Tales of two people

by Anthony Hope

III

“AT lunch on Friday,” Mrs Pryce resumed, “the steward told us that we were expected to reach Queenstown about one o’clock in the morning, and we all began discussing whether we should sit up. The old travellers scoffed at the idea, and mamma, though she wasn’t an old traveller, said she would never think of being so silly. But I and the two other girls at the table—they were Americans on their first trip over—said that we certainly should, and one of them asked Mr Walsh if he meant to. ‘I must,’ he said, smiling. ‘In fact, I expect to land there—that is, if I get the telegram I expect to get. Of course he glanced at me as he spoke, so that I knew what he meant, though the others hadn’t the least idea. What would they have said?”

“I suppose they did say they were very sorry he wasn’t going on to Liverpool?”

“Yes, and even mamma said how sorry we were to part from him. Fancy mamma saying that! It was fun! Only after lunch she was terribly aggravating; she kept me down in the writing-room all the afternoon, writing letters for her to all sorts of stupid people in America and at home, saying we’d arrived safely. Of course we’d arrived safely! But if mamma so much as crosses the Channel without sinking, she writes to all her friends as if she’d come back from the North Pole. Some people are like that, aren’t they?”

“Yes; and they’re generally considered attentive. You may get a great reputation for good manners by writing unnecessary letters.”

“Yes. So I didn’t see him again till dinner. Nothing much happened then—at least I don’t remember much. The end had begun, I think, and I wasn’t feeling so jolly as I had been all the way across. But everybody else was in high spirits, and he was the gayest of all of us. I expect he saw that I was rather blue, and he followed me on deck soon after dinner, and there we had our last little talk. He told me that he thought everything would be done quite quietly; he meant to tell the purser where to find him in case of inquiry, and to be ready to go ashore at once. He was sure they’d take him ashore; but if by chance they didn’t, he would stay in his cabin, so that, anyhow, this was ‘Good-bye.’ So I said ‘Good-bye’ and wished him good luck. ‘Are you going to sit up?’ he said. I looked at him for a moment and then said ‘No.’ He smiled in an apologetic sort of way and gave that little wave of his hands. ‘It’s foolish of me to care, I suppose, but—thank you for that.’ I was a little surprised, because I really hadn’t thought he would mind me seeing; but I was pleased too. He held out both his hands, and I took them and pressed them. Then I opened my hands and looked at his as they lay there. He was smiling at me with his lips and his eyes. ‘Slim-Fingered Jim!’ he whispered. ‘Don’t quite forget him, little friend.’ ‘I suppose I shall never see you again?’ I said. ‘Better not,’ he told me. ‘But let’s remember this voyage. We’ll put a little fence round it, won’t we? and keep all the rest of life out, and just let this stand by itself—on its own merits. Shall we, dear little friend?’ ”

Mrs Pryce stayed her narrative for a moment. But my curiosity was merciless.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I think I murmured something like ‘Oh, my dear, my dear!’ and then I let go of his hands and turned away to the sea; and when I looked round again, he was gone.”

“And that was the end?”

“No. The end was lying in the berth above mamma, who was sound asleep, and—well, snoring rather—lying there and feeling the ship slowing down and then stopping, and hearing the mail-boat come alongside, and all the noise and the shouting and the bustle. I knew I could hear nothing—there would be nothing to hear—but I couldn’t help listening. I listened very hard all the time, but of course I heard nothing; and at last—after hours and hours, as it seemed—we began to move again. That was the real end. I knew it had happened then; and so it had. He wasn’t at breakfast. But luckily nobody on the ship—none of the passengers, I mean—found out about it till we got to Liverpool; and as mamma and I weren’t going on to London, it didn’t matter.”

“And he got off?”

“Yes, he got off—that time.”

“I’m afraid this great man had one foible,” I observed. “He was proud of those hands! Well, Cæsar didn’t like getting bald, so I learnt at school.”

“I always remember them as they lay in mine,” she said. “His hands and his eyes—that’s what I remember.”

“Ever seen him again?”

“Of course not.” She sat where she was for a moment longer, then rose. “Shall we go in?”

“I think we may as well,” said I.

So we went into the billiard-room. They were still playing pool. I made for the whisky-and-soda and mixed myself a tumbler and drank thereof. When I set the tumbler down and turned round to the table Charlie Pryce was engaged in making a shot of critical importance. Everybody was looking at him. His wife was standing at the end of the table and looking at him too. She seemed as much interested in the shot as any of them. But was she? For before he played she raised her eyes and looked across at me with a queer little smile. I couldn’t help returning it. I knew what she was thinking. The billiard-table is a high trial.

When Charlie had brought off his shot—which he did triumphantly—his wife came and kissed him. This pleased him very much. He did not recognise the Kiss Penitential, which is, however, a well-ascertained variety.

I’m afraid that the magnetic current of immorality which seemed to emanate from Mr James Painter Walsh passed through the sympathetic medium of Mrs Pryce’s memory and infected, in some small degree, my more hardened intellect; for even now I can’t help hoping that Slim-Fingered Jim is being put to some light form of labour. But it’s a difficult business! Even the laundry—a most coveted department, as I am given to understand—would spoil them hopelessly.

THE GREY FROCK

THE rights and wrongs of the matter are perhaps a little obscure, and it is possible to take his side as well as hers. Or perhaps there is really no question of sides at all—no need to condemn anybody; only another instance of the difficulty people have in understanding one another’s point of view. But here, with a few lines added by way of introduction, are the facts as related in her obviously candid and sincere narrative.

Miss Winifred Petheram’s father had an income from landed estate of about five thousand a year, and spent, say, six or thereabouts; his manor house was old and beautiful, the gardens delightful, the stables handsome and handsomely maintained, the housekeeping liberal, hospitable, almost lavish. Mr Petheram had three sons and four daughters; but the sons were still young, and not the cause of any great expense. Mrs Petheram was a quiet body, the two girls in the schoolroom were no serious matter; in fact, apart from the horses, Mildred and Winifred were, in a pecuniary point of view, the most serious burden on the family purse. For both were pretty girls, gay and fond of society, given to paying frequent visits in town and country, and in consequence needing many frocks and a considerable supply of downright hard cash. But everybody was very comfortable; only it was understood that at a period generally referred to as “some day” there would be very little for anybody except the eldest son. “Some day,” meant, of course, when Mr Petheram reluctantly died, and thereby brought his family into less favourable worldly circumstances.

From this brief summary of the family’s position the duty of Mildred and Winifred (and, in due course of time, of the two girls in the schoolroom also) stands forth salient and unmistakable. Mildred performed it promptly at the age of nineteen years. He was the second son of a baronet, and his elder brother was sickly and unmarried; but, like a wise young man, he took no chances, went on the Stock Exchange, and became exceedingly well-to-do in an exceedingly brief space of time—something, in fact, “came off” in South Africa, and when that happens ordinary limits of time and probability are suspended. So with Mildred all was very well; and it was odds that one of the boys would be provided for by his brother-in-law. Winifred had just as good chances—nay, better; for her sensitive face and wondering eyes had an attraction that Mildred’s self-possessed good looks could not exert. But Winifred shilly-shallied (it was her father’s confidential after-dinner word) till she was twenty-one, then refused Sir Barton Amesbury (in itself a step of doubtful sanity, as was generally observed), and engaged herself to Harold Jackson, who made two hundred a year and had no prospects except the doubtful one of maintaining his income at that level—unless, that is, he turned out a genius, when it was even betting whether a mansion or the workhouse awaited him; for that depends on the variety of genius. Having taken this amazing course, Winifred was resolute and radiantly happy; her relatives, after the necessary amount of argument, shrugged their shoulders—the very inadequate ultima ratio to which a softening civilisation seems to have reduced relatives in such cases.

“I can manage two hundred a year for her while I live,” said Mr Petheram, wiping his brow and then dusting his boots; he was just back from his ride. “After that——”

“The insurance, my dear?” Mrs Petheram suggested. But her husband shook his head; that little discrepancy above noted, between five and six thousand a year, had before this caused the insurance to be a very badly broken reed.

Harold Jackson—for in him the explanation of Winifred’s action must be sought—was tall, good-looking, ready of speech, and decidedly agreeable. There was no aggressiveness about him, and his quiet manners repelled any suspicion of bumptiousness. But it cannot be denied that to him Winifred’s action did not seem extraordinary; he himself accounted for this by saying that she, like himself, was an Idealist, the boys by saying that he was “stuck-up,” Mr Petheram by a fretful exclamation that in all worldly matters he was as blind as a new-born puppy. Whatever the truth of these respective theories, he was as convinced that Winifred had chosen for her own happiness as that she had given him his. And in this she most fully agreed. Of course, then, all the shrugging of shoulders in the universe could not affect the radiant contentment of the lovers, nor could it avert the swift passage of months which soon brought the wedding-day in sight, and made preparations for it urgent and indispensable.

Married couples, even though they have only a precarious four hundred a year, must live somewhere—no idealism is independent of a roof; on the contrary, it centres round the home, so Harold said, and the word “home” seemed already sacred to Winifred as her glance answered his. It was the happiest day of her life when she put on her dainty new costume of delicate grey, took her parasol and gloves, matched to a shade with her gown, and mounted into the smart dog-cart which Jennie, the new chestnut mare, was to draw to the station. A letter had come from Harold to say that, after long search, he had found a house which would suit them, and was only just a trifle more expensive than the maximum sum they had decided to give for rent. Winifred knew that the delicate grey became her well, and that Harold would think her looking very pretty; and she was going to see her home and his. Her face was bright as she kissed her father and jumped down from the dog-cart; but he sighed when she had left him, and his brow was wrinkled as he drove Jennie back. He felt himself growing rather old; “some day” did not seem quite as remote as it used, and pretty Winnie—well, there was no use in crying over it now. Wilful girls must have their way; and it was not his fault that confounded agitators had played the deuce with the landed interest. The matter passed from his thoughts as he began to notice how satisfactorily Jennie moved.

Winifred’s lover met her in London, and found her eyes still bright from the reveries of her journey. To-day was a gala day—they drove off in a hansom to a smart restaurant in Piccadilly, joking about their extravagance. Everything was perfect to Winifred, except (a small exception, surely!) that Harold failed to praise, seemed almost not to notice, the grey costume; it must have been that he looked at her face only!

“It’s not a large house, you know,” he said at lunch, smiling at her over a glass of Graves.

“Well, I sha’n’t be wanting to get away from you,” she answered, smiling. “Not very far, Harold!”

“Are your people still abusing me?”

He put the question with a laugh.

“They never abused you, only me.” Then came the irrepressible question: “Do you like my new frock? I put it on on purpose—for the house, you know.”

“Our home!” he murmured, rather sentimentally, it must be confessed. The question about the frock he did not answer; he was thinking of the home. Winifred was momentarily grateful to a stout lady at the next table, who put up her glass, looked at the frock, and with a nod of approval called her companion’s attention to it. This was while Harold paid the bill.

Then they took another cab, and headed north—through Berkeley Square, where Winifred would have liked, but did not expect, to stop, and so up to Oxford Street. Here they bore considerably to the east, then plunged north again and drove through one or two long streets. Harold, who had made the journey before, paid no heed to the route, but talked freely of delightful hours which they were to enjoy together, of books to read and thoughts to think, and of an intimate sympathy which, near as they were already to one another, the home and the home life alone could enable them fully to realise. Winifred listened; but far down in her mind now was another question, hardly easier to stifle than that about the frock. “Where are we going to?” would have been its naked form; but she yielded no more to her impulse than to look about her and mark and wonder. At last they turned by a sharp twist from a long narrow street into a short narrower street, where a waggon by the curbstone forced the cab to a walk, and shrill boys were playing an unintelligible noisy game.

“What queer places we pass through!” she cried with a laugh, as she laid her hand on his arm and turned her face to his.

“Pass through! We’re at home,” he answered, returning her laugh. “At home, Winnie!” He pointed at a house on the right-hand side, and, immediately after, the cab stopped. Winifred got out, holding her skirt back from contact with the wheel. Harold, in his eagerness to ring the door bell, had forgotten to render her this service. She stood on the pavement for a moment looking about her. One of the boys cried: “Crikey, there’s a swell!” and she liked the boy for it. Then she turned to the house.

“It wants a lick of paint,” said Harold cheerfully, as he rang the bell again.

“It certainly does,” she admitted, looking up at the dirty walls.

An old woman opened the door; she might be said, by way of metaphor, to need the same process as the walls; a very narrow passage was disclosed behind her.

“Welcome!” said Harold, giving Winifred his hand and then presenting her to the old woman. “This is my future wife,” he explained. “We’ve come to look at the house. But we won’t bother you, Mrs Blidgett, we’d rather run over it by ourselves. We shall enjoy that, sha’n’t we, Winnie?”

Winnie’s answer was a little scream and a hasty clutch at her gown; a pail of dirty water, standing in the passage, had threatened ruin; she recoiled violently from this peril against the opposite wall and drew away again, silently exhibiting a long trail of dark dust on her new grey frock. Harold laughed as he led the way into a small square room that opened from the passage.

“That’s the parlour,” said the old woman, wiping her arms with her apron. “You can find your way upstairs; nothing’s locked.” And with this remark she withdrew by a steep staircase leading underground.

“She’s the caretaker,” Harold explained.

“She doesn’t seem to have taken much care,” observed Winifred, still indignant about her gown and holding it round her as closely as drapery clings to an antique statue.

Miss Petheram’s account of the house, its actual dimensions, accommodation, and characteristics, has always been very vague, and since she refused information as to its number in the street, verification of these details has remained impossible. Perhaps it was a reasonably capacious, although doubtless not extensive, dwelling; perhaps, again, it was a confined and well-nigh stifling den. She remembered two things—first, its all-pervading dirt; secondly, the remarkable quality which (as she alleged) distinguished its atmosphere. She thought there were seven “enclosures,” this term being arrived at (after discussion) as a compromise between “rooms” and “pens”; and she knew that the windows of each of these enclosures were commanded by the windows of several other apparently similar and very neighbouring enclosures. Beyond this she could give no account of her first half-hour in the house; her exact recollection began when she was left alone in the enclosure on the first floor, which Harold asserted to be the drawing-room, Harold himself having gone downstairs to seek the old woman and elicit from her some information as to what were and what were not tenant’s fixtures in the said enclosure. “You can look about you,” he remarked cheerfully, as he left her, “and make up your mind where you’re going to have your favourite seat. Then you shall tell me, and I shall have the picture of you sitting there in my mind.” He pointed to a wooden chair, the only one then in the room. “Experiment with that chair,” he added, laughing. “I won’t be long, darling.”

Mechanically, without considering things which she obviously ought to have considered, Winifred sank into the designated seat, laid her parasol on a small table, and leant her elbows on the same piece of furniture as she held her face between her gloved hands. The atmosphere again asserted its peculiar quality; she rose for a moment and opened the window; fresh air was gained at the expense of spoilt gloves, and was weighted with the drawbacks of a baby’s cries and an inquisitive woman’s stare from over the way. Shutting the window again, she returned to her chair—the symbol of what was to be her favourite seat in days to come, her chosen corner in the house which had been the subject of so many talks and so many dreams. There were a great many flies in the room; the noise of adjacent humanity in street and houses was miscellaneous and penetrating; the air was very close. And this house was rather more expensive than their calculations had allowed. They had immensely enjoyed making those calculations down there in the country, under the old yew hedge and in sight of the flower beds beneath the library window. She remembered the day they did it. There was a cricket match in the meadow. Mildred and her husband brought the drag over, and Sir Barton came in his tandem. It was almost too hot in the sun, but simply delightful in the shade. She and Harold had had great fun over mapping out their four hundred a year and proving how much might be done with it—at least compared with anything they could want when once they had the great thing that they wanted.

The vision vanished; she was back in the dirty little room again; she caught up her parasol; a streak across the dust marked where it had lain on the table; she sprang up and twisted her frock round, craning her neck back; ah, that she had reconnoitred that chair! She looked at her gloves; then with a cry of horror she dived for her handkerchief, put it to her lips, and scrubbed her cheeks; the handkerchief came away soiled, dingy, almost black. This last outrage overcame her; the parasol dropped on the floor, she rested her arms on the table and laid her face on them, and she burst into sobs, just as she used to in childhood when her brothers crumpled a clean frock or somebody spoke to her roughly. And between her sobs she cried, almost loudly, very bitterly: “Oh, it’s too mean and dirty and horrid!”

Harold had stolen softly upstairs, meaning to surprise the girl he loved, perhaps to let a snatched kiss be her first knowledge of his return. He flushed red, and his lips set sternly; he walked across the room to her with a heavy tread. She looked up, saw him, and knew that her exclamation had been overheard.

“What in the world is the matter?” he asked in a tone of cold surprise.

It was very absurd—she couldn’t stop crying; and from amid her weeping nothing more reasonable, nothing more adequate, nothing less trivial would come than confused murmurs of “My frock, Harold!” “My parasol!” “Oh, my face, my gloves!” He smiled contemptuously. “Don’t you see?” she exclaimed, exhibiting the gloves and parasol.

“See what? Are you crying because the room’s dirty?” He paused and then added, “I’m sorry you think it mean and horrid. Very sorry, Winifred.”

Offence was deep and bitter in his voice; he looked at her with a sort of disgust; she stopped sobbing and regarded him with a gaze in which fright and expectation seemed mingled, as though there were a great peril, and just one thing that might narrowly avert it. But his eyes were very hard. She dried her tears, and then forlornly scrubbed her cheeks again. He watched her with hostile curiosity, appearing to think her a very strange spectacle. Presently he spoke. “I thought you loved me. Oh, I daresay you thought so too till I came into competition with your new frock. I beg pardon—I must add your gloves and your parasol. As for the house, it’s no doubt mean and horrid; we were going to be poor, you see.” He laughed scornfully, as he added, “You might even have had to do a little dusting yourself now and then! Horrible!”

“I just sat there and looked at him.” That was Winifred’s own account of her behaviour. It is not very explicit and leaves room for much conjecture as to what her look said or tried to say. But whatever the message was he did not read it. He was engrossed in his own indignation, readier to hurt than to understand, full of his own wrong, of the mistake he had made, of her extraordinary want of love, of courage, of the high soul. Very likely all this was a natural enough state of mind for him to be in. Justice admits his provocation; the triviality of her spoken excuses gave his anger only too fine an opportunity. He easily persuaded himself that here was a revelation of the real woman, a flash of light that showed her true nature, showing, too, the folly of his delusion about her. Against all this her look and what it asked for had very little chance, and she could find no words that did not aggravate her offence.

“This is really rather a ludicrous scene,” he went on. “Is there any use in prolonging it?” He waited for her to speak, but she was still tongue-tied. “The caretaker needn’t be distressed by seeing the awful effects of her omission to dust the room; but, if you’re composed enough, we might as well go.” He looked round the room. “You’ll be glad to be out of this,” he ended.

“I know what you must think of me,” she burst out, “but—but you don’t understand—you don’t see——”

“No doubt I’m stupid, but I confess I don’t. At least there’s only one thing I see.” He bowed and waved his hand towards the door. “Shall we go?” he asked.

She led the way downstairs, her skirt again held close and raised clear of her ankles; her care for it was not lost on Harold as he followed her, for she heard him laugh again with an obtrusive bitterness that made his mirth a taunt. The old caretaker waited for them in the passage.

“When’ll you be coming, sir?” she asked.

“I don’t know. It’s not certain we shall come,” said he. “The lady is not much taken with the house.”

“Ah, well!” sighed the old woman resignedly.

For an account of their drive back to the station materials are, again, sadly wanting. “He hardly said a word, and I did nothing but try to get my face clean and my gloves presentable,” was Winifred’s history of their journey. But she remembered—or chose to relate—a little more of what passed while they waited for the train on the platform at Euston. He left her for a few minutes on pretext of smoking a cigarette, and she saw him walking up and down, apparently in thought. Then he came back and sat down beside her. His manner was grave now; to judge by his recorded words, perhaps it was even a little pompous; but when may young men be pompous, if not at such crises as these?

“It’s no use pretending that nothing has happened, Winifred,” he said. “That would be the hollowest pretence, not worthy, I think, of either of us. Perhaps we had better take time to consider our course and—er—our relations to one another.”

“You don’t want to marry me now?” she asked simply.

“I want to do what is best for our happiness,” he replied. “We cannot forget what has happened to-day.”

“I know you would never forget it,” she said.

He did not contradict her; he looked first at his watch, then along the platform for the approach of her train. To admit that he might forget it was impossible to him; in such a case forgetfulness would be a negation of his principles and a slur on his perception. It would also be such a triumph over his vanity and his pride as it did not lie in him to achieve, such a forgiveness as his faults and virtues combined to put beyond the power of his nature. She looked at him; and “I smiled,” she said, not seeming herself to know why she had smiled, but conscious that, in the midst of her woe, some subtly amusing thought about him had come into her mind. She had never been amused at him before; so she, too, was getting some glimmer of a revelation out of the day’s experience—not the awful blaze of light that had flashed on Harold’s eyes, but a dim ray, just enough to give cause to that puzzled smile for which she could not explicitly account.

So they parted, and for persons who have followed the affair at all closely it is hardly necessary to add that they never came together again. This issue was obvious, and Winifred seems to have made up her mind to it that very same evening, for she called her mother into her room (as the good lady passed on the way to bed) and looked up from the task of brushing the grey frock which she had spread out on the sofa.

“I don’t think I shall marry Mr Jackson now, mother,” she said.

Mrs Petheram looked at her daughter and at her daughter’s gown.

“You’d better tell me more about it to-morrow. You look tired to-night, dear,” she replied.

But Winifred never told her any more—in the first place, because the family was too delighted with the fact to care one straw about how it had come to pass, and, in the second place, on the more important ground that the thing was really too small, too trivial, and too absurd to bear telling—at least to the family. To me, for some reason or other, Winifred did tell it, or some of it—enough, anyhow, to enable me, with the help of a few touches of imagination, to conjecture how it occurred.

“Don’t you think it was very absurd?” she asked at the end of her story. We were sitting by the yew hedge, near the library windows, looking across the flower beds to the meadow; it was a beautiful day, and the old place was charming. “Because,” she added, “I did love him, you know; and it seems a small thing to separate about, doesn’t it?”

“If he had behaved differently——” I began.

“I don’t see how he could be expected to,” she murmured.

“You expected him to,” I said firmly. She turned to me with an appearance of interest, as though I might be able to interpret to her something that had been causing her puzzle. “Or you wouldn’t have looked at him as you say you did—or smiled at him, as you admit you did. But you were wrong to expect him to, because he’s not that kind of man.”

“What kind of man?”

“The kind of man to catch you in his arms, smother you in kisses (allow me the old phrase), tell you that he understood all you felt, knew all you were giving up, realised the great thing you were doing for him.”

Winifred was listening. I went on with my imaginary scene of romantic fervour.

“That when he contrasted that mean little place with the beauties you were accustomed to, with the beauties which were right and proper for you, when he saw your daintiness soiled by that dust, that gown whose hem he would willingly——”

“He needn’t say quite as much as that,” interrupted Winifred, smiling a little.

“Well, or words to that effect,” said I. “That when he did all this and saw all this, you know, he loved you more, and knew that you loved him more than he had dared to dream, with a deeper love, a love that gave up for him all that you loved next best and second only to him; that after seeing your tears he would never doubt again that you would face all trials and all troubles with him at your side—Don’t you think, if he’d said something of that kind, accompanying his words with the appropriate actions——” I paused.

“Well?” asked Winifred.

“Don’t you think you might have been living in that horrid little house now, instead of being about to contract an alliance with Sir Barton Amesbury?”

“How do you know I shall do that?” she cried.

“It needs,” I observed modestly, “little skill to discern the approach of the inevitable.” I looked at her thoughtful face and at her eyes; they had their old look of wondering in them. “Don’t you think that if he’d treated the situation in that way——?” I asked.

“Perhaps,” she said softly. “But he wouldn’t think of all that. He was such an Idealist.”

I really do not know why she applied that term to him at that moment, except that he used to apply it to himself at many moments. But since it seemed to her to explain his conduct, there is no need to quarrel with the epithet.

“And I hope,” said I, “that the grey frock wasn’t irretrievably ruined?”

“I’ve never worn it again,” she murmured.

So I suppose it was ruined—unless she has some other reason. But she would be right to treat it differently from other frocks; it must mean a good deal to her, although it failed to mean anything except its own pretty self to Mr Jackson.

FOREORDAINED

“I DON’T say,” observed the Colonel, “that limited liability companies haven’t great advantages. In fact, I’m a director myself—it’s a big grocery—and draw three hundred a year—a very welcome addition to my half-pay—and, for all I know, I may supply some of you fellows with your morning bacon. If I do, it just exemplifies the point I was about to make; which is this—When it comes to limited companies, you never know who anybody is. I could tell you a little story to illustrate that; it’s rather a sad one, though.”

The club smoking-room was cheerfully lighted, the fire burned brightly, we each had a cigar and a drink. We intimated to the Colonel that we felt in a position to endure a touch of tragedy.

“It’s some years ago now,” he said, “but it affected me considerably at the time. Do any of you go to Stretchley’s for your clothes?”

Three of us shook our heads wistfully. The fourth—a young man, and a new member, whom none of us knew, but who had a legal look about him and wore admirable trousers of a delicate grey—answered the Colonel’s question in the affirmative.

“If I may say so, you and Stretchley do one another credit, sir,” said the Colonel, with an approving glance at the new member’s trousers. “And I needn’t tell you that Stretchley’s have few equals—and no superiors. When you say Stretchley’s, you say everything. I have never gone to them myself: partly because I couldn’t afford it, more perhaps from motives of delicacy—from consideration for poor George Langhorn’s feelings. He has always preferred not to act professionally for his personal friends, even though he lost money in consequence.”

“How does George Langhorn come in?” I ventured to ask.

“He is Stretchley’s, to all intents and purposes. It’s a small family company. The business was founded by George’s maternal grandfather, and carried to greatness by his mother’s brother, Fred Stretchley, whom I used to see at Brighton years ago. Fred made it into a company, but of course kept the bulk of the shares to himself, besides the entire control; and when he died he left all he had to George, on condition—mark you, on condition—that George remained in the business, and in active control of it. He did that because he knew that George hated it, and, at the same time, had a wonderful turn for it.”

“Rather odd, that!” the new member observed.

“I don’t think so, sir,” said the Colonel. “He had a knack for it, because it was in his blood; and he hated it, because he’d had it crammed down his throat all his life. He’d been right through the mill from a boy; the only holiday he’d ever had from it was a year at Bonn—and that was to learn German, with a view to business. It was at Bonn that I became acquainted with him, and a very nice fellow he was—quite a gentleman, and extremely well-informed. We became great friends. His only fault was his exaggerated dislike of his own occupation. On that subject he was morbid—and, I’m afraid I must add, a trifle snobbish. All the same, he was unmistakably proud of Stretchley’s. He was quite alive to the fact that, if he had to be a tailor, it was a fine thing to be Stretchley’s, and in moments of confidence he would thank Heaven that he hadn’t been born in the ready-made line—‘reach-me-downs,’ he called it. ‘It might have been worse,’ he would say manfully. At those times I felt a great respect for him.”

“They do know how to make a pair of breeches,” murmured the new member, regarding his own legs with pensive satisfaction.

“Nobody better, nobody better,” the Colonel agreed, with a solemn cordiality—and we all looked at the new member’s legs for some moments. “Well, as I was saying,” the Colonel then resumed, “George Langhorn and I became real friends; but I was abroad on service for two or three years after he came back from Bonn and got into harness in Savile Row, and so I lost sight of him for a bit. But after I’d been home a few months, I was passing through town on my way to the Riviera, on six weeks’ leave, and I dropped in at his place and saw him. I found him in a sad way—very depressed and down in the mouth, railing against the business, utterly sick of it. He told me he couldn’t endure the sight of a frock-coat, and spent all his time at home in pyjamas and a dressing-gown—just because those were portions of apparel not supplied by Stretchley’s. Morbid, of course, but sad, very sad! It looked to me as if he was on the verge of a breakdown, and I took a strong line with him. I told him that he owed it to himself to take a complete holiday—to get right away from the shop for a bit, to forget all about it, to put plenty of money in his pocket, and give himself a real holiday—he told me he hadn’t taken more than a week here and there for two years. I said: ‘I’m just off to Monte Carlo. You come with me. Sink the shop—dismiss it from your mind—and come along.’ Well, he saw how wise I was, made his arrangements, and joined me at Charing Cross three days later. Off we went, and a very good time we had of it. George was a handsome young fellow of four or five and twenty, with lots to say for himself, and a very taking way with women. Nobody knew who he was, but I and my friends gave him a good start, and he could take care of the rest for himself. In point of fact I received a great many compliments on the good taste I showed in choosing my travelling companion. Ah, yes, we had very good fun!” The Colonel leant back in his chair for a moment, with a smile of pleasant—possibly of roguish—reminiscence.

“No signs of the tragedy yet, Colonel,” said I.

“Wait a bit; I’m just coming to it. When we’d been there about a fortnight, a young lady appeared on the scene. She was one of the prettiest creatures I ever saw—and I’ve seen some in my day—and as merry as she was pretty. Besides that, she was evidently uncommonly well off; she travelled with a companion, a maid, and a toy-poodle, and threw away her money at the tables as if she were made of it. I needn’t tell you that such a girl didn’t want for attentions at Monte Carlo, of all places in the world. The fortune-hunters were hot on her track, besides all the young fellows who were genuinely smitten with her. If I’d been ten years younger, I’d have had a shot myself. But it wouldn’t have been any use. From the very first George was the favourite, just as from the first George had been drawn to her. There seemed really to be what they call an affinity between them. I never saw an affair go so quickly or so prosperously. Yes, there seemed to be an affinity. George was carried right off his feet, and I was intensely pleased to see it. He wasn’t thinking of Stretchley’s now, and he was putting on weight every day! My treatment was being a brilliant success, and I didn’t mind admitting that more than half the credit was due to pretty Miss Minnie Welford—that was her name.

“I was only waiting to hear the happy news when one morning George came down looking decidedly pale and with a face as long as your arm. I made sure he’d received a telegram calling him back to Savile Row. But it wasn’t that. This was it. In conversation, in the garden of the Casino the evening before, somebody had begun talking about mésalliances and that sort of thing. One took one side, and one another—the people who had nothing in particular to boast about in the family way being the loudest in declaring they’d never make a low marriage, as they generally are. Minnie, who was sitting next George, took the high romantic line. She said that if she loved a man (George told me she blushed adorably as she said this—you can believe that or not, as you like) neither family nor fortune would weigh for a minute with her. That made George happy, as you can imagine. Then some fellow said: ‘You’d marry the chimney-sweep, would you, Miss Welford?’ ‘Yes, if I loved him,’ says she. ‘Absolutely nobody barred?’ the man asked, laughing. She blushed again (or so George said) and laughed a little and said: ‘Well, just one—just one class of man; but I won’t tell you which it is.’ And no more she would, though they all tried to guess, and chaffed her, and worried her to tell. When the talk had drifted off to something else, George seized his opportunity—he told me he had a horrid sort of presentiment—and whispered in her ear: ‘Tell me!’ She looked at him with eyes full of fun and said: ‘Well, I’ll tell you; but it’s a secret. Swear to keep it!’ George swore to keep it, and then she leant over to him, put her lips close to his ear, and whispered—— Well, of course, you’ve guessed what she whispered?”

“Tailors!” said the new member in a reflective tone.

“Yes, ‘tailors,’ ” said the Colonel mournfully. “She just whispered ‘Tailors!’ and ran off with a merry glance (so George said)—a merry glance. And he hadn’t had a wink of sleep all night, and came to tell me the first thing in the morning. I never saw a man so broken up.”

“Had she found out about him?” I asked.

“No, no, sir; not a hint—not an idea. You’ll see later on that she couldn’t have had the least idea. But there it was—tailors! And what the dickens was poor George Langhorn to do? He took one view, I urged the other. His was the high-flying line. He must tell her the whole truth before he breathed as much as a word of love to her! Fatal, of course, but he said it was the only line an honourable man could take. I denied that. I said: ‘Tell her you love her first. Get her consent—because you will get it. Let the matter rest for a week or two—let her love grow, let the thing become fully settled and accepted, so that to break it off would cause talk and so on. Then, when it’s all settled, just casually observe, in a laughing kind of way, that you’re sorry she has a prejudice against a certain estimable occupation, because you happen to be indirectly connected with it.’ Machiavellian, you’ll say, no doubt; but effective, very effective! ‘Indirectly connected’ I consider was justifiable. Yes, I do. I am, as I said a little while ago, a director of a grocery business, but I don’t consider myself directly—not directly—connected with lard and sugar. No, I didn’t go beyond the limits of honour, though possibly I skirted them. In helping one’s friends, one does. However, George wouldn’t have it, and at last I had to be content with a compromise. He wasn’t to speak of the business before he spoke of love, nor to speak of love before he spoke of the business. He was to speak of them both at once. That was what we decided.”

“Rather difficult,” commented the new member, with that reflective smile which I began to recognise as habitual.

“Pray, sir, would you expect such a thing to be easy?” demanded the Colonel, with an approach to warmth. “We did the best we could, sir, under exceptionally awkward and delicate circumstances.” The Colonel leant back again and took a sip of barley-water. That is his tipple.

We all waited in silence for the Colonel to resume his narrative. I remember that, owing perhaps to the associations of the subject, my regard was fixed on the new member’s grey trousers, to which he himself continued to pay a thoughtful attention. The Colonel took up the tale again in impressive tones.

“It has been my lot,” he said, “to witness many instances of the perverse working of what we call fate or destiny, and of the cruel freaks which it plays with us poor human creatures. I may mention, just in passing, the case of my old friend Major Vincent, who, himself a vegetarian, married a woman whom he subsequently discovered to be constitutionally unable so much as to sit in the same room with a cabbage. But neither that case nor any other within my experience equals the story which I am now telling you. You will agree with me when you hear the dénoûement, which is of a nature impossible for any of you to anticipate.”

“I think I know it,” observed the new member.

“It’s impossible that you should, sir,” said the Colonel firmly, though courteously: “and when you have heard me out, you yourself will be the first to admit as much. Where was I? Ah, I remember. Well, George Langhorn left me in the condition which I have attempted to describe, and with the understanding which I have mentioned. How, precisely, he carried out that understanding, I am, of course, unable to say, as his interview with Miss Welford was naturally a private one, and he never volunteered any detailed account of it, while it would have been absolute cruelty to press him on the subject; for if his state of mind was lamentable when he left me, it was as nothing to the dismay and horror which held possession of him on his return some two hours later. He rushed into my room really like a man distraught—I am in the habit of measuring my words, and I don’t use that one unadvisedly—plumped himself down on my sofa, and ejaculated: ‘Merciful heavens, she owns half the Sky-high!’ ”

At this climax—for such his manner obviously indicated it to be—the Colonel looked round on us in sombre triumph. We were all gravely attentive (except the new member, who still smiled), and the Colonel continued, well satisfied with the effect which he had produced.

“There’s fate for you, if you like!” he exclaimed, with uplifted forefinger. “There’s the impossibility of evading destiny or escaping from a foreordained environment! Out of all the girls in the world, George had fixed his affections on that particular one; he had gone straight to her, as it were; and, for my part, I can’t doubt that the very thing he hated, and she hated too, had, all the same, served in some mysterious way to bring them together. And there was the situation! Not only was George, as a man, forbidden the escape which he had prayed for, but Stretchley’s was brought into contact with the ‘Sky-high Tailoring Company’! No doubt you are all familiar with its advertisements—chubby boys in sailor suits, square-legged little girls in velveteen, dress-suits at thirty-seven and sixpence! I need not enlarge on the subject; it’s distasteful. It is enough to say that any connection between Stretchley’s and the Sky-high was to George’s mind almost unthinkable. Observe, then, the curious and distressing psychological situation. As a man, he hated Stretchley’s; as Stretchley’s, he loathed and despised the Sky-high. His love—his most unfortunate love—was in conflict at once with his personal feelings and with his professional pride. And what of her? When he grew calmer, George entered on that subject with some fulness. She had suffered, exactly as he had, from the obsession of the family business, in the shadow of which she had been bred, to a half-share in which she had succeeded on her father’s death. In early days, before fortune came, she had even been dressed from the stock! Like George, she had looked to marriage for a complete change of life and associations. It was not to be. And, more than that, she was acutely conscious of what George must feel. Her training and the family atmosphere had not failed to teach her that. She knew only too well how Stretchley’s would feel towards the Sky-high. And George was Stretchley’s, and she was the Sky-high! One sometimes reads of mésalliances in the papers or meets them among one’s acquaintance. Never have I met one like this. The very fact of the occupation being in essence the same intensified the discrepancy and the contrast. Which, gentlemen, would surprise and, I may say, shock you more—that a duke should marry oil or soap, or that a really first-class purveyor should take his bride from a fried fish shop? No man of perception can hesitate. It is within the bounds of the same occupation that the greatest contrasts, the greatest distance, the greatest gulfs of feeling are to be found. I value an otherwise painful experience because it exhibited that philosophic truth in so vivid and striking a manner. You would sooner ask the Commander-in-Chief to lend a hand with a wheelbarrow than propose to him to take command of a corporal’s guard. Your chef would no doubt put on the coals to oblige a lady, but not to oblige a thousand ladies would he wash the dishes!”

“I daresay that’s all true,” I made bold to observe, “but, nevertheless, your pair of lovers seem to me rather ridiculous.”

“Exactly, sir,” said the Colonel—and I was relieved that he took my interruption so well. “They would seem to you ridiculous. Probably the chef seems ridiculous too? A man of another profession can’t have the feeling in its full intensity. It seems ridiculous! But think—doesn’t that very fact increase the tragedy? To suffer from a feeling deep and painful, and to be aware that it is in the eyes of the world at large ridiculous—can you imagine anything more distressing?”

“Your story illustrates more than one great truth, I perceive, Colonel.”

“If it did not, sir, I should never have troubled you with it,” he answered with lofty courtesy.

“And what happened? Did love triumph over all?”

“I hesitate to describe the issue in those terms,” said he, with a slight frown. “They are conventional—designedly, no doubt—and I don’t think that they fit this particular case. George and Miss Welford were, beyond question, deeply attached to one another, and they got married in due course—nor am I aware that the marriage has turned out otherwise than well in the ordinary sense. Mrs Langhorn is a very charming woman. But was it a triumph of love? I look deeper, gentlemen. In my view love was but an instrument in the hands of Fate. The triumph was the triumph of Fate, and I am persuaded that, when they went to the altar, resignation to destiny was the most prominent feeling in the minds of both of them. That is why I said at the beginning that the story was rather a sad one. The very night before the wedding I found George poring over the Sky-high’s illustrated catalogue! What does that fact carry to your minds?”

“It looks bad,” I admitted, with a sigh.

“It speaks volumes,” said the Colonel briefly, and he finished his barley-water.

The new member flung the end of his cigar into the grate and rose to his feet. His face still wore the reflective smile which had decorated it throughout the Colonel’s story.

“And what,” I asked the Colonel, “are the present relations between Stretchley’s and the Sky-high?”

“It would be curious to know,” he answered; “but as to that I have no information. I’ve never ventured to interrogate George Langhorn on the point.”

“I think I can answer the question,” said the new member, flicking an ash off his trousers. “The two companies were privately amalgamated last week. I drew the articles of association myself. Mr Langhorn is to be chairman of the joint concern.”

The Colonel might plausibly have resented a silence so long maintained as to border on deceit. He showed no anger. He nodded his head gravely, as though to say: “Here is the Epilogue! Here is the Catastrophe complete!”

“Stretchley’s and the Sky-high!” he murmured. “Poor George Langhorn! Poor George!”

I went home to dinner really quite depressed.

PRUDENCE AND THE BISHOP

MISS PRUDENCE was astonishingly pretty; it was far from tedious to lie on the bank of the stream and watch her, while her second brother—a lanky youth of fifteen—fished for non-existent trout with an entirely unplausible fly.

“So Clara Jenkins said that about me?”

I nodded. “Just let it fall, you know, Miss Prudence, in the give-and-take of conversation.”

“If you weren’t a stranger in our neighbourhood, you wouldn’t pay any attention to what a girl like that says.”

“Oh, but it was about you,” I protested.

Prudence looked at me as if she were thinking that I might have been amusing when I was young.

“What was the word Clara used?” she asked.

“There were two words. ‘Calculating’ was one.”

“Oh, was it?”

“Yes. The other was ‘heartless.’ ”

“I like that! It’s only what mamma tells me.”

“Your mother tells you?” My tone indicated great surprise: her mother is the vicar’s wife, and the alleged counsel seemed unpastoral.

“Yes—and it’s quite right too,” Prudence maintained. “You know how poor we are. And there are eight of us!”

“Five and three?”

“Yes: Johnny at Oxford, Dick at school, and Clarence to go soon! And the girls—you know what girls cost, anyhow!”

“They vary, I suppose?”

“Just you talk to mamma about that!”

That didn’t seem urgent. “Another time,” I murmured, “I shall be pleased to exchange impressions.”

I don’t think Prudence heard. She was looking very thoughtful, a minute wrinkle ornamenting her brow.

“The boys must have their education; the girls must have justice done to them.”

“To be sure! And so——?”

“And why shouldn’t one fall in love with a man who—who——”

“Would be delighted to do all that?”

“Of course he’d be delighted. I mean a man who—who could do it.”

“Rich?”

“Papa says differences in worldly position are rightly ordained.”

“No doubt he’s correct. Your man would have to be quite rich, wouldn’t he? Seven besides you!”

“Oh, we aren’t accustomed to much,” said Prudence, with a smile at me which somehow made me wish for a cheque-book and an immense amount of tact; a balance at the bank we will presuppose.

“And may I ask,” I resumed, “why you are selected out of all the family for this—er—sacrifice?”

She blushed, but she was wary. “I’m the eldest girl, you see,” she said.

“Just so,” I agreed. “I was very stupid not to think of that.”

“The others are so young.”

“Of course. It would be waiting till it was too late?”

“Yes, Mr Wynne.”

I interpolate here a plain statement of fact. The other girls resemble their mother, and the vicar’s type, reproduced in Miss Prudence, is immeasurably the more refined—not to say picturesque.

“Oh, if you won’t be serious!” sighed Prudence—though, as has been seen, I had said nothing.

“It certainly is not a laughing matter,” I admitted.

“How difficult the world is! Was Sir John at the Jenkins’s?”

“Sir John?”

“Sir John Ffolliot—of Ascombe, you know.”

“Tall red-faced young man?”

“Yes, very—I mean, rather. Rather tall, anyhow.”

“Oh yes, he was there.”

“When Clara talked about me?”

“So far as I recollect, he was not in earshot at that moment, Miss Prudence. But then I wasn’t in earshot while she talked to him. So possibly——”

“Now she really is a cat, isn’t she?”

“I haven’t the smallest doubt of it. But you must make allowances.”

“I do. Still I can’t see why plain people are to say just what they like!”

“Nobody minds them,” I observed consolingly.

The conversation flagged for a moment or two. That didn’t matter; one can always look at the view.

“Is my hat crooked?” asked Miss Prudence with affected anxiety.

“I should say you’d get him, if you really want him,” I remarked.

My thoughts were switched off in another direction by Miss Prudence’s next utterance. I don’t complain of that; it was probably rightly ordained, as the vicar would have said; there’s something in a meadow and a river that resists middle age—and I don’t know that a blue frock, with eyes to match, and hair that——

“Do you happen to know how much a bishop gets?” asked Prudence.

“Not precisely, Miss Prudence. It varies, I believe—like what girls cost. All I know is that it’s never enough for the needs of his diocese.”

“Oh, isn’t it?” She looked rather troubled over this information.

“So the papers say—and the bishops too sometimes.”

“Still you wouldn’t call them exactly poor, would you?”

“I call them poor! Good Lord!” was my observation.

“You know our bishop’s Palace?”

“A charming residence, Miss Prudence—even stately.”

“And Sir John says he drives awfully good horses.”

“Let us rely on Sir John where we can.”

“And Mr Davenport says he gives away a lot.”

“Mr Davenport?”

“So he can’t be poor, can he?”

“Mr Davenport?”

“Oh, I beg pardon! But you’ve met him. How forgetful you are! Papa’s curate!”

“Dear me, dear me! Of course! You mean Frank?”

“Papa calls him Frank.”

“You all call him Frank.”

“I suppose we do—yes.”

“So I forgot his surname just for the minute. Does he call you Prudence?”

“What has that got to do with it?”

“Roughly speaking, it ranges from three to seven thousand a year. More for archbishops, according to scale, of course.”

“Well, that sounds plenty,” said Prudence.

(I have ascertained from Crockford’s Directory that the value of the vicar’s living is three hundred and twenty five pounds per annum.)

“Don’t be calculating, Miss Prudence!”

“And heartless?” The little wrinkle was on her brow again.

“That remark of Miss Jenkins’ seems to rankle!”

“I wasn’t thinking—altogether—of Clara.”

It seemed hard if somebody else had been calling her heartless too—or even thinking it. And all for listening to her mother! I tried to administer consolation.

“The thing is,” I observed, “a judicious balancing of considerations. Here, on the one hand, is justice to be done to the girls—in the way of accomplishments and appearance, I may presume?—and education to be given to the boys—it would be no bad thing if someone taught Dick how to make a fly, for example; on the other hand lie what I may broadly term your inclinations and——”

I awoke to the fact that Miss Prudence had not been listening to the latter portion of my remark. She was rubbing the knuckles of one hand into the palm of the other, and frowning now quite heavily. Then she twisted one little hand round the other; and almost inaudibly she said: “How can one balance considerations”—(She infused a pleasant scorn into her intonation of these respectable words)—“How can one balance considerations when——?”

Primâ facie that “when——” admitted of various interpretations. But I chose one without hesitation.

“Then why this talk about how much a bishop gets, you calculating heartless girl?”

She darted at me a look of fearful merriment.

“And they make them quite young sometimes in these days,” I added. And I rounded off my period by remarking that Sir John Ffolliot seemed a stupid sort of dog.

“Yes, isn’t he?”

“Might do for Clara Jenkins?”

“If I thought that——” Miss Prudence began hotly.

“But the idea is preposterous,” I added hastily. “One of your sisters now?”

“That’s really not a bad idea,” she conceded graciously.

In fact, she had suddenly grown altogether very gracious—and I do not refer merely to the marked civility of her manner towards myself. The frown had vanished, the wrinkle was not: the hands were clasped in a comfortable repose. She looked across to me with a ridiculously contented smile.

“It’s such a good thing to have a talk with a really sensible man,” she said.

I took off my hat—but I also rose to my feet. To present me as a future bishop was asking too much of the whirligig of time. Not a kaleidoscope could do it! Besides, I wasn’t serious about it; it was just the meadow, the river—and the rest. In order to prove this to myself beyond dispute, I said that I had to go to the post office and despatch an important letter.

“To the post office?” said Prudence, displaying some confusion at the mention of that institution. “Oh, then, would you mind—it would be so kind—would you really mind——?”

“Calling in at the parlour window and telling Mr Davenport that you’re going to have some tennis after tea? With pleasure, of course.”

“I didn’t know you knew he lodged there!” she cried.

“Pending promotion to the Palace, yes.”

I made that last remark after I had turned my back, and I didn’t look round to see whether Miss Prudence had heard it; it was, in fact, in the nature of an “aside”—a thing which may be heard or not at pleasure.

“Won’t you come too?” she called.

“Certainly not. I propose to meditate.” On these words I did turn round, and waved her farewell. I think she was indulging in a most proper forgetfulness of her brothers and sisters—and, incidentally, of myself. So I proceeded to the post office, although of course I had no letter at all to send.

I found Mr Davenport in flannels, sitting with his feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a pipe and reading. He was an engaging six-feet of vigour, and I delivered my message with as little rancour as could be expected under the circumstances.

“I think I’ll go,” he said, briskly knocking out his pipe.

It was some satisfaction to me to remind him that it was only half-past three, and that tennis didn’t begin till after tea. He put his pipe back between his teeth with a disappointed jerk.

“What are you reading?” I inquired affably. I must be pictured as standing outside the post office parlour window while conducting this colloquy.

He looked a trifle ashamed. “The fact is, I sometimes try to keep up my Latin a bit,” he explained, conscious of the eccentricity of this proceeding. “It’s Juvenal.”

“Not so very clerical,” I ventured to observe.

“A great moralist,” he maintained—yet with an eye distantly twinkling with the light of unregenerate days.

“I suppose so. That bit about prudence now——?”

“About who?” cried he, springing to his feet and dropping his poet on the floor.

“Evidently you recollect! Nullum numen abest si sit Prudentia——”

“Curiously enough, I’ve just been having a shot at a rendering of that couplet,” said Mr Davenport. As he spoke he approached the window: I sat down on the sill outside and lit a cigar.

“Curiously enough indeed!” said I. “May I be privileged to hear it?”

He threw out one arm and recited—

“ ‘All Heaven’s with us, so we Prudence win:
If Fortune’s hailed a goddess, ours the sin!’ ”

“Pretty well for the spirit, but none too faithful to the letter,” I remarked critically. “However, Dr Johnson is open to the same objection. You remember—

“ ‘Celestial Wisdom calms the mind,
And makes the happiness she does not find.’ ”

“I call that pretty bad.”

“Not much to the present point, anyhow,” I agreed.

“I had another rhyme—and after all the rhyme’s the difficulty. How about this?—

“ ‘All Heaven’s ours if Prudence we can gain,
Our silly hands build Fortune’s empty fane!’ ”

“Really you fire me to emulation,” I said. “I think I’ll try my own hand at it—

“ ‘If Prudence loves, what other boon need I?’ ”

“Splendid!” he cried, puffing at his empty pipe.

“ ‘Unless a bishop’s palace by-and-by?’ ”

This audacious departure from the original affected him powerfully. He laid a hand like a pair of tweezers on my wrist and cried excitedly—

“You’ve been talking to her!”

“So have you,” said I, “and to better purpose.”

By a subtle and rapid movement he was, in a moment, outside the door and stood facing me in the little front garden of the post office.

“I shouldn’t wonder if they began tennis before tea,” he remarked.

“You’ll find somebody to play a single. Good-bye!” He was turning away eagerly when something occurred to me. “Oh, by the way, Mr Davenport——”

“Yes?”

“Do you think you’ll ever be a bishop really?”

“Only when I talk to her,” he said, with a confused yet candid modesty which I found agreeable.

“Go and do homage for your temporalities,” I said.

“I say—her mother!” whispered Mr Davenport.

“She probably thought the same when she married the vicar.”

He smiled. “That’s rather funny!” he cried back to me, as he started off along the road.

“So your son-in-law may think some day, my boy,” said I with a touch of ill-humour. No matter, he was out of hearing. Besides I was not, I repeat, really serious about it—not half so serious, I venture to conjecture, as the vicar’s wife!

To her, perhaps, Dr Johnson’s paraphrase may be recommended.

THE OPENED DOOR

“WE may float for ten minutes,” said the Second Officer.

After a pause the passenger remarked:

“I’m glad of it, upon my word I am.”

“You’re thankful for small mercies,” was the retort.

The passenger did not explain. He could not expect the Second Officer, or the rest of them, to sympathise with his point of view, or share the feelings which made him rejoice, not at the respite, but at the doom itself. Those who were not busy getting the women and children into the boats, and keeping the ship above water, were cursing the other vessel for steaming away without offering aid, or clutching in bewildered terror at anyone who could tell them how the collision had happened and what hope there was of salvation. The boats were got safely off, laden to their utmost capacity; lifebuoys were handed round, and, when they ran short, men tossed up for them, and the losers ransacked the deck for some makeshift substitute. The passenger took no part in the competition or the search. He stood with his hands in his pockets and a smile on his lips, waiting for the ten minutes to wear themselves away. His only grudge against fate lay in those superfluous ten minutes.

Left to himself, he began to think, lighting a cigarette. He had to use a fusee, which was a pity, especially for his last cigarette, but the wind blew fiercely. It was strange how much harm a man could do without being a particularly bad fellow, and what an impasse he could get himself into. He had drifted on, and things had fallen out so maliciously that, because of him who hated hurting anybody, women were weeping and children smirched, and an old man hiding an honoured head in shame. He had even been required to be grateful to the man he hated most in the world, because he had not been put in the dock. That stuck in his throat more than all the rest. He had been ready to pay his shot and go to gaol—he would rather have done five years than owed the thanks for escaping them—but in very decency he couldn’t insist on going; the trial would have killed the old man. So they had concocted a plan—a chance of a new life, they called it—and shipped him off to the other side of the world with fifty pounds in his pocket—the gift of that enemy. At least he could get rid of the money now; and, still smiling, he dropped his pocket-book over the side into the great heaving waves. He had always meant it to go there—God forbid he should use it—but he had hardly hoped to go with it. He would follow it soon now. The door whose handle he had shrunk from turning had opened of its own accord in a most marvellously convenient way. To throw oneself overboard is a cold-blooded impossible sort of proceeding; the old man and the women would have heard of it, and he really didn’t want to give them any more pain. But this catastrophe was—from a selfish point of view—incredibly opportune. Such an exit had the dignity of the inevitable, and left the “new life” an agreeable hypothesis from which he doubted not that much comfort would be sucked by those dear, loving, foolish folk at home. Much “new life” he would have led! But let them think he would. And hurrah for a collision in deep water!

Five minutes gone—and they were deep in the water. The skipper was on the bridge; the engineers had come up and, together with the crew and such of the passengers as had not got away in the boats, were standing ready to jump at the word. Some were praying, some swearing, most discussing the matter in very much the same tones as they used in speculating about the weather on deck after dinner; but they all kept their eyes on the skipper.

“I shall just,” said the passenger, peering over the side, “go straight down. It oughtn’t to take long,” and he shivered a little. It had just struck him that the process might be very unpleasant, however satisfactory the result.

There was a sudden movement of the deck under him. The skipper seemed to shout, and, waving his arms, began to run down from the bridge. Then everybody jumped. The passenger dropped his finished cigarette, kicked off his deck shoes—a purely instinctive action—and jumped too. “Here goes!” he said.

When he came up again, he found himself swimming strongly. His arms and legs were not asking his leave about it; they were fighting the water as they had been taught, and they promised to make a long bout of it. He had never felt so vigorous. It was great nonsense, prolonging the thing like this. If he had thought of it, he wouldn’t have jumped so clear, then he would have been sucked down. He saw heads bobbing here and there about him; one man shrieked aloud and disappeared. It was—less the shrieking—just what he wanted to do. But he couldn’t. It was all very well to want to die, but this strong body of his had a word to say to that. Its business was to live, and it meant to live if it could. Well, it had always been a rebellious carcass—that was the cause of a great deal of the trouble—and it evidently meant to have its own way for this last time.

And it began to infect him. For the life of him, he couldn’t give in now. It was a fight between him and the water. He might have been a brute, and a rogue, and all the other pretty names that had come as sauce to that wretched fifty pounds, but he had never been a coward or shirked a fight. It was all right—he must be drowned in the end. But he would keep it up as long as he could; he would see it through; and with strong strokes he met and mastered and beat down wave after wave, outlived head after head that sank round him, and saw the old ship herself go under with a mighty pother.

All at once he found himself within reach of a spar. He was getting tired, though full of fight still, and he clutched at it for all the world as though he were in love with life. Hallo! There was a boy clinging to it—one of the ship’s boys, whom he knew well.

“Get off!” shrieked the boy. “Get off! It’s mine.”

“All right, Johnny, we’ll share it.”

“It won’t take us. Get off. It’s not fair. Oh, it’s going under!”

It was. The passenger let go, but kept close to it. It wouldn’t bear Johnny and him, but it would bear Johnny alone; it would also, probably, bear him alone. And he was getting very tired. Johnny saw his face and, clinging tight, began to cry. The passenger laid hold again. How jolly it was to have something under one’s chest! Johnny had had it for a long while. And what’s a ship’s boy? Besides, it’s every man for himself at such a time.

Johnny’s end ducked and Johnny’s head dipped with it. Johnny came up whimpering piteously, and swore in childish rage at the intruder. He was not a pretty boy, and he looked very ugly when he swore.

“You’ll drown us both, you——!” he gasped.

“It would bear me,” replied the passenger, “and you shouldn’t swear, Johnny.”

Johnny blubbered and swore again.

For an instant the passenger, resting as lightly as he could on the spar, watched Johnny’s face.

“You’ve kept afloat some time,” he observed, with an approving air. He liked pluck in boys—even ugly whimpering boys. His end went under, and he came up gurgling and spitting. He felt now as if he had no legs at all.

Johnny had stopped swearing, but was blubbering worse than ever.

“Damn it,” said the passenger, “haven’t I made enough people do that?” And he added, “Ta-ta, Johnny,” and let go the spar.

His legs were there, after all, and they let him know it. For time unmeasured he battled for the life he was weary of, and would not let himself be pushed through the open door. But at last he crossed its threshold.

Johnny was drowned too. But then the passenger had always protested against his acts being judged by their consequences; and it doesn’t seem fair to take it against him both ways.

LOVE’S LOGIC[1]

The Scene is a hall or corridor, lying between two conservatories, one on the right, the other on the left. Besides plants and other ornaments, the corridor is furnished with a couch and a small round table with an arm-chair by it. The time is between eleven and twelve in the evening.

Mr Marchesson’s back is visible in the doorway leading to the conservatory on the right.

MR M. (Speaking to unseen person in the conservatory.) So awfully sorry, but I absolutely promised to meet a man at the club. (Pause.) Beg pardon? Oh, a fellow named Smith—you don’t know him. (Pause.) Yes, I hope we shall meet soon, but I’m rather afraid I may have to go out of town. (Pause.) Good-night. (Backs a little further into the corridor.) Phew!

Miss Grainger’s back appears in the doorway leading to the conservatory on the left.

Miss G. (Speaking to unseen person in the conservatory.) Yes, of course we shall be friends. What? (Pause.) Oh yes, great friends, What? (Pause.) I don’t know—I may be going out of town. Good-night. (She backs into the corridor, throws her eyes upwards, and draws in her breath with a long sigh.)

Mr M. meanwhile has taken out a cigarette, and is just about to light it when they turn and see one another. Both start, smile, and then become grave and rather formal in manner.

Mr M. (Putting his hands—with the cigarette and the match-box—behind him.) Oh, I beg pardon! I didn’t think anybody—(He turns as if to retreat into the conservatory.)

Miss G. Please don’t go—and please do smoke. It’s so nice and cool here, isn’t it? (She sits down on the couch and fans herself gently.)

Mr M. May I really? (He comes forward a little, holding up his cigarette.) You’re sure you don’t mind?

(She nods. He lights the cigarette.)

Miss G. It’s so warm in that conservatory. (Pointing to the left.)

Mr M. (With feeling.) So it was in that one. (Pointing to the right. He wipes his brow, she fans herself assiduously.) Ouf!

Miss G. You do look rather—flustered.

Mr M. Well—in fact—so do you.

(They look at one another, trying to remain grave, but presently both give a short embarrassed laugh. Mr M. comes a step nearer, placing his hand on the back of the chair.)

I’ve got it! I know the signs!

(She looks at him inquiringly and with amusement. He nods towards the conservatory on the left.) You’ve been refusing some fellow in there.

Miss G. Have I? (Pointing to the conservatory on the right.) And what have you been doing in there?

Mr M. (After a careful glance over his shoulder.) As you didn’t see the lady, I don’t mind admitting that I’ve been doing the same thing.

Miss G. (Raising her brows.) Refusing?

Mr M. Refusing—to ask.

Miss G. Oh!

Mr M. (He smokes vigorously, then throws his cigarette into a receptacle.) It’s a precious lot easier for you than for us, though. I say, I must sound like a conceited idiot, I know, but—well, you see, the fact is——

Miss G. That you’re Mr Marchesson——?

Mr M. (Pleased.) You know my name?

Miss G. Oh yes. Mine’s Grainger.

Mr M. Yes. I—I know your name, Miss Grainger.

Miss G. You’re diamonds? (She touches some that she is wearing as she speaks. He nods gloomily.)

I’m soap. (He glances for a brief instant at his hand.) So, of course——! (She shrugs her shoulders and closes her fan. A moment’s pause.)

Mr M. Beastly, isn’t it?

Miss G. Well, it’s—monotonous.

Mr M. It’s worse than that. It’s degrading, it’s heart-breaking, it’s ruin to the character. It saps my faith in humanity, it trammels my actions, it confines my affections, it cuts me off from friendship, from the pleasant and innocent companionships which my nature longs for. I alone mayn’t look with the eye of honest admiration on a pretty girl, I alone mayn’t——

Miss G. Sit in a conservatory?

Mr M. (With a shudder.) Above all—not that! I tell you it’s kept me single for years! And you for——

Miss G. Years?

Mr M. (Smiling.) Months! All last season and most of this! Take your case now——

Miss G. (Eagerly leaning forward.) Oh yes, let’s!

Mr M. You’d naturally enjoy men’s society, you’d like their friendship, their company, their admiration. You’d enjoy an innocent but piquant flirtation.

Miss G. Should I?

Mr M. (Looking at her.) Well, yes, I think you would. You daren’t venture on it!

Miss G. It is generally fatal, I admit.

Mr M. The plain truth is that the thing’s intolerable. I shall stick a placard on my waistcoat—“Not for sale.”

Miss G. And I’d better become a hospital nurse!

Mr M. That’s rather an odd remedy, Miss Grainger. But, in some form or other, celibacy—public and avowed celibacy—is our only chance. (He throws himself down in the chair.)

Miss G. (Low.) Unless there was somebody who——

Mr M. Didn’t know who you were? Not to be done in these days, with the illustrated press! And—you’ll excuse my referring to it?—but your fond father put you on the wrappings of the soap. And owing to the large sale of the article——

Miss G. Yes, I know. But I meant—if there was somebody who didn’t—didn’t care about the money?

Mr M. (Half under his breath.) Said he didn’t!

Miss G. And who—who really did care just for—for oneself alone? Oh, I must sound romantic and absurd; but you—you know what I mean, Mr Marchesson? There are such men, aren’t there?

Mr M. Well, admitting there was one—and it’s a handsome admission, which I limit entirely to the male sex—in the first place you wouldn’t believe in him half the time, and in the second he wouldn’t believe in himself half the time, and in the third none of your friends would believe in him any of the time.

Miss G. That would be horrid—especially the friends, I mean.

Mr M. Female friends!

Miss G. Of course.

Mr M. Another disgusting aspect of the business! Do you—do I—ever get legitimate credit for our personal attractions? Never! Never!

Miss G. (With conviction.) That’s awfully true.

Mr M. So even your paragon, if you found him, wouldn’t meet the case. And as for my paragon, nobody but Diogenes would take on the job of finding her.

Miss G. (Musing.) Is nobody indifferent to money?

Mr M. Only if they’ve got more than they want. (He gives a glance at her, unperceived by her, rises, puts his hands in his pockets, and looks at her.) Only the unhappy rich.

Miss G. (Roused from abstraction.) I beg pardon, what?

Mr M. Imagine a man surfeited, cloyed, smothered in it; a man who has to pay six other men to look after it; a man who can’t live because of the income-tax, and daren’t die because of the death duties; a man overwhelmed with houses he can’t live in, yachts he can’t sail, horses he can’t ride; a man in whom the milk of human kindness is soured by impostors, and for whom even “deserving cases” have lost their charm; a man who’s been round the d——d world—I beg your pardon, really I beg your pardon—who’s been round the wretched world twice, and shot every beast on it at least once; who is sick of playing, and daren’t work for fear of making a profit——

Miss G. It almost sounds as if you were describing yourself.

Mr M. Oh no, no! No! At least—er—if at all, quite accidentally. I’ll describe you now, if you like.

Miss G. I get absolutely no thrill out of a new frock!

Mr M. There it is—in a nutshell, by Jingo! Miss Grainger, we have found the people we want, the people who are indifferent to money, and would—that is, might—marry us for love alone.

Miss G. (Laughing.) You mean—one another? That’s really rather an amusing end to our philosophising, isn’t it? (She rises, laughing still, and holds out her hand.) Good-night.

Mr M. (Indignantly.) Good-night be——! Why, our talk’s just got to the most interesting point!

Miss G. Well, you ought to know—you’ve been doing most of it yourself.

Mr M. Oh, but don’t go! I—I’ll do it better—and perhaps quicker too—if you’ll stay a bit.

Miss G. (Sitting again, with a laugh.) I’ll give you just five minutes to wind up the argument.

Mr M. The conclusion’s obvious in logic. I ought to offer you my hand in marriage, and you ought to accept.

Miss G. (Laughing.) Logic is logic, of course, Mr Marchesson—but we’ve never even been introduced! I don’t think you need feel absolutely compelled to go through the ceremony you suggest. We’ll be illogical, and say good-night.

Mr M. You admit the logic? You see the force of it?

Miss G. Women don’t act by logic, though.

Mr M. It’s always at least a good excuse.

Miss G. If you want one, yes. (She is about to rise again.)

Mr M. I do want one.

(She shakes her head, laughing.)

I’m serious.

Miss G. You don’t really want me to think that? The very first time we meet? The lady in there (pointing to the conservatory on the right) must have frightened you terribly indeed!

Mr M. Until the logic of the thing struck me—which happened only to-night—I thought it no good to try to know you.

Miss G. I don’t suppose you ever thought about it at all.

Mr M. I had nothing to give you—and you had nothing to give me! So it seemed in the days of illogicality. Now it’s all different. So I insist on—the ceremony.

Miss G. (Laughing, but a little agitated.) Go on, then. But your logic doesn’t bind me, you know.

(He comes and sits on the couch by her.)

Yes, that’s quite right—but don’t put too much feeling into it. It—it’s only logic! No, I—I don’t think I want you to go on. I—I don’t think it’s a good joke.

Mr M. It’s not a joke. I’ve never been introduced to you, you say. I’ve never spoken to you before to-night, I know. But you’re not a stranger to me. There have been very few days in the last three months when I haven’t managed to see you——

Miss G. (Low.) Managed to see me—managed?

Mr M. Yes—though I must say you go to some places which but for your presence would be very dull. I stuck at none of them, Miss Grainger. I swallowed every one! Did you ever notice me?

Miss G. Of course not.

(He looks at her.)

Of course I’ve seen you, but I never noticed you.

(He continues to look at her.)

Not specially, at anyrate.

Mr M. I suppose I must have been there a hundred times. How often did you notice me?

Miss G. How absurd! I’m sure I don’t remember. Very seldom.

Mr M. Don’t you remember even the first time?

Miss G. Oh yes, that was at the—— No, certainly I don’t.

Mr M. Yes, it was at the Phillips’s!

(She smiles against her will. He also smiles.)

I’m glad you remember.

Miss G. You stared so—as you may perhaps remember.

Mr M. Have I stared every time?

Miss G. Very often, anyhow.

Mr M. You noticed that?

Miss G. Every time I noticed you, I noticed that.

Mr M. And you noticed that very often! Therefore you noticed me——

Miss G. Please, no more logic!

Mr M. And yet you try to treat me as a stranger!

Miss G. It is rather a matter of trying with you, isn’t it? You’re not very susceptible to the treatment.

Mr M. And pretend to be surprised at my wanting to marry you! If the logic of it still leaves you doubtful——

Miss G. Doubtful! I never said I was doubtful!

Mr M. Look at the romantic side! How romantic it would be to throw yourself away on riches! Did you never think about that? Not when I—stared?

Miss G. I didn’t exactly mean that you exactly stared. You—you—you—— Oh, you really might help me out! What did you do?

Mr M. I’d so much rather hear you say it.

Miss G. Well, right from the beginning there was something in your look—I mean the way you looked at me—I can’t describe it, but it got more and more like that.

Mr M. Yes, I believe I meant it to.

Miss G. Never forward or—or impertinent. Just nice, Mr Marchesson.

Mr M. I say, was that a good chap you refused in there (indicating the conservatory to the left) a thousand years ago?

Miss G. Very—so handsome! I liked him awfully. And the girl you refused——

Mr M. To ask——

Miss G. In there? (Indicating the conservatory to the right.)

Mr M. Really, you know—impartially speaking—a ripper! Why did we?

Miss G. What?

Mr M. I said, “Why did we?”

Miss G. Was it—a thousand years ago? Yes?

Mr M. Which certainly makes it absurd to call us strangers.

Miss G. I wasn’t thinking any more about that. Oh, you do——?

Mr M. I do—mean it.

Miss G. (Rising.) I think that—after all—it wouldn’t be so bad in—in——

Mr M. The conservatory?

(They look at one another and laugh.)

Miss G. It’s terribly absurd even to think about it.

Mr M. It’s absolutely logical! And, by the way, it’s time I put my question.

Miss G. Haven’t you?

Mr M. Then it’s time you gave your answer.

Miss G. (Putting her hands in his.) Haven’t I?

Mr M. There’ll be a great deal of talk about this to-morrow! (He offers her his arm, and they go towards the conservatory on the left.) Oh, your conservatory? No!

Miss G. Yours would be just as bad.

Mr M. Then stay here.

Miss G. Take me to my carriage. And—and come and see if I’m not perfectly logical to-morrow.

(He releases her arm and kisses her hand. She adds in a low voice:) And—somehow—it is absurd—so wonderfully happy to-night! Will you come with me?

Mr M. Will I live? Come! Quick—through your conservatory! (He puts his arm round her waist.) Come!

(They disappear into the conservatory on the left.)

Curtain

LA MORT À LA MODE[2]
MONSIEUR LE DUC—MADAME LA MARQUISE

(The tumbril is the last of a row of several, some of which have left, some of which stand at, the gates of the Conciergerie. The others are full, in this the Duc is alone. At the beginning of the conversation the tumbril stands still, later it is moving slowly, escorted through a turbulent crowd by National Guards to its destination in the Place Louis Quinze (Place de la Revolution.) The time is noon of a fine day during the Reign of Terror.)

DUC. Alone! My luck holds to the last. They’re close as fish in a tub in the others—and by strange chance every man next to his worst enemy—or at least his best friend’s husband! These rascals have no consideration. Ah, somebody coming here! I’ve to have company after all. A woman too—deuce take it! (A lady is assisted into the tumbril. The Duc rises, bows, and starts.) Marquise! (The lady sinks on the bench across the tumbril.) You here! (He takes snuff and murmurs:) Awkward! (Pauses and murmurs again:) Even her! Curse the hounds!

Marquise. I—I heard you had escaped.

Due. Ah, madame, I can no longer expect justice from you—only mercy. And—excuse me—M. le Marquis?

Marquise. He—he has gone—

Duc. Ah yes, yes. He went before us? I remember now. Er—my condolences, Marquise. But on what pretext are you——?

Marquise. They say that, as his wife, I shared his designs and was in his confidence.

Duc. How little they know of the world! (Smiling.) As his wife—in his confidence! How simple the blackguards are! (Looks at her.) I protest I feel my presence inopportune.

Marquise. No. (She holds out a little silver box.) Will you hold this for me? (He takes it.) You may look. (Opening it he finds rouge and a powder-puff. The Marquise smiles faintly.)

Duc. (Shutting box.) On my honour you’ve no need of it this morning. Your cheeks display the most charming flush. Ah, we move. (She starts.) Yes, yes, it jolts horribly. But I won’t drop the rouge.

Marquise. Will it take long?

Duc. It? (Shrugs his shoulders.) Oh, before you know—before you know!

Marquise. No, no—I mean the journey.

Duc. Ah, the journey! It will seem short now. Before you came, I feared the tedium—though the crowd’s amusing enough. Look at that fellow! Why in heaven’s name does he shake his fist at me? He’s not one of my people, not even from my province. (Smiles at the crowd and seats himself by the Marquise.) You’re silent. Ah, I remember, now I remember! When we parted last, you vowed you’d never speak to me again.

Marquise. I thought I never should.

Duc. The things we think we never shall do include all the most delightful things we do.

Marquise. You seem to flatter yourself, monsieur. I meant what I said then: but times are changed.

Duc. Faith, yes! The times more than I.

Marquise. More than you? Ah, changeful times!

Duc. And their changes bring more grief than any of mine could.

Marquise. Oh, as for grief—! It was your rudeness I deplored, more than my loss.

Duc. I am never rude, madame. I may have been——

Marquise. (Low.) Unfaithful?

Duc. (Low.) Unworthy, madame. (She looks at him for a moment and sighs. He smiles and is about to speak when a great shout is heard from the direction of the Place Louis Quinze. She starts, turns a little pale, and involuntarily stretches out a hand to him.)

Marquise. What’s that? What’s happening?

Duc. Oh, they’re excited! In truth, my dear Marquise, I have long wished——

Marquise. No, no—what was the shouting?

Duc. Well—er—in fact, I imagine that the first of our friends must have arrived.

Marquise. (Low.) Arrived! (He smiles, takes her hand and kisses it, then holds out the rouge-box with an air of mockery.) No, no—I won’t.

Duc. Why, no! We’ve no need of it. Let me bring the colour to your cheeks. Once on a time I—well, at least I have been there when it came. Ah, it comes now! Listen to me. I have long wished to——

Marquise. To explain?

Duc. (Smiling.) Ah, you were always a little—a little—exacting. No, no; nobody can explain these things. I wished only to——

Marquise. You daren’t apologise!

Duc. Ah, and you never were quite just to my good breeding. No again! I wished to tell you frankly that I made a very great mistake. (A voice from the crowd shouts “To Hell with them!” The Duc laughs.) The Church’s prerogatives follow the King’s! Ah well! A terrible mistake, Marquise.

Marquise. (Low, but eagerly.) You suspected me of——? Was that why you——?

Duc. No. I suspected her.

Marquise. Her? But of what?

Duc. Of wit, madame, and of charm. I was most unjust.

Marquise. (Smiling.) And not perhaps of one other thing—in which respect you were unjust too?

Duc. (Looking at her a moment and then smiling.) No, no—on my honour I was not refused.

Marquise. Oh, not refused! (She turns away.)

Duc. Shall I tell you the reason of that?

Marquise. Can’t I—I at least—guess the reason?

Duc. You least of all can guess it. I did not ask, Marquise.

Marquise. (Turning quickly to him.) You didn’t——?

Duc. On my word, no. You’ll ask me why not?

Marquise. Why not, indeed? It was unlike you, monsieur.

Duc. I thought of you—and behold, it became impossible. At the moment your image—— (Another great shout is heard.) Hum, they never get tired of the sight, it seems. (He glances at the Marquise, but she has not noticed the shout. He takes her hand and presses it gently.)

Marquise. Is it true? You ought to tell the truth now.

Duc. Now? (Laughs.) Ah, yes!

Marquise. Really true? (She draws her hand away sharply.)

Duc. You don’t believe me?

Marquise. Yes, I believe you. But—but how stupid you were, monsieur!

Duc. Eh?

Marquise. How stupid you were, monsieur.

Duc. True. (Takes snuff.) True, by heaven! I was—monstrous stupid.

Marquise. To think that you could——

Duc. Love her?

Marquise. Forget me, monsieur. Alas, I lose all my pride in—— (Pauses.)

Duc. In——? (Pauses. They smile and she blushes.)

Marquise. In any compliments you may have paid me.

Duc. (Softly.) You won’t forgive me? Well, it’s the fashion now! I must die twice to-day?

Marquise. Twice—die twice! (Looks at him and trembles a little.) I—I had almost forgotten what—where we were. (A fierce shout is heard, sounding nearer now.) Louis, they’ll—they’ll do nothing worse than—kill me? You don’t answer, Louis!

Duc. Yes, yes. There’s no fear—no fear of that.

Marquise. But you hesitated.

Duc. (Low.) If we must talk of death, pray let it be of mine. (She glances at him and lays her hand on his for a moment.) Yours seems too—too—— (Smiles.) I want a word. Well, too incongruous, dear Marquise.

Marquise. I have confessed—and forgiven all my enemies.

Duc. Am I your enemy? Have you no forgiveness left for friends? (She looks at him gravely for a moment, then smiles reluctantly.) Why, we were growing grave! That would be a bad ending.

Marquise. The most seemly ending!

Duc. For me? Oh, oh, Marquise! They’d think they’d got hold of the wrong man. Your hand’s a trifle cold.

Marquise. (Laughing nervously.) Well, if it is? We’ve stopped again! Are we near now?

Duc. At the entrance of the Place, I believe. (Looks at her and goes on quickly.) You and I have walked here together before now. You remember? Alone together—so often. (Rises.) Forgive me—as you face towards the Place the sun is in your eyes. Pray sit the other way. It’s pleasanter to look towards the river—cooler to the eye. You remember our walks, dear Marquise?

Marquise. You still look towards the Place, though.

Duc. (Laughing.) Why yes! I can’t have the dogs saying I daren’t——

Marquise. Are they to say it of me then, monsieur? (She rises and stands by him, looking towards the Place, where the scaffold is now visible.)

Duc. (Removing his hat and bowing humbly.) I beg your pardon.

Marquise. (Very low.) Dear Louis, dear Louis!

Duc. I thought life done. I was wrong a thousand times!

Marquise. I cried when you——

Duc. Ah, if I beg them to torture me—— Would that atone?

Marquise. They found me crying. Think of the humiliation!

Duc. Oh, I must have a talk with a priest—after all I must! (She turns away with a sob and then a gasping laugh.) Ay, that’s life, dearest Marquise—and perhaps it’s the other thing too.

Marquise. I care less now, Louis.

Duc. Give me your hand a minute. Yes, it’s warmer now. And the rouge—why, madame, I swear the rouge is utterly superfluous! Shall we throw it to the mob? It’s their favourite colour. I’ll leave it in the cart—when they turn on one another, some hero may be glad of it. Margot, dear Margot, are you cold? I thought you shivered as your arm touched mine.

Marquise. (Low.) No. I’m—I’m just a little afraid, Louis.

Duc. Oh no, no, no—Margot, no. You’re cold. Or—(Smiling.) Come, flatter me. Say it’s agitation—say it’s joy. Come, Margot, say that!

Marquise. (Drawing nearer.) They didn’t know what they were doing when they sent me with you.

Duc. The ignorance of the fellows is extraordinary.

Marquise. Because—everybody knew.

Duc. Alas, I was never too discreet! (More shouts are heard. The Guard in charge of the tumbril cries “Ready? We’re the last.”) Hum! For to-day, I suppose he means! (He looks at her; her lips are moving. He takes off his hat and stands bareheaded. The movement of her lips ceases and she turns to him. He smiles.) I think you can have little need of prayer.

Marquise. You say that? You?

Duc. Yes, I say that, Margot. (They are at the foot of the scaffold now.) As for me—well, I have always followed the fashion—and prayers are not the fashion now. I was bitten by M. de Voltaire. By the way, perhaps he’s had something to do with this—and we made him the fashion! How whimsical! (The National Guard turns and points his finger towards the scaffold.) What? Oh, at your service, monsieur. (He turns to the Marquise, smiling.) I must leave you—this time in love.

Marquise. (Stretching out her hands.) Let me go first.

Duc. On my soul, I couldn’t! (Softly.) The way is dark, let me show it you.

Marquise. Louis, Louis!

Duc. And now—look now towards the river. Pray—towards the river! I want you to remember me at my best. And—Margot—you mustn’t—you mustn’t want the rouge. Your hand’s warm—still warm.

Marquise. (Vehemently.) I will go first. I—I can’t see you—I will go first.

Duc. Your will is my law always. (She turns to descend.) It has been pleasant to come with you.

Marquise. It was—easier—to come with you.

Duc. I am forgiven, Margot?

Marquise. Louis, dear Louis! (He raises her hand to his lips. She goes. He stands bareheaded, facing the scaffold while she suffers. Then he puts his hat on and mounts the scaffold. They carry past him the basket containing her head. A priest holds a crucifix before him. He starts and bows to the priest.)

Duc. I beg your pardon, father, but—I knew the lady very well. She died bravely, eh? Pardon? Think how we have lived as well as how we die? Yes, yes; most just and—er—apposite. Die truly penitent? Ah yes, yes. Forgive me—I’m not master of my time. (He bows and turns to the executioner and his assistants.) Don’t keep me waiting. My desire is to follow Madame la Marquise. What? “The woman died well!” God save us—the woman! Well, as you please. Shall we say—— (He places himself beneath the knife.) Shall we say—Margot? Nobody was ever like Margot. (Smiles, then looks up.) Well? Oh, you wait for me. Good! Messieurs, allez!

THE RIDDLE OF COUNTESS RUNA