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Happy House

by Freifrau von Betsey Riddle Hutten zum Stolzenberg · English · Gutenberg #42771 · 469,029 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Happy House

Author: Freifrau von Betsey Riddle Hutten zum Stolzenberg


        
Release date: May 22, 2013 [eBook #42771]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42771

Credits: E-text prepared by Annie McGuire from page images generously made available by the Google Books Library Project (http://books.google.com)


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HAPPY HOUSE

The BARONESS VON HUTTEN




HAPPY HOUSE

by

The BARONESS VON HUTTEN

Author of "Pam," "Pam Decides," "Sharrow," "Kingsmead," etc.







[Illustration]

New York
George H. Doran Company

Copyright, 1920,
By George H. Doran Company




_TO MISS LILY BETTS_


MY DEAR LILY: _We three, one of us in a chair, and two of us upside down
on the grass-plot, have decided that this book must be dedicated to you,
in memory of how we did not work on it at Sennen Cove, and how we did
work on it here. So here it is, with our grateful love, from_

  _Your affectionate_
  _Richard, and Hetty, and B. v. H._
  PENZANCE




HAPPY HOUSE




CHAPTER I


Mrs. Walbridge stood at the top of the steps, a pink satin slipper in
her hand, looking absently out into the late afternoon. The July
sunlight spread in thick layers across the narrow, flagged path to the
gate, and the shadows under the may tree on the left were motionless, as
if cut out of lead. The path was strewn with what looked like
machine-made snowflakes, and a long piece of white satin ribbon had
caught on the syringa bush on the right of the green gate, and hung like
a streak of whiter light across the leaves. Someone inside the house was
playing a fox-trot, and sounds of tired laughter were in the air, but
the well-known author, Mrs. Walbridge, did not hear them. She was
leaning against the side of the door, recklessly crushing her new grey
frock, and her eyes were fixed on the gate in the unseeing stare of
utter fatigue. Presently the music stopped and the sudden silence seemed
to rouse her, for, with a deep sigh and a little shake of the head that
was evidently characteristic, she turned and went slowly into the house.

A few minutes later a brisk-looking young man in a new straw hat came
down the street and paused at the gate, peering up at the fanlight to
verify his whereabouts. Number eighty-eight did not seem to satisfy
him, but suddenly his eyes fell on the gate. On its shabby green were
painted the words, very faded, almost undecipherable, "Happy House," and
with a contented nod the young man opened the gate and went quickly up
the steps. No one answered his ring, so he rang again. Again the silence
was unbroken, but from somewhere far off he heard the sound of laughter
and talking, and, peering forward into the little hall, he took a small
notebook from his pocket and wrote a few words in it, whistling softly
between his teeth. He was a freckled-faced young man with a tip-tilted
nose, not in the least like the petals of a flower, and with a look of
cheery cheekiness. After a moment he went into the passage and thrust
his head into the open drawing-room door. The room was filled with
flowers, and though the windows were wide open, it smelt close, as if it
had already been full of people. The walls were covered with pink and
white moiré paper, whose shiny surface was broken by various pictures.
Watts's "Hope" in a gilt frame dominated the mantelpiece; a copy of "The
Fighting Téméraire" faced it, and there were a good many photographs
elaborately framed, grouped, like little families, in clusters. Between
the windows hung an old, faded photogravure of "The Soul's Awakening,"
and "Alone at Last" revealed its artless passion over a walnut
chiffonier laden with small pieces of china. The young man in the straw
hat, which was now pushed far back on his sweat-darkened fair hair,
stood in the middle of the room and looked round, scratching his head
with his pencil. His bright eyes missed nothing, and although he was
plainly a young man full of buoyant matter-of-factness, there was scorn,
not unkindly, but decided, in his merry but almost porcine eyes as he
made mental notes of his surroundings.

"Poor old girl," he muttered. "Hang that 'bus accident. I wish I'd been
here in time for the party----" Then his shrewd face softened as the
deeper meaning of the room reached him. It was ugly; it was commonplace,
but it was more of a home than many a room his journalistic activities
had acquainted him with. By a low, shabby, comfortable-looking arm-chair
that stood near the flower-filled grate was a dark-covered table on
which stood five photographs, all in shiny silver or leather frames. Mr.
Wick stood over the table tapping his teeth softly with his pencil, and
moving his lips in a way that produced a hollow tune. "So that's the
little lot," he said to himself in a cheerful, confidential voice.
"Three feminines and two masculines, as the Italians say. And very nice
too. Her own corner, I bet. Yes, there's her fountain pen." He took it
up and made a note of its make and laid it carefully down. There was a
little fire-screen in the shape of a banner of wool embroidery on the
table. "That's how she keeps the firelight out of her eyes when she's
working in the winter. Poor old girl. What ghastly muck it is, too----
Good thing for her the public likes it. Now, then, what about that bell?
Guess I'll go and have another tinkle at it." He started to the door,
when it was pushed further open and the owner of the house came in. Mr.
Wick knew at the first glance that it was the owner of the house. A
fattish, middle-aged man in brand new shepherd's plaid trousers and a
not quite so new braided morning-coat.

"Hallo! I--I beg your pardon----" the new-comer began, not at all in
the voice of one who begs pardon. Mr. Wick waved his hand kindly.

"Oliver Wick's my name," he explained. "I come from _Round the Fire_ for
an account of the wedding, but I got mixed up with a rather good 'bus
smash in Oxford Street, and that's why I'm late."

"Oh, I see. Want a description of the wedding, do you? Clothes and so
on? I'm afraid I'm not much good for that, but if you'll come into the
garden I'll get one of my daughters to tell you. Some of the young
people are still there, as a matter of fact."

Mr. Walbridge had stopped just short of being a tall man. His
figure had thickened and spread as he grew older and his hips were
disproportionately broad, which gave him a heavy, clumsy look. In his
reddish, rather swollen face were traces of what had been great beauty,
and he had the unpleasant manner of a man who consciously uses his charm
as a means to attain his own ends.

"Come into the dining-room first and have a glass of the widow," he
suggested, as he led the way down the narrow passage towards an open
door at the back of the house.

Mr. Wick, who had no inhuman prejudice against conviviality, followed
him into the dining-room and partook, as his quick eyes made notes of
everything on which they rested, of a glass of warmish, rather doubtful
wine.

"I suppose Mrs. Walbridge will give me five minutes?" the young man
asked, setting down his glass and taking a cigarette from the very shiny
silver case offered him by his host. Mr. Walbridge laughed, showing the
remains of a fine set of teeth artfully reinforced by a skilled
dentist.

"Oh, yes. My wife will quite enjoy being interviewed. Women always like
that kind of thing, and, between you and me and the gate-post," he
poured some champagne into a tumbler and drank it before he went on,
"interviewers don't come round quite as they used in her younger days."

Mr. Wick despised the novels of the poor lady he had come to interview,
but he was a youth not without chivalry, and something in his host's
manner irritated him.

"She has a very good book public, anyhow, has Violet Walbridge. You
mustn't mind me calling her that. I shouldn't call Browning Mr.
Browning, you know, or Victoria Cross Miss Cross."

Walbridge nodded. "Oh, yes, they're pretty stories, pretty stories,
though I like stronger stuff myself. Just re-reading 'L'Assommoir'
again. Met Zola once when I was living in Paris. Always wondered how he
smashed his nose. Well, if you're ready, let's come down into the garden
where the ladies are."

The garden of Happy House was a long narrow strip almost entirely
covered by a grass tennis court, and bounded by a narrow, crowded,
neglected herbaceous border. As he stood at the top of the steep flight
of steps leading down to where the group of young people were sprawled
about in dilapidated old deck-chairs or on the grass, Mr. Wick's quick
eyes saw the herbaceous border, and, what is more, they understood it.
It was a meagre, squeezed, depressed looking attempt, and the young man
from Brondesbury knew instinctively that, whereas the tennis court was
loved by the young people of the family, the wild and pathetic flowers
belonged to the old lady he had come to interview. Somehow he seemed to
know, as he told his mother later, quite a lot about Violet Walbridge,
just through looking at her border.

The sun was setting now, and a little wind had come up, stirring the
leaves on the old elm under whose shade, erratic and scant, the little
group were seated. Three or four young men were there, splendid, if
rather warm, in their wedding garments, and several young women and
girls, the pretty pale colours of their fine feathers harmonising
charmingly with the evening. At the far end of the garden a lady was
walking, with a blue silk sunshade over her shoulder. As the two men
came down the steps Mr. Walbridge pointed to her.

"There's my wife," he said. "Shall I come and introduce you?"

"No, thank you. No, no, I'll go by myself," the young man answered
hastily, and as he went down across the lawn he heard a girl's voice
saying laughingly: "Reporter to interview Mrs. Jellaby." The others
laughed, not unkindly, but their laughter lent to Mr. Wick's approach to
Mrs. Walbridge a deference it might otherwise not have had. She had not
heard him coming, and was standing with her back to him, her head and
shoulders hidden by the delphinium-blue sunshade, and when she turned,
starting nervously at the sound of his voice, he realised with painful
acuteness that delphinium blue is not the colour to be worn by daylight
by old ladies. Her thin, worn face, in which the bones showed more than
in any face he had ever seen, was flooded with the blue colour that
seemed to fill all the hollows and lines with indigo, and her large
sunken eyes, on which the upper eyelids fitted too closely, must have
been, the young man noticed, beautiful eyes long ago. They were of that
most rare eye-colour, a really dark violet, and the eyebrows on the very
edge of the clearly defined frontal bone were slightly arched and well
marked over the temples. When he had told her who he was and his errand,
she flushed with pleasure and held out her hand to him, and he, whose
profession is probably second only to that of dentistry in its
unpopularity, was touched by her simple pleasure.

"My Chief thought the public would be interested in the wedding. He
tells me this daughter--the bride, I mean--was the original of--of--one
of your chief heroines."

Violet Walbridge led the way to an old, faded green garden seat, on
which they sat down.

"Yes, she's the original of 'Rose Parmenter,'" she helped him out
gently, without offence at his having forgotten the name. "I wish you
had seen her. But you can say that she was looking beautiful, because
she was----"

Mr. Wick whipped out his notebook and his beautifully sharpened pencil,
contrived a little table of his knees, and looked up at her.

"'Rose Parmenter'--oh, yes. That's one of your best-known books, isn't
it?"

"Yes, that and 'Starlight and Moonlight.' They sold best, though 'One
Maid's Word' has done very well. That," she added slowly, "has been done
into Swedish, as well as French and German. 'Queenie's Promise' has been
done into six languages."

Her voice was very low, and peculiarly toneless, but he noticed a little
flush of pleasure in her thin cheeks--a flush that induced him, quite
unexpectedly to himself, to burst out with the information that a friend
of his sister--Jenny _her_ name was--just revelled in his companion's
works. "Give me a box o' chocs," Kitty will say, "and one of Violet
Walbridge's books, and I wouldn't change places with Queen Mary."

Without being urged, Mrs. Walbridge gave the young man details he
wanted--that her daughter's name was Hermione Rosalind; that she was the
second daughter and the third child, and that she had married a man
named Gaskell-Walker--William Gaskell-Walker.

"He belongs to a Lancashire family, and they've gone to the Lakes for
their honeymoon." The author waved her thin hand towards the group of
young people at the other end of the lawn. "There's the rest of my
flock," she said, her voice warming a little. "The tall man who's
looking at his watch is my other son-in-law, Dr. Twiss of Queen Anne
Street, Cavendish Square. He married my eldest daughter, Maud, four
years ago. Their little boy was page to-day. He's upstairs asleep now."

As she spoke one of the girls in the group left the others and came
towards her and Wick.

"This is your daughter, too?" the young man asked, a little throb of
pleasure in his voice.

"Yes, this," Mrs. Walbridge answered, taking the girl's hand, "is my
baby, Griselda. Grisel, dear, this is Mr.--Mr.----"

"Wick," said the young man. "Oliver Wick."

"You've come to interview Mum?" Miss Walbridge asked, a little
good-natured raillery in her voice.

The young man bowed. "Yes. I represent _Round the Fire_, and my Chief
thought that the public would be interested in an account of the
wedding----" His eyes were glued to the young girl's face. She was very
small, and, he thought to himself, the blackest white girl he had ever
seen; so dark that if he had not known who she was he might have
wondered whether she were not the whitest black girl--her hair was
coal-black and her long eyes like inkwells, and her skin, smooth as
vellum, without a touch of colour, was a rich golden brown. She was
charmingly dressed in canary-coloured chiffon, and round her neck she
wore a little necklet of twisted strands of seed pearls, from which hung
a large, beautifully cut pearl-shaped topaz.

"I came to tell you, Mum," she went on, glancing over her shoulder at
one of the upper windows, "that Hilary's awake and bawling his head off,
and Maud wants you to go up to him."

Mrs. Walbridge rose and Wick noticed, although he could not have
explained it, how very different were her grey silk draperies from the
yellow ones of her daughter. She had, moreover, sat down carelessly, and
the back of her frock was crushed and twisted.

"It's my little grandson," she explained. "He's always frightened when
he wakes up. I'll go to him. Perhaps you'd like my daughter to show you
the wedding presents, Mr. Wick."

Oliver Wick was very young, and he was an ugly youth as well, but
something about him held the girl's attention, in spite of his being
only a reporter. This something, though she did not know it, was power,
so it was perfectly natural that the little, spoilt beauty should lead
him into the house to the room upstairs where the presents were set
forth. His flowery article in the next number of _Round the Fire_
expressed great appreciation of the gifts, but there was no detailed
account of them, and that was because, although he looked at them and
seemed to see what he was looking at, he really saw nothing but Miss
Walbridge's enchanting little face.

"Do you ever read any of Mum's novels?" the girl asked him at last, as
they stood by the window, looking down over the little garden into the
quiet, tree-bordered road.

The young man hesitated, and she burst out laughing, pointing a finger
of scorn at him.

"You've not?" she cried. "Own up. You needn't mind. I'm sure I don't
blame you; they're awful rubbish--poor old Mum! I often wonder who it is
_does_ read them."

As she finished speaking, the door into the back room opened, and Mrs.
Walbridge came out, carrying the little boy who had been crying. His
long, fat legs, ending in shiny patent leather slippers, hung limply
down, and his towsled fair head leant on her shoulder. He was dressed in
cavalier costume of velvet and satin, and his fat, stupid face was
blotted and blurred with tears. He looked so very large and heavy, and
Mrs. Walbridge looked so small and old and tired that the young man went
towards with his arms held out.

"Let me carry him down for you," he said. "He's too heavy----"

Griselda laughed. "My mother won't let you," she said gaily. "She always
carries him about. She's much stronger than she looks."

Mrs. Walbridge didn't speak, but, with a little smile, went out of the
room and slowly downstairs. Her daughter shrugged her shoulders.

"Mum's not only superannuated as to novels," she announced, smoothing
her hair in front of a glass; "she's the old-fashioned mother and
grandmother. She won't let us do a thing."

Her bright beauty had already cast a small spell on the young man, but
nevertheless he answered her in a flash:

"Do you ever try?"

She stared for a moment. In spite of his journalistic manner and what is
really best described as his cheek, Oliver Wick was a gentleman, and the
girl had instinctively accepted him as such. But at the abrupt, frank
censure in his voice she drew herself up and assumed a new manner.

"Now that you've seen the presents," she said, in what he knew she
thought to be a haughty tone, "I think I must get back to my friends."

He grinned. "Righto! Sorry to have detained you. But I haven't quite
finished my talk with Mrs. Walbridge. I'm sure she won't mind giving me
a few tips about her next book. Our people love that kind of
thing--_eat_ it."

He cast his eye about the pleasant sunny room, and then, as he reached
the door, stopped.

"I suppose this is _your_ room?" he asked, with bland disregard of her
manner.

"What do you mean?"

"Well--different kinds of pictures, you know; brown wallpaper, and
that's a good Kakemono. Hanabosa Iccho, isn't it?"

Miss Walbridge's face expressed surprise too acute to be altogether
courteous.

"I--I don't know," she said. "I know it's a very good one. Mother bought
it for Paul--that's my brother--he's very fond of such things--for his
birthday and at Christmas--his room is being painted, so some of his
things are in here."

The young man looked admiringly at the grey and white study of monkeys
and leaves.

"I've got an uncle who collects them," he said, "and that's a jolly good
one. I suppose that Mrs. Walbridge goes in for Japanese art too?"

"Poor mother!" The girl laughed. "She doesn't know a Kakemono from a
broomstick. Paul found that one at some sale and asked her to give it to
him."

They went slowly down the stairs, the girl's pretty white hand sliding
lightly along the polished rail in a way that put all thought of
Japanese art out of the young man's active mind. He was going to be a
great success, for he had the conquering power of concentrating not only
his thoughts but his feelings on one thing at a time; and for the moment
the only thing in the world was Griselda Walbridge's left hand.




CHAPTER II


Happy House was a big old house with rooms on both sides of the door,
and a good many bedrooms, but it was old-fashioned in the wrong way,
like a man's straw hat, say, of the early seventies. It was inconvenient
without being picturesque. There was only one bathroom, and the passages
were narrow. Most of the children had been born there, indeed all of
them except Paul, for the prudent Mrs. Walbridge had bought it out of
the proceeds of her first book, "Queenie's Promise"--a book that is even
now dear to thousands of romantic hearts in obscure homes. Paul had been
born in the little house at Tooting Bec, for there it was that the Great
Success had been written. In those days might have been seen walking
under the fine trees of the common, a little dowdy figure with a bustle
and flowing unhygienic draperies, that was the newly married Mrs.
Ferdinand Walbridge, in the throes of literary invention. But just
before the birth of Maud Evelyn the removal had been made; the hastily
gathered, inexpensive household gods had been carried by the faithful
Carter Paterson to Walpole Road and set up in their over-large, rather
dwarfing shrine. Those were the days of limitless ambition and mad, rosy
dreams, when Ferdinand was still regarded by his young wife much in the
way that Antony Trollope's heroines worshipped their husbands a short
time before. The romantic light of the runaway match still hung round
him and his extraordinary good looks filled her with unweakened pride.

They hung up Mr. Watts's "Hope," the beautiful and touching "Soul's
Awakening" (which, indeed, bore a certain resemblance to Walbridge at
that time), she arranged her little odds and ends of china, and her few
books that her father had sent her after the half-hearted reconciliation
following Paul's birth, and one of the first things they bought was a
gilt clock, representing two little cupids on a see-saw. Mrs.
Walbridge's taste was bad, but it was no worse than the taste of the
greater part of her contemporaries of her own class, for she belonged
body and soul to the Philistines. She hadn't even an artistic uncle
clinging to the uttermost skirts of the pre-Raphaelites to lighten her
darkness, and, behold, when she had made it, her little kingdom looked
good to her. She settled down light-heartedly and without misgivings, to
her quadruple rôle of wife, mother, housekeeper and writer. She had no
doubt, the delicate little creature of twenty, but that she could
"manage" and she had been managing ever since. She managed to write
those flowery sentimental books of hers in a room full of crawling,
experimental, loud-voiced babies; she managed to break in a series of
savage handmaidens, who married as soon as she had taught them how to do
their work; she managed to make flowers grow in the shabby, weed-grown
garden; she managed to mend stair-carpets, to stick up fresh wallpapers,
to teach her children their prayers and how to read and write; she
managed to cook the dinner during the many servantless periods. The fate
of her high-born hero and heroine tearing at her tender heart, while
that fabulous being, the printer's devil, waited, in a metaphorical
sense, on her doorstep. But most of all, she managed to put up with
Ferdinand. She had loved him strongly and truly, but she was a
clear-sighted little woman, and she could not be fooled twice in the
same way, which, from some points of view, is a misfortune in a wife. So
gradually she found him out, and with every bit of him that crumbled
away, something of herself crumbled too. Nobody knew very much about
those years, for she was one of those rare women who have no confidante,
and she was too busy for much active mourning. Ferdinand was an
expensive luxury. She worked every day and all day, believed in her
stories with a pathetic persistence, cherishing all her press
notices--she pasted them in a large book, and each one was carefully
dated. She had a large public, and made a fairly large, fairly regular
income, but there never was enough money, because Walbridge not only
speculated and gambled in every possible way, but also required a great
deal for his own personal comforts and luxuries. For years it was the
joy of the little woman's heart to dress him at one of the classic
tailors in Savile Row; his shirts and ties came from a Jermyn Street
shop, his boots from St. James's Street, and his gloves (he had very
beautiful hands) were made specially for him in the Rue de Rivoli. For
many years Ferdinand Walbridge (or Ferdie, as he was called by a large
but always changing circle of admiring friends) was one of the most
carefully dressed men in town. He had an office somewhere in the city,
but his various attempts at business always failed sooner or later, and
then after each failure he would settle down gently and not ungratefully
to a long period of what he called rest.

When the three elder children were eight, six and three, a very bad time
had come to "Happy House." Little had been known about it except for the
main fact that Mr. Walbridge was made a bankrupt. But Caroline Breeze,
the only woman who was anything like an intimate friend of the
household, knew that there was, over and above this dreadful business, a
worse trouble.

Caroline Breeze was one of those women who are not unaffectionately
called "a perfect fool" by their friends, but she was a close-mouthed,
loyal soul, and had never talked about it to anyone. But years
afterwards, when the time had come for her to speak, she spoke, out of
her silent observation, to great purpose. For a long time after his
bankruptcy Ferdie Walbridge walked about like a moulting bird; his
jauntiness seemed to have left him, and without it he wilted and became
as nothing. During this three years Mrs. Walbridge for the first time
did her writing in the small room in the attic--the small room with the
sloping roof and the little view of the tree-tops and sky of which she
grew so fond, and which, empty and desolate though it was, had gradually
grown to be called the study; and that was the time when Caroline Breeze
was of such great use to her. For Caroline used to come every day and
take the children, as she expressed it, off their mother's hands.

In '94 Mrs. Walbridge produced "Touchstones," in '95 "Under the Elms"
and in '96 "Starlight and Moonlight." It was in '98 that there appeared
in the papers a small notice to the effect that Mr. Ferdinand Walbridge
was discharged from his bankruptcy, having paid his creditors twenty
shillings in the pound.

Naturally, after this rehabilitation, Mr. Walbridge became once more his
charming and fascinating self, and was the object of many
congratulations from the entirely new group of friends that he had
gathered round him since his misfortune.

"Most chaps would have been satisfied to pay fifteen shillings in the
pound," more than one of these gentlemen declared to him, and Ferdie
Walbridge, as he waved his hand and expressed his failure to comprehend
such an attitude, really almost forgot that it was his wife and not
himself who had provided the money that had washed his honour clean.

Caroline Breeze, faithful and best of friends, lived up three pairs of
stairs in the Harrow Road, and one of her few pleasures was the keeping
of an accurate and minute record of her daily doings. Perhaps some
selections from the diary will help to bring us up to date in the story
of "Happy House."

_October_, 1894--_Tuesday._--Have been with poor Violet. Mr. Walbridge
has been most unfortunate, and someone has made him a bankrupt. It is a
dreadful blow to Violet, and poor little Hermy only six weeks old.
Brought Maud home for the night with me. She's cutting a big tooth. Gave
her black currant jam for tea. Do hope the seeds won't disagree with
her....

_Wednesday._--Not much sleep with poor little Maud. Took her round and
got Hermy in the pram, and did the shopping. Saw Mr. Walbridge for a
moment. He looks dreadfully ill, poor man. Told me he nearly shot
himself last night. I told him he must bear up for Violet's sake....

_A week later._--Went to "Happy House" and took care of the children
while Violet was at the solicitors. She looks frightfully ill and
changed, somehow. I don't quite understand what it is all about. Several
people I know have gone bankrupt, and none of their wives seem as upset
as Violet....

_November 5th._--Spent the day at "Happy House" looking after the
children. Violet had to go to the Law Courts with Mr. Walbridge. He
looked so desperate this morning that I crept in and hid his razors. He
dined at the King's Arms with some of his friends, and Violet and I had
high tea together. She looks dreadfully ill, and the doctor says she
must wean poor little Hermy. She said very little, but I'm afraid she
blames poor Mr. Walbridge. I begged her to be gentle with him, and she
promised she would, but she looked so oddly at me that I wished I hadn't
said it.

_November 20th._--Violet has moved into the top room next the nursery to
be nearer the children. I must say I think this is wrong of her. She
ought to consider her husband. He looks a little better, but my heart
aches for him.

_February_, 1895.--Violet's new book doing very well. Third edition out
yesterday. She's getting on well with the one for the autumn. Such a
pretty title--"Under the Elms." It's about a foundling, which I think is
always so sweet. She's very busy making over the children's clothes.
Ferdie (he says it is ridiculous that such an intimate friend as I am
should go on calling him Mr. Walbridge) has gone to Torquay for a few
weeks as he's very run down. Mem.--I lent him ten pounds, as dear Violet
really doesn't seem quite to understand that a gentleman needs a little
extra money when he's away. He was sweet about her. Told me how very
good she was, and said that her not understanding about the pocket money
is not her fault, as, of course, she is not quite so well born as he. He
is very well connected indeed, though he doesn't care to have much to do
with his relations. He's to pay me back when his two new pastels are
sold. They are at Jackson's in Oxford Street, and look lovely in the
window....

_November_, 1895.--Violet's new book out to-day--"Under the Elms"--a
sweet story. She gave me a copy with my name in it, and I sat up till
nearly two, with cocoa, reading it. Very touching, and made me cry, but
has a happy ending. I wish I had such a gift.

_January 13th_, 1896.--Just had a long talk with poor Ferdie. He is
really very unlucky. Had his pocket picked on his way home from the city
yesterday with £86 15s. 4d. in his purse. Does not wish to tell poor
Violet. It would distress her so. He had bought some shares in some kind
of mineral--I forget the name--and they had gone up, and he had been
planning to buy her a new coat and skirt, and a hat, and lovely presents
for all the children. He's such a kind man. He was even going to buy six
pairs of gloves for me. The disappointment is almost more than he can
bear. Sometimes I think Violet is rather hard on him. I couldn't bear to
see him so disappointed, so I am lending him £50 out of the Post Office
Savings Bank. He's going to pay me six per cent. It's better than I can
get in any other _safe_ investment. He's to pay me at midsummer.
_N.B._--That makes £60.

_February 12th_, 1896.--Paul's birthday. Went to tea to "Happy House."
Violet made a beautiful cake with white icing, and had squeezed little
pink squiggles all over it in a nice pattern. She gave him a fine new
pair of boots and a bath sponge. His daddy gave him a drum--a real
one--and a large box of chocolates.

_February 13th_, 1896.--Ferdie came round at seven this morning to ask
me to help nurse Paul. He was ill all night with nettle-rash in his
throat, and nearly choked, poor little boy. I've been there all day.
Susan told me Ferdie's grief in the night was something awful. It's a
good thing Violet does not take things so to heart. Odd about the
chocolate. It seems it's always given him nettle-rash.

_September 4th_, 1896.--Darling Hermy's second birthday. Her mother made
her a really lovely coat out of her Indian shawl. I knitted her a
petticoat. Dear Ferdie gave her a huge doll with real hair, that talks,
and a box of chocolates, which we took away from her, as Paul cried for
some. Ferdie had quite forgotten that chocolates poison Paul. He was
very wonderful this evening after the children had gone to bed. He had
made some money (only a little) by doing some work in the city, and he
had bought Violet a lovely pair of seed-pearl earrings. I suppose she
was very tired, because she was really quite ungracious about them, and
hurt his feelings dreadfully. There was also some trouble about the gas
man, which I didn't quite understand. But afterwards, when I had gone
upstairs to take a last look at the children, they had a talk, and as I
came downstairs I saw him kneeling in front of her with his head in her
lap. He has such pretty curly hair, and when I came in he came to me and
took my hand and said he didn't mind my seeing his tears, as I was the
same as a sister, and asked me to help influence her to forgive him, and
to begin over again. It was very touching, and I couldn't help crying a
little. I was so sorry for him. Violet is really rather hard. I
suggested to her that after all many nice people go bankrupt, and that
other women have far worse things to bear, and she looked at me very
oddly for a moment, almost as if she despised me, though it can't have
been that....

_September 30th_, 1896.--Have been helping Violet move her things back
into the downstairs room. Ferdie was so pleased. He brought home a great
bunch of white lilac--in September!--and put it in a vase by the bed. I
thought it was a lovely little attention.

_July 4th_, 1897.--A beautiful little boy came home this morning to
"Happy House." They are going to call him Guy, which is Ferdie's
favourite name. He was dreadfully disappointed it wasn't a little girl,
so that she could be named Violet Peace. He's so romantic. What a pity
there is no masculine name meaning Peace....




CHAPTER III


Mr. Oliver Wick's ideas of courtship were primitive and unshakable. On
one or two clever, ingenious pretexts he visited "Happy House" twice
within the month after his first visit, in order, as he expressed it to
himself, to look over Miss Walbridge in the light of a possible wife.
That he was in love with her he recognised, to continue using his own
language, "from the drop of the hat," "from the first gun." But although
he belonged to the most romantic race under the sun, Mr. Wick was no
fool, and whereas anything like a help-meet would have displeased him
almost to the point of disgust, he had certain standards to which any
one with claims to be the future Mrs. Oliver Wick must more or less
conform. He didn't care a bit about money--he felt that money was his
job, not the girl's--but she'd got to be straight, she'd got to be a
good looker, and she'd got to be good-tempered. No shrew-taming for
him--at least not in his own domestic circle.

One evening, shortly after his third visit to "Happy House," the young
man was standing at the tallboys in his mother's room in Spencer
Crescent, Brondesbury, tying a new tie over an immaculate dress shirt.

"I'm going to do the trick to-night," he declared, filled with pleasant
confidence, "or bust."

Mrs. Wick, who looked more like her son's grandmother than his mother,
sat in a low basket chair by the window, stretching, with an old, thin
pair of olive-wood glove stretchers, the new white gloves that were to
put the final touch of splendour to the wooer's appearance.

She was a pleasant-faced old woman, with a strong chin and keen, clear
eyes, and when she smiled she showed traces of past beauty.

"Well, of course," she said, snapping the glove-stretchers at him
thoughtfully, "you know everything--you always did--and far be it from
me to make any suggestions to you."

He turned round, grinning, his ugly face full of subtle likeness to her
handsome one.

"Oh, go on," he jeered, "you wonderful old thing! Some day your pictures
will be in the penny papers as the mother of Baron Wick of Brondesbury.
Of course I know everything! Look at this tie, for instance. A
Piccadilly tie, built for dukes, tied in Brondesbury by Fleet Street.
What's his name--D'Orsay--couldn't do it better. But what were you going
to say?"

She laughed and held out the gloves. "Here you are, son. Only this. I
bet you sixpence she won't look at you. She'll turn you down; refuse
you; give you the cold hand; icy mit--what d'you call it? And then,
you'll come back and weep on my shoulder."

Mr. Wick, who had taken the gloves, stood still for a minute, his face
full of sudden thought.

"She may," he said, "she may. I don't care if she does. I tell you she's
lovely, mother. She'd look like a fairy queen if the idiots who paint
'em realised that fairies ought to be dark, and not tow-coloured. Of
course she'll refuse me a few times, but her father'll be on my side."

"Why?"

"Because he's a rather clever old scoundrel, and he'll know that I'm a
succeeder--a getter."

The old woman looked thoughtful. "I haven't liked anything you told me
about _him_, Olly. But, after all, he has paid up, and lots of good men
have been unfortunate in business."

The young fellow took up his dress-coat, which was new and richly lined,
and drew it on with care.

"Oh, I'm not marrying into this family because I admire my future
father-in-law," he answered. "I haven't any little illusions about him,
old lady. It's his wife who's done the paying, or I'm very much
mistaken. She's an honest woman--poor thing."

There was such deep sympathy in his voice that his mother, who had
risen, and was patting and smoothing the new coat into place on his
broad shoulders, pulled him round till he faced her, and looked down at
him, for she was taller than he.

"Why are you so sorry for her?"

He hesitated for a moment, and his hesitation meant much to her.

"I don't know. She never says anything, of course. She seems happy
enough, but I believe--I believe she's found him out----"

"God help her," Mrs. Wick answered.

The young man remembered this episode as he sat opposite his hostess at
dinner an hour and a half later. The dining-room had been re-papered
since he had drunk that glass of luke-warm wine in it the day of
Hermione's wedding, and his sharp eyes noticed the absence of several
ugly things that had been there then. Stags no longer hooted to each
other across mountain chasms over the sideboard, and one or two good
line drawings hung in their place.

"How do you like it?" Griselda asked him. "Paul and I have been cheering
things up a bit."

"Splendid," he replied promptly. "I say, how beautiful your sister is!"

Griselda's rather hard little face softened charmingly as she looked
across the table, where the bride was sitting. Hermione Gaskell-Walker
was a very handsome young woman in an almost classical way, and her
short-sighted, clever-looking husband, who sat nearly opposite her,
evidently thought so too, for he peered over the flowers at her in
adoration that was plain and pleasing to see.

"They've such a jolly house in Campden Hill. His father was Adrian
Gaskell-Walker, the landscape painter, and collected things."

Mr. Wick nodded, but did not answer, for he was busy making a series of
those mental photographs, whose keenness and durability so largely
contributed to his success in life. He had an amazing power of storing
up records of incidents that somehow or other might come in useful to
him, and this little dinner party, which he had decided to be a
milestone on his road, interested him acutely in its detail.

By candlelight, in perfect evening dress, Ferdinand Walbridge's slightly
dilapidated charms were very manifest. On his right sat an elderly lady
about whom Mr. Wick's apparatus recorded only one word--pearls.

Next to her came Paul Walbridge, looking older than his twenty-nine
years--thin, delicate, rather high shouldered, with remarkably glossy
dark hair and immense soft, dove-coloured eyes. He looked far better
bred, the young man decided, than he had any right to look; his hands,
in particular, might have been modelled by Velasquez.

"Supercilious----" Wick thought, and then paused, not adding the "ass"
that had come into his mind, for he knew that Paul Walbridge was not an
ass, although he would have liked to call him one.

Next Paul came the beautiful Hermione, with magnificent shoulders white
as flour, and between her and her mother sat a man named Walter
Crichell, a portrait painter, one of the best in the secondary school--a
man with over-red lips and short white hands with unpleasant, pointed
fingers.

"That fellow's a stinker," Wick decided, never to change his mind.

Next came the hostess, thin, worn, rather silent, in the natural
isolation of an old woman sitting between two young men, each of whom
had youth and beauty on his far side.

Then, of course, came Oliver himself and Grisel. Next to Grisel,
Gaskell-Walker, the lower part of whose face was clever, but who would
probably find himself handicapped by the qualities belonging to too
high, too straight a forehead; and next him, consequently on the host's
left, sat Crichell's wife. Young Wick could not look at her very
comfortably without leaning forward, but he caught one or two glimpses
of her face as Walbridge bent over her, and promised himself a good look
in the drawing-room. She was worth it, he knew. A soft, velvety brown
creature, a little on the fat side, but rather beautiful. It was plain,
too, that the old man admired her.

Mr. Wick studied his host's face for a moment as he thus completed his
circle of observation, and so strong were his feelings as he looked at
Mr. Walbridge that quite unintentionally he said "Ugh!" aloud.

"What did you say?" It was Mrs. Walbridge who spoke--her first remark
for quite a quarter of an hour--and in her large eyes was the anxious,
guilty look of one who has allowed herself to wool-gather in public.

Wick started, blushed scarlet, and then burst out laughing at his
dilemma.

"I didn't say anything," he answered. "I was only thinking. I beg your
pardon, Mrs. Walbridge."

Her worn face softened into a kind smile, and he noticed that her teeth
were even and very white.

"It is awful, isn't it," she said, "to--to get thinking about things
when one ought to be talking? I'm afraid I'm very dull for a young man
to sit next."

"Oh, come, Mrs. Walbridge," he protested, "when you know how they all
lapped up that article I wrote about you."

She bridled gently. "It was a very nice article." After a minute she
added anxiously, her thin fingers pressing an old blue enamel brooch
that fastened the rather crumpled lace at her throat: "Tell me, Mr.
Wick, do you--do you really think that--that people like my books as
much as they used to?"

"You must have a very big public," he answered, wishing she had not put
the question.

"Yes, I know I have, but--you see, of course I'm not young any more, and
the children--they know a great many people, and bring some of them here
and--I've noticed that while they are all very kind, they don't seem to
have--to have really read my books."

"Don't they?" said Wick, full of sympathy. "Dear me!"

She shook her head. "No, they really don't, and I've been wondering
if--if it is that they're beginning to find me--a little old-fashioned."

What he wanted to say in return for this was: "But, bless your heart,
you _are_ old-fashioned, the old-fashionest old dear that ever lived!"
What he did say was: "Well, I suppose lots of people think Thackeray and
Dickens old-fashioned----" But when Grisel turned just then and fired
some question at him, he felt a weak longing to mop his brow. It had
been a narrow escape, and he would not have hurt the old lady's feelings
for worlds. Something about this faded, exhausted-looking little old
literary bee touched the young fellow in a quite new way.

"Gosh!" he thought; "now if it was mother, she wouldn't let people think
her old-fashioned; she wouldn't _be_ old-fashioned. My word, wouldn't
she just sit up at night and write something to beat Wells, and Elinor
Glyn, and the rest of them into a cocked hat!"

Grisel, in white--white that would have done very well, he thought, in
Grosvenor Square or St. James's--was in her best mood that night, and as
they talked he felt himself slipping lower and lower into the
abyss--that pleasant abyss on the edge of which he had hovered so many
times before without letting himself go.

It was then that the question of Bruce Collier's book rose. It was
Crichell who brought up the subject, and as he described the book he
enthusiastically waved his peculiarly white hands, which Mr. Wick
thought, with some disgust, looked as if they were on the point of
sprouting into horrid white tubers like potatoes in a dark cellar.

"The finest book I've read for years," he declared. "Magnificent piece
of work."

"Walter's quite mad about it," his wife put in, leaning forward and
making motions with her hand and throat like those of a sunning pigeon.
"He dined with us last night--Mr. Collier--and he's an extraordinary
creature. Never touched a drug in his life, yet he knows all about
it--and as for the other things----" she shrugged her shoulders and
laughed. Her husband shook his fist at her.

"Now, Clara," he said, "curb that tongue of yours, my dear, or you'll
shock Mrs. Walbridge. Have you read the book, Mrs. Walbridge, 'Reek'?"

The little writer shook her head. "No, I haven't very much time for
reading. I've just read 'The Rosary.' What a delightful book it is!"

Grisel stretched her hand across Wick and took hold of her mother's.

"Never mind, darling, you shan't be teased, and you mustn't read 'Reek.'
I shouldn't dream of allowing you to."

Walbridge, in whose handsome, swollen eyes a new little flame was
showing, looked up from a whispered talk with Mrs. Crichell and smiled
at his wife.

"No, darling," he agreed, "I can't have you reading such books. It would
ruin your style. I'm sure Mr. Wick agrees with me, don't you, Mr. Wick?
Mr. Wick is a great admirer of your books," he added in an insufferable
way.

She didn't speak, but Wick saw her thin lips quiver a little, and
hastened to answer:

"I'm only a business man, Mr. Walbridge, and know nothing at all about
literature, but I know this much--I bet the chap who wrote 'Reek' would
give his eye-tooth to have Mrs. Walbridge's sales!"

Hermione Gaskell-Walker raised her heavy-lidded eyes and smiled at him
gratefully, as she murmured, "Darling mum," and, stimulated by his
success, Mr. Wick ended the conversation by saying firmly, as Mrs.
Walbridge caught the eye of the pearl lady: "Filthy book, anyhow; not
fit to be read by ladies----"

       *       *       *       *       *

Some hours later a not very crestfallen young man sat in the small
dining-room of 11, Spencer Crescent, Brondesbury, and ate poached eggs
on toast--he was always ready for poached eggs--and announced to his
dressing-gowned and beslippered mother that the lady of his choice had
rejected him.

"Couldn't dream of it," he announced cheerfully, reaching for butter
with his own knife in a way only permissible at such out-of-hour meals.
"She pretended to be surprised, you know, and then, when that didn't
work, she tried to assume that I was mad. Pretty little piece, she is,
mother. Dimples in her lovely face she's got, and eyes like two little
black suns, shining away----"

His mother coughed drily. "You don't seem remarkably cast down," she
observed, rubbing her nose with her thumb--a broad and capable thumb,
"and here was I wasting my tissue in an agony of fear about my
broken-hearted boy."

He cocked his head as little snub-nosed dogs do, indeed, he all but
cocked one ear, and his eyes twinkled.

"You and your tissue, indeed! You don't think I thought she was going
to jump down my throat, do you? I'd hate a girl who took me first time.
I like being refused--looks well. I hope she'll refuse me three or four
times more."

"If she could see you eat poached eggs in your shirt-sleeves, with all
the varnish off your hair, she'd go on refusing you to the crack o'
doom," retorted the old lady.

Then they went to bed, and in five minutes the rejected one was snoring
comfortably.




CHAPTER IV


"Roseleaves and Lavender," Violet Walbridge's last novel, was selling
pretty well, but a few days after the dinner party the author left her
house about half-past eleven, mounted a No. 3 bus, settled herself in
the prow and travelled down to the Strand in answer to a rather pressing
invitation from her publishers.

It was a fine October morning, with a little tang in the air, so
windless that some early falling leaves left their boughs with an air of
doubt and travelled very slowly, almost hesitatingly, towards the earth.
All the smoke went straight up into the sky, and several caged birds on
the route were singing loudly outside their windows. The bus was full of
people, more or less all of them of the type who made Mrs. Walbridge's
public, and there were, without doubt, several girls sitting almost
within reach of her who would have felt it in the nature of an adventure
to meet the author of "Queenie's Promise" and "One Maid's Word." It is
interesting to think that there are fewer people who would genuinely
thrill at the sight of George Meredith, if he were still alive, than
would thrill at having met such a writer as Violet Walbridge. But no one
knew who the little, dowdily dressed woman was, and her journey to
Charing Cross was uneventful. God, who gives all mercies, gave the gift
of vanity, and Mrs. Walbridge, although very humble-minded, was not
without her innocent share in the consoling fault. More than once she
had given herself the pleasure of telling some casually met stranger
who she was. Once her yearly holiday at Bexhill had been given a glow of
glory by the fact that she had by chance found the chambermaid at the
little hotel, engrossed to the point of imbecility in "Starlight and
Moonlight." Delicately, shyly, she had made known to the girl the fact
of her identity, and the reverence, almost awe, of the poor ignorant
servant in meeting the author of that splendid book had made her very
happy for many hours.

Another time a working man in a train had been quarrelling with his wife
for the possession of a torn copy of "Aaron's Rod" (a book which Mrs.
Walbridge privately considered a little strong), and as she got out of
the train and the man handed her down her holdall, she had thrown the
exciting information of her identity into his face and run for her life,
feeling herself akin to Dickens, Miss Ethel M. Dell, Robert Louis
Stevenson, and all the other great ones of the earth. But these splendid
events had never been frequent, and of late years they had almost ceased
to occur. And as the little lady got off the bus at Charing Cross and
blundered apologetically into a tall, rosy-faced girl, who clutched _The
Red Magazine_ to her breast, she wondered wistfully if the girl would
have been delighted if she had told her.

       *       *       *       *       *

Messrs. Lubbock & Payne, publishers, had their offices in the Strand,
and Mrs. Walbridge's appointment was for half-past eleven. She felt a
little nervous and depressed as she went up in the lift, for Mr. Lubbock
was a very imposing man, whose fine bay-windowed waistcoat always
overawed her a little. However, it was probably the glory of the golden
autumn day that had got on her nerves. She was always sad on such days,
so she tried to look bold and successful as she passed Wheeler, the old
clerk, Mr. Lubbock's right-hand man, whom she had known for a quarter of
a century.

Wheeler, however, did not respond to her remarks about the weather as he
had once done, and when she had waited nearly half an hour her
depression had grown still greater, and she was finally ushered into the
inner office with hands and feet icy with fear.

Harrison Lubbock, a large, abnormally clean-looking old gentleman, with
a ruff of silky white hair round his polished scalp, greeted her kindly,
but without enthusiasm.

"I've asked you to call, Mrs. Walbridge," he began at once with a
pronounced glance at the clock, "on a little matter of business. Mr.
Payne and I have been talking things over of late--business matters you
understand--and we have come to the conclusion that there are one or two
of our authors to whom a few words of advice might be of use." He
paused, and she looked at him anxiously.

"I see," she said, her face growing a little paler. "I--I'm one of those
authors?"

He bowed, and the soft folds of his beautifully shaved double chin
dropped a little lower over his high collar.

"Yes, yes, quite so. You're a very old, shall I say, client?--of
ours----"

She would have liked to reply that at that moment the word patient might
be more applicable to her, but she dared not, and after a moment he went
on:

"I think we may say that we are very old friends."

This was awful. She was no business woman, and she had little knowledge
of the world, but even she knew that it meant danger, in an interview
avowedly a business interview, when friendship was invoked. She
stammered something, and he went on:

"Your books have sold--sell--very well, on the whole. We have done our
best for them, and, as you know, the cost of publishing and
advertising--particularly advertising--has nearly doubled since the
war."

Again he paused, and this time she bowed, being afraid to say that she
knew conditions were such that her percentage on sales had gone down,
while the sale price of her books had gone up to seven and six. She
noticed Mr. Lubbock's sleeve-links; they were new ones and very neat, of
gold and platinum. How she wished she could buy a pair like that for
Paul! In the old days her envy would have been for Ferdie. Mr. Lubbock
cleared his throat, fitted his fat finger-tips neatly together, and
began to be sprightly.

"Amazing how the output of books of fiction has increased of late years,
isn't it? Dear me, I can remember when 2250 would have been considered a
big output, and now there are so many good writers, so many excellent
writers, Mrs. Walbridge, that we are forced by competition and market
conditions to bring out nearly three times that number. I wonder if you
have kept up with the new writers," he went on after a pause, "Mrs.
Levett, Joan Kelly, Austen Goodheart, and so on--and Wanda Potter. Wanda
Potter's last book sold over a hundred thousand."

"I haven't read any of them, I'm afraid. I've so little time----" She
tried to smile and felt as if her lips were freezing.

"Just so, just so; exactly what I was saying to Payne. 'Mrs. Walbridge
is a very busy woman,' I said to Payne. 'She hasn't time--she can't be
_expected_ to have time--to read all these things, so it's quite natural
that--that----'" He broke off, and taking up a little bronze figure of a
poodle, that served as a paper weight, he examined it carefully for a
moment. "I'm sure you understand what I mean, Mrs. Walbridge," he said
at last.

She was looking at the corner of his polished mahogany writing table;
she was looking at two carefully jointed bits of wood, finely grained
and smoothly welded together, but what she saw was "Happy House"; Ferdie
and his new cedar cigar chest yawning to be filled; of an unpaid
tailor's bill; of his annual cough (Ferdie coughed himself regularly to
Torquay every autumn); she saw Paul and his new edition de luxe of
Swinburne, and the Rowlandson "Horse Fair" he had taken her to see in
King Street, St. James's--the "Horse Fair" that was to cost "only
eighteen guineas." She saw the little sea-green frock that hung in the
great Frenchman's window in Hanover Square, the little frock that would
look so beautiful on Grisel. She saw a vision of a hecatomb of roasts of
beef and saddles of mutton, and oysters, and burgundy, that she was
longing to offer up to her family gods. She saw the natural skunk coat
she had been planning to give to poor dear Caroline for Christmas. She
saw the new bathroom, on which the men were already working, that was to
be Grisel's. Then these things passed away, and the corner of the table
again appeared, and Mr. Lubbock was saying, in that kind, dreadful voice
of his: "I feel quite sure that you understand our position, Mrs.
Walbridge, and, after all, the reduction is not of very great
consequence."

Before she could speak the telephone bell rang. He took up the receiver
and bent forward, politeness and courtesy expressed in every line of his
big figure as clearly as if the telephone had been a person he was
speaking to.

"Oh--oh, yes, is that you, Payne?" she heard him say. "Yes, what an odd
coincidence, she's here with me now!" and Mrs. Walbridge knew that it
was no coincidence; that they had planned it all out between them, and
for a moment she had a wild idea of flight. She would run and run down
the narrow, dusty stairs and out into the street, and not hear any of it
said. It seemed that she could bear the reduction of her money, but that
she could not bear it discussed by these two men who held not only her,
but "Happy House" and everybody in "Happy House" in the hollow of their
hands. But she dared not move, and presently Mr. Payne came in.

Mr. Payne was a little, yellowish-pink man, who looked like a weazel. He
had lashless and browless blue eyes, and his nose was sharp and his
teeth looked very sharp. He was brisk and brusque in his manner, and he
dashed at the subject of the smaller price for the next book with an
abruptness that was only one degree more bearable than Mr. Lubbock's
smoothness.

"Yes, yes," he declared, shaking hands rather violently. "I knew you
understood, Mrs. Walbridge, didn't I, Lubbock? 'Mrs. Walbridge is a
business woman,' I said, 'and of course she'll understand that the war
has changed things very considerably, to say nothing of the--of
the--ah--inevitable march of time.'"

"I was telling Mrs. Walbridge," Lubbock joined in, "that I thought it
would be a good plan for her to read some of the new books. Haven't we
got Wanda Potter's 'Rice Paper'? Excellent story, excellent--and sells
well." He called up someone on the telephone, and smiling into it,
working his rough eyebrows genially, he gave orders for someone named
Briggs to get Miss Potter's last book for Mrs. Walbridge. "Wait a
minute, George. What other ones would you suggest? Oh, yes, and Mr.
Goodheart's 'New Odyssey.' Useful book that," to Mrs. Walbridge. "You
take them, with our compliments, and just--just go through them----"

Mrs. Walbridge had risen and stood before the table, her hands clutching
very hard at her shabby leather bag.

Mr. Payne was about to speak, when something in her face stopped him.
They had known her for years. They had treated her very well, and they
had made a great deal of money out of her. But both of them felt at that
moment that until then they had never quite known her. Her face was very
white, and her immense hollow eyes were full of almost unbearable
misery. But it was the bravery of her that struck them both.

"Do I understand," she said quietly, "that you mean that I am
old-fashioned--too old-fashioned?" They did not answer, and she went on,
not realising that they both felt that she had turned the tables on
them. "You mean that my books don't sell so well as they did because
they are not up to date, because I'm--old."

"Good gracious, Mrs. Walbridge," broke in Mr. Payne, with the horrid
facetiousness of well-meaning vulgarity, "what an idea! We simply mean
that because you are so busy you have not had time to--how shall I say
it?--to keep exactly up to date. But a lady with your gifts and your
great experience is not going to pretend that she finds any difficulty
in changing this----"

She bowed. "Thank you, Mr. Payne. I think I understand. My new book
would have been ready in a few days, but if you can give me an extra
fortnight, I'll go through it again and try to--to modernise it a
little."

Then she said good morning, and went quietly out.

Mr. Lubbock let himself heavily down into his swivel chair.

"Dear me," he said, being a man of unblemished vocabulary, "that was
very unpleasant, Payne."

Mr. Payne lit a cigarette. "It was beastly," he retorted, blinking
rapidly through the smoke. "Upon my word, it's quite upset me. Poor old
thing! She'll never be able to do it, Lubbock. Never in this world. By
God, it's quite upset me! I'll have a pint of champagne for my lunch."

       *       *       *       *       *

Violet Walbridge had a little shopping to do. She had to go to
Sketchley's to get some blouses that had been cleaned for Griselda; she
went to Selfridges for a paper box of opened oysters for Paul, who was
at home with a cold; and she had two bills to pay in Oxford Street. When
these things were done, and she had bought a bunch of chrysanthemums
from a flower-girl, she took her place near the kerb and waited for her
bus. And then it was that the malicious gods struck her their final blow
for that day. Two young women stood near her, laden with parcels,
cheerfully talkative. One of them had been to a dance the night before;
the other one's baby had a new tooth, a very remarkable tooth, it
seemed, and both of them were in a state of pleasant turmoil and fret
about frocks that they were having made. Mrs. Walbridge listened to them
innocently, standing first on one foot and then on the other to rest
herself, her various parcels hugged close under her arms, the oysters
borne like a sacred offering in both hands.

"Dear me," one of the young women said suddenly, "it's after one
o'clock!"

Mrs. Walbridge started, for one o'clock was her lunch hour, and her
husband was very particular about punctuality in others.

"I meant to pop in to the _Times_ Book Club and get something to read,"
declared the mother of the baby with the new tooth, "but it's too late.
Have you read that thing 'Reek'? I've forgotten who it's by--somebody
new."

"No. I've been down for it for days and days, but I can't get it. I've
read a splendid new book, though--Wanda Potter's 'Rice Paper'--awfully
clever, and Joan Kelly's 'Ploughshares.'"

"I had an ulcerated tooth the other day," answered her friend, "and
couldn't go out, and sent Winnie to Boots' with a list of books, and
they were all out, so that nice red-haired girl--_you_ know--picked out
some herself and sent me, and guess what one of them was. Violet
Walbridge's last one--'Rosemary and Lavender'--or something----"

The other one laughed. "Oh, I know. 'Sage and Onions,' George calls it.
_Awful_ trash--can't stand her nowadays."

A bus arrived at that moment, and the two young women going on top, Mrs.
Walbridge crept inside, and sat crushed between two large uncomfortable
women, her face bent over the oysters.

"'Sage and Onions,'" she kept repeating under her breath, "'Sage and
Onions'----"

Ferdie was very much annoyed because she was late for lunch, and called
her very selfish to be out parading the streets doing idiotic errands
when she ought to be at home.




CHAPTER V


"Lord Effingham" was the book on which Mrs. Walbridge was at work, and
she sat the greater part of the next three nights reading the books that
Mr. Lubbock had given her, with a view to freshening up her nearly
finished novel. She could not read during the day, because she had too
much to do.

The plumbers had played havoc with the house in getting the new bathroom
in, and the cook had to leave even more unexpectedly than cooks
generally leave because her only sister was marrying and she had to go
home and look after her mother. This domestic complication is familiar
to many, but it didn't make it any easier for Mrs. Walbridge. Nor did
things improve when Maud Twiss and her husband went for a second
honeymoon to Ireland, leaving little Hilary at "Happy House."

Mrs. Walbridge loved her grandson; but he was a querulous, spoilt child,
and at the best of times his presence was upsetting. Now, with no cook,
with plumbers and the dreadful necessity of modernising "Lord
Effingham," the little boy nearly drove her mad.

One morning, about four weeks after her interview with Mr. Lubbock, she
was sitting in her little attic at the back of the house, surrounded by
closely written sheets of foolscap into which she had red-inked her
desperate efforts at enlivening--Lady Tryx, the heroine, had started on
a new career of endless cigarettes and cocktails, and a hitherto
blameless housemaid, who at first had been dismissed by an unkind
countess on a charge of theft, was now burdened with an illegitimate
baby; but even this failed to brighten up the dull level of decency that
was so discouraging to the publishers. Violet Walbridge was a failure at
illegitimacy and lawless passion, and, what was worse, she knew it.

It was cold up in the attic, for there was no fireplace, and something
had gone wrong with her oil-stove. Paul had promised to see to it before
going to the City that morning, but he had forgotten, so his mother had
to put an old flannel dressing-gown on over her ordinary clothes and
wrap her aching feet in a shawl. Her hands were covered with red ink,
for her cheap stylographic pen leaked, and her pretty black hair, wavy
and attractively threaded with white, was tumbled and loose.

She was utterly discouraged and unhappy about the book. "Lord
Effingham," with ridiculous perseverance, insisted on pursuing his so
blightingly blameless career. Her effort had put the book, such as it
was, completely out of shape, and she could have cried with despair as
she sat there staring through the curtainless window at the sky. Her
burden was so very great, and it made it worse, although she had always
prided herself on keeping her secret, that no one knew how utterly
dependent the whole household of "Happy House" was on her books.

Her husband had an office and regarded himself as a business man; Paul
worked in a bank, and poor Guy had been called up and was in France. (He
had been with some stockbrokers in the City.) But none of them had ever
contributed anything serious to the upkeep of the house.

Paul's salary was small, and his mother considered that the poor boy
really needed all that he made, because he was one of those people who
are very dependent on beautiful surroundings. He was a poet, too, and
had written some charming verse, most of which was still unpublished,
but every line of which was carefully copied in a vellum covered book
someone had sent to his mother one Christmas from Florence.

Somehow that morning her mind was full of the now long absent Guy. Guy
was the troublesome one. They were all tabulated in her mind--Hermione
being the beauty, and Maud, "my eldest girl," while Paul was artistic.

There had been scrapes in Guy's early days (he was only twenty-one now).
Certainly his tendencies had been inherited from his father--full grown
cap-â-pie tendencies they were, sprung whole, it seemed, from Ferdie's
brain, as Pallas Athene sprang from her father, Zeus's. The boy was fond
of billiards and devoted to horses, and there had been a time--a very
tragic time--when he had shown signs of being too fond of whisky and
soda. But that was past. Twice he had been home on leave from the front,
and he had undoubtedly improved in many ways.

A year ago there had been an Entanglement--(Mrs. Walbridge thought of it
with a capital in her mind)--with a young Frenchwoman in Soho, but that
too seemed to have died down and now that the war was certainly going to
end before long--this dreadful war to which we in England had so
dreadfully become accustomed--he would be coming back. She sighed, for
Guy's return would mean an even severer strain on her resources. He was
rather a dandy and fond of clothes, but he had grown and expanded of
late, and would need new things.

She looked down with something very much like hatred at the impeccable
"Lord Effingham," whose persistent virtue and the wholesome tendencies
of whose female friends were such drawbacks to her living children.

She struggled on and wrote a few pages, realising that the
interpolations she had made were as clumsy and damaging to her story as
were the red ink words that expressed them to the fair sheets of her
manuscript.

Presently she heard footsteps, and a familiar little cough, coming up
the stairs. It was Ferdinand coming, she knew, for a talk with her about
his visit to Torquay.

"Dear me, Violet, why can't you write downstairs like a Christian," he
began fretfully, turning up his coat collar and plunging his hands into
his trouser pockets. "All this affectation of needing quiet and solitude
for such work as yours is simply ridiculous."

She glanced up at him without moving. "I'm sorry, Ferdie," she said
gently, "but indeed it isn't affectation. I really can't work when
people are going in and out, and poor little Hilary is so noisy."

"Poor little Hilary! Damn nonsense! I slept very badly last night, and
had just got nicely off this morning about half-past nine, when he came
into my room and waked me--wanted my boot-jack for a boat, little
beast!"

"Oh, I _am_ sorry--I told him he mustn't disturb you. I'd just gone down
to show Jessie how to make the mince----"

"Jessie's cooking is abominable. I don't know why you haven't got
someone by this time."

When Ferdie's indignation had died away, he began again.

"What I want to know is about my rooms at Torquay. Has Mrs. Bishop
written?"

"Yes. Her letter came this morning. I've got it somewhere here"--she
rummaged about, but failed to find the letter. "I must have left it
downstairs. She says she can't let you have the front room, because some
general has got it and is going to stay all winter."

"Damnation! Just the kind of thing that always happens to me."

The clear morning light, falling undiluted from the sky, seemed to
expose his mean soul almost cruelly, and his wife turned her eyes
hastily away. She had known him now, as he really was, for many years
and yet somehow the memory of what he had once seemed to be, what he had
been to her, in her loving imagination, came back to her with painful
force, and smote her to the heart.

"She says there is a very nice room at the back----"

He rose impatiently, waving his beautiful hands, on which the veins were
beginning to stand out ominously.

"Oh, of course, you _would_ think it delightful for me to have a room at
the back. Nobody but _you_ ever _does_ appreciate beauty, views or
anything of that kind. When am I to go?"

"The room will be ready on Wednesday. But, listen, Ferdie, if you think
you can't bear it, why don't you write to Mrs. Bishop yourself and ask
her to look out something for you? You see, she knows you, so she'd take
more pains than if I wrote----"

A smile that she knew and hated crept round his mouth. "Yes, that's
possible, she might," he answered. "Nice little woman, Mrs. Bishop, and
although she is only a boarding-house keeper, she knows a gentleman when
she sees him."

At the door he paused. "Well, I'll go and write to her. I suppose you've
got some money, my dear? I paid my last cent to the income-tax man the
other day. I'm sure you needn't have declared all that money to them,
Violet----"

"I only told them the truth, Ferdie."

It was an old quarrel, this about the declaration to the income-tax
people, and one in which he was always beaten, so, with a shrug, he went
downstairs.

After a moment he called, his musical voice hoarse with the effort:
"Violet--I say, Violet, have my new shirts come?"

"I--I didn't know you had ordered any, dear----"

"Oh, didn't you? No, I may have forgotten to tell you. Well, I did.
Thought I might as well get two dozen while I was about it. Things are
going up so."

There was a little pause and then she said, "I hope you got them at that
nice place in Oxford Street?"

He had begun to whistle, but now he stopped and snarled out, "No, I
didn't then. I suppose it's _my_ business where I order my own shirts? I
got them at my usual shirt-makers in Jermyn Street."

Mrs. Walbridge went quietly back into her little study and sat down.

       *       *       *       *       *

That afternoon she went by Underground to Oxford Street and from there
walked in a cold grey rain to Queen Anne Street, where her daughter,
Mrs. Twiss, lived. Doctor Twiss lived in one-half of a roomy old house
in Queen Anne Street. His waiting-room and his consulting-room were at
the left of the door, those on the right belonging to a fashionable
dentist--but the rest of his rooms were two flights upstairs, the
dentist, who was a rich man, occupying the whole of the first floor.

Mrs. Walbridge paused before she rang at the upstairs door, for she was
very tired, and her usually placid thoughts seemed broken and confused.
Maud was her eldest daughter and in some ways the most companionable,
but she was a selfish woman and devotedly fond of her husband and little
boy, so that she had scant room for anyone else in her life.

"If only Maud would be sympathetic," Mrs. Walbridge thought, as she
finally rang.

"Mrs. Twiss is in the bedroom," the maid told her, "she ain't very well
to-day. I think the sea voyage upset 'er."

Mrs. Walbridge nodded to her and went down the narrow rose-walled
passage and knocked.

Mrs. Twiss was lying down on a divan at the foot of her bed, reading.

"Oh, Mum," she cried, without getting up, "how sweet of you to come so
soon! How are you, all right? We've had the most glorious
time--Moreton's put on four pounds and never looked better in his life."

Mrs. Walbridge sat down and looked round at the pleasant, familiar room.
There were plenty of flowers about and piles of new books, and all the
illustrated weeklies, and on a little Moorish table close to the divan
stood a gilt basket full of chocolates.

"You seem to be having a comfortable afternoon, my dear."

Maud laughed.

"I am. I expect we shall have a pretty bad time when we begin to count
up--travelling is fearfully expensive now--Moreton had to send home for
an extra fifty pounds. So we're taking it easy to-day. He's gone to the
hospital, and we're dining at the Carlton and going to see 'Chu Chin
Chow' to-night."

There was a little pause. Mrs. Walbridge was very unaccustomed to
telling bad news; being told it was more in her line. But she was in
such distress that she had thought she must tell Maud about Lubbock and
Payne. It would have done her good just to talk it over. But now, when
she tried, she found she could not.

"Caroline had taken Hilary to the Zoo when your telephone message came,"
she began, "or I would have brought him along. He's been very good,
Maud, and his appetite is splendid. I got him a bottle of cod liver oil
and malt, because I thought his little ribs stuck out a bit when I
bathed him----"

"Oh, the pet! I'm longing to see him! We've brought him all sorts of
presents. Oh, Mum, I was going to get you a sweet little bracelet of old
Irish paste--you know--a thing in four little chains. But at the last
minute Moreton found we had spent so much that I had to give him my last
fiver. So you'll take the will for the deed, won't you?"

"Of course, darling, how sweet of you to think of it. I'm glad Moreton
is so much better," Mrs. Walbridge began after a moment, "I hope he'll
have lots of patients this winter."

Maud's fair face clouded. She was a big, handsome woman, though less
shapely in her features than her sisters, and already showed signs of
being very fat in a few years' time, although she was only twenty-eight.

"I hope so, too," she grumbled. "Things are really awfully serious. I
believe all the tradespeople put their prices up when they hear this
address."

"I suppose it wouldn't--I suppose it wouldn't do for you to go and live
in a cheaper house?" Mrs. Walbridge faltered.

Maud sat straight up in her horror and dropped a half-bitten chocolate
on the floor.

"My goodness, mother, what a perfectly poisonous idea! Why, it would
ruin Moreton after having begun here. _Of course_ we can't."

She came and sat down on a stool near her mother and leaned her head on
her mother's knees.

"I'm longing to see Hilary," she repeated, playing with a bit of her
silk dressing-gown nervously. "And I have something to tell him,
Mum--he'll--he'll be having a little sister in the spring."

Poor Mrs. Walbridge sat perfectly still for a moment, her hand on her
daughter's silky brown hair. Another baby, another duty, another worry,
and she would be the only one who would really suffer, although Maud and
her gay, well-meaning young husband would talk a great deal about their
responsibilities.

"Mum," Maud said coaxingly. "Darling, you've got a new book coming out,
haven't you? Don't go and buy Paul any more of those nasty Japanese
things; those monkeys make me sick anyhow. Be a lamb, and let me have a
hundred pounds to see me through, will you?"

There was nothing particularly imploring in her voice, for she was quite
used to asking favours of her mother, and repeated favours always turn
into rights sooner or later. When her mother didn't answer, she screwed
round on her stool and looked up.

"Why, Mum," she cried, "what's the matter? Why do you look like that?"

Mrs. Walbridge kissed her. "Nothing, dear, I'm tired. I've been working
very hard."

She rose and her big daughter scrambled to her feet, laughing merrily.

"Oh, you old pet! Was it working hard at it's psychological masterpiece?
Anybody'd think you were what's-his-name, who wrote 'Elektra'!" She
laughed again, pleasant, full-throated, musical laughter, that yet cut
her hearer to her sore heart.

"Don't--don't laugh, dear," she said gently. "I know my bodes are awful
rubbish, but----"

Mrs. Twiss stared and took another chocolate.

"Oh, darling," she murmured. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. We
all _love_ your books. Well, you'll let me have the hundred, won't you,
pet? We're going to name her Violet."

The little sad face under the old-fashioned, pheasant-winged hat
softened a little. "I'll do my best, dear," she said. "Now I must go.
Give my love to Moreton."




CHAPTER VI


It was about a week after Mrs. Walbridge's visit to Mrs. Twiss that
Griselda went to the play with old Mrs. Wick and her son. Greatly to the
girl's astonishment, Mr. Wick turned up two or three days after her
decided rejection of him, and his manner had shown nothing of the
traditional depression of the refused young man. Indeed, he seemed
particularly gay, and had brought her some sweets--sticky balls rolled
in wax paper, that he told her were the best sweets on earth.

"My mother made 'em," he said. "She's great at making things. These ones
are a sort of nougat. You try one--_you'll_ see----"

The uncouth looking sweetmeats were indeed delicious, and the two young
people sat at the top of the stairs leading to the garden (for it was
one of those odd, lost summer days that wander along through our island
winters like lonely strayed children), and munched and talked, and
talked and munched, in as friendly a way, Griselda thought, as if he had
never mentioned marriage to her.

"I don't like your frock," he said suddenly, speaking with difficulty,
for his mother's sweets were sticky. "You're too dark for blue. Makes
you look yellow."

"Well, upon my word!" The girl was full of innocent airs and graces;
little affectations blossomed all over her, and perhaps they were only
the blossom of future graces. But somehow, this odd reporter person, as
she called him to her mother, clutched at these premature flowerets
like a black frost, and she found herself being as natural as a little
boy with him.

"You are polite," she remarked.

He smiled from ear to ear.

"No, I'm not. I'm very rude, but it's true. You ought to wear green and
brown, or yellow or white. Imagine a buttercup dressed in blue serge!"

Everyone likes to talk about himself or herself, so for a moment Grisel
enjoyed herself thoroughly, as they gravely discussed the different
kinds of flowers that she might be said to resemble. Then he invited her
to go to the play, and when she refused demurely, he chuckled with
delight.

"Oh, now you think I'm the ignorant young man," he retorted. "You think
I don't know that you couldn't go with me alone. (Of course, so far as
that's concerned you _could_--all the smart girls, dukes' and earls'
daughters, do)--but I have not invited you to. My mother's coming with
us."

"Your mother?"

"Yes. Naturally she's anxious to meet you."

She looked at him innocently, her eyes like black-heart cherries with
the sun on them.

"Why should your mother wish to meet me?"

"Oh," he answered. "Don't you realise that I'm an only son?"

"What's that got to do with it?"

He looked at her gravely, his flexible lips steady as iron. "Most
mothers want to know the girl their son's going to marry, don't you
think?"

Before she could help it, she laughed. "But her sons aren't going to
marry me."

"No, but her son is. I am. Oh, yes," he went on before she could speak.
"We shan't be married this winter, of course, but in the spring we
shall. You may choose a nice month. It'll be a proud day for you, my
dear, and jolly lucky you'll be to get me!"

She rose and refused another sweet. "No thanks, we must go in now. I've
got a lot to do. My father's not very well, and I may have to go down to
Torquay to look after him if he doesn't get better."

"Miss Walbridge," he spoke in a voice that to her was quite new, and
when she turned, looking at him over her shoulder, something in the
dignity of his face forced her to turn completely round and wait.

"Don't think me a perfect fool," he said. "I can't help teasing you.
You--you're so little and so young. What I'd like to do would be to lift
you up on my shoulder and run round and round the garden with you, and
scare the life out of you, but I daren't do that, so I have to tease
you. Besides, you know," he added very gravely, "it is true that I love
you, and I mean you to marry me."

Mrs. Walbridge, who was in the dining-room packing some bottles of
home-made beef-tea to send to Torquay, could not help overhearing the
rest of this conversation. She never forgot it, or the young man's face
as he finished speaking to Griselda, who suddenly seemed more
responsible, more grown-up than her mother had ever seen her.

"Please don't say anything more about that, Mr. Wick," she said gently.
"I like you very much--we all do, even my mother, who's so
old-fashioned--but I can't possibly marry you."

The four young eyes stared into each other for what seemed a long time,
and then he drew back courteously to let her pass.

"I'll not say anything more about it for three months," he declared. "I
promise you that."

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus the arrangement about going to the play had been made, and when the
evening came Mr. Wick drove up in a taxi and carried his prize off to
the box at the theatre, where he had already installed his mother.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Grisel came home she went up to her mother's room, slipping out of
her frock and putting on her mother's shabby old dressing-gown, that she
declared to be a perfect disgrace, and sat on the foot of the bed
describing the adventures of the evening.

"She's a perfect old dear, Mum," the girl declared. "Very large, not
exactly fat, you know, but big. Very little hair, brushed quite flat,
and done up in a tiny bun at the back, and the most beautiful manners,
like some old-fashioned duchess. Like an old duchess in one of your
books, Mum--that kind--not like a _live_ one----"

"I see," murmured Mrs. Walbridge. "How did you like the play?"

"Oh, it was very pretty. Mary Grey looked perfectly beautiful. She's
such a dear, but I wish she had sung. _They_ liked it awfully, but
somehow I never understand Shakespeare's plays--never quite know what
they are driving at, I mean. The place was packed, and I saw lots of
people I know. The Murchisons were there, and Dickie Scotts, and that
awful Pellaby woman, _covered_ with pearls and jewels. Johnny Holden
came up just as we were leaving, and told me that he had seen Guy. He's
only just back. He said Guy's awfully fit, and has done some very good
caricatures. He says there's going to be an armistice as sure as eggs is
eggs. The Hun is a dead man according to him. And, oh, Mother, you'll
never guess--Oliver Wick went out on the 28th of August, 1914, and was
all through the Big Push and the retreat from Mons. Fancy his never
telling us! Johnny mentioned it. He was wounded there--during the
retreat. One of his fingers is quite stiff. I never noticed it, did
you?"

Mrs. Walbridge shook her head. "No, I never did. So he's been out?"

"Yes, and he only had one leave all the time. He was invalided out last
year--there's a bullet somewhere inside him still. His mother says she
thinks it must be in his brain. She _does_ adore him, Mum."

Mrs. Walbridge was silent, for she envied this other woman, not exactly
her son, but her love for her son. Her own boys were very dear to her,
but one quality was lacking in her love for them, and that was
adoration. For although she was only a fourth-rate novelist, she had the
sad gift of unswerving clear-sightedness, and no merciful delusion
blinded her when she looked at her own children.

Grisel had stopped brushing her pretty hair, which lay like two wings
over her young breast, framing her little quick face, and bringing out
its vivid whiteness. She was sitting with the silver brush on her knees,
and in her eyes brooded an unusually deep thought.

"You like him, my dear, don't you?"

The girl started. "Who? Oh, Oliver? No--I mean----" She rose and put
the brush on the dressing-table.

"How nice that you call him Oliver," commented her mother, in a
matter-of-fact voice. "I like him, too. I think he's a delightful young
fellow. So boyish, isn't he?"

Grisel came to the bed, her momentary embarrassment scattered to the
winds by the sober sense of her mother's words.

"Yes, he's a dear," she said simply, "but his mother's a perfect pet,
and she's coming to see us. You'll love her, Mum." At the door she
turned. "Good-night, Mum darling. Don't worry about your old book. It's
sure to come out all right. What did you say the name of it was?"

"'Lord Effingham.'"

The girl stepped back in surprise at her mother's tone. "Why, good
gracious, Mum, you spoke as if he were a real man and you hated him! I
hope he isn't one of the modern horrors, like that dreadful man in
'Reek.'" She ran back to the bed and gave her mother a little stroke and
shake. "I couldn't dream of allowing you to write horrid modern books
about beastly real people," she said protectingly. Then she went to bed.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next morning a telegram arrived from Torquay, saying that Mr.
Walbridge was no better, and asking his wife to come down and look after
him. She had expected just such a wire (for he was one of those people
who always become ill when they are bored or lonely) and she had already
arranged to send Grisel down.

The girl liked Torquay and had two or three friends there, and it would
be a pleasant change for her. Besides, her mother thought, if things
were going to be really bad, it would be better to have the children out
of the way.

So Grisel, much pleased, and not at all worried about her father, went
off, and for several days after her departure Mrs. Walbridge worked
uninterruptedly in the deserted drawing-room. The weather had changed,
and it was intensely stormy and wet, so there was something pleasant in
the shut-in feeling of the firelit room.

Paul, now the only one at home, was, of course, at the bank all day, and
most evenings he either dined out or went out immediately after dinner.
He was a silent man, very preoccupied with his own thoughts and
possessed of the negative gift of taking no interest whatever in other
people's affairs. He scorned curiosity with all his heart, and never
suspected that curiosity is very often only an expression of human
interest.

Of late, too, his mother had noticed he had been even more silent and
absent-minded than ever, and she wondered if he was having a love
affair. She dared not ask him, however, and so the long days and longer
evenings passed in almost unending hard work for the little writing
woman, and finally she arrived at a certain amount of success with the
troublesome "Lord Effingham."

Her book was entirely changed. Such atmosphere as it had ever had she
had destroyed, and, very proud of the illegitimate baby she had
introduced into its innocent pages, she one night packed up the
manuscript and ran out to a greengrocer in the neighbourhood, where
lived an old man who sometimes did errands for her.

Old Mr. King was at home, and would be delighted to go round the next
morning at half-past nine to take the very valuable parcel safely down
to Messrs. Lubbock & Payne.

She thanked the greengrocer's wife, who was the old man's daughter, and,
putting up her umbrella, went out again into the wet.

It was a shiny black night, full of storm noises and unceasing rain, and
when she reached "Happy House" Mrs. Walbridge stood for a moment under
her umbrella, leaning against the little green gate, where the name was
now almost illegible, and looked about her, breathing more freely in the
thought that the book was done; for good or evil; that she had done her
best by it, and that if it failed, it must just fail.

She felt more cheerful now that "Lord Effingham" was off her hands.
Things _must_ improve, she thought.

The political news was much better; the armistice might be signed any
day, and perhaps when Guy came back he would, after all, be helpful to
her.

Ferdie was better. She had had a letter that morning, and little Grisel
was having a happy time with her friends. There was to be a dance, and
she had written for her new white satin frock to be sent down.

"I must go to Swan & Edgars and get her a new pair of satin slippers,"
she thought, as she went up the steps, and opened the door with her
latchkey. "Fancy the little minx dancing her last pair through the other
night!"

She went down into the kitchen and made herself a cup of extra strong
cocoa to drink in bed. Cocoa in bed with a book is a very cosy thing.

The boys had always thought her a frump, and Guy in particular hated
her old black velvet evening gown, and, now that he had been in Paris
and seen all the smart clothes, he would despise the black velvet gown
more than ever. If only she could have some kind of a new evening frock.
Grey would do. Iron grey would wear almost as well as black. She set
down her cup of cocoa with a little sigh. Ridiculous to think about that
kind of thing when she only had one hundred and eighty pounds in the
bank.

Then she read a few pages of "Thomas à Kempis," turned out her light,
and lay still in the dark waiting for sleep.




CHAPTER VII


Paul's room was a large one at the back on the second floor. It looked
into the elm tree, and was very pleasant and quiet.

A few days after Mrs. Walbridge had sent the manuscript of "Lord
Effingham" to her publishers, she was in Paul's room, helping him hang a
new picture that he had picked up at a sale. His mother thought it a
very ugly picture; in fact, she thought it not nice, but she said
nothing, for her opinion was of no value to him, and she knew it.

It was a sunshiny day, and the naked boughs of the old tree stirred and
made odd little noises as the east wind attacked it in gusts. The
shadows of the branches danced across the dull green walls and made the
gleams of light on the picture glasses die and come to life again in a
way that gave the large room something the air of a glade in a wood.

Paul, in his shirt-sleeves, stood on a pair of steps hammering a nail
into the exact spot in the wall that he had decided on after long
measurement and reflection.

"I do hope you're wearing your thick Jaegers, darling," his mother said,
as she took the hammer from him and held up the picture.

"Not yet," he said. "I'm going to put them on to-morrow." He hung up the
picture and backed gravely off the ladder, looking up at it, a smile of
pride and satisfaction softening his over-delicate, rather supercilious
face. "A little gem, Mother, though you probably don't think so," he
announced good-naturedly. "Bruce Collier wanted it. He's got a fine
collection."

"Bruce Collier," Mrs. Walbridge pursed her lips thoughtfully. "I've
heard his name. Who is he, Paul?"

"The chap who wrote 'Reek.' Crichell was talking about him here one
night in the summer. There's the book an the table. He gave it to me."

She picked the book up and opened it. "What beautiful paper," she said
slowly, "and I love the print, Paul."

He nodded. "Oh, yes. Nares publishes him. Now I'm going to put the
Kakemono here, Mother." He indicated a blank space on the wall near his
writing-table. "Will you get it? You won't be sorry to have it out of
the girls' room, will you?"

She went obediently towards the door, and at it she turned.

"You'll be surprised, dear, but, do you know, I have got quite used to
those monkeys, and really like them now!"

He looked up from filling his pipe and smiled at her, his narrow face--a
face of a type so often seen nowadays in very young men--too
small-featured, too clean-cut, too narrow in the brow, too lacking in
the big old British qualities, both good and bad, and yet full of
uncreative cleverness--lighted by whimsical, not unkindly, astonishment.

"'Violet Walbridge confesses to a passion for Honobosa Iccho,'" he
declaimed, as if quoting a possible headline. "No, no, Mother darling,
that won't do. You must stick to Marcus Stone. Trot along and get it,
there's a dear."

She trotted along and got it, and brought it back, carefully rolled on
its stick.

"Grisel will be sorry to find it gone," she said, as he hung it on the
nail and let it slowly slide down the wall. "She loves it."

"She loves it because Wick knew about the artist. Imitative little
monkey, Grisel."

His mother stared at him. It was on her lips to say, "So are you--so are
you an imitative monkey," for she realised that these new artistic
tastes of his were derived from some model and not from any instinctive
search for a peculiar kind of beauty. Instead she only said, referring
to an old pet name of her own for her children, "Yes, one of God's
apelets, and so are you, Paul."

He had backed to the far side of the room and stood surveying the effect
of the Kakemono with much satisfaction.

"Yes, dear," he murmured, without listening to her. "That's very good,
just there. The light catches it just right."

As he spoke, Jessie, the maid, came in, still straightening a hastily
tied-on cap and apron.

"A gentleman downstairs to see you, sir."

Paul nodded.

"Oh, Mr. Crichell! We're going to the Grafton Galleries together to see
that 'Moonlight in the Trenches' fellow's pictures."

"Please, Mr. Paul, it ain't Mr. Crichell." Jessie was still standing by
the door.

"Oh, who is it?"

"I don't know, sir. Not at all a nice gentleman. I wouldn't leave him
alone in the drorin'-room if I was you."

The girl left the room, and Mrs. Walbridge sat down suddenly. Paul's
face had changed, and she was frightened.

"Look here, Mother," he said, "I'm afraid it's a brute of a fellow on
business. I told him I'd kill him if he came here, but"--the young man
waved his long, nervous hands helplessly--"he's come, you see."

Her big hollow eyes were fixed on him with a strained, unwinking stare.

"Oh, Paul," she whispered, "what is it?"

He moved irresolutely towards the door, came back, took up his coat and
then threw it on to the divan under the Rowlandson "Horse Fair."

"Look here, Mother," he said, "I must get him out of the house. Suppose
you go and tell him--tell him that I'm not in. Perhaps you'd better say
that I'm out of town."

"Is it a bill?" she asked tonelessly, without moving.

"No--that is--not exactly. The fact is, it's a money-lender. Alfred
Brock put me on to a good thing in the City, and it--it went wrong
somehow, so I borrowed fifty pounds of this chap--Somerset's his
name--and I---- But go and tell him I'm out. I'll explain it all to you
afterwards," he broke off nervously.

She walked to the window and stood looking out, and he thought she was
crying.

"Don't, Mother, please don't," he exclaimed. "It's quite all right. I
shall have the money next week, and the brute's just got to wait, that's
all."

But she was not crying, and that was not why she had turned her face
from him. And what she saw, oddly enough, as she looked out into the
empty boughs of the elm tree, was the face of old Mrs. Wick, whose
picture young Wick carried in his pocket, and had once shown her. "What
a happy woman, what a happy woman!" she was saying under her breath.
After a pause she turned round.

"I'll not say you're out, Paul, and I won't say you're away. I'll see
the man, and I'll tell him you'll pay him next week."

Across his white face flashed the wild impatience of the man who,
knowing that there is for his ailment only one remedy and that a
desperate one, is offered some homely, perfectly inefficacious
substitute.

"Don't be a----" he broke out. But she went downstairs without heeding
him.

The man stood in the middle of the drawing-room, looking round at the
homely furniture. Being what she was, Mrs. Walbridge had, of course,
expected a florid and bediamonded Jew, instead of which the man was a
stocky, red-faced, snub-nosed Englishman, who approached to her innocent
ideal of a prize-fighter.

"Good morning."

At her voice he whirled round and about awkwardly.

"Sorry to trouble you, m'm, I'm sure," he began, grasping the situation
with what to her seemed marvellous quickness. "Young gentleman had
better come down hisself."

"My son----" she began.

But he waved her into silence with a small, roughcast looking hand.

"No good sayin' he's out of town, ma'am, or even spendin' the day on the
river, 'cos he ain't."

Mrs. Walbridge looked at him, a slow wave of understanding creeping to
her brain.

"I wasn't going to tell you that my son is out, or away," she returned
quietly. "He's upstairs. He's extremely sorry, but he will not be able
to pay you your--your little account until next week."

The man stared at her in honest surprise, and then his red face melted
into rather pleasant curves of irrepressible laughter.

"Well, I'll be--I'll be blowed!" he cried, slapping his knee. "Did he
send you down to tell me that? My governor will laugh at that."

They talked, this ill-assorted pair, for about half an hour, and then
the man left the house very quietly, bowing at the door with real
respect to the lady who had so amused him. He had heard of Violet
Walbridge all his life, and vaguely remembered having read "Queenie's
Promise" when he was about sixteen, and had the mumps, and to think that
she should be like this! Very much "blowed" and inclined to being
damned, as he told his wife later, he disappeared out of Mrs.
Walbridge's life.

She went upstairs, and found Paul walking up and down the room, smoking
cigarettes furiously, his neglected pipe on the mantelpiece.

"Lord, Mother, what an age you've been!" he cried, petulantly. "Was it
Somerset himself?"

"No, this man's name was Green. He tells me, Paul, that they have
applied to you several times; that the money was due last week."

He nodded sulkily. "Yes, it was. If Alfred Brock hadn't been a fool, it
wouldn't have happened. Brock shall never see a penny of my money
again."

"He told me," his mother went on, her hand on the door handle, "that he
knew you had a collection of pictures and things, and he--he was going
to make you sell some of them."

"The swine! Poor mother," he added carelessly, "a nasty half hour for
you, I'm afraid. What did you say to him to make him go?"

Mrs. Walbridge looked curiously round the room as if she saw it for the
first time. The Rowlandson, the Kakemono, the exquisite little Muirhead,
the French pastel that shocked her; the beautiful adjustable
reading-chair, with its lectern-like bookrest; the fourteenth century
Persian prayer rug; the odds and ends of good china on the mantelpiece.
All these treasures, so dear to Paul, that she, in her innocence, had
regarded as inexpensive whims, had received a new value through the odd
medium of Mr. Green.

"I didn't say much to him, Paul," she answered slowly. "I--I paid him."

She went out and closed the door. The young man took a hasty step
towards it, then hesitated and went back to his arm-chair. It was jolly
decent of her. He'd thank her and give her a kiss for it at tea time. He
must think of something graceful and appropriate to say. Meantime he was
chilly and uncomfortable, so, leaning forward, he lit a match and set
fire to the coal-heaped grate. "Jolly decent of mother," he thought,
leaning back to watch the glowing of the fire. "Those absurd books of
hers really are pretty useful, after all."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was pleasant that evening to have a long letter from Grisel, and Mrs.
Walbridge, who had been busy since Mr. Green's departure in getting off
a basket of beef-tea, home-made potted meat, and red-currant jelly, to
Torquay, and who had been bound by an old promise to take tea with poor
Caroline, found the letter when she came in, and as Paul, after his
hurried thanks, had gone out for the rest of the day and evening, she
changed into her warm dressing-gown, and settled down to her supper tray
in the drawing-room, with a pint of ale and a nicely browned sausage,
and Grisel's letter.

Grisel wrote a peculiarly delightful hand, each letter small and
well-shaped, and nearly as clear as print. She was also fluent and had a
certain gift for description, so that her letters were a real treat to
her mother. This one, written on several sheets of beautiful pale grey
paper with "Conroy Hall" in one corner, promised to be an unusually
delightful one, for it contained, she saw, glancing through it, a full
description of the ball at which her daughter had worn the new satin
shoes she had sent her from Swan & Edgars.

     "_Darling Mum,_" Griselda began, "_I haven't written for several
     days because I've been having such a good time that there wasn't a
     minute for anything except frivoling! You'll gather from this that
     the poor old Dad is better, and his headaches have gone. I don't
     think it was anything but liver myself. And he's been hob-nobbing
     with some old friends who have turned up at one of the big
     hotels--I forget which._

      "_I came here the day before yesterday to stay with Elsie, and
      I've never had such a good time in my life. Fred has put an awful
      lot of money into the place and furnished it splendidly, so it's
      really wonderful. He's like a little white rat, it's no good
      concealing that, but then he's like such a very_ NICE _white rat,
      and he adores Elsie, and thinks nothing's too good for her.
      They've lived like fighting cocks all through the war. How they
      get the food I can't imagine! Of course, they make their own
      butter, and have swindled the Government like anything, which, of
      course, is great fun._

      "_Elsie has just had a lot of new clothes from London, and really
      looks a dream, although she's as fat as a little pig. Of course,
      they've done a lot of entertaining of wounded for years now,
      otherwise I don't think they would have known there is a war.
      Elsie says she's awfully glad there's no Vere de Vere blood in
      Fred, or he would have minded things more. He really is a typical
      nouveau riche out of a novel (not one of your novels, darling)._

      "_Did I tell you how glad I was that you've got 'Lord Effingham'
      into shape? It'll be a relief to your poor mind. I found 'From
      Sunlight to Shadow' in the library, and have been reading it, and
      I think it's perfectly sweet. I really did enjoy it very much. It
      reminded me of Rosa N. Carey. How I used to love her books when I
      was a kid!_

      "_We have no men-servants here, but Fred's going to get a dozen or
      so as soon as the Armistice is signed. Meantime there are swarms
      of lovely footmanettes, too pretty for words, in violet frocks and
      lace caps and aprons. They all look as if George Grossmith had
      drilled them, somehow. One rather expects them to burst out into
      song, but they don't._

      "_Well, the ball was a great success. I'm writing in bed. It's
      after lunch. We danced till after five, and I was such a belle,
      Mum! All the girls down here seem to be six foot tall, and many of
      them have that new uniform-walk--I'm sure serving in different
      corps made the women's feet all spread; they are big and thick
      about the ankles, too--so I appeared as the old-fashioned
      Christmas pantomime fairy, done in white and gold. That's what
      Fred said. My frock really was as good as anybody's, you darling.
      Hundreds of beautiful youths rolled up to contend for the honour
      of a dance. It really was fun after the over-femaled parties we
      have been to lately, and I felt like Queenie, or that girl in
      'Touchstones,'--the cruel one who broke hearts. Oh, Mother
      darling, what a noodle you are not to know that it's the man who
      does the heart-breaking nowadays!_

      "_Lady Sybil Ross was here with her twins. They looked just like
      partridge eggs, they're so speckly, but they're nice girls; but
      they treated me as if I was a little doll of some kind, as if they
      were surprised that I could talk and walk, being so small as I am.
      Fanny Ross has been engaged three times, and each time the man has
      been killed at the front. Isn't it awful? But I couldn't help
      laughing. There didn't seem to be any reason why she should stop
      being engaged to one after the other for ever, and it doesn't seem
      to hurt her in the least._

      "_Father came last night, of course, and you would have been proud
      of him; he looked such a beautiful old pet. Of course, his diet
      and the water wagon have done wonders for his looks. His eyes are
      as clear as a child's--or were the first part of the evening, but
      rather fell off towards the end (off the water wagon, I mean!) Of
      course, he was quite all right, you know, but he was very genial
      and his eyes a bit swimmy. Poor old Dad._

      "_Did I tell you that Clara Crichell's here? She's staying with
      her mother, who has taken a house, and she and Dad had the time of
      their lives together. She's very pretty, but towards the end of
      the evening she looked rather like a squashed tomato, I thought.
      Seriously, I think she's quite crazy about father. I'm so glad
      you're old-fashioned, darling, and that I don't have to chaperon
      you too. A frisky young mother is an awful responsibility for a
      girl, and I should hate to have to ask anyone's intentions about
      my Mamma!_

      "_I've just had the most scrumptious lunch--heavenly sweetbreads
      in little paper boats, and eggs done in some wonderful French way,
      and grape-fruit salad, and a sweet little carafe like a
      scent-bottle, full of some divine white wine. I love having my
      meals in bed, and I adore having a maid to look after me. If I
      marry a rich man, never again as long as I live will I put on my
      stockings myself, I swear it!_

      "_Well, I went to supper with an awfully nice boy (I forget his
      name), who urged me to marry him and share his pension as a 2nd
      Lieutenant. I've danced my new shoes to ribbons--war satin, of
      course--and the next evening frock I have must be black, darling.
      Lots of girls younger than I are wearing black, and it's so
      becoming._

      "_I had a ridiculous present from Oliver yesterday--four beautiful
      giant kippers tied up in blue ribbon. Of course, he thought I was
      at Mrs. Bishop's, but wasn't he a goose to send me kippers?_

      "_By the way, I've a serious beau--a most charming old man, Sir
      John Barclay. He's perfectly delightful. Quite old and frightfully
      rich. Snow-white hair and the most lovely tenor voice. He's
      staying in the house, and, though I say it as shouldn't, is my
      slave. He sang 'The Banks of Allan Water' the other day, and made
      me cry. Such a sweet, young-sounding voice it is. He sent me the
      loveliest flowers this morning. Really, it looks very much as if
      he was going to offer himself and his worldly goods to me! I hope
      he doesn't, because he really is a dear, and he looks as if he
      might mind being hurt._

      "_How are you, dearest? You must enjoy being all alone. Do eat
      enough; don't live on toast and tea, and don't let Jessie forget
      your hot bottle._

      "_Dearest love to you,_

  "GRISEL.

     "_P. S.--When you send me a new pair of slippers, please send me a
     pair of stockings too, as there are simply no soles left in my last
     pair._"





CHAPTER VIII


Mr. Wick, on his way to "Happy House" one very wet afternoon, in the
beginning of November, gave way to pleasant dreams. He knew that the
lady of his affections was still in Torquay, for he had had a letter
from her, but she had bidden him go and see her mother, and collect one
or two books that she wanted, and send them down to her.

"I'm rather worried about Mum," she had written, "without any particular
reason. I wish you'd go and take a look at her and let me know if
everything's all right."

Mr. Wick, who had had a serious conflict with his chief a few days
before, and come out with streaming colours, was feeling very happy, in
spite of the pouring rain and the dreadful uniformity of the
wet-November-afternoon faces about him. He was one step farther on
towards his goal, which was nothing less than becoming a great newspaper
proprietor and running the political world from a swivel chair somewhere
in Fleet Street. And it was very sweet to him to be sent in this
intimate way by Griselda Walbridge to inspect and report on her mother.

And now, under the shelter of his dripping umbrella, he was finishing a
book, which he had read conscientiously, though with incredible
swiftness. Since his meeting with Griselda, he had taken the trouble to
look through half a dozen of Mrs. Walbridge's books, and could see (for
he was unconsciously a very good critic) what the secret of their
success was.

"Very slow," he explained to his mother. "Nothing much happens and there
are the same people in all of them, with different names. She always has
pretty names for the girls, and the men are usually swells. Kind of book
a woman could read while she's knitting, or boiling the clothes, or
bathing the baby, without either losing the thread of the story or
scamping her work."

But this new book, he realised, had lost that easy quality. There were
pages of undigested realism scattered through it; several of the stock
characters were missing. There was, for instance, no faithful old family
butler, no sinuous foreign adventuress. (The innocence of Violet
Walbridge's adventuresses was prodigious, in spite of the desperate
epithets she showered on them) and there was a superfluous infant,
nameless, and as unnecessary to the story as it was to his mother, whose
presence was as inappropriate as that of Gaby Deslys at a Quaker
meeting.

"That baby puts the lid on," the young man thought, stuffing the book in
his mackintosh pocket and feeling in the other pocket for the safety of
the treasure he had put there. "She'll bust the whole show if she goes
on like that. She can't do the new stuff, and her old patients won't
stand such strong doses as this."

As he got off the bus his mind was engaged with wondering whether Mrs.
Walbridge had any fortune apart from her pen.

"Strikes me that Paul is something of an _objet de luxe_," he reflected,
as he turned off Albany Street. "Bank clerks oughtn't to go messing about
with stockbrokers, and that fellow Brock is a bad egg. When I've
married Griselda, pretty pet, we shan't have very much to do with
Master Paul. The other one, Guy, the soldier, looks a decent lad. I like
that photograph."

As he reached the house his pace slackened and over his shrewd
journalistic face came an odd softening as if for a moment his very
thoughts had stopped using slang. The green swing gate with its half
effaced words touched him anew. The more he knew of Mrs. Walbridge and
her family, the greater seemed the pathos of the name of her house.

"I suppose she named it that years ago when she was young," he thought
gently. "I suppose she kept the paint fresh at first, and then later it
didn't seem worth while."

A very modern product was this Oliver Wick--the kind of a man that could
not have existed a quarter of a century ago, when young men were either
gentlemen or cads, as the saying went. He had set out to make a great
fortune and he was going to make it. He was conscious to his finger-tips
of his powers and his gift of observation and of managing inferior
minds. His habitual language was a jargon composed of journalistic,
sporting, and society slang, yet his mind was open to the most tender
impressions, his sharp little eyes always ready to soften to a tear, and
he loved and read poetry with avidity.

Now he stood for a moment in the pouring rain, touched to the quick by
the pathos of the shabby little gate of the unsuccessful, overworked old
novelist.

       *       *       *       *       *

He found Mrs. Walbridge sitting by the fire in her expressionless
drawing-room, reading. She was so engrossed in her book that, after a
hurried greeting, she at once began to talk of it.

"Oh, Mr. Wick," she cried, forgetting to ask him to sit down, which,
however, he promptly did, "have you read this?"

He glanced at the book. "Yes, it's the book Mr. Crichell talked about
that night at dinner here." After a second he added a little awkwardly,
"I--I wouldn't read it if I were you, Mrs. Walbridge."

She closed the book and drew back in her chair with a little flush.

"I--I've nearly finished it. Everyone's been talking about it, and I
found it in my son's room."

He was silent for a moment, for he did not know quite what to say to
her, to this old lady whose literary stockpot produced such a harmless
and uniform brew.

"Reek" was not important enough to be called strong meat; it was just a
thoroughly nasty book whose author dwelt lovingly on obscene side-issues
of ordinary life, and in whose three hundred odd pages of closely
printed matter there was not a word, nor even a suggestion that could
help or even cheer for a moment any conceivable reader.

"Disgusting rubbish," he declared after a moment. "My old mother read
the first chapter and marched down with it in the tongs and put it in
the kitchen fire." He chuckled at the vision of the old lady's slow
progress down the narrow passage, with the tongs held straight out
before her. "That showed my young sister Jenny what _she_ thought of
it!" He paused and then went on very quickly, with a little flicker of
colour in his thin, white face, "You won't let Grisel read it?"

Mrs. Walbridge shuddered. "Dear me, no. Not that she would understand
it," she added slowly.

There was a pause and the young man watched the firelight playing over
the hollowed, haggard face with the deeply-lined white brow, and the
tired violet eyes. It came to him suddenly how very pretty she must have
been in her youth--her youth, so long ago, and before he was born (he
was twenty-six). And then she said slowly, in a hesitating voice:

"It's such a stupid book. It's so badly put together and the people
aren't real."

If a six months' old baby had sat up in its cradle and quoted Plato to
him the young journalist could not have been more surprised. That Violet
Walbridge, of all people on earth, should criticise the construction of
a novel by Bruce Collier! Bruce Collier, who was undoubtedly the head of
the new school of writers, and about whom most serious critics wrote
columns in the morning papers. He stared at her in frank, almost
open-mouthed astonishment, and she went on without apparently noticing
his emotion, and speaking modestly, but with a sureness that he had
never observed in her before.

"You see, if Swithin Cleveland had been in the ruins that time--_you_
know--he could not possibly have written that letter to Sophia."

"Why couldn't he?" stammered Wick.

For a few minutes he listened to her soft, rather unmodulated voice, as
she unfolded her ideas to him, and then suddenly he jumped up and
slapped his knee.

"By Jove," he shouted, "you're right, you're right, Mrs. Walbridge, and
not one of them--the critics I mean--has seen it!"

He tramped up and down the room, talking rapidly, brandishing his arms
in a characteristically ungraceful, but expressive way.

"Why don't you write an article about it? I'll make my chief print it in
one of his decent papers. Not that--not that," he broke off stammering
hopelessly, "_Round the Fire_ isn't very good in its _way_, you
know--but I mean in _Cosmos_ or _The Jupiter_."

Mrs. Walbridge laughed softly. "Don't apologise for _Round the Fire_,"
she said. "I think I know exactly what it is."

He sat down again. The wind was whipping against the window with a
delightful crackling noise. The corner by the homely hearth in the dim,
inexpressive drawing-room was very pleasant in its way, and he liked, he
very greatly liked, the old-fashioned lady in the shabby grey gown--the
lady whom, if he had to stop the stars in their courses to accomplish
it, was going to be his mother-in-law. He had always liked Mrs.
Walbridge; he had always known that she held qualities that in a
mother-in-law would be shining ones, but she had a personality a little
too like this drawing-room of hers, too like the old mirror that hung
over the mantelpiece and was a little cloudy, a little obscure, and now,
behold, something had breathed on the mirror and it had cleared! Like a
flash he saw the future. Himself England's greatest newspaper king, in a
great, fine, romantic old house somewhere--St. James's Square for
choice, failing that, Manchester Square might do--and by his side was
his lovely little blackest white girl, and beside her, in subdued grey
velvet and lace, the perfect mother-in-law, perfect because, not only
had she been capable of producing a wife fit for the greatest man in
England, and of being herself gently and quietly and modestly
impressive, but she possessed that great blessing to a man in the
position that he would be in, a keenly critical mind, and the mind would
be, he felt, in a way his, because he had discovered it. He was sure
that no one in her household or among her friends even suspected Mrs.
Walbridge of such an astonishing possession.

"Look here," he said at the end of half an hour or so, when they had
discussed Mr. Collier's rather putrescent masterpiece pretty thoroughly,
"I suppose Grisel's told you that I mean to marry her?"

"She's told me that you'd asked her."

"Oh, that's nothing," he waved his hand impatiently, "asking her, I
mean. I have asked her two or three times, just for the sake of form,
you know. But she's got to do it sooner or later. I'm in no hurry."

"Dear me," murmured his hostess, a little frightened by the novelty of
his point of view.

"Yes. You mustn't think me cheeky or--dashing, you know," he protested
gravely. "I'm not really. I only mention it now to you so that you would
understand what I'm going to say."

"Yes?" She spoke very gently, and her eyes were kind and benign.

"I was going to ask you," he said, his manner suddenly changing to one
that impressed her, unconsciously to both of them. "I was going to ask
you if you don't think you could do something to modernise your style a
little. Just from the business point of view, I mean."

He saw her wince, but kept on, with benevolent ruthlessness.

"I've been reading over some of your books since I met you, and I like
'em, and I quite see the reason for their popularity." He broke off
shortly, and asked her, his head cocked on one side, his lips pursed
fiercely: "How are your sales now, compared to what they were, say, ten
years ago?"

Mrs. Walbridge took up the poker and bent over the fire. He knew she was
doing it to hide her face, and moved slightly so that he could keep on
looking at her, for he meant to have the truth, and knew that this
truthful lady would not hesitate to lie to him on this occasion.

"About the same, I think," she said in an undertone, poking the fire
destructively.

He took the poker out of her hand, and by pointing it at her, forced her
slowly back into her chair.

"Oh, come now," he protested. "Honour bright--man to man, you
know--_business_----"

There was a pause, after which she said: "Well, then, if you put it like
that, no! my sales have been growing less for some years now, slowly,
until--until quite lately. My last book was really almost a failure.
Don't," she added, clasping her thin hands and bending forward a little,
"don't mention this to Grisel, will you? They none of them know. I--I
didn't like to worry them."

The young man rose and walked to the window, saying: "Oh, hell!" under
his breath.

"Of course I won't tell Grisel," he almost shouted from between the lace
curtains; "but doesn't your husband know?"

"Oh, no--no. They none of them do. It would only worry them, you know."

"It must worry you, doesn't it?"

Neither of them noticed that the young man, who might so well have been
one of her younger children, was behaving quite as if he were what he
had destined himself to be, a powerful and experienced king of
journalism. And she, who had written books while he was crawling on his
nursery floor, sat before him with folded hands, answering his questions
with the simplicity and lack of reserve of a child. For once he had
broken her barriers down, he realised how the poor thing was relieved
and glad to talk about her troubles.

Thus it came that she told him all about that dreadful interview with
Messrs. Lubbock & Payne, and of her struggles with "Lord Effingham."

"I've modernised it," she said, with hopefulness that made him want to
cry, "but it didn't seem very good to me. But then I don't suppose one's
ever a very good judge of one's own work----"

"Then one ought to be," he thrust in brutally. "Every man and every
woman ought to be the best judge of his or her work. Any other kind of
talk's nonsense. You ought to know your best book. Don't you? Because if
you don't, I can tell you."

She trembled as she looked up at him. "I know you're going to say
'Queenie's Promise,'" she said feebly.

He shook his head. "Well, it isn't, then. It's the 'Under Secretary.' I
read that through from start to finish in the Underground the other day,
and it's--it's got the makings of a real good story."

At this moment the door opened, and Jessie brought in the tea, and by
doing so changed these two bewitched people back to their real selves,
and the millionaire newspaper king found himself once more only a young
reporter, and the trembling literary aspirant at his feet became, as at
the wave of a wand, again the tired, once mildly successful old
novelist, his hostess and potential mother-in-law.

They were both embarrassed for a few minutes, and then, as they drank
their tea, Mrs. Walbridge found herself, to her great though gentle
surprise, telling him what she instinctively called the story of her
life.

"My father was a solicitor," she said, "in Lincoln's Inn, and we lived
in Russell Street. It's a boarding-house now. I went past it the other
day on my way to the Tube, and it brought it all back so clearly! My
mother died when I was a child, and one of my aunts brought me up. She
was very old-fashioned, and rather an invalid, so as a child I saw
hardly anyone but her and my nurse, and once in a long while my father.
For years I never read anything but Miss Yonge's books, and Edna
Lyall's, and _The Girl's Own Paper_. My aunt was very particular about
my books."

"She must have been," growled the young man, trying to eat his toast
silently, so that he could hear.

"I never went to school, but had a series of governesses, all very sad
women. Most governesses seem to be sad, don't they? And all oldish, and
not in very good health. I was allowed to read Sir Walter Scott's poems,
and one or two of Dickens as I grew older. But I never liked Dickens; he
writes about such common people. I loved Bulwer, and my aunt allowed me
to read several of his. My aunt died when I was sixteen, and six months
after her death my father went to Mexico on business, which would have
made him a very rich man if it had turned out as he hoped. One of my old
governesses came to stay in the house while he was gone. Her name was
Miss Sweet, and I liked her because she was sentimental and had a soft
voice, and wasn't at all particular about dates. Then it was that I
wrote my first book--or not quite then, for I was nearly eighteen, but
my father was still away."

She hesitated for a moment. She was allowing her voice more scope since
the gloom had thickened in the quiet room. The young man did not move,
for he feared to disturb her.

"It was a caretaker in the next house which had long been empty that put
the idea into my head. She was an old woman with a niece, who lived with
her, and the niece was very pretty. The story was a dreadful one--a
tragedy, and the girl committed suicide. I can't quite tell you," the
quiet voice went on, "what it meant to an ignorant girl, sheltered as I
was, to be plunged into the midst of such horrors. Poor old Mrs. Bell
waked us up in the middle of the night when it happened, and I went
alone, as Miss Sweet had a bad attack of asthma."

She shuddered, and reaching to the back of a chair, took from it and
wrapped round her shoulders a little old red shawl. On and on went the
quiet voice, telling the story with a kind of neat dexterity and absence
of the overburdening adjectives common to such narration.

Wick was amazed and filled with pity at the thought of what life had
been to this woman to reduce her powers to the deadly level of the tales
that she poured out regularly every autumn.

"It was a dreadful business, as you see, but somehow after the first it
didn't frighten or upset me much, though it made poor Miss Sweet quite
ill. Afterwards we went down to Lulworth Cove for a change, and it was
while we were down there that I wrote the book. I was very happy then.
Your work," she added, with a touch of innocent vanity, "not being
creative, you may not realise what writing a book really is, but it's
very wonderful. I used to sit on the rocks and scribble away by the
hour. I think it was very good too, and I was proud of it. And the day
after we got home, in the autumn--we had been called back by a telegram
saying that my father had reached Liverpool--I packed up the manuscript
on the dining-room table and addressed it to Mr. Murray. Someone had
spilt a little black currant jam on the tablecloth, and as I arranged
the pages I managed to smear a little of it across the title, and I
remember getting cold water and a bit of cotton-wool and washing it off,
and then drying it before the kitchen fire, and mending the spoilt
letters with a very fine pen, so that it would look nice. 'Hannah' was
the name of it. Not a very good title, but that was the way it came to
me," she added softly, and her voice trailed away into silence.

The darkness increased suddenly, and the firelight made a lake of colour
on the hearthrug, the only colour left in the room.

"Well," Wick asked hoarsely, "did John Murray publish it?"

She laughed. "John Murray never saw it. I left it on the hall table that
night, and was going to register it myself in the morning. When my
father came in late he noticed it, and opened it."

"Well----?"

Somehow he never forgot the feel of the room at that moment, or the
chill sound of the next words as they fell on his waiting ears.

"He burnt it." After a little while she went on: "He was horrified by
it. I suppose it was not very proper, written by a young girl, and he
had never known that I understood about such things, but of course I
did, after the adventure of poor Kitty Bailey. Ring the bell, will you,
Oliver? It's growing very dark."

He rang, and while the lamp was being brought he knelt on the old
hearthrug and mended the fire. In a few moments the crude, unlovely room
was piteously bright, and the mystery had flown.

"Weren't you very angry?" Wick asked, as the door closed on the maid.

"I? Oh, no. It was he who was angry--my father. I think he was too hard
on me, but it didn't matter very much. It was probably very badly
written, though at the time I thought it was good."

Wick held out his hand. "Well, I must be off. Thank you so much for
telling me, Mrs. Walbridge. Did you go on writing at once then?"

Her thin, small-boned hand quivered in his as she answered:

"Oh, no. I didn't write again until--until after my marriage."

They stood looking very kindly at each other, the old woman and the
young man, and then she said suddenly, as he took up his hat and stick:

"I don't know why I told you, except, perhaps, that it happened, the
burning of 'Hannah,' I mean, thirty-five years ago to-day. I was
thinking about it before you came."

As he hurried through the rain towards the 'bus, the young man counted
back.

"That makes her fifty-two," he said. "I thought she was older than
that."

As he squeezed into the crowded interior of "everybody's carriage," as
de Amicis calls it, a feeling of great pity swept over him. "How it must
have hurt," he thought, "for her to remember it like that."




CHAPTER IX


The Gaskell-Walkers returned from their very long honeymoon a few days
later and spent the night at Happy House, their own house being not
quite ready for them.

It having rained without ceasing for a week at the Lakes, the young man
had taken his bride to North Devon, where he had hired a car and they
had spent a delightful time tearing over the country as fast as they
could go, which happened to be Mr. Gaskell-Walker's higher form of
enjoyment. He had made notes of the distance traversed each separate
day, and to Mrs. Walbridge's bewildered mind, it seemed as if they had
been nowhere, but had spent their time going from or to different
places. However, her pretty daughter was in blooming health, and
displayed her airs and graces in an artless and becoming way like some
pretty bird. Wracked with worry, almost unbearably anxious about her new
work, on which subject her publishers had maintained a silence which
looked ominous. Mrs. Walbridge gave herself up to delight for a few
hours in watching the happiness of these young people and hearing their
comfortable plans for the future. She had never seen the house in
Campden Hill, but Hermione had been taken there shortly before her
wedding, and was delighted with everything about it. The drawing-room
was apparently the only drawing-room in London that was over twenty feet
long, and the art treasures, about which the young woman talked
vaguely, but with immense satisfaction, seemed to be various and
valuable.

"There is a whole room full of Chinese dragons," Gaskell-Walker told her
at dinner, "wicked-looking, teethy devils of all sizes. I used to be
awfully frightened of them when I was a kid."

"And the loveliest Indian screens, mother, you know, that dull,
crumbly-looking wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl."

Mrs. Walbridge had no idea of the exact income of her son-in-law, but
she knew that the young couple intended to keep three servants and that
Billy was partner in a fairly prosperous, though new, stockbroking firm
in Throgmorton Street. He was not so sympathetic to her as Maud's
husband. Moreton Twiss was young and full of boyish high spirits and a
kind of innocent horse-play, that even the arrival of Hilary had in no
wise quieted; and for some reason his untidy black hair and twinkling
eyes were dearer to her than the correct smartness of the more
conventional Gaskell-Walker.

Gaskell-Walker was ten or twelve years older than the other man,
although he had married the younger daughter, and being extremely
short-sighted, he wore pince-nez, without which his mother-in-law had
never seen him. She was one of those people who prefer eyes to be
unglazed. However, everything pointed to happiness being in store for
Hermy, for she and her husband were very much in love with each other,
he rather more than she was, which her mother felt to be as things
should be. And the little dinner was very pleasant, Paul being at his
best, which was very good, so good that he rarely produced it for family
use, and Hermy, being a daughter for any mother's eyes to rest upon with
pride, in her pretty sapphire-blue frock, with the charming diamond
pendant her husband had given her for her wedding present, blinking on
her lovely bosom.

"What news from Guy?" the bride asked, as they lingered in the
old-fashioned way over their walnuts and port.

"I had a beautiful letter from him only this afternoon. I am going to
show it to you. He's very well and seems to have made some nice friends
amongst the officers."

Gaskell-Walker laughed. "Trust Master Guy to make friends," he said,
cracking a nut with care, his over-manicured nails flashing as he did
so. "Easier to make than to keep them in his case."

"Like the Governor," commented Paul carelessly.

"Children, children," Mrs. Walbridge glanced with anxious eyes from the
one to the other, "I do wish you wouldn't speak of your father so--or
Guy either, Paul, if you don't mind."

Gaskell-Walker bowed courteously. "I am sorry, Mrs. Walbridge," he
answered, plainly meaning what he said, "I was only chaffing. We always
tease the brat about his new intimate friends, and I didn't mean to say
a word against him."

"Is father really better?" Hermione put in, smiling at her mother over
the top of her glass. "I hear he is carrying on anyhow with Clara
Crichell. Who was it told us so, Billy?"

"Oh, shut up, Hermy," put in Paul with a glance at his mother, who,
however, had paid no attention to the remark.

It was a peculiarity of Mrs. Walbridge's children that, while each one
of them individually was capable of hurting her a dozen times a day, not
one of them could bear one of the others to inflict the slightest
scratch on her.

"The kid's having a grand time," Paul went on to his sister, "with Fred
and Elsie Ford. Balls and dinners every night and adorers by the dozen,
so Archie Pratt told me. He had been down there--he's a cousin of
Elsie's, you know. He says the kid's the success of the place. Seemed
rather smitten himself, I thought."

"I loathe Archie Pratt," murmured Hermione, "he smells of white rose and
is always talking about biplanes and monoplanes."

"He is an A1 airman," put in her husband, "they say he is down for a
D. S. O. for that Italian business. By the way, Paul, I hear the
Armistice is most certainly going to be signed next week."

Paul nodded. "Yes, according to the paper it is, but some of these
duffers will probably put it off."

"No. I have it pretty straight. It really is going to be. The Hun cannot
possibly hold out any longer. It's funny the way they cling to that
figure-head of the Kaiser. But his nerve seems to be completely broken.
He won't be able to stick it out."

Mrs. Walbridge pushed back her chair. "Guy says they expect it to be
signed on Monday or Tuesday--the French expect it, I mean."

"What is Guy going to do then?" asked Gaskell-Walker, as he opened the
door.

His mother-in-law looked at him vaguely. "Do? I don't know. I suppose
he'll go back to the City. Mr. McCormick promised to take him back, but
I don't know--he hasn't said anything about it. I'll get his letter."

They went upstairs to the girl's room, for Paul had long since
established his æsthetic inability to sit in "the mausoleum," as he
called the drawing-room, and there, among the pretty modern
knick-knacks and pictures, the mother read her soldier son's letter.

It was a good letter, unoriginal and typical in its lack of grumbling
and rather artificial cheerfulness. The writer called his friends and
comrades by odd nicknames, vegetable and otherwise; he gave the details
of the food, and the delights of sleeping in a bed once more after
eighteen months of trench life. Then at the last there was something
over which Mrs. Walbridge hesitated for a moment--something which was
plainly very important to her. Billy Gaskell-Walker got up.

"I'll just go down and get a cigar out of my coat pocket," he said
kindly.

But Mrs. Walbridge stopped him. "No, no, Billy, don't go," she said,
"I'd like you to hear because you are going to be brothers now." She
could not tell him that it was Paul before whom she had hesitated to
read the more intimate part of the letter.

Paul sat at the far end of the room, reading a newspaper, his smoothly
brushed hair gleaming over the back of Grisel's favourite chair.

"Of course, you know that Guy has been rather foolish," his mother went
on after a pause, putting on her spectacles again. "But he is only
twenty-one, after all, and that's not so very old, is it?"

Curiously enough the stranger, the man who was nothing to her or to her
boy by blood, understood her better and was closer to her at that moment
than either her son or her daughter. Gaskell-Walker drew his chair a
little nearer and took his cigarette out of his mouth, a queer little
unpremeditated act of homage which she noticed and for which she was
grateful.

"A man of twenty-one," he said slowly, "is not a man at all, he's only
a child, and Guy is so good-looking, he's so full of what women call
charm----" he broke off with an expressive shrug, and after smiling
gratefully at him, and lowering her voice a little that she might not
disturb Paul's study of the _Evening Standard_, his mother-in-law went
on with the letter, reading in a low, moved voice:

     "'_Dear old Mum, I shall be awfully glad to get back. I've been
     thinking quite a lot lately and I can see better than I used to
     what a selfish young cub I've always been to you. Of course, it's
     your own fault that we're all such pigs. You've been too good to
     us!_'--That," the reader broke off to say, "is ridiculous.--'_But
     then I've just sort of taken everything for granted. It's been part
     of nature that you should sit up in the little garret room, slaving
     away at writing books to do things and buy things for us. It never
     struck me before that you don't have much of a time, but it does
     now, and when I come back I'm going to try to be a little more
     decent to you. It isn't that I didn't love you----_'" Her voice
     fell still lower and she shot another nervous glance at the back of
     Paul's immovable head. "'_I always did--we all do, of course. It's
     just possible that we're all selfish without meaning to be and I've
     been the worst, because, of course, Paul has been working for years
     and has no time to do very much, and it's different with the girls.
     But I'd give something nice now, when I think about it all out
     here, if I hadn't always been such a hound about going upstairs for
     you and down to the kitchen and little things like that. Your poor
     old feet must have been pretty tired sometimes chasing about doing
     things for us, and in future I'm going to do the chasing._'"

"Bless him," put in Hermione lazily, "he's a good child. We must kill
the fatted calf for him when he comes home. Billy, we'll have a
beautiful party----."

Gaskell-Walker nodded. "Bravo, Brat," he approved gently. "We mustn't
tease him any more. Perhaps," he added thoughtfully, "I might get him a
job in Throgmorton Street. Don't think much of McCormick, anyway.

"There's a little more," went on Mrs. Walbridge, who had not listened to
this conversation, but was bending over her letter, partly, it struck
her son-in-law, to hide her eyes, "it's about--about that poor girl--you
know."

Paul turned round in his chair and rested his chin on its black satin
back.

"Francine, you mean"--he laughed with a little sneer, "what about her?
The youth seems to be making his soul in earnest, but I have my doubts
as to whether the lady will be satisfied with the rôle he offers her."

"Oh, shut up, Paul, you're a cat," Hermione almost snapped, in her
unusual vehemence. "Unless, I am very much mistaken you liked the girl
yourself till the Brat came along and wiped your eye."

"Shut up, you two. Go on, Mrs. Walbridge," interrupted Gaskell-Walker.
"The girl's no worse than most young fellow's first adventure. Go and
chew your bone on the mat, you two, if you've got to squabble. I want to
hear what the Brat says."

After a pained look at her elder son, Mrs. Walbridge went on with the
letter, Paul walking ostentatiously indifferent to the piano and
turning over the music on top of it as she did so.

     "'_I know you have been worried to death about my silly scrape with
     that girl, but it really wasn't so bad as you all thought. I can't
     tell you about it in a letter, but I will when I see you and then
     you'll see that I wasn't quite such an ass as most people imagined.
     Anyhow, I straightened it all out the best way I could before I
     went back after my last leave, and I know you'll be glad to hear
     that I didn't treat her badly._' That's all he said about her. Then
     he asks about his bullfinch--we've not told him it died--and sends
     his love to everyone." Her voice shook a little as she read on.
     "'_Tell old Paul I'm awfully glad to hear he's doing so well, and
     hope he'll soon be able to get out of that cursed bank. I wish he'd
     write to me, letters are a great boon out here. Give the girls each
     a kiss and tell Billy that a little stick won't do Mrs. Hermy any
     harm, when she goes through her manners at home!_' Isn't it a very
     nice letter, Billy?"

"It is indeed, Mrs. Walbridge, there's good stuff in the Brat, and for
one, I'm going to do my best to help it come out. He'll have a good time
at our house--we both like entertaining, and I've done pretty well this
year, and it'll be nice for him to have a cheery place to go to, full of
young people. We must get some pretty flappers to amuse him, Hermy, and
then he won't want to go wasting his time in silly places."

Paul turned. "I rather think," he drawled, "that we haven't, in spite of
all these virtuous plans, heard the last of the excellent Francine.
Good-night, Gaskell-Walker." He left the room, closing the door very
softly behind him.

"I do wish," snapped Hermy, "that Paul would slam the door when he's
furious, like a Christian. That cat-footed way of his drives me mad."

A little later Mrs. Walbridge accompanied her guests to their room,
where everything had been prepared for them with the most minute and
loving care.

"There's the cold milk, Billy, on your side, and Hermy's hot milk is in
the thermos. The windows are open at the top about a foot. Is that
right?"

Hermione kissed her mother, who, after a minute's hesitation, kissed her
again.

"That's poor little Guy's kiss," the elder woman said. "Oh, Hermy, I'm
so glad he's coming home."

Mrs. Walbridge then held out her hand to her son-in-law. "Good-night.
Billy, it's nice having you here. You've been very kind about Guy. It
has made me happy."

Gaskell-Walker peered closely into her face, for he had taken his
glasses off. He was a selfish man, and not particularly tender-hearted,
selfishness after forty having a tendency to grow a thick membrane over
the feelings. But something in her face touched him.

"Good-night, dear Mrs. Walbridge," he said gently. "Will you allow your
new son-in-law to kiss you good-night?" And he bent and kissed her on
her soft cheek.




CHAPTER X


At half-past seven on the morning of Armistice Day Caroline Breeze, who
was an early waker, but a late riser, was sitting up in bed reading. Her
small, high up flat was very comfortable, and the good old woman had
only to cross the room to light her gas-ring and prepare her morning
tea. This she had done half an hour before, and was now propped up
against many pillows with a pleasantly furnished tea-tray on her lap,
bread and butter in one hand, which she dipped shamelessly into her tea,
as she read, with avid, dreamy eyes, a new novel.

Miss Breeze was about sixty, and of irredeemable plainness, being the
victim of that cruel form of indigestion that makes the nose red and the
eyes watery. Her sparse grey hair, the front part of which was by day
covered by a front of grey glossiness with but few pretences at
concealment, that now hung, carefully brushed, on the foot of her bed
like a bloodless and innocently come by war trophy, was screwed up on
top of her big square head. She wore a little flannel jacket of the
wrong shade of pink; her eiderdown, her window curtains, her wallpaper
were pink, all too, of that pathetically wrong shade, but being
comfortably colour blind, or taste blind, she knew nothing of this, and
regarded her room as a bower of beauty and charm. The book she was
reading was intensely interesting; there was in it a most cruelly
treated companion, a revolting lap-dog that had to be taken for walks
in the park, and a handsome nephew who ground his teeth in moments of
emotion, and had designs on Rosamund (that was the governess's name). So
engrossed was the good lady that presently she allowed her bit of bread
and butter to soak too long in the tea, and as she raised it to her
mouth it disintegrated, and fell with a horrid splash on her jacket.

"Oh, dear, how disgusting!" the old lady said aloud, laying down her
book and removing the tea-soaked and buttery bread with a knife. "I do
hope it's going to end all right."

When she had rubbed the front of her jacket vigorously with her napkin,
she took up the book, and with a furtive air turned to the last page.
This habit of looking at the end before she got to it was one of which
Miss Breeze was very ashamed, but she was so tender-hearted that when
she saw in the story any signs of possible tragedy, she really could not
resist taking a hasty glance at the ending, just to see if things were
all right. If they were she went back to the tale with undisturbed zest,
and undiminished excitement over the intervening troubles of the
heroine. But if the author had been so foolish as to allow death or
misunderstanding to blight the life of her heroine, Caroline Breeze
closed the book and never opened it again.

She had just resumed her reading, when a ring came at her door. The
postman did not ring, and she did not receive telegrams, so she was
startled, and sat staring owl-like through her glasses towards the door.
The ring was repeated, followed by a quick tapping of ungloved fingers
on the panel, and she heard a voice:

"Let me in, Caroline, it's only me."

"Good gracious. It's Violet!"

Slipping the tray from her knees to the little bamboo table at the side
of the bed, Miss Breeze wrapped the eiderdown round her, and scuttled
across and opened the door. She kissed her guest and they both went back
into the warm bedroom; for the fire in the little drawing-room would not
be lit until just before Miss Breeze got up, and lying in bed in the
morning was her one self-indulgence.

"My dear, take your hat off and sit down in the comfortable chair.
Whatever has brought you here at this hour?"

"Trouble," answered Mrs. Walbridge simply, doing as she was told. "I
want you to do something for me, Caroline, it's a favour. I've very
little time, so I can't explain. I must have some money."

"Money!" Miss Breeze had known Mrs. Walbridge for many years, but she
had never suspected that her friend had money troubles.

"Yes, I must have some at once, and I want you to--to pawn these for
me."

Opening her bag, she took out a little old case into which she had
crowded her two or three old-fashioned diamond rings, and two pairs of
earrings, one of seed pearls, the other of pale sapphires clumsily set
in diamond chips and thick gold.

Caroline Breeze had never been inside a pawnshop in her life, but she
did not protest against the horrid errand.

"I'll get up at once and go," she said. "What do you think they ought to
give me?"

Mrs. Walbridge, who was very pale, and whose eyes looked larger and more
sunken than ever, shrugged her shoulders helplessly. "I haven't the
slightest idea," she said.

"What's that book?" she added sharply, the crimson cover of her friend's
novel catching her eyes.

Miss Breeze's face, already so red and white in the wrong places, turned
a deep bluish colour of extreme embarrassment. "Oh, it's--it's just a
book," she stammered, laying her hand on it. "I--I thought I'd like to
read it, just to see if it really is good."

Mrs. Walbridge, who had risen, held out her hand.

"Let me see it, Caroline," she said quietly, and Miss Breeze gave it to
her. "I thought so--Beryl J. Bell. I've seen it advertised. Jones &
Hayward advertise a great deal. Is it--is it good?"

Mrs. Walbridge's voice shook a little, and Caroline Breeze turned her
eyes away.

"Nothing extra," she answered in a voice that tried to be indifferent.
"I suppose they spend a lot of money in advertising her."

Forgetting her hurry, Mrs. Walbridge sat down again and looked eagerly
through the book. There was a long silence, a flutter of pages being the
only noise in the quiet room. Caroline Breeze's faithful heart ached for
her friend, and in her wisdom she said nothing. But Mrs. Walbridge spoke
after she had closed the book and laid it down on the bed.

"I suppose you know," her voice was very quiet and the colour had died
away from her face, leaving the shadows and lines in it deeper than
ever. "I suppose you know that 'Lord Effingham' is--a failure?"

Caroline made a dreadful grimace, rumpling up her nose and protruding
her thick lips two or three times rapidly, a way she had when she was
embarrassed or distressed.

"Oh, no," she protested, "not a failure. I've noticed that the critics
don't seem to like it _quite_ so much as the others, but----"

"Don't. It's a failure, Caroline, and it's right that it should be. I
tried to change it, to make it more modern, and I've spoiled it
completely. It's neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring."

"Oh, Violet!" Poor Miss Breeze's watery eyes overflowed a little, the
tears did not fall, but spread awkwardly, scantily, over her rutted
cheeks, and made her plain face even plainer. "I love your books, and I
love this one too. If they had let you alone it would have been sweet."

"Yes, but they didn't let me alone, and they were right not to. They
weren't unkind, they were right."

There was something innocently pathetic in the little figure by the bed.
The plain old felt hat was on one side of her head, and in the
strengthening morning light she looked a really old woman--an unhappy,
hopeless old woman.

"I'm old-fashioned, Caroline--out of date. That's what it is. These new
people--that woman for instance, Beryl J. Bell--she's young, she
believes in her books, her mind isn't tired like mine. I know." She rose
and moved nervously about the room, speaking in a quick undertone. "I've
always known that my books aren't very good of course--not like Hichens,
I mean, and Mrs. Humphrey Ward, and Arnold Bennett--but they were good
of their kind, and people did like them, I know they did. I've had
letters from people I've never even heard of, showing how much they
liked them, and how they had helped them. But now they're old-fashioned
even among old-fashioned ones. That's it." She stood still to utter the
saddest of cries. "I'm old, Caroline. I'm old."

Poor Caroline Breeze burst into loud snuffling sobs, and rising from her
bed, her skimpy nightgown clinging to her bony legs, she embraced her
poor friend, and tried to comfort her with love and lies. Violet
Walbridge did not cry. She was never a tearful woman, and at this moment
was far past such a show of feeling.

"Get back into bed, dear. You'll catch cold," she said gently, patting
her friend's bony shoulder. "I must go now or they'll miss me. Come to
lunch when you've been to the pawnshop. It's good of you to go. I know I
ought to go myself, but somehow I can't, with my own things, and I
thought it would not be so bad for you, because you can _tell_ the man
that it's for a friend."

This idea she cherished, poor innocent lady, as one of great
originality, and to Miss Breeze as well it appeared valuable. But even
now, grieved as she was for her friend, it never occurred to the
faithful Caroline that the financial situation of "Happy House" could
possibly be one of more than temporary tightness.

Mrs. Walbridge never talked of money matters and for all Miss Breeze
knew might have a regular income quite apart from her books. So the kind
old maid's assumption was that one of the boys had got into a scrape,
and that Mrs. Walbridge wished to help him without her husband's
knowledge. For, in spite of the fact that Ferdie Walbridge, on the
strength of having once paid back ten pounds of his original loan from
Miss Breeze, had on several occasions borrowed further small sums of
her, to avoid, he said, bothering poor Violet about trifles, Caroline
still cherished her pristine belief that husbands were superior beings,
who ought not to be troubled by small matters by their wives.

As the friends parted Caroline ventured one question. "There's another
book sold to Lubbock & Payne, isn't there? On that last contract, I
mean."

Mrs. Walbridge shook her head. "No, this is the last of the three. I--I
dare say I shall hear from them shortly."

Caroline Breeze went back to her room, and dressed and prepared to go on
her, to her, so strange and adventurous errand.

No one saw Mrs. Walbridge come home, and the morning dragged along with
its usual round of dull duties, until about half past ten, when Miss
Breeze arrived, her long queer figure, in her tight-fitting jacket edged
with strips of shabby mink, and her oddly rakish hat decorated with a
scrap of gold lace and a big bunch of pink roses.

"I've been, dear," she burst out eagerly, as she came into the attic
room, where her friend sat at her work-table, "and I've got fifty-two
pounds. Isn't it splendid?"

Mrs. Walbridge's face fell. "Oh, thanks--that's very good," she said,
"and I'm so grateful to you, Caroline."

"It wasn't a bit like what I had expected," Miss Breeze explained,
unbuttoning her jacket, and pulling out her cherished lace frill. "I
rather thought there would be little pens, you know, like the ones in
Dickens, with a young man leaning across a counter. But it was exactly
like a shop and there was a very nice little back room, and such a
polite man, a Christian. He said the diamonds were very good, but small,
and he didn't seem to believe me when I told him it was for a friend.
Wasn't it odd of him?"

Mrs. Walbridge nodded. She had taken up a pencil and was making some
notes on an old envelope, "twenty-six, thirty-six," she murmured. "Are
they really signing the Armistice to-day?" she asked a moment later,
looking up.

"Yes, I think so. The streets are crowded, everybody seems to be waiting
for something. I don't see why they don't sign the peace at once, and
not waste time over an armistice; it would be far simpler."

Mrs. Walbridge rose. "Let's go downstairs, dear," she said.

But at that moment a sudden ringing of bells filled the air--bells from
all sides, bells big, bells small, bells musical and bells harsh. The
two women stared at each other.

"That must be it," Miss Breeze cried. "I thought they were going to fire
off cannon."

Mrs. Walbridge went to the little window and opened it. The sun was
shining, and the sky was as clear as if they looked at it from some
empty moor. She stood and looked up.

"Thank God," she said. "Now all the sons and brothers and lovers will be
coming home--those who are left----"

"And husbands," agreed Miss Breeze, clasping her hands.

As the cannon began to roar, Violet Walbridge turned and looked at her
friend with a curious expression in her fine eyes. "And husbands," she
added softly.

       *       *       *       *       *

While the two women were having their simple lunch the house door burst
open and Griselda came running in, glowing with colour and happiness,
looking the picture of youth and beauty, in a little close-fitting fur
cap and stole of the same kind of fur. The Fords had motored her up to
town to see the celebrations and to go to a ball at one of the big
hotels that night.

"Oh, mother," she cried, "aren't you glad it's over--the war, I mean?"

She sat down at the table, and leaning her chin in her hand, watched the
two women as they pecked at their bread and cheese.

"Aren't you surprised to see me? We only came up on the spur of the
moment. Fred said it was a historical event, and we ought not to miss
it, and he telephoned through and got rooms. The prices are perfectly
fearful, but he really doesn't care what he spends. So here we are. They
sent me up here in the car."

"Where," asked her mother, in an odd, dry little voice, "did you get
those furs?"

Griselda, who had taken off the stole, glanced down at it carelessly.
"Oh, this. Elsie gave it to me. Fred gave her some heavenly sables the
other day, so she didn't want these any more."

"I gave you my beaver set."

The girl glanced curiously at her mother's face. "I know you did, dear,
and it's very nice, of course. But beaver doesn't suit me, and besides
it's very old fashioned."

Mrs. Walbridge started at the last word, and her wedding ring struck
sharply against a glass.

"Old fashioned?" she said. "Yes, I suppose it is. Well, come upstairs,
dear, and take your things off in my room. Jessie's turning yours out
to-day, but it'll be ready in a little while."

Griselda caught up her stole and threw it round her shoulders. "Oh, I'm
not staying," she explained carelessly. "We're at the Ritz. It's only
for two or three days, so I thought I wouldn't--upset things here--and
besides, Elsie wanted me. Sir John Barclay is motoring her and me back
on the day after to-morrow----"

"Who is Sir John Barclay?" asked Miss Breeze interestedly. Grisel
laughed.

"Try to bear it, Caroline," she said, "but he's not young and handsome;
he's old. _Very_ nice," she added, patronisingly, "but really old. White
hair and all that. Isn't it a pity, for he's as rich as
Croesus--copper in Africa it is, and sheep and cows in South America.
I wish he'd adopt me as a favourite grandchild." As she spoke a long,
throaty honk of a motor horn was heard. "That's Peters. I promised Elsie
I wouldn't be late, and he's reminding me. We're lunching at the Carlton
with Sir John, so I really _mustn't_ be late. Good-bye, dears."

She kissed both the women and they all three walked to the hall door
together.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," the girl went on, as she opened the door.
"Dad says he's going to stay on for another fortnight. He says his
health's better, but really and truly he's having the time of his life
and is a thoroughly gay old dog. Oh, yes, and he wants you to send him
some new pajamas--only two or three pairs, and you're not to send him
mauve ones. Rather naughty of him to be so particular, isn't it?"

"Griselda!" Mrs. Walbridge's voice was very stern, and the girl made a
funny little face as she ran down the path.

They watched her get into the big car, and waved their hands to her as
it bore her quietly away.

The two women went back into the house and sat down in the drawing-room.
The fire had gone out during the excitement of the morning, and the room
looked more than ever unlovely and uninhabited. Mrs. Walbridge stood for
a moment gazing down at the five photographs.

"Dear Grisel is having a splendid time, isn't she?" asked Caroline
warmly. "How nice for her to have such rich friends."

Mrs. Walbridge did not answer. Her eyes were still fixed on the pictures
of her five children.




CHAPTER XI


A week later Mrs. Walbridge received a letter from her publishers. It
was a very kind letter, for, after all, publishers are human beings, and
Mr. Lubbock and Mr. Payne were really sorry to hurt their poor little
client.

"'Pon my word, it really makes me feel quite miserable," Mr. Lubbock had
told his partner, with perfect sincerity, as they drew up a rough draft
of the letter for Miss Borlays, their most confidential secretary, to
type.

Mr. Payne nodded in agreement. "Poor old thing, it'll be an awful blow,
and I half suspect," he added, "that she supports that rascally,
good-looking husband of hers by her earnings."

"There are a lot of children, too, Payne. I've forgotten how many, but a
great many," added Mr. Lubbock, smoothing his impeccable waistcoat.
"Poor little woman. I wish we didn't have to do it. Of course, she has
grown absolutely out of date, and this last book is disastrous,
positively disastrous."

However, after some discussion, the two men decided, for the sake of old
times and long friendship, to accept one more book from Mrs. Walbridge.

"We'll buy outright," Lubbock suggested. "What do you say? Give her a
cheque for five hundred pounds and let her deliver the manuscript when
she likes. That'll let her down a bit easier."

Mr. Payne nodded. "Five hundred pounds is a lot of money," he protested
feebly. "We shan't sell as many copies either after this last mess.
However, we'll do it."

When they had finished the rough draft and sent it in to the efficient
Miss Borlays, the two men went out to lunch, and had a bottle of Clos
Vogeot to console themselves, both for what was practically a gift of a
large sum of money, and also for their sincere sympathy with that poor
little superannuated scribbler. After his third glass of the excellent
and mellowing wine, Mr. Lubbock even recalled to his friend how very
pretty Mrs. Walbridge had been twenty years ago.

"I remember thinking I had never seen such eyes in my life," the good
gentleman murmured reminiscently, "and I was only just married in those
days, too."

       *       *       *       *       *

The letter was less of a blow to Mrs. Walbridge than might have been
expected, for, when faced with absolute ruin, an unexpected five hundred
pounds comes very nearly like manna from heaven. Her relief when she had
cashed the cheque and actually had the notes folded away in her shabby
little old bag was so great that she had to struggle to keep the tears
from her habitually tearless eyes. She did not go straight home from the
bank, and restraining herself with a violent effort from rushing in to
thank Mr. Lubbock and Mr. Payne--a course which she knew would be
extremely distressing to them both--she did an unjustifiable but very
forgivable thing. She went to Peter Robinson's and spent twenty-seven
pounds nineteen and sixpence on a muff and stole for Griselda. This she
had sent straight to her daughter, and, sitting at the counter in the
shop, she wrote a little letter on a bit of paper out of one of her
notebooks.

     "_My darling_," she said, in her beautiful, clear writing, "_here's
     a little present for you. I can't bear you to accept things from
     anyone but me. Explain to Elsie Ford, and I'm sure she'll
     understand your asking her to take back the beautiful furs she so
     kindly wanted to give you._

      "_When are you coming back? I don't want to cut your pleasure
      short, but you've been away for a long time now, and I miss you.
      Oliver came to see me yesterday, and he has a box for 'Roxana,'
      and wants you and me and a friend of his, a young man, to go with
      him on Thursday. Guy will be coming back any day now, and
      Christmas is near--and in fact I want my baby very badly._

  "_Your loving mother_,
  "VIOLET WALBRIDGE."

This note she pinned on the muff, and herself folded the soft paper over
it as it lay in the box. The girl who had sold it to her was very
sympathetic and pleasant, and promised that it should go off that very
day. When these things were accomplished, Mrs. Walbridge went on to
Campden Hill, where she was lunching with Hermione.

Hilltop Road, Campden Hill, is a blind alley, beautifully quiet, with
grass growing between the cobble-stones that pave it. It is a quiet,
sunny, tree-sheltered place, with five or six engardened houses on
either side, the smallest of which belonged to the Gaskell-Walkers. Even
now, in November, a few scraggy roses and some brown-edged hydrangeas
still garnished the sodden garden, and Mrs. Walbridge noticed with
pleasure, as she went up the path, that the painters were evidently out.
The door and windows glittered steadily in the glory of new bottle-green
paint, and the windows themselves had lost the hollow-eyed look
incidental to houses where the housemaids are not yet settled down to a
religious respect for their blinds.

She was a little late for lunch, but Maud was the only other guest, and,
as Maud was very hungry, they had not waited for her, and she found them
sitting cosily over curried eggs in the pretty dining-room. She had not
seen Maud for about a fortnight, and was pleased to find her looking
well and rosy. Hilary was at the seaside with his Grannie Twiss, and
Maud and Moreton, she was told, had been having a high old time doing
the theatres.

"We are praying," the young wife added pleasantly, "for bubonic plague,
or cholera, or something. Poor Moreton's only had three patients since
we got back, and one of them only had neuralgia from his tooth, and
Moreton had to send him across the passage to Mr. Burton to pull out a
few. That," she added, reaching for the salt, "was rather bitter."

Hermione, looking radiantly pretty in her smart trousseau coat and
skirt, was full of simple news about her husband and her house and their
plans.

"Billy's not forgotten his promise about the Brat," she said, after a
while. "He's asked Mr. Browning, his partner, you know, and he says he
thinks they could make some kind of a place for him--for Guy, I mean."

"That's very kind of him. I haven't heard from Guy for over a week. I
suppose he'll be coming any day now, bless him."

Then she was asked and told news of Paul, and this information was given
and accepted rather coldly, for Paul was not a favourite with his
brother and sisters, and their interest was only conventional.

"I believe he did rather well in something; I forget what, copper or
something, last week," Mrs. Walbridge explained. "He's bought a lovely
teapot with flowers all over it, and a picture--a water-colour of Venice
that he says will be worth double what he paid for it in a few years."

"Grisel's having a grand time," one of the young women exclaimed towards
the end of the lunch. "Elsie Ford is jolly good to her."

Her mother's delicate eyebrows stirred a little ruefully. "I don't like
this new custom of taking presents from one's friends," she said.

"Nonsense, mother. Everybody does it, and Elsie's so rich it doesn't
matter to her what she gives away. Do you remember how we despised her
for marrying Fred Ford, Hermy?"

Hermione nodded. "Yes; he was dreadful in those days, wasn't he? There
wasn't a decent 'o' in him. Real cockney."

"She's toned him down a lot, though," put in the other, "and he has a
trick of picking up smart slang--really _good_ slang, you know--that
makes him quite possible. When's the kid coming home, mum?"

"A few days before Christmas. I had a letter from her yesterday. They
are doing a lot of motoring, which, of course, Grisel loves. There's an
old gentleman named Barclay who is very kind to her," she said.

Hermione Gaskell-Walker burst out laughing. "You'll be having the kind
old gentleman for a son-in-law if you don't look out, you innocent old
pet," she said, lighting her coffee machine, and blowing out the match.
"Elsie told me--I met her the other day in Harrod's when she came up for
that special performance at His Majesty's--that the old man was crazy
about the kid, and," she added with satisfaction, "rolling--simply
rolling."

Her mother looked bewildered. "Rolling----?"

"In money, dear. He's extremely rich--cattle, I think, in Argentina. She
always was the best-looking of the three of us, so it's only fair she
should make the best match."

Maud interrupted her indignantly. "Best match, indeed! An old man like
that. How sickening of you, Hermy. I wouldn't give up Moreton for all
the millionaires in the world."

Mrs. Walbridge patted her hand. "That's right, dear," she murmured, and
Mrs. Gaskell-Walker looked a little ashamed of herself.

"You needn't think I'm not fond of Billy, for I am. He's absolutely
perfect. I was only speaking from the worldly point of view, and it
would be funny if the kid should burst out into a title, and millions,
while Moreton is hunting illusive patients, and Billy worrying himself
dead on the Stock Exchange."

After lunch Mrs. Walbridge was taken over the house, which was very
comfortable and full of things that she supposed must be beautiful,
although to her they were for the most part grotesque, if not ugly. The
mattresses, and such homely appurtenances, were oldish, she found, and
rather shabby, but everything downstairs was imposing, and that,
Hermione thought, was the chief thing.

"By the way, mother," the young wife burst out as they came down the
steep staircase, "what about that Wick man? There's not going to be any
trouble with him, I hope?"

"Trouble?"

"Yes, with Grisel, I mean. Billy took a fancy to him rather, and asked
him to come and see us, so he turned up the other Sunday for supper.
He's very nice. We both liked him, but there's something very odd about
him, don't you think?"

Maud laughed. "It's only that he says all the things that most people
only think."

"I like him," Mrs. Walbridge announced firmly. "I like him very much.
Did he say anything to you about Griselda, Hermy--or to Billy?"

"No, not exactly. But when he talked about the future, and he always
does talk about the future (I never knew anyone who seemed to have less
use for the past, or even the present), he seemed to assume that she
would always be there, with him, I mean."

"He's asked her to marry him, and she's refused him."

"Really? He doesn't seem much cast down by it. I never saw a more cheery
person in my life. Billy says he'll be a great success some day."

Maud went part of the way home with her mother, and asked her again for
the loan. Mrs. Walbridge hesitated.

"I don't quite see how I can, dear," she said behind her muff, for they
were in a bus. "My--my last book has not sold quite so well as the
others."

Maud nodded. "I've seen some of the notices. Awfully sorry, dear. By the
way, why don't you try to brighten up your style a little? They're
awfully sweet and all that, but they are a little old-fashioned, you
know."

"I--I tried to brighten up 'Lord Effingham,'" her mother faltered, and
Maud laughed with kindly meant amusement that cut deep.

"'Lord Effingham' really was the limit. That baby was most shocking. We
blushed for you, Moreton and I. Moreton says he thinks you don't read
enough of the new stuff. Oh, I don't mean really good stuff, like Wells
and May Sinclair and that lot, but the second-rate ones that sell so
well--Mrs. Llovitt and Austen Goodheart, and so on. This Bell woman,
too--what's her name?--Beryl J. Bell. I don't think her book is really
better than yours, but every second person one meets is reading it."

Before they parted she returned again to the question of the loan.

"If you possibly can you'll let me have it, won't you? We really are
rather at our wits' end. Everyone is so dreadfully healthy just now, and
the rent is pretty bad--quarter-day coming. I do want some pretty things
for little Violet. I should hate her to wear Hilary's left-offs."

A little smile, that was almost whimsical, touched Mrs. Walbridge's
flexible lips.

"My children all wore each other's left-offs," she said softly, "and it
didn't seem to hurt them. Grisel looked very sweet in your long robes.
However, I'll see what I can do, darling, and I _can_ let you have
twenty-five--only don't mention it to Paul, will you?"

She changed buses at Oxford Circus, and after waiting a long time on the
corner, she gave up trying to force her way into the overcrowded buses
(for she hadn't the gift of crowds) and walked home. It was nearly
tea-time when she reached Happy House, and after a hasty cup of tea she
went up to her little attic study and sat down to work.

When Paul came home at dinner-time he was not unreasonably annoyed to
find his mother still writing.

"Do come down," he called. "Dinner's on the table, and I'm hungry."

When she appeared, he looked with distaste at her ruffled hair and
ink-stained finger.

"Really, mother," he exclaimed irritably, "I do think you might manage
to be in time for meals. It's disgusting to a man to get home and have
to wait for his food."

"I shan't be a minute, dear," she said. "I must just wash my hands and
brush my hair."

"Oh, bother your hands and your hair; come along. I'm going to the
play--gallery--with Bruce Collier, to the Coliseum, so I shan't have to
dress, but I've very little time."

Mrs. Walbridge was a careful housekeeper, but things will go wrong
sometimes in every house, and this was one of those occasions for her.
She had a new cook whom she ought, she knew, to have superintended, but
the call of her book had been too loud and she had forgotten all about
dinner. The soup was lumpy and luke-warm, and the leg of mutton
quivering and purple. Paul watched it as she cut the first slice (she
always did the carving), and threw down his napkin angrily.

"Raw meat--that's really too much! I'll go to the club and get a
sandwich."

Tears rose to her eyes. "Oh, Paul, I _am_ sorry, very sorry," she cried,
"and I don't wonder you're annoyed, but don't go. Let me make you a
Welsh rabbit."

He shook his head and rose. "No, no. I'd rather go."

"I--I--it was my fault," she went on. "I got so interested in my book
that I utterly forgot dinner."

At the door he turned and looked back at her pitilessly.

"Your book! If your books were worth while there'd be some excuse for
artistic absent-mindedness, but considering the stuff you turn out, I
shouldn't think such mundane details as soup and mutton need be so
infinitely beneath you."

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Walbridge sat still for several minutes, staring at the closed
door, a strange look on her pale face. Presently she rose, the look in
her eyes intensifying, almost solidifying, to one that would
immeasurably have astonished her son if he could have seen it. Lighting
a lamp, she went quickly upstairs to her little writing room, and,
unfastening the buttons of her right sleeve, freeing her wrist, she took
up her pen and began to write. Day had begun to light her square of sky
when she crept down quietly to bed the next morning.




CHAPTER XII


A few days before Christmas Ferdinand Walbridge and his youngest
daughter came home. It, was over two months since his wife had seen him,
and she was very much struck by his look of health and youth.

"The sea air has done you a world of good, Ferdie," she commented
gently.

He shot a quick glance at her out of marvellously cleared and unswollen
eyes.

"Torquay agrees with me," he answered shortly; "always did."

Then he told her with genuine pleasure--for, like so many men with whom
selfishness is almost a disease, he liked spending money, and was rather
generous than otherwise--that he had made a good thing from a tip in
copper, given him by a friend in Torquay.

"Sir John Barclay," he explained. "Grisel will have written you about
him."

She nodded. "Oh, yes. The kind old gentleman."

"Exactly, the kind old gentleman." He laughed. "He and I are very
friendly, and, as I say, he put me on to this thing, and I cleared a
couple of hundred pounds."

She was about to ask him if he couldn't manage some of the quarterly
bills with part of the money, when he cut the ground from under her feet
by taking from his pocket five five-pound notes and handing them to her.

"That's just a little present for you, old girl," he said, "to help you
out with Christmas."

Before she had finished thanking him, the house door had banged behind
him.

Grisel had not arrived yet, as she was coming by car with the Fords, who
were spending Christmas at the Savoy, and Mrs. Walbridge ran out and
bought some flowers to decorate the girl's room.

She had not forgiven Paul for the episode of the underdone mutton. He
had hurt her many times before, but he had never so thoroughly disgusted
her, and her indignation, that she knew to be justified and fair, was in
an odd way a strength to her. She had worked for hours every day on her
new book, and was behindhand in consequence with her Christmas plans,
but Grisel must have flowers. She spent nearly three pounds of the
twenty-five her husband had given her at the beautiful shop in Baker
Street, and then, because she was afraid of crushing them, took a taxi
home, and was met by a look of cold raillery by Paul, who was letting
himself into the house with his latchkey as she drove up.

"I hope Lubbock & Payne are paying you well for the new masterpiece," he
said, as she came up the steps laden with flowers. He was surprised at
the look she gave him in return.

"Your father made me a present this morning," she said quietly, "and if
I choose to buy flowers with some of it that doesn't concern you, my
dear Paul."

Up in the girls' room (as the upstairs sitting-room was still called,
although only one girl was left) she had half an hour of real pleasure,
filling vases with water and arranging flowers to the best advantage.
She was passionately devoted to the pretty things, but for many years
now had had to give up buying them, or trying to keep growing things in
the house. Growing plants need care and time, and Mrs. Walbridge had
little leisure for such delightful attentions.

But now Grisel was coming home, so she felt perfectly satisfied in
spending such an enormous sum of money as nearly three pounds on
adorning the girl's room.

Her husband had not known at what time the Fords and their guest would
reach London. They would, no doubt, lunch on the way, and as Sir John
Barclay was coming up with them, they would probably stop to explore any
old churches they might pass. He had a passion for routing about in
chilly, romantic old churches.

"Fond of arches, and architecture, and flying buttresses and things," he
added, with the pleasant disdain of one to whom those chaste joys make
no appeal.

So, when the flowers were arranged, and the blinds drawn down, and the
fire lit, Mrs. Walbridge went to her own room and put on her only
afternoon dress. It looked very shabby, she thought, as she stood in
front of the glass. It had never been much of a frock, and she had worn
it and worn it and worn it. It was of black silk, of some thin, papery
kind that looked cracked in a strong light, and the sleeves were very
old-fashioned, with something wrong about the shoulders. She sighed a
little, and then gave her pretty curly hair a last smooth of the brush
and went downstairs.

She was a little anxious lest one of the children might notice the
absence of her rings, and the seed pearl earrings, which, being one of
her husband's very few gifts, were a part of her immemorial gala attire;
she was almost sure that he would notice their absence, and she felt
that she would die with shame if any of them knew about the pawning.

The new cook had produced some unexpectedly tempting-looking cakes, and
Jessie, much elated by her reinstatement as a one-job woman, was waiting
in all the glories of new cap and apron, to open the door to Miss
Griselda, while the mistress, in the dreary drawing-room, sat down by
the fire to wait for her daughter.

She was lost in thought over her new book, which was engrossing her very
deeply. She heard a sudden knocking on the glass panel of the house
door, and jumped up and ran to open the door, flinging out her arms and
crying:

"Oh, my darling!"

"Thanks, Mrs. Walbridge. I like being called your darling. You might
kiss me too, if you don't mind. It's Christmas time."

Oliver Wick laughed cheerfully as the little lady started back in
fright. "That's what I call a nice warm welcome," the young man went on,
following her into the hall and hanging up his hat.

"Then she hasn't come? May I come in and wait? I've really come to see
her, you know, but I've got a very decent excuse--a note from my mother,
saying how delighted we shall be to dine with you on Christmas Eve." He
produced a letter and followed his hostess into the drawing-room,
carrying something that looked like a small hatbox with great care.

Mrs. Walbridge read the note and expressed her satisfaction at its
contents.

"What have you got in that box," she added.

"Flowers for Grisel," he answered promptly. "Beauties. Just look." He
raised the lid of his box and showed her an enormous bunch of closely
packed Parma violets. "Aren't they lovely?" he asked, beaming with
pleasure, "and won't she love them?"

"She will indeed. Let's go upstairs and put them in water, shall we?"

And thus it was that when Griselda Walbridge reached home after having
stayed nearly two months with the Freddie Fords at Conroy Hall, Torquay,
she found Mr. Wick awaiting her with a curious air of belonging to the
household as much, or even more, than she did.

"You're fatter," he said, looking at her critically, his small eyes shut
as if she were a picture and he an expert, "and you've got that nasty
red stuff on your lips. Oh, fie!"

Mrs. Walbridge watched them happily, as she leant back in Hermione's
favourite old chair by the fire. There was something in this friendly,
busy youth that she loved. He gave her a safe feeling, and she decided,
as she watched his sparring with her daughter, that she would be glad to
see Grisel safely married to him. He was poor, she knew, but she had
unconsciously accepted his own ideas about his future, and knew that his
poverty was merely a temporary thing, and that he was headed straight
for power and wealth. Besides, power and wealth were not things that she
had ever greatly valued.

Grisel was thinner, she went on thinking. She looked taller in her
beautifully fitting chestnut brown skirt and chiffon tan blouse. The
girl had changed. She looked more grown up, more of what her mother
innocently characterised as "a society girl." Her manner, too, was
different. She seemed at once a little bored and excited about
something.

She had opened her dressing-case and taken out a variety of little
belongings and was darting about the room like, her mother thought, a
swallow, settling these things in their old places. A handsomely framed
photograph of her father (his gift on her last birthday) she put on the
mantelpiece, and turned with a little laugh.

"Isn't Dad looking splendid," she said. "He's been motoring a lot, you
know, and it's done him a world of good."

"Oh, I didn't know he went with you," her mother observed, surprised.
Grisel took a little silver and enamel cigarette box out of her pocket
and put it on the table.

"He didn't go with us," she answered carelessly. "The Crichells had
their car, you know, and he and Clara used to knock about a bit."

"Surely, my dear, you don't call Mrs. Crichell by her Christian name?"

"Don't I? I call everybody by their Christian names--everyone does. The
old ones hate being 'Miss-ed'--reminds them of their age, you see. Even
Elsie's mother hated being called Mrs. Hulbert, but, of course, I
wouldn't call her Pansy! She really _is_ old. Must be as old as you,
dear, though I must say she doesn't look it."

Oliver Wick glanced quickly at Mrs. Walbridge, but looked away in
relief, for he saw that she was untouched by the girl's careless remark,
and he realised with a pang of satisfaction that her sensitiveness lay
far from such matters as age and looks.

"Did you see much of that Mrs. Crichell?" he asked, as she sat down and
lit a cigarette. She laughed.

"Yes. I know you hate her, but she's really not so bad, and Mr. Crichell
and she entertained a good deal. They had an awfully nice house there."

"I don't hate her," said Oliver Wick quietly, "but she's vulgar, and too
idle and empty-headed to be much good, or happy. Women like that are
always on the edge of making beasts of themselves, even if they don't do
it."

"Oh, a Daniel come to judgment!" she jeered. "You seem very wise, this
afternoon."

"Yes," he answered drily. "I'm always rather sage on Saturdays. Friday's
pay day, you know, at my shop, and nothing makes a man feel so wise as
money in his breeches pocket. You," he added, "have, on the contrary,
gained chiefly in folly, I should say."

She laughed. "Have I? I'm not at all sure of that."

There was something thoughtful in her voice and face, and her mother
looked at her wonderingly.

Oliver's face was imperturbable. "Who's the man?" he asked, and she
actually jumped, so that her cigarette fell out of her amber holder to
the floor.

"What d'you say?" she asked, as she picked up the cigarette. "Who was
the what?"

"Man--the man you're contemplating marrying?"

All that there was of the new and the strange in Griselda seemed to her
mother to flower in her answer to the young man's question.

She threw back her head and laughed, her pretty throat shown to the best
advantage as she did so. Then coolly looking at Wick from under her
lashes in a consciously attractive way, she drawled:

"I'm not going to tell you his name, though you're perfectly right, oh
shrewd young knight of the fountain pen."

Wick was shrewd, but he was also very young, and Mrs. Walbridge felt a
little pang of pain as she saw how white he had grown and what a smitten
look had come to his face. After a second he rallied, and lit a
cigarette, but he had been badly hurt, and his face showed it as he
said, with a laugh:

"That's a phase all attractive young girls go through--trying to make up
their minds to marry some rich man they don't like, before they have the
sense to settle down with the handsome object of their true affections."

"The object being you, I suppose?" she retorted.

"Grisel, Grisel," her mother protested gently. "You really go too far,
my dear."

The girl laughed. "Poor mother. You're longing to tell me it isn't
womanly, aren't you? But it's very kind of you to have brought me the
violets, Oliver, and I'm glad to see you, and all that----" She held out
her hand carelessly, with something of the air of a stage queen, "but
I'm dining out, and must have a talk with mother before I dress, so I'm
afraid you must go now."

He rose at once, apologising nervously and sensitively for having stayed
too long, and Mrs. Walbridge went down to the door with him. He was very
slow in getting into his coat, and she purposely did not look at him.
She knew he was suffering, and she had an absurd feeling that he was
hers, that she had written him--that she knew exactly what he was going
through, and what he was going to do.

Then he opened the door and turned round, grinning broadly and holding
out his hand.

"She got the first one in that round, didn't she?" he asked. "Never
mind, I'll get her yet, the young minx! Oh, my word," he added,
relapsing suddenly into helpless, conscious pathos: "What a little
beauty she is! My knees feel like wet tissue paper."

Before she could speak he had bent and kissed her (for though he was not
very tall, he was taller than she), and was gone into the darkness.




CHAPTER XIII


The Christmas Eve dinner party was rather a large one. Hermione and her
husband could not come, as they were obliged to dine with relations of
the Gaskell-Walkers. But the Twiss's were there, and Mr. and Mrs.
Crichell, and Paul and the Wicks, and, to Griselda's joy, the great
Bruce Collier honoured them with his presence. She knew that this
condescension was due to his having once met her coming out of the house
when he was on his way to see Paul.

Walbridge had, as usual, helped by spending all his available money on
things of a showy and convivial nature. The quarterly gas bill was still
unpaid, and he was having serious trouble with his tailor, but he had
sent in a case of champagne, and a box of the best cigars money could
buy, and all sorts of impressive, though unnecessary dainties, such as
caviare, pâté de foie, brandied cherries, oysters and so on, besides a
fifteen-pound turkey, which quite put out of joint, as Grisel expressed
it, "the pope's nose of the poor little eleven-pounder mother had bought
for the occasion."

Ferdie had been very fussy and tiresome ever since he came back from
Torquay, and at the last minute, distrustful of the new cook's powers,
he had insisted on getting a woman in for the Christmas Eve dinner. The
permanent cook wept all day, and went through the usual procedure of
reproaches and threats, but she finally quieted down, by the help of a
bottle of port, and the dinner really was excellent.

At the last minute the table had had to be redecorated, because Ferdie
had been seized with a desire to have orchids. Mrs. Walbridge sat
patiently by and watched him remove her time-honoured design of holly
and mistletoe and smilax, and then arrange the lovely purple and mauve
things that she now saw for the first time in her life without a shop
front between her and them. She dared not ask the price; she dared not
offer to help him, for he was extraordinarily irritable, and in spite of
his look of renewed health and youth, moved to violent invective by the
slightest word or suggestion. She watched him now as he darted from side
to side of the table trying the effect of the different clear-glass
vases, full of the expensive flowers that his wife privately thought so
much less lovely than roses or sweet peas.

He was looking very handsome, and had certainly renewed his youth in a
way that made her feel, as she raised her eyes to the glass that always
hung opposite his place at table, that she looked older and more dowdy
than ever. And yet there was something in his face that displeased her,
and seemed to give her an odd kind of warning. After a while she rose
and went quietly to the door.

"Where are you going?" he asked sharply.

"I'm going up to write a little."

"Oh, rubbish! Go down to the kitchen and make sure that everything's all
right. That's far more important."

"I've been down to the kitchen," she answered gently, with something in
her eyes that disconcerted him. "Everything is all right, and as you are
going to arrange the seats I'm going to write for a while."

She went upstairs and closed the door, and sat down before her
work-table, where her lamp always stood nowadays filled and trimmed,
with a box of matches by its side.

       *       *       *       *       *

Old Mrs. Wick, rather imposing in grey, with some fine lace, and a cap,
and a handsome old brooch of Irish paste and black enamel, necessarily
sat on Ferdie Walbridge's right at dinner. Mrs. Crichell, very handsome
in jade green velvet, sat on his left, as she had sat, Oliver
remembered, from his place on Mrs. Walbridge's left, that night in the
early autumn, when he had first dined at the house.

Oliver was very proud of his old mother, and with good reason, for her
plain, strong face was by far the most arresting, apart from the mere
fact of superficial beauty, at the table. His little sister too, whose
soft red hair foamed over her head like scarlet soap-suds, bore the
proximity of three very good-looking young women remarkably well. She
was plainly by far the most intelligent of the four, and once or twice
when the celebrated Mr. Collier laid down the law with even more than
his usual cocksureness, little Jenny dashed in, as her delighted brother
thought, and wiped the floor with him. He was a pretentious, posing man,
Mr. Collier, disposing of such writers as Thomas Hardy and Meredith with
a few words of amused contempt.

"Hardy has talent," he said, screwing his glass in his eye, and studying
Griselda's charming face with relish. "Of course, he writes well, but
he's very old-fashioned, and far too long-winded. There's not one of his
books that would not be better for a little judicious paring down."

"And who," put in Jenny Wick's high, clear voice, "whom do you suggest
as a parer?"

Collier glared at her, and Paul who, for some reason, had hardly taken
his eyes off his red-headed _vis-à-vis_, gave a sudden laugh, although
he had had no intention of doing so.

"I like your sister," Maud Twiss said pleasantly, turning to Oliver, and
speaking in an undertone. "She's a dear little thing."

"Isn't she," he answered, "very like me, don't you think?"

And Maud, who knew him less well than the other members of the family,
was a little disconcerted, and blushed. She looked very handsome when
she blushed, and Crichell leant across the table to her, waving those
white hands of his in the way that was so singularly distasteful to
Wick. Once more the young man was reminded of things sprouting in dark
places, and then his quick imagination improved on this crude vision,
and he seemed to catch a glimpse of blind sea-worms writhing in some
sunless cavern.

"When are you going to sit to me, Mrs. Twiss?" the painter asked. But
Twiss, who sat the other side of Jenny, leant over and answered for his
wife.

"Never, Mr. Crichell. She's no time for portraits."

Paul, who disliked his younger brother-in-law, sneered at this, and Maud
saw him.

"I saw you yesterday, Paul," she said, without lowering her voice. "You
didn't see me, did you?"

He turned to her with a little snarl. "Yesterday? No, I didn't."

"I thought not. I was lunching at the Piccadilly Grill with Elynor
Twiss."

Paul didn't answer, but he turned to Mrs. Wick and made some unimportant
remark to her. The old lady was amused by the situation, and she did not
like Paul, whereas Maud struck her as a kind, pretty young woman who
ought to be aided and abetted in her attack on a disagreeable,
pettish-minded brother.

"No," she returned, in her sonorous voice, "I never did. Do you often go
to the Piccadilly Grill, Mr. Walbridge? I was there with Oliver the
other day."

Paul was furious. He didn't mind bear baiting, but he did object to
being the bear, and Oliver, who knew his mother and her wicked ways, and
who had also caught a pained look in Mrs. Walbridge's eyes, leaned
across Maud and made a sign to the old lady. The sign consisted of
slipping the forefinger of his right hand down into his collar and
giving it a jerk as if he felt a little breathless. Mrs. Wick laughed.
She loved teasing, but this was an old signal used only when Oliver felt
that she really had gone far enough. So she nodded good-humouredly at
her son and let the subject of the Piccadilly Grill drop.

After that the dinner went on pleasantly enough, and Mrs. Walbridge saw
with pleasure that Ferdie really seemed to be enjoying himself. Mr.
Walbridge, like everybody else, had the qualities of his defects, and he
was a very good host.

Mrs. Wick was old and plain, and did not interest him in the least, but
she was his guest, and he was charming to her--charming, that is, as far
as a man may be said to be charming to a woman who is not at all charmed
by him. Pretty Mrs. Crichell, on his left, talked a good deal to Moreton
Twiss, who admired and took pleasure in her beauty, as every man ought
always to admire and take pleasure in the beauty of any pretty woman.
To do them justice, most of them do.

Grisel, of all the people at the table, seemed the least amused, Wick
thought. Mr. Collier plainly admired her, but she seemed to derive less
satisfaction from this circumstance than might have been expected, and
he knew that she had never liked Crichell, who sat on her right. When
her brilliant little face was in repose, it had a new look of fatigue
and boredom. Wick watched her constantly throughout dinner, for he was
hampered by no wish to conceal his admiration, and he came to the
conclusion that she was not only preoccupied, but worried about
something. He wondered if Walbridge knew the cause of this worry, for
the girl turned more than once towards her father, and looked at him in
a way that puzzled her observer.

They went upstairs for coffee, the girls' sitting-room being not only
larger and pleasanter than the drawing-room, but the piano also being
there, and when the men had come in and Oliver made a bee-line for
Grisel, he found that she looked even more nervous and tired than he had
thought.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Tired. Besides it's very warm in here."

"Come and sit by the window."

She obeyed him listlessly, and they sat down in the window seat that
looked down over the little path leading round the house to the kitchen
door.

"I do wish," the girl burst out suddenly, "that mother wouldn't have the
Crichells here."

He stared at her. "But I thought you liked her. Why do you call her by
her Christian name if you don't?"

"I don't say I don't like her. I saw you looking at his hands at dinner.
Aren't they beastly?"

"Horrid. Has he done anything--anything you don't like?"

She shook her head. "Oh, no. But I--I wish they hadn't come."

As she spoke Wick's sister began to play, something very modern, of
which he could make neither head nor tail. But she played brilliantly,
and with what seemed almost unequalled facility, although he knew what
hours of daily hard work went to its perfection.

Grisel leant back in her corner, and shut her eyes for a minute. She was
really pale, and looked seriously troubled and puzzled. He turned and
watched the listening group round the fire. Mrs. Crichell lay back in a
low chair, her beautiful arms hanging loose over its sides. She was
really lovely, the young man thought--as lovely, that is, as a woman of
forty could possibly be, and Mr. Collier evidently agreed with him, for
his eyes were fixed on her. Crichell had taken up a magazine, folded
back the last page, and was rapidly sketching Maud Twiss, who sat
looking away from him and did not see what he was doing. Twiss had gone
to the telephone and Paul stood near the piano, watching Jenny, as her
red head bobbed funnily over the keys as she played.

Mrs. Walbridge had left the room, and Walbridge stood leaning against
the door in a pose often drawn by du Maurier in the eighties.

"I say," Wick whispered to Grisel, hoping to make her laugh, "your
father is most awfully good-looking. Perfectly splendid to-night, isn't
he?"

She gave a little pettish start. "Oh, do be quiet," she snapped. "If
you knew how sick and tired I was of having father's good looks drummed
into me----"

She rose and marched over to the chair her mother had left, and sat
down, staring at her father, as if she disliked him intensely.

Wick sat still, feeling very much injured, for, after all, most girls
would like to hear their father praised--at least, most pretty girls. Of
course, if she had been plain, he reflected gravely, one could
understand her being so shirty.

As Jenny stopped playing, Mrs. Walbridge came back into the room, and
approached Mrs. Crichell.

"I'm so sorry," she said kindly, "but someone has just telephoned to
your husband from his mother's house and asked if he's not going on
there."

Mrs. Crichell unfurled her fan, which was of black feathers like some
big wing. "Dear me, how tiresome!" she said. "He's having such a good
time, sketching Maud, and she doesn't even see him. Walter," she called.

Crichell turned. "Yes?"

She gave him the message, and he rose without any comment. "You'll let
me take this magazine with me, Mrs. Walbridge?" he asked.

Maud turned and stared at him. She was a little annoyed, but plainly
thought the matter not worth making a fuss about, and Mrs. Crichell rose
and took up her gloves, and gave herself a little shake more than ever
like a sleek pigeon that has been sitting in the sun.

"Oh, need you go too?" Mrs. Walbridge asked, hospitably.

She

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