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Fraternity

by John Galsworthy · English · Gutenberg #2773 · 553,353 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Fraternity

Author: John Galsworthy


        
Release date: June 14, 2006 [eBook #2773]
                Most recently updated: February 22, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2773

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRATERNITY ***




Produced by David Widger





FRATERNITY

By John Galsworthy




CHAPTER I

THE SHADOW

In the afternoon of the last day of April, 190--, a billowy sea of little
broken clouds crowned the thin air above High Street, Kensington.
This soft tumult of vapours, covering nearly all the firmament, was in
onslaught round a patch of blue sky, shaped somewhat like a star, which
still gleamed--a single gentian flower amongst innumerable grass. Each
of these small clouds seemed fitted with a pair of unseen wings, and, as
insects flight on their too constant journeys, they were setting forth
all ways round this starry blossom which burned so clear with the colour
of its far fixity. On one side they were massed in fleecy congeries, so
crowding each other that no edge or outline was preserved; on the other,
higher, stronger, emergent from their fellow-clouds, they seemed leading
the attack on that surviving gleam of the ineffable. Infinite was the
variety of those million separate vapours, infinite the unchanging unity
of that fixed blue star.

Down in the street beneath this eternal warring of the various
soft-winged clouds on the unmisted ether, men, women, children, and
their familiars--horses, dogs, and cats--were pursuing their occupations
with the sweet zest of the Spring. They streamed along, and the noise of
their frequenting rose in an unbroken roar: “I, I--I, I!”

The crowd was perhaps thickest outside the premises of Messrs. Rose and
Thorn. Every kind of being, from the highest to the lowest, passed in
front of the hundred doors of this establishment; and before the costume
window a rather tall, slight, graceful woman stood thinking: “It really
is gentian blue! But I don't know whether I ought to buy it, with all
this distress about!”

Her eyes, which were greenish-grey, and often ironical lest they should
reveal her soul, seemed probing a blue gown displayed in that window, to
the very heart of its desirability.

“And suppose Stephen doesn't like me in it!” This doubt set her gloved
fingers pleating the bosom of her frock. Into that little pleat she
folded the essence of herself, the wish to have and the fear of having,
the wish to be and the fear of being, and her veil, falling from the
edge of her hat, three inches from her face, shrouded with its tissue
her half-decided little features, her rather too high cheek-bones, her
cheeks which were slightly hollowed, as though Time had kissed them just
too much.

The old man, with a long face, eyes rimmed like a parrot's, and
discoloured nose, who, so long as he did not sit down, was permitted
to frequent the pavement just there and sell the 'Westminster Gazette',
marked her, and took his empty pipe out of his mouth.

It was his business to know all the passers-by, and his pleasure too;
his mind was thus distracted from the condition of his feet. He knew
this particular lady with the delicate face, and found her puzzling;
she sometimes bought the paper which Fate condemned him, against his
politics, to sell. The Tory journals were undoubtedly those which her
class of person ought to purchase. He knew a lady when he saw one. In
fact, before Life threw him into the streets, by giving him a disease in
curing which his savings had disappeared, he had been a butler, and for
the gentry had a respect as incurable as was his distrust of “all
that class of people” who bought their things at “these 'ere large
establishments,” and attended “these 'ere subscription dances at the
Town 'All over there.” He watched her with special interest, not,
indeed, attempting to attract attention, though conscious in every fibre
that he had only sold five copies of his early issues. And he was sorry
and surprised when she passed from his sight through one of the hundred
doors.

The thought which spurred her into Messrs. Rose and Thorn's was this: “I
am thirty-eight; I have a daughter of seventeen. I cannot afford to
lose my husband's admiration. The time is on me when I really must make
myself look nice!”

Before a long mirror, in whose bright pool there yearly bathed hundreds
of women's bodies, divested of skirts and bodices, whose unruffled
surface reflected daily a dozen women's souls divested of everything,
her eyes became as bright as steel; but having ascertained the need of
taking two inches off the chest of the gentian frock, one off its waist,
three off its hips, and of adding one to its skirt, they clouded again
with doubt, as though prepared to fly from the decision she had come to.
Resuming her bodice, she asked:

“When could you let me have it?”

“At the end of the week, madam.”

“Not till then?”

“We are very pressed, madam.”

“Oh, but you must let me have it by Thursday at the latest, please.”

The fitter sighed: “I will do my best.”

“I shall rely on you. Mrs. Stephen Dallison, 76, The Old Square.”

Going downstairs she thought: “That poor girl looked very tired; it's a
shame they give them such long hours!” and she passed into the street.

A voice said timidly behind her: “Westminister, marm?”

“That's the poor old creature,” thought Cecilia Dallison, “whose nose is
so unpleasant. I don't really think I--” and she felt for a penny in her
little bag. Standing beside the “poor old creature” was a woman clothed
in worn but neat black clothes, and an ancient toque which had once
known a better head. The wan remains of a little bit of fur lay round
her throat. She had a thin face, not without refinement, mild, very
clear brown eyes, and a twist of smooth black hair. Beside her was
a skimpy little boy, and in her arms a baby. Mrs. Dallison held out
two-pence for the paper, but it was at the woman that she looked.

“Oh, Mrs. Hughs,” she said, “we've been expecting you to hem the
curtains!”

The woman slightly pressed the baby.

“I am very sorry, ma'am. I knew I was expected, but I've had such
trouble.”

Cecilia winced. “Oh, really?”

“Yes, m'm; it's my husband.”

“Oh, dear!” Cecilia murmured. “But why didn't you come to us?”

“I didn't feel up to it, ma'am; I didn't really--”

A tear ran down her cheek, and was caught in a furrow near the mouth.

Mrs. Dallison said hurriedly: “Yes, yes; I'm very sorry.”

“This old gentleman, Mr. Creed, lives in the same house with us, and he
is going to speak to my husband.”

The old man wagged his head on its lean stalk of neck.

“He ought to know better than be'ave 'imself so disrespectable,” he
said.

Cecilia looked at him, and murmured: “I hope he won't turn on you!”

The old man shuffled his feet.

“I likes to live at peace with everybody. I shall have the police to 'im
if he misdemeans hisself with me!... Westminister, sir?” And, screening
his mouth from Mrs. Dallison, he added in a loud whisper: “Execution of
the Shoreditch murderer!”

Cecilia felt suddenly as though the world were listening to her
conversation with these two rather seedy persons.

“I don't really know what I can do for you, Mrs. Hughs. I'll speak to
Mr. Dallison, and to Mr. Hilary too.”

“Yes, ma'am; thank you, ma'am.”

With a smile which seemed to deprecate its own appearance,
Cecilia grasped her skirts and crossed the road. “I hope I wasn't
unsympathetic,” she thought, looking back at the three figures on the
edge of the pavement--the old man with his papers, and his discoloured
nose thrust upwards under iron-rimmed spectacles; the seamstress in her
black dress; the skimpy little boy. Neither speaking nor moving, they
were looking out before them at the traffic; and something in Cecilia
revolted at this sight. It was lifeless, hopeless, unaesthetic.

“What can one do,” she thought, “for women like Mrs. Hughs, who always
look like that? And that poor old man! I suppose I oughtn't to have
bought that dress, but Stephen is tired of this.”

She turned out of the main street into a road preserved from commoner
forms of traffic, and stopped at a long low house half hidden behind the
trees of its front garden.

It was the residence of Hilary Dallison, her husband's brother, and
himself the husband of Bianca, her own sister.

The queer conceit came to Cecilia that it resembled Hilary. Its look
was kindly and uncertain; its colour a palish tan; the eyebrows of
its windows rather straight than arched, and those deep-set eyes, the
windows, twinkled hospitably; it had, as it were, a sparse moustache
and beard of creepers, and dark marks here and there, like the lines and
shadows on the faces of those who think too much. Beside it, and apart,
though connected by a passage, a studio stood, and about that studio--of
white rough-cast, with a black oak door, and peacock-blue paint--was
something a little hard and fugitive, well suited to Bianca, who used
it, indeed, to paint in. It seemed to stand, with its eyes on the house,
shrinking defiantly from too close company, as though it could not
entirely give itself to anything. Cecilia, who often worried over the
relations between her sister and her brother-in-law, suddenly felt how
fitting and symbolical this was.

But, mistrusting inspirations, which, experience told her, committed one
too much, she walked quickly up the stone-flagged pathway to the door.
Lying in the porch was a little moonlight-coloured lady bulldog, of
toy breed, who gazed up with eyes like agates, delicately waving her
bell-rope tail, as it was her habit to do towards everyone, for she had
been handed down clearer and paler with each generation, till she had at
last lost all the peculiar virtues of dogs that bait the bull.

Speaking the word “Miranda!” Mrs. Stephen Dallison tried to pat this
daughter of the house. The little bulldog withdrew from her caress,
being also unaccustomed to commit herself....

Mondays were Blanca's “days,” and Cecilia made her way towards the
studio. It was a large high room, full of people.

Motionless, by himself, close to the door, stood an old man, very thin
and rather bent, with silvery hair, and a thin silvery beard grasped in
his transparent fingers. He was dressed in a suit of smoke-grey cottage
tweed, which smelt of peat, and an Oxford shirt, whose collar, ceasing
prematurely, exposed a lean brown neck; his trousers, too, ended very
soon, and showed light socks. In his attitude there was something
suggestive of the patience and determination of a mule. At Cecilia's
approach he raised his eyes. It was at once apparent why, in so full a
room, he was standing alone. Those blue eyes looked as if he were about
to utter a prophetic statement.

“They have been speaking to me of an execution,” he said.

Cecilia made a nervous movement.

“Yes, Father?”

“To take life,” went on the old man in a voice which, though charged
with strong emotion, seemed to be speaking to itself, “was the chief
mark of the insensate barbarism still prevailing in those days. It
sprang from that most irreligious fetish, the belief in the permanence
of the individual ego after death. From the worship of that fetish had
come all the sorrows of the human race.”

Cecilia, with an involuntary quiver of her little bag, said:

“Father, how can you?”

“They did not stop to love each other in this life; they were so sure
they had all eternity to do it in. The doctrine was an invention to
enable men to act like dogs with clear consciences. Love could never
come to full fruition till it was destroyed.”

Cecilia looked hastily round; no one had heard. She moved a little
sideways, and became merged in another group. Her father's lips
continued moving. He had resumed the patient attitude which so slightly
suggested mules. A voice behind her said: “I do think your father is
such an interesting man, Mrs. Dallison.”

Cecilia turned and saw a woman of middle height, with her hair done
in the early Italian fashion, and very small, dark, lively eyes, which
looked as though her love of living would keep her busy each minute of
her day and all the minutes that she could occupy of everybody else's
days.

“Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace? Oh! how do you do? I've been meaning to come
and see you for quite a long time, but I know you're always so busy.”

With doubting eyes, half friendly and half defensive, as though chaffing
to prevent herself from being chaffed, Cecilia looked at Mrs. Tallents
Smallpeace, whom she had met several times at Bianca's house. The widow
of a somewhat famous connoisseur, she was now secretary of the League
for Educating Orphans who have Lost both Parents, vice-president of
the Forlorn Hope for Maids in Peril, and treasurer to Thursday Hops
for Working Girls. She seemed to know every man and woman who was worth
knowing, and some besides; to see all picture-shows; to hear every new
musician; and attend the opening performance of every play. With regard
to literature, she would say that authors bored her; but she was always
doing them good turns, inviting them to meet their critics or editors,
and sometimes--though this was not generally known--pulling them out
of the holes they were prone to get into, by lending them a sum of
money--after which, as she would plaintively remark; she rarely saw them
more.

She had a peculiar spiritual significance to Mrs. Stephen Dallison,
being just on the borderline between those of Bianca's friends whom
Cecilia did not wish and those whom she did wish to come to her own
house, for Stephen, a barrister in an official position, had a keen
sense of the ridiculous. Since Hilary wrote books and was a poet, and
Bianca painted, their friends would naturally be either interesting or
queer; and though for Stephen's sake it was important to establish which
was which, they were so very often both. Such people stimulated,
taken in small doses, but neither on her husband's account nor on her
daughter's did Cecilia desire that they should come to her in swarms.
Her attitude of mind towards them was, in fact, similar-a sort of
pleasurable dread-to that in which she purchased the Westminster Gazette
to feel the pulse of social progress.

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's dark little eyes twinkled.

“I hear that Mr. Stone--that is your father's name, I think--is writing
a book which will create quite a sensation when it comes out.”

Cecilia bit her lips. “I hope it never will come out,” she was on the
point of saying.

“What will it be called?” asked Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace. “I gather that
it's a book of Universal Brotherhood. That's so nice!”

Cecilia made a movement of annoyance. “Who told you?”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, “I do think your sister gets
such attractive people at her At Homes. They all take such interest in
things.”

A little surprised at herself, Cecilia answered “Too much for me!”

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace smiled. “I mean in art and social questions.
Surely one can't be too interested in them?”

Cecilia said rather hastily:

“Oh no, of course not.” And both ladies looked around them. A buzz of
conversation fell on Cecilia's ears.

“Have you seen the 'Aftermath'? It's really quite wonderful!”

“Poor old chap! he's so rococo....”

“There's a new man.

“She's very sympathetic.

“But the condition of the poor....

“Is that Mr. Balladyce? Oh, really.

“It gives you such a feeling of life.

“Bourgeois!...”

The voice of Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace broke through: “But do please tell
me who is that young girl with the young man looking at the picture over
there. She's quite charming!”

Cecilia's cheeks went a very pretty pink.

“Oh, that's my little daughter.”

“Really! Have you a daughter as big as that? Why, she must be
seventeen!”

“Nearly eighteen!”

“What is her name?”

“Thyme,” said Cecilia, with a little smile. She felt that Mrs. Tallents
Smallpeace was about to say: 'How charming!'

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace saw her smile and paused. “Who is the young man
with her?”

“My nephew, Martin Stone.”

“The son of your brother who was killed with his wife in that dreadful
Alpine accident? He looks a very decided sort of young man. He's got
that new look. What is he?”

“He's very nearly a doctor. I never know whether he's quite finished or
not.”

“I thought perhaps he might have something to do with Art.”

“Oh no, he despises Art.”

“And does your daughter despise it, too?”

“No; she's studying it.”

“Oh, really! How interesting! I do think the rising generation amusing,
don't you? They're so independent.”

Cecilia looked uneasily at the rising generation. They were standing
side by side before the picture, curiously observant and detached,
exchanging short remarks and glances. They seemed to watch all these
circling, chatting, bending, smiling people with a sort of youthful,
matter-of-fact, half-hostile curiosity. The young man had a pale face,
clean-shaven, with a strong jaw, a long, straight nose, a rather bumpy
forehead which did not recede, and clear grey eyes. His sarcastic
lips were firm and quick, and he looked at people with disconcerting
straightness. The young girl wore a blue-green frock. Her face was
charming, with eager, hazel-grey eyes, a bright colour, and fluffy hair
the colour of ripe nuts.

“That's your sister's picture, 'The Shadow,' they're looking at, isn't
it?” asked Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace. “I remember seeing it on Christmas
Day, and the little model who was sitting for it--an attractive type!
Your brother-in-law told me how interested you all were in her. Quite a
romantic story, wasn't it, about her fainting from want of food when she
first came to sit?”

Cecilia murmured something. Her hands were moving nervously; she looked
ill at ease.

These signs passed unperceived by Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, whose eyes
were busy.

“In the F.H.M.P., of course, I see a lot of young girls placed in
delicate positions, just on the borders, don't you know? You should
really join the F.H.M.P., Mrs. Dallison. It's a first-rate thing--most
absorbing work.”

The doubting deepened in Cecilia's eyes.

“Oh, it must be!” she said. “I've so little time.”

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace went on at once.

“Don't you think that we live in the most interesting days? There are
such a lot of movements going on. It's quite exciting. We all feel
that we can't shut our eyes any longer to social questions. I mean the
condition of the people alone is enough to give one nightmare!”

“Yes, yes,” said Cecilia; “it is dreadful, of course.

“Politicians and officials are so hopeless, one can't look for anything
from them.”

Cecilia drew herself up. “Oh, do you think so?” she said.

“I was just talking to Mr. Balladyce. He says that Art and Literature
must be put on a new basis altogether.”

“Yes,” said Cecilia; “really? Is he that funny little man?”

“I think he's so monstrously clever.”

Cecilia answered quickly: “I know--I know. Of course, something must be
done.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace absently, “I think we all
feel that. Oh, do tell me! I've been talking to such a delightful
person--just the type you see when you go into the City--thousands of
them, all in such good black coats. It's so unusual to really meet one
nowadays; and they're so refreshing, they have such nice simple views.
There he is, standing just behind your sister.”

Cecilia by a nervous gesture indicated that she recognized the
personality alluded to. “Oh, yes,” she said; “Mr. Purcey. I don't know
why he comes to see us.”

“I think he's so delicious!” said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace dreamily. Her
little dark eyes, like bees, had flown to sip honey from the flower
in question--a man of broad build and medium height, dressed.
with accuracy, who seemed just a little out of his proper bed. His
mustachioed mouth wore a set smile; his cheerful face was rather red,
with a forehead of no extravagant height or breadth, and a conspicuous
jaw; his hair was thick and light in colour, and his eyes were small,
grey, and shrewd. He was looking at a picture.

“He's so delightfully unconscious,” murmured Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace.
“He didn't even seem to know that there was a problem of the lower
classes.”

“Did he tell you that he had a picture?” asked Cecilia gloomily.

“Oh yes, by Harpignies, with the accent on the 'pig.' It's worth three
times what he gave for it. It's so nice to be made to feel that there is
still all that mass of people just simply measuring everything by what
they gave for it.”

“And did he tell you my grandfather Carfax's dictum in the Banstock
case?” muttered Cecilia.

“Oh yes: 'The man who does not know his own mind should be made an
Irishman by Act of Parliament.' He said it was so awfully good.”

“He would,” replied Cecilia.

“He seems to depress you, rather!”

“Oh no; I believe he's quite a nice sort of person. One can't be rude
to him; he really did what he thought a very kind thing to my father.
That's how we came to know him. Only it's rather trying when he will
come to call regularly. He gets a little on one's nerves.”

“Ah, that's just what I feel is so jolly about him; no one would ever
get on his nerves. I do think we've got too many nerves, don't you?
Here's your brother-in-law. He's such an uncommon-looking man; I want
to have a talk with him about that little model. A country girl, wasn't
she?”

She had turned her head towards a tall man with a very slight stoop and
a brown, thin, bearded face, who was approaching from the door. She did
not see that Cecilia had flushed, and was looking at her almost angrily.
The tall thin man put his hand on Cecilia's arm, saying gently: “Hallo
Cis! Stephen here yet?”

Cecilia shook her head.

“You know Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, Hilary?”

The tall man bowed. His hazel-coloured eyes were shy, gentle, and
deep-set; his eyebrows, hardly ever still, gave him a look of austere
whimsicality. His dark brown hair was very lightly touched with grey,
and a frequent kindly smile played on his lips. His unmannerised manner
was quiet to the point of extinction. He had long, thin, brown hands,
and nothing peculiar about his dress.

“I'll leave you to talk to Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace,” Cecilia said.

A knot of people round Mr. Balladyce prevented her from moving far,
however, and the voice of Mrs. Smallpeace travelled to her ears.

“I was talking about that little model. It was so good of you to take
such interest in the girl. I wondered whether we could do anything for
her.”

Cecilia's hearing was too excellent to miss the tone of Hilary's reply:

“Oh, thank you; I don't think so.”

“I fancied perhaps you might feel that our Society---hers is an
unsatisfactory profession for young girls!”

Cecilia saw the back of Hilary's neck grow red. She turned her head
away.

“Of course, there are many very nice models indeed,” said the voice of
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace. “I don't mean that they are necessarily at
all--if they're girls of strong character; and especially if they don't
sit for the--the altogether.”

Hilary's dry, staccato answer came to Cecilia's ears: “Thank you; it's
very kind of you.”

“Oh, of course, if it's not necessary. Your wife's picture was so
clever, Mr. Dallison--such an interesting type.”

Without intention Cecilia found herself before that picture. It stood
with its face a little turned towards the wall, as though somewhat in
disgrace, portraying the full-length figure of a girl standing in deep
shadow, with her arms half outstretched, as if asking for something. Her
eyes were fixed on Cecilia, and through her parted lips breath almost
seemed to come. The only colour in the picture was the pale blue of
those eyes, the pallid red of those parted lips, the still paler brown
of the hair; the rest was shadow. In the foreground light was falling as
though from a street-lamp.

Cecilia thought: “That girl's eyes and mouth haunt me. Whatever made
Blanca choose such a subject? It is clever, of course--for her.”




CHAPTER II

A FAMILY DISCUSSION

The marriage of Sylvanus Stone, Professor of the Natural Sciences,
to Anne, daughter of Mr. Justice Carfax, of the well-known county
family--the Carfaxes of Spring Deans, Hants--was recorded in the
sixties. The baptisms of Martin, Cecilia, and Bianca, son and daughters
of Sylvanus and Anne Stone, were to be discovered registered in
Kensington in the three consecutive years following, as though some
single-minded person had been connected with their births. After this
the baptisms of no more offspring were to be found anywhere, as if that
single mind had encountered opposition. But in the eighties there
was noted in the register of the same church the burial of “Anne, nee
Carfax, wife of Sylvanus Stone.” In that “nee Carfax” there was, to
those who knew, something more than met the eye. It summed up the mother
of Cecilia and Bianca, and, in more subtle fashion, Cecilia and Bianca,
too. It summed up that fugitive, barricading look in their bright eyes,
which, though spoken of in the family as “the Carfax eyes,” were in
reality far from coming from old Mr. Justice Carfax. They had been his
wife's in turn, and had much annoyed a man of his decided character.
He himself had always known his mind, and had let others know it, too;
reminding his wife that she was an impracticable woman, who knew not her
own mind; and devoting his lawful gains to securing the future of
his progeny. It would have disturbed him if he had lived to see
his grand-daughters and their times. Like so many able men of his
generation, far-seeing enough in practical affairs, he had never
considered the possibility that the descendants of those who, like
himself, had laid up treasure for their children's children might
acquire the quality of taking time, balancing pros and cons, looking
ahead, and not putting one foot down before picking the other up. He
had not foreseen, in deed, that to wobble might become an art, in order
that, before anything was done, people might know the full necessity for
doing some thing, and how impossible it would be to do indeed, foolish
to attempt to do--that which would fully meet the case. He, who had been
a man of action all his life, had not perceived how it would grow to be
matter of common instinct that to act was to commit oneself, and that,
while what one had was not precisely what one wanted, what one had not
(if one had it) would be as bad. He had never been self-conscious--it
was not the custom of his generation--and, having but little
imagination, had never suspected that he was laying up that quality
for his descendants, together with a competence which secured them a
comfortable leisure.

Of all the persons in his grand-daughter's studio that afternoon, that
stray sheep Mr. Purcey would have been, perhaps, the only one whose
judgments he would have considered sound. No one had laid up a
competence for Mr. Purcey, who had been in business from the age of
twenty.

It is uncertain whether the mere fact that he was not in his own fold
kept this visitor lingering in the studio when all other guests were
gone; or whether it was simply the feeling that the longer he stayed
in contact with really artistic people the more distinguished he was
becoming. Probably the latter, for the possession of that Harpignies,
a good specimen, which he had bought by accident, and subsequently by
accident discovered to have a peculiar value, had become a factor in his
life, marking him out from all his friends, who went in more for a neat
type of Royal Academy landscape, together with reproductions of young
ladies in eighteenth-century costumes seated on horseback, or in Scotch
gardens. A junior partner in a banking-house of some importance, he
lived at Wimbledon, whence he passed up and down daily in his car. To
this he owed his acquaintance with the family of Dallison. For one day,
after telling his chauffeur to meet him at the Albert Gate, he had
set out to stroll down Rotten Row, as he often did on the way home,
designing to nod to anybody that he knew. It had turned out a somewhat
barren expedition. No one of any consequence had met his eye; and it was
with a certain almost fretful longing for distraction that in Kensington
Gardens he came on an old man feeding birds out of a paper bag. The
birds having flown away on seeing him, he approached the feeder to
apologize.

“I'm afraid I frightened your birds, sir,” he began.

This old man, who was dressed in smoke-grey tweeds which exhaled a
poignant scent of peat, looked at him without answering.

“I'm afraid your birds saw me coming,” Mr. Purcey said again.

“In those days,” said the aged stranger, “birds were afraid of men.”

Mr. Purcey's shrewd grey eyes perceived at once that he had a character
to deal with.

“Ah, yes!” he said; “I see--you allude to the present time. That's very
nice. Ha, ha!”

The old man answered: “The emotion of fear is inseparably connected with
a primitive state of fratricidal rivalry.”

This sentence put Mr. Purcey on his guard.

'The old chap,' he thought, 'is touched. He evidently oughtn't to be out
here by himself.' He debated, therefore, whether he should hasten away
toward his car, or stand by in case his assistance should be needed.
Being a kind-hearted man, who believed in his capacity for putting
things to rights, and noticing a certain delicacy--a “sort of something
rather distinguished,” as he phrased it afterwards--in the old fellow's
face and figure, he decided to see if he could be of any service. They
walked along together, Mr. Purcey watching his new friend askance, and
directing the march to where he had ordered his chauffeur to await him.

“You are very fond of birds, I suppose,” he said cautiously.

“The birds are our brothers.”

The answer was of a nature to determine Mr. Purcey in his diagnosis of
the case.

“I've got my car here,” he said. “Let me give you a lift home.”

This new but aged acquaintance did not seem to hear; his lips moved as
though he were following out some thought.

“In those days,” Mr. Purcey heard him say, “the congeries of men were
known as rookeries. The expression was hardly just towards that handsome
bird.”

Mr. Purcey touched him hastily on the arm.

“I've got my car here, sir,” he said. “Do let me put you down!”

Telling the story afterwards, he had spoken thus:

“The old chap knew where he lived right enough; but dash me if I believe
he noticed that I was taking him there in my car--I had the A.i. Damyer
out. That's how I came to make the acquaintance of these Dallisons. He's
the writer, you know, and she paints--rather the new school--she admires
Harpignies. Well, when I got there in the car I found Dallison in the
garden. Of course I was careful not to put my foot into it. I told him:
'I found this old gentleman wandering about. I've just brought him back
in my car.' Who should the old chap turn out to be but her father! They
were awfully obliged to me. Charmin' people, but very what d'you call it
'fin de siecle'--like all these professors, these artistic pigs--seem to
know rather a queer set, advanced people, and all that sort of cuckoo,
always talkin' about the poor, and societies, and new religions, and
that kind of thing.”

Though he had since been to see them several times, the Dallisons had
never robbed him of the virtuous feeling of that good action--they had
never let him know that he had brought home, not, as he imagined, a
lunatic, but merely a philosopher.

It had been somewhat of a quiet shock to him to find Mr. Stone close to
the doorway when he entered Bianca's studio that afternoon; for though
he had seen him since the encounter in Kensington Gardens, and knew that
he was writing a book, he still felt that he was not quite the sort of
old man that one ought to meet about. He had at once begun to tell him
of the hanging of the Shoreditch murderer, as recorded in the evening
papers. Mr. Stone's reception of that news had still further confirmed
his original views. When all the guests were gone--with the exception
of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Dallison and Miss Dallison, “that awfully pretty
girl,” and the young man “who was always hangin' about her”--he had
approached his hostess for some quiet talk. She stood listening to him,
very well bred, with just that habitual spice of mockery in her smile,
which to Mr. Purcey's eyes made her “a very strikin'-lookin' woman, but
rather---” There he would stop, for it required a greater psychologist
than he to describe a secret disharmony which a little marred her
beauty. Due to some too violent cross of blood, to an environment too
unsuited, to what not--it was branded on her. Those who knew Bianca
Dallison better than Mr. Purcey were but too well aware of this
fugitive, proud spirit permeating one whose beauty would otherwise have
passed unquestioned.

She was a little taller than Cecilia, her figure rather fuller and more
graceful, her hair darker, her eyes, too, darker and more deeply set,
her cheek-bones higher, her colouring richer. That spirit of the age,
Disharmony, must have presided when a child so vivid and dark-coloured
was christened Bianca.

Mr. Purcey, however, was not a man who allowed the finest shades of
feeling to interfere with his enjoyments. She was a “strikin'-lookin'
woman,” and there was, thanks to Harpignies, a link between them.

“Your father and I, Mrs. Dallison, can't quite understand each other,”
 he began. “Our views of life don't seem to hit it off exactly.”

“Really,” murmured Bianca; “I should have thought that you'd have got on
so well.”

“He's a little bit too--er--scriptural for me, perhaps,” said Mr.
Purcey, with some delicacy.

“Did we never tell you,” Bianca answered softly, “that my father was a
rather well--known man of science before his illness?”

“Ah!” replied Mr. Purcey, a little puzzled; “that, of course. D'you
know, of all your pictures, Mrs. Dallison, I think that one you call
'The Shadow' is the most rippin'. There's a something about it that
gets hold of you. That was the original, wasn't it, at your Christmas
party--attractive girl--it's an awf'ly good likeness.”

Bianca's face had changed, but Mr. Purcey was not a man to notice a
little thing like that.

“If ever you want to part with it,” he said, “I hope you'll give me a
chance. I mean it'd be a pleasure to me to have it. I think it'll be
worth a lot of money some day.”

Bianca did not answer, and Mr. Purcey, feeling suddenly a little
awkward, said: “I've got my car waiting. I must be off--really.” Shaking
hands with all of them, he went away.

When the door had closed behind his back, a universal sigh went up. It
was followed by a silence, which Hilary broke.

“We'll smoke, Stevie, if Cis doesn't mind.”

Stephen Dallison placed a cigarette between his moustacheless lips,
always rather screwed up, and ready to nip with a smile anything that
might make him feel ridiculous.

“Phew!” he said. “Our friend Purcey becomes a little tedious. He seems
to take the whole of Philistia about with him.”

“He's a very decent fellow,” murmured Hilary.

“A bit heavy, surely!” Stephen Dallison's face, though also long and
narrow, was not much like his brother's. His eyes, though not unkind,
were far more scrutinising, inquisitive, and practical; his hair darker,
smoother.

Letting a puff of smoke escape, he added:

“Now, that's the sort of man to give you a good sound opinion. You
should have asked him, Cis.”

Cecilia answered with a frown:

“Don't chaff, Stephen; I'm perfectly serious about Mrs. Hughs.”

“Well, I don't see what I can do for the good woman, my dear. One can't
interfere in these domestic matters.”

“But it seems dreadful that we who employ her should be able to do
nothing for her. Don't you think so, B.?”

“I suppose we could do something for her if we wanted to badly enough.”

Bianca's voice, which had the self-distrustful ring of modern music,
suited her personality.

A glance passed between Stephen and his wife.

“That's B. all over!” it seemed to say....

“Hound Street, where they live, is a horrid place.”

It was Thyme who spoke, and everybody looked round at her.

“How do you know that?” asked Cecilia.

“I went to see.”

“With whom?”

“Martin.”

The lips of the young man whose name she mentioned curled sarcastically.

Hilary asked gently:

“Well, my dear, what did you see?”

“Most of the doors are open---”

Bianca murmured: “That doesn't tell us much.”

“On the contrary,” said Martin suddenly, in a deep bass voice, “it tells
you everything. Go on.”

“The Hughs live on the top floor at No. 1. It's the best house in
the street. On the ground-floor are some people called Budgen; he's a
labourer, and she's lame. They've got one son. The Hughs have let off
the first-floor front-room to an old man named Creed---”

“Yes, I know,” Cecilia muttered.

“He makes about one and tenpence a day by selling papers. The back-room
on that floor they let, of course, to your little model, Aunt B.”

“She is not my model now.”

There was a silence such as falls when no one knows how far the matter
mentioned is safe to, touch on. Thyme proceeded with her report.

“Her room's much the best in the house; it's airy, and it looks out over
someone's garden. I suppose she stays there because it's so cheap. The
Hughs' rooms are---” She stopped, wrinkling her straight nose.

“So that's the household,” said Hilary. “Two married couples, one young
man, one young girl”--his eyes travelled from one to another of the two
married couples, the young man, and the young girl, collected in this
room--“and one old man,” he added softly.

“Not quite the sort of place for you to go poking about in, Thyme,”
 Stephen said ironically. “Do you think so, Martin?”

“Why not?”

Stephen raised his brows, and glanced towards his wife. Her face was
dubious, a little scared. There was a silence. Then Bianca spoke:

“Well?” That word, like nearly all her speeches, seemed rather to
disconcert her hearers.

“So Hughs ill-treats her?” said Hilary.

“She says so,” replied Cecilia--“at least, that's what I understood. Of
course, I don't know any details.”

“She had better get rid of him, I should think,” Bianca murmured.

Out of the silence that followed Thyme's clear voice was heard saying:

“She can't get a divorce; she could get a separation.”

Cecilia rose uneasily. These words concreted suddenly a wealth of
half-acknowledged doubts about her little daughter. This came of letting
her hear people talk, and go about with Martin! She might even have been
listening to her grandfather--such a thought was most disturbing. And,
afraid, on the one hand, of gainsaying the liberty of speech, and, on
the other, of seeming to approve her daughter's knowledge of the world,
she looked at her husband.

But Stephen did not speak, feeling, no doubt, that to pursue the subject
would be either to court an ethical, even an abstract, disquisition,
and this one did not do in anybody's presence, much less one's wife's or
daughter's; or to touch on sordid facts of doubtful character, which was
equally distasteful in the circumstances. He, too, however, was uneasy
that Thyme should know so much.

The dusk was gathering outside; the fire threw a flickering light,
fitfully outlining their figures, making those faces, so familiar to
each other, a little mysterious.

At last Stephen broke the silence. “Of course, I'm very sorry for her,
but you'd better let it alone--you can't tell with that sort of people;
you never can make out what they want--it's safer not to meddle. At all
events, it's a matter for a Society to look into first!”

Cecilia answered: “But she's, on my conscience, Stephen.”

“They're all on my conscience,” muttered Hilary.

Bianca looked at him for the first time; then, turning to her nephew,
said: “What do you say, Martin?”

The young man, whose face was stained by the firelight the colour of
pale cheese, made no answer.

But suddenly through the stillness came a voice:

“I have thought of something.”

Everyone turned round. Mr. Stone was seen emerging from behind “The
Shadow”; his frail figure, in its grey tweeds, his silvery hair and
beard, were outlined sharply against the wall.

“Why, Father,” Cecilia said, “we didn't know that you were here!”

Mr. Stone looked round bewildered; it seemed as if he, too, had been
ignorant of that fact.

“What is it that you've thought of?”

The firelight leaped suddenly on to Mr. Stone's thin yellow hand.

“Each of us,” he said, “has a shadow in those places--in those streets.”

There was a vague rustling, as of people not taking a remark too
seriously, and the sound of a closing door.




CHAPTER III

HILARY'S BROWN STUDY

“What do you really think, Uncle Hilary?”

Turning at his writing-table to look at the face of his young niece,
Hilary Dallison answered:

“My dear, we have had the same state of affairs since the beginning of
the world. There is no chemical process; so far as my knowledge goes,
that does not make waste products. What your grandfather calls our
'shadows' are the waste products of the social process. That there is a
submerged tenth is as certain as that there is an emerged fiftieth like
ourselves; exactly who they are and how they come, whether they can ever
be improved away, is, I think, as uncertain as anything can be.”

The figure of the girl seated in the big armchair did not stir. Her lips
pouted contemptuously, a frown wrinkled her forehead.

“Martin says that a thing is only impossible when we think it so.”

“Faith and the mountain, I'm afraid.”

Thyme's foot shot forth; it nearly came into contact with Miranda, the
little bulldog.

“Oh, duckie!”

But the little moonlight bulldog backed away.

“I hate these slums, uncle; they're so disgusting!”

Hilary leaned his face on his thin hand; it was his characteristic
attitude.

“They are hateful, disgusting, and heartrending. That does not make the
problem any the less difficult, does it?”

“I believe we simply make the difficulties ourselves by seeing them.”

Hilary smiled. “Does Martin say that too?”

“Of course he does.”

“Speaking broadly,” murmured Hilary, “I see only one difficulty--human
nature.”

Thyme rose. “I think it horrible to have a low opinion of human nature.”

“My dear,” said Hilary, “don't you think perhaps that people who have
what is called a low opinion of human nature are really more tolerant of
it, more in love with it, in fact, than those who, looking to what human
nature might be, are bound to hate what human nature is.”

The look which Thyme directed at her uncle's amiable, attractive face,
with its pointed beard, high forehead, and special little smile, seemed
to alarm Hilary.

“I don't want you to have an unnecessarily low opinion of me, my dear.
I'm not one of those people who tell you that everything's all right
because the rich have their troubles as well as the poor. A certain
modicum of decency and comfort is obviously necessary to man before
we can begin to do anything but pity him; but that doesn't make it any
easier to know how you're going to insure him that modicum of decency
and comfort, does it?”

“We've got to do it,” said Thyme; “it won't wait any longer.”

“My dear,” said Hilary, “think of Mr. Purcey! What proportion of the
upper classes do you imagine is even conscious of that necessity? We,
who have got what I call the social conscience, rise from the platform
of Mr. Purcey; we're just a gang of a few thousands to Mr. Purcey's tens
of thousands, and how many even of us are prepared, or, for the
matter of that, fitted, to act on our consciousness? In spite of your
grandfather's ideas, I'm afraid we're all too much divided into classes;
man acts, and always has acted, in classes.”

“Oh--classes!” answered Thyme--“that's the old superstition, uncle.”

“Is it? I thought one's class, perhaps, was only oneself
exaggerated--not to be shaken off. For instance, what are you and I,
with our particular prejudices, going to do?”

Thyme gave him the cruel look of youth, which seemed to say: 'You are my
very good uncle, and a dear; but you are more than twice my age. That, I
think, is conclusive!'

“Has something been settled about Mrs. Hughs?” she asked abruptly.

“What does your father say this morning?”

Thyme picked up her portfolio of drawings, and moved towards the door.

“Father's hopeless. He hasn't an idea beyond referring her to the
S.P.B.”

She was gone; and Hilary, with a sigh, took his pen up, but he wrote
nothing down ....

Hilary and Stephen Dallison were grandsons of that Canon Dallison, well
known as friend, and sometime adviser, of a certain Victorian novelist.
The Canon, who came of an old Oxfordshire family, which for three
hundred years at least had served the Church or State, was himself the
author of two volumes of “Socratic Dialogues.” He had bequeathed to his
son--a permanent official in the Foreign Office--if not his literary
talent, the tradition at all events of culture. This tradition had in
turn been handed on to Hilary and Stephen.

Educated at a public school and Cambridge, blessed with competent,
though not large, independent incomes, and brought up never to allude to
money if it could possibly be helped, the two young men had been turned
out of the mint with something of the same outward stamp on them. Both
were kindly, both fond of open-air pursuits, and neither of them lazy.
Both, too, were very civilised, with that bone-deep decency, that
dislike of violence, nowhere so prevalent as in the upper classes of a
country whose settled institutions are as old as its roads, or the walls
which insulate its parks. But as time went on, the one great quality
which heredity and education, environment and means, had bred in both of
them--self-consciousness--acted in these two brothers very differently.
To Stephen it was preservative, keeping him, as it were, in ice
throughout hot-weather seasons, enabling him to know exactly when he was
in danger of decomposition, so that he might nip the process in the
bud; it was with him a healthy, perhaps slightly chemical, ingredient,
binding his component parts, causing them to work together safely,
homogeneously. In Hilary the effect seemed to have been otherwise; like
some slow and subtle poison, this great quality, self-consciousness,
had soaked his system through and through; permeated every cranny of his
spirit, so that to think a definite thought, or do a definite deed, was
obviously becoming difficult to him. It took in the main the form of a
sort of gentle desiccating humour.

“It's a remarkable thing,” he had one day said to Stephen, “that by the
process of assimilating little bits of chopped-up cattle one should be
able to form the speculation of how remarkable a thing it is.”

Stephen had paused a second before answering--they were lunching off
roast beef in the Law Courts--he had then said:

“You're surely not going to eschew the higher mammals, like our
respected father-in-law?”

“On the contrary,” said Hilary, “to chew them; but it is remarkable, for
all that; you missed my point.”

It was clear that a man who could see anything remarkable in such a
thing was far gone, and Stephen had murmured:

“My dear old chap, you're getting too introspective.”

Hilary, having given his brother the special retiring smile, which
seemed not only to say; “Don't let me bore you,” but also, “Well,
perhaps you had better wait outside,” the conversation closed.

That smile of Hilary's, which jibbed away from things, though
disconcerting and apt to put an end to intercourse, was natural enough.
A sensitive man, who had passed his life amongst cultivated people in
the making of books, guarded from real wants by modest, not vulgar,
affluence, had not reached the age of forty-two without finding his
delicacy sharpened to the point of fastidiousness. Even his dog could
see the sort of man he was. She knew that he would take no liberties,
either with her ears or with her tail. She knew that he would never hold
her mouth ajar, and watch her teeth, as some men do; that when she was
lying on her back he would gently rub her chest without giving her the
feeling that she was doing wrong, as women will; and if she sat, as she
was sitting now, with her eyes fixed on his study fire, he would never,
she knew, even from afar, prevent her thinking of the nothing she loved
to think on.

In his study, which smelt of a particular mild tobacco warranted to
suit the nerves of any literary man, there was a bust of Socrates, which
always seemed to have a strange attraction for its owner. He had once
described to a fellow-writer the impression produced on him by that
plaster face, so capaciously ugly, as though comprehending the whole
of human life, sharing all man's gluttony and lust, his violence and
rapacity, but sharing also his strivings toward love and reason and
serenity.

“He's telling us,” said Hilary, “to drink deep, to dive down and live
with mermaids, to lie out on the hills under the sun, to sweat with
helots, to know all things and all men. No seat, he says, among the
Wise, unless we've been through it all before we climb! That's how he
strikes me--not too cheering for people of our sort!”

Under the shadow of this bust Hilary rested his forehead on his hand. In
front of him were three open books and a pile of manuscript, and
pushed to one side a little sheaf of pieces of green-white paper,
press-cuttings of his latest book.

The exact position occupied by his work in the life of such a man is not
too easy to define. He earned an income by it, but he was not dependent
on that income. As poet, critic, writer of essays, he had made himself
a certain name--not a great name, but enough to swear by. Whether his
fastidiousness could have stood the conditions of literary existence
without private means was now and then debated by his friends; it
could probably have done so better than was supposed, for he sometimes
startled those who set him down as a dilettante by a horny way of
retiring into his shell for the finish of a piece of work.

Try as he would that morning to keep his thoughts concentrated on his
literary labour, they wandered to his conversation with his niece and
to the discussion on Mrs. Hughs; the family seamstress, in his wife's
studio the day before. Stephen had lingered behind Cecilia and Thyme
when they went away after dinner, to deliver a last counsel to his
brother at the garden gate.

“Never meddle between man and wife--you know what the lower classes
are!”

And across the dark garden he had looked back towards the house. One
room on the ground-floor alone was lighted. Through its open window the
head and shoulders of Mr. Stone could be seen close to a small green
reading-lamp. Stephen shook his head, murmuring:

“But, I say, our old friend, eh? 'In those places--in those streets!'
It's worse than simple crankiness--the poor old chap is getting
almost---”

And, touching his forehead lightly with two fingers, he had hurried off
with the ever-springy step of one whose regularity habitually controls
his imagination.

Pausing a minute amongst the bushes, Hilary too had looked at the
lighted window which broke the dark front of his house, and his little
moonlight bulldog, peering round his legs, had gazed up also. Mr.
Stone was still standing, pen in hand, presumably deep in thought. His
silvered head and beard moved slightly to the efforts of his brain. He
came over to the window, and, evidently not seeing his son-in-law, faced
out into the night.

In that darkness were all the shapes and lights and shadows of a
London night in spring: the trees in dark bloom; the wan yellow of
the gas-lamps, pale emblems of the self-consciousness of towns; the
clustered shades of the tiny leaves, spilled, purple, on the surface of
the road, like bunches of black grapes squeezed down into the earth by
the feet of the passers-by. There, too, were shapes of men and women
hurrying home, and the great blocked shapes of the houses where they
lived. A halo hovered above the City--a high haze of yellow light,
dimming the stars. The black, slow figure of a policeman moved
noiselessly along the railings opposite.

From then till eleven o'clock, when he would make himself some cocoa on
a little spirit-lamp, the writer of the “Book of Universal Brotherhood”
 would alternate between his bent posture above his manuscript and his
blank consideration of the night....

With a jerk, Hilary came back to his reflections beneath the bust of
Socrates.

“Each of us has a shadow in those places--in those streets!”

There certainly was a virus in that notion. One must either take it as a
jest, like Stephen; or, what must one do? How far was it one's business
to identify oneself with other people, especially the helpless--how far
to preserve oneself intact--'integer vita'? Hilary was no young person,
like his niece or Martin, to whom everything seemed simple; nor was
he an old person like their grandfather, for whom life had lost its
complications.

And, very conscious of his natural disabilities for a decision on a
like, or indeed on any, subject except, perhaps, a point of literary
technique, he got up from his writing-table, and, taking his little
bulldog, went out. His intention was to visit Mrs. Hughs in Hound
Street, and see with his own eyes the state of things. But he had
another reason, too, for wishing to go there ....




CHAPTER IV

THE LITTLE MODEL

When in the preceding autumn Bianca began her picture called “The
Shadow,” nobody was more surprised than Hilary that she asked him to
find her a model for the figure. Not knowing the nature of the picture,
nor having been for many years--perhaps never--admitted into the
workings of his wife's spirit, he said:

“Why don't you ask Thyme to sit for you?”

Blanca answered: “She's not the type at all--too matter-of-fact.
Besides, I don't want a lady; the figure's to be half draped.”

Hilary smiled.

Blanca knew quite well that he was smiling at this distinction between
ladies and other women, and understood that he was smiling, not so much
at her, but at himself, for secretly agreeing with the distinction she
had made.

And suddenly she smiled too.

There was the whole history of their married life in those two smiles.
They meant so much: so many thousand hours of suppressed irritation,
so many baffled longings and earnest efforts to bring their natures
together. They were the supreme, quiet evidence of the divergence of two
lives--that slow divergence which had been far from being wilful, and
was the more hopeless in that it had been so gradual and so gentle. They
had never really had a quarrel, having enlightened views of marriage;
but they had smiled. They had smiled so often through so many years that
no two people in the world could very well be further from each other.
Their smiles had banned the revelation even to themselves of the tragedy
of their wedded state. It is certain that neither could help those
smiles, which were not intended to wound, but came on their faces
as naturally as moonlight falls on water, out of their inimically
constituted souls.

Hilary spent two afternoons among his artist friends, trying, by means
of the indications he had gathered, to find a model for “The Shadow.” He
had found one at last. Her name, Barton, and address had been given him
by a painter of still life, called French.

“She's never sat to me,” he said; “my sister discovered her in the West
Country somewhere. She's got a story of some sort. I don't know what.
She came up about three months ago, I think.”

“She's not sitting to your sister now?” Hilary asked.

“No,” said the painter of still life; “my sister's married and gone
out to India. I don't know whether she'd sit for the half-draped, but I
should think so. She'll have to, sooner or later; she may as well
begin, especially to a woman. There's a something about her that's
attractive--you might try her!” And with these words he resumed the
painting of still life which he had broken off to talk to Hilary.

Hilary had written to this girl to come and see him. She had come just
before dinner the same day.

He found her standing in the middle of his study, not daring, as it
seemed, to go near the furniture, and as there was very little light,
he could hardly see her face. She was resting a foot, very patient, very
still, in an old brown skirt, an ill-shaped blouse, and a blue-green
tam-o'-shanter cap. Hilary turned up the light. He saw a round little
face with broad cheekbones, flower-blue eyes, short lamp-black lashes,
and slightly parted lips. It was difficult to judge of her figure in
those old clothes, but she was neither short nor tall; her neck was
white and well set on, her hair pale brown and abundant. Hilary noted
that her chin, though not receding, was too soft and small; but what he
noted chiefly was her look of patient expectancy, as though beyond the
present she were seeing something, not necessarily pleasant, which had
to come. If he had not known from the painter of still life that she was
from the country, he would have thought her a town-bred girl, she looked
so pale. Her appearance, at all events, was not “too matter-of-fact.”
 Her speech, however, with its slight West-Country burr, was
matter-of-fact enough, concerned entirely with how long she would
have to sit, and the pay she was to get for it. In the middle of their
conversation she sank down on the floor, and Hilary was driven to
restore her with biscuits and liqueur, which in his haste he took for
brandy. It seemed she had not eaten since her breakfast the day before,
which had consisted of a cup of tea. In answer to his remonstrance, she
made this matter-of-fact remark:

“If you haven't money, you can't buy things.... There's no one I can ask
up here; I'm a stranger.”

“Then you haven't been getting work?”

“No,” the little model answered sullenly; “I don't want to sit as most
of them want me to till I'm obliged.” The blood rushed up in her face
with startling vividness, then left it white again.

'Ah!' thought Hilary, 'she has had experience already.'

Both he and his wife were accessible to cases of distress, but the
nature of their charity was different. Hilary was constitutionally
unable to refuse his aid to anything that held out a hand for it. Bianca
(whose sociology was sounder), while affirming that charity was wrong,
since in a properly constituted State no one should need help, referred
her cases, like Stephen, to the “Society for the Prevention of Begging,”
 which took much time and many pains to ascertain the worst.

But in this case what was of importance was that the poor girl should
have a meal, and after that to find out if she were living in a decent
house; and since she appeared not to be, to recommend her somewhere
better. And as in charity it is always well to kill two birds with one
expenditure of force, it was found that Mrs. Hughs, the seamstress, had
a single room to let unfurnished, and would be more than glad of four
shillings, or even three and six, a week for it. Furniture was also
found for her: a bed that creaked, a washstand, table, and chest of
drawers; a carpet, two chairs, and certain things to cook with; some of
those old photographs and prints that hide in cupboards, and a peculiar
little clock, which frequently forgot the time of day. All these and
some elementary articles of dress were sent round in a little van, with
three ferns whose time had nearly come, and a piece of the plant called
“honesty.” Soon after this she came to “sit.” She was a very quiet and
passive little model, and was not required to pose half-draped, Bianca
having decided that, after all, “The Shadow” was better represented
fully clothed; for, though she discussed the nude, and looked on it with
freedom, when it came to painting unclothed people, she felt a sort of
physical aversion.

Hilary, who was curious, as a man naturally would be, about anyone who
had fainted from hunger at his feet, came every now and then to see,
and would sit watching this little half-starved girl with kindly and
screwed-up eyes. About his personality there was all the evidence of
that saying current among those who knew him: “Hilary would walk a mile
sooner than tread on an ant.” The little model, from the moment when he
poured liqueur between her teeth, seemed to feel he had a claim on her,
for she reserved her small, matter-of-fact confessions for his ears. She
made them in the garden, coming in or going out; or outside, and, now
and then, inside his study, like a child who comes and shows you a sore
finger. Thus, quite suddenly:

“I've four shillings left over this week, Mr. Dallison,” or, “Old Mr.
Creed's gone to the hospital to-day, Mr. Dallison.”

Her face soon became less bloodless than on that first evening, but it
was still pale, inclined to colour in wrong places on cold days, with
little blue veins about the temples and shadows under the eyes. The lips
were still always a trifle parted, and she still seemed to be looking
out for what was coming, like a little Madonna, or Venus, in
a Botticelli picture. This look of hers, coupled with the
matter-of-factness of her speech, gave its flavour to her
personality....

On Christmas Day the picture was on view to Mr. Purcey, who had chanced
to “give his car a run,” and to other connoisseurs. Bianca had invited
her model to be present at this function, intending to get her work.
But, slipping at once into a corner, the girl had stood as far as
possible behind a canvas. People, seeing her standing there, and noting
her likeness to the picture, looked at her with curiosity, and passed
on, murmuring that she was an interesting type. They did not talk to
her, either because they were afraid she could not talk of the things
they could talk of, or that they could not talk of the things she could
talk of, or because they were anxious not to seem to patronize her. She
talked to one, therefore. This occasioned Hilary some distress. He kept
coming up and smiling at her, or making tentative remarks or jests, to
which she would reply, “Yes, Mr. Dallison,” or “No, Mr. Dallison,” as
the case might be.

Seeing him return from one of these little visits, an Art Critic
standing before the picture had smiled, and his round, clean-shaven,
sensual face had assumed a greenish tint in eyes and cheeks, as of the
fat in turtle soup.

The only two other people who had noticed her particularly were those
old acquaintances, Mr. Purcey and Mr. Stone. Mr. Purcey had thought,
'Rather a good-lookin' girl,' and his eyes strayed somewhat continually
in her direction. There was something piquant and, as it were,
unlawfully enticing to him in the fact that she was a real artist's
model.

Mr. Stone's way of noticing her had been different. He had approached
in his slightly inconvenient way, as though seeing but one thing in the
whole world.

“You are living by yourself?” he had said. “I shall come and see you.”

Made by the Art Critic or by Mr. Purcey, that somewhat strange remark
would have had one meaning; made by Mr. Stone it obviously had another.
Having finished what he had to say, the author of the book of “Universal
Brotherhood” had bowed and turned to go. Perceiving that he saw before
him the door and nothing else, everybody made way for him at once.
The remarks that usually arose behind his back began to be
heard--“Extraordinary old man!” “You know, he bathes in the Serpentine
all the year round?” “And he cooks his food himself, and does his own
room, they say; and all the rest of his time he writes a book!” “A
perfect crank!”




CHAPTER V

THE COMEDY BEGINS

The Art Critic who had smiled was--like all men--a subject for pity
rather than for blame. An Irishman of real ability, he had started life
with high ideals and a belief that he could live with them. He had hoped
to serve Art, to keep his service pure; but, having one day let his acid
temperament out of hand to revel in an orgy of personal retaliation,
he had since never known when she would slip her chain and come home
smothered in mire. Moreover, he no longer chastised her when she came.
His ideals had left him, one by one; he now lived alone, immune from
dignity and shame, soothing himself with whisky. A man of rancour, meet
for pity, and, in his cups, contented. He had lunched freely before
coming to Blanca's Christmas function, but by four o'clock, the gases
which had made him feel the world a pleasant place had nearly all
evaporated, and he was suffering from a wish to drink again. Or it may
have been that this girl, with her soft look, gave him the feeling that
she ought to have belonged to him; and as she did not, he felt, perhaps,
a natural irritation that she belonged, or might belong, to somebody
else. Or, again, it was possibly his natural male distaste for the works
of women painters which induced an awkward frame of mind.

Two days later in a daily paper over no signature, appeared this little
paragraph: “We learn that 'The Shadow,' painted by Bianca Stone, who is
not generally known to be the wife of the writer, Mr. Hilary Dallison,
will soon be exhibited at the Bencox Gallery. This very 'fin-de-siecle'
creation, with its unpleasant subject, representing a woman (presumably
of the streets) standing beneath a gas-lamp, is a somewhat anaemic piece
of painting. If Mr. Dallison, who finds the type an interesting one,
embodies her in one of his very charming poems, we trust the result will
be less bloodless.”

The little piece of green-white paper containing this information was
handed to Hilary by his wife at breakfast. The blood mounted slowly in
his cheeks. Bianca's eyes fastened themselves on that flush. Whether
or no--as philosophers say--little things are all big with the past,
of whose chain they are the latest links, they frequently produce what
apparently are great results.

The marital relations of Hilary and his wife, which till then had been
those of, at all events, formal conjugality, changed from that moment.
After ten o'clock at night their lives became as separate as though
they lived in different houses. And this change came about without
expostulations, reproach, or explanation, just by the turning of a key;
and even this was the merest symbol, employed once only, to save the
ungracefulness of words. Such a hint was quite enough for a man like
Hilary, whose delicacy, sense of the ridiculous, and peculiar faculty
of starting back and retiring into himself, put the need of anything
further out of the question. Both must have felt, too, that there was
nothing that could be explained. An anonymous double entendre was not
precisely evidence on which to found a rupture of the marital tie. The
trouble was so much deeper than that--the throbbing of a woman's wounded
self-esteem, of the feeling that she was no longer loved, which had long
cried out for revenge.

One morning in the middle of the week after this incident the innocent
author of it presented herself in Hilary's study, and, standing in her
peculiar patient attitude, made her little statements. As usual, they
were very little ones; as usual, she seemed helpless, and suggested a
child with a sore finger. She had no other work; she owed the week's
rent; she did not know what would happen to her; Mrs. Dallison did not
want her any more; she could not tell what she had done! The picture was
finished, she knew, but Mrs. Dallison had said she was going to paint
her again in another picture....

Hilary did not reply.

“....That old gentleman, Mr.--Mr. Stone, had been to see her. He wanted
her to come and copy out his book for two hours a day, from four to six,
at a shilling an hour. Ought she to come, please? He said his book would
take him years.”

Before answering her Hilary stood for a full minute staring at the fire.
The little model stole a look at him. He suddenly turned and faced her.
His glance was evidently disconcerting to the girl. It was, indeed,
a critical and dubious look, such as he might have bent on a folio of
doubtful origin.

“Don't you think,” he said at last, “that it would be much better for
you to go back into the country?”

The little model shook her head vehemently.

“Oh no!”

“Well, but why not? This is a most unsatisfactory sort of life.”

The girl stole another look at him, then said sullenly:

“I can't go back there.”

“What is it? Aren't your people nice to you?”

She grew red.

“No; and I don't want to go”; then, evidently seeing from Hilary's face
that his delicacy forbade his questioning her further, she brightened
up, and murmured: “The old gentleman said it would make me independent.”

“Well,” replied Hilary, with a shrug, “you'd better take his offer.”

She kept turning her face back as she went down the path, as though to
show her gratitude. And presently, looking up from his manuscript,
he saw her face still at the railings, peering through a lilac bush.
Suddenly she skipped, like a child let out of school. Hilary got up,
perturbed. The sight of that skipping was like the rays of a lantern
turned on the dark street of another human being's life. It revealed,
as in a flash, the loneliness of this child, without money and without
friends, in the midst of this great town.

The months of January, February, March passed, and the little model came
daily to copy the “Book of Universal Brotherhood.”

Mr. Stone's room, for which he insisted on paying rent, was never
entered by a servant. It was on the ground-floor, and anyone passing the
door between the hours of four and six could hear him dictating slowly,
pausing now and then to spell a word. In these two hours it appeared to
be his custom to read out, for fair copying, the labours of the other
seven.

At five o'clock there was invariably a sound of plates and cups, and
out of it the little model's voice would rise, matter-of-fact, soft,
monotoned, making little statements; and in turn Mr. Stone's, also
making statements which clearly lacked cohesion with those of his young
friend. On one occasion, the door being open, Hilary heard distinctly
the following conversation:

The LITTLE MODEL: “Mr. Creed says he was a butler. He's got an ugly
nose.” (A pause.)

Mr. STONE: “In those days men were absorbed in thinking of their
individualities. Their occupations seemed to them important---”

The LITTLE MODEL: “Mr. Creed says his savings were all swallowed up by
illness.”

Mr. STONE: “---it was not so.”

The LITTLE MODEL: “Mr. Creed says he was always brought up to go to
church.”

Mr. STONE (suddenly): “There has been no church worth going to since A.
D. 700.”

The LITTLE MODEL: “But he doesn't go.”

And with a flying glance through the just open door Hilary saw her
holding bread-and-butter with inky fingers, her lips a little parted,
expecting the next bite, and her eyes fixed curiously on Mr. Stone,
whose transparent hand held a teacup, and whose eyes were immovably
fixed on distance.

It was one day in April that Mr. Stone, heralded by the scent of Harris
tweed and baked potatoes which habitually encircled him, appeared at
five o'clock in Hilary's study doorway.

“She has not come,” he said.

Hilary laid down his pen. It was the first real Spring day.

“Will you come for a walk with me, sir, instead?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Mr. Stone.

They walked out into Kensington Gardens, Hilary with his head rather
bent towards the ground, and Mr. Stone, with eyes fixed on his far
thoughts, slightly poking forward his silver beard.

In their favourite firmaments the stars of crocuses and daffodils
were shining. Almost every tree had its pigeon cooing, every bush its
blackbird in full song. And on the paths were babies in perambulators.
These were their happy hunting-grounds, and here they came each day to
watch from a safe distance the little dirty girls sitting on the grass
nursing little dirty boys, to listen to the ceaseless chatter of these
common urchins, and learn to deal with the great problem of the lowest
classes. And babies sat in their perambulators, thinking and sucking
india-rubber tubes. Dogs went before them, and nursemaids followed
after.

The spirit of colour was flying in the distant trees, swathing them with
brownish-purple haze; the sky was saffroned by dying sunlight. It was
such a day as brings a longing to the heart, like that which the moon
brings to the hearts of children.

Mr. Stone and Hilary sat down in the Broad Walk.

“Elm-trees!” said Mr. Stone. “It is not known when they assumed their
present shape. They have one universal soul. It is the same with man.”
 He ceased, and Hilary looked round uneasily. They were alone on the
bench.

Mr. Stone's voice rose again. “Their form and balance is their single
soul; they have preserved it from century to century. This is all they
live for. In those days”--his voice sank; he had plainly forgotten that
he was not alone--“when men had no universal conceptions, they would
have done well to look at the trees. Instead of fostering a number of
little souls on the pabulum of varying theories of future life, they
should have been concerned to improve their present shapes, and thus to
dignify man's single soul.”

“Elms were always considered dangerous trees, I believe,” said Hilary.

Mr. Stone turned, and, seeing his son-in-law beside him, asked:

“You spoke to me, I think?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Stone said wistfully:

“Shall we walk?”

They rose from the bench and walked on....

The explanation of the little model's absence was thus stated by herself
to Hilary: “I had an appointment.”

“More work?”

“A friend of Mr. French.”

“Yes--who?”

“Mr. Lennard. He's a sculptor; he's got a studio in Chelsea. He wants me
to pose to him.”

“Ah!”

She stole a glance at Hilary, and hung her head.

Hilary turned to the window. “You know what posing to a sculptor means,
of course?”

The little model's voice sounded behind him, matter-of-fact as ever: “He
said I was just the figure he was looking for.”

Hilary continued to stare through the window. “I thought you didn't mean
to begin standing for the nude.”

“I don't want to stay poor always.”

Hilary turned round at the strange tone of these unexpected words.

The girl was in a streak of sunlight; her pale cheeks flushed; her pale,
half-opened lips red; her eyes, in their setting of short black lashes,
wide and mutinous; her young round bosom heaving as if she had been
running.

“I don't want to go on copying books all my life.”

“Oh, very well.”

“Mr. Dallison! I didn't mean that--I didn't really! I want to do what
you tell me to do--I do!”

Hilary stood contemplating her with the dubious, critical look, as
though asking: “What is there behind you? Are you really a genuine
edition, or what?” which had so disconcerted her before. At last he
said: “You must do just as you like. I never advise anybody.”

“But you don't want me to--I know you don't. Of course, if you don't
want me to, then it'll be a pleasure not to!”

Hilary smiled.

“Don't you like copying for Mr. Stone?”

The little model made a face. “I like Mr. Stone--he's such a funny old
gentleman.”

“That is the general opinion,” answered Hilary. “But Mr. Stone, you
know, thinks that we are funny.”

The little model smiled faintly, too; the streak of sunlight had slanted
past her, and, standing there behind its glamour and million floating
specks of gold-dust, she looked for the moment like the young Shade of
Spring, watching with expectancy for what the year would bring her.

With the words “I am ready,” spoken from the doorway, Mr. Stone
interrupted further colloquy....

But though the girl's position in the household had, to all seeming,
become established, now and then some little incident--straws blowing
down the wind--showed feelings at work beneath the family's apparent
friendliness, beneath that tentative and almost apologetic manner
towards the poor or helpless, which marks out those who own what Hilary
had called the “social conscience.” Only three days, indeed, before
he sat in his brown study, meditating beneath the bust of Socrates,
Cecilia, coming to lunch, had let fall this remark:

“Of course, I know nobody can read his handwriting; but I can't think
why father doesn't dictate to a typist, instead of to that little girl.
She could go twice the pace!”

Blanca's answer, deferred for a few seconds, was:

“Hilary perhaps knows.”

“Do you dislike her coming here?” asked Hilary.

“Not particularly. Why?”

“I thought from your tone you did.”

“I don't dislike her coming here for that purpose.”

“Does she come for any other?”

Cecilia, dropping her quick glance to her fork, said just a little
hastily: “Father is extraordinary, of course.”

But the next three days Hilary was out in the afternoon when the little
model came.

This, then, was the other reason, on the morning of the first of May,
which made him not averse to go and visit Mrs. Hughs in Hound Street,
Kensington.




CHAPTER VI

FIRST PILGRIMAGE TO HOUND STREET

Hilary and his little bulldog entered Hound Street from its eastern
end. It was a grey street of three-storied houses, all in one style of
architecture. Nearly all their doors were open, and on the doorsteps
babes and children were enjoying Easter holidays. They sat in apathy,
varied by sudden little slaps and bursts of noise. Nearly all were
dirty; some had whole boots, some half boots, and two or three had none.
In the gutters more children were at play; their shrill tongues and
febrile movements gave Hilary the feeling that their “caste” exacted of
them a profession of this faith: “To-day we live; to-morrow--if there be
one--will be like to-day.”

He had unconsciously chosen the very centre of the street to walk in,
and Miranda, who had never in her life demeaned herself to this extent,
ran at his heels, turning up her eyes, as though to say: 'One thing I
make a point of--no dog must speak to me!'

Fortunately, there were no dogs; but there were many cats, and these
cats were thin.

Through the upper windows of the houses Hilary had glimpses of women in
poor habiliments doing various kinds of work, but stopping now and then
to gaze into the street. He walked to the end, where a wall stopped him,
and, still in the centre of the road, he walked the whole length back.
The children stared at his tall figure with indifference; they evidently
felt that he was not of those who, like themselves, had no to-morrow.

No. 1, Hound Street, abutting on the garden of a house of better class,
was distinctly the show building of the street. The door, however, was
not closed, and pulling the remnant of a bell, Hilary walked in.

The first thing that he noticed was a smell; it was not precisely bad,
but it might have been better. It was a smell of walls and washing,
varied rather vaguely by red herrings. The second thing he noticed was
his moonlight bulldog, who stood on the doorstep eyeing a tiny sandy
cat. This very little cat, whose back was arched with fury, he was
obliged to chase away before his bulldog would come in. The third thing
he noticed was a lame woman of short stature, standing in the doorway
of a room. Her face, with big cheek-bones, and wide-open, light grey,
dark-lashed eyes, was broad and patient; she rested her lame leg by
holding to the handle of the door.

“I dunno if you'll find anyone upstairs. I'd go and ask, but my leg's
lame.”

“So I see,” said Hilary; “I'm sorry.”

The woman sighed: “Been like that these five years”; and turned back
into her room.

“Is there nothing to be done for it?”

“Well, I did think so once,” replied the woman, “but they say the bone's
diseased; I neglected it at the start.”

“Oh dear!”

“We hadn't the time to give to it,” the woman said defensively, retiring
into a room so full of china cups, photographs, coloured prints, waxwork
fruits, and other ornaments, that there seemed no room for the enormous
bed.

Wishing her good-morning, Hilary began to mount the stairs. On the first
floor he paused. Here, in the back room, the little model lived.

He looked around him. The paper on the passage walls was of a dingy
orange colour, the blind of the window torn, and still pursuing him,
pervading everything, was the scent of walls and washing and red
herrings. There came on him a sickness, a sort of spiritual revolt. To
live here, to pass up these stairs, between these dingy, bilious walls,
on this dirty carpet, with this--ugh! every day; twice, four times, six
times, who knew how many times a day! And that sense, the first to be
attracted or revolted, the first to become fastidious with the culture
of the body, the last to be expelled from the temple of the pure-spirit;
that sense to whose refinement all breeding and all education is
devoted; that sense which, ever an inch at least in front of man, is
able to retard the development of nations, and paralyse all social
schemes--this Sense of Smell awakened within him the centuries of his
gentility, the ghosts of all those Dallisons who, for three hundred
years and more, had served Church or State. It revived the souls of
scents he was accustomed to, and with them, subtly mingled, the whole
live fabric of aestheticism, woven in fresh air and laid in lavender.
It roused the simple, non-extravagant demand of perfect cleanliness. And
though he knew that chemists would have certified the composition of
his blood to be the same as that of the dwellers in this house, and that
this smell, composed of walls and washing and red herrings, was really
rather healthy, he stood frowning fixedly at the girl's door, and the
memory of his young niece's delicately wrinkled nose as she described
the house rose before him. He went on upstairs, followed by his
moonlight bulldog.

Hilary's tall thin figure appearing in the open doorway of the top-floor
front, his kind and worried face, and the pale agate eyes of the little
bulldog peeping through his legs, were witnessed by nothing but a baby,
who was sitting in a wooden box in the centre of the room. This baby,
who was very like a piece of putty to which Nature had by some accident
fitted two movable black eyes, was clothed in a woman's knitted
undervest, spreading beyond his feet and hands, so that nothing but
his head was visible. This vest divided him from the wooden shavings on
which he sat, and, since he had not yet attained the art of rising
to his feet, the box divided him from contacts of all other kinds. As
completely isolated from his kingdom as a Czar of all the Russias, he
was doing nothing. In this realm there was a dingy bed, two chairs, and
a washstand, with one lame leg, supported by an aged footstool. Clothes
and garments were hanging on nails, pans lay about the hearth, a
sewing-machine stood on a bare deal table. Over the bed was hung an
oleograph, from a Christmas supplement, of the birth of Jesus, and above
it a bayonet, under which was printed in an illiterate hand on a rough
scroll of paper: “Gave three of em what for at Elandslaagte. S. Hughs.”
 Some photographs adorned the walls, and two drooping ferns stood on the
window-ledge. The room withal had a sort of desperate tidiness; in a
large cupboard, slightly open, could be seen stowed all that must not
see the light of day. The window of the baby's kingdom was tightly
closed; the scent was the scent of walls and washing and red herrings,
and--of other things.

Hilary looked at the baby, and the baby looked at him. The eyes of that
tiny scrap of grey humanity seemed saying:

'You are not my mother, I believe?'

He stooped down and touched its cheek. The baby blinked its black eyes
once.

'No,' it seemed, to say again, 'you are not my mother.'

A lump rose in Hilary's throat; he turned and went downstairs. Pausing
outside the little model's door, he knocked, and, receiving no answer,
turned the handle. The little square room was empty; it was neat and
clean enough, with a pink-flowered paper of comparatively modern date.
Through its open window could be seen a pear-tree in full bloom. Hilary
shut the door again with care, ashamed of having opened it.

On the half-landing, staring up at him with black eyes like the baby's,
was a man of medium height and active build, whose short face, with
broad cheekbones, cropped dark hair, straight nose, and little black
moustache, was burnt a dark dun colour. He was dressed in the uniform
of those who sweep the streets--a loose blue blouse, and trousers tucked
into boots reaching half-way up his calves; he held a peaked cap in his
hand.

After some seconds of mutual admiration, Hilary said:

“Mr. Hughs, I believe?” Yes.

“I've been up to see your wife.”

“Have you?”

“You know me, I suppose?”

“Yes, I know you.”

“Unfortunately, there's only your baby at home.”

Hughs motioned with his cap towards the little model's room. “I thought
perhaps you'd been to see her,” he said. His black eyes smouldered;
there was more than class resentment in the expression of his face.

Flushing slightly and giving him a keen look, Hilary passed down the
stairs without replying. But Miranda had not followed. She stood, with
one paw delicately held up above the topmost step.

'I don't know this man,' she seemed to say, 'and I don't like his
looks.'

Hughs grinned. “I never hurt a dumb animal,” he said; “come on, tykie!”

Stimulated by a word she had never thought to hear, Miranda descended
rapidly.

'He meant that for impudence,' thought Hilary as he walked away.

“Westminister, sir? Oh dear!”

A skinny trembling hand was offering him a greenish newspaper.

“Terrible cold wind for the time o' year!”

A very aged man in black-rimmed spectacles, with a distended nose
and long upper lip and chin, was tentatively fumbling out change for
sixpence.

“I seem to know your face,” said Hilary.

“Oh dear, yes. You deals with this 'ere shop--the tobacco department.
I've often seen you when you've a-been agoin' in. Sometimes you has
the Pell Mell off o' this man here.” He jerked his head a trifle to
the left, where a younger man was standing armed with a sheaf of whiter
papers. In that gesture were years of envy, heart-burning, and sense of
wrong. 'That's my paper,' it seemed to say, 'by all the rights of man;
and that low-class fellow sellin' it, takin' away my profits!'

“I sells this 'ere Westminister. I reads it on Sundays--it's a
gentleman's paper, 'igh-class paper--notwithstandin' of its politics.
But, Lor', sir, with this 'ere man a-sellin' the Pell Mell”--lowering
his voice, he invited Hilary to confidence--“so many o' the gentry takes
that; an' there ain't too many o' the gentry about 'ere--I mean, not o'
the real gentry--that I can afford to 'ave 'em took away from me.”

Hilary, who had stopped to listen out of delicacy, had a flash of
recollection. “You live in Hound Street?”

The old man answered eagerly: “Oh dear! Yes, sir--No. 1, name of Creed.
You're the gentleman where the young person goes for to copy of a book!”

“It's not my book she copies.”

“Oh no; it's an old gentleman; I know 'im. He come an' see me once.
He come in one Sunday morning. 'Here's a pound o' tobacca for you!' 'e
says. 'You was a butler,' 'e says. 'Butlers!' 'e says, 'there'll be no
butlers in fifty years.' An' out 'e goes. Not quite”--he put a shaky
hand up to his head--“not quite--oh dear!”

“Some people called Hughs live in your house, I think?”

“I rents my room off o' them. A lady was a-speakin' to me yesterday
about 'em; that's not your lady, I suppose, sir?”

His eyes seemed to apostrophise Hilary's hat, which was of soft felt:
'Yes, yes--I've seen your sort a-stayin' about in the best houses.
They has you down because of your learnin'; and quite the manners of a
gentleman you've got.'

“My wife's sister, I expect.”

“Oh dear! She often has a paper off o' me. A real lady--not one o'
these”--again he invited Hilary to confidence--“you know what I
mean, sir--that buys their things a' ready-made at these 'ere large
establishments. Oh, I know her well.”

“The old gentleman who visited you is her father.”

“Is he? Oh dear!” The old butler was silent, evidently puzzled.

Hilary's eyebrows began to execute those intricate manoeuvres which
always indicated that he was about to tax his delicacy.

“How-how does Hughs treat the little girl who lives in the next room to
you?”

The old butler replied in a rather gloomy tone:

“She takes my advice, and don't 'ave nothin' to say to 'im. Dreadful
foreign-lookin' man 'e is. Wherever 'e was brought up I can't think!”

“A soldier, wasn't he?”

“So he says. He's one o' these that works for the Vestry; an' then 'e'll
go an' get upon the drink, an' when that sets 'im off, it seems as
if there wasn't no respect for nothing in 'im; he goes on against the
gentry, and the Church, and every sort of institution. I never met no
soldiers like him. Dreadful foreign--Welsh, they tell me.”

“What do you think of the street you're living in?”

“I keeps myself to myself; low class o' street it is; dreadful low class
o' person there--no self-respect about 'em.”

“Ah!” said Hilary.

“These little 'ouses, they get into the hands o' little men, and they
don't care so long as they makes their rent out o' them. They can't help
themselves--low class o' man like that; 'e's got to do the best 'e can
for 'imself. They say there's thousands o' these 'ouses all over London.
There's some that's for pullin' of 'em down, but that's talkin' rubbish;
where are you goin' to get the money for to do it? These 'ere little
men, they can't afford not even to put a paper on the walls, and the big
ground landlords--you can't expect them to know what's happenin' behind
their backs. There's some ignorant fellers like this Hughs talks a
lot o' wild nonsense about the duty o' ground landlords; but you can't
expect the real gentry to look into these sort o' things. They've got
their estates down in the country. I've lived with them, and of course I
know.”

The little bulldog, incommoded by the passers-by, now took the
opportunity of beating with her tail against the old butler's legs.

“Oh dear! what's this? He don't bite, do 'e? Good Sambo!”

Miranda sought her master's eye at once. 'You see what happens to her if
a lady loiters in the streets,' she seemed to say.

“It must be hard standing about here all day, after the life you've
led,” said Hilary.

“I mustn't complain; it's been the salvation o' me.”

“Do you get shelter?”

Again the old butler seemed to take him into confidence.

“Sometimes of a wet night they lets me stand up in the archway there;
they know I'm respectable. 'T wouldn't never do for that man”--he nodded
at his rival--“or any of them boys to get standin' there, obstructin' of
the traffic.”

“I wanted to ask you, Mr. Creed, is there anything to be done for Mrs.
Hughs?”

The frail old body quivered with the vindictive force of his answer.

“Accordin' to what she says, if I'm a-to believe 'er, I'd have him up
before the magistrate, sure as my name's Creed, an' get a separation,
an' I wouldn't never live with 'im again: that's what she ought to do.
An' if he come to go for her after that, I'd have 'im in prison, if 'e
killed me first! I've no patience with a low class o' man like that! He
insulted of me this morning.”

“Prison's a dreadful remedy,” murmured Hilary.

The old butler answered stoutly: “There ain't but one way o' treatin'
them low fellers--ketch hold o' them until they holler!”

Hilary was about to reply when he found himself alone. At the edge of
the pavement some yards away, Creed, his face upraised to heaven, was
embracing with all his force the second edition of the Westminster
Gazette, which had been thrown him from a cart.

'Well,' thought Hilary, walking on, 'you know your own mind, anyway!'

And trotting by his side, with her jaw set very firm, his little bulldog
looked up above her eyes, and seemed to say: 'It was time we left that
man of action!'




CHAPTER VII

CECILIA'S SCATTERED THOUGHTS

In her morning room Mrs. Stephen Dallison sat at an old oak bureau
collecting her scattered thoughts. They lay about on pieces of stamped
notepaper, beginning “Dear Cecilia,” or “Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace
requests,” or on bits of pasteboard headed by the names of theatres,
galleries, or concert-halls; or, again, on paper of not quite so good a
quality, commencing, “Dear Friend,” and ending with a single well-known
name like “Wessex,” so that no suspicion should attach to the appeal
contained between the two. She had before her also sheets of her own
writing-paper, headed “76, The Old Square, Kensington,” and two little
books. One of these was bound in marbleised paper, and on it written:
“Please keep this book in safety”; across the other, cased in the
skin of some small animal deceased, was inscribed the solitary word
“Engagements.”

Cecilia had on a Persian-green silk blouse with sleeves that would have
hidden her slim hands, but for silver buttons made in the likeness of
little roses at her wrists; on her brow was a faint frown, as though
she were wondering what her thoughts were all about. She sat there every
morning catching those thoughts, and placing them in one or other of
her little books. Only by thus working hard could she keep herself, her
husband, and daughter, in due touch with all the different movements
going on. And that the touch might be as due as possible, she had a
little headache nearly every day. For the dread of letting slip one
movement, or of being too much taken with another, was very real to her;
there were so many people who were interesting, so many sympathies of
hers and Stephen's which she desired to cultivate, that it was a matter
of the utmost import not to cultivate any single one too much. Then,
too, the duty of remaining feminine with all this going forward taxed
her constitution. She sometimes thought enviously of the splendid
isolation now enjoyed by Blanca, of which some subtle instinct, rather
than definite knowledge, had informed her; but not often, for she was a
loyal little person, to whom Stephen and his comforts were of the first
moment. And though she worried somewhat because her thoughts WOULD come
by every post, she did not worry very much--hardly more than the Persian
kitten on her lap, who also sat for hours trying to catch her tail, with
a line between her eyes, and two small hollows in her cheeks.

When she had at last decided what concerts she would be obliged to miss,
paid her subscription to the League for the Suppression of Tinned Milk,
and accepted an invitation to watch a man fall from a balloon, she
paused. Then, dipping her pen in ink, she wrote as follows:

“Mrs. Stephen Dallison would be glad to have the blue dress ordered by
her yesterday sent home at once without alteration.--Messrs. Rose and
Thorn, High Street, Kensington.”

Ringing the bell, she thought: 'It will be a job for Mrs. Hughs, poor
thing. I believe she'll do it quite as well as Rose and Thorn.'--“Would
you please ask Mrs. Hughs to come to me?--Oh, is that you, Mrs. Hughs?
Come in.”

The seamstress, who had advanced into the middle of the room, stood with
her worn hands against her sides, and no sign of life but the liquid
patience in her large brown eyes. She was an enigmatic figure. Her
presence always roused a sort of irritation in Cecilia, as if she had
been suddenly confronted with what might possibly have been herself if
certain little accidents had omitted to occur. She was so conscious that
she ought to sympathise, so anxious to show that there was no barrier
between them, so eager to be all she ought to be, that her voice almost
purred.

“Are you Getting on with the curtains, Mrs. Hughs?”

“Yes, m'm, thank you, m'm.”

“I shall have another job for you to-morrow--altering a dress. Can you
come?”

“Yes, m'm, thank you, m'm.”

“Is the baby well?”

“Yes, m'm, thank you, m'm.”

There was a silence.

'It's no good talking of her domestic matters,' thought Cecilia; 'not
that I don't care!' But the silence getting on her nerves, she said
quickly: “Is your husband behaving himself better?”

There was no answer; Cecilia saw a tear trickle slowly down the woman's
cheek.

'Oh dear, oh dear,' she thought; 'poor thing! I'm in for it!'

Mrs. Hughs' whispering voice began: “He's behaving himself dreadful,
m'm. I was going to speak to you. It's ever since that young girl”--her
face hardened--“come to live down in my room there; he seem to--he seem
to--just do nothing but neglect me.”

Cecilia's heart gave the little pleasurable flutter which the heart must
feel at the love dramas of other people, however painful.

“You mean the little model?” she said.

The seamstress answered in an agitated voice: “I don't want to speak
against her, but she's put a spell on him, that's what she has; he don't
seem able to do nothing but talk of her, and hang about her room. It was
that troubling me when I saw you the other day. And ever since yesterday
midday, when Mr. Hilary came--he's been talking that wild--and he pushed
me--and--and---” Her lips ceased to form articulate words, but, since it
was not etiquette to cry before her superiors, she used them to swallow
down her tears, and something in her lean throat moved up and down.

At the mention of Hilary's name the pleasurable sensation in Cecilia had
undergone a change. She felt curiosity, fear, offence.

“I don't quite understand you,” she said.

The seamstress plaited at her frock. “Of course, I can't help the way
he talks, m'm. I'm sure I don't like to repeat the wicked things he says
about Mr. Hilary. It seems as if he were out of his mind when he gets
talkin' about that young girl.”

The tone of those last three words was almost fierce.

Cecilia was on the point of saying: 'That will do, please; I want
to hear no more.' But her curiosity and queer subtle fear forced her
instead to repeat: “I don't understand. Do you mean he insinuates that
Mr. Hilary has anything to do with--with this girl, or what?” And she
thought: 'I'll stop that, at any rate.'

The seamstress's face was distorted by her efforts to control her voice.

“I tell him he's wicked to say such things, m'm, and Mr. Hilary such a
kind gentleman. And what business is it of his, I say, that's got a wife
and children of his own? I've seen him in the street, I've watched him
hanging about Mrs. Hilary's house when I've been working there waiting
for that girl, and following her--home---” Again her lips refused to do
service, except in the swallowing of her tears.

Cecilia thought: 'I must tell Stephen at once. That man is dangerous.'
A spasm gripped her heart, usually so warm and snug; vague feelings she
had already entertained presented themselves now with startling force;
she seemed to see the face of sordid life staring at the family of
Dallison. Mrs. Hughs' voice, which did not dare to break, resumed:

“I've said to him: 'Whatever are you thinking of? And after Mrs.
Hilary's been so kind to me! But he's like a madman when he's in liquor,
and he says he'll go to Mrs. Hilary---”

“Go to my sister? What about? The ruffian!”

At hearing her husband called a ruffian by another woman the shadow of
resentment passed across Mrs. Hughs' face, leaving it quivering and red.
The conversation had already made a strange difference in the manner of
these two women to each other. It was as though each now knew exactly
how much sympathy and confidence could be expected of the other, as
though life had suddenly sucked up the mist, and shown them standing one
on either side of a deep trench. In Mrs. Hughs' eyes there was the look
of those who have long discovered that they must not answer back for
fear of losing what little ground they have to stand on; and Cecilia's
eyes were cold and watchful. 'I sympathise,' they seemed to say, 'I
sympathise; but you must please understand that you cannot expect
sympathy if your affairs compromise the members of my family.' Her,
chief thought now was to be relieved of the company of this woman,
who had been betrayed into showing what lay beneath her dumb, stubborn
patience. It was not callousness, but the natural result of being
fluttered. Her heart was like a bird agitated in its gilt-wire cage by
the contemplation of a distant cat. She did not, however, lose her sense
of what was practical, but said calmly: “Your husband was wounded in
South Africa, you told me? It looks as if he wasn't quite.... I think
you should have a doctor!”

The seamstress's answer, slow and matter-of-fact, was worse than her
emotion.

“No, m'm, he isn't mad.”

Crossing to the hearth-whose Persian-blue tiling had taken her so
long to find--Cecilia stood beneath a reproduction of Botticelli's
“Primavera,” and looked doubtfully at Mrs. Hughs. The Persian kitten,
sleepy and disturbed on the bosom of her blouse, gazed up into her face.
'Consider me,' it seemed to say; 'I am worth consideration; I am of a
piece with you, and everything round you. We are both elegant and rather
slender; we both love warmth and kittens; we both dislike interference
with our fur. You took a long time to buy me, so as to get me perfect.
You see that woman over there! I sat on her lap this morning while she
was sewing your curtains. She has no right in here; she's not what she
seems; she can bite and scratch, I know; her lap is skinny; she drops
water from her eyes. She made me wet all down my back. Be careful what
you're doing, or she'll make you wet down yours!'

All that was like the little Persian kitten within Cecilia--cosiness
and love of pretty things, attachment to her own abode with its
high-art lining, love for her mate and her own kitten, Thyme, dread of
disturbance--all made her long to push this woman from the room; this
woman with the skimpy figure, and eyes that, for all their patience, had
in them something virago-like; this woman who carried about with her an
atmosphere of sordid grief, of squalid menaces, and scandal. She
longed all the more because it could well be seen from the seamstress's
helpless attitude that she too would have liked an easy life. To dwell
on things like this was to feel more than thirty-eight!

Cecilia had no pocket, Providence having removed it now for some time
past, but from her little bag she drew forth the two essentials of
gentility. Taking her nose, which she feared was shining, gently within
one, she fumbled in the other. And again she looked doubtfully at Mrs.
Hughs. Her heart said: 'Give the poor woman half a sovereign; it might
comfort her!' But her brain said: 'I owe her four-and-six; after what
she's just been saying about her husband and that girl and Hilary, it
mayn't be safe to give her more.' She held out two half-crowns, and had
an inspiration: “I shall mention to my sister what you've said; you can
tell your husband that!”

No sooner had she said this, however, than she saw, from a little smile
devoid of merriment and quickly extinguished, that Mrs. Hughs did not
believe she would do anything of the kind; from which she concluded that
the seamstress was convinced of Hilary's interest in the little model.
She said hastily:

“You can go now, Mrs. Hughs.”

Mrs. Hughs went, making no noise or sign of any sort.

Cecilia returned to her scattered thoughts. They lay there still, with
a gleam of sun from the low window smearing their importance; she felt
somehow that it did not now matter very much whether she and Stephen, in
the interests of science, saw that man fall from his balloon, or, in
the interests of art, heard Herr von Kraaffe sing his Polish songs; she
experienced, too, almost a revulsion in favour of tinned milk. After
meditatively tearing up her note to Messrs. Rose and Thorn, she lowered
the bureau lid and left the room.

Mounting the stairs, whose old oak banisters on either side were a real
joy, she felt she was stupid to let vague, sordid rumours, which,
after all, affected her but indirectly, disturb her morning's work. And
entering Stephen's dressing-room she stood looking at his boots.

Inside each one of them was a wooden soul; none had any creases, none
had any holes. The moment they wore out, their wooden souls were taken
from them and their bodies given to the poor, whilst--in accordance with
that theory, to hear a course of lectures on which a scattered thought
was even now inviting her--the wooden souls migrated instantly to other
leathern bodies.

Looking at that polished row of boots, Cecilia felt lonely and
unsatisfied. Stephen worked in the Law Courts, Thyme worked at Art;
both were doing something definite. She alone, it seemed, had to wait at
home, and order dinner, answer letters, shop, pay calls, and do a dozen
things that failed to stop her thoughts from dwelling on that woman's
tale. She was not often conscious of the nature of her life, so like the
lives of many hundred women in this London, which she said she could
not stand, but which she stood very well. As a rule, with practical good
sense, she kept her doubting eyes fixed friendlily on every little
phase in turn, enjoying well enough fitting the Chinese puzzle of her
scattered thoughts, setting out on each small adventure with a certain
cautious zest, and taking Stephen with her as far as he allowed. This
last year or so, now that Thyme was a grown girl, she had felt at once
a loss of purpose and a gain of liberty. She hardly knew whether to be
glad or sorry. It freed her for the tasting of more things, more people,
and more Stephen; but it left a little void in her heart, a little
soreness round it. What would Thyme think if she heard this story about
her uncle? The thought started a whole train of doubts that had of late
beset her. Was her little daughter going to turn out like herself? If
not, why not? Stephen joked about his daughter's skirts, her hockey, her
friendship with young men. He joked about the way Thyme refused to let
him joke about her art or about her interest in “the people.” His joking
was a source of irritation to Cecilia. For, by woman's instinct rather
than by any reasoning process, she was conscious of a disconcerting
change. Amongst the people she knew, young men were not now attracted by
girls as they had been in her young days. There was a kind of cool and
friendly matter-of-factness in the way they treated them, a sort of
almost scientific playfulness. And Cecilia felt uneasy as to how far
this was to go. She seemed left behind. If young people were really
becoming serious, if youths no longer cared about the colour of Thyme's
eyes, or dress, or hair, what would there be left to care for--that
is, up to the point of definite relationship? Not that she wanted her
daughter to be married. It would be time enough to think of that when
she was twenty-five. But her own experiences had been so different. She
had spent so many youthful hours in wondering about men, had seen so
many men cast furtive looks at her; and now there did not seem in men
or girls anything left worth the other's while to wonder or look furtive
about. She was not of a philosophic turn of mind, and had attached
no deep meaning to Stephen's jest--“If young people will reveal their
ankles, they'll soon have no ankles to reveal.”

To Cecilia the extinction of the race seemed threatened; in reality her
species of the race alone was vanishing, which to her, of course,
was very much the same disaster. With her eyes on Stephen's boots she
thought: 'How shall I prevent what I've heard from coming to Bianca's
ears? I know how she would take it! How shall I prevent Thyme's hearing?
I'm sure I don't know what the effect would be on her! I must speak to
Stephen. He's so fond of Hilary.'

And, turning away from Stephen's boots, she mused: 'Of course it's
nonsense. Hilary's much too--too nice, too fastidious, to be more than
just interested; but he's so kind he might easily put himself in a false
position. And--it's ugly nonsense! B. can be so disagreeable; even now
she's not--on terms with him!' And suddenly the thought of Mr. Purcey
leaped into her mind--Mr. Purcey, who, as Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace had
declared, was not even conscious that there was a problem of the poor.
To think of him seemed somehow at that moment comforting, like rolling
oneself in a blanket against a draught. Passing into her room, she
opened her wardrobe door.

'Bother the woman!' she thought. 'I do want that gentian dress got
ready, but now I simply can't give it to her to do.'




CHAPTER VIII

THE SINGLE MIND OF MR. STONE

Since in the flutter of her spirit caused by the words of Mrs. Hughs,
Cecilia felt she must do something, she decided to change her dress.

The furniture of the pretty room she shared with Stephen had not been
hastily assembled. Conscious, even fifteen years ago, when they moved
into this house, of the grave Philistinism of the upper classes, she
and Stephen had ever kept their duty to aestheticism green; and, in the
matter of their bed, had lain for two years on two little white affairs,
comfortable, but purely temporary, that they might give themselves a
chance. The chance had come at last--a bed in real keeping with the
period they had settled on, and going for twelve pounds. They had not
let it go, and now slept in it--not quite so comfortable, perhaps, but
comfortable enough, and conscious of duty done.

For fifteen years Cecilia had been furnishing her house; the process
approached completion. The only things remaining on her mind--apart,
that is, from Thyme's development and the condition of the people--were:
item, a copper lantern that would allow some light to pass its
framework; item, an old oak washstand not going back to Cromwell's time.
And now this third anxiety had come!

She was rather touching, as she stood before the wardrobe glass divested
of her bodice, with dimples of exertion in her thin white arms while she
hooked her skirt behind, and her greenish eyes troubled, so anxious to
do their best for everyone, and save risk of any sort. Having put on
a bramble-coloured frock, which laced across her breast with silver
lattice-work, and a hat (without feathers, so as to encourage birds)
fastened to her head with pins (bought to aid a novel school of
metal-work), she went to see what sort of day it was.

The window looked out at the back over some dreary streets, where the
wind was flinging light drifts of smoke athwart the sunlight. They had
chosen this room, not indeed for its view over the condition of the
people, but because of the sky effects at sunset, which were extremely
fine. For the first time, perhaps, Cecilia was conscious that a sample
of the class she was so interested in was exposed to view beneath her
nose. 'The Hughs live somewhere there,' she thought. 'After all I think
B. ought to know about that man. She might speak to father, and get
him to give up having the girl to copy for him--the whole thing's so
worrying.'

In pursuance of this thought, she lunched hastily, and went out, making
her way to Hilary's. With every step she became more uncertain. The fear
of meddling too much, of not meddling enough, of seeming meddlesome;
timidity at touching anything so awkward; distrust, even ignorance, of
her sister's character, which was like, yet so very unlike, her own;
a real itch to get the matter settled, so that nothing whatever should
come of it--all this she felt. She hurried, dawdled, finished the
adventure almost at a run, then told the servant not to announce her.
The vision of Bianca's eyes, while she listened to this tale, was
suddenly too much for Cecilia. She decided to pay a visit to her father
first.

Mr. Stone was writing, attired in his working dress--a thick brown
woollen gown, revealing his thin neck above the line of a blue shirt,
and tightly gathered round the waist with tasselled cord; the lower
portions of grey trousers were visible above woollen-slippered feet. His
hair straggled over his thin long ears. The window, wide open, admitted
an east wind; there was no fire. Cecilia shivered.

“Come in quickly,” said Mr. Stone. Turning to a big high desk of stained
deal which occupied the middle of one wall, he began methodically to
place the inkstand, a heavy paper-knife, a book, and stones of several
sizes, on his guttering sheets of manuscript.

Cecilia looked about her; she had not been inside her father's room for
several months. There was nothing in it but that desk, a camp bed in the
far corner (with blankets, but no sheets), a folding washstand, and a
narrow bookcase, the books in which Cecilia unconsciously told off on
the fingers of her memory. They never varied. On the top shelf the Bible
and the works of Plautus and Diderot; on the second from the top the
plays of Shakespeare in a blue edition; on the third from the bottom Don
Quixote, in four volumes, covered with brown paper; a green Milton; the
“Comedies of Aristophanes”; a leather book, partially burned, comparing
the philosophy of Epicurus with the philosophy of Spinoza; and in a
yellow binding Mark Twain's “Huckleberry Finn.” On the second from
the bottom was lighter literature: “The Iliad”; a “Life of Francis of
Assisi”; Speke's “Discovery of the Sources of the Nile”; the “Pickwick
Papers”; “Mr. Midshipman Easy”; The Verses of Theocritus, in a very
old translation; Renan's “Life of Christ”; and the “Autobiography of
Benvenuto Cellini.” The bottom shelf of all was full of books on natural
science.

The walls were whitewashed, and, as Cecilia knew, came off on anybody
who leaned against them. The floor was stained, and had no carpet. There
was a little gas cooking-stove, with cooking things ranged on it; a
small bare table; and one large cupboard. No draperies, no pictures,
no ornaments of any kind; but by the window an ancient golden leather
chair. Cecilia could never bear to sit in that oasis; its colour in this
wilderness was too precious to her spirit.

“It's an east wind, father; aren't you terribly cold without a fire?”

Mr. Stone came from his writing-desk, and stood so that light might fall
on a sheet of paper in his hand. Cecilia noted the scent that went about
with him of peat and baked potatoes. He spoke:

“Listen to this: 'In the condition of society, dignified in those
days with the name of civilisation, the only source of hope was
the persistence of the quality called courage. Amongst a thousand
nerve-destroying habits, amongst the dramshops, patent medicines, the
undigested chaos of inventions and discoveries, while hundreds were
prating in their pulpits of things believed in by a negligible fraction
of the population, and thousands writing down today what nobody would
want to read in two days' time; while men shut animals in cages, and
made bears jig to please their children, and all were striving one
against the other; while, in a word, like gnats above a stagnant pool on
a summer's evening, man danced up and down without the faintest notion
why--in this condition of affairs the quality of courage was alive.
It was the only fire within that gloomy valley.'” He stopped, though
evidently anxious to go on, because he had read the last word on that
sheet of paper. He moved towards the writing-desk. Cecilia said hastily:

“Do you mind if I shut the window, father?”

Mr. Stone made a movement of his head, and Cecilia saw that he held a
second sheet of paper in his hand. She rose, and, going towards him,
said:

“I want to talk to you, Dad!” Taking up the cord of his dressing-gown,
she pulled it by its tassel.

“Don't!” said Mr. Stone; “it secures my trousers.”

Cecilia dropped the cord. 'Father is really terrible!' she thought.

Mr. Stone, lifting the second sheet of paper, began again:

“'The reason, however, was not far to seek---”

Cecilia said desperately:

“It's about that girl who comes to copy for you.”

Mr. Stone lowered the sheet of paper, and stood, slightly curved from
head to foot; his ears moved as though he were about to lay them back;
his blue eyes, with little white spots of light alongside the tiny black
pupils, stared at his daughter.

Cecilia thought: 'He's listening now.'

She made haste. “Must you have her here? Can't you do without her?”

“Without whom?” said Mr. Stone.

“Without the girl who comes to copy for you.”

“Why?”

“For this very good reason---”

Mr. Stone dropped his eyes, and Cecilia saw that he had moved the sheet
of paper up as far as his waist.

“Does she copy better than any other girl could?” she asked hastily.

“No,” said Mr. Stone.

“Then, Father, I do wish, to please me, you'd get someone else. I know
what I'm talking about, and I---” Cecilia stopped; her father's lips and
eyes were moving; he was obviously reading to himself.

'I've no patience with him,' she thought; 'he thinks of nothing but his
wretched book.'

Aware of his daughter's silence, Mr. Stone let the sheet of paper sink,
and waited patiently again.

“What do you want, my dear?” he said.

“Oh, Father, do listen just a minute!”

“Yes, Yes.”

“It's about that girl who comes to copy for you. Is there any reason why
she should come instead of any other girl?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Stone.

“What reason?”

“Because she has no friends.”

So awkward a reply was not expected by Cecilia; she looked at the floor,
forced to search within her soul. Silence lasted several seconds; then
Mr. Stone's voice rose above a whisper:

“'The reason was not far to seek. Man, differentiated from the other
apes by his desire to know, was from the first obliged to steel himself
against the penalties of knowledge. Like animals subjected to the
rigours of an Arctic climate, and putting forth more fur with
each reduction in the temperature, man's hide of courage thickened
automatically to resist the spear-thrusts dealt him by his own insatiate
curiosity. In those days of which we speak, when undigested knowledge,
in a great invading horde, had swarmed all his defences, man, suffering
from a foul dyspepsia, with a nervous system in the latest stages of
exhaustion, and a reeling brain, survived by reason of his power to go
on making courage. Little heroic as (in the then general state of petty
competition) his deeds appeared to be, there never had yet been a time
when man in bulk was more courageous, for there never had yet been
a time when he had more need to be. Signs were not wanting that this
desperate state of things had caught the eyes of the community. A little
sect---'” Mr. Stone stopped; his eyes had again tumbled over the bottom
edge; he moved hurriedly towards the desk. Just as his hand removed a
stone and took up a third sheet, Cecilia cried out:

“Father!”

Mr. Stone stopped, and turned towards her. His daughter saw that he had
gone quite pink; her annoyance vanished.

“Father! About that girl---”

Mr. Stone seemed to reflect. “Yes, yes,” he said.

“I don't think Bianca likes her coming here.”

Mr. Stone passed his hand across his brow.

“Forgive me for reading to you, my dear,” he said; “it's a great relief
to me at times.”

Cecilia went close to him, and refrained with difficulty from taking up
the tasselled cord.

“Of course, dear,” she said: “I quite understand that.”

Mr. Stone looked full in her face, and before a gaze which seemed to go
through her and see things the other side, Cecilia dropped her eyes.

“It is strange,” he said, “how you came to be my daughter!”

To Cecilia, too, this had often seemed a problem.

“There is a great deal in atavism,” said Mr. Stone, “that we know
nothing of at present.”

Cecilia cried with heat, “I do wish you would attend a minute, Father;
it's really an important matter,” and she turned towards the window,
tears being very near her eyes.

The voice of Mr. Stone said humbly: “I will try, my dear.”

But Cecilia thought: 'I must give him a good lesson. He really is too
self-absorbed'; and she did not move, conveying by the posture of her
shoulders how gravely she was vexed.

She could see nursemaids wheeling babies towards the Gardens, and
noted their faces gazing, not at the babies, but, uppishly, at other
nursemaids, or, with a sort of cautious longing, at men who passed. How
selfish they looked! She felt a little glow of satisfaction that she was
making this thin and bent old man behind her conscious of his egoism.

'He will know better another time,' she thought. Suddenly she heard a
whistling, squeaking sound--it was Mr. Stone whispering the third page
of his manuscript:

“'---animated by some admirable sentiments, but whose doctrines--riddled
by the fact that life is but the change of form to form--were too
constricted for the evils they designed to remedy; this little sect, who
had as yet to learn the meaning of universal love, were making the most
strenuous efforts, in advance of the community at large, to understand
themselves. The necessary, movement which they voiced--reaction against
the high-tide of the fratricidal system then prevailing--was young, and
had the freshness and honesty of youth....'”

Without a word Cecilia turned round and hurried to the door. She saw her
father drop the sheet of paper; she saw his face, all pink and silver,
stooping after it; and remorse visited her anger.

In the corridor outside she was arrested by a noise. The uncertain light
of London halls fell there; on close inspection the sufferer was seen to
be Miranda, who, unable to decide whether she wanted to be in the garden
or the house, was seated beneath the hatrack snuffling to herself. On
seeing Cecilia she came out.

“What do you want, you little beast?”

Peering at her over the tops of her eyes, Miranda vaguely lifted a white
foot. 'Why ask me that?' she seemed to say. 'How am I to know? Are we
not all like this?'

Her conduct, coming at that moment, over-tried Cecilia's nerves. She
threw open Hilary's study-door, saying sharply: “Go in and find your
master!”

Miranda did not move, but Hilary came out instead. He had been
correcting proofs to catch the post, and wore the look of a man
abstracted, faintly contemptuous of other forms of life.

Cecilia, once more saved from the necessity of approaching her sister,
the mistress of the house, so fugitive, haunting, and unseen, yet so
much the centre of this situation, said:

“Can I speak to you a minute, Hilary?”

They went into his study, and Miranda came creeping in behind.

To Cecilia her brother-in-law always seemed an amiable and more or less
pathetic figure. In his literary preoccupations he allowed people to
impose on him. He looked unsubstantial beside the bust of Socrates,
which moved Cecilia strangely--it was so very massive and so very ugly!
She decided not to beat about the bush.

“I've been hearing some odd things from Mrs. Hughs about that little
model, Hilary.”

Hilary's smile faded from his eyes, but remained clinging to his lips.

“Indeed!”

Cecilia went on nervously: “Mrs. Hughs says it's because of her that
Hughs behaves so badly. I don't want to say anything against the girl,
but she seems--she seems to have---”

“Yes?” said Hilary.

“To have cast a spell on Hughs, as the woman puts it.”

“On Hughs!” repeated Hilary.

Cecilia found her eyes resting on the bust of Socrates, and hastily
proceeded:

“She says he follows her about, and comes down here to lie in wait for
her. It's a most strange business altogether. You went to see them,
didn't you?”

Hilary nodded.

“I've been speaking to Father,” Cecilia murmured; “but he's hopeless--I,
couldn't get him to pay the least attention.”

Hilary seemed thinking deeply.

“I wanted him,” she went on, “to get some other girl instead to come and
copy for him.”

“Why?”

Under the seeming impossibility of ever getting any farther, without
saying what she had come to say, Cecilia blurted out:

“Mrs. Hughs says that Hughs has threatened you.”

Hilary's face became ironical.

“Really!” he said. “That's good of him! What for?”

The frightful indelicacy of her situation at this moment, the feeling of
unfairness that she should be placed in it, almost overwhelmed Cecilia.
“Goodness knows I don't want to meddle. I never meddle in anything-it's
horrible!”

Hilary took her hand.

“My dear Cis,” he said, “of course! But we'd better have this out!”

Grateful for the pressure of his hand, she gave it a convulsive squeeze.

“It's so sordid, Hilary!”

“Sordid! H'm! Let's get it over, then.”

Cecilia had grown crimson. “Do you want me to tell you everything?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, Hughs evidently thinks you're interested in the girl. You can't
keep anything from servants and people who work about your house; they
always think the worst of everything--and, of course, they know that you
and B. don't--aren't---”

Hilary nodded.

“Mrs. Hughs actually said the man meant to go to B.!”

Again the vision of her sister seemed to float into the room, and she
went on desperately: “And, Hilary, I can see Mrs. Hughs really thinks
you are interested. Of course, she wants to, for if you were, it would
mean that a man like her husband could have no chance.”

Astonished at this flash of cynical inspiration, and ashamed of such
plain speaking, she checked herself. Hilary had turned away.

Cecilia touched his arm. “Hilary, dear,” she said, “isn't there any
chance of you and B---”

Hilary's lips twitched. “I should say not.”

Cecilia looked sadly at the floor. Not since Stephen was bad with
pleurisy had she felt so worried. The sight of Hilary's face brought
back her doubts with all their force. It might, of course, be only anger
at the man's impudence, but it might be--she hardly liked to frame her
thought--a more personal feeling.

“Don't you think,” she said, “that, anyway, she had better not come here
again?”

Hilary paced the room.

“It's her only safe and certain piece of work; it keeps her independent.
It's much more satisfactory than this sitting. I can't have any hand in
taking it away from her.”

Cecilia had never seen him moved like this. Was it possible that he was
not incorrigibly gentle, but had in him some of that animality which
she, in a sense, admired? This uncertainty terribly increased the
difficulties of the situation.

“But, Hilary,” she said at last, “are you satisfied about the girl--I
mean, are you satisfied that she really is worth helping?”

“I don't understand.”

“I mean,” murmured Cecilia, “that we don't know anything about her
past.” And, seeing from the movement of his eyebrows that she was
touching on what had evidently been a doubt with him, she went on with
great courage: “Where are her friends and relations? I mean, she may
have had a--adventures.”

Hilary withdrew into himself.

“You can hardly expect me,” he said, “to go into that with her.”

His reply made Cecilia feel ridiculous.

“Well,” she said in a hard little voice, “if this is what comes of
helping the poor, I don't see the use of it.”

The outburst evoked no reply from Hilary; she felt more tremulous than
ever. The whole thing was so confused, so unnatural. What with the dark,
malignant Hughs and that haunting vision of Bianca, the matter seemed
almost Italian. That a man of Hughs' class might be affected by the
passion of love had somehow never come into her head. She thought of
the back streets she had looked out on from her bedroom window. Could
anything like passion spring up in those dismal alleys? The people
who lived there, poor downtrodden things, had enough to do to keep
themselves alive. She knew all about them; they were in the air; their
condition was deplorable! Could a person whose condition was deplorable
find time or strength for any sort of lurid exhibition such as this? It
was incredible.

She became aware that Hilary was speaking.

“I daresay the man is dangerous!”

Hearing her fears confirmed, and in accordance with the secret vein of
hardness which kept her living, amid all her sympathies and hesitations,
Cecilia felt suddenly that she had gone as far as it was in her to go.

“I shall have no more to do with them,” she said; “I've tried my best
for Mrs. Hughs. I know quite as good a needlewoman, who'll be only too
glad to come instead. Any other girl will do as well to copy father's
book. If you take my advice, Hilary, you'll give up trying to help them
too.”

Hilary's smile puzzled and annoyed her. If she had known, this was the
smile that stood between him and her sister.

“You may be right,” he said, and shrugged his shoulders:

“Very well,” said Cecilia, “I've done all I can. I must go now.
Good-bye.”

During her progress to the door she gave one look behind. Hilary was
standing by the bust of Socrates. Her heart smote her to leave him thus
embarrassed. But again the vision of Bianca--fugitive in her own house,
and with something tragic in her mocking immobility--came to her, and
she hastened away.

A voice said: “How are you, Mrs. Dallison? Your sister at home?”

Cecilia saw before her Mr. Purcey, rising and falling a little with the
oscillation of his A.i. Damyer.

A sense as of having just left a house visited by sickness or misfortune
made Cecilia murmur:

“I'm afraid she's not.”

“Bad luck!” said Mr. Purcey. His face fell as far as so red and square
a face could fall. “I was hoping perhaps I might be allowed to take
them for a run. She's wanting exercise.” Mr. Purcey laid his hand on the
flank of his palpitating car. “Know these A.i. Damyers, Mrs. Dallison?
Best value you can get, simply rippin' little cars. Wish you'd try her.”

The A.i. Damyer, diffusing an aroma of the finest petrol, leaped and
trembled, as though conscious of her master's praise. Cecilia looked at
her.

“Yes,” she said, “she's very sweet.”

“Now do!” said Mr. Purcey. “Let me give you a run--Just to please me, I
mean. I'm sure you'll like her.”

A little compunction, a little curiosity, a sudden revolt against all
the discomfiture and sordid doubts she had been suffering from, made
Cecilia glance softly at Mr. Purcey's figure; almost before she knew
it, she was seated in the A.i. Damyer. It trembled, emitted two small
sounds, one large scent, and glided forward. Mr. Purcey said:

“That's rippin' of you!”

A postman, dog, and baker's cart, all hurrying at top speed, seemed to
stand still; Cecilia felt the wind beating her cheeks. She gave a little
laugh.

“You must just take me home, please.”

Mr. Purcey touched the chauffeur's elbow.

“Round the park,” he said. “Let her have it.”

The A.i. Damyer uttered a tiny shriek. Cecilia, leaning back in her
padded corner, glanced askance at Mr. Purcey leaning back in his; an
unholy, astonished little smile played on her lips.

'What am I doing?' it seemed to say. 'The way he got me here--really!
And now I am here I'm just going to enjoy it!'

There were no Hughs, no little model--all that sordid life had vanished;
there was nothing but the wind beating her cheeks and the A.i. Damyer
leaping under her.

Mr. Purcey said: “It just makes all the difference to me; keeps my
nerves in order.”

“Oh,” Cecilia murmured, “have you got nerves.”

Mr. Purcey smiled. When he smiled his cheeks formed two hard red blocks,
his trim moustache stood out, and many little wrinkles ran from his
light eyes.

“Chock full of them,” he said; “least thing upsets me. Can't bear to see
a hungry-lookin' child, or anything.”

A strange feeling of admiration for this man had come upon Cecilia. Why
could not she, and Thyme, and Hilary, and Stephen, and all the people
they knew and mixed with, be like him, so sound and healthy, so
unravaged by disturbing sympathies, so innocent of “social conscience,”
 so content?

As though jealous of these thoughts about her master, the A.i. Damyer
stopped of her own accord.

“Hallo,” said Mr. Purcey, “hallo, I say! Don't you get out; she'll be
all right directly.”

“Oh,” said Cecilia, “thanks; but I must go in here, anyhow; I think I'll
say good-bye. Thank you so much. I have enjoyed it.”

From the threshold of a shop she looked back. Mr. Purcey, on foot, was
leaning forward from the waist, staring at his A.i. Damyer with profound
concentration.




CHAPTER IX

HILARY GIVES CHASE

The ethics of a man like Hilary were not those of the million pure bred
Purceys of this life, founded on a sense of property in this world
and the next; nor were they precisely the morals and religion of the
aristocracy, who, though aestheticised in parts, quietly used, in bulk,
their fortified position to graft on Mr. Purcey's ethics the principle
of 'You be damned!' In the eyes of the majority he was probably an
immoral and irreligious man; but in fact his morals and religion were
those of his special section of society--the cultivated classes, “the
professors, the artistic pigs, advanced people, and all that sort of
cuckoo,” as Mr. Purcey called them--a section of society supplemented by
persons, placed beyond the realms of want, who speculated in ideas.

Had he been required to make confession of his creed he would probably
have framed it in some such way as this: “I disbelieve in all Church
dogmas, and do not go to church; I have no definite ideas about a future
state, and do not want to have; but in a private way I try to identify
myself as much as possible with what I see about me, feeling that if I
could ever really be at one with the world I live in I should be happy.
I think it foolish not to trust my senses and my reason; as for what my
senses and my reason will not tell me, I assume that all is as it had to
be, for if one could get to know the why of everything in one would be
the Universe. I do not believe that chastity is a virtue in itself,
but only so far as it ministers to the health and happiness of the
community. I do not believe that marriage confers the rights of
ownership, and I loathe all public wrangling on such matters; but I am
temperamentally averse to the harming of my neighbours, if in reason it
can be avoided. As to manners, I think that to repeat a bit of scandal,
and circulate backbiting stories, are worse offences than the actions
that gave rise to them. If I mentally condemn a person, I feel guilty of
moral lapse. I hate self-assertion; I am ashamed of self-advertisement.
I dislike loudness of any kind. Probably I have too much tendency to
negation of all sorts. Small-talk bores me to extinction, but I will
discuss a point of ethics or psychology half the night. To make capital
out of a person's weakness is repugnant to me. I want to be a decent
man, but--I really can't take myself too seriously.”

Though he had preserved his politeness towards Cecilia, he was in truth
angry, and grew angrier every minute. He was angry with her, himself,
and the man Hughs; and suffered from this anger as only they can who are
not accustomed to the rough-and-tumble of things.

Such a retiring man as Hilary was seldom given the opportunity for an
obvious display of chivalry. The tenor of his life removed him from
those situations. Such chivalry as he displayed was of a negative order.
And confronted suddenly with the conduct of Hughs, who, it seemed,
knocked his wife about, and dogged the footsteps of a helpless girl, he
took it seriously to heart.

When the little model came walking up the garden on her usual visit, he
fancied her face looked scared. Quieting the growling of Miranda, who
from the first had stubbornly refused to know this girl, he sat down
with a book to wait for her to go away. After sitting an hour or more,
turning over pages, and knowing little of their sense, he saw a man
peer over his garden gate. He was there for half a minute, then lounged
across the road, and stood hidden by some railings.

'So?' thought Hilary. 'Shall I go out and warn the fellow to clear off,
or shall I wait to see what happens when she goes away?'

He determined on the latter course. Presently she came out, walking with
her peculiar gait, youthful and pretty, but too matter-of-fact, and yet,
as it were, too purposeless to be a lady's. She looked back at Hilary's
window, and turned uphill.

Hilary took his hat and stick and waited. In half a minute Hughs came
out from under cover of the railings and followed. Then Hilary, too, set
forth.

There is left in every man something of the primeval love of stalking.
The delicate Hilary, in cooler blood, would have revolted at the notion
of dogging people's footsteps. He now experienced the holy pleasures of
the chase. Certain that Hughs was really following the girl, he had
but to keep him in sight and remain unseen. This was not hard for a
man given to mountain-climbing, almost the only sport left to one who
thought it immoral to hurt anybody but himself.

Taking advantage of shop-windows, omnibuses, passers-by, and other bits
of cover, he prosecuted the chase up the steepy heights of Campden Hill.
But soon a nearly fatal check occurred; for, chancing to take his eyes
off Hughs, he saw the little model returning on her tracks. Ready enough
in physical emergencies, Hilary sprang into a passing omnibus. He saw
her stopping before the window of a picture-shop. From the expression
of her face and figure, she evidently had no idea that she was being
followed, but stood with a sort of slack-lipped wonder, lost in
admiration of a well-known print. Hilary had often wondered who could
possibly admire that picture--he now knew. It was obvious that the
girl's aesthetic sense was deeply touched.

While this was passing through his mind, he caught sight of Hughs
lurking outside a public-house. The dark man's face was sullen and
dejected, and looked as if he suffered. Hilary felt a sort of pity for
him.

The omnibus leaped forward, and he sat down smartly almost on a lady's
lap. This was the lap of Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, who greeted him with
a warm, quiet smile, and made a little room.

“Your sister-in-law has just been to see me, Mr. Dallison. She's such
a dear-so interested in everything. I tried to get her to come on to my
meeting with me.”

Raising his hat, Hilary frowned. For once his delicacy was at fault. He
said:

“Ah, yes! Excuse me!” and got out.

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace looked after him, and then glanced round the
omnibus. His conduct was very like the conduct of a man who had got in
to keep an assignation with a lady, and found that lady sitting next his
aunt. She was unable to see a soul who seemed to foster this view, and
sat thinking that he was “rather attractive.” Suddenly her dark busy
eyes lighted on the figure of the little model strolling along again.

'Oh!' she thought. 'Ah! Yes, really! How very interesting!'

Hilary, to avoid meeting the girl point-blank, had turned up a
by-street, and, finding a convenient corner, waited. He was puzzled. If
this man were persecuting her with his attentions, why had he not gone
across when she was standing at the picture-shop?

She passed across the opening of the by-street, still walking in the
slack way of one who takes the pleasures of the streets. She passed from
view; Hilary strained his eyes to see if Hughs were following. He
waited several minutes. The man did not appear. The chase was over! And
suddenly it flashed across him that Hughs had merely dogged her to see
that she had no assignation with anybody. They had both been playing the
same game! He flushed up in that shady little street, in which he was
the only person to be seen. Cecilia was right! It was a sordid business.
A man more in touch with facts than Hilary would have had some mental
pigeonhole into which to put an incident like this; but, being by
profession concerned mainly with ideas and thoughts, he did not quite
know where he was. The habit of his mind precluded him from thinking
very definitely on any subject except his literary work--precluded him
especially in a matter of this sort, so inextricably entwined with that
delicate, dim question, the impact of class on class.

Pondering deeply, he ascended the leafy lane that leads between high
railings from Notting Hill to Kensington.

It was so far from traffic that every tree on either side was loud with
the Spring songs of birds; the scent of running sap came forth shyly as
the sun sank low. Strange peace, strange feeling of old Mother Earth up
there above the town; wild tunes, and the quiet sight of clouds. Man in
this lane might rest his troubled thoughts, and for a while trust the
goodness of the Scheme that gave him birth, the beauty of each day, that
laughs or broods itself into night. Some budding lilacs exhaled a scent
of lemons; a sandy cat on the coping of a garden wall was basking in the
setting sun.

In the centre of the lane a row of elm-trees displayed their gnarled,
knotted roots. Human beings were seated there, whose matted hair clung
round their tired faces. Their gaunt limbs were clothed in rags; each
had a stick, and some sort of dirty bundle tied to it. They were asleep.
On a bench beyond, two toothless old women sat, moving their eyes from
side to side, and a crimson-faced woman was snoring. Under the next
tree a Cockney youth and his girl were sitting side by side-pale young
things, with loose mouths, and hollow cheeks, and restless eyes. Their
arms were enlaced; they were silent. A little farther on two young men
in working clothes were looking straight before them, with desperately
tired faces. They, too, were silent.

On the last bench of all Hilary came on the little model, seated slackly
by herself.




CHAPTER X

THE TROUSSEAU

This the first time these two had each other at large, was clearly not a
comfortable event for either of them. The girl blushed, and hastily got
off her seat. Hilary, who raised his hat and frowned, sat down on it.

“Don't get up,” he said; “I want to talk to you.”

The little model obediently resumed her seat. A silence followed.
She had on the old brown skirt and knitted jersey, the old blue-green
tam-o'-shanter cap, and there were marks of weariness beneath her eyes.

At last Hilary remarked: “How are you getting on?”

The little model looked at her feet.

“Pretty well, thank you, Mr. Dallison.”

“I came to see you yesterday.”

She slid a look at him which might have meant nothing or meant much, so
perfect its shy stolidity.

“I was out,” she said, “sitting to Miss Boyle.”

“So you have some work?”

“It's finished now.”

“Then you're only getting the two shillings a day from Mr. Stone?”

She nodded.

“H'm!”

The unexpected fervour of this grunt seemed to animate the little model.

“Three and sixpence for my rent, and breakfast costs threepence
nearly--only bread-and-butter--that's five and two; and washing's
always at least tenpence--that's six; and little things last week was
a shilling--even when I don't take buses--seven; that leaves five
shillings for my dinners. Mr. Stone always gives me tea. It's my clothes
worries me.” She tucked her feet farther beneath the seat, and Hilary
refrained from looking down. “My hat is awful, and I do want some---”
 She looked Hilary in the face for the first time. “I do wish I was
rich.”

“I don't wonder.”

The little model gritted her teeth, and, twisting at her dirty gloves,
said: “Mr. Dallison, d'you know the first thing I'd buy if I was rich?”

“No.”

“I'd buy everything new on me from top to toe, and I wouldn't ever wear
any of these old things again.”

Hilary got up: “Come with me now, and buy everything new from top to
toe.”

“Oh!”

Hilary had already perceived that he had made an awkward, even
dangerous, proposal; short, however, of giving her money, the idea of
which offended his sense of delicacy, there was no way out of it. He
said brusquely: “Come along!”

The little model rose obediently. Hilary noticed that her boots were
split, and this--as though he had seen someone strike a child--so
moved his indignation that he felt no more qualms, but rather a sort of
pleasant glow, such as will come to the most studious man when he levels
a blow at the conventions.

He looked down at his companion--her eyes were lowered; he could not
tell at all what she was thinking of.

“This is what I was going to speak to you about,” he said: “I don't like
that house you're in; I think you ought to be somewhere else. What do
you say?”

“Yes, Mr. Dallison.”

“You'd better make a change, I think; you could find another room,
couldn't you?”

The little model answered as before: “Yes, Mr. Dallison.”

“I'm afraid that Hughs is-a dangerous sort of fellow.”

“He's a funny man.”

“Does he annoy you?”

Her expression baffled Hilary; there seemed a sort of slow enjoyment in
it. She looked up knowingly.

“I don't mind him--he won't hurt me. Mr. Dallison, do you think blue or
green?”

Hilary answered shortly: “Bluey-green.”

She clasped her hands, changed her feet with a hop, and went on walking
as before.

“Listen to me,” said Hilary; “has Mrs. Hughs been talking to you about
her husband?”

The little model smiled again.

“She goes on,” she said.

Hilary bit his lips.

“Mr. Dallison, please--about my hat?”

“What about your hat?”

“Would you like me to get a large one or a small one?”

“For God's sake,” answered Hilary, “a small one--no feathers.”

“Oh!”

“Can you attend to me a minute? Have either Hughs or Mrs. Hughs spoken
to you about--coming to my house, about--me?”

The little model's face remained impassive, but by the movement of her
fingers Hilary saw that she was attending now.

“I don't care what they say.”

Hilary looked away; an angry flush slowly mounted in his face.

With surprising suddenness the little model said:

“Of course, if I was a lady, I might mind!”

“Don't talk like that!” said Hilary; “every woman is a lady.”

The stolidity of the girl's face, more mocking far than any smile,
warned him of the cheapness of this verbiage.

“If I was a lady,” she repeated simply, “I shouldn't be livin' there,
should I?”

“No,” said Hilary; “and you had better not go on living there, anyway.”

The little model making no answer, Hilary did not quite know what to
say. It was becoming apparent to him that she viewed the situation with
a very different outlook from himself, and that he did not understand
that outlook.

He felt thoroughly at sea, conscious that this girl's life contained a
thousand things he did not know, a thousand points of view he did not
share.

Their two figures attracted some attention in the crowded street,
for Hilary-tall and slight, with his thin, bearded face and soft felt
hat--was what is known as “a distinguished-looking man”; and the little
model, though not “distinguished-looking” in her old brown skirt and
tam-o'shanter cap, had the sort of face which made men and even
women turn to look at her. To men she was a little bit of strangely
interesting, not too usual, flesh and blood; to women, she was that
which made men turn to look at her. Yet now and again there would rise
in some passer-by a feeling more impersonal, as though the God of Pity
had shaken wings overhead, and dropped a tiny feather.

So walking, and exciting vague interest, they reached the first of the
hundred doors of Messrs. Rose and Thorn.

Hilary had determined on this end door, for, as the adventure grew
warmer, he was more alive to its dangers. To take this child into the
very shop frequented by his wife and friends seemed a little mad; but
that same reason which caused them to frequent it--the fact that there
was no other shop of the sort half so handy--was the reason which caused
Hilary to go there now. He had acted on impulse; he knew that if he let
his impulse cool he would not act at all. The bold course was the wise
one; this was why he chose the end door round the corner. Standing
aside for her to go in first, he noticed the girl's brightened eyes and
cheeks; she had never looked so pretty. He glanced hastily round; the
department was barren for their purposes, filled entirely with pyjamas.
He felt a touch on his arm. The little model, rather pink, was looking
up at him.

“Mr. Dallison, am I to get more than one set of--underthings?”

“Three-three,” muttered Hilary; and suddenly he saw that they were on
the threshold of that sanctuary. “Buy them,” he said, “and bring me the
bill.”

He waited close beside a man with a pink face, a moustache, and an
almost perfect figure, who was standing very still, dressed from head to
foot in blue-and-white stripes. He seemed the apotheosis of what a man
should be, his face composed in a deathless simper: “Long, long have
been the struggles of man, but civilization has produced me at last.
Further than this it cannot go. Nothing shall make me continue my line.
In me the end is reached. See my back: 'The Amateur. This perfect style,
8s. 11d. Great reduction.'”

He would not talk to Hilary, and the latter was compelled to watch the
shopmen. It was but half an hour to closing time; the youths were moving
languidly, bickering a little, in the absence of their customers--like
flies on a pane unable to get out into the sun. Two of them came and
asked him what they might serve him with; they were so refined and
pleasant that Hilary was on the point of buying what he did not want.
The reappearance of the little model saved him.

“It's thirty shillings; five and eleven was the cheapest, and stockings,
and I bought some sta---”

Hilary produced the money hastily.

“This is a very dear shop,” she said.

When she had paid the bill, and Hilary had taken from her a large
brown-paper parcel, they journeyed on together. He had armoured his face
now in a slightly startled quizzicality, as though, himself detached, he
were watching the adventure from a distance.

On the central velvet seat of the boot and shoe department, a lady, with
an egret in her hat, was stretching out a slim silk-stockinged foot,
waiting for a boot. She looked with negligent amusement at this common
little girl and her singular companion. This look of hers seemed to
affect the women serving, for none came near the little model. Hilary
saw them eyeing her boots, and, suddenly forgetting his role of
looker-on, he became very angry. Taking out his watch, he went up to the
eldest woman.

“If somebody,” he said, “does not attend this young lady within a
minute, I shall make a personal complaint to Mr. Thorn.”

The hand of the watch, however, had not completed its round before a
woman was at the little model's side. Hilary saw her taking off her
boot, and by a sudden impulse he placed himself between her and the
lady. In doing this, he so far forgot his delicacy as to fix his eyes
on the little model's foot. The sense of physical discomfort which first
attacked him became a sort of aching in his heart. That brown, dingy
stocking was darned till no stocking, only darning, and one toe and two
little white bits of foot were seen, where the threads refused to hold
together any longer.

The little model wagged the toe uneasily--she had hoped, no doubt, that
it would not protrude, then concealed it with her skirt. Hilary moved
hastily away; when he looked again, it was not at her, but at the lady.

Her face had changed; it was no longer amused and negligent, but stamped
with an expression of offence. 'Intolerable,' it seemed to say, 'to
bring a girl like that into a shop like this! I shall never come here
again!' The expression was but the outward sign of that inner physical
discomfort Hilary himself had felt when he first saw the little model's
stocking. This naturally did not serve to lessen his anger, especially
as he saw her animus mechanically reproduced on the faces of the serving
women.

He went back to the little model, and sat down by her side.

“Does it fit? You'd better walk in it and see.”

The little model walked.

“It squeezes me,” she said.

“Try another, then,” said Hilary.

The lady rose, stood for a second with her eyebrows raised and her
nostrils slightly distended, then went away, and left a peculiarly
pleasant scent of violets behind.

The second pair of boots not “squeezing” her, the little model was
soon ready to go down. She had all her trousseau now, except the
dress--selected and, indeed, paid for, but which, as she told Hilary,
she was coming back to try on tomorrow, when--when---. She had obviously
meant to say when she was all new underneath. She was laden with one
large and two small parcels, and in her eyes there was a holy look.

Outside the shop she gazed up in his face.

“Well, you are happy now?” asked Hilary.

Between the short black lashes were seen two very bright, wet shining
eyes; her parted lips began to quiver.

“Good-night, then,” he said abruptly, and walked away.

But looking round, he saw her still standing there, half buried in
parcels, gazing after him. Raising his hat, he turned into the High
Street towards home....

The old man, known to that low class of fellow with whom he was now
condemned to associate as “Westminister,” was taking a whiff or two
out of his old clay pipe, and trying to forget his feet. He saw Hilary
coming, and carefully extended a copy of the last edition.

“Good-evenin', sir! Quite seasonable to-day for the time of year! Ho,
yes! 'Westminister!'”

His eyes followed Hilary's retreat. He thought:

“Oh dear! He's a-given me an 'arf-a-crown. He does look well--I like to
see 'im look as well as that--quite young! Oh dear!”

The sun-that smoky, faring ball, which in its time had seen so many last
editions of the Westminster Gazette--was dropping down to pass the
night in Shepherd's Bush. It made the old butler's eyelids blink when
he turned to see if the coin really was a half-crown, or too good to be
true.

And all the spires and house-roofs, and the spaces up above and
underneath them, glittered and swam, and men and horses looked as if
they had been powdered with golden dust.




CHAPTER XI

PEAR BLOSSOM

Weighed down by her three parcels, the little model pursued her way to
Hound Street. At the door of No. 1 the son of the lame woman, a tall
weedy youth with a white face, was resting his legs alternately, and
smoking a cigarette. Closing one eye, he addressed her thus:

“'Allo, miss! Kerry your parcels for you?”

The little model gave him a look. 'Mind your own business!' it said; but
there was that in the flicker of her eyelashes which more than nullified
this snub.

Entering her room, she deposited the parcels on her bed, and untied the
strings with quick, pink fingers. When she had freed the garments from
wrappings and spread them out, she knelt down, and began to touch them,
putting her nose down once or twice to sniff the linen and feel its
texture. There were little frills attached here and there, and to these
she paid particular attention, ruffling their edges with the palms of
her hands, while the holy look came back to her face. Rising at length,
she locked the door, drew down the blind, undressed from head to foot,
and put on the new garments. Letting her hair down, she turned herself
luxuriously round and round before the too-small looking-glass. There
was utter satisfaction in each gesture of that whole operation, as
if her spirit, long starved, were having a good meal. In this rapt
contemplation of herself, all childish vanity and expectancy, and all
that wonderful quality found in simple unspiritual natures of delighting
in the present moment, were perfectly displayed. So, motionless, with
her hair loose on her neck, she was like one of those half-hours of
Spring that have lost their restlessness and are content just to be.

Presently, however, as though suddenly remembering that her happiness
was not utterly complete, she went to a drawer, took out a packet of
pear-drops, and put one in her mouth.

The sun, near to setting, had found its way through a hole in the blind,
and touched her neck. She turned as though she had received a kiss, and,
raising a corner of the blind, peered out. The pear-tree, which, to the
annoyance of its proprietor, was placed so close to the back court of
this low-class house as almost to seem to belong to it, was bathed in
slanting sunlight. No tree in all the world could have looked more fair
than it did just then in its garb of gilded bloom. With her hand up to
her bare neck, and her cheeks indrawn from sucking the sweet, the little
model fixed her eyes on the tree. Her expression did not change; she
showed no signs of admiration. Her gaze passed on to the back windows
of the house that really owned the pear-tree, spying out whether anyone
could see her--hoping, perhaps, someone would see her while she was
feeling so nice and new. Then, dropping the blind, she went back to the
glass and began to pin her hair up. When this was done she stood for
a long minute looking at her old brown skirt and blouse, hesitating to
defile her new-found purity. At last she put them on and drew up the
blind. The sunlight had passed off the pear-tree; its bloom was now
white, and almost as still as snow. The little model put another sweet
into her mouth, and producing from her pocket an ancient leather purse,
counted out her money. Evidently discovering that it was no more than
she expected, she sighed, and rummaged out of a top drawer an old
illustrated magazine.

She sat down on the bed, and, turning the leaves rapidly till she
reached a certain page, rested the paper in her lap. Her eyes were fixed
on a photograph in the left-hand corner-one of those effigies of writers
that appear occasionally in the public press. Under it were printed the
words: “Mr. Hilary Dallison.” And suddenly she heaved a sigh.

The room grew darker; the wind, getting up as the sun went down, blew a
few dropped petals of the pear-tree against the window-pane.




CHAPTER XII

SHIPS IN SAIL

In due accord with the old butler's comment on his looks, Hilary had
felt so young that, instead of going home, he mounted an omnibus, and
went down to his club--the “Pen and Ink,” so called because the man
who founded it could not think at the moment of any other words. This
literary person had left the club soon after its initiation, having
conceived for it a sudden dislike. It had indeed a certain reputation
for bad cooking, and all its members complained bitterly at times that
you never could go in without meeting someone you knew. It stood in
Dover Street. Unlike other clubs, it was mainly used to talk in, and had
special arrangements for the safety of umbrellas and such books as
had not yet vanished from the library; not, of course, owing to any
peculative tendency among its members, but because, after interchanging
their ideas, those members would depart, in a long row, each grasping
some material object in his hand. Its maroon-coloured curtains, too,
were never drawn, because, in the heat of their discussions, the members
were always drawing them. On the whole, those members did not like each
other much; wondering a little, one by one, why the others wrote;
and when the printed reasons were detailed to them, reading them with
irritation. If really compelled to hazard an opinion about each other's
merits, they used to say that, no doubt “So-and-so” was “very good,”
 but they had never read him! For it had early been established as the
principle underlying membership not to read the writings of another man,
unless you could be certain he was dead, lest you might have to tell him
to his face that you disliked his work. For they were very jealous of
the purity of their literary consciences. Exception was made, however,
in the case of those who lived by written criticism, the opinions of
such persons being read by all, with a varying smile, and a certain
cerebral excitement. Now and then, however, some member, violating
every sense of decency, would take a violent liking for another member's
books. This he would express in words, to the discomfort of his fellows,
who, with a sudden chilly feeling in the stomach, would wonder why it
was not their books that he was praising.

Almost every year, and generally in March, certain aspirations would
pass into the club; members would ask each other why there was no
Academy of British Letters; why there was no concerted movement to limit
the production of other authors' books; why there was no prize given
for the best work of the year. For a little time it almost seemed as if
their individualism were in danger; but, the windows having been opened
wider than usual some morning, the aspirations would pass out, and all
would feel secretly as a man feels when he has swallowed the mosquito
that has been worrying him all night--relieved, but just a little
bit embarrassed. Socially sympathetic in their dealings with each
other--they were mostly quite nice fellows--each kept a little
fame-machine, on which he might be seen sitting every morning about the
time the papers and his correspondence came, wondering if his fame were
going up.

Hilary stayed in the club till half-past nine; then, avoiding a
discussion which was just setting in, he took his own umbrella, and bent
his steps towards home.

It was the moment of suspense in Piccadilly; the tide had flowed up to
the theatres, and had not yet begun to ebb. The tranquil trees, still
feathery, draped their branches along the farther bank of that broad
river, resting from their watch over the tragi-comedies played on its
surface by men, their small companions. The gentle sighs which distilled
from their plume-like boughs seemed utterances of the softest wisdom.
Not far beyond their trunks it was all dark velvet, into which separate
shapes, adventuring, were lost, as wild birds vanishing in space, or the
souls of men received into their Mother's heart.

Hilary walked, hearing no sighs of wisdom, noting no smooth darkness,
wrapped in thought. The mere fact of having given pleasure was enough
to produce a warm sensation in a man so naturally kind. But, as with
all self-conscious, self-distrustful, natures, that sensation had not
lasted. He was left with a feeling of emptiness and disillusionment, as
of having given himself a good mark without reason.

While walking, he was a target for the eyes of many women, who passed
him rapidly, like ships in sail. The special fastidious shyness of his
face attracted those accustomed to another kind of face. And though
he did not precisely look at them, they in turn inspired in him the
compassionate, morbid curiosity which persons who live desperate lives
necessarily inspire in the leisured, speculative mind. One of them
deliberately approached him from a side-street. Though taller and
fuller, with heightened colour, frizzy hair, and a hat with feathers;
she was the image of the little model--the same shape of face, broad
cheek-bones, mouth a little open; the same flower-coloured eyes and
short black lashes, all coarsened and accentuated as Art coarsens and
accentuates the lines of life. Looking boldly into Hilary's startled
face, she laughed. Hilary winced and walked on quickly.

He reached home at half-past ten. The lamp was burning in Mr. Stone's
room, and his window was, as usual, open; that which was not usual,
however, was a light in Hilary's own bedroom. He went gently up. Through
the door-ajar-he saw, to his surprise, the figure of his wife. She was
reclining in a chair, her elbows on its arms, the tips of her fingers
pressed together. Her face, with its dark hair, vivid colouring, and
sharp lines, was touched with shadows, her head turned as though towards
somebody beside her; her neck gleamed white. So--motionless, dimly
seen--she was like a woman sitting alongside her own life, scrutinising,
criticising, watching it live, taking no part in it. Hilary wondered
whether to go in or slip away from his strange visitor.

“Ah! it's you,” she said.

Hilary approached her. For all her mocking of her own charms, this wife
of his was strangely graceful. After nineteen years in which to learn
every line of her face and body, every secret of her nature, she still
eluded him; that elusiveness, which had begun by being such a charm, had
got on his nerves, and extinguished the flame it had once lighted. He
had so often tried to see, and never seen, the essence of her soul. Why
was she made like this? Why was she for ever mocking herself, himself,
and every other thing? Why was she so hard to her own life, so bitter a
foe to her own happiness? Leonardo da Vinci might have painted her, less
sensual and cruel than his women, more restless and disharmonic, but
physically, spiritually enticing, and, by her refusals to surrender
either to her spirit or her senses, baffling her own enticements.

“I don't know why I came,” she said.

Hilary found no better answer than: “I am sorry I was out to dinner.”

“Has the wind gone round? My room is cold.”

“Yes, north-east. Stay here.”

Her hand touched his; that warm and restless clasp was agitating.

“It's good of you to ask me; but we'd better not begin what we can't
keep up.”

“Stay here,” said Hilary again, kneeling down beside her chair.

And suddenly he began to kiss her face and neck. He felt her answering
kisses; for a moment they were clasped together in a fierce embrace.
Then, as though by mutual consent, their arms relaxed; their eyes grew
furtive, like the eyes of children who have egged each other on to
steal; and on their lips appeared the faintest of faint smiles. It was
as though those lips were saying: “Yes, but we are not quite animals!”

Hilary got up and sat down on his bed. Blanca stayed in the chair,
looking straight before her, utterly inert, her head thrown back, her
white throat gleaming, on her lips and in her eyes that flickering
smile. Not a word more, nor a look, passed between them.

Then rising, without noise, she passed behind him and went out.

Hilary had a feeling in his mouth as though he had been chewing ashes.
And a phrase--as phrases sometimes fill the spirit of a man without
rhyme or reason--kept forming on his lips: “The house of harmony!”

Presently he went to her door, and stood there listening. He could hear
no sound whatever. If she had been crying if she had been laughing--it
would have been better than this silence. He put his hands up to his
ears and ran down-stairs.




CHAPTER XIII

SOUND IN THE NIGHT

He passed his study door, and halted at Mr. Stone's; the thought of
the old man, so steady and absorbed in the face of all external things,
refreshed him.

Still in his brown woollen gown, Mr. Stone was sitting with his eyes
fixed on something in the corner, whence a little perfumed steam was
rising.

“Shut the door,” he said; “I am making cocoa; will you have a cup?”

“Am I disturbing you?” asked Hilary.

Mr. Stone looked at him steadily before answering:

“If I work after cocoa, I find it clogs the liver.”

“Then, if you'll let me, sir, I'll stay a little.”

“It is boiling,” said Mr. Stone. He took the saucepan off the flame,
and, distending his frail cheeks, blew. Then, while the steam mingled
with his frosty beard, he brought two cups from a cupboard, filled one
of them, and looked at Hilary.

“I should like you,” he said, “to hear three or four pages I have just
completed; you may perhaps be able to suggest a word or two.”

He placed the saucepan back on the stove, and grasped the cup he had
filled.

“I will drink my cocoa, and read them to you.”

Going to the desk, he stood, blowing at the cup.

Hilary turned up the collar of his coat against the night wind which
was visiting the room, and glanced at the empty cup, for he was rather
hungry. He heard a curious sound: Mr. Stone was blowing his own tongue.
In his haste to read, he had drunk too soon and deeply of the cocoa.

“I have burnt my mouth,” he said.

Hilary moved hastily towards him: “Badly? Try cold milk, sir.”

Mr. Stone lifted the cup.

“There is none,” he said, and drank again.

'What would I not give,' thought Hilary, 'to have his singleness of
heart!'

There was the sharp sound of a cup set down. Then, out of a rustling of
papers, a sort of droning rose:

“'The Proletariat--with a cynicism natural to those who really are in
want, and even amongst their leaders only veiled when these attained
a certain position in the public eye--desired indeed the wealth and
leisure of their richer neighbours, but in their long night of struggle
with existence they had only found the energy to formulate their
pressing needs from day to day. They were a heaving, surging sea of
creatures, slowly, without consciousness or real guidance, rising in
long tidal movements to set the limits of the shore a little farther
back, and cast afresh the form of social life; and on its pea-green
bosom '” Mr. Stone paused. “She has copied it wrong,” he said; “the
word is 'seagreen.' 'And on its sea-green bosom sailed a fleet of silver
cockle-shells, wafted by the breath of those not in themselves driven by
the wind of need. The voyage of these silver cockle-shells, all heading
across each other's bows, was, in fact, the advanced movement of that
time. In the stern of each of these little craft, blowing at the sails,
was seated a by-product of the accepted system. These by-products we
should now examine.”

Mr. Stone paused, and looked into his cup. There were some grounds in
it. He drank them, and went on:

“'The fratricidal principle of the survival of the fittest, which in
those days was England's moral teaching, had made the country one huge
butcher's shop. Amongst the carcasses of countless victims there had
fattened and grown purple many butchers, physically strengthened by the
smell of blood and sawdust. These had begotten many children. Following
out the laws of Nature providing against surfeit, a proportion of these
children were born with a feeling of distaste for blood and sawdust;
many of them, compelled for the purpose of making money to follow in
their fathers' practices, did so unwillingly; some, thanks to their
fathers' butchery, were in a position to abstain from practising; but
whether in practice or at leisure, distaste for the scent of blood
and sawdust was the common feature that distinguished them. Qualities
hitherto but little known, and generally despised--not, as we shall
see, without some reason--were developed in them. Self-consciousness,
aestheticism, a dislike for waste, a hatred of injustice; these--or some
one of these, when coupled with that desire natural to men throughout
all ages to accomplish something--constituted the motive forces which
enabled them to work their bellows. In practical affairs those who were
under the necessity of labouring were driven, under the then machinery
of social life, to the humaner and less exacting kinds of butchery, such
as the Arts, Education, the practice of Religions and Medicine, and
the paid representation of their fellow-creatures. Those not so driven
occupied themselves in observing and complaining of the existing state
of thing. Each year saw more of their silver cockleshells putting out
from port, and the cheeks of those who blew the sails more violently
distended. Looking back on that pretty voyage, we see the reason why
those ships were doomed never to move, but, seated on the sea-green
bosom of that sea, to heave up and down, heading across each other's
bows in the self-same place for ever. That reason, in few words, was
this: 'The man who blew should have been in the sea, not on the ship.'”

The droning ceased. Hilary saw that Mr. Stone was staring fixedly at
his sheet of paper, as though the merits of this last sentence were
surprising him. The droning instantly began again: “'In social effort,
as in the physical processes of Nature, there had ever been a single
fertilising agent--the mysterious and wonderful attraction known as
Love. To this--that merging of one being in another--had been due all
the progressive variance of form, known by man under the name of Life.
It was this merger, this mysterious, unconscious Love, which was lacking
to the windy efforts of those who tried to sail that fleet. They were
full of reason, conscience, horror, full of impatience, contempt,
revolt; but they did not love the masses of their fellow-men. They could
not fling themselves into the sea. Their hearts were glowing; but the
wind which made them glow was not the salt and universal zephyr: it was
the desert wind of scorn. As with the flowering of the aloe-tree--so
long awaited, so strange and swift when once it comes--man had yet
to wait for his delirious impulse to Universal Brotherhood, and the
forgetfulness of Self.'”

Mr. Stone had finished, and stood gazing at his visitor with eyes that
clearly saw beyond him. Hilary could not meet those eyes; he kept his
own fixed on the empty cocoa cup. It was not, in fact, usual for those
who heard Mr. Stone read his manuscript to look him in the face. He
stood thus absorbed so long that Hilary rose at last, and glanced into
the saucepan. There was no cocoa in it. Mr. Stone had only made enough
for one. He had meant it for his visitor, but self-forgetfulness had
supervened.

“You know what happens to the aloe, sir, when it has flowered?” asked
Hilary with malice.

Mr. Stone moved, but did not answer.

“It dies,” said Hilary.

“No,” said Mr. Stone; “it is at peace.”

“When is self at peace, sir? The individual is surely as immortal as the
universal. That is the eternal comedy of life.”

“What is?” said Mr. Stone.

“The fight or game between the two.”

Mr. Stone stood a moment looking wistfully at his son-in-law. He laid
down the sheet of manuscript. “It is time for me to do my exercises.” So
saying, he undid the tasselled cord tied round the middle of his gown.

Hilary hastened to the door. From that point of vantage he looked back.

Divested of his gown and turned towards the window, Mr. Stone was
already rising on his toes, his arms were extended, his palms pressed
hard together in the attitude of prayer, his trousers slowly slipping
down.

“One, two, three, four, five!” There was a sudden sound of breath
escaping....

In the corridor upstairs, flooded with moonlight from a window at the
end, Hilary stood listening again. The only sound that came to him was
the light snoring of Miranda, who slept in the bathroom, not caring to
lie too near to anyone. He went to his room, and for a long time sat
buried in thought; then, opening the side window, he leaned out. On
the trees of the next garden, and the sloping roofs of stables and
outhouses, the moonlight had come down like a flight of milk-white
pigeons; with outspread wings, vibrating faintly as though yet in
motion, they covered everything. Nothing stirred. A clock was striking
two. Past that flight of milk-white pigeons were black walls as yet
unvisited. Then, in the stillness, Hilary seemed to hear, deep and very
faint, the sound as of some monster breathing, or the far beating of
muffed drums. From every side of the pale sleeping town it seemed to
come, under the moon's cold glamour. It rose, and fell, and rose, with
a weird, creepy rhythm, like a groaning of the hopeless and hungry. A
hansom cab rattled down the High Street; Hilary strained his ears after
the failing clatter of hoofs and bell. They died; there was silence.
Creeping nearer, drumming, throbbing, he heard again the beating of
that vast heart. It grew and grew. His own heart began thumping. Then,
emerging from that sinister dumb groan, he distinguished a crunching
sound, and knew that it was no muttering echo of men's struggles, but
only the waggons journeying to Covent Garden Market.




CHAPTER XIV

A WALK ABROAD

Thyme Dallison, in the midst of her busy life, found leisure to record
her recollections and ideas in the pages of old school notebooks. She
had no definite purpose in so doing, nor did she desire the solace of
luxuriating in her private feelings--this she would have scorned as out
of date and silly. It was done from the fulness of youthful energy,
and from the desire to express oneself that was “in the air.” It was
everywhere, that desire: among her fellow-students, among her young
men friends, in her mother's drawing-room, and her aunt's studio.
Like sentiment and marriage to the Victorian miss, so was this duty to
express herself to Thyme; and, going hand-in-hand with it, the duty to
have a good and jolly youth. She never read again the thoughts which she
recorded, she took no care to lock them up, knowing that her liberty,
development, and pleasure were sacred things which no one would dream of
touching--she kept them stuffed down in a drawer among her handkerchiefs
and ties and blouses, together with the indelible fragment of a pencil.

This journal, naive and slipshod, recorded without order the current
impression of things on her mind.

In the early morning of the 4th of May she sat, night-gowned, on the
foot of her white bed, with chestnut hair all fluffy about her neck,
eyes bright and cheeks still rosy with sleep, scribbling away
and rubbing one bare foot against the other in the ecstasy of
self-expression. Now and then, in the middle of a sentence, she would
stop and look out of the window, or stretch herself deliciously, as
though life were too full of joy for her to finish anything.

“I went into grandfather's room yesterday, and stayed while he was
dictating to the little model. I do think grandfather's so splendid.
Martin says an enthusiast is worse than useless; people, he says,
can't afford to dabble in ideas or dreams. He calls grandfather's idea
paleolithic. I hate him to be laughed at. Martin's so cocksure. I don't
think he'd find many men of eighty who'd bathe in the Serpentine all the
year round, and do his own room, cook his own food, and live on about
ninety pounds a year out of his pension of three hundred, and give all
the rest away. Martin says that's unsound, and the 'Book of Universal
Brotherhood' rot. I don't care if it is; it's fine to go on writing it
as he does all day. Martin admits that. That's the worst of him: he's so
cool, you can't score him off; he seems to be always criticising you; it
makes me wild.... That little model is a hopeless duffer. I could have
taken it all down in half the time. She kept stopping and looking up
with that mouth of hers half open, as if she had all day before her.
Grandfather's so absorbed he doesn't notice; he likes to read the thing
over and over, to hear how the words sound. That girl would be no good
at any sort of work, except 'sitting,' I suppose. Aunt B. used to say
she sat well. There's something queer about her face; it reminds me a
little of that Botticelli Madonna in the National Gallery, the full-face
one; not so much in the shape as in the expression--almost stupid, and
yet as if things were going to happen to her. Her hands and arms are
pretty, and her feet are smaller than mine. She's two years older than
me. I asked her why she went in for being a model, which is beastly
work. She said she was glad to get anything! I asked her why she didn't
go into a shop or into service. She didn't answer at once, and then said
she hadn't had any recommendations--didn't know where to try; then, all
of a sudden, she grew quite sulky, and said she didn't want to....”

Thyme paused to pencil in a sketch of the little model's profile....

“She had on a really pretty frock, quite simple and well made--it must
have cost three or four pounds. She can't be so very badly off, or
somebody gave it her....”

And again Thyme paused.

“She looked ever so much prettier in it than she used to in her old
brown skirt, I thought .... Uncle Hilary came to dinner last night. We
talked of social questions; we always discuss things when he comes.
I can't help liking Uncle Hilary; he has such kind eyes, and he's so
gentle that you never lose your temper with him. Martin calls him weak
and unsatisfactory because he's not in touch with life. I should say it
was more as if he couldn't bear to force anyone to do anything; he seems
to see both sides of every question, and he's not good at making up his
mind, of course. He's rather like Hamlet might have been, only nobody
seems to know now what Hamlet was really like. I told him what I thought
about the lower classes. One can talk to him. I hate father's way of
making feeble little jokes, as if nothing were serious. I said I
didn't think it was any use to dabble; we ought to go to the root of
everything. I said that money and class distinctions are two bogeys we
have got to lay. Martin says, when it comes to real dealing with social
questions and the poor, all the people we know are amateurs. He says
that we have got to shake ourselves free of all the old sentimental
notions, and just work at putting everything to the test of Health.
Father calls Martin a 'Sanitist'; and Uncle Hilary says that if you wash
people by law they'll all be as dirty again tomorrow....”

Thyme paused again. A blackbird in the garden of the Square was uttering
a long, low, chuckling trill. She ran to the window and peeped out. The
bird was on a plane-tree, and, with throat uplifted, was letting through
his yellow beak that delicious piece of self-expression. All things he
seemed to praise--the sky, the sun, the trees, the dewy grass, himself:

'You darling!' thought Thyme. With a shudder of delight she dropped her
notebook back into the drawer, flung off her nightgown, and flew into
her bath.

That same morning she slipped out quietly at ten o'clock. Her Saturdays
were free of classes, but she had to run the gauntlet of her mother's
liking for her company and her father's wish for her to go with him to
Richmond and play golf.

For on Saturdays Stephen almost always left the precincts of the Courts
before three o'clock. Then, if he could induce his wife or daughter to
accompany him, he liked to get a round or two in preparation for Sunday,
when he always started off at half-past ten and played all day. If
Cecilia and Thyme failed him, he would go to his club, and keep himself
in touch with every kind of social movement by reading the reviews.

Thyme walked along with her head up and a wrinkle in her brow, as though
she were absorbed in serious reflection; if admiring glances were flung
at her, she did not seem aware of them. Passing not far from Hilary's,
she entered the Broad Walk, and crossed it to the farther end.

On a railing, stretching out his long legs and observing the passers-by,
sat her cousin, Martin Stone. He got down as she came up.

“Late again,” he said. “Come on!”

“Where are we going first?” Thyme asked.

“The Notting Hill district's all we can do to-day if we're to go again
to Mrs. Hughs'. I must be down at the hospital this afternoon.”

Thyme frowned. “I do envy you living by yourself, Martin. It's silly
having to live at home.”

Martin did not answer, but one nostril of his long nose was seen to
curve, and Thyme acquiesced in this without remark. They walked for
some minutes between tall houses, looking about them calmly. Then Martin
said: “All Purceys round here.”

Thyme nodded. Again there was silence; but in these pauses there was
no embarrassment, no consciousness apparently that it was silence, and
their eyes--those young, impatient, interested eyes--were for ever busy
observing.

“Boundary line. We shall be in a patch directly.”

“Black?” asked Thyme.

“Dark blue--black farther on.”

They were passing down a long, grey, curving road, whose narrow houses,
hopelessly unpainted, showed marks of grinding poverty. The Spring wind
was ruffling straw and little bits of paper in the gutters; under the
bright sunlight a bleak and bitter struggle seemed raging. Thyme said:

“This street gives me a hollow feeling.”

Martin nodded. “Worse than the real article. There's half a mile of
this. Here it's all grim fighting. Farther on they've given it up.”

And still they went on up the curving street, with its few pinched shops
and its unending narrow grimness.

At the corner of a by-street Martin said: “We'll go down here.”

Thyme stood still, wrinkling her nose. Martin eyed her.

“Don't funk!”

“I'm not funking, Martin, only I can't stand the smells.”

“You'll have to get used to them.”

“Yes, I know; but--but I forgot my eucalyptus.”

The young man took out a handkerchief which had not yet been unfolded.

“Here, take mine.”

“They do make me feel so--it's a shame to take yours,” and she took the
handkerchief.

“That's all right,” said Martin. “Come on!”

The houses of this narrow street, inside and out, seemed full of women.
Many of them had babies in their arms; they were working or looking out
of windows or gossiping on doorsteps. And all stopped to stare as the
young couple passed. Thyme stole a look at her companion. His long
stride had not varied; there was the usual pale, observant, sarcastic
expression on his face. Clenching the handkerchief in readiness, and
trying to imitate his callous air, she looked at a group of five women
on the nearest doorstep.

Three were seated and two were standing. One of these, a young woman
with a round, open face, was clearly very soon to have a child; the
other, with a short, dark face and iron-grey, straggling hair, was
smoking a clay pipe. Of the three seated, one, quite young, had a face
as grey white as a dirty sheet, and a blackened eye; the second, with
her ragged dress disarranged, was nursing a baby; the third, in the
centre, on the top step, with red arms akimbo, her face scored with
drink, was shouting friendly obscenities to a neighbour in the window
opposite. In Thyme's heart rose the passionate feeling, 'How disgusting!
how disgusting!' and since she did not dare to give expression to it,
she bit her lips and turned her head from them, resenting, with all a
young girl's horror, that her sex had given her away. The women stared
at her, and in those faces, according to their different temperaments,
could be seen first the same vague, hard interest that had been Thyme's
when she first looked at them, then the same secret hostility and
criticism, as though they too felt that by this young girl's untouched
modesty, by her gushed cheeks and unsoiled clothes, their sex had given
them away. With contemptuous movements of their lips and bodies, on that
doorstep they proclaimed their emphatic belief in the virtue and reality
of their own existences and in the vice and unreality of her intruding
presence.

“Give the doll to Bill; 'e'd make 'er work for once, the---” In a burst
of laughter the epithet was lost.

Martin's lips curled.

“Purple just here,” he said.

Thyme's cheeks were crimson.

At the end of the little street he stopped before a shop.

“Come on,” he said, “you'll see the sort of place where they buy their
grub.”

In the doorway were standing a thin brown spaniel, a small fair woman
with a high, bald forehead, from which the hair was gleaned into
curlpapers, and a little girl with some affection of the skin.

Nodding coolly, Martin motioned them aside. The shop was ten feet
square; its counters, running parallel to two of the walls, were covered
with plates of cake, sausages, old ham-bones, peppermint sweets, and
household soap; there was also bread, margarine, suet in bowls, sugar,
bloaters--many bloaters--Captain's biscuits, and other things besides.
Two or three dead rabbits hung against the wall. All was uncovered,
so that what flies there were sat feeding socialistically. Behind the
counter a girl of seventeen was serving a thin-faced woman with portions
of a cheese which she was holding down with her strong, dirty hand,
while she sawed it with a knife. On the counter, next the cheese, sat a
quiet-looking cat.

They all glanced round at the two young people, who stood and waited.

“Finish what you're at,” said Martin, “then give me three pennyworth of
bull's-eyes.”

The girl, with a violent effort, finished severing the cheese. The
thin-faced woman took it, and, coughing above it, went away. The girl,
who could not take her eyes off Thyme, now served them with three
pennyworth of bull's-eyes, which she took out with her fingers, for
they had stuck. Putting them in a screw of newspaper, she handed them
to Martin. The young man, who had been observing negligently, touched
Thyme's elbow. She, who had stood with eyes cast down, now turned. They
went out, Martin handing the bull's-eyes to the little girl with an
affection of the skin.

The street now ended in a wide road formed of little low houses.

“Black,” said Martin, “here; all down this road-casual labour,
criminals, loafers, drunkards, consumps. Look at the faces!”

Thyme raised her eyes obediently. In this main thoroughfare it was not
as in the by-street, and only dull or sullen glances, or none at
all, were bent on her. Some of the houses had ragged plants on the
window-sills; in one window a canary was singing. Then, at a bend, they
came into a blacker reach of human river. Here were outbuildings, houses
with broken windows, houses with windows boarded up, fried-fish shops,
low public-houses, houses without doors. There were more men here than
women, and those men were wheeling barrows full of rags and bottles,
or not even full of rags and bottles; or they were standing by the
public-houses gossiping or quarrelling in groups of three or four;
or very slowly walking in the gutters, or on the pavements, as though
trying to remember if they were alive. Then suddenly some young man with
gaunt violence in his face would pass, pushing his barrow desperately,
striding fiercely by. And every now and then, from a fried-fish or
hardware shop, would come out a man in a dirty apron to take the sun and
contemplate the scene, not finding in it, seemingly, anything that in
any way depressed his spirit. Amongst the constant, crawling, shifting
stream of passengers were seen women carrying food wrapped up in
newspaper, or with bundles beneath their shawls. The faces of these
women were generally either very red and coarse or of a sort of
bluish-white; they wore the expression of such as know themselves to be
existing in the way that Providence has arranged they should exist. No
surprise, revolt, dismay, or shame was ever to be seen on those faces;
in place of these emotions a drab and brutish acquiescence or mechanical
coarse jocularity. To pass like this about their business was their
occupation each morning of the year; it was needful to accept it. Not
having any hope of ever, being different, not being able to imagine any
other life, they were not so wasteful of their strength as to attempt
either to hope or to imagine. Here and there, too, very slowly passed
old men and women, crawling along, like winter bees who, in some strange
and evil moment, had forgotten to die in the sunlight of their toil,
and, too old to be of use, had been chivied forth from their hive to
perish slowly in the cold twilight of their days.

Down the centre of the street Thyme saw a brewer's dray creeping its way
due south under the sun. Three horses drew it, with braided tails and
beribboned manes, the brass glittering on their harness. High up, like
a god, sat the drayman, his little slits of eyes above huge red cheeks
fixed immovably on his horses' crests. Behind him, with slow, unceasing
crunch, the dray rolled, piled up with hogsheads, whereon the drayman's
mate lay sleeping. Like the slumbrous image of some mighty unrelenting
Power, it passed, proud that its monstrous bulk contained all the joy
and blessing those shadows on the pavement had ever known.

The two young people emerged on to the high road running east and west.

“Cross here,” said Martin, “and cut down into Kensington. Nothing more
of interest now till we get to Hound Street. Purceys and Purceys all
round about this part.”

Thyme shook herself.

“O Martin, let's go down a road where there's some air. I feel so
dirty.” She put her hand up to her chest.

“There's one here,” said Martin.

They turned to the left into a road that had many trees. Now that she
could breathe and look about her, Thyme once more held her head erect
and began to swing her arms.

“Martin, something must be done!”

The young doctor did not reply; his face still wore its pale, sarcastic,
observant look. He gave her arm a squeeze with a half-contemptuous
smile.




CHAPTER XV

SECOND PILGRIMAGE TO HOUND STREET

Arriving in Hound Street, Martin Stone and his companion went straight
up to Mrs. Hughs' front room. They found her doing the week's washing,
and hanging out before a scanty fire part of the little that the week
had been suffered to soil. Her arms were bare, her face and eyes red;
the steam of soapsuds had congealed on them.

Attached to the bolster by a towel, under his father's bayonet and the
oleograph depicting the Nativity, sat the baby. In the air there was
the scent of him, of walls, and washing, and red herrings. The two young
people took their seat on the window-sill.

“May we open the window, Mrs. Hughs?” said Thyme. “Or will it hurt the
baby?”

“No, miss.”

“What's the matter with your wrists?” asked Martin.

The seamstress, muffing her arms with the garment she was dipping in
soapy water, did not answer.

“Don't do that. Let me have a look.”

Mrs. Hughs held out her arms; the wrists were swollen and discoloured.

“The brute!” cried Thyme.

The young doctor muttered: “Done last night. Got any arnica?”

“No, Sir.”

“Of course not.” He laid a sixpence on the sill. “Get some and rub it
in. Mind you don't break the skin.”

Thyme suddenly burst out: “Why don't you leave him, Mrs. Hughs? Why do
you live with a brute like that?”

Martin frowned.

“Any particular row,” he said, “or only just the ordinary?”

Mrs. Hughs turned her face to the scanty fire. Her shoulders heaved
spasmodically.

Thus passed three minutes, then she again began rubbing the soapy
garment.

“If you don't mind, I'll smoke,” said Martin. “What's your baby's name?
Bill? Here, Bill!” He placed his little finger in the baby's hand.
“Feeding him yourself?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What's his number?”

“I've lost three, sir; there's only his brother Stanley now.”

“One a year?”

“No, Sir. I missed two years in the war, of course.”

“Hughs wounded out there?”

“Yes, sir--in the head.”

“Ah! And fever?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Martin tapped his pipe against his forehead. “Least drop of liquor goes
to it, I suppose?”

Mrs. Hughs paused in the dipping of a cloth; her tear-stained face
expressed resentment, as though she had detected an attempt to find
excuses for her husband.

“He didn't ought to treat me as he does,” she said.

All three now stood round the bed, over which the baby presided with
solemn gaze.

Thyme said: “I wouldn't care what he did, Mrs. Hughs; I wouldn't stay
another day if I were you. It's your duty as a woman.”

To hear her duty as a woman Mrs. Hughs turned; slow vindictiveness
gathered on her thin face.

“Yes, miss?” she said. “I don't know what to do.

“Take the children and go. What's the good of waiting? We'll give you
money if you haven't got enough.”

But Mrs. Hughs did not answer.

“Well?” said Martin, blowing out a cloud of smoke.

Thyme burst out again: “Just go, the very minute your little boy comes
back from school. Hughs 'll never find you. It 'll serve him right. No
woman ought to put up with what you have; it's simply weakness, Mrs.
Hughs.”

As though that word had forced its way into her very heart and set the
blood free suddenly, Mrs. Hughs' face turned the colour of tomatoes. She
poured forth words:

“And leave him to that young girl--and leave him to his wickedness!
After I've been his wife eight years and borne him five! after I've done
what I have for him! I never want no better husband than what he used
to be, till she came with her pale face and her prinky manners,
and--and her mouth that you can tell she's bad by. Let her keep to her
profession--sitting naked's what she's fit for--coming here to decent
folk---” And holding out her wrists to Thyme, who had shrunk back, she
cried: “He's never struck me before. I got these all because of her new
clothes!”

Hearing his mother speak with such strange passion, the baby howled.
Mrs. Hughs stopped, and took him up. Pressing him close to her thin
bosom, she looked above his little dingy head at the two young people.

“I got my wrists like this last night, wrestling with him. He swore he'd
go and leave me, but I held him, I did. And don't you ever think that
I'll let him go to that young girl--not if he kills me first!”

With those words the passion in her face died down. She was again a
meek, mute woman.

During this outbreak, Thyme, shrinking, stood by the doorway with
lowered eyes. She now looked up at Martin, clearly asking him to
come away. The latter had kept his gaze fixed on Mrs. Hughs, smoking
silently. He took his pipe out of his mouth, and pointed with it at the
baby.

“This gentleman,” he said, “can't stand too much of that.”

In silence all three bent their eyes on the baby. His little fists, and
nose, and forehead, even his little naked, crinkled feet, were thrust
with all his feeble strength against his mother's bosom, as though he
were striving to creep into some hole away from life. There was a sort
of dumb despair in that tiny pushing of his way back to the place whence
he had come. His head, covered with dingy down, quivered with his effort
to escape. He had been alive so little; that little had sufficed. Martin
put his pipe back into his mouth.

“This won't do, you know,” he said. “He can't stand it. And look here!
If you stop feeding him, I wouldn't give that for him tomorrow!” He held
up the circle of his thumb and finger. “You're the best judge of what
sort of chance you've got of going on in your present state of mind!”
 Then, motioning to Thyme, he went down the stairs.




CHAPTER XVI

BENEATH THE ELMS

Spring was in the hearts of men, and their tall companions, trees. Their
troubles, the stiflings of each other's growth, and all such things,
seemed of little moment. Spring had them by the throat. It turned old
men round, and made them stare at women younger than themselves. It made
young men and women walking side by side touch each other, and every
bird on the branches tune his pipe. Flying sunlight speckled the
fluttered leaves, and gushed the cheeks of crippled boys who limped into
the Gardens, till their pale Cockney faces shone with a strange glow.

In the Broad Walk, beneath those dangerous trees, the elms, people sat
and took the sun--cheek by jowl, generals and nursemaids, parsons and
the unemployed. Above, in that Spring wind, the elm-tree boughs were
swaying, rustling, creaking ever so gently, carrying on the innumerable
talk of trees--their sapient, wordless conversation over the affairs of
men. It was pleasant, too, to see and hear the myriad movement of the
million little separate leaves, each shaped differently, flighting never
twice alike, yet all obedient to the single spirit of their tree.

Thyme and Martin were sitting on a seat beneath the largest of all the
elms. Their manner lacked the unconcern and dignity of the moment, when,
two hours before, they had started forth on their discovery from the
other end of the Broad Walk. Martin spoke:

“It's given you the hump! First sight of blood, and you're like all the
rest of them!”

“I'm not, Martin. How perfectly beastly of you!”

“Oh yes, you are. There's plenty of aestheticism about you and your
people--plenty of good intentions--but not an ounce of real business!”

“Don't abuse my people; they're just as kind as you!”

“Oh, they're kind enough, and they can see what's wrong. It's not that
which stops them. But your dad's a regular official. He's got so much
sense of what he ought not to do that he never does anything; Just as
Hilary's got so much consciousness of what he ought to do that he never
does anything. You went to that woman's this morning with your ideas of
helping her all cut and dried, and now that you find the facts aren't
what you thought, you're stumped!”

“One can't believe anything they say. That's what I hate. I thought
Hughs simply knocked her about. I didn't know it was her jealousy--”

“Of course you didn't. Do you imagine those people give anything away to
our sort unless they're forced? They know better.”

“Well, I hate the whole thing--it's all so sordid!”

“O Lord!”

“Well, it is! I don't feel that I want to help a woman who can say and
feel such horrid things, or the girl, or any of them.”

“Who cares what they say or feel? that's not the point. It's simply a
case of common sense: Your people put that girl there, and they must get
her to clear out again sharp. It's just a question of what's healthy.”

“Well, I know it's not healthy for me to have anything to do with, and
I won't! I don't believe you can help people unless they want to be
helped.”

Martin whistled.

“You're rather a brute, I think,” said Thyme.

“A brute, not rath

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