← catalogue

A Girl of the North: A Story of London and Canada

by Susan Morrow Jones · English · Gutenberg #48845 · 394,029 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Girl of the North: A Story of London and Canada
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: A Girl of the North: A Story of London and Canada

Author: Susan Morrow Jones


        
Release date: May 1, 2015 [eBook #48845]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48845

Credits: Produced by Larry Harrison, Cindy Beyer, Ross Cooling and
        the online Project Gutenberg team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A GIRL OF THE NORTH: A STORY OF LONDON AND CANADA ***

                          A GIRL OF THE NORTH




                            POPULAR NOVELS.

               =Miss Malevolent.=
                 By the Author of “The Hypocrite.”
                     Second Edition.      3s. 6d.
               =The Hypocrite.=
                 By the Author of “Miss Malevolent.”
                     Sixth Edition.      2s. 6d.
               =Shams.=
                 By ——?
                     Fourth Edition.      3s. 6d.
               =Mora: or One Woman’s History.=
                 By T. W. SPEIGHT.      6s.
               =In Monte Carlo.=
                 By HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ.
                     Second Edition.      2s. 6d.
               =A Cry in the Night.=
                 By ARNOLD GOLSWORTHY.      3s. 6d.
               =A Man Adrift.=
                 By BART KENNEDY.      6s.
               =The Wandering Romanoff.=
                 By BART KENNEDY.      2s. 6d.
               =Ashes Tell No Tales.=
                 By Mrs. ALBERT S. BRADSHAW.      3s. 6d.
               =An Obscure Apostle.=
                 By Madame ORIESZKO.      6s.
               =Daughters of Pleasure.=
                 By ANNA: COMTESSE DE BRÉMONT.      6s.
               =A Son of Africa.=
                 By ANNA: COMTESSE DE BRÉMONT.      6s.
               =The Gentleman Digger.=
                 By ANNA: COMTESSE DE BRÉMONT.
                     Third Edition.      3s. 6d.
               =A Virtue of Necessity.=
                 By HERBERT ADAMS.      3s. 6d.
               =Lord Jimmy.=
                 By GEORGE MARTYN.
                     Second Edition.       2s.
               =Seven Nights With Satan.=
                 By J. L. O.       3s. 6d.




                      A GIRL OF
                      THE NORTH

                              _A STORY OF_
                              _LONDON AND CANADA_

                                   BY
                             HELEN MILECETE
                  AUTHOR OF “A DETACHED PIRATE,” ETC.



                             SECOND EDITION



                                 LONDON
                          GREENING & CO., LTD.
                20 CECIL COURT, CHARING CROSS ROAD, W.C.
                                  1900
                        [_All rights reserved_]




                           Table of Contents

                          Chapter One
                          Chapter Two
                          Chapter Three
                          Chapter Four
                          Chapter Five
                          Chapter Six
                          Chapter Seven
                          Chapter Eight
                          Chapter Nine
                          Chapter Ten
                          Chapter Eleven
                          Chapter Twelve
                          Chapter Thirteen
                          Chapter Fourteen
                          Chapter Fifteen
                          Chapter Sixteen
                          Chapter Seventeen
                          Chapter Eighteen
                          Chapter Nineteen
                          Chapter Twenty
                          Chapter Twenty-One
                          Chapter Twenty-Two
                          Chapter Twenty-Three




                          A GIRL OF THE NORTH




                               CHAPTER I


THE world called it failure: he called it success, and the thought
evolved itself into happiness for a time.

George Archer was a man of unusual talent and power. He had translated
the most recent book by a celebrated Danish naturalist, besides which he
had acquired some fame as a naturalist on his own account; and the small
world of men, who trouble about such things, mentioned his name with a
certain amount of respect as that of one to whom mysteries are revealed.

He was rich. He had travelled all over the world. At last, wishing to go
to Canada, the idea of writing a book on the different varieties of
Canadian fish came to him with the charm of inspiration, of freedom, and
of novelty.

He was singularly unpractical, and given to great enthusiasms.

The glamour of Canada fell upon him; he was fascinated by the long cold
winter, with its tempests and swinging winds, its drifting snow, and the
endless battle with the princes and powers of the air: by the spring,
too, with its force when all the brooks ran and overflowed with the
melting of the snow in the hot sun, and the glorious long, light,
glowing days, when everything broke into life with suddenness. After
this came a gorgeous summer, with hot vibrating days, which brought
magnificent flowers into blossom; and then autumn with its Indian summer
and stillness—a sort of grey stillness, as if the dear dead came back
for a space. The wind died then, and there was only a movement of the
air laden with sweetness as it passed over blueberry barrens and lonely
stretches of black, still lakes, which possessed the charm of the
unknown, the fascination of the forest crowded with moose and bears.
George Archer loved the country with its colouring of triumph—trees,
sky, and water, all shared in the same glory.

When he came out, he brought letters to various people in Canada, and he
collected many important facts for his piscatorial work during his first
summer—in the autumn he met Naomi Fontaine, one quarter French, more
than a quarter English (her enemies added one half Indian). Archer loved
her and married her.

They settled down in an old house, which he rebuilt and made more than
comfortable. It stood near an arm of the sea, about two miles from a
town called Musquodobit, and in the middle of woods, of salmon rivers,
and lakes.

They were happy—perfectly, gloriously happy. They made no plans for the
future. To-day was theirs; they loved it, and for three years their
happiness lasted. Then Naomi died of pneumonia, and left him alone with
their daughter Launa.

Mr. Archer stayed at Musquodobit, for he had no desire to return to
England, his relations having received the news of his marriage with
certain questions—was Naomi a native? Their idea of natives was hazy,
and ran to wild orgies, cannabalism, and no clothing. Had she any
relations? George said she was a Roman Catholic and a Canadian, then the
letters grew fewer and fewer. Archer did not remember his people. He
loved his life; the freedom of it enthralled him. He fished and hunted
at the same time he pursued the research about bones, which brought him
many letters, much contradiction, and labour.

He could not bear to leave the land which Naomi had loved, whilst
dwelling there without her was misery and torment, and yet he loved it
too. That land exercises an indescribable fascination over
impressionable folk; its intenseness, its wild beauty and passion, the
rapid, boiling rivers full of fish, and the quiet, still lakes; the
grandeur of the granite rocks, the hills, and vast forests of pine, fir,
and maple; and, above all, the turbulent rapture and stormy joy of the
sea, crashing against the iron-bound coast. Archer’s home was situated
about one hundred yards from the shore. The bay was well sheltered, and
two miles below lay the open sea. It was near enough to be within reach
when Archer wearied of the calm of the bay; and near enough for them to
hear it surge, moan, and roar at times, and to be always in sun and
storm—altogether loveable.

Launa Archer was an ugly baby. When her mother died she was a year old,
and soon became intelligent enough to interest her father. He was often
away, and left her in charge of her nurse Eliza, who loved her; and the
child grew from babyhood into a sprite of mischief, always cheerful,
always laughing, often naughty, and fond of forgiving Eliza, with much
kindness and bounteousness, when she reproved her.

Mr. Archer’s house, “Solitude,” was a large building, with an appearance
of care and comfort. There were neighbours three and four miles away.
But he cared little for them while Naomi lived, and less after her
death. So Launa grew from infancy into childhood alone. She played with
the dogs, and in summer let them run among the long grass, which was for
hay, and which their wild bounding did not improve. How she loved to see
them tearing through it and chasing each other. And then she spent days
by the brook, sailing boats and paddling and splashing. Many mighty
fleets she launched, which sailed away and never came back, drifting
down the current to the sea. She played with the big white daisies in
the pasture, and gathered them with huge yellow buttercups. She dabbled
in the salt water, and ran up and down the beach, while the dogs hunted
the kingfishers and yapped in vain at the crows. It was a heavenly life
for a child—lonely never, solitary, perhaps, for she had but frequent
glimpses of her father, who journeyed north, south, east, and west,
seeking many things, principally forgetfulness, or rather a memory that
should revive no pain.




                               CHAPTER II


WHEN Launa Archer was ten years old her father realised that she must be
taught; so he went forth to seek a governess.

Mr. Archer had grown into a silent man, as is often very naturally the
case with men who spend much of their lives in the woods. But Launa
found him an excellent companion, full of knowledge about all the beasts
of the field and fowls of the air, and able to tell wonderful stories of
“Ring, the king’s son,” Norwegian fairy stories, and Indian legends.
Archer found the governess problem hard to solve. For once in his life
he distrusted his own inclinations, and asked advice of Mrs. Butler, the
wife of one of his neighbours. She had no children, but she longed to be
consulted about Launa, on the principle that childless women know most
about children. Mrs. Butler disapproved of Launa, for she was shy, had
retired under the table during one of Mrs. Butler’s visitations, and
refused to come forth until the lady had left, giving as an excuse that
Mrs. Butler shook hands too much and too often.

Mrs. Butler grew voluble, and George Archer somewhat distressed. She
strongly advised school; indeed, it was her war-cry. School would endow
Launa with lady-like habits. Her listener frowned. School would give her
pleasant companionship, and a knowledge of all those things which it was
necessary for young ladies to acquire.

“Is not curiosity, the hereditary tendency of Mother Eve strongly
inherent in all women?” asked Mr. Archer. “Launa will learn for
herself.”

“Yes, perhaps,” vaguely murmured Mrs. Butler. “Still, if I were you I
would send her to school.”

George Archer immediately became conscious of many things he did not
want his Launa to become or to learn. She would either be miserable at
school or dislike “Solitude” on her return thither; either result would
be disagreeable. He wanted Launa to remain natural; consequently he did
not advertise for a governess. He had an idea he might meet a suitable
teacher. Mrs. Butler told him that in all probability he would marry
such a paragon as he desired, and he smiled without contradicting her.

He visited his friends at Baltimore, New York, and Halifax, which was
near where he lived, and in New York he found what he sought. Her name
was Black; she was a German-American. Her age was thirty, though her
face suggested forty and her figure twenty. When she played the piano
Archer almost worshipped her talent. He had found the long-looked-for
solace—in the music he saw Naomi; they were together again. And
whenever Miss Black played he seemed to lose himself in a heavenly
dream. If she could teach the wild little lady at “Solitude” to play!
Miss Black could row and paddle; she had read, and did read; she could
walk far, and play tennis. She was full of intelligence, and her German
was good.

It seemed to the perplexed parent that the day of the millennium was
about to dawn when he went, home with this trophy. If the dogs and Launa
liked her then he could dare to be content.

Launa had never known anyone she did not like except Mrs. Butler, who
reciprocated the feeling. The idea of a governess had no dreaded
associations for her; a companion was her greatest desire. Eliza had
grown too fat to climb fences and to go out in the canoe—a form of
pleasure she dreaded and detested, for Eliza could not swim, nor would
she learn.

Miss Black—Launa christened her “Whitey”—was a success. When Mrs.
Butler heard of her she said the world would talk, but when she saw
Whitey’s livid face and weather-beaten countenance, she wanted to know
what her history was, and talked about Mr. Archer’s lonely and
defenceless situation as though he were a castle facing north-east.

The dogs loved Miss Black; her sitting-room was always a haven of refuge
when they were wet and tired, also when Launa had steeplechases and
Fatsey, an old dog, would not and could not jump over a broomstick three
feet from the ground, then, he too, sought sanctuary with Whitey.

Whitey taught Launa music, and the child worked earnestly, undismayed by
the drudgery, with the hope of some day being able to play like her
teacher, and her reward always came in the form of freedom for a while.
With Whitey, she read many books, stories, history, and poetry. And as
Miss Black had travelled far and wide she made all she taught
interesting.

This odd couple were very happy together. In the winter they snowshoed,
going for long tramps through the woods. They were frequently out in
stormy weather, for Miss Black loved the wind as much as Launa did, and
the wild turmoil of snow and tempest attracted them both. They explored
the whole surrounding country together. Miss Black and Launa were also
very fond of wandering to the far away lakes—the big black lakes with
long shadows and deep reflections of trees and rocks—lakes whose
solitude and silence filled one with a sort of apprehension, that
whispered of horrors, past or to come—the ghosts of dead braves might
wander there as a foretaste of the happy hunting ground. The hills were
high and steep, covered with brushwood which was very thick, and at
intervals there were rocks and holes that made climbing perilous, but
Launa and Miss Black did not mind difficulties. On one occasion Mr.
Archer took them to camp out for a week and to fish. How they loved it!
The queer smell of the wood smoke, the joy of cooking in the ashes, and
the talk round the fire in the twilight before bedtime, when the stars
came out and the moon hung half-way up in the sky, while the firelight
threw shadows all around, making the white birch trees look ghostly in
the dim light, while in the distance the little stream rushed on to the
sea.




                              CHAPTER III


WHEN Launa, who had a queer, passionate temper, a horror of restraint of
any kind, and a great dislike to being disappointed or thwarted, was
fifteen, she was tall, and slight, all arms and legs, with long thin
fingers, and well-shaped feet. Her skin was tanned, with a tinge of red
in her cheeks, her eyes were brown, as was her hair. She could paddle,
and walk on snowshoes like an Indian, her voice had a low soft richness
in it that reminded Mr. Archer of a squaw—which made him wonder whether
there had been Indian blood in Naomi or not?

But Launa had a stronger look than her mother; she was less of the
dainty French girl, and she possessed a greater desire to rise, to
achieve something, possessing a less sublime acquiescence in fate or
destiny than Naomi, who had been sweeter, more yielding, and fulfilling
Mr. Archer’s preconceived, primeval idea of a woman. Sometimes he feared
for his daughter, and that curious belief in herself, which she
displayed with a half-expressed idea, that she would be able to command
fate, an early sign of her masterful independence.

“When I am big,” Launa said to her father one day, “I shall write a book
about the woods and the Indians; no one writes about them, or seems to
know how.”

Her father smiled.

“You must learn to keep still.”

“The arranging and selecting of ideas must be difficult,” she said, “and
I always come to grief over commas. I love full stops, but Whitey says
my sentences are jerky. It must be difficult to disguise one’s mood when
writing books, to write when one is tired or weary; I could not do it.”

“You will perhaps be glad to do it some day.” Then changing the subject,
he said, “I am going to the Reserve to-day, will you come?”

“What time shall we go?”

“At three,” he answered.

Launa rushed off to order tea to take with them, as well as some tea and
sugar for presents to the Indians.

They drove about six miles to the Reserve. It was a desolate piece of
country, and lay along the side of a large lake, from which ran a little
trout stream. The Indians lived in cottages, poorly built shanties, and
they welcomed the Archers with joy. There was an old grandmother, a
terrible old person in a red flannel bed-jacket, a very short skirt, and
a short pipe, which she smoked with fervour. Her grey hair hung down on
both sides of her brown face, and she waved her long thin fingers as she
related tales of her magic cures, for she was a doctor and made herb
decoctions for anyone who was ailing. She talked in a low mysterious
voice.

“I give him little medicine, yer know,” she said, with a leer and a
drawl, nodding her funny old head with an air of confidence in her
listener’s understanding and belief.

Miss Black was afraid of her, and always felt sure that Mrs. Andrew
would not be too good to omit mixing poison with her medicine, if she
considered it desirable the sick person should not recover.

Launa listened to the old grandmother’s stories with rapt attention,
until Andrew, the witch’s husband, came to say he had lighted a fire by
the lake, and that Abram had launched his canoe to take Launa in it
after tea.

Andrew and Launa caught some trout, which they cooked at the wood fire,
and Launa made tea. She presented Mrs. Andrew with a large parcel of it
to that lady’s joy, though she merely grunted her thanks, and then
offered Launa a cup out of her own tea-pot. But as the Indians seldom or
never empty the tea-pot (they consider it a waste to throw away the old
leaves, and keep on adding a few new ones, which they let boil to get
their full flavour), Launa knew better than to drink it. It was, in
truth, a deadly concoction.

Abram pushed his canoe into the water, and taking a paddle in one hand
started with a little run and then jumped into the end of the canoe,
which shot out into the middle of the lake. It was a wonderful jump, and
Launa never tired of seeing it.

“There is no one who can do that as Abram does,” she said with
admiration. “He is splendid, isn’t he, Andrew? Abram, Abram!” called
Launa. “Take me up to the end of the lake!”

He brought the canoe in again, and she took her paddle and knelt in the
bow. They went off together, her firm figure, with its graceful arm
movement, erect, muscular, and supple. Oh! the joy of those days! The
joy of living and of doing! The rapid, firm strokes, and the movement!

                 *        *        *        *        *

Launa paid her visit to the opera house in New York, whither her father
took her with Miss Black for a winter, and then her dreams were
realised. She heard the “Nibelungenlied,” “The Meistersinger,”
“Tannhauser,” besides selections from “Parsifal”; she also attended
numerous concerts. Music took the place of her out-of-door life, and she
became so absorbed in it that she only occasionally missed and regretted
her former wanderings. It was as if she had experienced its wonderful
power for the first time, and drank from a cup of intoxicating
sweetness.

She went to dances, and discovered that men found her attractive, and
naturally she soon learned how to make herself agreeable. At the same
time she realised that most men love a woman for her bodily charm.

“Men are very animalish, Whitey,” said Launa one day, after having made
a successful appearance at an evening reception.

Miss Black gasped. She had ignored the existence of men as lovers,
except in history and in books, while teaching Launa.

“All men are not alike,” she said vaguely.

“No, of course not. Father is perfect. Few men are like him.”

When they returned to “Solitude,” Launa worked with renewed ardour, and
practised with joy—she wanted to play well. She read all sorts of
books, and after a course of lectures on Greek literature, she turned
with avidity to Plato, to Epictetus. Of German books she read many; to
Miss Black’s regret she had outgrown Marlitt. For a woman who could do
things, who did not fear storm or rain, Miss Black was singularly afraid
of the knowledge of good and evil. Evil belonged especially to the poor
and low, and to men, who gave it up when they put on dress-clothes, and
were in the society of ladies—the humanising influence of ladies! A
dress suit was the veneer that completely covered the brute-beast in a
man.

About this time Launa turned affectionately to her father. She found him
sympathetic, for he understood her, and he never gasped.

“You remind me of your mother,” he said one day to her.

“Tell me about her,” she said, flushing with pleasure.

“She was very sweet—how can I tell you? I loved her; half of me, the
best, the happy half died with her; it was as if I were killed. . . .
And we were so happy.”

“It was terrible,” said Launa. “Life, father, seems sometimes to be
horribly, terribly sad.” She said this with the air of one who has made
a new discovery, and it amused her father.

“Why is it?” she asked.

“I do not know.”

“And what is the good?”

He did not answer.

It dawned upon the small world round “Solitude” that Launa was
attractive, and so the inhabitants came to visit and to criticise. They
all went to Quebec, and they stayed several nights at different houses,
where she enjoyed herself, and where she was admired—especially at one
of the balls she attended.

Among all the men she met, English as well as Canadian, for there was a
garrison in Halifax, a man named Paul Harvey interested her most. He was
a Canadian, who possessed a place about twenty miles from “Solitude.” He
was tall and dark. His skin was tanned from the out-of-door life he led;
he had a peculiarly high forehead, and high cheek bones, and his body
had the lithe look common to men who spend their lives in doing, and who
are never troubled with superfluous flesh. His keen eyes glanced into
one’s inner consciousness, and seemed hard, until he smiled. He walked
with the Indian stride, which is quick and quiet. Of course he could
ride, and he had the strong capable hands of a man who has been brought
up to do things, and who could do them well. Paul Harvey and Launa soon
became firm friends, for they understood each other. They loved the same
things; the witchery of the woods, of the canoe, and of the sea was real
and tangible to them both, and he loved music, as did she. In the long
spring days they often met, and he was full of admiration for this girl,
who was so strong and so fearless.

George Archer frequently invited Paul to “Solitude,” without the least
idea of encouraging any feeling on Paul’s part for Launa, who in her
father’s eyes was still a child; that any man should think of her as a
possible wife never occurred to him, but then Archer’s idea of a wife
(the other man’s wife) was a submissive woman, and Launa was not that.

One day in May Mr. Archer had gone to Chezettcook to fish, and Launa was
anxious to pay him a visit. Paul expressed himself desirous of driving
her down to the river which her father owned.

So the two left “Solitude” at two o’clock on a still day, very sultry
and hot; a haze lay thick over the land, and the sun shone red with a
lurid glare, for the haze was the smoke of fires in the woods.

They drove along very rapidly, not talking much, though occasionally
Paul would look at her and she at him, and they smiled with a sense of
well-being and mutual bliss.

“I think,” said Paul at last, “that the Bible makes a mistake when it
says, ‘Godliness with contentment is great gain’; it should be love.”

“Oh, Paul,” she exclaimed. “The smoke! it is getting so thick.”

Paul was holding his head down.

“Shall we turn back? The fire is crossing the road in front of us. I am
afraid we can’t get through it.”

He turned his horse quickly.

“Launa, it seems as if it were cutting us off.”

They were in a winding road, a crosscut. He started Micmac at a gallop.
If the fire were before them! There was a long hill to climb.

The trap swayed and jolted, for the road was bad. They were tearing
along; the wind was behind them, and they could hear the crackle which
was getting nearer, rising to a hideous roar. A river crossed the road
below the hill—had they time to get to it?

Paul wrapped the rug round his companion, put it over her head, and
covered her mouth.

“Keep it tight,” he exclaimed, “and sit still.”

Then he began to use his whip, having tied his own handkerchief over his
mouth. Micmac was going more slowly in spite of the whip; it seemed as
if he were terrified and paralysed by the pursuing fiend.

“You are not afraid,” said Paul with difficulty, through his
handkerchief.

“No,” gasped Launa, “not with you.”

He put his hand on her shoulder.

“Keep your mouth well covered; the fire is before us. We must go through
it.”

On, on they tore; the smoke almost choked her. It was so terribly thick
that Paul could not see Micmac, though his eyes burnt, and he kept them
open with difficulty. Then the flames ran up a dead pine tree in front
of him, and shed a lurid light through the smoke. The heat was intense;
he shut his smarting eyes, and trusted Micmac would keep the road.

“Oh, if the bridge—a wooden bridge—were not down!” “Were not down!”
repeated itself; “Were not down!”

They were in the midst of the fire now; the roaring was tremendous, and
the trees were flaming and crackling on all sides. Paul covered his eyes
with one hand, and used the whip with the other. It was like the finish
of a race, a race for life, down the hill at a gallop. But the bridge?
It had already caught, and the wood was smoking, when Micmac stopped
with a jerk, and Paul jumped out and took hold of him.

“You must, old boy, you must,” he murmured. “Once over we are pretty
safe. Good horse, good horse!”

The trembling Micmac refused again; the bridge was hot, and frightened
him. Then he went at it with a rush, with Paul still at his head,
half-running, half-dragged by the horse. The river was wide, and the
wind was from the north, blowing the fire down on them over the road,
but not across the stream in the direction in which they were going.

Paul got into the trap quickly, and Micmac galloped on and on and on
until, though the smoke was still thick, they were safe. At last Paul
pulled up, and looked back. The road along which they had come was a
sheet of flame, and he shuddered as he thought of what might have
happened. There were so many pine trees to burn, and to fall burning,
while the side of the river on which they were was covered with alder
bushes and rocks, and the wind, too, was blowing that way.

“Now!” he gasped hoarsely, for his throat was dry and parched. “Now!”

And Launa threw off her rug. Paul was black, his face was flaming and
smutty, his cap had blown off, and his hair stood on end. Her rug was
singed. Micmac had a burn, where a piece of wood had fallen on him, and
he was trembling when Launa got out and patted him, talking while she
did it.

“My darling,” murmured Paul, going up to her, “you are safe; you behaved
like an angel.”

He looked at his hands and did not touch her.

“So did Micmac. Look at him, and you—you are burnt, your hands are
sore. Oh, I am so sorry! Do, do drive back to ‘Solitude,’ and—and—”

“Yes?”

“Oh, drive back!” she said.

They took a short cut across a half made road, and so got behind the
fire. Paul talked very little, and she not at all, though she heard “My
darling” over and over again, and wondered.

Paul stayed at “Solitude,” and after dinner Launa, Whitey, and he sat on
the veranda and watched the fire, still burning in the distance. The
whole sky was in a blaze, but luckily the wind was dying down. They
could see the flames running from tree to tree; they could hear the
roar, but they were quite safe, for the water was between them. In the
dark, Paul silently, secretly took her hand, and they talked to Miss
Black of the annual regatta, and of Canadian ferns. A few stars blazed
high up in the sky, the others were dimmed by the lurid glow, and the
aspen tree quivered in the dying breeze, while the waves of the incoming
tide tapped the boats gently below.

Launa felt in that state of happiness, which says, “_Last, last, last._”

                 *        *        *        *        *

The annual regatta came off that year in July. Everyone knows the St.
Aspenquid Regatta. There were the usual boat races, and excitements and
innocent fooleries; but the best of all was the canoe race for the
championship of Canada. Paul Harvey had entered for it with his friend
Jack Howston.

Before the start they both came to the steam launch, from which Launa
was viewing the races. Harvey, with his strong half-brown, half-white
arms bare above his elbows, looked like work. After a word or two with
Launa, as she leaned down to him, they paddled away to the start. She
heard the pistol shot and the hoarse murmur of the crowd, proclaiming
the race had begun. Far away in the distance the brown canoes could be
seen; Launa watched breathlessly as they came nearer. The paddles
flashed in the sun and on the gleaming dancing water. To Launa, the
long, strong, slow strokes with the absence of haste was maddening; she
stood, not daring to move, watching the white forms as they came nearer,
nearer, the iron muscles in each man showing up as he paddled on and on.
Paul’s canoe was third in the contest.

“Third,” announced Launa. Her voice sounded level, she was just able to
hide her apprehension lest he might fail, and her longing for his
success, which, nevertheless, made her desirous of burying her face in
her hands until the race was over. Her hostess, Mrs. Montmorency, stood
near her, serene, alert, and slight, enjoying her successful party with
a little interest in the races, and a little curiosity as to Launa’s
attitude towards Paul Harvey.

The men ahead were doing their utmost; in the second canoe, too, they
were working hard; but the men in the dark canoe seemed to be dead,
dull—what was it?

The crowd shouted “St. John, St. John!” for the canoe owned by that town
was in front. Disappointment was in the cry. But suddenly the third
canoe gave a spring; it shot forward with a leap, and a bound, and a
swirl through the water, and then on and on. The two men were working,
straining. They passed the second canoe, and the finish was near; the
strong sinews under the arms of the two men showed up clearly. Had they
waited too long? . . . On they crept, and at last with a final, splendid
rush—oh, the ease of it, the seeming lack of effort—the brown canoe
shot ahead of the other. They had won, won. Amid shrieks, cheers, and
waving of handkerchiefs the heroes, the winners paddled away to change.

Launa had been on the verge of tears, caused by excitement, fear,
apprehension, and heaven knows what besides. She was unable to drink her
tea because of a lump in her throat. Paul paddled alone over to her, and
climbed on board the _Lethe_.

“You’ve won,” she said. “I am very glad.”

“And so am I—glad. I am more than glad. It means good luck; it means I
shall win my heart’s desire; it means—” he almost said “You.”

Launa did not answer; she gave him her hand as if they had met for the
first time, and he held it longer than a man does when saying, “How do
you do?” It was like an involuntary childish caress.

He stayed with her until it was time for the single canoe race, for
which he was acting umpire. She was sweet, with a delightful
unexpectedness which fascinated him, as did her varying good looks, her
firm, lithe body.

“I wish they had a ladies’ canoe race,” he said. “You would enter for
it, would you not?”

“Oh yes.”

“They will certainly have one next year, and you will win.”

Launa laughed.

“I must go,” he said with regret. “But I shall soon come back.”

“We shall leave soon now,” said Mrs. Montmorency. “Will you come and
dine at Paradise to-morrow, Paul? We are going over there, and shall
drive home by moonlight. Perhaps you will come and meet us?”

“Thank you,” he replied. “I will.”

Then he got into his canoe, and Launa watched him paddle away with slow
strokes—regretful strokes they seemed to her. His paddling was so
unlike that of the other men, so strong, and his body swayed to the
motion. Mrs. Montmorency brought up a Mr. Evans and introduced him to
Launa. He was a young Englishman, with a respect for the institutions of
his country, a love for his dinner, and for pretty women.

He began by asking whether Launa considered Miss Montmorency pretty, and
whether she liked Wagner. His theories were that a man can tell a
woman’s character most quickly from her ideas on the subject of other
women, as well as from the music she affects.

Near them sat Mr. Archer and the hostess talking. Launa heard a word
here and there as she listened to Mr. Evans’ agreeable remarks, and then
she heard her father say:

“Harvey is a fool or worse. The Indians will not stand it. Peter Joe
came to me about it; he says he would kill him, only that he is sure he
would be hanged for it.”

“You think they will take some quiet revenge,” said Mrs. Montmorency,
“and more deadly.”

“Yes, I do.”

“In their mind a child constitutes marriage?”

“If its father does not want to marry anyone else,” he answered. “They
will be satisfied if he lets things alone, but he won’t.”

“He does want to marry?”

“I think so. Money will considerably improve his house, and pay off some
of the mortgages; he will, I expect, take a wife with money.”

“It is terrible, and such a pity. I always liked Mr. Harvey for his
mother’s sake, and I have ever made him welcome.”

“I advised him to marry her—the squaw,” said Mr. Archer. “It will
finish him socially, but in other ways it will make a man of him. Harvey
is—”

Here they walked away to the bow of the _Lethe_, and Launa’s companion
talked on, and she answered him.

She impressed him with her interest, her air of being fascinated by him,
and all the while she was in torment. Harvey had held her hand! She took
off her pale tan suede glove and threw it into the water. It burnt her;
her hands felt hot.

Her quick action puzzled Mr. Evans.

“Miss Archer, your glove! Is it a challenge? Do you mean me to go after
it?”

“No, no,” she answered. “I hate it; I do not want it. Oh, we are going.”

The _Lethe_ had steam up, and was puffing and moving slowly.

“I am so glad. It is very hot. How cool the air is.”

They passed Paul in his canoe. He waved his hand to Launa, who was
staring into the water, and appeared absorbed in the depths or in her
companion.




                               CHAPTER IV


THAT night Launa could not sleep. She was so angry with Paul Harvey and
with herself; she loathed herself. Her ideas of men and their passions
were those of a young girl, to whom passion is unknown, to whom men
appear as gods. She considered a man must love a woman by whom he has a
child. Love, love! Paul was the father of a squaw’s child—of a squaw’s
child; it reiterated in her brain until she almost writhed with anguish.
She had thought of him as always her own. The shame of it! And worse
than shame, the pain, because she would have to give him up. Oh, to get
home! To be able to wander about alone! Away on the big barrens where
she could move as she liked, and tire herself out. Their wind-laden
sweetness would revive her, their vastness would bring peace; she was so
tired of the life away from “Solitude.” She forgot how much joy hope had
always given to her. She had hoped. The past tense is easily conjugated
once, but to live in the past for ever, to regret for ever is torment,
death-like torment. She resolved not to regret, not to suffer, and so
she read Carlyle until daylight.

Next day Mrs. Montmorency’s party drove to Paradise. There were
wonderful beech woods in which to walk. Paul met them there. His first
look was for Launa; she was standing talking to two men, and he joined
them and waited with patience, until at last he asked her to go for a
walk.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I am too tired to walk.”

“I want to show you the trees. Come into the wood and sit down, you can
rest there.”

“Well, I will walk,” she answered.

She looked at him with an involuntary air of appeal. She was not afraid
of him, she assured herself, only afraid of herself. Some day he might
tell her things, ask her questions, and she, through weakmindedness,
might answer. They started to walk, and she still meditated. Why should
she think he cared for her? Ah yes, and why did she want him to care?
These questions opened an endless vista of ideas and feelings before
her. She felt indifferent for the moment, as no doubt he did.

“The view is lovely,” she exclaimed at last. “Let us go to the village.”

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, coming nearer and looking at
her.

“Of many things. I think in heaven I should miss the sweetness of the
air which is here.”

“So should I.”

They walked down the road past a cluster of Indian cottages. A young
squaw with a baby in her arms sat in front of one of them. Launa looked
at her and at the child; its hair was more curly, and not quite so black
as the long, straight locks of Indian children.

“What a queer baby!” she exclaimed.

She looked at her companion. He was digging with his stick in the red
clay of the road; his eyes were hidden; a red flush mounted to his
forehead, and he was singularly embarrassed. She turned away and walked
slowly on, followed by him in silence.

“What is that noise?” she said.

They heard a sound like a moan quite near them, and it grew louder;
something—some animal—was suffering intensely.

“Look!” she cried.

In a ditch by the roadside lay a horse, thin, so thin that his bones
seemed as if they would come through his skin. A few children clustered
round, throwing stones at it at intervals and poking it with sticks.
Blood slowly oozed from a wound in its head, and its poor body was
covered with sores.

“Do something,” she said, and her voice quivered with the horror of it.
“Can’t we put it out of its misery? Whose horse is it?”

Paul had driven away the children, and gone close to it.

“Someone has half shot it; it must be in torture.”

“Go and borrow a rifle,” she said. “I will stay here and keep away those
little fiends. Do go.”

“You are not afraid?”

“Afraid? No, only so sorry. What horrible, unavailing suffering! Go, and
be quick.”

He walked briskly away, and she strolled up and down. The children came
near to stare at her, but they ceased to torment the horse. She could
not bear its eyes; they seemed to beg of her to kill it, and she could
do nothing. She clasped her hands together with such force that they
hurt her as she longed and longed for Paul’s return. It began to grow
dusk. She had forgotten tea, and the rest of the party—would they be
looking for her, and imagining all sorts of things? Meanwhile the
horse’s moans grew louder; the young squaw with the baby came slowly
down the road—the baby was crying.

Launa asked if she knew who owned the horse.

“A man named Morris, who lives down the road four miles away. He turned
him out to die; he is too old to work or eat.”

The baby wailed.

“Your child is ill,” said Launa.

“Yes,” grunted the girl, who was so young and almost pretty; “my
grandmother cursed him.”

“Cursed him?”

“Because of his father, he—”

“Oh,” interrupted the other, “will Paul never come? If he would only be
quick.”

She could not bear these revelations. The moans of the horse and the
shrill misery of the child were torturing her.

Someone suddenly threw a stone from behind the shelter of a spruce tree;
it struck the horse, which gave a sharp scream. In the distance Launa
heard footsteps. She ran down the road. It was Paul.

“I am so glad you have come,” she said breathlessly, quickly. “Hurry.
Did you get a rifle?”

“Are you _glad_?” his voice changed. “Yes, I have it.”

“The horse is suffering so terribly.”

He looked at her with a certain wistfulness which was unusual.

He is going to tell me he is sorry for _that_, she thought, remembering
the squaw and the child who had come near them.

“Go, go and put him out of his misery,” she said, with quick anger and
excitement. “There is so much torture, so much suffering for animals,
women, and children. Oh, God! it is awful!”

He turned and saw the Indian girl.

“You,” he said merely, but with bitterness, almost hatred, in his tone.
“Go away.”

“You are a brute,” said Launa, “to talk to her in that way. What has she
done? Go and kill the horse.”

“Not until you are further away,” he said, with gentleness. “He may, and
probably will, scream. That woman is not fit for you to talk to or to
touch.”

For one moment Launa felt afraid, and she wanted to ask him to come with
her down the road out of earshot, away from it all. The twilight was
growing dense. The horse would scream; ugh! how horrible the suffering!
There were witches abroad in the night—witches of selfishness, of pain,
of terror. She wanted Paul to put his arms round her, to kiss her, even
with the girl near with his child in her arms. She felt degraded, and
yet loath to let him leave her, until she remembered the horse.

“Come with me,” said Paul, and he took her hand and led her down the
road. “There is a big rock here. You will wait for me? Sit down and I
will wrap your cloak round you; you are cold.”

Her teeth chattered with apprehension as he walked firmly back. She
listened with her fingers in her ears, hearing only the thump of her
heart beating. One, two sharp reports and a sort of checked scream told
her it was over before he came back.

They walked quickly to the hotel, where the rest of the party were
waiting dinner. They were curious as well as hungry, and anxious to hear
the result of all this wood walking. They discovered nothing; neither
Launa nor Paul appeared happy, or at ease. He ate his dinner with
indifference; she ate nothing, and felt as if all her body, beginning
with her teeth, was beyond her control.

Before they left to drive home he said:—

“You misunderstood me to-night. I want to tell you about that squaw.”

“I know it. Do not tell me.”

“You are angry with me because of her. I could not help it.”

“I despise a man who could not help it,” she answered. “I am sorry for
her and for you. You could shoot the horse.”

“You are angry about her?” he asked again.

“I am outraged, not merely angry. Why,” she continued suddenly, “should
there be one law for me and one for her? I could not bear anyone who
treated her claim as nothing. She will belong to you, be one of you—”
she paused.

“I would never treat her claim as of no value,” he said quickly, “but—”

“You will never come again to me,” she said.

Had she said too much? Would he understand? She continued:

“Do not explain. Be careful—they may think of revenge.”

“That is enough. And so it is good-bye? Good-bye, then.”

Mrs. Montmorency took Launa home with her in the brougham. They talked
about clothes, while Launa remembered the queer dark evening, the
half-pretty Indian girl, and heard the wailing sobs of her baby, and
then she saw Paul’s face full of anger. Love was there, hatred as well,
as he said, “Go away,” to the girl. She shuddered, and he thought her
angry—simply angry—good that he could think she felt so slight an
emotion. Women are angry every day with their maids, and their
dressmakers, and their rivals, and it leaves no impression, not even a
wrinkle; there remains no ache whatever, unless it be weariness.

“I _love_ crepon,” she said to Mrs. Montmorency. “It is so soft and
graceful.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Paul Harvey did not go again to “Solitude.” Miss Black lamented his
absence loudly. From inquiries she made she learned that he had gone
away to the Restigouche with some Englishmen to fish.

Launa took up shorthand as a sedative, and worked with great diligence.
But she learned nothing. However, as neither her father nor Miss Black
was aware of this, because of their utter ignorance of shorthand, its
failure as an attainable subject caused no surprise to them.

Mr. Archer went to New York, and then Launa frequently took long
wandering walks—over stretches of rocky country with narrow, gloomy,
cuttings full of granite boulders, where there were caves.

One day she went, in her canoe, up a stream, until she reached a chain
of lakes where she could paddle on and on—far away into space—where
the stillness was maddening yet restful.

The peace of autumn, of approaching death, lay on the woods. The maples,
with their gorgeous colouring, shone and flamed in the bright sun; the
birches were yellow, almost gold, in the brilliant light; occasionally a
leaf fell slowly, it reminded Launa of a ghost of the end; there was
dread in the creeping slowness, as of the invincible, powerful march of
a quiet enemy. The breeze sprung up gently, it rippled the water, and
stirred the tall pine trees slowly with a rhythmic movement, and the sun
began to sink. She gazed again and again at the warm rapturous
colouring, the triumph of the trees at the end of their summer life, for
the leaves have a glorious finish, and then she turned her canoe round
and paddled swiftly back to “Solitude.”

Everything there was in confusion; Miss Black had been taken suddenly
ill. She was still unconscious, and they had sent for the doctor, who
arrived only to tell them she was dead.

Launa did not know her father’s address. Miss Black’s relations were
merely cousins, to whom her death and funeral were matters of
indifference.

So Launa stayed alone with the dead woman weeping tears of sorrow—some
tears were for the loss of companionship, some for the love and never
ceasing care. The idea of a funeral was terrible to her; death meant
earth and creepy things. At last Mr. Archer got his telegram, and came
home.

Launa felt as if the end had come to her. Death, the intruder, had
entered into her life; he was a powerful enemy, and hitherto she had
only regarded him as a sleeping brother.

Mr. Archer’s grief was not perfunctory, he grieved honestly and really.
Miss Black was his friend—if any longing for a nearer and perhaps
dearer connection (the dearness thereof is wont to depart when the
nearness is an accomplished fact) had ever crossed his mind, it had
crossed only and never taken root. The constancy of man is more
frequently attributable to circumstances than to everlasting love.

Mr. Archer observed that Launa had grown different—older, more absorbed
in something, more sympathetic. Always a child of deep emotions, she had
developed into a woman. But because her heart was not navigable to
floundering old women, the world near “Solitude” called her cold,
unfeeling, and indifferent.

Her father regretted this alteration. She had been a child, but
apparently death had stepped in and changed her.

He studied her gravely and with attention. “Solitude” was dreary.
Launa’s admirers grew weary of vain visits, of fruitless attempts to see
her, and they ceased to come. They said she was in love with an unknown
man; they had to account for her refusal to see them, and pique and
vanity suggested this solution.

After a long, cold winter, spring was beginning. All life was breaking
out again. The world was glad, triumphant, new, and Mr. George Archer’s
mind turned to England. Launa must go there for change of scene and air,
so they left Canada on the first of May.

Launa and Paul had never met since the memorable day he had shot the
horse. Mr. Archer casually mentioned that Paul was in Montreal. Launa
had a burning desire to hear tidings of him, but she repressed it; she
pushed it back, back, back in her mind, far away into those cupboards
everyone has, and keeps locked and sealed always, by sheer force of
will.




                               CHAPTER V


THE long streak of smoke from the steamer’s funnel lay black on the calm
sea; the strong throb of the engines sounded like the measure of a waltz
to Launa. She sat on deck every day after the first woe of sea-sickness
was over, and felt utterly and completely miserable. She wanted to go
back again, for the ache of unconquered pain remained in her heart. She
gave herself a little shake and tried to make herself agreeable to a
young man who was returning to England to be married. He told her
happily that the engines were playing the “Wedding March”; to her it was
a hateful discord, with the refrain of a waltz to which she had danced
with Paul. The young man hummed Mendelssohn, and she heard Paul’s voice,
and fancied his kisses on the warm cheek of the squaw.

“When I am married I would rather have the ‘Dead March in Saul’ played
than that,” said Launa at last.

The triumphant whistler gazed incredulously at her. He found her
irresponsive, so he left her alone, and went to get a whisky and soda.
No doubt the poor girl was feeling sick. She would not argue about
anticipation and realisation, or time and love. She seemed so cold. He
could imagine her sailing on through life alone. She evidently did not
care for men; anyhow she did not encourage him.

Launa was occupied with her thoughts. She was trying to seal up her life
as if it were a book and could be put away. The long, uneventful days
were good for reflection, but they were trying and full of remorse and
regret.

“I am young,” she said to herself; “only nineteen, and I will forget,”
said her mind, “and I wish for Paul,” said her heart, which was like the
ship’s engines—an essential part of movement and life.

“Hearts,” she said to the young man with anticipations, when he
returned, “are only necessary to one’s being as the engines are to a
steamer.”

She considered herself very wise.

“You are so young,” he answered, wondering why she should mention her
heart.

Just then Mr. Archer appeared at the companion door to breathe the air.
He was writing a paper on the intestines of salmon and grayling. The
young man turned to him and said:

“Miss Archer compares our hearts to the engines.”

“A very good way,” murmured the father.

The young man left them and went to play poker; they were an unsuitable
pair. Mr. Archer came over to Launa, who turned quickly to him.

“Father, I heard you talking to Mrs. Montmorency that day on the
_Lethe_—about Mr. Harvey—was it true?”

Mr. Archer frowned.

“What did you hear?”

“Something about—a squaw and a child.”

“It was quite true about the squaw and the child,” he answered slowly.

“Ah!” she exclaimed with a little gasp. “Then a man can think of two
women at the same time.”

Then he turned and looked at her.

“Men are very brutal.”

“You said he was thinking of marriage?”

“He is.”

She turned her face away from him, for his kind, penetrating look hurt
her, and just then she needed him to be cross to her.

“Why do you ask me these questions, child?”

“Because it seemed so strange to me—I could not understand him.”

“Merely strange and not brutal? Nothing to you? Well, you hardly knew
him, Launa.”

“Nothing to me,” she repeated, and her father returned to his writing.

The young man with anticipations saw his departure, and hastened to talk
to Launa. He was singularly anxious to realise the pleasure of Miss
Archer’s society; she was quite original.

“You look pale,” he said, with solicitude.

“Do I?”

“And worried. As if someone were dead.”

“Some one is dead.”

“Relations of yours? Cheer up. Wait until you get to London.”

“And then?”

“Then? Oh, you can have a good time. You can have the best of good times
in London—the very best—and forget everything disagreeable, too. I
give you my word, it is just like morphia. When I am in a hole, and feel
down on my luck, I go to town.”

“Is that the fog? I think I should not like the after effect of
morphia.”

“Fog?” he asked. “No, it isn’t fog, and yet it is fog, too; it deadens
the brain. When someone threw me over, you bet I felt bad. I went up to
town and forgot for a week. I did, really.”

“A week! It lost its effect in a week, so quickly?”

“Well, she wrote then and forgave me, and _I_ hadn’t done anything
wrong; _she_ flirted. But she took me back, and I just licked her
boots.”

“But suppose she had not taken you back?”

“Then I should have lived and forgotten her; I’m hanged if I wouldn’t,”
he said, with energy. “Life does it.”

“Life?—you mean time.”

“I mean living it down.”

“But suppose you could not forget? Suppose you were so fond that you
thought of her always?”

“I would forget. I mean—Well, I couldn’t, you know,” he said, and
laughed. “Now I’ve got her, you see, and don’t need to try. I do not
mind telling you—you seem so interested, and are so sympathetic
to-day—that I only forgot her when it was noisy and all that. But when
I was alone and quiet—at night, you know—I was miserable. You have
nothing like that to worry you, Miss Archer? It is very kind of you to
take so much interest in my trouble. You won’t think of your relations
when you get to town. Are they in Canada?”

“Yes.”

“And one died—a girl, I suppose? And the others want to interfere with
you; they want you to be dull because they are? Relations always do
that. Now, I have an aunt—she’s a caution; she thinks I ought not to
marry. But I would not stand that. Have you any aunts in town?”

“No. My father has a cousin; Mrs. Carden is her name.”

“She won’t bother you, I expect. You are lucky. Your father adores you.
You have plenty of money, and are young. My Aunt Maria is a—Oh, the
very deuce.”

Here he launched forth into anecdotes of his relations, and Launa
murmured a polite accompaniment to his reminiscences until the bell rang
for dinner.

“We’ll meet after dinner, won’t we, and finish our talk? It’s very
jolly,” he said. “You have such a nice voice, too.”

“You have done me a great deal of good,” she answered. “Time is all one
wants.”

“And life, amusement, and love,” he added softly, with a glance at her,
which, considering the state of his feelings for another lady, was
unnecessarily kind.

“Leave out love,” she answered. “I am hungry.”

On deck after dinner when he looked for her she was not to be seen, so
he concluded she was tired and had gone to bed, wherefore he played
poker.

But Launa was not tired. She had hidden from him. His talks about his
Aunt Maria had no interest for her, except when she regarded them as a
narcotic, and then his musings were soothing. That evening she wanted to
think and to be alone.

Her father had insisted on her drinking champagne at dinner. Mr. Archer
said a voyage was exhausting, and he looked weary. He had not recovered
from the surprise which his daughter’s questions had produced. Were they
caused merely by curiosity—the curiosity of an ignorant girl—or by
interest? Curiosity is merely an inheritance from Eve; interest is the
first instinct towards a man when a woman loves him or is going to love
him.

“Launa must drink champagne to-night,” he decided. “And soon we shall be
in London. But why did she ask those curious questions?”

Launa took some cushions and rugs and went forward behind the boats. The
steamer was surging on, the wind was rising, and the waves were breaking
below with big white heads of foam. She began to think; she drew a
picture of it all for herself in her mind and called herself a fool.
Suppose Paul were there on the steamer, suppose he came to her with love
in his eyes, and he were hers for the time—and that was it, that was
what hurt—for the time, perhaps only for a time. Would she be willing
to take him at the price of another woman’s shame? And to know and to
remember what was between her and him, like a bar, or a hand—the warm
soft hand of a woman! No, it was over. She would shut up the book. Paul
was dead, her Paul, the Paul she loved—she would think of him as she
did of her dead mother—sometimes. But her mother was with the angels,
and Paul was alive. She shivered a little; it was cold and damp, and the
swirl of the waves as the steamer rushed through them was cruel.

She resolved to begin again, to rub out the writing of the first episode
of life—such a new book to her—and to make the page ready for London
and fresh impressions.

When the Archers arrived in London they took a flat near the Thames
Embankment, and Launa revelled in new clothes, music, and horses. Her
father soon had many friends. His wee world was exciting itself about
the question of bones of fish, and he flung himself with ardour into the
controversy.

After some days of continual absence on his part, and loneliness on
Launa’s, she went to him and said:—

“I want to know some women. I love nice women. Don’t you know some?”

He looked surprised.

“There is your cousin, Lavinia Carden; she lives in town. I will take
you to see her. Her husband is dead; poor man, he never was happy. He
yearned for the country and for pigs—Lavinia only appreciated bacon,
and would not live out of Bayswater. A month at the seaside was all poor
Carden got in the way of country.”

“I shall not like her.”

“She will give you good advice, Launa,” he said, laughing. “You don’t
like that.”

Mrs. Carden lived in a semi-detached house, beyond Bayswater, far from
the region of the fashionable, in the heart of cheap villadom, where
twelve pennies had to make a little over a shilling. Endeavouring to
save a farthing on one’s rolls or one’s fire-lighters is an absorbing
occupation, and it seems to have most interest for those to whom it is
immaterial whether they do save their farthing or not. Mrs. Carden had
one son. When he was at home she saw what she considered life—an
occasional visit to the theatre, or a dull dinner party, both reached
with due propriety in a four-wheeler.

Mrs. Carden was a selfish woman, with a firm belief in her own opinions,
and her own importance; anyone who contradicted her or disagreed with
her was at once a detestable person. Her affection for her son was
expressed in long letters, and the frequent use of “dearest.” But her
love was variable, and when he was at home he disturbed her breakfasts,
while her nights were made feverish by his late hours, which kept the
hall gas a-light until sometimes past twelve o’clock. Her servants
assumed a more frivolous demeanour on his arrival, and it seemed to her
that while their caps were coquettishly crooked and smart, her stiff
house became sometimes slightly untidy.

Charlie Carden was in a line regiment stationed at Malta, with one
hundred and fifty pounds a year besides his pay. His mother wondered why
he never became dashing, or soldier-like, or anything of a hero, with a
sprinkling from the pepper-pot of wickedness—to possess this is the
bounden duty of every man when he puts on a red coat or a sword. Carden
remained dull, and his mother almost despised him; he was not even
selfish, nor did he bully her.

George Archer and Lavinia Carden were second cousins, she was the only
relation left whom he had known as a boy. His recollections of her were
hazy. In these she figured as a muslin-fichued, sandy-haired girl, in
whose face piety and cruelty struggled for mastery; now she parted her
hair deliberately in the middle, and indulged in them both. In her youth
she had regarded George as a possible husband, and, not loving him, had
forgotten him, therefore when reminded of his existence she felt angry
with him. Was it not his fault that she had married a man whose only
inclinations were to have a farmyard, against which she had had to
struggle all her life?

The day before the Archers went to 52 Lancaster Road a note was sent to
Lavinia to prepare her for their visit. Mrs. Carden therefore left off
her cap for the afternoon, braving the smile of her parlourmaid with the
fortitude of a widow who has given up hope of a second marriage, and who
suddenly finds the wonderful idea returning with unwonted
sweetness—brought back to her by the visit of a man who was long ago
considered a possibility. His fondness for a walk from church on Sunday
evenings with her had more than proclaimed this fact. She forgot he had
a daughter, and that it was five and twenty years since they had met.

The outside of Lavinia’s house was grey. Inside her drawing-room
suggested the past and dust, which was constantly being removed; its
mark was on the carpet, the walls and the furniture. Only the red blinds
shed a little cheerful light, which the drab curtains chastened and
subdued.

Mrs. Carden began by relating reminiscences of the family, and then
pitied George Archer for his long residence among Colonists. He
explained that his residence was quite voluntary, and that he regarded
it as the happiest period of his life.

“Did you think my father was obliged to live in Canada whether he liked
it or not?” asked Launa; “that he was suffering an unwilling exile?”

“Not exactly that,” said Mrs. Carden. “Where are you staying?”

When she heard of the flat, and contemplated Launa’s boots and dress,
she murmured to herself, “Money.”

“George, sometimes when you are busy I should be so glad to take care of
Launa; I would take her to—” She paused. Where could she take Launa?
“We might go to the Zoo.”

“Thank you very much,” said Launa politely. She did not press Mrs.
Carden to name the day for this expedition; she was not favourably
impressed by her relative.

“You will come and dine with us, Mrs. Carden,” said Launa.

“Call me Lavinia,” said Mrs. Carden.

“Come any evening next week; which one will suit you?” asked Mr. Archer.

“Next Thursday,” answered Lavinia.

Then they talked of Mr. Archer’s old home, and looked at photographs of
the whole of the family.

“Those happy days,” murmured Mrs. Carden, not without an uneasy feeling
that her hair was growing thin at the parting; besides, she began to
feel cold without her cap.

They drank weak tea, and Lavinia asked Launa her impressions of England.

“I think London is perfectly delightful,” she answered. “I don’t like
the horses much. You use bearing reins. The river is quite perfect, and
so different from ours. And yet sometimes I long for a stretch of rocky
country, for more freedom. But the music and the life are so
interesting. Yes, I love London.”

“Horses, river, life,” repeated Mrs. Carden.

A horse to her was a vehicle of locomotion, like an engine; it conveyed
her to the station or to a party. Some deluded beings owned horses; she
preferred hers hired, with no responsibility as to legs or grooms.

“You love boating and freedom,” remarked Mrs. Carden. “They are both
often dangerous.”

“In this country, yes—where freedom frequently ends in trespassing,”
answered Launa.

“Or worse—the loss of one’s reputation,” Lavinia said with decision.

Then she turned to George and told him anecdotes. She conversed rapidly
and loudly; when she was a girl her family had told her she was arch.

When they rose to go she said: “George, my dear son will be at home in a
few days. May I bring him to dine? Launa, he is your cousin.”

“Do bring him,” said Mr. Archer; “Launa will be glad to see him, I
know.”

What a name—Launa! reflected Lavinia after their departure. What a
fatality there is in our annexing the Colonies! Still, there is money
behind the girl, and she is young.

By which reflection we may infer that Mrs. Carden thought of her son in
connection with the money and Launa.

The Archers went home in a hansom.

“You call her a woman, daddy; now I call her a fossil,” said Launa. “She
is not the sort of woman friend I need. I want a living woman—not one
who has existed on husks until she withers everyone who goes near her.”

“She is a type,” he answered vacantly.

“She is an imitation. Show me some one who is brave—who has or knows
life.”

“Would you like Mrs. Phillips to come and see you? She is Sir John
Blomfield’s daughter, a widow and young. She wants to know you.”

“I am doubtful, not whether she will like me,” with sublime conceit,
“but whether I shall like her.”

“You must try her,” he laughed.

His daughter amused him with her odd ideas.

However, when Mrs. Phillips did come, Launa approved of her.

All this time Launa was learning. She was filled with a desire to know
and see more; people and life were so interesting. It was like a new
play. She noticed how differently her father, herself, and the others
were affected by it, and the noise was soothing, even at times
deadening.

Launa found Mrs. Phillips entertaining. She explained some of the parts
in this vast human drama. She found Miss Archer absurdly young in many
of her notions, and absurdly old in others.

“I want to see everything,” said Launa, “and to live myself. It is
terrible to feel oneself growing old. It will soon be over, and I
haven’t done what I meant to do.”

Mrs. Phillips laughed.

“Go on. What did you mean to do?”

“I should like,” said Launa, “to be happy.”

“So should we all. Tell me more.”

“I want to play a little first, and then—to make the world a little
brighter for someone.”

“If I were you, I would simply play myself and leave the others alone.
Playing is real and not difficult. Once you begin to mix other people in
your life, with your or their happiness depending on you, you will
probably be very miserable.”

The admiration of one woman for another is sincere when it is felt when
with her, and not merely expressed to a man.

Mrs. Phillips admired Launa for her youth, for her length of limb, and
for her slight, graceful body and her warm brown skin. Launa’s mind was
attractive. She made friends quickly; she seemed very adaptable;
everyone interested her. Some men adored her as they had done at
Musquodobit. To others, with a taste for sensuality, she was an
indefinite slight girl, while to the few she was wholly desirable—madly
desirable. Of course to the crowd she was just a girl.

Music exercised all its old fascination for her. She practised with
diligence, and she listened greedily. It transported her to “Solitude,”
to the wild sea there, to the rivers and lakes, the life which she loved
and missed, which life and Paul she strove every day to forget. And in
music she was with him. It was a dream life—she lived in it. Paul was
dead to her, but for all that he existed sometimes. She was stared at in
her canoe on the river, her paddling was so strong and vigorous, her
body so lithe, her arms so round and firm as she took long, almost
masculine, strokes, and nowhere did she miss Paul so much as she did
there.




                               CHAPTER VI


THE Cardens both went to dinner.

Captain Carden was a nondescript. He might have been attractive if he
had ever appeared interested. He was tall, fair, with grey eyes, and
very ugly hands, which were forced into notice because of his constant
endeavour to hide them. Launa regarded mother and son with curiosity,
for they were English and new, and reminded her of the characters in
Trollope’s novels. Neither Charlie Carden nor his mother appeared to
have found much to interest them in this world. They were ignorant as
well as superior, and gloried in knowing nothing, unlike Mrs. Phillips’s
friends, who were anxious to know everything, and to impress outsiders
with their knowledge.

The Archers talked first about the opera. Mrs. Carden’s ideas of it were
limited to “Pinafore” as new and “Martha” as old. German opera and
Wagner were nothing to her, nor did she care about books.

Captain Carden talked about horses to Launa, who gathered that he
fancied his own opinion as well as his own horses and prowess.

Mrs. Carden thought George should ask her to take the head of the table;
she considered Launa too young. She was disappointed when she found the
table was round.

Mrs. Phillips and Mr. Herbert were the other guests. Mr. Herbert was an
ugly, short man, with a square face, and a stubbly black moustache. He
was a journalist—besides which he was clever. Shortly he was going to
Canada to write articles for some papers on the country and its
resources.

“You are going to write to me, too,” said Mrs. Phillips.

“Yes,” he replied, with a glance, full of—what?

Launa saw it; here was a man and a woman who clearly were of moment to
each other. Launa was so absolutely ignorant of men; she knew only one
man, and she tried to forget him. She had believed in them all as a
class, and in their chivalrous respect for women—indefinite women—and
in their everlasting love for one particular woman at last, but her
belief was tottering.

That all men were brave she believed, too, it was part, an essential
part, of her idea of a man, as all women are lovely and good. Of course
she knew women existed with protruding teeth, who have no attraction,
but men do not _love_ them. Mrs. Carden she classed among them.

Captain Carden talked to her with assiduity. He told her he found London
dull.

“I hate the people; they are so difficult to know. I have called over
and over again on the Huntingdons. You know who he is? Lord Huntingdon
in the War Office. And I go often to the club for billiards, but no one
is friendly, and society is very difficult to get into.”

“But do you not go in for something? Don’t you ride, or row, or play
golf? I think all men should care for things of that sort, even for
making love.”

“I never make love; that means marriage, and I have no money.”

“Do you ride?” she asked, feeling perfectly indifferent as to his reply.
“All soldiers do.”

This conversation was so profoundly insipid.

“Sometimes; but I hate it. I am always afraid of falling off. I go in
for it because the regiment would not think much of me if I didn’t. But
I hope I have not bored you,” with a sudden change of tone. “We are
cousins, you know, and it is so funny how intimate I can be with you;
there are so few women I like, or with whom I can be confidential.”

Launa ate an almond with deliberation.

“Perhaps some day you will come for a drive with me. I might hire a safe
horse.”

“Oh, no, thank you. Please do not trouble, I do not like safe horses.”

Mr. Archer turned to Captain Carden and asked about Malta, and Launa
watched Mrs. Phillips, who was talking very little, while Mr. Herbert’s
conversation was incessant. His air was persuasive, his eyes eager,
ardent, full of desire.

At ten the Cardens departed. Charley Carden had time to assure Launa
again that she was the only woman with whom he could be confidential.
Mrs. Phillips was to stay the night. Launa and she had bedrooms
adjoining, with a door of communication. They both put on
dressing-gowns, and Lily Phillips went into Launa’s room.

“You are not sleepy, are you? Shall we talk?”

“Sit here,” said Launa, “in this comfortable chair.”

There was a small fire.

“I am always cold,” said Launa. “I love a fire.”

“What do you think of Mr. Herbert?”

“I think him clever, and he evidently likes you.”

“Yes, he is clever. But tell me, Launa, are you modern?”

“In what way?”

“Would you ask a man who loved you if he had a past? Would you object to
it if he had?”

“If a past were a present I would object. Can’t men be without past? Is
there always a woman they have loved first?”

She seemed to hear the wailing of a child and the rustling of the trees,
and to feel the fresh breeze. She shuddered. Mrs. Phillips observed the
shudder and the look.

“I do not object. Men are different; they are coarse. They like
kissing—indiscriminate kissing.”

Launa laughed, and said, “Go on.”

“If I love a man I shall not care what he has—past, present, anything,
if he loves me. I would like one man to really love me.”

“You have been married,” suggested Launa.

“But not loved. My husband was nice; we never quarrelled, but we never
made it up. Nice men do not love women; they ask us to marry them, to be
mothers to their children. Devils love us and often leave us.”

For some time there was silence.

“You like Mr. Herbert?” again asked Mrs. Phillips.

“He wants to marry you,” said Launa.

“He thinks he does. I am afraid of marriage. I am four-and-twenty and I
feel fifty; he is thirty and seems twenty.”

“If I were a man,” said Launa, “I would love you. You are not merely
beautiful; you are more—not only attractive, you will never grow old.”

“Thank you, dear,” said Mrs. Phillips; “that is a compliment.”

Mrs. Phillips was small and slight; her hair was a very dark brown, her
lips were red, her eyes large and dark blue. Her mouth was the most
beautiful part of her face. Her fascination was great; men loved her,
went mad over her, and loved her still. She was not good-tempered; a man
would never have chosen her for his friend merely. She was variable; not
the least of her attraction was that men never could tell how she would
treat them. Some women lose their power by their variableness; Mrs.
Phillips gained hers. She was cold, yet she could have been passionately
fond; but she worshipped self-control, and considered a man ceases to
care for a woman when once he is sure of her.

“I shall marry him,” she said. “I think I shall. He is not poor, but I
shall never live with him.”

“Why not? What will you do?”

“Though he cares for me, he will grow tired of marriage, and so shall I.
The accessibility of a wife is so dull. I shall live in my own flat, and
he can keep his rooms. Our marriage notice in all the papers will be
followed by a week’s honeymoon, and then he can go back to his work, and
I can play. He must love me better for not being sure of me at
breakfast, weary of me at dinner, and asleep in the drawing-room at
night. All the attraction of the—” she paused—“of the others will be
mine. I shall be his wife. We can entertain, and he will be sure of me.”

“Do men always grow tired of us?” asked Launa, “even if or when they
love us?”

“Not always tired, but secure. If they were merely tired, they would let
us alone. They cease to desire to please us; we belong to them. Ah, my
dear, love! do men love us? Yes, they love us, but do they love one
woman?”

Launa’s clock struck twelve.

“I must go to bed,” said Lily Phillips. “I shall not kiss you. Women
should never kiss each other. Good-night.”

“Good-night,” repeated Launa.

“That Carden man will want to marry you, Launa. Beware of them both. He
is a worm, and has awful legs!”

A few nights after this, Mrs. Phillips took Launa to a ball given by
some bachelors—eligible, delightful young men—whose reputation for
wickedness was wholly obliterated by their fortunes or the want thereof.

Captain Carden was there. He had procured his invitation with great
difficulty. The mother of one bachelor had cause for gratitude towards
him. Her son was in his regiment, and when his reputation promised to
become inconveniently large, Captain Carden for once used his wits,
saved him from the consequences thereof, and the family felt they owed
Captain Carden something. Mrs. Carden rejoiced. She thanked Providence
for having delivered the sons of the enemy into her hand, and piously
glanced at the ceiling (where a brass chandelier hung, symbolic of the
worship of light, also brass) when Charlie related his success. He
disliked Mrs. Phillips. She circumvented him by introducing several men
to Launa before Captain Carden could demand more dances than he had a
right to expect. But then she could give him only two.

“Mr. George will amuse you, dear,” said Mrs. Phillips to Launa. “He is
clever, and will tell you about his books.”

Mr. George appeared young, and looked not more than two-and-twenty. He
was tall, with a pink and white skin, yellow hair, and an infantile
smile. He seemed to have vacated the pinafores of the nursery only the
day before; but this was not the case, for he had really left them long
ago, and he was thirty years old. He told Miss Archer he was writing a
book.

“About what? Is it a novel?” she asked.

“About Beginnings,” he replied; “they are so neglected. Everyone writes
about Pasts and Probable Futures, but Beginnings are so interesting. The
first love-making is a joy, afterwards it palls. The Beginning—the
doubt of how she will take it, and how one can make it—is rapture.”

“You think there is joy in uncertainty?” she said.

“I do,” he replied.

“But when men love, they—”

George interrupted her.

“Dear Miss Archer, I have taken to you at once. I notice you do not use
that detestable expression ‘in love.’ This is our Beginning. You were
saying—?”

“I was going to say, when men love they are never happy until they
discover whether she loves them in return; uncertainty gives them no
joy.”

“It does, they _think_ it does not. That is just what I want to
illustrate; when a man does know it, and she does love him, then he
marries her, he is certain of her. He may become resigned, but he is not
happy, and then—”

“Yes, and then?”

“He is forever dissatisfied.”

“I thought women only were dissatisfied.”

“Men are, too,” said Mr. George; “I want to show the unhappiness of
certainty. I know it.”

“This is our dance, Launa,” said Captain Carden, standing before her and
endeavouring to show his proprietorship.

She did not rise. She looked at him and resented his calling her “Launa”
as he did. He was not her friend. She disliked him. His jerky manner and
his shifty eyes repelled her.

“Launa,” murmured Mr. George, “your name? and it was surely not given by
your godfathers and godmothers?”

“Our dance,” said Captain Carden again.

“I will tell you about my name,” she said, “by and by.”

The band was playing a waltz. In spite of herself she felt gay,
inspirited. To Captain Carden it was as all other waltzes. He was tired
of dancing with young ladies who bored him, and equally weary of ladies
who plainly showed they thought him not worthy of a look or a word.

Launa came as a change and a relief. She had intense vitality and
energy; a waltz always affected her; it made her glad or sad. She loved
the music, the motion, and she looked so desirable.

Captain Carden was not sure whether she was beautiful or not. He wanted
to hear someone else say it; he distrusted his own opinion; he had no
self-confidence. She was eligible, virtue of virtues; he was a man, she
a woman, and as such glad to get him. Did a woman ever refuse a man with
his advantages? Never.

Dancing gave Launa more colour. She waltzed several times round the room
with him. He danced badly, and held her too close. They stopped. Her
hair was ruffled. She stood near him, and he longed to possess her, to
own her, to kiss her until she was breathless. His eyes shone as he
looked at her. How he would reform her. She would long for his words;
she would yearn for his caresses.

“Isn’t that a reviving waltz?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied almost impulsively.

Her presence was reviving, not the music. After this she danced with Mr.
George, and explained her captivating name to him. He said he adored it.

“As a Beginning,” she suggested.

“Yes,” he answered instantly.

Then he asked leave to call upon her father to explain his recently
published book of Proverbs. He offered to bring a copy with him, and she
accepted his offer, for he greatly amused her.

She met another man, called Wainbridge. He also expressed his intention
of calling at Victoria Mansions. He called himself a musician, though he
did not play any instrument; she promised to play for him.

“He will be Lord Wainbridge some day,” said Mrs. Phillips, as they drove
home together. “His uncle has no children by this wife. If she were to
die!” Lily Phillips shuddered, “there is another, a young woman with
sons.”

“He must be a beast,” said Launa.

“No, not necessarily, only a victim to circumstances, and she is very
pretty. I think Mr. Wainbridge knows her. Lady Wainbridge is a horror;
she is a Plymouth sister, and wears bombazine always, and a front. She
was only evangelical when he married her, and he considered she
possessed the possibilities of the good wife, and he expected an heir.
He has suffered intensely.”

“Rubbish,” said Launa, “the other woman suffers.”

“You may be sure he has settled all he can on her,” said Lily Phillips,
“for I suppose she does suffer, principally because she is not his wife.
I often wish I knew her. I wonder if she feels wicked. It would be
interesting to know any one living on a volcano, as she does. His wife
might die, he might marry a young and innocent girl. Men like their
wives to be ignorant of their vices and peculiar passions until after
marriage—then—Well, good-night. It was a very cheery ball. You liked
it?”

“Immensely,” answered Launa.

“You are very young, Launa. You think men love once. You would not care
for a man who could love you and kiss another woman?”

“He could not love me then.”

“My dear, men are different. There is passion and love, and not always
felt for the same woman. Love and passion last; passion alone—Bah! it
is nothing.”

“Nothing,” repeated Launa.

“It is an impulse; it goes, and they love you again.”

Some days after the ball they were all at tea at Mrs. Phillips’s—Mr.
Wainbridge, Launa, Mr. George, and others. The two men had already
called on Mr. Archer, and had been invited to dine.

“I want above all things in the world,” said Launa slowly, “to drive a
hansom, to sit up high and see the world.”

“I bet you five pounds you can’t,” said Mr. George. “I beg your pardon.
But I am sure you can’t.”

She laughed. “I will.”

“How will you climb up?” asked Mrs. Phillips.

“Easily. I will do it at night.”

“And drive me,” Mr. George said. “I will pay you. Don’t overcharge.”

“Take me too,” said Mr. Wainbridge.

“You may both come,” answered Launa gaily.

“You must all dine here to-morrow night,” said Lily Phillips. “Launa,
make your arrangements, and get it over.”

It was after dinner. Launa and Mr. George had been delightful. Mr.
Wainbridge was suffering from his feelings for her; he could not be
frivolous. The carriage came for Miss Archer, who sent it away.

“Come,” she said. “Good-night, Lily, I am going to drive. Jacobs got me
a hansom, and has arranged it all for me. Do hurry,” she said to Mr.
George. “I feel so excited.”

She put on a long driving coat, a little cap, and a very large silk
handkerchief, which went round her neck, and covered the lower part of
her face completely.

Mrs. Phillips came out to the door.

“We can’t start here,” said Launa; “the hansom is in a narrow street
close by.”

They found it waiting just round the corner.

“Get in quickly,” she said.

“I won’t,” said Mr. Wainbridge, “until you are up. Don’t do it. I wish
you wouldn’t.”

“Rubbish,” she replied. “I am going by the back streets. I know the way,
so does the mare. I am driving Nell, you know.”

She climbed up and arranged the rugs.

“It is splendid, it gives one such a grip. Let her go.”

They dashed off with a clatter. The mare evidently was pulling.

“I never thought she would do it,” said Mr. George.

“I wish to Heaven she had not tried,” said the other.

“Get out, then,” said Mr. George. “Shall I stop her?”

“No! If she is killed, I’ll be killed too!”

Mr. George laughed quietly with intense enjoyment. They drove through
dark streets. Launa had been coached by Jacobs which way to go. In one
place where it was brightly lighted there was a public-house and a
policeman. She drove slowly. Mr. Wainbridge glanced with apprehension at
the stalwart supporter of law.

Then they turned a corner, and stopped in front of Victoria Mansions.
Jacobs was waiting. Launa got down.

“It was perfectly celestial,” she said. “I never enjoyed anything so
much in my life.”

“Nor I,” said Mr. George, “though I owe you five pounds. There is
something romantic in being driven by a woman, and that woman you, and
you drive so well. I am callous when I remember that five pounds, though
I was alarmed about you.”

“Of course I would not take it,” she said.

Mr. Wainbridge looked white. He helped her to take off her coat.

“You will never do it again,” he said. “Promise—never.”

She laughed softly.

“I shall do it perhaps if I want to.”

“Only with me.”

The tone was beseeching.

“No, no, with anyone I choose.”

After they left, Launa went into her father’s work-room.

“I drove to-night,” she said. “Mr. George and Mr. Wainbridge came in the
hansom, and I drove it.”

“You drove a hansom cab?”

“Yes, I feel very proud, so don’t tell me I ought not to be.”

“You should be ashamed, and I must scold you.”

“Ah, no. You are a dear.”

“Was it a successful party? You like Mrs. Phillips?”

“I like her very much. . . . Do men love women—often?”

Her father looked at her, but it was evidently a problem question, not
as it affected herself, but others.

“Yes,” he replied.

“They talk so much about it.”

“I suppose so. You have . . . no theories, no experience, I suppose?”

“No, I think a man in love must be rather a bore. Good-night, I am very
sleepy.”

“Don’t drive any more hansoms, Launa.”

“Very well, father, I won’t.”




                              CHAPTER VII


MR. ARCHER had gone on a trip to Norway.

Mrs. Phillips was at Marlow with some friends, Mr. Herbert was there
also.

Mrs. Phillips had written to Launa telling her the new shirts were
becoming and the new punt a success. From this Launa gathered that Mr.
Herbert, as well as the punt, was agreeable. Lily had too much
experience to give in to his supplications at once, or to agree with him
that love was of any avail in life. She said marriage rhymed with
carriage very properly, and love with nothing. Besides, she was aware
that after a woman has said “I love you” frequently there is nothing
left to say.

Launa was all alone.

This particular afternoon she had arrayed herself in a wonderful
tea-gown—a combination of Greece and Paris with flashes of audacity
thrown in, green and cream and gold—it was loose where it is pretty to
be loose, and tight where it showed the curves of her figure.

She was playing to herself—Chopin and Wagner. Her wrists had gained in
strength, her tone in volume, and her mind—that, too, had gained in
experience and insight. The world was opening to her—undreamt of
possibilities intruded sometimes—but Lily’s ideas of taking the goods
the gods give to-day while never thinking of to-morrow, were attractive.
Yet Launa could not forget Paul; in her heart she believed in the future
“Goldene Zeit” which _must_ come.

It was impossible for her to realise that she could not command
fate—destiny. She had assumed the command once, that day with Paul, and
now she regretted it. She could not write to him; everything was against
that, and if he were to come over, as she often hoped he would, how much
better would it be? The Indian girl came between them. She knew her
father would never consent to any marriage between herself and Paul.
Launa had cultivated an ideal of women’s behaviour to other women; they
should always support the wronged woman, even when it means losing a
hearts desire. Until it meant losing her own heart’s desire she had
derived much joy from this theory, now she realised that no one can be
happy on a theory.

She played a Chopin study: relentless fate—a chilling, creeping fiend
of Impossibility—went through it, which mocked the delusive sound of
far-away joy and happiness somewhere—the indefinite somewhere.

She heard a faint rustle of a _portière_ behind her, but she played on.
When it was over she put her head in her hands, then let her hands fall
with a crash upon the keys. The sound expressed her feelings, the
discord was a relief.

“How do you do?” said some one softly behind her.

She started and turned round to see Mr. Wainbridge. There were tears in
her eyes enough to soften them as she looked up at him. She did not rise
hurriedly, or look startled as the majority of women would have done,
but held out her hand, which he took.

“Shall I go away?” he asked. He admired every detail of her appearance,
and the look in her eyes surprised him. “You would like to be alone and
I cannot bear to leave you,” he said slowly, while still holding her
hand.

His expression and intonation were not lost on her—they meant power in
herself; he could not leave her; and the desire of power comes after
love in the aspirations of some women.

“No, stay,” she said. “Sit down.”

He chose a chair near her and the silence was restful—most women
consider it fatal. He had begun to compare her with other women.

“You heard my discord?”

“I heard it,” he replied.

“And interpreted it?”

“No, I cannot say that.”

“I will play to you,” she said, rising with a quick litheness which
reminded him of a serpent.

She played Liszt’s arrangement of Mendelssohn’s “Auf Flügeln des
Gesanges.”

“Thank you; I have enjoyed it intensely,” he said, when she had
finished. “‘Thank you’ is poor—it cannot express my meaning. You play
magnificently.”

“I am glad you think so,” she replied. “When you came I was wishing I
could do nothing. You understand? To acquiesce is happiness if one knows
no better.”

“But if one does know? Believe me, acquiescence is misery. The wings of
song carried you somewhere far away?”

“How do you know?” she asked suddenly. “To fight, to be, and to do, are
the best.”

“Like our childish friend the verb; you have left out to suffer,” he
suggested softly.

She laughed, and he felt baffled.

“Let us go and have tea.”

“On the principle of feed a man when he bores you,” Mr. Wainbridge said
with irritation.

“No, not at all. I love my tea, and it will be cold. Tell me first how
you like my music-room? It is my own particular abode; you were admitted
by mistake.”

“May I be admitted again?”

“Perhaps—tell me about my room?”

He had forgotten to look at the surroundings. The room was long, and
rather high—the walls were a dull rich cream colour; quantities of
flowers were arranged everywhere, principally irises with their long
leaves, in immense dull brown jars. Standing near the piano was a
eucalyptus tree, its dull grey-green leaves hung over Launa. Green,
brown, and cream were the colours in the room, with red here and
there—the warm red of autumn leaves.

“The room suits you,” he replied.

Mr. Wainbridge found personal conversation was over with the change of
room. She talked of the last new book, and of bicycling. He made himself
agreeable. He was a prudent young man, and well received everywhere;
plain daughters of dukes and marquises were glad to talk to him—he was
a Possibility; there was a doubt owing to his uncle and the Plymouth
Sister. There was a legend about Mr. Wainbridge that he once had loved
someone of the lower classes—the someone was indefinite—it was
supposed she had died or married. Some people gave Mr. Wainbridge credit
for the virtue of forsaking her.

They had finished tea when Mr. George was announced. He had a large book
with him. It was his own book of proverbs, and he brought it to present
to Launa.

“Precept is better than example,” he began. “Don’t you think so,
Wainbridge? I always have set a good example, but—”

“Mrs. Carden,” said the maid, and the rest of Mr. George’s sentence was
lost in the rustle of that lady’s entrance.

She was arrayed principally in bugles. She looked war-like, and as if
she might suddenly sound the call to battle on one of her ornaments.

Launa introduced the men to her. Mrs. Carden accepted tea, and observed
that George was away.

“I am here,” whispered Mr. George softly. “Does she want me?”

Launa frowned at him.

“Yes,” she replied; “he is in Norway. I heard from him to-day.”

“I am sure Mrs. Carden will agree with me,” said Mr. George agreeably,
“about proverbs. Precept _is_ better than example. Miss Launa, your
father plainly thinks so. He is away enjoying himself. He sets you a bad
example, but his precepts are excellent. My edition of the proverbs is
so convincing.”

Mrs. Carden gazed at him, her cake in her hand half-way to her mouth,
which was open.

“Is it really precept is better than example? Did Solomon say it? I only
know his proverbs. I brought my son up on them.”

She was rather at sea as to Mr. George’s position, he seemed so
self-assured and so moral. Could he be the head of a new sect, or the
editor of a paper?

“Solomon says, ‘The lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb,’” said
Mrs. Carden. “He is a very wise man.”

“That is not a mere precept,” said Mr. Wainbridge softly. “He said it
from experience.”

“Solomon’s example was variable,” said George.

“But he was very wise,” observed Mrs. Carden.

“Very,” said George solemnly. “Precept is better than example.”

“What?” she asked, “surely you have made a mistake, and the true version
is ‘example is better than precept.’”

She wore an air of triumph, and glanced proudly round her.

“Mr. George is writing a book,” said Launa, “on proverbs. He is—”

“Correcting the faults of the world,” said Mr. George, humbly.

“A necessary task,” said Mrs. Carden, “in these degenerate days. Mr.
M^{c}Carthy, who preaches at St. Luke’s, Launa (I advise you to go and
hear him), is a son of Dr. Willis, in the faith—”

“What a good name. I did not know that was what they called it,” said
Mr. George softly; “but add in love—in faith and love.”

“Miss Archer was playing to me,” said Mr. Wainbridge. “Have you heard
her?”

He addressed his question to Mrs. Carden, who appeared perturbed.

“No. I am sure she can play. But I dislike music excessively. I played
myself once; and my son has a flute. I find it disturbing.”

“There is so much wind needed for the flute,” said Mr. George. “It is an
instrument which reminds one of a hurricane.”

“I love a penny whistle,” said Launa. “I can play ‘Honey, my honey,’ on
mine.”

“Play it now,” said Mr. George. “Please, Miss Archer. I really cannot
call you Miss Archer any longer. Miss Launa is so much prettier; and
Launa is the prettiest name in the world.”

“You may call me Launa if you like. I never was called Miss Archer as
much as I have been since I came to England. I will play the penny
whistle for you some day. Mrs. Carden would not like it now.”

“Pray do not mind me; I must go. I am always at home at half-past five;
I dine at six. I came, my dear Launa, to ask you to come and spend a few
quiet days with me while your father is away. Charlie is also away.”

“Thank you. It is very kind of you to think of me,” replied Launa. “I
cannot come and stay, for I promised my father I would not leave the
flat just now. You see all our servants are new, and he would not like
me to leave them alone.”

“How terrible if they danced in your music room,” said Mr. Wainbridge,
with a smile.

“Terrible,” said Launa.

“There is no reason why we should not dance there,” observed Mr. George.
“Example! precept! Let us dance.”

“I think, Launa, it would be much better for you to come to the shelter
of an English home, during the time of your father’s absence. It is not
proper for you to remain here alone.”

“I prefer a Canadian shelter,” said Launa, with sweetness.

“Are you having music lessons, dear Launa?” asked Mrs. Carden. “And have
you taken up any serious study, yet?”

“I go to Herr Winderthal’s twice a week and play for him, and with him.
He has two other men for the violin and the ’cello; we play trios and
quartettes. You know the quartette with ‘Die Forelle,’ motif by
Schubert?”

“Alone?” inquired Mrs. Carden, with apprehension.

“Alone? No. Three people play in a trio, and four in a quartette,” said
Launa.

Mr. George laughed, and said:—

“No one will listen to me. And I do so want to explain my proverb to
you, Miss Launa. You see, if a woman has a brutal temper she does
absolutely as she likes, and never sets an example; her precepts are
obeyed, she has a good time, the best; and you see a saint whose example
is quite heavenly, does any one imitate her? No, they only make her do
more, work harder, and set a better example. Then they admire her.”

“You have met that woman?” said Mr. Wainbridge.

“Several of them,” said the other.

“Good-bye,” began Mrs. Carden. “I am disappointed in you, Launa.”

Launa did not inquire the reason of her disappointment, but shook hands
with her, accompanying her to the door, followed by the two men.

“Come to me when you are in difficulties,” said Mrs. Carden. “Your
housemaids—”

She waved her parasol as the lift bore her down, and went home in a
state of agitation; for in the future Launa would have great
possessions, and the Carden exchequer was low. Could it be that the
young man with the proverbs had discovered this? That he would desire
Launa?

She resolved to invite herself to lunch with Launa the next Sunday, and
to make Charlie call the day of his return.




                              CHAPTER VIII


MRS. CARDEN drove home in a hansom, a strange and unusual extravagance.
At Launa’s she had been bewildered—the conversation was so difficult to
understand, so full of proverbs and of Solomon.

In the hansom Mrs. Carden would think well. She turned the situation
over in her mind and stopped at a telegraph office to send Charlie a
telegram. He was fishing with some uninteresting cousins in Kent. Mrs.
Carden sent for her friend and confidante, Miss Sims. Miss Sims had been
fat, she now was thin, and weighed only seven stone—she gloried in thin
arms and a scraggy neck, and told everybody about herself in a sad
voice. It is better to be poor and lean than poor and fat, the rich ask
one to dine more frequently.

Mrs. Carden told her lean friend as much of the subject as was necessary
for her to know.

Mrs. Carden’s principles were good—on principle. She was firmly
persuaded that Charlie was deeply, virginly in love with Launa, and that
Launa was wandering—was being attracted by strange men who talked of
books and pianos with intimacy, and of proverbs. At first she had an
idea that Mr. George was a leader of some kind. From the sheltered
seclusion of beyond Bayswater she had read the papers, and had heard
that at one fashionable church the clergyman lectured on dress in the
pulpit, while his wife wore a becoming cassock in the chancel. Miss Sims
and Mrs. Carden took counsel together, and the result thereof was that
Charlie loved Launa, and Launa must see the advantage of such affection.

Mrs. Carden sent Launa a post-card, saying she would go to lunch the
next Sunday at two o’clock. If Launa was obliged to go out, she must
leave lunch for her relative, and empty rooms—Mrs. Carden adored rooms
without their owners.

Mrs. Phillips was still staying at Marlow; Mr. Herbert, too, was there.
She was in the uncomfortable situation of indecision; he in an equally
uncomfortable one. He had made up his mind, but a solitary mind which
has determined on its own course of action is weariness, because for
happiness it requires the acquiescence of the other person, and Lily
would not agree that what would make him happy would necessarily make
her so.

Her doubt had not spoiled her appetite, the arrangement of her neckties,
nor any one of those details to which a well-dressed woman is always
attentive, but it did spoil the sunshine and the river; the wind in the
rushes made her shiver, and the backwaters were lonely and too
convenient for episodes. The locks and people were delightful; the
puffing of steam launches was a sound of joy. She took to rowing, and
suffered tortures afterwards from stiff arms and a stiffer back. When
she did not row, Mr. Herbert did; she sat in the stern and discoursed to
him, and he enjoyed her conversation. The boat was delightful: it was
quite cranky, and neither person dared to move about; conversation with
three yards between them must be of the day and not of the feelings, or
if feelings are mentioned, one means those delightful, unexplainable
sensations which are merely useful as subjects of conversation, and do
not agitate one sufficiently to make one uncomfortable.

At the end of a month Mrs. Phillips went up to Paddington. Mr. Herbert
accompanied her; they sat in opposite corners of the carriage, and she
read the _Lady’s Pictorial_ while he smoked. At Paddington they parted,
and she drove to Victoria Mansions to stay with Launa.

Mr. Wainbridge was there, and they were having tea. Mrs. Phillips found
it cool and restful, and the sensation of being not the first and only
woman was novel and possessed a reposeful charm. They were arguing about
music, and the room was full of flowers.

When Launa received Mrs. Carden’s post-card she threw it to her friend
Lily.

“There,” she said.

Mrs. Phillips groaned.

“I cannot endure that woman. Who are you having to lunch as well?”

“Mr. Herbert, Mr. Wainbridge, you and I.”

“Shall I ask papa? He is so cheerful.”

“Do, if you think he will not be bored.”

“My dear, he admires you immensely.”

Sir John Bloomfield was a cheerful old gentleman; he took this world as
it treated him, and that was well. He had been married twice. The second
lady, Lily’s stepmother, had money, and did not live long. She had taken
life seriously, and it killed her. Sir John’s curly hair was white, and
also his moustache; he wore his hat with a gentle incline to one side of
his head. It gave him a rakish air of joviality; he affected the society
of young married women, all except his daughters—he took no interest in
either of them. He came to lunch on Sunday, fresh from a stroll with a
delightful young woman, after an hour’s contemplation of the smartest
bonnets in church, and having listened to the cleverest preacher in
London, whose sermons lasted ten minutes only. He was a brilliant man.

They were all in the drawing-room when Mrs. Carden rustled in.

Sir John attached himself to Launa as he objected to elderly ladies,
because they were so apt to take it for granted that his opinions were
like theirs—middle-aged—and Sir John was quite modern.

At lunch Mrs. Carden sat between Mr. Herbert and Sir John, who devoted
himself to Launa. There was another reason to account for his youthful
air—he had not the gluttonous enjoyment of food the middle-aged and old
acquire.

Mr. Herbert was absorbed in his lunch. Mrs. Carden began to talk. She
was hungry, but the waves of Sir John’s anecdotes threatened to engulf
her and to reduce her to silence.

She talked of music halls and of morality. In those days both were
subjects of conversation and of argument.

“I hate morality,” said Launa. “It means nothing. It is only a name.
Maud is so fond of talking of it. Maud is very vulgar.”

Mrs. Carden pushed away her plate with impatience. She ate the pudding
afterwards, for it was excellent. She was horrified.

Sir John helped himself to cream with deliberation. Mr. Wainbridge
looked at Launa. Mrs. Phillips saw the look and interpreted it.

“My dear Miss Archer,” said Sir John, “the world is very hard; its rules
are firm and not easily broken.”

“I do not agree with you,” said Mrs. Carden. “They are broken with
impunity very easily.”

“Probably you do not agree with me,” said Sir John. “I haven’t tried to
break any. I do not speak from experience.”

“The world does not mind its rules being broken,” said Mrs. Phillips.
“It minds only when it discovers the hole and is obliged to notice it.”

“There are saints to whom the good people would not, could not speak,”
said Sir John.

“Purity and morality are often mistaken,” said Launa, “by the world. It
is unjust, and justice is cruelty.”

“It is law,” observed Mr. Wainbridge, with a sigh.

“Law and the promises,” said Sir John.

“Prophets,” corrected Mrs. Carden.

“Promises are interesting,” he continued, talking rapidly because he
knew he had made a mistake. “A man should always keep a promise.”

“No,” said Launa.

“Yes,” said Mr. Wainbridge.

“I would rather hear the truth,” said Launa, “even if it hurt. One
moment’s pain would be better than days of regret.”

Mrs. Carden shook her head and waved her hands. Pantomime was her only
resource.

Sir John assumed his spritely air.

“We are too sad; we are discussing such uninteresting subjects. No man
ever breaks a promise to such charming ladies as there are here. Lily,
tell us about your river adventures.”

“Ask Jack.”

Mr. Herbert smiled.

“We went out in the boat every day—Lily rowed occasionally and I rowed
frequently. We disagreed on various subjects every day, on the marriage
question and on—on—”

“On what?” said Launa.

“On that—”

They laughed together.

“What is ‘that’?” said Mrs. Carden.

“A preposition,” answered Mr. Herbert shortly.

“Oh, no,” said Lily, “it’s a pronoun.”

“‘That’ is an adverb,” said Mrs. Carden. “Launa, I shall tell Maud that
you called her—vulgar.”

“Oh! do.”

“Women always tell,” said Mr. Herbert. “I told a woman something once
and she told. She—”

“I am not a woman,” said Mrs. Carden, “who carries tales.”

“But you are going to tell someone what Miss Archer said of her,”
observed Mr. Herbert. “Men don’t do that.”

“Ah!”

“Nobody tells, really.”

“_I_ did not tell, Jack,” said Mrs. Phillips.

“Tell us now,” said Sir John. “If you get the credit of telling we may
as well derive some amusement from the story. Miss Archer, what do men
usually tell you.”

“Different things. They do not confide in me. I am not sympathetic
enough.”

“Are you not?” inquired Mr. Wainbridge. “I think you are. I should love
to confide in you.”

He looked again at her, so did Mr. Herbert, and Lily observing both
looks concerned herself with Mr. Herbert’s, which was one of
admiration—developing admiration.

It was then that marriage with him appeared desirable, or rather the
owning of him would be pleasant. Mrs. Phillips imagined her wedding and
the wedding dress! He could admire another woman!

They got up from the table, and Mrs. Phillips stayed with the men to
smoke. After his cigarette Sir John went to the Club. Mrs. Carden seated
herself on a sofa and demanded a footstool, then when Launa announced an
engagement for the afternoon, Lavinia arose and took her departure.
Launa and Mr. Wainbridge drove off in a hansom.

“Do you think they are really going to hear music?” asked Mr. Herbert,
when Lily and he were alone.

“Why not?”

“Because it is so hot, and because _I_ would much rather talk to you
here, so I naturally suppose every other man would rather talk to the
woman he loves than listen to any music. I have made up my mind to marry
you in a month.”

She smiled enigmatically.

“Very well. You know my bargain. I cannot live with my sister; she
swamps me. Her mind and her life are like a bog. It is dull living
alone; you would provide an element of excitement.”

“You say marriage is not love. Is it exciting?” he asked.

“A husband should be reviving,” she answered, “and should endeavour to
be—a lover—always.”

Mr. Herbert came over to her.

“I shall always be your lover.”

“And you agree to my conditions?”

“You are to keep your rooms; I am to keep mine. Is that it?”

“Yes. What else?”

“We are seldom to have breakfast together.”

“Very seldom,” she answered.

“After our honeymoon?”

“After our—after that—yes,” she said.

“But dinner always.”

“Dinner often,” she corrected.

“Take off your rings,” he said.

Mrs. Phillips frowned.

“You are too commanding.”

“Please.”

“You do it,” and she held out her hand.

He gravely pulled off first one with two large turquoises—he had given
it to her—next a small one with a diamond, then her wedding ring which
he put in his pocket, and replaced it with one almost exactly like it.

“With my body I thee worship,” he said, and he added a ring with three
large sapphires in a light gold setting. The stones were set high and
they shone.

“You do not wear his ring now.”

“How beautiful the stones are,” she answered.

“I have always been jealous of that ring,” he said.

“Have you? ‘Jealousy is as cruel as the grave,’ saith Solomon. Do not be
cruel.”

“I could not be anything with you but kind,” he replied, with a sort of
unsteadiness, for though she was not lovely she was alluring,
fascinating. He could have followed her away from everything, through
disasters and fire without feeling it, until she left him.

“The honeymoon was invented for Adam and Eve before the Fall,” she said
slowly, “and before the appearance of the serpent. Is there necessarily
a serpent now?”

“You spoil everything by analysing it,” he replied. “You should look on
things as a whole, and not dissect them; that is one of your own maxims.
You told it to me when I asked of what your new hat was made. You said
it was a whole and a creation.”

“But honeymoons are not wholes, nor are emotions. Everything is largely
constituted of them.”

“They are moments. Live for one moment.”

“It passes so quickly,” she said, and sighed.

“Then, in a month,” he suggested, with an outward air of boldness,
though inwardly he was doubtful and quaking, “you will marry me.”

“In a month! How soon!”

“How far away. Where shall we go for our tour?”

“Not to Paris. I hate Paris.”

“Shall we stay in London?”

“No, no! How commonplace! We shall live in London. Suggest something
new.”

“Shall we go into the country? To the real country, where there are
nightingales and roses?”

She sang softly:

        “The nightingale in fervent song
        Doth woo the rose the whole night long.”

“Rubinstein, isn’t it?” he asked. “Well, will you come?”

“Yes, it is risky, but I will for once hear the nightingales and feel
young again.”

“I love you.”

“Do you? Love—it is so old, so new, so impossible.”

“For always,” he said, not answering her, only following the train of
thought in his own mind.

“No, not for always,” she said sadly, “Love me really for a week, a day,
a year—while the nightingales sing. I would rather have a man’s whole
love for _one_ day, than his toleration for years, his agreeable
acceptation of my presence.”

“A man usually loves his wife.”

“Does he? Does he? You know that is rubbish. You love me now, and you
think you will always. A wife is associated with a man’s disagreeable
pleasures, his duty dinners, his dull breakfasts. When he goes to dine
at his Colonel’s, or with the man who has influence, and runs the
papers, she goes and bores him too. If you were compelled to take the
other man’s wife out to dinner you would appreciate the attributes of
your own when you returned to her.”

“A man loves his future wife before matrimony. But, Lily, afterwards I
think it is your own fault.”

“Mine?” she exclaimed. “Mine—you forget—you—”

“Dearest, I did not mean you. I meant indefinite woman. It will never be
your fault.”

She looked at him.

“You apologised in time—I was haughty. Sit there, near, but not too
near me.”

He seated himself in a little chair.

“That chair will break. Sit somewhere else.”

“To return to the subject of matrimony,” she said.

“Of breakfast.”

“A woman lets her husband see too much of her, and know too much about
her. She frequently looks ugly. Oh, Dr. Jaegar, thou art answerable for
much woe! Breakfast is a disturbing meal, for we sometimes are weary at
breakfast and—you may have yours alone.”

“I would like it better with you.”

“That is it,” she exclaimed. “Now you would. Soon you would not. You
must make a man do without what he loves, to keep his love. Men are so
unreasonable.”

“Do you believe in anyone, Lily?”

“No. Yes, I do.”

“Tell me,” he asked eagerly, “in whom do you believe?”

“In myself.”




                               CHAPTER IX


LAUNA and Mr. Wainbridge drove to the concert—a private one—where Herr
Donau was going to play the piano for his hostess—Lady Blake, Launa,
and a friend.

The day was hot, terribly so. The heat rose from the ground, the houses,
and the pavement; it struck one like a fiery draught from a furnace.
Launa and Mr. Wainbridge were silent; they knew each other well enough
to be so. He was pondering. Though he found her interesting he did not
agree with her at all about many things, but therein lay her power of
attracting him, for she did not care whether she did or not. She did not
pretend this as many women do, when men always are aware of it.

“I am hot,” she said.

“And you look cool.”

“I am wishing to be where I could hear the river ripple, and hear the
sound of the water as it curls over the rocks. I wish I could see the
big lake where it widens, where the pines and the maples grow. Oh, the
smell of the wind there!”

“Why won’t you come and sit in the park instead of going to hear Donau?”

“Because I can imagine myself in that far-off land when Donau is
playing,” she answered. “I can shut my eyes and feel the wind; I see the
water just rippled and then still. In the park it is civilised and hot;
the trees are beautiful, but not like those I love. The grass is green,
but the wind is parching, and it is town-laden; it is—” She stopped.
“Who is that?”

He started at the tone of her voice. It was full of apprehension, of a
sort of cold joy, as if she had fought, and was glad to be beaten.

He asked, “Where?”

“I thought I saw someone—someone I knew—someone—Oh, I want to stop,
to get out. It is stifling here.”

“There are so many people,” he replied. “I did not notice anyone. Was it
a woman? We are nearly there now. Do not get out.”

“No—never mind. It was imagination. I thought I saw—it could not have
been really.”

“Ah,” he said, “imagination is deceiving and becoming. You have grown
most beautifully flushed. You are very good to look at, Miss Archer.”

“You must talk to Lady Blake,” said Launa. “I am tired.”

The room into which they were shown was dark, cool, and flower-scented.
Lady Blake was dressed in black. She was a woman men loved for an hour,
a dance, or a day. Sir Godfrey Blake had married her after a short
acquaintance. Immediately afterwards he went into Parliament, and now
sat out all the debates, and was seldom at home. Men pitied her, women
shook their heads, while she loudly lamented a cold husband, and was
consoled by other men.

“We have been waiting for you,” she said. “Herr Donau is ready to
begin.”

She gloried in her riches, and she was musical, though in the days of
her poverty she had not been. Shilling seats and deprivations did not
suit her; but to be able to pay the most expensive successful pianist in
London for a whole afternoon to play to her and one or two chosen ones,
what a triumph! That was success. And if she did not enjoy the music she
did derive great satisfaction from saying, “Donau played for us on
Sunday; he played marvellously. Of course we paid him.”

“Miss Archer’s imagination has been causing her to see people—a
person,” said Mr. Wainbridge, as he shook hands with Lady Blake.

He wanted to see Launa grow red again, as well as to discover who she
thought she had seen.

She laughed.

“Was it a ghost?” asked Lady Blake.

She looked uncomfortable. She had some ghosts behind her—a brother and
sister who were poor, and who lived at Clapham. They worked, and she
ignored them.

“A ghost!” repeated Wainbridge. “Do you believe in ghosts, Miss Archer?”

“Do I? Souls of the dead! I wish I could see them.”

“Don’t!” exclaimed Lady Blake. I believe in premonitory warnings. You
did not see me walking, did you, Miss Archer? I _hope_ not.”

“No, I only saw an old friend—an old Canadian friend. But it was only
in fancy, for the next moment it was gone.”

There was a slight pause when she said “it was gone.” Mr. Wainbridge
noticed she used “it.”

Lady Blake said “Oh” sadly, and then continued: “Premonitory warnings
are so interesting. Was the friend an old, I mean an ancient grey-headed
friend, or only old as regards the time of friendship? Was it a woman?”

“It was a spirit,” said Launa.

“You will hear of a death,” said Lady Blake with solemnity.

“It is already dead,” replied Launa.

“To you?” asked Mr. Wainbridge.

“Are we not going to hear Herr Donau play?” inquired Launa. “You have
not forgotten you are to play the Waldstein Sonata for me?” she said to
Herr Donau.

“I have not forgotten. Shall I begin?”

“Do,” said Lady Blake, seating herself in a chair covered with
cream-coloured material.

Her black dress, yellow hair, and white skin had an ideal, an arranged
background. Ideals have to be well arranged, otherwise they are
deficient. Launa sat in a dim corner; Mr. Wainbridge chose a chair from
which he could observe her.

She was listening intently; she had often played the Waldstein to Paul,
and she wanted to see how Donau would play the octave run. Through it
all she could think of Paul. Had she really seen him? No, he was not in
England. Could he be dead? . . . Donau played the run beautifully. . . .
Could Paul be dead? Donau played the octaves with one hand—glïssando.
Wonderful! Launa glanced round her; no one appeared to have noticed.
Lady Blake was keeping time with her head and her foot. Time in the
Waldstein! Launa felt a great wave of longing, of desire for the woods,
lakes, and the vastness of the real forest, and for the air. Oh! that
air! Keen sometimes, sweet, full of the smell of wild flowers, of the
pine woods—and where was Paul?

The Waldstein went on and on. To her it meant spring days, movement,
hope, but not in the overcrowded old land. To the others it meant
different things—music always does—and Launa’s mind returned to the
impression of the afternoon. It could not have been Paul alive that she
had seen? Could it be that he was dead, and because she loved him, he
came to her? Did she love him? She heard the wailing of the Indian
child. But if Paul were dead, he was hers—hers—hers—

Her thoughts were interrupted by the ceasing of the piano and the
compliments of Lady Blake and Mr. Wainbridge.

“You were asleep,” said Mr. Wainbridge to Launa.

“No. My thoughts were wandering.”

“With more spirits?”

“Mr. Wainbridge, come here,” said Lady Blake. “Come and see this; it is
by Herr Donau. Play it, do, Herr Donau, and then Miss Archer has
promised to play ‘Warum.’”

“There is a history in that,” said Launa, when the great man had
finished. “There is an unravelled thread in it.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, “there is. You have understanding, Miss Archer.”

“And now, will you play ‘Warum?’” asked Lady Blake.

“To hear Miss Archer play ‘Warum’ is one of the world’s desires,” said
Mr. Wainbridge, “because you puzzle it—the world, I mean.”

She did not answer. Lady Blake rehearsed speeches to all her dear and
jealous friends while the music lasted. She would say “Donau and Miss
Archer played for us during a whole afternoon.” She _had_ triumphed.

Launa drove home alone. Mr. Wainbridge to his regret had an engagement.
He said good-bye to her with sorrow, while she was indifferent. There
was something in the spirit theory after all.

Mrs. Phillips and Mr. Herbert were still sitting at Victoria Mansions.
She had changed her dress for a tea-gown and invited him to dinner. The
evening was hot. Launa dressed in white and went to the music-room.
Conversation did not appeal to her. She began to play, to work hard at
an impossible sonata. The hard work was taking away her weariness, the
feeling of misery and longing when the door was opened and Captain
Carden came in.

“I did not let your maid announce me. I wanted to surprise you, Launa,”
he said, advancing with an air of expectation. “She said you were not at
home, but I heard the piano, and I knew you would see me.”

He held out his hand.

“I will finish this page,” she said, not taking the hand thus affably
extended, and playing on.

Captain Carden seated himself near and stared at her. She could feel his
eyes taking her in, all over, gloating over her, but she finished and
sat on the music-stool, turning herself round until she faced him.

“Your mother was here to lunch.”

“Yes, Launa, she told me so.”

“Did you want to see me particularly?” she asked. “I suppose you did,
because I said ‘not at home.’ I am very tired and in a musical mood.”

He smiled languidly and leaned back.

“You don’t mean that, Launa.”

His detestable habit of repeating her name irritated her. She looked at
him.

“Why do you never call me Charlie? We are relations.”

“Are we?” she asked.

“Yes. That is one reason why I came, and then my mother asked me to come
and see you. She and I are both worried. Mother thinks—”

“Do think yourself; you remind me of Uriah Heep.”

“My mother thinks,” he continued with a sort of leer, “that you are
lonely. She fears the friends you have, the contamination of their talk
about no morals—she says—”

Launa got up.

“You will either go away or else you will talk of something else. Speak
for yourself, pray. I do not care what your mother thinks.”

Captain Carden looked at her.

“Don’t get cross. You know I am in love with you, and I want to marry
you. It will be such an advantage to you, an unknown Canadian, to marry
into a good old English family, and to be well looked after.”

She was silent, first from surprise, then from anger. It was as if the
words would not come rapidly enough.

“Thank you,” she said. “I decline your insulting offer. Now will you
go?”

“Now, Launa, you know it is the best thing you can do. I am really in
love with you. You will have some of your own money settled on you, of
course, and you will have an excellent position and be thought a great
deal of as my wife.”

“I will never be your wife,” she answered. “_Never._”

“All girls want to marry; you do. They all do. I like a girl who
pretends to be backward, but this is enough, Launa. Give in now, you
know how I love you, you—”

Launa’s cheeks were blazing, she got up and rang the bell violently. He
followed, unseen by her, until she felt his arm on her waist; his face
was detestably close, his eyes staring into hers, glaring like an
animal’s, and his breath was hot against her face. She gave him one firm
push; she had not paddled so much in vain; her arms were very strong,
and he did not expect it. He staggered across the room, upsetting a
little table and breaking some china ornaments which fell with a crash
as he sprawled on the floor. Just then the maid opened the door, and Mr.
Wainbridge walked in.

“Curtis, show Captain Carden out,” said Launa, apparently with calm
indifference.

She looked very tall, slight, and angry, as she stood waiting. Captain
Carden gathered himself together with a sheepish look, and advanced
towards her.

“Good-bye, Launa.”

“Go,” she said.

“Launa, say good-bye.”

And as the door closed she threw herself into a big chair and laughed.
Captain Carden heard it as he left the flat and detected nothing but
ridicule in it. Mr. Wainbridge went over to her; he saw she would have
cried had she not laughed, and that her nerves were all unstrung.

“Why didn’t you tell me to kick him out? He deserved it.”

“Why didn’t you do it?”

She put her hands over her face, and began to sob. He stroked her hair
gently, tenderly, and she liked it.

“I am an idiot! I am an idiot!” she said at last.

“What did he do?”

“How did you come? You were dining at the Grays’, I thought you said?”

“I came because I wanted to see you.”

She dried her eyes and leaned back in her chair and looked out at the
night, feeling the curious rest of exhaustion. The greyness of twilight
crept into the room, it was peaceful though still sultry. He took her
hand and said:

“I am glad I came.”

“So am I,” she said, cheerfully. Her mood had changed. “You saved me
from unknown bother. He was most impertinent.”

In the other room Mrs. Phillips was becoming impatient. She was hungry.
At tea-time Herbert’s conversation engrossed her, and now where was
dinner?

She was also anxious to create a sensation, to surprise Launa and
everyone by telling of her speedy marriage, which was to take place in
one month exactly. And so she went into the music-room.

“Has that awful Carden man gone? I am so hungry, Launa dear. Do say you
are hungry too, Mr. Wainbridge. I am going to be married in a month.”

She sighed.

“No wonder, then, that you are hungry,” said Mr. Wainbridge, “with that
awful prospect you need restoratives of all sorts.”

“Lucky Mr. Herbert,” said Launa. “I congratulate him.”

“How nice of you,” said Mrs. Phillips. “I feared you might be small
minded enough to congratulate me. He is in the drawing-room—starving
too.”

“Let us go, then, to dinner,” said Launa. “Mr. Herbert, you are so
lucky.”

“That is good of you,” he answered.

“Merely decent of her,” said Mrs. Phillips. “She knows my worth.”

“How are the spirits?” asked Wainbridge, as Launa and he followed the
other two into the dining-room.

“Good. Look at my eyes. Are they red?”

“They are beautiful.”

He took her hand for one moment; it was an involuntary caress.

And they drank to the perfect happiness of Mrs. Phillips and Mr.
Herbert.




                               CHAPTER X


THE wedding was over. Mrs. Phillips had become Mrs. Herbert. The
accounts were in all the papers, the guests were mentioned, and the
bride’s attire was described. She wore mauve, a bonnet, and what was not
mentioned, a nervous air. The known dangers of matrimony are worse in
anticipation, and more true, than the maiden bride’s assurance of
eternal bliss.

“Miss Archer, an American beauty,” said the Chronicler, “accompanied her
to the altar, and handed her a smelling-bottle.”

Mr. and Mrs. Herbert departed amid no rice and no old slippers. Lily
would not have them. They went to hear the nightingales, and to remember
Rubinstein’s song:

        “The nightingale with fervent song
        Doth woo the rose the whole night long.”

For one whole week the weather was glorious and unchangeable.

Launa was alone in Victoria Mansions. Mr. George visited her with
frequency, and so did Mr. Wainbridge.

Mr. George often came in the morning.

“I am at my worst early, Launa,” he said, “and then I long for strong
measures. You are a strong measure. Your name is so perfect, I could not
spoil it with a Miss,” he added apologetically.

All the old women would have called her a bold Canadian had they not
remembered her money and success. England conquered and annexed her
Colonies; do not their maidens annex her young men?

Launa missed her father; between them there was a perfect relationship;
their minds were in tune; she was so certain of his love and care that
she feared no diminution thereof. He wrote to her often, and she thought
of shutting up the flat and going to join him.

On Lily’s wedding day, Mr. Wainbridge told her he was obliged to travel
with his uncle for six weeks. The uncle, Lord Wainbridge, had just
constructed a novel; it contained a pinch of all the crazes of the day,
and was clever, but not moral. Lord Wainbridge became uneasy, and Lady
Wainbridge rampant with rage (designated in this case Christian
solicitude about his fall) when she read it. She said the want of morals
was his own. She said many things which he did not mind when she only
gave utterance to them; but he feared ridicule as he feared nothing
else; she said he would be laughed at, so he fled to his nephew, who
always had sympathy for him.

Launa received the tidings of Mr. Wainbridge’s departure with
indifference, though she did feel it. And he decided that her lack of
vanity was her one fault. She really appeared as if she did not care
whether she attracted him or not. But she thought very much about him.
His interest in her was pleasant. It was more. It was necessary to her,
as much as anything can be necessary over which we have no control, and
without which we must live if it is withdrawn.

The day of his last visit they spent in reading, when he would have much
rather talked. But she had a new book.

“How queer it is that the charm of so few poems lasts,” she said. “What
I loved at sixteen I loathe now, and I suppose what I love now I shall
hate at thirty-five.”

“We change. You do not love a comic song when your heart aches.”

“I have no heart.”

“Because I said that, you think I meant your heart,” he replied. “I did
not.”

“Your own then?”

“Perhaps. Do you believe we are responsible for evil?”

“I do not know. Are we responsible for what we cannot help? I could not
condemn any one but myself. The existence of evil is true, but how
horrible! And how it spoils our lives.”

“Spoils our lives,” he repeated. “You are quite right! Tell me, can a
man or a woman love two people at once? Is it possible to love evil and
good?”

Launa grew pale.

“No one can _love_ evil.”

“You are right,” he said, with triumph. “It is not love then. To do
right, one should love something, _someone_.”

“Yes,” she half whispered, “love someone, even if they are beyond one’s
reach.”

“You have comforted me. I must say good-bye, now. No, I will see you
once again, to-night. In six weeks I shall come back, and I shall be
glad—glad. What shall you be?”

She did not answer, but stood up and walked across the room to look at a
photograph. She would never go back to Canada, _never_.

“Where did you get that photograph?” he asked. “Is it new? Who is it?”

It was Paul. She had kept it locked up until now.

“It is no one you know. It is only a picture which reminds me of evil.”

“Take it down—shall I?”

“No, no,” she said sharply. “We are terribly in earnest,” she added, and
gave a little laugh.

She went to the window and looked out. The lights were flashing, and the
roar of the city came up to her.

“Good-bye,” he said, taking her hand. “Good-bye—_Behüt dich Gott_.”

That night Launa went to a dance, which lasted until three in the
morning. She wore pink, and looked beautiful. The lust for slaughter,
for conquest, for admiration entered into her. She could not love any
man, she assured herself, while she knew that she thought only of Paul.
But she possessed power. She could _hurt_, and for that one night she
gloried in it. This was what the man on the steamer had meant; this was
deadening; this was life and din; there was no time to think.

Mr. Wainbridge was there; she gave him one dance only, and he was angry,
though he rejoiced when Mr. George said to him:—

“Launa is miserable. Her eyes are unhappy; she is feeling something.”

She had expressed herself as yearning for Norway, and that was all; but
Mr. Wainbridge thought she wanted him.

The next morning she slept until it was late; she was very tired; When
her letters were brought to her she did not open them. She lazily drank
her tea and looked at the post-marks, wondering from whom they were. She
sent a wire to her father, saying she would like to join him at once.

While she was dressing her maid brought her a telegram. It might be
about her new dress, or Lady Blake’s picnic, or the concert at which she
was to play.

This was what she read:—

                   “Your father accidentally shot. Dying.
               Come.

                                             “STEVENS.”

Stevens was a friend who had joined her father.

Launa looked at it; dying—not _dead_. She drank her tea. It was, it
must be some detestable, horrible dream.

By twelve o’clock her boxes were packed; and Launa and her maid started
on their long, almost useless, journey. To sit still and wait was
impossible, it was like watching for someone who never came. The train
tore along, and the trees seemed to wave their branches like hungry,
relentless demons, as if they would clutch all men; the sea was cruel,
and the steamer outrageously slow.

And Launa was too late.

                 *        *        *        *        *

After an absence of one week she came back to London, crushed, weary,
and heart-sick. Her life seemed to be over. She had seen him again, but
he was dead. There was nothing she could do, it was all over. If only
she had Paul! She could have screamed with the torture of fate. She
realised the disappointment of life, that nothing could be as it had
been. A new life might come to her, but she could never gather the old
one together again. Perhaps some day she would be reminded of the past
when she had forgotten. To be reminded it is necessary to have
forgotten. But now she suffered—now she wanted everything she had not.
She felt the torture of the vain longing for the impossible; a blister
on her body would have been a relief; there was one on her soul. She
wished she had told her father about Paul; she wished she could forget
Paul; she wished he were there with her, and then she resolved again to
forget him.

She wrote to Mr. Wainbridge and told him of her terrible trouble. It was
a relief to pour out her mind to someone who understood, and to whom she
could say mad things—whether he sympathised or not she did not care.

She was rich, and inundated with letters of sympathy. Each writer
considered herself the one consoler Launa required. Men do not write
that kind of letter; they merely leave cards.

Mrs. Carden sent pages of lamentation and exhortation, interspersed with
demands for one interview, just one, with her dearest Launa.

Lily Herbert came up to town for the day. She was sorry for Launa when
she could remember to be so. It was with great difficulty she could
disguise the cheerful grin her countenance had assumed since her
marriage. She could not understand Launa’s abandonment to grief. If Sir
John had died Lily would have wept, when reflecting on her lonely
position, and then have smiled over the patterns of new mourning.

Launa remained dumb to her and with her; Lily realised at last, with a
certain sort of awe, that Launa was stricken; that she was full of
sorrow which was not easily ended, and that she could not bear attempts
at consolation, which were merely, and only could be, attempts. Who can
raise the dead? Launa passed through the lonely dark valley of
nevermore—of hunger for one face, for one word, which is so intense as
to be torture, and to which was added the desire for the presence of a
man whom she felt was unfaithful to her. Could _she_ bear another man’s
kisses? How could he then kiss another woman?

To stay in London was impossible for her, and so she chose to go to a
little village in Derbyshire which her father had loved as a boy. The
Black Country, with its barren moors and lonely stonewalled hills,
attracted her; the warm valleys full of bracken and alder bushes,
through which the rushing mountain streams tore, had a wild beauty and a
lulling power. It was very lonely and bleak. She could walk for miles
without seeing anyone, and the people she did meet were for the most
part only villagers. Much as she longed to see “Solitude” again, she
felt the impossibility of going there.

During all these long, long days of sorrow and direful longing, Mr.
Wainbridge wrote to her. Almost every day a letter came, and she began
to look for them and to answer them. At first she had only sent him
scrawls, but he had gradually drifted into an intimate—a most intimate
friend.

She often re-read his letters, and there was more in them than the
actual words said. She gave him credit for an intuition which he did not
possess. He loved her, and he divined that she did not love him; she
could almost love him for that. Women usually love men for imaginary
qualities. She thought him brave and pure; she fancied he loved what she
did, instead of which he loved her. _Her_ personality made life
interesting; _her_ playing made music an everlasting joy.

The day after she was settled at Fair View she had a long letter from
him in answer to her first coherent one.

                                          “SCHWEITZERHOF, LUCERNE,
                                                  “_July 3rd_.

    “At last! I was so glad to get your letter this morning. First,
    I am going to thank you from my heart for telling me everything,
    and please remember that I can never be bored by anything that
    concerns you. Just believe that, and you will trust me, and I
    may be able to help you with my sympathy at any rate. Dear, I do
    sympathise, and it is as if the trouble were my own. I can dimly
    guess what a terrible loss you have had, and I know that your
    relationship with him was a perfect one. I am so sorry that the
    letters I have written since I left London have been so selfish
    and full of my own feelings, while you are in such grief;
    forgive them. I should love to hear that the knowledge of my
    sympathy and care is something to you. I need not tell you that
    I would spare no trouble and no thought if I could help you in
    the smallest degree, or if I could save you one ounce of care or
    pain. I know the hardness of it appals you. Can I say or do
    anything to make you happier?

    “I have just been reading for the tenth time ‘Andrea del Sarto.’
    It is wonderful; but how he longed for a soul in his wife, and
    yet he loved her for her beauty, and she—‘again the cousin’s
    whistle.’ It is so sad, but how could she love him when she did
    not understand him? And I suppose it bored her to sit by the
    window with him while he talked to her, and all the time she was
    listening for the cousin’s whistle, and wishing her husband
    would begin to paint again. Surely ‘a man’s reach does always
    exceed his grasp.’ If it did not, we should not want a Heaven at
    all. Browning knew things, didn’t he?

    “We are not coming back for some weeks yet, and it makes me sad,
    for I long to hear your voice again. I love your voice.—

    “Yours,

                                                        “C. H. W.”

A course of these letters was very comforting. To be necessary to
someone is what many women are obliged to be, instead of being loved.

The days were long and full of pain. She did not grow accustomed to it.
The wound was as open and sore as at first. It was a relief to be alone,
and to be allowed to be sorrowful. There was no peace, no joy anywhere.




                               CHAPTER XI


LILY HERBERT as Lily Phillips had realised the importance of keeping her
husband’s love, not his toleration. Mr. Phillips had been affectionate
always, and she had tolerated him. She remembered it all; she had been
so relieved and glad when he was away from her, his kisses nauseated
her.

With Herbert life was joy, and, had she not firmly believed it could not
last, real happiness would have been hers.

Their honeymoon had lasted for three weeks, three weeks of absolute
happiness, tempered only by her husband’s reflections of sorrow for
Launa—for he admired Launa. Lily did likewise, and she feared her, too.
Lily wondered whether she was to be the one who cared most; in all
marriages one cares more than the other. She had always felt a contempt
for women who show they care while their husbands seem indifferent. She
blamed them; they were no longer desirable to their husbands; they were
within reach. Someone must lead, so she took it: fear lest he should
change or grow tired lent terror to all her ideas and movements.

They were staying in Surrey. The house was small, with a garden which
was a bower of roses, with beautiful lawns and large cedar trees. They
lived out of doors. Mr. Herbert did not work, and she took to
embroidery. He told her she looked absolutely lovely when she sewed.

She laughed.

“There is something syren-like about you,” he said. “You will never grow
old; you could not become unattractive.”

“Thank you.”

“Is that all—is that all you are going to say to me, only thank you?”

“All,” she said.

He came over by her.

“Your hands are so beautiful. I would like to live like this always.”

“It would not be always June and warm,” she said.

“I love you, love you absolutely—what can change it?”

“What?” she repeated, even while she feared. “Don’t ask, you will spoil
it.”

“You never—will not often let me kiss you. Why is it?”

“I hate kissing.”

“I will kiss you,” he said masterfully. “You are mine, mine, mine. You
are an enchantress, a witch. When I am with you, or away from you, I
think of nothing but you. My life is all you.”

He took her in his arms gently. She remembered with a shudder those
horrible embraces of her first marriage. He kissed her lips, those warm
red lips which were one of her chief beauties; but it was all done so
gently.

“You were afraid of me,” he said. “Heavens! here is someone coming to
call.”

“And you have crushed my blouse,” she said reproachfully.

It was Lady Blake.

“How are you both?” she asked, as she rustled towards them, pretty,
smiling, and glancing from one to the other.

“Very happy,” said Mr. Herbert. “The nightingales are still singing.”

“Ah,” said Lady Blake, as she seated herself in his chair, and accepted
a cushion from him. “Happy—there is something subdued about happiness.
I want you to come and stay with me.”

“When is your uncle coming home?” Lily said to her husband.

“In a week,” he replied.

“In a week then,” said Mrs. Herbert, “we would like to come to you.”

After Lady Blake left he said:

“And now it is over.”

“Not over,” she answered, “just beginning. We stay at Blake House for
two weeks, and then papa wants us.”

Mr. Herbert acquiesced. He had given in to her conditions, and he knew
what she did not or pretended not to believe, that he loved her with all
his soul. He would go with cheerfulness to Lady Blake’s, anything to
prolong the honeymoon, and he hoped Lily would forget her proposed
arrangement when they returned to town. That oblivion might descend on
her mind he prayed!

After their visits they went back to London.

They arrived one morning about twelve, and drove to her flat in Sloane
Street, he had his luggage sent to his rooms which were two streets
further on.

“I think we might take a larger flat,” he suggested. “It would be
cheaper and less trouble.”

She laughed and answered:

“By and by. You remember our bargain? We are not to grow tired like
other people or to see too much of each other—enough of each other.”

“And so one of us is to be always miserable,” he said.

“Isn’t it better?” she asked. “Isn’t anything better than for either of
us to be tired?”

There were tears in her eyes.

“No, my beloved, it is not better. Will you not think it over? Will
you—” he held her hand. “We are so happy, we shall be always. It will
last, I swear it will—”

The cab stopped and she got out.

She gave herself a little shake as she went up in the lift. How
perilously near giving in she had been! What would it be to her to lose
the lover? A husband is a poor exchange. No, she would be firm.

The little flat looked very pretty, there were flowers everywhere. Her
two maids welcomed her with smiles and blushes. Lunch was ready.

Mrs. Herbert went to take off her hat. Her own room was decorated with
white flowers; it was a dear little white and green room.

“I should like to wash my hands,” said her husband meekly.

“Yes, you may. I will show you my room. Now that we are married I can
show you everything. There is a delightful sensation of freedom as well
as of bondage in matrimony.”

She took him into her room and left him there.

“That is my spare room,” she said, and pointed to a door. “It will be
your room when I ask you to stay here.”

“There is something unusually novel in being asked to stay with one’s
wife. It is as if you had me on approval.”

“Don’t say that,” she suggested. “No, you belong to me now.”

“I wish I did. You are like the angel with the drawn sword at the gate
of the Garden of Eden. He was not placed there until after Eve had eaten
the apple. I suppose I have had a bite of my apple.”

“You are anticipating. You are borrowing trouble. Wash your hands and
come to lunch.”

He looked into the next room. It was yellow and white, and dainty and
fresh. A row of his boots would disfigure it. His bachelor quarters
seemed so dull in comparison. The faint smell of violets came from her
clothes, he used her hair brush, and looked at her shoes lingeringly.

They ate their lunch and smoked afterwards.

“This is lovely!” he said, with a sigh.

“And how unlike matrimony. The average husband likes to use his
authority at first, and says he will have the pictures altered, and he
cannot sleep in a bed which runs from east to west, or from north to
south or—”

He looked at her rather sadly.

“You are not an average wife, and I am little more than a bachelor even
now.”

“You are a very nice one.”

“Will you come and see my abode? You have seen my sitting-room, but Mrs.
Grant has it all done up, and so you must pay me a visit.”

“Do you remember one day when I went to have tea with you, and Mrs.
Carson disappointed us? How terrified I was that someone might see me,
though you told the minion to say you were out. Every time the bell rang
I thought it was a man who would force his way in; do you remember?”

“Do I not remember? Put on your hat.”

“I will change my dress. You will wait?”

“For ever,” with a smile and a glance.

So far they both felt matrimony a success; desire had not failed. When
would it?

Joy was clouded by apprehension in her mind; in his there was no doubt,
no fear. He knew himself better than she did. They walked together to
his rooms. He showed her all over them. His housekeeper, Mrs. Grant,
welcomed her. She too had arranged flowers in plenty.

“How will you have this room furnished?” he asked, as he threw open the
door. It was a large room, the best one in a set of four. It had been
his work-room, but he had given it up for another, and a dark one.

“This is to be your room when you come to stay.”

She smiled. There was a touch of genius in his suggestion—more a touch
of impropriety—which appealed to her.

“You will ask me to stay?”

“Sometimes,” he replied. “Not too often, lest you grow weary of me and
find fault with the housekeeping.”

“Pale pink would be pretty for the room decorations, and also be
becoming. I would come more frequently if it were becoming.” She turned
to look at his pictures. “Oh! here is a photograph of Launa. She gave it
to you?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“She is beautiful, and what a queer girl! I had no idea her father’s
death would make her so wretched. She was perfectly crushed. She behaved
as if he were her lover.”

“He was very fond of her.”

“He was devoted to her. I cannot quite make her out. She is—there is a
history somewhere. I did not know she had given you her photograph. I
suppose she gave them to everyone. She did not keep them only for people
she cared for. I am glad,” she said suddenly, “that I have enough money
to do without yours.”

“I can give you presents.”

“And ask me to stay.”

“For always. I ask you now,” he said. “I beg you. Will you stay always
with me? Not in these rooms, but we can have one flat together.”

“You promised,” she answered, with a slightly unsteady voice. “You
promised—don’t.”

To remind a man of his promise when he wants to break it, frequently
means the woman would not mind if he did, and if he insists she will
give in. It betrays weakness. He put his arms round her and said
nothing, but he gave no orders for the immediate furnishing of one large
flat. Her experiment should be tried. He had no desire or intention of
forcing her to give in nor of being master; just then she would have
liked him to be master, but how can a man know these things?

They went back to her rooms for dinner. She put on a creamy gown trimmed
with lace; he gave her some pale pink roses and fastened them on. He
never forgot her flowers.

In the evening they sat in the big window and looked out at the moon—it
rose, a big round shining moon. They were silent. At last she said:

“The stars are larger than the moon, but how faint beside it. The moon
is nearer.”

“That is what one feels sometimes,” he answered. “One loves the stars,
but the moon is nearer.”

“Yes, it is nearer. Would you feel so? Am I the moon or a star? Of what
are you thinking?”

“Of you.”

“Of me. Think of something nice.”

“You are not nice. You are original, and that is never nice. How lonely
I shall be to-night!”

“And I.”

Here Mr. George walked in.

“I have come,” he said, “to condole with you both on being married.”

“How kind of you!” said Lily.

“And to ask you, Mrs. Herbert, whether the bird in the hand is worth two
in the bush? There were two in your bush. Do gratify my desire—my
ardent desire—for information.”

“I will,” she replied. “First I must give you some coffee and ask you to
look at the moon.”

“Moon,” repeated Mr. George. “There are many moons; this is the old
moon, not your kind, and this one is lovely. Was your moon full of
honey?”

“No,” replied Mr. Herbert, lighting a cigarette, “ours was without
anything sickly or monotonous.”

“Or satiating?”

“Exactly,” answered Mr. Herbert.

“Tell me now, Mrs. Herbert, about the bush. Is it not better to have two
in the bush than the bird in your hand?”

“Are you asking merely as a journalist, Mr. George? Or do you honestly
desire information?”

“I desire honest information and information honestly.”

“Two in the bush,” she repeated.

“Sir Ralph and Mr. Buxton,” suggested the inquirer softly. “Perhaps you
prefer the bird in your hand as well as the two in the bush, for they
are still there. They have returned to town, and are looking more
cheerful than they appeared at your wedding. If you remember, they left
that festive scene early, before your departure for the desert of
matrimony.”

“The bird in the hand is enough for me,” said Lily, “enough now.”

“Ah!” said her husband, with an air of abstraction, “now.”

“Yes, now,” she said defiantly.

“Now,” repeated Mr. George, with exaggerated emphasis. “Why are we all
talking of now? Tell me about Launa, Mrs. Herbert? Where is she?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Herbert, “where is she?”

“I will make you both a present of her address,” said Lily. “She will
not see you; you can both write volumes to her, and you, Mr. George,
will at once rush by the night or the morning train to see her.”

“No, time and distance will merely mellow her affection for me. I am
very fond of her, too fond, for I love her.”

“Dear me,” said Lily. “In what way do you love her? Hopelessly, madly,
platonically, or matrimonially?”

“Not matrimonially, because I could never tire of her; not platonically,
platonic people are too clever and enjoy their experiences too much to
be indifferent, but they never want to kiss each other. I might—”

“These are revelations,” said Mr. Herbert.

“Go on,” commanded Lily.

“I can’t. Launa is perfect. I fear she does not love me. When I call her
Launa, her eyelids never quiver. Did you ever quiver, Mrs. Herbert?”

“Never.”

“You are intellectual. I am going to write a book and call it
‘Marriage.’ There will be various assortments in it. Platonic matrimony
is interesting.”

“Very,” said Lily.

She went away to get the address for him.

“Wainbridge is very fond of Miss Archer,” said George, when he was alone
with Herbert.

“She looked ill when I last saw her. I am going to write to her.”

“Tell her—”

“Tell her what?” asked Lily, returning as he spoke.

“That we are perfectly, indefinitely happy.”

“How unlucky of you, Jack. You never should boast about happiness. It
will go. How dreadful of you. I know something will go wrong.”

“You have no nerve,” said Mr. Herbert.

“These connubial differences so early in your matrimonial career are
most embarrassing,” said Mr. George. “Later you will seldom or never
differ, or differ altogether. Thus do the early quarrels of husband and
wife evolve themselves. I must go.”

“Shall we ever become indifferent?” she asked. “Shall we ever grow old
and cold and—?”

“Grey,” interrupted Herbert. “The moon will change and not shine.”

They gazed at each other as if appalled by their remarks.

“Anyway the moon does not shine solely for you,” said Mr. George.
“Farewell.”

Mr. Herbert accompanied him to the door, and when he came back to her,
Lily said:

“Good-night, you must go home.”

“It is so late for me to be out, and I want to stay with you.”

“No. You must go,” she said.

“May I come to breakfast?”

“At a quarter-past nine.”

“Good-night, my darling, my—good-night.”

He lingered. He was loath to go, and she almost said, “Stay, never go;”
but she did not say it, and so he left her.

She missed him. He had gone away indifferently, and had not seemed to
mind. She had ordered a special breakfast for him next day. Where had he
gone after leaving her? The moon and the star comparison returned to her
mind. Then she wrote to Sir Ralph Egerton, telling him to come to see
her. Had Jack borne their first parting with indifference?

It was part of the plan that the wife should not worry whether her
husband suffered indifference or any other malady. Worry causes
sleepless nights and wrinkles. Mrs. Herbert went to bed, but the moon
shone in and she could not sleep. She hoped he could not; nor did he.




                              CHAPTER XII


MRS. HERBERT was at home. Her drawing-room had been crowded. Sir Ralph
Egerton had paid his first visit, and was more admiring, more devoted
than ever. Lily had increased in value in his eyes now that another man
had appropriated her. Her desirability was greater because she was out
of reach.

Lily was looking particularly well. Sir Ralph had brought her a wedding
present and an invitation to go to the play with him. The guests had all
left, and he had not succeeded in persuading her to come when Mr.
Wainbridge came in, followed by Mr. Herbert.

“Sir Ralph wants me to go to the theatre to-night,” she said, turning to
her husband. “You are not asked.”

“I shall be delighted if you will come,” said Sir Ralph politely.

“I cannot,” answered Mr. Herbert. “You have forgotten your engagement,
Lily, to come with me.”

“So I have. Sir Ralph, will you dine here to-morrow night and we can go
somewhere? I won’t ask you, dear,” she said to her husband, “for you
would not be amused.”

“Many thanks, I will come at eight to-morrow,” said Sir Ralph.
“Good-bye.”

“Tell me about yourself,” said Lily to Mr. Wainbridge. “How are you?”

Mr. Herbert left them alone.

“I am very well. I want you to help me.”

“To help you?”

“Will you try to get Miss Archer to come back to town? I cannot go to
Derbyshire to see her.”

“You want to see her?”

“Very much.”

“I will do what I can. You want to marry her?”

“Perhaps.”

“Marriage is not peace—not always.”

“It is better than separation and distance,” he replied. “Where are you
and your husband going?”

“Out—to the opera and then to supper somewhere.”

After he went away Lily wrote to Launa and then dressed and went out
with her husband. They were so happy when they were together, and his
absences, ordered by herself, were so trying—he was kind and strong,
moreover he loved her. How terrible if he were to forget, to grow cold!
She hardened her heart—her way was the best. She forgot that a day
comes when passion must grow cooler; then it is that friendship seasoned
by passion takes its place, and makes life rest and sweetness. She was
torn with jealousy lest he might care for some other woman, for if he
were to, he would not settle down to the dull, assured matrimonial
existence when he grew used to her, and probably seek amusement
elsewhere. This was her way of keeping his love. She let him see her
seldom, not often alone. He heard of her flirtations from herself. She
loved him absolutely, and she feared the force of her love might cause
his to grow cold, therefore she kept him at a distance and hungered for
a sign, for a caress from him, while she never betrayed her feelings.

The next day Launa received the following letter. She was starting for a
long walk when it came, and read it on the way.

                 *        *        *        *        *

    “MY DEAREST LAUNA,—How are you? We are longing to see you. Do
    come to London. Are you not coming for your music? Mr.
    Wainbridge was here to-day. He is much concerned, dear, that you
    do not come back to town. He fears you may be going to Canada to
    leave us all. Jack is most anxious to see you too. We are still
    happy, madly, gloriously, interruptedly happy. Interruptions are
    salutary—they add joy to the everydayness of life. Dear Launa,
    _do_ come back soon.

                                                 “Thine as ever,
                                                           “L. H.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Launa went across the moor to the “Cat and Fiddle.” Only by long walks
could she kill the restlessness which overcame her. She was longing to
hear some music again, and Lily’s letter arrived at exactly the very
best time for Mr. Wainbridge.

Mr. Wainbridge wrote almost every day. He sent her books, music, and
flowers. He tried to induce her to come to town. He told her that he
loved her with a love of the soul, that his one longing was to comfort
her, to endeavour to make up for the grief and despair of the past. She
thought of him with interest. He possessed the glamour of a lover for
her without any of the disadvantages of being enamoured herself. This
was an affection of the mind—a soul-love that he felt for her; it
lulled her into security. She resolved to leave in a week for London,
there to begin her music again.

As she walked home across the moor, she thought of the days at
“Solitude” with her father—she felt old and sad. Work only was left;
her aspirations on first coming to London seemed the foolish yearnings
of a child for the moon. She would _do_ something—play, work, and
forget with her heart and soul, and also she _would_ care for some
person. This unsatisfied longing for the woods, for her father and the
old life must be crushed, and speedily. How easy it was to label her
longings! She did not add the desire for one word from Paul to them, and
yet that was the greatest one of all. Lily’s suggestion that she might
intend to go to Canada again filled her with loathing. How could she
face “Solitude”?

And so she and her maid journeyed to Victoria Mansions. Lily came to
welcome her, and expressed herself as being enchanted with life, though
really Jack and she were starting on an unsatisfactory wild-goose chase.
Occasionally they had a day together—sometimes he merely came to dine
when she was having a party. Sir Ralph spent many and long days with
her; they went about together, and Jack waited. He had a firm belief in
his own future with her. She would tire of this life and be glad to
rest, and know he would care always.

When Launa had set her house in order, and had the piano tuned, she
began to take music lessons again.

Mr. Wainbridge came at once to see her. She wanted to take up their
friendship where they had left it before their letter-writing; he had
added the letters, the wishes and imaginings of their separation to it.
At first this intentional game of cross-purposes amused him. She would
not understand what any one might have seen.

She wanted friendship, only bounded by all the old opinions, with
love-making confined to books. There was a grey shadow between her and
love-making. Mr. Wainbridge saw it and was patient.

About this time Launa met the Coopers. Mrs. Cooper was a relic as well
as a relict—her one daughter Sylvia was of the present day. They were
very poor, and Sylvia worked very hard.

Mrs. Cooper knew how to dress in silk or satin, decorated with lace; but
to adapt herself to serge was quite beyond her capabilities. She was a
woman who could only order a dinner of an era which is passing away.
Clear soup, turbot, or cod-fish, with thick sauce, roast beef, a heavy
pudding, plum or cabinet—no savoury—and for dessert candied fruit and
oranges. Dainty dinners and economy were unknown to her. Sylvia did the
housekeeping, and Mrs. Cooper wept. Her husband had been angelic, with a
decided turn for unpunctuality, which is the prerogative of angels. This
was a daily cross to his wife, and her husband bore her revilings with a
saintly and irritating fortitude. Sylvia Cooper was pretty. She was
small and pale, with browny green eyes and brown hair. She met Mr.
George at Victoria Mansions; he had vainly tried to get introduced to
her. He went to the editor of the _Signal_, the new paper which was to
be the signal for every one’s opinions—lords and ladies, ballet girls,
actresses and actors, all wrote for it; only managers did not write for
it, and they disliked it. The notoriety the publication of opinions
brought was not always agreeable.

Mr. George thought of interviewing Miss Cooper, as she sang in the
chorus of the newest and most dull opera.

The editor of the _Signal_ said if she were pretty he would have her
photograph, and if she had broken any of the commandments, he would
allow the interview to be published.

Mr. George said she was pretty, and as for the commandments, Miss Cooper
looked as if she had never heard of them. So he started for the Fulham
Road, where she lived.

First he saw Mrs. Cooper. She received him with the graciousness his
clothes and boots deserved. When he explained his errand she gasped with
horror.

Fortunately at this moment Sylvia entered and the tragic situation
ended. Mr. George asked questions and obtained her photograph for the
paper.

“I will not repeat any of the opinions you confide in me,” he said. “If
I did, and you said you preferred fine days to rainy ones, you would see
in all the papers that Miss Cooper owns to a fondness for fine days, but
she need not imagine that Heaven will be gracious to _her_ at the
expense of the farmers.”

“Or cab drivers,” said Sylvia. “Showery weather must be their harvest
time. Still no paper will notice my opinions. Why did you come to
interview me? I am nobody.”

“I want to get your ideas on chorus work.”

“Yes? Well, you shall have them by and by. We need not talk of my
feelings or of my preferences—but will you have some tea?”

He owned to being a friend of Launa’s and a cousin of Sir Anthony
Howard’s. Mrs. Cooper forgave everything then, and found his visit of
over an hour too short. As soon as he left he drove to Victoria
Mansions.

Launa had just come in. She had lunched at the Herberts’. Mr. Wainbridge
as usual was with her.

“You will never guess where I have been,” said Mr. George, with
complacency, accepting a third cup of tea. Launa’s tea was always good;
at Sylvia’s there was no cream. “I suppose,” he reflected, “there are
lives without cream.”

“Tell me where you have been.”

“Interviewing Miss Cooper for the _Signal_, and here is her photograph.”

“Not really,” said Launa, with interest. “How naughty of you when I
refused to introduce you to her, for I do not approve of you.”

“Now, Miss Launa, you are real mean, as you Yankees say.”

“I am a Canadian.”

“I know it. Haven’t I kept your secret? Did I ever tell Mr. Wainbridge
how you fell violently in love with me and told me so, and how you would
hold my hand? And how I did stroke yours? I was obliged to that night of
the Fulton’s ball. The night you cried—you had just been dancing with
Mr. Wainbridge—you said you were tired—you said—”

“It is nothing new for Miss Archer to be tired,” interrupted Mr.
Wainbridge. “Did she see a ghost? She saw one, I remember, on a Sunday
afternoon.”

“And you are base,” said Launa. “I will not invite you to any of my
parties to meet Sylvia. You have thus betrayed my tenderest feelings and
my tears. For what paper was your interview?”

“The _Signal_, I told you. Now, don’t roll your eyes, Launa; you are not
shocked, I know. What could I do? You see you would not introduce me to
her; Wainbridge said he could not; Mrs. Herbert is so much married _à la
mode_, that I, a young and innocent young man, cannot risk my slender
reputation in her company. Then I thought of the _Signal_. Their leave
was easily procured; they have no intention of paying me, and they will
publish her photograph some day. Her mother was alarmed when she heard
why I had come. I trotted out my cousin, Sir Anthony, and you, Launa. We
had tea, and I am going again soon; perhaps they may come with me some
Sunday afternoon somewhere.”

“Indefinite,” said Mr. Wainbridge, “but convincing of your affection for
her. Take care.”

“Tell me about Sylvia,” said Mr. George. “Wainbridge, you know her well.
Isn’t there a story attached to her?”

“Yes.”

“Tell us,” said Launa. “Do.”

“When the Coopers were well off, only two years ago, Sylvia met Lord
Fairmouth. He is in Africa, or somewhere.”

“Go on,” said Launa.

“You are quite safe, I know; but that young ruffian, will he tell?”

“Tell,” repeated Mr. George. “I long to kick you down the stairs, Mr.
Wainbridge. Go on.”

“Sylvia did not know he was married, and they met every day. He loved
her. His wife was a woman who—”

“Who belonged to every and any man as well as to him,” suggested Mr.
George.

“Sylvia, then,” continued Mr. Wainbridge, “was very religious. She did
not believe in marriage after divorce. Fairmouth could easily have got
rid of his wife; but Sylvia was firm, so he left her and then went away.
She probably sent him.”

“How terrible!” said Launa. “Could they not have met sometimes? Might
not his love have been a comfort to her?”

“Moralists say not,” said Mr. Wainbridge.

“Such love cannot be real,” said Launa. “I used to think love was
immortal.”

“It would be immortal,” said Mr. George. “Too pure for this earth.”

The two men looked at her.

“Almost thou persuadest me that such things can be,” said Mr. George.

“I have learned such a lot,” she said, “in London. Love is marriage and
an end.”

“I am not going to murmur marriage to Sylvia,” said Mr. George. “I have
left it out altogether in my new book, the difficulty was to dispose of
my man and woman. I overcame that by saying, ‘The end is the usual one.’
To return to Sylvia. I am not afraid of a breach of promise, but
nowadays marriage is labelled a ‘question,’ and the reviewers are so
tired of it; they are all married. I fear I must leave you now, Miss
Launa. Good-bye.”

“Be a good boy! Don’t chase the cat or—Good-bye.”

“Suppose you were situated as they were,” said Mr. Wainbridge, “would
you have sent him away? Would you have been afraid?”

“Afraid?” she repeated, with a contempt for fear. “No, I would have
loved him—forever and ever. Why, because a man is bound to a vile
woman, need he make the woman he loves vile because he loves her, or
because he is bound?”

She looked at him, flushed with excitement, and doing battle for truth,
and he realised that to some women love does not mean temptation because
they are usually ignorant—at first. It would be difficult to explain
this to Launa.

“I know not,” he whispered.

“I often wish,” she said, half to herself, “that we knew more of what
will happen after death, if we were only told—should we try more? There
is such temptation to become lethargic—to drown remembrance in the
waters of Lethe.”

“You have no temptation. Do you want a reward? That is the lowest type
of religion.”

“I do not want crowns, and vast seas of gold have no charm for me. Do
you not suppose that Sylvia often wonders whether she will meet and know
the man she loves again?”

“Certainly she does, and she will see him and know him here. He won’t be
able to stay away.”

“You don’t believe in a future anywhere?”

“I believe in another world,” he said, “in another life where a verdict
of temporary insanity as regards the foolishness of man’s doings in this
life will be given with frequency. Most of us are not responsible for
what we do. You know if a man or a woman kills his or herself the jury
usually call it suicide while temporarily insane. Many of us commit
self-murder for this life, but, in the eyes of the higher jury, if it
exist at all, we are temporarily insane.”

“Don’t say if it exist; it must, else it were never worth one’s while to
give up anything.”

“Is giving up worth it? Is it?” he asked. “Why not take all one can get?
it is little enough. I love you,” he added softly, and put one arm round
her.

“Don’t,” she said sharply, “_don’t_; I cannot bear being touched.”

“You love me?”

“No, I love no one. I like you, we are friends. You like what I do. You
must not spoil it by loving me.”

“What did George mean when he said you had cried one night after dancing
with me?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“I did not offend you?”

“No; oh, no. It had nothing to do with you personally. Can’t we be as we
were?”

“I have always loved you. I long to help and comfort you, to make you
happy. Do you think that impossible?”

“Why ask inconvenient questions?”

“Is it inconvenient? My dearest, I did not mean it.”

“Because she cares for me she was afraid happiness was never coming,” he
thought.

A man always attributes a woman’s refusing to tell him how much she
cares to her being too shy to talk of it; never to her not caring
enough. “Yet does she care?” he wondered. That he might still doubt, and
not be obliged to think of settlements and the wedding ring was
satisfactory, it left an element of uncertainty in their relations; he
could dare to be tender, yet not too loving. Men marry because there is
nothing else to do, he thought. They know all about their future wives,
their affection is returned, it is satiating—there is nothing new.

Ten minutes afterwards Launa was singing Darkey songs for him, and
laughing as if her quest for happiness were over—successfully.

As he bade her good-bye, she gave him her hand.

“Is that all?”

“Yes; all. Next time I shall not shake hands, between friends it is
unnecessary.”

“I can wait.”

“Do,” she replied. “You could not well do anything else.”

He could not feel sure that it was time even to think a wedding ring
would ever be required.




                              CHAPTER XIII


LONDON and December—fogs and fires—cosy rooms and misery, side by
side.

Lily came to breakfast, and found her husband waiting with her letters.

“Good-morning,” she said politely.

“Bad-morning,” returned he morosely.

“Why have you come? I said neither of us was to disturb the other when
either was ill.”

“I am not ill. I have arrived because you chose me for better, for
worse, and now you let me have my breakfast alone. I hate breakfast, and
I love you. You do not greet me with joy.”

He came over to put his arm round her.

“After breakfast. It is too early for anything except tea.”

“That cup which does not inebriate. I wish to Heaven it would or could
inebriate you. You might be less cold, less—”

“Married.”

“You speak as though you expected this—as though this phase of ours is
not new to you. Is it a phase?”

“I do not know. I fear—oh, Jack, why is it?”

This cry for information was at least human.

“It is this detestable flat system. Let us go and live in a house—with
stairs,” said Jack.

She laughed.

“How amusing. The stairs would not make me—or you—different.”

“I am tired of being alone.”

“I thought you were going to say of being married. Loneliness is the
philosopher’s joy.”

“I am a man, not a philosopher.”

“And my husband.”

“Yes, your husband.”

“Why do you sigh?”

“Did I sigh?”

“Have some more tea.”

“I will. I do feel cheered. Perhaps if I stayed here all day, and you
made tea for me, I should feel contented.”

“You have not yet told me why you came.”

“Hans Breitmann gib ein barty. Where is that barty now?”

“Who is going to ‘gib ein barty’?”

“I am,” he replied.

“Am I to be invited?”

“If you are good.”

“I am always good. I am not always happy.”

“And the pious books say, if you were the one you would be the other.
Bertie’s play is to come off on the 16th. He has got me a box. You want
to see it?”

“Yes. It is said to be clever.”

“Bertie isn’t,” said Herbert.

“He did not write it, Miss Fisher did. She will get half the profits.
But who are the ‘barty’?”

“You and I, Sylvia, George, Wainbridge, and Launa.”

“Too respectable, married and dull. We are to do wedded felicity, while
they seek to imitate us. They are known to be desirous of so doing.”

“Who else can I ask?”

“Sir Ralph, Lady Hastings. Leave out Launa and Mr. Wainbridge. Sylvia
and Mr. George will do, if she can come. She is still moon-struck, or
lord-struck, or virtue-struck. Why did she send him away? She will never
marry Mr. George.”

“I thought Launa was your friend?”

“So she is.”

“I do not advise anyone to marry, do you? It is an uncertain,
disquieting bondage, even our way.”

“Even our way,” she repeated.

Jack thought he detected a sign of disappointment in her acquiescence.
It is all very well to abuse oneself while seeking contradiction, but to
have one’s husband call the joy of matrimony uncertain—that brings
uneasiness into the mind of the wife.

Lily ate some toast, and felt disappointed. He did not love her more
because of her inaccessibility.

“You will come to see the play with me? We shall have supper at the
Savoy.”

“Very well. You will ask Sir Ralph and Lady Hastings?”

“I think not.”

“Sir Ralph is very fond of me.”

“So am I.”

“Are you? I want to sit next to him at supper.”

“You can sit by me, dear.”

“Why not call me ‘my love’? That is what a husband usually calls his
wife, ‘my love’—it is a sort of mockery—‘my love’ when it is dead and
gone.”

“My love is not dead nor gone.”

“Yet you will not please me about Sir Ralph. If we gave up this
detestable flat system, the inviting and arranging of parties would be
left to me, my lord.”

“You may ask all the people you like, dear. You may give a ball, if you
will, only live in a house with stairs.”

“Not yet, dear.”

“I must go now, and leave you. Every time I leave you it grows harder.
Why must it be?”

“I will come to your party on the 16th, and I will bring Sir Ralph.”

“I do not want him.”

“Yes, you do. Did you get my gloves?”

“They will come to-day. Good-bye.”

Quickly he put his arm round her and rapidly kissed her.

“There!”

“Go home,” she replied. “Matrimonial endearments thus early in the
morning are unusual and uncomfortable.”

Then she sat down and read her letters.

“He won’t ask Sir Ralph,” she thought. “Shall I go? I am tired of Sir
Ralph, and Jack never bores me.”

She ordered her husband’s favourite pudding for lunch, and arranged the
flowers, but he did not come. He was afraid of wearying her, and sat in
his rooms, wanting to go to what he called the Haven, but not daring. A
drawn sword hovered over his Paradise. After lunch Lily wrote to him.

                 *        *        *        *        *

    “MY DEAREST,—You thought me a cold brute this morning, I know.
    Can’t you understand how it is? I am so terribly afraid of your
    ceasing to care that I seem so indifferent? Marriage we all know
    does not increase love. And I feel that if I were once to show
    you how much I love you you would change. Your love would grow
    less; we cannot stand still; and I am trying to control fate, to
    hold you and to keep you forever. I know that my power over you
    would vanish if you were sure of me, and if we were to settle
    down in a house with stairs, you would soon regard me as an
    article of furniture—necessary perhaps to your comfort, but to
    be easily replaced if broken. You are such a husband now; that
    is what I resent, and you are too fond of coming to breakfast;
    why are you not my lover still? If I were your mistress you
    would come and dine with me, and we should be perfectly happy.
    You would not dream of inquiring what men or man had called, and
    the duration of each visit; you must make love to me as you used
    to do and trust me absolutely. I am yours—I think of you
    always, not sometimes but _always_, and I hunger for your
    presence, for your touch. But I could not bear your toleration,
    and I loathe the husband attitude you sometimes assume. Do you
    do it because you fear to weary me with your caresses? I think
    so, but you are wrong. I love you, love you. What a fool I am!—

    “Yours,

                                                              “L.”

After writing this she went to call on her husband’s aunts. They as
usual reduced her to a state of irritability, and she walked home full
of reflections upon boredom. This was rapidly dispersed by Sir Ralph,
who was waiting for her with a new book. Tea restored her mind to its
normal balance, and conversation, with a cigarette, brought back her
belief in herself. That morning she had been singularly near leaning on
Jack. Sir Ralph amused her, he was so easily hurt, and in such open
bondage to her. While talking with him, the impossibility of a _grande
passion_ in these days manifested itself to her. She got up and went to
her writing-table—in a drawer was her letter to Jack. She had intended
to send it to him after dinner; it would have brought him to her at
once. For one night anyway she would have experienced exquisite
happiness. She shut her eyes, remembering the perfect joy; it was almost
pain to think of her love for him. Then she hurriedly tore up the
letter, and burned it.

“It is strange how many phases one’s mind goes through in a day,” she
said.

Her letter burned quickly and curled up, as if the flames hurt it, and
it was in pain. She moved uneasily, for it almost hurt her.

“This morning I was different.”

“Were you?” asked Sir Ralph. “My mind never changes. I am always the
same.”

“How very dull! I am never the same. Are you asked to the party of my
lord and master on the 16th?”

“No.”

“You have heard nothing of it?”

“Not yet. I wanted you to come with me to see the new ballet on the
16th. I came to ask you. Now, I suppose, you will not come.”

“I know not. Shall I not? Yes, I will come—alone!”

“Alone! So much the better, and to supper afterwards at the Savoy?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You will wear?”

“Black.”

“I will send you some flowers.”

“The advantages of matrimony are supreme. I am enjoying it immensely.”

“Really? I should have thought it might be dull for you.”

“Oh, no; not with all of you to amuse me.”

After he left she dressed and went to a party, where she met him again.
It was a cheerful entertainment, without any dull people to ask
questions. Mrs. Herbert found several ladies took much interest in her
affairs, and in her husband’s whereabouts. They did not ask such
questions twice, but it annoyed her to know of what they thought. They
blamed Jack. As a husband he ought to look after that young woman.

For the next few days, Mrs. Herbert avoided being alone with her
husband. She invited him to lunch when other people were present, and he
did not enjoy it, though he comforted himself by thinking of the 16th.
Mr. Herbert made arrangements for his wife to stay all night at his
abode, and found himself strung up to a pitch of joyful expectation.

In those days of waiting, her mood was uncertain, morose, absurd, and
cross at intervals. Mr. Herbert waited for his day of reckoning; he
intended to settle all things on that eventful night, to have all or
nothing.

They were at the theatre watching the new play. Launa, Sylvia, Mr.
George, and Mr. Wainbridge. Mr. Herbert was watching for Lily. She was
often late.

A note was brought to him; he opened it with indifference, which did not
last. His wife had sent it as she drove off with Sir Ralph to see the
ballet.

Mr. Herbert left the theatre and walked up and down outside, mad with
rage and heartache. Fool, fool, that he had been; to love her, to trust
her. She had killed love and trust, he assured himself; while all the
time he knew she had not, that was the greatest torture.

Mrs. Herbert and Sir Ralph had a box at the Grosvenor. Her dress was
most becoming, which is the wine that maketh glad the heart of woman;
but, strange to say, she could not forget her husband. It is usually so
easy to forget.

She planned a breakfast party next day. Jack would come to take her out;
she loved a cockney day with him, when they travelled first-class and
called it cockney. There was skating, they would go together; and she
would forgive him with effect and solemnity.

“Herbert’s party comprises Miss Archer as the only lady,” said Mrs.
Herbert. “Well, she is beautiful.”

“He thinks so.”

“And so do I,” she replied. “Launa alone, how odd!”

“Why? I am very liberal; I cannot see why Launa and your husband should
not have a party as you and I are doing.”

“We are old friends.”

“Yes. Are we anything else? We are old friends.”

“And they are new ones.”

“The length of time makes no difference,” he said. “I could love a new
friend in a week better than an old friend in a year.”

“How true!”

How glad I am, she reflected, that Jack and I have two flats. If we were
in one small space to-night we should quarrel.

She went home feeling sad. Would Jack be waiting for her? A few strong
words, a few strong kisses, and where would her philosophy have been?
Repentance would have replaced it.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The weather was very cold. Near Polton there was a lake, on which the
skating was good. Launa and Lily had arranged to meet at Paddington, and
go down there for a few days. Launa waited an hour for Lily, and then
went without her.

The Polton Arms was a celebrated hotel, because the landlady was a
celebrated cook. Launa took her maid, and resolved to stay and skate
without Mrs. Herbert. Mr. Wainbridge did not know her address.

The luxury of solitude for a short space was pleasant to her, and the
landlady had known her father. Launa spent all the day on the lake; the
days were wonderfully clear and cold, and the air and the motion were as
new life to her.

One day when she came back to the Polton Arms, and entered the big warm
hall, in which burned a wood fire, Mr. Wainbridge came forward and took
her hand.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Surprised, and well.”

“I have come to see you. I could not get on any longer without you.”

“How did you discover me? Come and have tea now.”

Her sitting-room was very pleasant, the usual hotel adornments had
vanished. There was peace; and they sat and talked until it was time to
dress for dinner.

“Propriety,” said Launa, “demands that you should dine downstairs, and I
in my sitting-room alone; but the claims of propriety are not imperious.
We will dine together.”

Wainbridge felt perfectly happy, perfectly content; Launa was feeling
soothed and lulled by the sensation that someone cared excessively for
her. It was so desolate to be always alone, and she wanted someone to
take care of her.

For the rest of the week they met every day, and spent it together
skating. As Mr. Wainbridge could not waltz on skates she taught him.

“This is a sort of honeymoon,” he said.

“Without any bother. Honeymoons are troublesome.”

“That depends on the moon and the honey. I like it in the comb.”

One day they were just starting for the lake when they met Captain
Carden. Launa bowed to him, and did not appear uncomfortable at what he
considered an inopportune meeting for her. Captain Carden went back to
town that night, and told Mr. George, whom he met, that Launa was
staying at Polton with Mr. Wainbridge.

“They are staying together,” he said. “How lucky for her she is not
married, for I saw them.”

Mr. George promptly remarked that unless Captain Carden wanted kicking,
he had better go, which he did.

The Cardens still felt a tender interest, an endless curiosity about
Launa. They regretted her fall from grace, and Mrs. Carden felt with
sorrow that she had wandered far from the safe haven of her protection;
but when Charlie told her Launa was with Mr. Wainbridge, then did she
mingle tears and rejoicings.

“We shall get her yet,” he said at last. “When no one else will know
her, she will be glad to be Mrs. Carden.”

“A Mrs. Carden whom no one will know,” said his mother. “How terrible!”

“But her money,” he suggested.

They were drinking tea together—a pale, straw-coloured liquid. For once
Mr. Carden had not grumbled; for the present they were united. The maid
announced, “Mr. Harvey.”

Mrs. Carden rose and bowed. Mr. Harvey advanced with the self-possession
of a Somebody, and the assurance of an American.

“I must apologise,” he said, “for troubling you. I came to get Miss
Archer’s address. Her father once gave me yours as the means of finding
him in town. I am a friend of theirs, and live near them in Canada.”

“Launa’s address?” repeated Carden.

“Address,” echoed his mother. “Please sit down.”

“Her address,” replied Harvey.

“Launa was in the country,” said Mrs. Carden. “She lives at Victoria
Mansions, but I am sorry to say she is a very odd girl. She loves the
world.”

“It is beautiful,” said the Canadian. “Then she has not changed.”

“Beautiful, is it?” observed Mrs. Carden.

“If you will kindly give me her exact address, I will not trouble you
any further.”

Mrs. Carden went to her writing-table and wrote it. As she handed it to
him she said:

“Are you her relation or her guardian? I believe my cousin married a
Canadian.”

“I am not her guardian.”

“We—my son and I—are much worried about her. He met her down at
Polton. She was staying there, and so was a man called Mr. Wainbridge.”

Here she paused for exclamations.

“Well?” said Paul.

“Not well,” said Mrs. Carden. “It is very wrong of Launa to stay at an
hotel with a man—with—a—man. Do you understand?”

“No,” replied Paul. “Not what you mean me to understand.”

“They frequently had their meals together.”

“Quite right.”

“My son is in love with Miss Archer. He is as careful about her
reputation as about his own.”

“He had better be,” answered Paul. “He should have held his tongue, and
not have invented vile stories.”

Then he went away. Captain Carden immediately became furious, because
Harvey had said he had invented stories.

Paul had been in London a week. He was determined to find Launa, to make
her love him. It was only that one day she had been different. Her
words, her look had been as if he were an outcast, a glance of loathing
she had thrown at him. He remembered it always, but he loved her, longed
for her intensely; and now he was determined to know what she had meant
when she said she felt outraged. He had no reason to suppose she could
care for him. Indeed, her absence from Canada, her rebuke the day after
he had shot the horse, all showed that she did not love him. Yet she had
not always seemed to hate him. Love and hate are closely connected, and
he would know what she really felt, because he could not live without
her. He had tried the North-West big game shooting; he had rushed madly
about, and cried for madder music, stronger wine to help him forget; and
through it all she was there.

Now these detestable people said untrue things about her; nevertheless
he shuddered slightly as he remembered what they had insinuated.

He drove back to the Metropolis and walked past Victoria Mansions. Then
he went in. He saw her name on the doorpost, and boldly marched up the
stairs, disdaining the porter’s suggestion of the lift. Outside her door
he could hear her playing and singing:

        “Long is it I have loved thee,
        Thee shall I love alway,
                    My dearest;
        Long is it I have loved thee,
        Thee shall I love alway.”

It was a Canadian song, he knew it well. He whistled it softly as he
went down the stairs. Outside it was cold and beginning to rain. He did
not feel it.

        “Long is it I have loved thee.”




                              CHAPTER XIV


CAPTAIN CARDEN found himself in an unusual and delightful situation: he
had something to say, and that something interested various people.
Launa had attracted a certain amount of attention, from the British
matron upwards, but being a Canadian, which, after all, is as bad as
being an American, all things were expected of her, and being rich, all
things were forgiven her. She had appropriated young men, but seemed to
prefer quality to quantity.

Since her father’s death, she had lived in great seclusion. The world
gave her no credit for it, it was the seclusion, no doubt, of one who is
well amused. People talked uncertainly to her about art and music, for
it was rumoured that she was composing, and in truth she was working and
having lessons from Herr Donau.

Captain Carden had never forgiven her laugh that night. Ridicule to this
gallant son of Mars was torture. He sallied forth garnished with
importance, and carrying a full card-case to call on his many friends.
He went first to Lady Blake’s. He had murmured to many people, “Have you
heard about Miss Archer?”

He had no cause to think that Lady Blake would receive him with rapture,
but his news would interest her.

Lady Blake was at home. She was alone and hating it, so she welcomed
Captain Carden with joy. Her last party had been a failure. Mr.
Wainbridge had plainly taken no interest in her latest quarrel with her
husband, and Herr Donau talked of nothing but Miss Archer’s wonderful
execution. Captain Carden was a man, and as such, available for
conquest, and she welcomed him as a relief to her feelings.

They talked of the weather, of the opera, and finally he mentioned
Launa.

“Is there no other girl in London? Must you all talk of her?”

“Why?” he asked. “Have you heard?”

“Heard what? Tell me,” she said.

“I thought you knew. I really cannot tell you.”

“I never would believe anything about another woman, it is so cruel to
one’s own self—so low, I think. Unless, of course, it were absolutely
true, and then I should feel sorry.”

She uttered her words with a sublime air of pity.

“Yes; I know you would. Still, some women—”

“Some women?”

“Are queer.”

“Are they?” she inquired.

“Free—strange in their ideas of propriety. Miss Archer is, I think.”

“We all know that Canadians are free. Canada is not exactly a
Republic—not a Monarchy. The country has no institutions, and that must
affect the women—don’t you think so?”

She had the sweetest, most appealing way of saying “don’t you think so,”
with an accent on the “don’t” and on the “you” which men and old women
found very attractive.

“There is an atmosphere of a wigwam and the wilderness about them, that
is the reason men like them—before they marry them.”

“They skate so well, too,” he said. “Have you been skating? I spent a
day or two at Polton. I met Miss Archer with Mr. Wainbridge, and they
were staying together at the inn. She skates splendidly.”

He then said “Good-bye,” and left her considering the subject and all
its various possibilities. Launa and Mr. Wainbridge together at the same
hotel. There is only one way in which a man and a woman can be staying
together at an hotel. Either they are married or they ought to be. She
laughed and told her next visitor.

Captain Carden then went to see Mrs. Herbert. Sir Ralph, Mr. George, and
various other men were there, and two women.

Captain Carden, quietly but sorrowfully, related his story to Mrs.
Herbert.

“Miss Archer and Mr. Wainbridge!” she repeated, “alone at the inn. Well,
what matter? If they like to be foolish, why shouldn’t they? It sounds
very terrible; but if I were you, Captain Carden, I would not repeat it.
Let it go. Believe me, the path of a reformer is a difficult one, and
reformation is uninteresting, especially if it is impossible. Good-bye,”
she added. “I am sorry you have to go.”

Sir Ralph and Mr. George stayed after everyone had left, and talked.

Mrs. Herbert did not believe Captain Carden’s story, at least not in the
way he wanted her to; but she was jealous of Launa, and rather glad to
hear anything to her discredit. She turned to Mr. George, and asked:

“How is your Proverb book?”

“Not progressing very rapidly,” he answered. “I have taken to
interviewing. I find it more amusing.”

“Whom do you interview?”

“Young and interesting women—the women of the future.”

“Is it true what they are saying of Launa?” she asked.

“What do they say?”

“That she and Mr. Wainbridge were alone at Polton together at the hotel
there.”

“Well?”

“That is all. You must acknowledge that if a girl stays with a man at a
country hotel—”

“A country hotel! Is that bad?” he interrupted. “The town is always
respectable. I understand. What a pity they had not stayed at the Grand
or the Metropole. I am so glad I live in town. Aren’t you, Egerton?”

“Rubbish,” she replied. “You misunderstand me.”

“Not at all. Tell me more,” said George.

“I am worried about Launa. Her reputation will suffer.”

Sir Ralph rose and said:

“Good-bye—to-morrow at ten.”

He hated the mere idea of moral reflections.

“Has Launa a reputation yet?” asked George. “A woman must be talked
about for three seasons, and have four married men in love with her.
That is a reputation. It is eating your cake and having it too, and you
are endeavouring to do that.”

“What do you mean?”

“You tell me what they say of Launa. They say far worse of you. They say
Sir Ralph lives here—not that you stay in the same hotel—by accident,
simultaneously—which happened to her. They say that Buxton and Sir
Ralph are partners, and that Herbert is useful. It is like the women in
the Bible, you remember? ‘We will eat our own bread and wear our own
apparel, only let us be called by thy name.’ Herbert gives the name.”

“You had better go,” she said. “You are a coward to say all these things
to a woman. You would not dare say them if I were a man, or if Jack were
here.”

“No; but he seldom is here, and he is useful as a shelter. I would not
have said this if you had not made me angry about Launa. She is one of
the best women I ever knew.”

“Your experience then is limited.”

“Good-bye. You live in too large a glass-house to throw stones, unless
you are absolutely reckless and desire the smashing of your own roof.”

With this he left her, and she sat and thought it all over. She was very
angry with Mr. George, and yet she laughed. She felt so absolutely sure
of herself, and knew her husband was the one man in the world she loved.
These others were merely to keep herself from thinking—they were to her
what embroidery is to some women. Why should people talk of her? And Mr.
George—what a brute he was!

What she hardly dared acknowledge to herself was her husband’s daily
increasing indifference. He had been away since the 16th, and he had not
told her where he was going.

Was he often with Launa? Jealousy, a raging, burning hatred of the woman
who was liked so much, filled her mind, and she stamped her foot with
rage. Then she wanted to cry. To feel herself powerless, to know herself
mistaken, both were new emotions, both were uncomfortably true and
horrible.

Marriage, she reflected, was always a failure; to keep one’s husband as
a lover is impossible. At this moment Mr. Herbert came in.

“You!” she exclaimed, with mixed feelings of pleasure and surprise.

“You are alone?”

“How do you do?” she said. She always remembered the observances of
polite society. “I am alone. Look behind the curtain or under the sofa
if you think I have a man hidden anywhere.”

She resisted an impulse which said, “Speak, say you love him.” He looked
in one of his critical moods, so she summoned all her energies to her
aid and crushed away any feeling she possessed.

“I am very well,” he answered. He looked tired. “I am going to Cairo
to-night to do some writing for the _Signal_.”

“You are going . . . and I?”

“You will stay here,” he answered, with cheerful unconcern. “You have
all you want.”

“All—Jack! don’t go. They say—I will even live in a house with
stairs.”

“You have heard! What have you heard?”

She got up and came near him.

“I shall miss you terribly.”

“You want me to stay?”

“Yes, I do want you to stay with me, or I will go with you.”

“This is only a mood—to show your own power. When I come back, in six
months, then we shall see.”

“Six months? And I am to wait. No, thank you. You will have lost me for
ever then. Oh! you are cruel.”

“You are mistaken; I am not cruel. We have tried our experiment, and it
has failed for me—for you, perhaps it is what you wanted. It will be
all the better for you if I am not here. They—the all-powerful—will
say less about you, if you are decently careful. Have you seen anything
of Launa? Perhaps you will be good to her.”

“To Launa? What is she to you?”

“My friend. You cannot understand that. I—”

“A man is never the friend of a woman.”

“You have no friends then?”

“I—I am different. Why should I console her for your departure? Is she
broken-hearted?”

“No,” he replied. “Why will you misunderstand me?”

“Isn’t it enough for her to have Mr. Wainbridge, and to stay at hotels
with him alone.”

“Take care what you say, and what you insinuate. Launa is perfectly
innocent, she never stayed at an hotel—that is, lived with Mr.
Wainbridge as you suggest. Someone may have seen them dining together.
You dine with men sometimes. But I must go now.”

She walked up and down in front of him. She was like a panther, with the
same quick, nervous, gliding steps, and she was raging. She wore a
tea-gown; he had once admired it. The light accentuated her piercing
eyes, her mocking red lips.

“I shall not come to you until you send for me,” he said.

“And I shall never send for you. Marriage is a mistake. You believe all
they say of me. I have never kissed any man but you, I did love you, I
might love you if—”

“Your virtue in not kissing men is wonderful, but they may kiss you. I
believe nothing about you, nor in your love for me, nor for anyone.”

“Daily life is so absorbing, the fine dust sifts in and deadens all
feeling,” she said sadly.

“Does it? Well, now I must say good-bye.”

He took her hand.

“I trust you always. I cannot stay in this way. It is best for me to go
and to forget.”

And so he left her.

She threw herself down on her sofa and buried her face in the cushions.
“Best to go and to forget—to go and to forget.” This was the reward of
a Regenerator of Matrimony.

That night Mrs. Herbert went to a dance. The waltzes all seemed to be
played to the measure of a train—every minute took him further away—in
intervals, when she was not talking, she composed letters which she
never sent, and she hated herself for having let him go. Where was her
power? Had she lost it?

She tried to use it on Sir Ralph, and the result more than justified her
expectations.

“You deserve a good scolding,” said Mr. George, when he asked for a
dance and she refused to give it to him. “You are eating your cake now.
I hope it is bitter. Jack has gone.”

Sir Ralph went home with her, but he did not go in, as she shook hands
by the lift and thanked him in an absent-minded, perfunctory way. Then
she went to her room and wept.

She was a fool. It was all too horrible. The next morning life was not
worth living, it was black and dreary. Excitement and Sir Ralph were all
she had left. She was jealous of the unknown, of Jack’s gladstone bag,
and of his boots, of everything; and then she remembered Launa, and she
was jealous of her. It was quite delightful to find a person to hurt,
someone tangible at whom to throw speeches. Mrs. Herbert resolved to
rise early, and go to see Launa.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Meanwhile Captain Carden’s remarks and suggestions had an effect. Mr.
Wainbridge noticed it—men looked coldly or with a certain amount of
curiosity at him—some women turned the other way, others were
interested. He did not realise the meaning of this, until Mr. George
brought it before him. Mr. George was by no means one of the crowd. He
knew Launa well; it was doubtful whether she had refused him or not. He
adored Sylvia now. He frequented Launa’s abode, scolded her when she
appeared weary, and forbade her to sit up late. By this time people said
that Miss Archer and Mr. Wainbridge had spent a week in Paris together,
as Mr. and Mrs. Claude.

Mr. Wainbridge heard this tale in silence, and at the end he expressed
himself as anxious to horsewhip the whole town. Mr. George reminded him
that the town is large, and chiefly composed of women.

“Damn

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/48845