beings, that
is by Fanny and himself. And perhaps, Fanny, like himself, had managed
by now almost to forget it....

Elwyn swung out of the house, he walked up South Street, and so into
Park Lane and over to the Park railings. There was still a great deal of
traffic in the roadway, but the pavements were deserted.

As he began to walk quickly westward, the past came back and overwhelmed
him as with a great flood of mingled memories. And it was not, as his
mother would probably have visioned it, a muddy spate filled with
unclean things. Rather was it a flood of exquisite spring waters,
instinct with the buoyant head-long rushes of youth, and filled with
clear, happy shallows, in which retrospectively he lay and sunned
himself in the warmth of what had been a great love--love such as
Winifred Fanshawe, with her thin, complaisant nature, would never
bestow.

The mother's imprudent words of unnecessary warning had brought back to
her son everything she had hoped was now, if not obliterated, then
repented of; but Elwyn's heart was filled to-night with a vague
tenderness for the half-forgotten woman whom he had loved awhile with so
passionate and absorbing a love, and to whom, under cover of that poor
and wilted thing, his conscience, he had ultimately behaved so ill.

Hugh Elwyn's mind travelled back across the years, to the very beginning
of his involved account with honour--that account which he believed to
be now straightened out.

Jim Bellair had been Elwyn's friend--first college friend and then
favourite "pal." When Bellair had fallen head over ears in love with a
girl still in the schoolroom, a girl not even pretty, but with wonderful
auburn hair and dark, startled-looking eyes, and had finally persuaded,
cajoled, badgered her into saying "Yes," it was Hugh Elwyn who had been
Bellair's rather sulky best man. Small wonder that the bridegroom had
half-jokingly left his young wife in Elwyn's charge when he had had to
go half across the world on business that could not be delayed, while
she stayed behind to nurse her father who was ill.

It was then, with mysterious, uncanny suddenness, that the mischief had
begun. There had been something wild and untamed in Fanny
Bellair--something which had roused in Elwyn the hunter's instinct, an
instinct hitherto unslaked by over easy victories. And then Chance, that
great, cynical goddess which plays so great a part in civilized life,
had flung first one opportunity and then another into his eager,
grasping hands.

Fanny's father had died; and she had been lonely and in sorrow. Careless
friends, however kind, do not care to see much of those who mourn, but
he, Hugh Elwyn, had not been careless, nay, he had been careful to see
more, not less, of his friend's wife in this her first great grief, and
she had been moved to the heart by his sympathy.

It was by Elwyn's advice that Mrs. Bellair had taken a house not far
from London that lovely summer.

Ah, that little house! Elwyn could remember every bush, almost every
flower that had flowered, in the walled garden during those enchanted
weeks. Against the background of his mind every ornament, every odd
piece of furniture in that old cottage, stood out as having been the
silent, it had seemed at the time the kindly, understanding witnesses of
what had by then become an exquisite friendship. He, the man, had known
almost from the first where they too were drifting, but she, the woman,
had slipped into love as a wanderer at night slips suddenly into a deep
and hidden pool.

In a story book they would both have gone away openly together--but
somehow the thought of doing such a thing never seriously occurred to
Elwyn. He was far too fond of Bellair--it seemed absurd to say that now,
but the truth, especially the truth of what has been, is often absurd.

Elwyn had contented himself with stealing Bellair's wife; he had no
desire to put public shame and ridicule upon his friend. And fortune,
favouring him, had prolonged the other man's enforced absence.

And then? And then at last Bellair had come back,--and trouble began. As
to many things, nay, as to most things which have to do with the flesh
rather than the spirit, men are more fastidiously delicate than are
women. There had come months of misery, of revolt, and, on Elwyn's part,
of dulling love....

Then, once more, Chance gave him an unlooked-for opportunity--an
opportunity of escape from what had become to him an intolerable
position.

The war broke out, and Hugh Elwyn was among the very first of those
gallant fellows who volunteered during the dark November of '99.

By a curious irony of fate, the troopship that bore him to South Africa
had Bellair also on board, but owing to Elwyn's secret decision--he was
far the cleverer man of the two--he and his friend were no longer bound
together by that wordless intimacy which is the basis of any close tie
among men. By the time the two came back from Africa they had become
little more than cordial acquaintances. Marriage, so Bellair sometimes
told himself ruefully, generally plays the devil with a man's bachelor
friendships. He was a kindly, generous hearted soul, who found much
comfort in platitudes....

But that, alas! had not been the end. On Elwyn's return home there had
come to him a violent, overmastering revival of his passion. Again he
and Fanny met--again they loved. Then one terrible day she came and told
him, with stricken eyes, what he sometimes hoped, even now, had not been
true--that she was about to have a child, and that it would be his
child. At that moment, as he knew well, Mrs. Bellair had desired
ardently to go away with him, openly. But he had drawn back, assuring
himself--and this time honestly--that his shrinking from that course,
now surely the only honest course, was not wholly ignoble. Were he to do
such a thing it would go far to kill his mother--worse, it would
embitter every moment of the life which remained to her.

For a while Elwyn went in deadly fear lest Fanny should tell her husband
the truth. But the weeks and months drifted by, and she remained silent.
And as he had gone about that year, petted and made much of by his
friends and acquaintances--for did he not bear on his worn, handsome
face that look which war paints on the face of your sensitive modern
man?--he heard whispered the delightful news that after five years of
marriage kind Jim and dear Fanny Bellair were at last going to be made
happy--happy in the good old way.

Among the other memories of that hateful time, one came back, to-night,
with especial vividness. Hurrying home across the park one afternoon,
seven years ago now, almost to a day, he had suddenly run up against
Bellair.

They had talked for a few moments on indifferent things, and then Jim
had said shyly, awkwardly, but with a beaming look on his face, "You
know about Fanny? Of course I can't help feeling a bit anxious, but
she's so healthy--not like those women who have always something the
matter with them!" And he, Elwyn, had gripped the other man's hand, and
muttered the congratulation which was being asked of him.

That meeting, so full of shameful irony, had occurred about a week
before the child's birth. Elwyn had meant to be away from London--but
Chance, so carelessly kind a friend to him in the past, at last proved
cruel, for surely it was Chance and Chance alone that led him, on the
very eve of the day he was starting for Norway, straight across the
quiet square, composed of high Georgian houses, where the Bellairs still
lived.

To-night, thanks to his mother, every incident of that long, agonizing
night came back. He could almost feel the tremor of half fear, half
excitement, which had possessed him when he had suddenly become aware
that his friends' house was still lit up and astir, and that fresh straw
lay heaped up in prodigal profusion in the road where, a little past the
door, was drawn up a doctor's one-horse brougham. Even then he might
have taken another way, but something had seemed to drive him on, past
the house,--and there Elwyn, staying his deadened footsteps, had heard
float down to him from widely opened windows above, certain sounds,
muffled moans, telling of a physical extremity which even now he winced
to remember.

He had waited on and on--longing to escape, and yet prisoned between
imaginary bounds within which he paced up and down, filled with an
obscure desire to share, in the measure that was possible to him, her
torment.

At last, in the orange, dust-laden dawn of a London summer morning, the
front door of the house had opened, and Elwyn had walked forward, every
nerve quivering with suspense and fatigue, feeling that he must know....

A great doctor, with whose face he was vaguely acquainted, had stepped
out accompanied by Bellair--Bellair with ruffled hair and red-rimmed
eyes, but looking if tired then content, even more, triumphant. Elwyn
had heard him say the words, "Thanks awfully. I shall never forget how
kind you have been, Sir Joseph. Yes, I'll go to bed at once. I know you
must have thought me rather stupid."

And then Bellair had suddenly seen Elwyn standing on the pavement; he
had accepted unquestioningly the halting explanation that he was on his
way home from a late party, and had happened, as it were, that way.
"It's a boy!" he had said exultantly, although Elwyn had asked him no
question, and then, "Of course I'm awfully pleased, but I'm dog tired!
She's had a bad time, poor girl--but it's all right now, thank God! Come
in and have a drink, Hugo."

But Elwyn had shaken his head. Again he had gripped his old friend's
hand, as he had done a week before, and again he had muttered the
necessary words of congratulation. Then, turning on his heel, he had
gone home, and spent the rest of the night in desultory packing.

       *       *       *       *       *

That was just seven years ago, and Elwyn had never seen Fanny's child.
He had been away from England for over a year, and when he came back he
learned that the Bellairs were away, living in the country, where they
had taken a house for the sake of their boy.

As time had gone on, Elwyn and his friends had somehow drifted apart, as
people are apt to drift apart in the busy idleness of the life led by
the fortunate Bellairs and Elwyns of this world. Fanny avoided Hugh
Elwyn, and Elwyn avoided Fanny, but they two only were aware of this. It
was the last of the many secrets which they had once shared. When he
and Bellair by chance met alone, all the old cordiality and even the old
affection seemed to come back, if not to Elwyn then to the other man.

And now the child, to whom it seemed not only Fanny but Jim Bellair also
was so devoted, was ill, and he, Hugh Elwyn, had been the last to hear
of it. He felt vaguely remorseful that this should be so. There had been
years when nothing that affected Bellair could have left him
indifferent, and a time when the slightest misadventure befalling Fanny
would have called forth his eager, helpful sympathy.

How strange it would be--he quickened his footsteps--if this child, with
whom he was at once remotely and intimately concerned, were to die! He
could not help feeling, deep down in his heart, that this would be, if a
tragic, then a natural solution of a painful and unnatural problem--and
then, quite suddenly, he felt horribly ashamed of having allowed himself
to think this thought, to wish this awful wish.

Why should he not go now, at once, to Manchester Square, and inquire as
to the little boy's condition? It was not really late, not yet midnight.
He could go and leave a message, perhaps even scribble a line to Jim
Bellair explaining that he had come round as soon as he had heard of the
child's illness.


II

When Hugh Elwyn reached the familiar turning whence he could see the
Bellairs' high house, time seemed to have slipped back.

The house was all lit up as it had been on that summer night seven years
ago. Everything was the same--even to the heaped-up straw into which his
half-reluctant feet now sank. There was even a doctor's carriage drawn
up a little way from the front door, but this time it was a smart
electric brougham.

He rang the bell, and as the door opened, Jim Bellair suddenly came into
the hall, out of a room which Elwyn knew to be the smoking-room--a room
in which he and Fanny had at one time spent long hours in contented, nay
in ecstatic, dual solitude.

"I have come to inquire--I only heard to-night--" he began awkwardly,
but the other cut him short, "Yes, yes, I understand--it's awfully good
of you, Elwyn! I'm awfully glad to see you. Come in here--" and perforce
he had to follow. "The doctor's upstairs--I mean Sir Joseph Pixton.
Fanny was determined to have him, and he very kindly came, though of
course he's not a child's doctor. He's annoyed because Fanny won't have
trained nurses; but I don't suppose anything would make any difference.
It's just a fight--a fight for the little chap's life--that's what it
is, and we don't know yet who'll win."

He spoke in quick, short sentences, staring with widely open eyes at his
erstwhile friend as he spoke. "Pneumonia--I suppose you don't know
anything about it? I thought children never had such things, especially
not in hot weather."

"I had a frightful illness when I was about your boy's age," said Elwyn
eagerly. "It's the first thing I can really remember. They called it
inflammation of the lungs. I was awfully bad. My mother talks of it now,
sometimes."

"Does she?" Bellair spoke wearily. "If only one could _do_ something,"
he went on. "But you see the worst of it is that I can do
nothing--nothing! Fanny hates my being up there--she thinks it upsets
the boy. He's such a jolly little chap, Hugo. You know we called him
Peter after Fanny's father?"

Elwyn moved towards the door. He felt dreadfully moved by the other's
pain. He told himself that after all he could do no good by staying, and
he felt so ashamed, such a cur----

"You don't want to go away yet?" There was sharp chagrin, reproachful
dismay, in Bellair's voice. Elwyn remembered that in old days Jim had
always hated being alone. "Won't you stay and hear what Pixton says?
Or--or are you in a hurry?"

Elwyn turned round. "Of course I'll stay," he said briefly.

Bellair spared him thanks, but he began walking about the room
restlessly. At last he went to the door and set it ajar. "I want to hear
when Sir Joseph comes down," he explained, and even as he spoke there
came the sound of heavy, slow footsteps on the staircase.

Bellair went out and brought the great man in.

"I've told Mrs. Bellair that we ought to have Bewdley! He knows a great
deal more about children than I can pretend to do; and I propose, with
your leave, to go off now, myself, and if possible bring him back." The
old doctor's keen eyes wandered as he spoke from Bellair's fair face to
Hugh Elwyn's dark one. "Perhaps," he said, "perhaps, Mr. Bellair, you
would get someone to telephone to Dr. Bewdley's house to say that I'm
coming? It might save a few moments."

As Bellair left the room, the doctor turned to Elwyn and said abruptly,
"I hope you'll be able to stay with your brother? All this is very hard
on him; Mrs. Bellair will scarcely allow him into the child's room, and
though that, of course, is quite right, I'm sorry for the man. He's
wrapped up in the child."

And when Bellair came back from accompanying the old doctor to his
carriage, there was a smile on his face--the first smile which had been
there for a long time: "Pixton thinks you're my brother! He said, 'I
hope your brother will manage to stay with you for a bit.' Now I'll go
up and see Fanny. Pixton is certainly more hopeful than the last man we
had--"

Bellair's voice had a confident ring. Elwyn remembered with a pang that
Jim had always been like that--always believed, that is, that the best
would come to pass.

When left alone, Elwyn began walking restlessly up and down, much as his
friend had walked up and down a few minutes ago. Something of the
excitement of the fight going on above had entered into him; he now
desired ardently that the child should live, should emerge victor from
the grim struggle.

At last Bellair came back. "Fanny believes that this is the night of
crisis," he said slowly. All the buoyancy had left his voice. "But--but
Elwyn, I hope you won't mind--the fact is she's set her heart on your
seeing him. I told her what you told me about yourself, I mean your
illness as a child, and it's cheered her up amazingly, poor girl!
Perhaps you could tell her a little bit more about it, though I like to
think that if the boy gets through it"--his voice broke suddenly--"she
won't remember this--this awful time. But don't let's keep her
waiting--" He took Elwyn's consent for granted, and quickly the two men
walked up the stairs of the high house, on and on and on.

"It's a good way up," whispered Bellair, "but Fanny was told that a
child's nursery couldn't be too high. So we had the four rooms at the
top thrown into two."

They were now on the dimly-lighted landing. "Wait one moment--wait one
moment, Hugo." Bellair's voice had dropped to a low, gruff whisper.

Elwyn remained alone. He could hear slight movements going on in the
room into which Bellair had just gone; and then there also fell on his
ears the deep, regular sound of snoring. Who could be asleep in the
house at such a moment? The sound disturbed him; it seemed to add a
touch of grotesque horror to the situation.

Suddenly the handle of the door in front of him moved round, and he
heard Fanny Bellair's voice, unnaturally controlled and calm. "I sent
Nanna to bed, Jim. The poor old creature was absolutely worn out. And
then I would so much rather be alone when Sir Joseph brings back the
other doctor. He admits--I mean Sir Joseph does--that to-night _is_ the
crisis."

The door swung widely open, and Elwyn, moving instinctively back,
visualized the scene before him very distinctly.

There was a screen on the right hand, a screen covered, as had been the
one in his own nursery, with a patchwork of pictures varnished over.

Mrs. Bellair stood between the screen and the pale blue wall. Her slim
figure was clad in some sort of long white garment, and over it she wore
an apron, which he noticed was far too large for her. Her hair, the
auburn hair which had been her greatest beauty, and which he had once
loved to praise and to caress, was fastened back, massed up in as small
a compass as possible. That, and the fact that her face was
expressionless, so altered her in Elwyn's eyes as to give him an uncanny
feeling that the woman before him was not the woman he had known, had
loved, had left,--but a stranger, only bound to him by the slender link
of a common humanity.

She waited some moments as if listening, then she came out on to the
landing, and shut the door behind her very softly.

The sentence of conventional sympathy half formed on Elwyn's lips died
into nothingness; as little could he have offered words of cheer to one
who was being tortured; but in the dim light their hands met and clasped
tightly.

"Hugo?" she said, "I want to ask you something. You told Jim just now
that you were once very ill as a child,--ill like this, ill like my
child. I want you to tell me honestly if that is true? I mean, were you
very, very ill?"

He answered her in the same way, without preamble, baldly: "It is quite
true," he said. "I was very ill--so ill that my mother for one moment
thought that I was dead. But remember, Fanny, that in those days they
did not know nearly as much as they do now. Your boy has two chances for
every one that I had then."

"Would you mind coming in and seeing him?" Her voice faltered, it had
become more human, more conventional, in quality.

"Of course I will see him," he said. "I want to see him,--dear." She
had suddenly become to him once more the thing nearest his heart; once
more the link between them became of the closest, most intimate nature,
and yet, or perhaps because of its intensity, the sense of nearness
which had sprung at her touch into being was passionless.

The face which had been drained of all expression quickened into
agonized feeling. She tried to withdraw her hand from his, but he held
it firmly, and it was hand in hand that together they walked into the
room.

As they came round the screen behind which lay the sick child, Bellair
went over to the farthest of the three windows and stood there with
crossed arms staring out into the night.

The little boy lay on his right side, and as they moved round to the
edge of the large cot, Elwyn, with a sudden tightening of the throat,
became aware that the child was neither asleep nor, as he in his
ignorance had expected to find him, sunk in stupor or delirium. But the
small, dark face, framed by the white pillow, was set in lines of deep,
unchildlike gravity, and in the eyes which now gazed incuriously at
Elwyn there was a strange, watchful light which seemed to illumine that
which was within rather than that which was without.

As is always the case with a living creature near to death, little
Peter Bellair looked very lonely.

Then Elwyn, moving nearer still, seemed--or so at least Fanny Bellair
will ever believe--to take possession of the moribund child, yielding
him as he did so something of his own strength to help him through the
crisis then imminent. And indeed the little creature whose forehead,
whose clenched left hand lying on the sheet were beginning to glisten
with sweat, appeared to become merged in some strange way with himself.
Merged, not with the man he was to-day, but with the Hugh Elwyn of
thirty years back, who, as a lonely only child, had lived so intensely
secret, imaginative a life, peopling the prim alleys of Hyde Park with
fairies, imps, tricksy hobgoblins in whom he more than half believed,
and longing even then, as ever after, for the unattainable, never
carelessly happy as his father and mother believed him to be....

Hugh Elwyn stayed with the Bellairs all that night. He shared the sick
suspense the hour of the crisis brought, and he was present when the
specialist said the fateful words, "I think, under God, this child will
live."

When at last Elwyn left the house, clad in an old light coat of
Bellair's in order that the folk early astir should not see that he was
wearing evening clothes, he felt happier, more light-hearted, than he
had done for years.

His life had been like a crowded lumber-room, full of useless and
worn-out things he had accounted precious, while he had ignored the one
possession that really mattered and that linked him, not only with the
future, but with the greatest reality of his past.

The inevitable pain which this suddenly discovered treasure was to bring
was mercifully concealed from him, as also the sombre fact that he would
henceforth go lonely all his life, perforce obliged to content himself
with the crumbs of another man's feast. For Peter Bellair, high-strung,
imaginative, as he will ever be, will worship the strong, kindly, simple
man he believes to be his father, but to that dear father's friend he
will only yield the careless affection born of gratitude for much
kindness.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the matter of the broken engagement, Hugh Elwyn was more fairly
treated by the men and women whom the matter concerned, or who thought
it concerned them, than are the majority of recusant lovers.

"Hugh Elwyn has never been quite the same since the war, and you know
Winifred Fanshawe really liked the other man the best," so said those
who spent an idle moment in discussing the matter, and they generally
added, "It's a good thing that he's spending the summer with his old
friends, the Bellairs. They're living very quietly just now, for their
little boy has been dreadfully ill, so it's just the place for poor old
Hugo to get over it all!"




ST. CATHERINE'S EVE


I

"In this matter of the railway James Mottram has proved a false friend,
a very traitor to me!"

Charles Nagle's brown eyes shone with anger; he looked loweringly at his
companions, and they, a beautiful young woman and an old man dressed in
the sober garb of a Catholic ecclesiastic of that day, glanced at one
another apprehensively.

All England was then sharply divided into two camps, the one composed of
those who welcomed with enthusiasm the wonderful new invention which
obliterated space, the other of those who dreaded and abhorred the
coming of the railroads.

Charles Nagle got up and walked to the end of the terrace. He stared
down into the wooded combe, or ravine, below, and noted with sullen
anger the signs of stir and activity in the narrow strip of wood which
till a few weeks before had been so still, so entirely remote from
even the quiet human activities of 1835.

At last he turned round, pirouetting on his heel with a quick movement,
and his good looks impressed anew each of the two who sat there with
him. Eighty years ago beauty of line and colour were allowed to tell in
masculine apparel, and this young Dorset squire delighted in fine
clothes. Though November was far advanced it was a mild day, and Charles
Nagle wore a bright blue coat, cut, as was then the fashion, to show off
the points of his elegant figure--of his slender waist and his broad
shoulders; as for the elaborately frilled waistcoat, it terminated in an
India muslin stock, wound many times round his neck. He looked a foppish
Londoner rather than what he was--an honest country gentleman who had
not journeyed to the capital for some six years, and then only to see a
great physician.

"'Twas a most unneighbourly act on the part of James--he knows it well
enough, for we hardly see him now!" He addressed his words more
particularly to his wife, and he spoke more gently than before.

The old priest--his name was Dorriforth--looked uneasily from his host
to his hostess. He felt that both these young people, whom he had known
from childhood, and whom he loved well, had altered during the few weeks
which had gone by since he had last seen them. Rather--he mentally
corrected himself--it was the wife, Catherine, who was changed. Charles
Nagle was much the same; poor Charles would never be other, for he
belonged to the mysterious company of those who, physically sound, are
mentally infirm, and shunned by their more fortunate fellows.

But Charles Nagle's wife, the sweet young woman who for so long had been
content, nay glad, to share this pitiful exile, seemed now to have
escaped, if not in body then in mind, from the place where her sad,
monotonous duty lay.

She did not at once answer her husband; but she looked at him fixedly,
her hand smoothing nervously the skirt of her pretty gown.

Mrs. Nagle's dress also showed a care and research unusual in that of
the country lady of those days. This was partly no doubt owing to her
French blood--her grandparents had been _émigrés_--and to the fact that
Charles liked to see her in light colours. The gown she was now wearing
on this mild November day was a French flowered silk, the spoil of a
smuggler who pursued his profitable calling on the coast hard by. The
short, high bodice and puffed sleeves were draped with a scarf of
Buckinghamshire lace which left, as was the fashion of those days, the
wearer's lovely shoulders bare.

"James Mottram," she said at last, and with a heightened colour,
"believes in progress, Charles. It is the one thing concerning which you
and your friend will never agree."

"Friend?" he repeated moodily. "Friend! James Mottram has shown himself
no friend of ours. And then I had rights in this matter--am I not his
heir-at-law? I could prevent my cousin from touching a stone, or felling
a tree, at the Eype. But 'tis his indifference to my feelings that
angers me so. Why, I trusted the fellow as if he had been my brother!"

"And James Mottram," said the old priest authoritatively, "has always
felt the same to you, Charles. Never forget that! In all but name you
are brothers. Were you not brought up together? Had I not the schooling
of you both as lads?" He spoke with a good deal of feeling; he had
noticed--and the fact disturbed him--that Charles Nagle spoke in the
past tense when referring to his affection for the absent man.

"But surely, sir, you cannot approve that this iron monster should
invade our quiet neighbourhood?" exclaimed Charles impatiently.

Mrs. Nagle looked at the priest entreatingly. Did she by any chance
suppose that he would be able to modify her husband's violent feeling?

"If I am to say the truth, Charles," said Mr. Dorriforth mildly, "and
you would not have me conceal my sentiments, then I believe the time
will come when even you will be reconciled to this marvellous invention.
Those who surely know declare that, thanks to these railroads, our
beloved country will soon be all cultivated as is a garden. Nay, perhaps
others of our Faith, strangers, will settle here----"

"Strangers?" repeated Charles Nagle sombrely, "I wish no strangers here.
Even now there are too many strangers about." He looked round as if he
expected those strangers of whom the priest had spoken to appear
suddenly from behind the yew hedges which stretched away, enclosing
Catherine Nagle's charming garden, to the left of the plateau on which
stood the old manor-house.

"Nay, nay," he repeated, returning to his grievance, "never had I
expected to find James Mottram a traitor to his order. As for the folk
about here, they're bewitched! They believe that this puffing devil will
make them all rich! I could tell them different; but, as you know, there
are reasons why I should not."

The priest bent his head gravely. The Catholic gentry of those days were
not on comfortable terms with their neighbours. In spite of the fact
that legally they were now "emancipated," any malicious person could
still make life intolerable to them. The railway mania was at its
beginnings, and it would have been especially dangerous for Charles
Nagle to take, in an active sense, the unpopular side.

In other parts of England, far from this Dorset countryside, railroads
had brought with them a revival of trade. It was hoped that the same
result would follow here, and a long strip of James Mottram's estate had
been selected as being peculiarly suitable for the laying down of the
iron track which was to connect the nearest town with the sea.

Unfortunately the land in question consisted of a wood which formed the
boundary-line where Charles Nagle's property marched with that of his
kinsman and co-religionist, James Mottram; and Nagle had taken the
matter very ill indeed. He was now still suffering, in a physical
sense, from the effects of the violent fit of passion which the matter
had induced, and which even his wife, Catherine, had not been able to
allay....

As he started walking up and down with caged, impatient steps, she
watched him with an uneasy, anxious glance. He kept shaking his head
with a nervous movement, and he stared angrily across the ravine to the
opposite hill, where against the skyline the large mass of Eype Castle,
James Mottram's dwelling-place, stood four-square to the high winds
which swept up from the sea.

Suddenly he again strode over to the edge of the terrace: "I think I'll
go down and have a talk to those railroad fellows," he muttered
uncertainly.

Charles knew well that this was among the forbidden things--the things
he must not do; yet occasionally Catherine, who was, as the poor fellow
dimly realized, his mentor and guardian, as well as his outwardly
submissive wife, would allow him to do that which was forbidden.

But to-day such was not her humour. "Oh, no, Charles," she said
decidedly, "you cannot go down to the wood! You must stay here and talk
to Mr. Dorriforth."

"They were making hellish noises all last night; I had no rest at all,"
Nagle went on inconsequently. "They were running their puffing devil up
and down, 'The Bridport Wonder'--that's what they call it, reverend
sir," he turned to the priest.

Catherine again looked up at her husband, and their old friend saw that
she bit her lip as if checking herself in impatient speech. Was she
losing the sweetness of her temper, the evenness of disposition the
priest had ever admired in her, and even reverenced?

Mrs. Nagle knew that the steam-engine had been run over the line for the
first time the night before, for James Mottram and she had arranged that
the trial should take place then rather than in the daytime. She also
knew that Charles had slept through the long dark hours, those hours
during which she had lain wide awake by his side listening to the
strange new sounds made by the Bridport Wonder. Doubtless one of the
servants had spoken of the matter in his hearing.

She frowned, then felt ashamed. "Charles," she said gently, "would it
not be well for me to go down to the wood and discover when these
railroad men are going away? They say in the village that their work is
now done."

"Yes," he cried eagerly. "A good idea, love! And if they're going off
at once, you might order that a barrel of good ale be sent down to them.
I'm informed that that's what James has had done this very day. Now I've
no wish that James should appear more generous than I!"

Catherine Nagle smiled, the indulgent kindly smile which a woman bestows
on a loved child who suddenly betrays a touch of that vanity which is,
in a child, so pardonable.

She went into the house, and in a few moments returned with a pink scarf
wound about her soft dark hair--hair dressed high, turned back from her
forehead in the old pre-Revolution French mode, and not, as was then the
fashion, arranged in stiff curls.

The two men watched her walking swiftly along the terrace till she sank
out of their sight, for a row of stone steps led down to an orchard
planted with now leafless pear and apple trees, and surrounded with a
quickset hedge. A wooden gate, with a strong lock to it, was set in this
closely clipped hedge. It opened on a steep path which, after traversing
two fields, terminated in the beech-wood where now ran the iron track of
the new railroad.

Catherine Nagle unlocked the orchard gate, and went through on to the
field path. And then she slackened her steps.

For hours, nay, for days, she had been longing for solitude, and now,
for a brief space, solitude was hers. But, instead of bringing her
peace, this respite from the companionship of Charles and of Mr.
Dorriforth brought increased tumult and revolt.

She had ardently desired the visit of the old priest, but his presence
had bestowed, instead of solace, fret and discomfort. When he fixed on
her his mild, penetrating eyes, she felt as if he were dragging into the
light certain secret things which had been so far closely hidden within
her heart, and concerning which she had successfully dulled her once
sensitive conscience.

The waking hours of the last two days had each been veined with torment.
Her soul sickened as she thought of the morrow, St. Catherine's Day,
that is, her feast-day. The _émigrés_, Mrs. Nagle's own people, had in
exile jealousy kept up their own customs, and to Charles Nagle's wife
the twenty-fifth day of November had always been a day of days, what her
birthday is to a happy Englishwoman. Even Charles always remembered the
date, and in concert with his faithful man-servant, Collins, sent to
London each year for a pretty jewel. The housefolk, all of whom had
learnt to love their mistress, and who helped her loyally in her
difficult, sometimes perilous, task, also made of the feast a holiday.

But now, on this St. Catherine's Eve, Mrs. Nagle told herself that she
was at the end of her strength. And yet only a month ago--so she now
reminded herself piteously--all had been well with her; she had been
strangely, pathetically happy a month since; content with all the
conditions of her singular and unnatural life....

Suddenly she stopped walking. As if in answer to a word spoken by an
invisible companion she turned aside, and, stooping, picked a weed
growing by the path. She held it up for a moment to her cheek, and then
spoke aloud. "Were it not for James Mottram," she said slowly, and very
clearly, "I, too, should become mad."

Then she looked round in sudden fear. Catherine Nagle had never before
uttered, or permitted another to utter aloud in her presence, that awful
word. But she knew that their neighbours were not so scrupulous. One
cruel enemy, and, what was especially untoward, a close relation, Mrs.
Felwake, own sister to Charles Nagle's dead father, often uttered it.
This lady desired her son to reign at Edgecombe; it was she who in the
last few years had spread abroad the notion that Charles Nagle, in the
public interest, should be asylumed.

In his own house, and among his own tenants, the slander was angrily
denied. When Charles was stranger, more suspicious, moodier than usual,
those about him would tell one another that "the squire was ill to-day,"
or that "the master was ailing." That he had a mysterious illness was
admitted. Had not a famous London doctor persuaded Mr. Nagle that it
would be dangerous for him to ride, even to walk outside the boundary of
his small estate,--in brief, to run any risks which might affect his
heart? He had now got out of the way of wishing to go far afield;
contentedly he would pace up and down for hours on the long terrace
which overhung the wood--talking, talking, talking, with Catherine on
his arm.

But he was unselfish--sometimes. "Take a walk, dear heart, with James,"
he would say, and then Catherine Nagle and James Mottram would go out
and make their way to some lonely farmhouse or cottage where Mottram had
estate business. Yet during these expeditions they never forgot Charles,
so Catherine now reminded herself sorely,--nay, it was then that they
talked of him the most, discussing him kindly, tenderly, as they
went....

Catherine walked quickly on, her eyes on the ground. With a feeling of
oppressed pain she recalled the last time she and Mottram had been alone
together. Bound for a distant spot on the coast, they had gone on and on
for miles, almost up to the cliffs below which lay the sea. Ah, how
happy, how innocent she had felt that day!

Then they had come to a stile--Mottram had helped her up, helped her
down, and for a moment her hand had lain and fluttered in his hand....

During the long walk back, each had been very silent; and Catherine--she
could not answer for her companion--when she had seen Charles waiting
for her patiently, had felt a pained, shamed beat of the heart. As for
James Mottram, he had gone home at once, scarce waiting for good-nights.

That evening--Catherine remembered it now with a certain comfort--she
had been very kind to Charles; she was ever kind, but she had then been
kinder than usual, and he had responded by becoming suddenly clearer in
mind than she had known him to be for a long time. For some days he had
been the old Charles--tender, whimsical, gallant, the Charles with whom,
at a time when every girl is in love with love, she had alack! fallen in
love. Then once more the cloud had come down, shadowing a dreary waste
of days--dark days of oppression and of silence, alternating with sudden
bursts of unreasonable and unreasoning rage.

James Mottram had come, and come frequently, during that time of misery.
But his manner had changed. He had become restrained, as if watchful of
himself; he was no longer the free, the happy, the lively companion he
had used to be. Catherine scarcely saw him out of Charles's presence,
and when they were by chance alone they talked of Charles, only of
Charles and of his unhappy condition, and of what could be done to
better it.

And now James Mottram had given up coming to Edgecombe in the old
familiar way; or rather--and this galled Catherine shrewdly--he came
only sufficiently often not to rouse remark among their servants and
humble neighbours.

       *       *       *       *       *

Catherine Nagle was on the edge of the wood, and looking about her she
saw with surprise that the railway men she had come down to see had
finished work for the day. There were signs of their immediate
occupation, a fire was still smouldering, and the door of one of the
shanties they occupied was open. But complete stillness reigned in this
kingdom of high trees. To the right and left, as far as she could see,
stretched the twin lines of rude iron rails laid down along what had
been a cart-track, as well as a short cut between Edgecombe Manor and
Eype Castle. A dun drift, to-day's harvest of dead leaves, had settled
on the rails; even now it was difficult to follow their course.

As she stood there, about to turn and retrace her steps, Catherine
suddenly saw James Mottram advancing quickly towards her, and the
mingled revolt and sadness which had so wholly possessed her gave way to
a sudden, overwhelming feeling of security and joy.

She moved from behind the little hut near which she had been standing,
and a moment later they stood face to face.

James Mottram was as unlike Charles Nagle as two men of the same age, of
the same breed, and of the same breeding could well be. He was shorter,
and of sturdier build, than his cousin; and he was plain, whereas
Charles Nagle was strikingly handsome. Also his face was tanned by
constant exposure to sun, salt-wind, and rain; his hair was cut short,
his face shaven.

The very clothes James Mottram wore were in almost ludicrous contrast to
those which Charles Nagle affected, for Mottram's were always of
serviceable homespun. But for the fact that they and he were
scrupulously clean, the man now walking by Catherine Nagle's side might
have been a prosperous farmer or bailiff instead of the owner of such
large property in those parts as made him, in spite of his unpopular
faith, lord of the little world about him.

On his plain face and strong, sturdy figure Catherine's beautiful eyes
dwelt with unconscious relief. She was so weary of Charles's absorption
in his apparel, and of his interest in the hundred and one fal-lals
which then delighted the cosmopolitan men of fashion.

A simple, almost childish gladness filled her heart. Conscience, but
just now so insistent and disturbing a familiar, vanished for a space,
nay more, assumed the garb of a meddling busybody who seeks to discover
harm where no harm is.

Was not James Mottram Charles's friend, almost, as the old priest had
said, Charles's brother? Had she not herself deliberately chosen Charles
in place of James when both young men had been in ardent pursuit of
her--James's pursuit almost wordless, Charles's conducted with all the
eloquence of the poet he had then set out to be?

Mottram, seeing her in the wood, uttered a word of surprise. She
explained her presence there. Their hands scarce touched in greeting,
and then they started walking side by side up the field path.

Mottram carried a stout ash stick. Had the priest been there he would
perchance have noticed that the man's hand twitched and moved restlessly
as he swung his stick about; but Catherine only became aware that her
companion was preoccupied and uneasy after they had gone some way.

When, however, the fact of his unease seemed forced upon her notice, she
felt suddenly angered. There was a quality in Mrs. Nagle that made her
ever ready to rise to meet and conquer circumstance. She told herself,
with heightened colour, that James Mottram should and must return to his
old ways--to his old familiar footing with her. Anything else would be,
nay was, intolerable.

"James,"--she turned to him frankly--"why have you not come over to see
us lately as often as you did? Charles misses you sadly, and so do I.
Prepare to find him in a bad mood to-day. But just now he distressed
Mr. Dorriforth by his unreasonableness touching the railroad." She
smiled and went on lightly, "He said that you were a false friend to
him--a traitor!"

And then Catherine Nagle stopped and caught her breath. God! Why had she
said that? But Mottram had evidently not caught the sinister word, and
Catherine in haste drove back conscience into the lair whence conscience
had leapt so suddenly to her side.

"Maybe I ought, in this matter of the railroad," he said musingly, "to
have humoured Charles. I am now sorry I did not do so. After all,
Charles may be right--and all we others wrong. The railroad may not
bring us lasting good!"

Catherine looked at him surprised. James Mottram had always been so sure
of himself in this matter; but now there was dejection, weariness in his
voice; and he was walking quickly, more quickly up the steep incline
than Mrs. Nagle found agreeable. But she also hastened her steps,
telling herself, with wondering pain, that he was evidently in no mood
for her company.

"Mr. Dorriforth has already been here two days," she observed
irrelevantly.

"Aye, I know that. It was to see him I came to-day; and I will ask you
to spare him to me for two or three hours. Indeed, I propose that he
should walk back with me to the Eype. I wish him to witness my new will.
And then I may as well go to confession, for it is well to be shriven
before a journey, though for my part I feel ever safer on sea than
land!"

Mottram looked straight before him as he spoke.

"A journey?" Catherine repeated the words in a low, questioning tone.
There had come across her heart a feeling of such anguish that it was as
though her body instead of her soul were being wrenched asunder. In her
extremity she called on pride--and pride, ever woman's most loyal
friend, flew to her aid.

"Yes," he repeated, still staring straight in front of him, "I leave
to-morrow for Plymouth. I have had letters from my agent in Jamaica
which make it desirable that I should return there without delay." He
dug his stick into the soft earth as he spoke.

James Mottram was absorbed in himself, in his own desire to carry
himself well in his fierce determination to avoid betraying what he
believed to be his secret. But Catherine Nagle knew nothing of this.
She almost thought him indifferent.

They had come to a steep part of the incline, and Catherine suddenly
quickened her steps and passed him, so making it impossible that he
could see her face. She tried to speak, but the commonplace words she
desired to say were strangled, at birth, in her throat.

"Charles will not mind; he will not miss me as he would have missed me
before this unhappy business of the railroad came between us," Mottram
said lamely.

She still made no answer; instead she shook her head with an impatient
gesture. Her silence made him sorry. After all, he had been a good
friend to Catherine Nagle--so much he could tell himself without shame.
He stepped aside on to the grass, and striding forward turned round and
faced her.

The tears were rolling down her cheeks; but she threw back her head and
met his gaze with a cold, almost a defiant look. "You startled me
greatly," she said breathlessly, "and took me so by surprise, James! I
am grieved to think how Charles--nay, how we shall both--miss you. It is
of Charles I think, James; it is for Charles I weep----"

As she uttered the lying words, she still looked proudly into his face
as if daring him to doubt her. "But I shall never forget--I shall ever
think with gratitude of your great goodness to my poor Charles. Two
years out of your life--that's what it's been, James. Too much--too much
by far!" She had regained control over her quivering heart, and it was
with a wan smile that she added, "But we shall miss you, dear, kind
friend."

Her smile stung him. "Catherine," he said sternly, "I go because I
must--because I dare not stay. You are a woman and a saint, I a man and
a sinner. I've been a fool and worse than a fool. You say that Charles
to-day called me false friend, traitor! Catherine--Charles spoke more
truly than he knew."

His burning eyes held her fascinated. The tears had dried on her cheeks.
She was thirstily absorbing the words as they fell now slowly, now
quickly, from his lips.

But what was this he was saying? "Catherine, do you wish me to go on?"
Oh, cruel! Cruel to put this further weight on her conscience! But she
made a scarcely perceptible movement of assent--and again he spoke.

"Years ago I thought I loved you. I went away, as you know well, because
of that love. You had chosen Charles--Charles in many ways the better
fellow of the two. I went away thinking myself sick with love of you,
but it was false--only my pride had been hurt. I did not love you as I
loved myself. And when I got clear away, in a new place, among new
people"--he hesitated and reddened darkly--"I forgot you! I vow that
when I came back I was cured--cured if ever a man was! It was of
Charles, not of you, Catherine, that I thought on my way home. To me
Charles and you had become one. I swear it!" He repeated: "To me you and
Charles were one."

He waited a long moment, and then, more slowly, he went on, as if
pleading with himself--with her: "You know what I found here in place of
what I had left? I found Charles a----"

Catherine Nagle shrank back. She put up her right hand to ward off the
word, and Mottram, seizing her hand, held it in his with a convulsive
clasp. "'Twas not the old feeling that came back to me--that I again
swear, Catherine. 'Twas something different--something infinitely
stronger--something that at first I believed to be all noble----"

He stopped speaking, and Catherine Nagle uttered one word--a curious
word. "When?" she asked, and more urgently again she whispered, "When?"

"Long before I knew!" he said hoarsely. "At first I called the passion
that possessed me by the false name of 'friendship.' But that poor
hypocrisy soon left me! A month ago, Catherine, I found myself
wishing--I'll say this for myself, it was for the first time--that
Charles was dead. And then I knew for sure what I had already long
suspected--that the time had come for me to go----"

He dropped her hand, and stood before her, abased in his own eyes, but
one who, if a criminal, had had the strength to be his own judge and
pass heavy sentence on himself.

"And now, Catherine--now that you understand why I go, you will bid me
God-speed. Nay, more"--he looked at her, and smiled wryly--"if you are
kind, as I know you to be kind, you will pray for me, for I go from you
a melancholy, as well as a foolish man."

She smiled a strange little wavering smile, and Mottram was deeply moved
by the gentleness with which Catherine Nagle had listened to his story.
He had been prepared for an averted glance, for words of cold
rebuke--such words as his own long-dead mother would surely have
uttered to a man who had come to her with such a tale.

       *       *       *       *       *

They walked on for a while, and Catherine again broke the silence by a
question which disturbed her companion. "Then your agent's letter was
not really urgent, James?"

"The letters of an honest agent always call for the owner," he muttered
evasively.

They reached the orchard gate. Catherine held the key in her hand, but
she did not place it in the lock--instead she paused awhile. "Then there
is no special urgency?" she repeated. "And James--forgive me for asking
it--are you, indeed, leaving England because of this--this matter of
which you have just told me?"

He bent his head in answer.

Then she said deliberately: "Your conscience, James, is too scrupulous.
I do not think that there is any reason why you should not stay. When
Charles and I were in Italy," she went on in a toneless, monotonous
voice, "I met some of those young noblemen who in times of pestilence go
disguised to nurse the sick and bury the dead. It is that work of
charity, dear friend, which you have been performing in our unhappy
house. You have been nursing the sick--nay, more, you have been
tending"--she waited, then in a low voice she added--"the dead--the dead
that are yet alive."

Mottram's soul leapt into his eyes. "Then you bid me stay?" he asked.

"For the present," she answered, "I beg you to stay. But only so if it
is indeed true that your presence is not really required in Jamaica."

"I swear, Catherine, that all goes sufficiently well there." Again he
fixed his honest, ardent eyes on her face.

And now James Mottram was filled with a great exultation of spirit. He
felt that Catherine's soul, incapable of even the thought of evil,
shamed and made unreal the temptation which had seemed till just now one
which could only be resisted by flight. Catherine was right; he had been
over scrupulous.

There was proof of it in the blessed fact that even now, already, the
poison which had seemed to possess him, that terrible longing for
another man's wife, had left him, vanishing in that same wife's pure
presence. It was when he was alone--alone in his great house on the
hill, that the devil entered into him, whispering that it was an awful
thing such a woman as was Catherine, sensitive, intelligent, and in her
beauty so appealing, should be tied to such a being as was Charles
Nagle--poor Charles, whom every one, excepting his wife and one loyal
kinsman, called mad. And yet now it was for this very Charles that
Catherine asked him to stay, for the sake of that unhappy, distraught
man to whom he, James Mottram, recognized the duty of a brother.

"We will both forget what you have just told me," she said gently, and
he bowed his head in reverence.

They were now on the last step of the stone stairway leading to the
terrace.

Mrs. Nagle turned to her companion; he saw that her eyes were very
bright, and that the rose-red colour in her cheeks had deepened as if
she had been standing before a great fire.

As they came within sight of Charles Nagle and of the old priest,
Catherine put out her hand. She touched Mottram on the arm--it was a
fleeting touch, but it brought them both, with beating hearts, to a
stand. "James," she said, and then she stopped for a moment--a moment
that seemed to contain æons of mingled rapture and pain--"one word about
Mr. Dorriforth." The commonplace words dropped them back to earth. "Did
you wish him to stay with you till to-morrow? That will scarcely be
possible, for to-morrow is St. Catherine's Day."

"Why, no," he said quickly. "I will not take him home with me to-night.
All my plans are now changed. My will can wait"--he smiled at her--"and
so can my confession."

"No, no!" she cried almost violently. "Your confession must not wait,
James----"

"Aye, but it must," he said, and again he smiled. "I am in no mood for
confession, Catherine." He added in a lower tone, "you've purged me of
my sin, my dear--I feel already shriven."

Shame of a very poignant quality suddenly seared Catherine Nagle's soul.
"Go on, you," she said breathlessly, though to his ears she seemed to
speak in her usual controlled and quiet tones, "I have some orders to
give in the house. Join Charles and Mr. Dorriforth. I will come out
presently."

James Mottram obeyed her. He walked quickly forward. "Good news,
Charles," he cried. "These railway men whose presence so offends you go
for good to-morrow! Reverend sir, accept my hearty greeting."

       *       *       *       *       *

Catherine Nagle turned to the right and went into the house. She
hastened through the rooms in which, year in and year out, she spent
her life, with Charles as her perpetual, her insistent companion. She
now longed for a time of recollection and secret communion, and so she
instinctively made for the one place where no one, not even Charles,
would come and disturb her.

Walking across the square hall, she ran up the broad staircase leading
to the gallery, out of which opened the doors of her bedroom and of her
husband's dressing-room. But she went swiftly past these two closed
doors, and made her way along a short passage which terminated abruptly
with a faded red baize door giving access to the chapel.

Long, low-ceilinged and windowless, the chapel of Edgecombe Manor had
remained unaltered since the time when there were heavy penalties
attached both to the celebration of the sacred rites and to the hearing
of Mass. The chapel depended for what fresh air it had on a narrow door
opening straight on to ladder-like stairs leading down directly and out
on to the terrace below. It was by this way that the small and scattered
congregation gained access to the chapel when the presence of a priest
permitted of Mass being celebrated there.

Catherine went up close to the altar rails, and sat down on the
arm-chair placed there for her sole use. She felt that now, when about
to wrestle with her soul, she could not kneel and pray. Since she had
been last in the chapel, acting sacristan that same morning, life had
taken a great stride forward, dragging her along in its triumphant wake,
a cruel and yet a magnificent conqueror.

Hiding her face in her hands, she lived again each agonized and
exquisite moment she had lived through as there had fallen on her ears
the words of James Mottram's shamed confession. Once more her heart was
moved to an exultant sense of happiness that he should have said these
things to her--of happiness and shrinking shame....

But soon other thoughts, other and sterner memories were thrust upon
her. She told herself the bitter truth. Not only had she led James
Mottram into temptation, but she had put all her woman's wit to the task
of keeping him there. It was her woman's wit--but Catherine Nagle called
it by a harsher name--which had enabled her to make that perilous rock
on which she and James Mottram now stood heart to heart together,
appear, to him at least, a spot of sanctity and safety. It was she, not
the man who had gazed at her with so ardent a belief in her purity and
honour, who was playing traitor--and traitor to one at once confiding
and defenceless....

Then, strangely, this evocation of Charles brought her burdened
conscience relief. Catherine found sudden comfort in remembering her
care, her tenderness for Charles. She reminded herself fiercely that
never had she allowed anything to interfere with her wifely duty. Never?
Alas! she remembered that there had come a day, at a time when James
Mottram's sudden defection had filled her heart with pain, when she had
been unkind to Charles. She recalled his look of bewildered surprise,
and how he, poor fellow, had tried to sulk--only a few hours later to
come to her, as might have done a repentant child, with the words, "Have
I offended you, dear love?" And she who now avoided his caresses had
kissed him of her own accord with tears, and cried, "No, no, Charles,
you never offend me--you are always good to me!"

There had been a moment to-day, just before she had taunted James
Mottram with being over-scrupulous, when she had told herself that she
could be loyal to both of these men she loved and who loved her, giving
to each a different part of her heart.

But that bargain with conscience had never been struck; while
considering it she had found herself longing for some convulsion of the
earth which should throw her and Mottram in each other's arms.

James Mottram traitor? That was what she was about to make him be.
Catherine forced herself to face the remorse, the horror, the loathing
of himself which would ensue.

It was for Mottram's sake, far more than in response to the command laid
on her by her own soul, that Catherine Nagle finally determined on the
act of renunciation which she knew was being immediately required of
her.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Mrs. Nagle came out on the terrace the three men rose
ceremoniously. She glanced at Charles, even now her first thought and
her first care. His handsome face was overcast with the look of gloomy
preoccupation which she had learnt to fear, though she knew that in
truth it signified but little. At James Mottram she did not look, for
she wished to husband her strength for what she was about to do.

Making a sign to the others to sit down, she herself remained standing
behind Charles's chair. It was from there that she at last spoke,
instinctively addressing her words to the old priest.

"I wonder," she said, "if James has told you of his approaching
departure? He has heard from his agent in Jamaica that his presence is
urgently required there."

Charles Nagle looked up eagerly. "This is news indeed!" he exclaimed.
"Lucky fellow! Why, you'll escape all the trouble that you've put on us
with regard to that puffing devil!" He spoke more cordially than he had
done for a long time to his cousin.

Mr. Dorriforth glanced for a moment up at Catherine's face. Then quickly
he averted his eyes.

James Mottram rose to his feet. His limbs seemed to have aged. He gave
Catherine a long, probing look.

"Forgive me," he said deliberately. "You mistook my meaning. The matter
is not as urgent, Catherine, as you thought." He turned to Charles, "I
will not desert my friends--at any rate not for the present. I'll face
the puffing devil with those to whom I have helped to acquaint him!"

But Mrs. Nagle and the priest both knew that the brave words were a vain
boast. Charles alone was deceived; and he showed no pleasure in the
thought that the man who had been to him so kind and so patient a
comrade and so trusty a friend was after all not leaving England
immediately.

"I must be going back to the Eype now." Mottram spoke heavily; again he
looked at Mrs. Nagle with a strangely probing, pleading look. "But I'll
come over to-morrow morning--to Mass. I've not forgotten that to-morrow
is St. Catherine's Day--that this is St. Catherine's Eve."

Charles seemed to wake out of a deep abstraction. "Yes, yes," he said
heartily. "To-morrow is the great day! And then, after we've had
breakfast I shall be able to consult you, James, about a very important
matter, that new well they're plaguing me to sink in the village."

For the moment the cloud had again lifted; Nagle looked at his cousin
with all his old confidence and affection, and in response James
Mottram's face worked with sudden emotion.

"I'll be quite at your service, Charles," he said, "quite at your
service!"

Catherine stood by. "I will let you out by the orchard gate," she said.
"No need for you to go round by the road."

They walked, silently, side by side, along the terrace and down the
stone steps. When in the leafless orchard, and close to where they were
to part, he spoke:

"You bid me go--at once?" Mottram asked the question in a low, even
tone; but he did not look at Catherine, instead his eyes seemed to be
following the movements of the stick he was digging into the ground at
their feet.

"I think, James, that would be best." Even to herself the words Mrs.
Nagle uttered sounded very cold.

"Best for me?" he asked. Then he looked up, and with sudden passion,
"Catherine!" he cried. "Believe me, I know that I can stay! Forget the
wild and foolish things I said. No thought of mine shall wrong
Charles--I swear it solemnly. Catherine!--do not bid me leave you.
Cannot you trust my honour?" His eyes held hers, by turns they seemed to
become beseeching and imperious.

Catherine Nagle suddenly threw out her hands with a piteous gesture.
"Ah! James," she said, "I cannot trust my own----" And as she thus made
surrender of her two most cherished possessions, her pride and her
womanly reticence, Mottram's face--the plain-featured face so
exquisitely dear to her--became transfigured. He said no word, he made
no step forward, and yet Catherine felt as if the whole of his being was
calling her, drawing her to him....

Suddenly there rang through the still air a discordant cry: "Catherine!
Catherine!"

Mrs. Nagle sighed, a long convulsive sigh. It was as though a deep pit
had opened between herself and her companion. "That was Charles," she
whispered, "poor Charles calling me. I must not keep him waiting."

"God forgive me," Mottram said huskily, "and bless you, Catherine, for
all your goodness to me." He took her hand in farewell, and she felt the
firm, kind grasp to be that of the kinsman and friend, not that of the
lover.

Then came over her a sense of measureless and most woeful loss. She
realized for the first time all that his going away would mean to
her--of all that it would leave her bereft. He had been the one human
being to whom she had been able to bring herself to speak freely.
Charles had been their common charge, the link as well as the barrier
between them.

"You'll come to-morrow morning?" she said, and she tried to withdraw her
hand from his. His impersonal touch hurt her.

"I'll come to-morrow, and rather early, Catherine. Then I'll be able to
confess before Mass." He was speaking in his usual voice, but he still
held her hand, and she felt his grip on it tightening, bringing welcome
hurt.

"And you'll leave----?"

"For Plymouth to-morrow afternoon," he said briefly. He dropped her
hand, which now felt numbed and maimed, and passed through the gate
without looking back.

She stood a moment watching him as he strode down the field path. It had
suddenly become, from day, night,--high time for Charles to be indoors.

Forgetting to lock the gate, she turned and retraced her steps through
the orchard, and so made her way up to where her husband and the old
priest were standing awaiting her.

As she approached them, she became aware that something going on in the
valley below was absorbing their close attention. She felt glad that
this was so.

"There it is!" cried Charles Nagle angrily. "I told you that they'd
begin their damned practice again to-night!"

Slowly through the stretch of open country which lay spread to their
right, the Bridport Wonder went puffing its way. Lanterns had been hung
in front of the engine, and as it crawled sinuously along it looked like
some huge monster with myriad eyes. As it entered the wood below, the
dark barrel-like body of the engine seemed to give a bound, a lurch
forward, and the men that manned it laughed out suddenly and loudly. The
sound of their uncouth mirth floated upwards through the twilight.

"James's ale has made them merry!" exclaimed Charles, wagging his head.
"And he, going through the wood, will just have met the puffing devil. I
wish him the joy of the meeting!"


II

It was five hours later. Mrs. Nagle had bidden her reverend guest good
night, and she was now moving about her large, barely furnished
bedchamber, waiting for her husband to come upstairs.

The hours which had followed James Mottram's departure had seemed
intolerably long. Catherine felt as if she had gone through some
terrible physical exertion which had left her worn out--stupefied. And
yet she could not rest. Even now her day was not over; Charles often
grew restless and talkative at night. He and Mr. Dorriforth were no
doubt still sitting talking together downstairs.

Mrs. Nagle could hear her husband's valet moving about in the next room,
and the servant's proximity disturbed her.

She waited awhile and then went and opened the door of the
dressing-room. "You need not sit up, Collins," she said.

The man looked vaguely disturbed. "I fear that Mr. Nagle, madam, has
gone out of doors," he said.

Catherine felt dismayed. The winter before Charles had once stayed out
nearly all night.

"Go you to bed, Collins," she said. "I will wait up till Mr. Nagle comes
in, and I will make it right with him."

He looked at her doubtingly. Was it possible that Mrs. Nagle was unaware
of how much worse than usual his master had been the last few days?

"I fear Mr. Nagle is not well to-day," he ventured. "He seems much
disturbed to-night."

"Your master is disturbed because Mr. Mottram is again leaving England
for the Indies." Catherine forced herself to say the words. She was
dully surprised to see how quietly news so momentous to her was received
by her faithful servant.

"That may be it," said the man consideringly, "but I can't help thinking
that the master is still much concerned about the railroad. I fear that
he has gone down to the wood to-night."

Catherine was startled. "Oh, surely he would not do that, Collins?" She
added in a lower tone, "I myself locked the orchard gate."

"If that is so," he answered, obviously relieved, "then with your leave,
madam, I'll be off to bed."

Mrs. Nagle went back into her room, and sat down by the fire, and then,
sooner than she had expected to do so, she heard a familiar sound. It
came from the chapel, for Charles was fond of using that strange and
secret entry into his house.

She got up and quietly opened her bedroom door.

From the hall below was cast up the dim light of the oil-lamp which
always burnt there at night, and suddenly Catherine saw her husband
emerge from the chapel passage, and begin walking slowly round the
opposite side of the gallery. She watched him with languid curiosity.

Charles Nagle was treading softly, his head bent as if in thought.
Suddenly he stayed his steps by a half-moon table on which stood a large
Chinese bowl filled with pot-pourri; and into this he plunged his hands,
seeming to lave them in the dry rose-leaves. Catherine felt no surprise,
she was so used to his strange ways; and more than once he had hidden
things--magpie fashion--in that great bowl. She turned and closed her
door noiselessly; Charles much disliked being spied on.

At last she heard him go into his dressing-room. Then came the sounds of
cupboard doors being flung open, and the hurried pouring out of
water.... But long before he could have had time to undress, she heard
the familiar knock.

She said feebly, "Come in," and the door opened.

It was as she had feared; her husband had no thought, no intention, of
going yet to bed. Not only was he fully dressed, but the white evening
waistcoat he had been wearing had been changed by him within the last
few moments for a waistcoat she had not seen before, though she had
heard of its arrival from London. It was of cashmere, the latest freak
of fashion. She also saw with surprise that his nankeen trousers were
stained, as if he had been kneeling on damp ground. He looked very hot,
his wavy hair lay damply on his brow, and he appeared excited,
oppressively alive.

"Catherine!" he exclaimed, hurrying up to the place where she was
standing near the fire. "You will bear witness that I was always and
most positively averse to the railroad being brought here?" He did not
wait for her to answer him. "Did I not always say that trouble would
come of it--trouble to us all? Yet sometimes it's an ill thing to be
proved right."

"Indeed it is, Charles," she answered gently. "But let us talk of this
to-morrow. It's time for bed, my dear, and I am very weary."

He was now standing by her, staring down into the fire.

Suddenly he turned and seized her left arm. He brought her unresisting
across the room, then dragged aside the heavy yellow curtains which had
been drawn before the central window.

"Look over there, Catherine," he said meaningly. "Can you see the Eype?
The moon gives but little light to-night, but the stars are bright. I
can see a glimmer at yon window. They must be still waiting for James to
come home."

"I see the glimmer you mean," she said dully. "No doubt they leave a
lamp burning all night, as we do. James must have got home hours ago,
Charles." She saw that the cuff of her husband's coat was also covered
with dark, damp stains, and again she wondered uneasily what he had been
doing out of doors.

"Catherine?" Charles Nagle turned her round, ungently, and forced her to
look up into his face. "Have you ever thought what 'twould be like to
live at the Eype?"

The question startled her. She roused herself to refute what she felt to
be an unworthy accusation. "No, Charles," she said, looking at him
steadily. "God is my witness that at no time did I think of living at
the Eype! Such a wish never came to me----"

"Nor to me!" he cried, "nor to me, Catherine! All the long years that
James Mottram was in Jamaica the thought never once came to me that he
might die, and I survive him. After all we were much of an age, he had
but two years the advantage of me. I always thought that the boy--my
aunt's son, curse him!--would get it all. Then, had I thought of it--and
I swear I never did think of it--I should have told myself that any day
James might bring a wife to the Eype----"

He was staring through the leaded panes with an intent, eager gaze. "It
is a fine house, Catherine, and commodious. Larger, airier than
ours--though perhaps colder," he added thoughtfully. "Cold I always
found it in winter when I used to stay there as a boy--colder than this
house. You prefer Edgecombe, Catherine? If you were given a choice, is
it here that you would live?" He looked at her, as if impatient for an
answer.

"Every stone of Edgecombe, our home, is dear to me," she said solemnly.
"I have never admired the Eype. It is too large, too cold for my taste.
It stands too much exposed to the wind."

"It does! it does!" There was a note of regret in his voice. He let the
curtain fall and looked about him rather wildly.

"And now, Charles," she said, "shall we not say our prayers and retire
to rest."

"If I had only thought of it," he said, "I might have said my prayers in
the chapel. But there was much to do. I thought of calling you,
Catherine, for you make a better sacristan than I. Then I remembered
Boney--poor little Boney crushed by the miller's dray--and how you cried
all night, and that though I promised you a far finer, cleverer dog than
that poor old friend had ever been. Collins said, 'Why, sir, you should
have hid the old dog's death from the mistress till the morning!' A
worthy fellow, Collins. He meant no disrespect to me. At that time,
d'you remember, Collins had only been in my service a few months?"

       *       *       *       *       *

It was an hour later. From where she lay in bed, Catherine Nagle with
dry, aching eyes stared into the fire, watching the wood embers turn
from red to grey. By her side, his hand in hers, Charles slept the
dreamless, heavy slumber of a child.

Scarcely breathing, in her anxiety lest he should wake, she loosened her
hand, and with a quick movement slipped out of bed. The fire was burning
low, but Catherine saw everything in the room very clearly, and she
threw over her night-dress a long cloak, and wound about her head the
scarf which she had worn during her walk to the wood.

It was not the first time Mrs. Nagle had risen thus in the still night
and sought refuge from herself and from her thoughts in the chapel; and
her husband had never missed her from his side.

As she crept round the dimly lit gallery she passed by the great bowl of
pot-pourri by which Charles Nagle had lingered, and there came to her
the thought that it might perchance be well for her to discover, before
the servants should have a chance of doing so, what he had doubtless
hidden there.

Catherine plunged both her hands into the scented rose-leaves, and she
gave a sudden cry of pain--for her fingers had closed on the sharp edge
of a steel blade. Then she drew out a narrow damascened knife, one
which her husband, taken by its elegant shape, had purchased long
before in Italy.

Mrs. Nagle's brow furrowed in vexation--Collins should have put the
dangerous toy out of his master's reach. Slipping the knife into the
deep pocket of her cloak, she hurried on into the unlit passage leading
to the chapel.

       *       *       *       *       *

Save for the hanging lamp, which since Mr. Dorriforth had said Mass
there that morning signified the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, the
chapel should have been in darkness. But as Catherine passed through the
door she saw, with sudden, uneasy amazement, the farther end of the
chapel in a haze of brightness.

Below the altar, striking upwards from the floor of the sanctuary,
gleamed a corona of light. Charles--she could not for a moment doubt
that it was Charles's doing--had moved the six high, heavy silver
candlesticks which always stood on either side of the altar, and had
placed them on the ground.

There, in a circle, the wax candles blazed, standing sentinel-wise about
a dark, round object which was propped up on a pile of altar-linen
carefully arranged to support it.

Fear clutched at Catherine's heart--such fear as even in the early days
of Charles's madness had never clutched it. She was filled with a
horrible dread, and a wild, incredulous dismay.

What was the Thing, at once so familiar and so terribly strange, that
Charles had brought out of the November night and placed with so much
care below the altar?

But the thin flames of the candles, now shooting up, now guttering low,
blown on by some invisible current of strong air, gave no steady light.

Staying still close to the door, she sank down on her knees, and
desiring

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