The Dark House

by I. A. R. Wylie

II

1

"I don't understand it," Christine said. "It seems to me better than anything you've ever read to me."

She counted her stitches for the second time, and looked up at the sun that showed its face over the stable roof opposite, as though at a lamp which did not burn as well as it used to do. In the dusty golden light she was like a figure in a tapestry. Perhaps in its early days it had been a trifle crude, a trifle harsh in colour, but now worn and threadbare, trembling on decay, it had attained a rare and exquisite beauty.

She smiled back blindly into the little room.

"Don't you think so, Robert?"

Mr. Ricardo also looked at Robert, eagerly, pathetically.

"It was to gain your opinion—reinforce my own judgment—solely for that purpose—difficult to obtain, the impartial opinion of a trained mind——"

He had grown into a habit of talking like that—in broken disjointed sentences, which only Robert and Christine who knew his thoughts could understand. And now, in the midst of his scattered manuscript he waited, rubbing his shiny knees with his thin, grey, not very clean hands.

But Robert looked at Francey. He had sat all the time with his arms crossed on the oil-clothed table and looked at her, frankly and unconsciously as a savage or a street boy might have done. He was too tired to care. He had come straight from giving the limousine underneath an extra washing down for the Whitsun holidays and oil still lingered in his nails, and there was a faint forgotten smear of it on his cheek, and another near the thick upstanding hair where he had rubbed his hand across. They came as almost humorous relief in a face in which there were things ten years too old—the harsh and bony structure showing where there should have been a round boyishness, and the full mouth set in a fierce, relentless negation of itself. But the oil smears and the eyes that shone out from under the fair overhanging brows were again almost too young. They made the strength pathetic.

He, too, sat in the sunlight, which was not kind to his green, threadbare clothes. But the sun only came into the stable yard for an hour or two, and as it withdrew itself slowly along the length of the table he shifted his position to move with it, unconsciously, like a tired animal. Francey, cross-legged and smoking, on the couch which at night unfolded itself into a bed, saw the movement and smiled at him. Her eyes were as steady in their serenity as his were steady with hunger. She did not change colour, so that whatever she understood from that long scrutiny did not trouble her. He leant forward, as though he were afraid of missing some subtle half-tone in her voice.

"Mr. Ricardo thinks I'm unprejudiced. He's forgotten the times when he pulled my ears and smacked my head. But you are different, Francey. You can say what you think."

"But it wouldn't be at all helpful," she answered very solemnly. "To begin with, I have the scientific mind, and I cannot accept as a basis of argument an entirely untested hypothesis."

Connie Edwards thereupon gave vent to an artificial groan of anguish, followed by an explosive giggle which would have lost her her half of Rufus Cosgrave's chair had he not put his arm round her. There were only three chairs in the room, and as two of them had been already occupied when she and her companion had, as she expressed it, "blown in" half an hour previously, they had perched together, listening with clasped hands and an air of insincere solemnity. For Mr. Ricardo had not stopped reading. He had gone on as though he had not heard their boisterous entry, and even now would have seemed unaware of their existence but for something bitter and antagonistic in the hunch of his thin shoulders. His dark, biting eyes avoided them like those of a sullen child who does not want to see. But Miss Edwards appeared to be not easily depressed. She waved her hand in friendly thanks for the cigarette case which Francey tossed across to her, and, having selected her cigarette with blunt, viciously manicured fingers, poked Cosgrave for a match.

"Gawd Almighty, and Little Connie K.O.'ed in the first round by an untested hypo—hypo—— What was it, Ruffles dear? (Oh, do stop squeezing my hand! This isn't the pictures, and it's a match I want—not love.) An untested hypothesis. Thank you, dearie. I wonder if He's feeling as sore about it as I am?"

She gurgled over her cigarette, and Cosgrave smiled at everyone in turn, as though he had said aloud, "Isn't she a splendid joke?" He looked almost mystically happy.

"Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," Mr. Ricardo muttered. "Mark it, mark it, Robert—the shallow thinking, shallow jesting, shallow living——"

Miss Edwards winked at Francey, and Francey looked back at her with her understanding kindliness. It seemed to Robert that ever since Connie Edwards had burst into the room Francey had changed. The change was subtle and difficult to lay hold of, like Francey herself. Mentally she was always moving about, quietly, light-footedly, just as she had done among the bricks and rubble of their old playground, peering thoughtfully at things which nobody else saw or looking at them from some new point of view. You couldn't be sure what they were or why they interested her. And now—he had almost seen her do it—she had shifted her position, come over to Connie Edward's side, and was gazing over her shoulder, with her own brown head tilted a little on one ear, and was saying in Connie's vernacular:

"Well, so that's how it looks to you? And, I say, you're right. It's a scream——"

In her mysterious way she had found something she liked in Connie Edwards, with her awful hat and her outrageous, three-inch heels and her common prettiness. Cosgrave obviously was crazy about her. He seemed to cling to her because she had an insatiable hunger for the things he couldn't afford. One could see that he had tried to model himself to her taste. He wore a gardenia and a spotted tie. And, bearing these insignia of vulgarity, he looked more than ever pathetic and over-delicate.

Cosgrave was an idiot who had lost his balance. But Francey was another matter. The Francey who had asked "And are you a good little boy?" accepted Connie Edwards without question. Because it was ridiculous to be hurt about it Robert grew angry with her and frowned away from her, and talked to Mr. Ricardo as though there were no one else in the room.

"I can't think why they didn't take it, sir. It's fine stuff. A shade too long for a magazine article. It may have been that, of course."

But Mr. Ricardo bent down and began to gather up his manuscript. The paper was of all kinds and sizes, covered with crabbed writing and fierce erasures. It was oddly like himself—disordered, a little desperate, not very clean. When he had all the sheets together he sat with them hugged against his breast and bent closer to Christine, speaking in a mysterious whisper.

"It's not that. Robert knows it isn't, but he doesn't care any more. He'll say anything. But I know. I've guessed it a long time. People have found out. They say to one another, when I send in my papers, 'This man is a liar. Every morning of his life he gives his assent to lies. And now he is going to teach the very lies he pretends to exterminate. We can't have anything to do with a man like that.' And there's a conspiracy, Miss Christine, a conspiracy——" His voice began to rise and tremble. "They've taken me off my old classes under the pretext that they are too much for me. They've set me on to Scripture. Then they told me I had to remember—remember circumstances—to prevent myself from saying what I thought of such devilish cruelty. But I saw that they wanted me to break out so that they could get rid of me altogether, and I held my tongue. One of these days, though, I shall stand up in the open places and tell the truth. I shall say what they have done to me——"

He had forgotten, if he had ever fully realized, that there were strangers about him. He shook his fist and shouted, whilst the slow, hopeless tears rolled down the sunken yellow cheeks onto the dirty manuscript.

They stared at him in consternation, all but Francey, who uncurled herself negligently and slid from the sofa.

"It's past my tea-time," she announced, "and I want my tea."

It was as though she had neither seen nor cared. Christine turned her faded, groping eyes thankfully in her direction.

"Of course, my dear. Robert—please——"

"No," he said; "we don't have tea, Francey."

"But, Robert, at least when we have guests——"

"Or guests," he added, with a set, white face.

Cosgrave laughed. He made a comic grimace. He seemed utterly irrepressible and irresponsible, like a colt let out for the first time in a wide field.

"You don't know this fellow like I do, Miss Wilmot. A nasty Spartan. But if you'll put a shilling in the gas meter we'll get cakes and a quarter of tea. He doesn't need to have any if he doesn't want it, but he can't grudge us a corner of table and half a chair each. Miss Christine's on our side, aren't you, Miss Christine? And oh, Connie, there's a pastrycook's round the corner where they make jam-puffs like they did when I was a kid——"

"I'll put the kettle on," Francey said, nodding to him.

She passed close to Robert. She even gave him a quick, friendly touch. He could almost hear her say, "Tag, Robert!" but he would not look at her. And yet the moment after he knew that it was all make-believe. His anger was a sham, protecting something that was fragile and afraid of pain. Now that she had gone out of the barren little room she had taken with her the sense of a secret, gracious intimacy which had been its warmth and colour. He saw that the sunlight had shrunk to a pale gold finger whose tip rested lingeringly on the windowsill, and he felt tired and cold and work-soiled.

He got up and followed her awkwardly, with a sullen face and a childishly beating heart. The kettle was already on the gas, and Francey gazing into an open cupboard that was scarcely smaller than the kitchen itself.

"It's like a boy's chemist shop," she said casually, as though she had expected him, "with the doses done up in little white paper packets. Is it a game, Robert?"

"A sort of game. We used to use too much of everything, and at the end of the week there'd be nothing left. So we doled it out like that."

"Yes, I see. A jolly good idea. That way you couldn't over-eat yourselves."

"I—I suppose you think I was an awful beast about the tea, don't you?"

"No, I didn't—I don't."

"I was—much firmer than I would have been, but I wanted you to stay.
So I couldn't give in."

"If it had been just Cosgrave and Miss Edwards?"

"It wouldn't have mattered—not so much."

"I wasn't hurt. It was tactless of me. But I wanted the tea. I forgot. And I wanted to stay, too. I haven't learnt to do without things that I want."

"You think I don't want them?"

She closed the cupboard door abruptly. The kitchen was so small that when she turned they had to stand close to one another to avoid falling back into the sink or burning themselves against the gas jet. He saw that the fine colour had gone out of her face. She looked unfamiliarly tired.

"I think you want them terribly. I suppose I'm not heroic. I don't like your saying 'No' always—always."

"I shall get what I really want in the end."

She sighed, reflected, and then laughed rather ruefully.

"Oh, well, get the cups now, at any rate."

"There are only three, Francey."

"You and I will have to share, then."

So she made him happy—just as she had done when they had been children—with a sudden comradely gesture.

But in the next room Mr. Ricardo had begun to talk again. They had to hear him. He was not crying any more. His voice sounded hard and embittered.

"He's changed. He doesn't care. He pretended to listen. He was looking at that girl. She's a strange girl. I don't trust her. She believes in myths. Oh, yes, I know. She did not say so, but I can smell out an enemy. She will try to wreck everything. So it is in life. We give everything—sacrifice everything—to pass on our knowledge, our experience, and in the end they break away from us—they go their own road."

Robert could not hear Christine's answer. He felt that Ricardo had thrown out his arms in one of his wild gestures. "Not gratitude—not gratitude. He was to have carried on my fight. To have been free as I am not——"

Miss Edwards and Rufus Cosgrave came racketing back up the steep and creaking stairs. It was like the whirlwind entry of some boisterous comet dragging at its rear a bewildered, happy tail. They were as exultant as though their paper bags contained priceless loot rescued from overwhelming forces.

"Hurry up there, Mr. Stonehouse. Don't keep the lady waiting. Tea and puff, as ordered, ma'am. No, ma'am, no tipping allowed in this establishment. But anything left under the plate will be sent to the Society for the Cure of the Grouch among Superior Waiters."

She jollied Christine, whose answering smile was like a little puzzled ghost. She nourished a heavily scented handkerchief in the professional manner and grinned at Robert, whose open hostility did not so much as ruffle the fringe of her good humour. In her raffish, rakish world poverty and wry, eccentric-tempered people abounded, and were just part of an enormous joke. And Rufus Cosgrave, who gaped at her in wonder and admiration, saw that she was right. Poor old Robert and exams, and beastly, bullying fathers and hard-upness—the latter more especially—were all supremely funny.

But Robert would not look at the jam-puff which she pushed across to him.

"Thanks. I hate the beastly stuff."

And yet it was a flaky thing, oozing, as Rufus had declared, with real raspberry jam. And he was very young. But he would not give way. Could not. It seemed trivial, and yet it was vital, too. There was something in him which stood up straight and unbendable. Once broken it could never be set up again. And gradually a sense of loneliness crept over him. He went and stood next Ricardo, who, like himself, would have no share in the festivity. And the old man blinked up at him with a kind of triumph.

"And we're going to a hill that I know of," Francey was saying. "No one else knows of it. In fact, it's only there when I am. You go by train, and after that you have to walk. I don't know the way. It comes by inspiration. When you get to the top you can see the whole of England, and there are always flowers. I'm taking Howard's gang, and you people must come along too. It's what you want. A good time——"

"All the time," said Miss Edwards, blowing away the crumbs.

"My people are going in a char-a-banc to Brighton," Rufus said. "But
I'll give them the slip. There's sure to be a beastly row anyhow."

"That's my brave boy! Who cares for rows? Take me. Our Mr. Reilly's had the nerve to fix up a rehearsal for the new French dame what's coming to ginger up our show—and, oh, believe me, it needs it—but am I down-hearted? No! Anyway, if she's half the stuff they say she is they'll never notice poor little Connie's gone to bury her fifth grandmother. So I'll be with you, lady, and kind regards and many thanks."

"And you, too. Miss Forsyth?"

Christine shook her head. She was frowning up out of the open window a little anxiously.

"What would you do with a tired old woman?"

"Ruffles will carry you. Throw out your chest, Ruffles, and look fierce. What's the use of a hefty brute like that if it isn't useful?"

"And when you're on my hill," Francey said with a mysterious nod, "you'll understand it better than any of us." She looked away from the grey, upturned face. She added almost to herself: "How dark it is here! The sun has gone down behind the roof."

"Has it? Yes, it went so suddenly. I wondered"—she picked up her knitting, and began to roll it together—"if Robert could go?" she murmured.

"Robert can go. I knew before I asked."

But he flung round on her in a burst of extraordinary resentment.

"I can't. You seem to think I can do anything and everything that comes into your head. People like you never really understand. We're poor. We haven't the money or the time to—to fool round. Nor has Cosgrave, but he likes to pretend—humbug himself and anyone else silly enough to believe in him."

It was as though something long smouldering amongst them had blazed up. Cosgrave banged the table with his clenched fist. His freckles were like small suns shining out of his dead-white face.

"You—you leave me alone, Stonehouse. I—I'm n-not a kid any more. And I d-don't pretend. Connie knows I haven't a c-cent in the world except what poor mother sneaks out of the housekeeping. But I'm s-sick of living as I've done—always grinding, always afraid of everything. If I c-can't have my fun out of life I d-don't want to live at all. I'm not going to Heaven to make up for it—Mr. Ricardo has just told us that—so what's the use? You've g-got your work and that satisfies you. Mine doesn't satisfy me. So when you t-talk about me—you're just t-talking through your hat."

Miss Edwards threw up her hands in mock horror.

"Oh, my angel child, what a temper! And to think I nearly married him!"

She choked with laughter. And underneath the thin flooring, as though roused by her irreverent merriment, the big car shook itself awake with a roar and splutter of indignation. But the sliding doors were thrown open, and its rage died down at the prospect of release. It began to purr complacently, greedily.

It was strange how the sound quieted them. They looked towards the window as though for the first time they were aware of something outside that came to them from beyond the low, confining roofs—a spring wind blowing from far-off places.

"Six cylinder," Cosgrave muttered with feverish eyes. "Do you know, if
I had that thing living under me I'd—I'd go off with it one night, and
I'd go on and on and never come back."

Connie Edwards patted his head. She winked at Francey, but Francey was looking at Robert's sullen back.

"No, you wouldn't. Not for six months or so, anyhow."

He laughed shamefacedly.

"Oh, well, of course I'm rotting. I can't drive a go-cart. Never had the chance. Oh, I say, Robert, don't grouch. I didn't mean to be rude. Of course, you're right in a way. But I get that sort of stuff at home, and if I get it here I don't know what I'll do."

"Oh, you're right, too," Robert muttered. "It's not my business."

Cosgrave appealed sadly to Francey.

"He's wild with me. But a picnic—you'd think any human being might go on a picnic——"

"You're going," she answered quietly, "and Robert too."

He did not take up the challenge. He was too miserable. He had not meant to break out like that. As in the old days, he hungered for her approval, her good smile of understanding. But as in the old days, too, beneath it all, was the dim consciousness of an antagonism, of their two wills poised against one another.

The car purred louder with exultation. It came sliding out into the narrow, cobbled street. It waited a moment, gathering itself together.

"I wonder where it's going," Cosgrave dreamed. "I hope a jolly long way—right to the other end of England. I'd like to think of it going on and on through the whole world."

Christine leaned forward, peering out dimly.

"Are the trees out yet, Robert?"

They looked at her in silence. It was a strange thing to ask. And yet not strange at all. All day long she sat there and saw nothing but the squat, red-faced stable opposite. Or if she went out it was to buy cheaply from the barrows in a mean side street. And now she was remembering that there were trees somewhere, perhaps in bloom.

Even Miss Edwards looked queerly dashed and distressed.

"Now you're asking something, Miss Forsyth. There are trees in this little old village, but they aren't real somehow, and I never notice 'em. Well, we'll know on Monday. Please Heaven, it doesn't rain."

"I want to get out," Cosgrave muttered; "out of here—right away——"

"I've not had a picnic—not since I was a kid. But I haven't forgotten it, though. Heaps to eat—and an appetite—— Oh, my!"

"And you can go on eating and eating," Francey added greedily, "and it doesn't seem to matter."

"Egg and cress sandwiches——"

"Ham pie——"

"Sardines——"

"Russian salad—mayonnaise——"

"And something jolly in a bottle."

They laughed at one another. But after that the quiet returned again. Francey sat with her hands clasped behind her head and her chair tip-tilted against the wall. To Robert, who watched her from out of the shadow, she seemed to be drifting farther and farther away on a dark, quiet, flowing river.

It grew to dusk. The car had long since set out on its unknown journey. The narrow street with its pungent stable odour had sunk into one of those deep silences which lie scattered like secret pools along the route of London's endless processions. And presently Mr. Ricardo, who had not moved or spoken, but had sat hunched together like a captive bird, leant forward with his finger to his lips.

Christine had fallen asleep. Her hands lay folded upon her work and her face was still lifted to the black ridge of roof where the sun had vanished. There was enchantment about her sleep, as though in the very midst of them she had begun to live a new, mysterious life of her own. She had been the shadowy onlooker. She became the central figure among them.

Mr. Ricardo rose noiselessly. He looked at no one. He passed them like a ghost. They heard him creeping down the stairs and his hurrying, unequal footsteps on the empty street. Cosgrave and Connie Edwards nodded to one another and took hands and were gone. Francey, too, slipped to her feet. She gathered up her hat and coat, her silence effortless. She did not so much as glance at Robert, but at the head of the steep, ladder-like stairs he overtook her.

"Francey—listen——"

With one foot on the lower step, her back against the wall, she waited for him. It was too dark for them to see each other clearly. They were shadows to one another. They spoke in whispers, as though they were afraid of waking something more than the sleeper in the room behind them. He could not have told how he knew that her face was wet.

"I wanted to say—I don't know why I behaved like that. I'm not usually—nervy—uncontrolled. I don't think I've ever lost my temper before. I've had so little to do with people. Perhaps that's it. I've gone my own way alone——"

"And now that our ways have crossed," she began with a sad irony.

"No—not crossed—come together—run out together into the high-road——" He clenched his hands till they were bloodless in the effort to speak. "You see, a few weeks ago I wouldn't have lost my temper—and I wouldn't have said queer, silly things like this—— I'm a sort of kaleidoscope that someone's shaken up. I don't know myself; things have been hard—but awfully simple. I've only thought of—wanted—the one thing. It doesn't seem to me that I've had to fight until now. You don't understand—what it has been——"

"I do—I do!" she interrupted hurriedly. "I've seen Christine—and the way you live—and that dreadful cupboard. Oh, I'm not sorry for you—only afraid. You're nothing but a boy——"

"You needn't be afraid. I'll pull through. It's only another year now. But I can't be like the other people you know—who can be jolly and easy-going—because they're not going anywhere at all. Can't you be patient, Francey?"

"Was I impatient?" He felt her humour flicker up like a flame in the darkness. "I suppose I was. It was the jam-puff. You hurt their feelings. And it was such a little thing."

"I hate jam-puffs," he said, but humbly, because it was not the truth, and he could never explain.

"Come with us, Robert."

"I can't."

"But you want to come?"

"That's just it. I don't know why. It would be waste of time—money—everything—all wrong. What have I to do with Howard and that lot—with girls like Connie Edwards?"

"—and me," she added, smiling to herself.

"Or you with them?"

"Oh, they're my friends. As you say, they're not going anywhere—just dawdling along and picking up things by the wayside—queer, interesting things——"

"I've no use for them," he said doggedly.

"—And Christine wanted to go." She added after a moment, gently, as though she were feeling through the dark, "—is dying to go, Robert."

"You're just imagining it. She's never cared for things like that—only for my getting ahead with my work—my finals."

"Didn't you hear her ask about the trees?"

He looked back over his shoulder like a suddenly frightened child.

"Yes. It—it didn't mean anything, though. It was just for something to say."

"She said a great deal more than she meant to."

"We've mapped out everything—every ha'penny—every minute."

"Let me help, Robert. I've got such a lot. I've no one else. I could make it easier for you both. I should be happier, too. And you could pay me back afterwards with interest—a hundred per cent.—I don't care what."

But now feeling through the dark she had reached the barrier. He answered stonily.

"Thanks. We've never owed anything. We shan't begin now."

She slipped into her coat. She tugged her soft hat down over her hair. There was more than anger in her quick, impatient movements. She was going because she couldn't bear it any more. She had given in. She would never come back. And at that fear he broke out with a desperate cunning.

"It's too bad to be angry with me. I—I want to go."

"And I've asked you——?

"Because you want me?"

"Of course. It will be the first chance we've had to really talk——"

"It can't matter—just for once," he pleaded with himself.

"It might matter a great deal."

She went on down the stairs, very slowly, lingeringly. He leant over the creaking banisters, trying to see her.

"Francey—you duffer—you haven't even told me where to meet you."

"Paddington—the Booking Office—10.15."

He held his breath. Her voice had sounded like that of a spirit laughing out of the black veil beneath. It did not come again. He could not even hear her footsteps. She had vanished. But he waited, trembling before the wonder of his own impulse.

Supposing he had yielded—had taken her hands and kissed them—kissed that pale, beloved face, he who had never kissed anyone but Christine since his mother died?

He had not done it. It had been too difficult to yield. But he stood there, dreaming, with his hot eyes pressed into his hands, whilst out of the magic quiet rose wave after wave of enchantment, engulfing him.

2

They agreed that Francey had not boasted about her hill. It stood up boldly out of the rolling sea of field and common land and was tree-crowned, with primroses shining amongst the young grass. From its summit they could see toy villages and church, spires and motors and char-a-bancs running like alarmed insects along the white, winding lanes. But apparently no one saw the hill. No one came to it. Since it was everything that picnic parties demanded in the way of a hill, it was only reasonable to accept Francey's theory that it was not really there at all—or at most only there for her particular convenience.

They spread their table-cloth on its slope and under the dappled shadows of the half-fledged trees, with Christine presiding on the high ground. Her wispy grey hair fluttered out from under the wide black hat, and she looked pretty and pathetic, with her shabby black bag and her old umbrella, like a witch, as Howard said, who had been caught whilst absent-mindedly gathering toad-stools and carried here in triumph to bless their mortal festivity.

"The umbrella keeps off rain," he explained mysteriously, "and besides that, it's a necromantic Handley-Page which might fly off with her at any minute. When you see it opening, stand clear and hold on to yourselves."

He made a limerick on this particular fancy. It was a very bad limerick, as bad, probably, as his theories on pyridine and its relation to the alkaloids which had floored him in his last exam.; but the Gang applauded enthusiastically, and drank to Christine out of mugs of beer. Unlicked and cynical as they were, they seemed to have a chivalrous tenderness for her. And she was at home among them—silent, smiling wistfully down upon their commonplace eccentricities, as though through the mist of her coming blindness they were somehow lovable.

They ate outrageously of fearsome things. Yet over her third meringue Connie Edwards broke down with lamentations for the lost powers of youth.

"I can remember eating five of 'em," she said, "and coming home to a tea of winkles and bloater paste. Oh Gawd! I'll be in my grave before I can turn round."

She had been from the start in an unusually pensive and philosophic mood—a trifle wide-eyed and even awe-struck. It seemed that the night before the "French dame" had appeared unexpectedly during a rehearsal—a peculiarly gingerless performance according to Connie's account—and had watched from the wings awhile, and then, unasked and apparently without premeditation, had broken in among them and at the edge of the footlights, to a gaping, empty theatre, had danced and sung a little song.

"A French song," Connie said solemnly. "Not a word of the blessed thing could we understand, and yet we were all hugging ourselves. Not pretty either—a mere bone and a yank of hair—and no more voice than a sparrow. But you just went along too. Couldn't help it. And afterwards we played up as though we liked it, and hadn't been plugging at the rottenest show in England for the last ten weeks. And she laughed and clapped her hands, and our tongues hung out we were that pleased. She's It, friends. It. Gyp Labelle from the Folies Bergeres and absolutely It."

Rufus Cosgrave rolled over on his face and lay blinking out of the long grass like a sleepy, red-headed satyr.

"Gyp Labelle," he said drowsily, "Gyp Labelle!"

Robert knew that he was thinking of the Circus. And he did not want to think about the Circus. He pushed the memory from him. He was glad when Howard said gravely:

"That's genius. That's what we poor devils pray to and pray for. We know we haven't got it, but we're always hoping that if we agonize and sweat long enough, one day God will lean out of His cloud and touch us with His finger."

"Michael Angelo," said Gertie Sumners, with a kind of sombre triumph. "The Sistine Chapel. I've got a print of it in my room. That's where you saw it." She leaned back against a tree trunk with her knees drawn up to her chin, and blew out clouds of smoke, and looked more than usually grey and dishevelled and in need of a bath. "In a way it's like that with Jeffries. He rubs his beastly old thumb over my rottenest charcoal sketch, and it's a masterpiece."

Robert, lying outstretched at Francey's feet, wondered at them—at their talk of genius in connection with a revue star and a smudgy, underpaid studio hack, more still at their reverence for a God in Whom they certainly did not believe.

Miss Edwards snatched off her cartwheel hat smothered with impossible poppies, and sent it spinning down the hill.

"What's the good?" she demanded fiercely. "We're just nothing at all. We're young now. But when we aren't young, what's going to happen to the bunch of us?"

"This is a picnic," Howard reminded her. "Not a funeral. You haven't eaten enough. Have a pickle."

But the shadow lingered. It was like the shadow thrown by the white clouds riding the light spring wind. It put out the naming colours of the grass and flowers. It was as though winter, slinking sullenly to its lair, showed its teeth at them in sinister reminder. Then it was gone. It was difficult to believe it could return.

Robert looked up shyly into Francey's face, and she smiled down at him with her warm eyes. They had scarcely spoken to one another, but something delicate and exquisite had been born between them in their silence. He was afraid to touch it, and afraid almost to move. He felt very close to her, very sure that she was living with him, withdrawn secretly from the rest into the strange world that he had discovered. He was happy. And happiness like this was new to him and terrifying. He was like a waif from the streets, pale and gaunt and young, with dazzled eyes gazing for the first time into great distances.

"Italy——" Gertie Sumners muttered. She threw away her cigarette, and sat with her sickly face between her hands. "I've got to get there before I die. Think of all the swine that hoof about the Sistine Chapel yawning their fat heads off, and me who'd give my immortal soul for an hour——"

"You'll go," Howard said, blinking kindly at her. "I'll take you. We'll get out of this for good and all. I'll bust a bank or forge a cheque. You've got the divine right to go, old dear!"

Robert stirred, drawing himself a little nearer to Francey, touching her rough tweed skirt humbly, secretly, as a Catholic might touch a sacred relic for comfort and protection. They were talking a language that he could not understand—-they were occupied with things that he despised, not knowing what they were; they made him ashamed of his ignorance and angry with his shame. He could not free himself of his first conviction that they were really the Banditti—inferior children, who yet had something that he had not. He was cleverer than they were. He would be a great man when they had wilted from their brief, shallow-soiled youth to a handful of dry stubble. (This Gertie Sumners would not even live long. He recognized already the thumb-marks of disease in her sunken cheeks.) And yet he was an outsider, blundering in their wake. Just because they accepted him, taking it for granted he was one of them, they deepened his isolation. He could not talk their talk. He could not play with them. He had tried. The old hunger "to belong" had driven him. But he was stiff with strength and clumsy with purpose. If he and Francey had not belonged to one another, he would have been overwhelmed in loneliness.

He shut his ears against them. But when she spoke he had to listen—jealously, fearfully.

"It would be no use, Howard. You'd come back. You can't strip off your nationality like an old-fashioned coat and throw it away. All this—isn't it English and different from any other country in the world—deeply, deeply different, just as we are different? England—she's a human, lovely woman, quiet and broad-bosomed, busy about her home, and only sometimes, in the spring and autumn, she stops a little to dream her mystic dreams. In the summer and winter she pretends to forget. She's anxious about many things—how she shall keep us warm and fed—a little stupid-seeming, with wells of all sorts of kindly wisdom.

"And Italy—the saint, the austere spirit, close to God, preparing herself for God, with unspeakable visions of Him. Where I lived"—she made a sudden passionate gesture of delight—"we looked over the Campagna, and there were three hills close to one another with towns perched on their crest, as far from the world and comfort as they could get. And at night they were like the three kings with their golden crowns and dark flowing robes, waiting for God to show them the sign.

"But we build our towns in the valleys and sheltered places. We like our trains to be punctual, and to do things in decent order. We pretend to be a practical and reasonable people. We're of our soil. In Italy what do trains matter—or when they come and go—when, even to those who don't believe in Him at all, it's only God who matters?" She laughed, shaking herself free. "So you'll come back, Howard—because you're part of all this. You'll always hate waiting for your train, and you'll always be a little ashamed of your dreams. And you'll never be real anywhere else."

Howard applauded solemnly.

"I'll make a poem of that—one day, when I'm awfully drunk, and don't know what I'm doing."

But Robert sat up sharply, frowning at her, white, almost accusing.

"When did you live in Italy, Francey?"

"Last year—all last year."

"You mean—you chucked your work—everything—just to play round——?"

Howard yawned prodigiously.

"You don't get our Francey's point of view, Stonehouse. You don't understand."

"Just to play round," she echoed to herself. Then she laughed and unclasped her hands from about her knees and stood up effortlessly, stretching out her arms like a sleepy child. "And now I'm going to gather sticks for a fire and primroses to take home. Coming Robert?"

"No," he muttered.

Howard rolled over in the grass.

"Sulky young idiot—if I wasn't half asleep—or I'd been asked——"

His voice died into an unintelligible murmur.

So she went alone. The rest, heavy with food and sunshine, nibbled jadedly at the remnants of the feast, exchanging broken, drowsy comments. Perhaps Gertie Sumners was brooding over the three kings with their golden crowns. But Robert knelt and watched Francey run down the hill-side, faster and faster, like a brown shadow. There was a thick belt of beech trees at the bottom, and she ran into them and was lost.

He rose stiffly. He did not want the others to see—he did not want to know himself, that he was following her. He strolled indolently about the crest of the hill, whistling to the breeze, his eyes hunting the wood beneath like the eyes of a young setter at heel. But when at last he was out of sight he slipped his leash and was off, running recklessly, headlong. The hill rose up behind him and sent him down its hillocky slopes as though before the horns of an avalanche. The wind blew the scent of trees and flowers and young grass against his burning face. It was like draughts of a cold, clear wine. It was like running full-tilt down Acacia Grove leaping and whooping.

It was frightening, too—a hand fumbling at the heart—this fierce coming to life of something dormant, this breaking free——

The wood had swallowed her. He drew up panting in the cool twilight. Beyond the faint breathing of the leaves overhead and the secret movement of hidden things, there was no sound. He walked on quickly. At first it was only suspense, childish, thrilling. Then it was more than that. His heart began to beat quickly. He tried to call her, but the quiet daunted him. The wood was a still, green pool into which she had dropped and vanished. It was an enchanted wood. There was enchantment all about her. They had seemed so near to one another—and then in a moment she had slipped away from him into a life of her own where he could not follow.

He had to find her and hold her fast. Nothing else mattered—neither his work, nor his career, nor Christine. It was terrible how little they seemed now—a handful of dust—beside this mounting, imperative desire. He had been so invulnerable. In wanting nothing but what was in himself he had been able to defy exterior events. Now he was stripped of his defence. He could be hurt. He could be made desperately happy or unhappy by things which he had thought trivial and purposeless—the playthings of inferior children.

He came upon her suddenly. She knelt in the long grass, idle, with a few scattered primroses in her lap as though in the midst of gathering them she had been overtaken by a dream. He called her by name, angrily, because of what he suffered. He stumbled to her and flung himself down beside her and held her close to him, ruthless with desire and his child's fear.

In that sheer physical explosion his whole personality blazed up and seemed to melt away, flowing into new form. He had dashed down the hill, a crude, exultant boy, into the whole storm and mystery of manhood. And for all his fierceness his heart was small within him, afraid of her, and of itself, and its own hunger.

At last he let her go. He tore himself from her and dropped face down in the grass, trembling with grief and shame. He heard her say: "Robert—dear Robert," very quietly, and her hand touched him, passing like a breath of cool wind over his hair and neck. He kissed it humbly, pressing it to his wet, hot cheek.

"I was frightened, Francey—and jealous—of everything—of the things you love that I don't even know of—of the places you've been to—of your friends—your money—your work. I thought you'd run away to Italy—or somewhere else where I couldn't follow—that I'd lost you——"

He saw her face and how deeply stirred she was. She had blazed up in answer to him, but that very fire lit up something in her which was not new, but which now stood out full armed—a clear-eyed austerity.

"I felt, too, as though I were running away—to the ends of the world—but not from you, Robert. I wanted you to come too. I asked you. You're not frightened now, are you?"

"Not so much."

"Let's be quiet—quite quiet, Robert. We've got to talk this out, haven't we? I've got to understand. Sit here and help me tie these together. They're for Christine. It'll make it easier for us. You didn't mean this to happen. It was the sun and wind—it goes to one's head like being out of prison after years and years. You mustn't make a mistake. You would never forgive yourself or me. I'd understand if you said: 'It was just to-day and being happy.' But I won't play at our being in love with one another, Robert."

"It isn't a mistake, I'm not playing. I don't pretend I meant to let you know. I was frightened. I wanted to hold fast to you. But I've been sure ever since that night at Brown's——"

"And yet you wanted to avoid me——"

He nodded. Ho knelt beside her, very white and earnest, with his hands clenched on his thighs.

"That was because I knew. I didn't think about it. But I knew all right. And I was afraid it would upset everything to care."

"Doesn't it?"

"Not caring for you. Of course, I know all about life. I'm young and I've never looked at a girl. I've always realized that it would be natural to fall in love—perhaps worse than most men—and that if it was with a girl like Cosgrave's it would be sheer damnation. I'd have to fight it down. But loving you is different. It'll make me stronger. I'll work harder and better because I love you. I'll do bigger things because of you."

Her head was bowed over her primroses. The sunlight falling between the trees on her wild brown hair kindled a smouldering colour in its disorder. He watched her, fascinated and abashed by the knowledge that she was smiling to herself. And suddenly, roughly like an ashamed boy, he took a grey and blood-stained rag from his inner pocket and tossed it into her lap.

"Do you remember that?"

She picked it up gingerly, amusedly.

"Is it a handkerchief, Robert?"

"Don't you remember it?" he repeated with triumph, as though in some way he had beaten her.

For a moment she was silent. And when she looked at him her eyes were no longer smiling.

"You kept it like that——?"

"I wouldn't even wash it. I hid it. It's got dirtier and dirtier."

"It must be horribly germy, Robert. We'll wash it together. As members of the medical profession we couldn't have it on our conscience——"

They laughed then, freely, out of the depth of their happiness. She laid her hand in his and he bent his head to kiss it.

"You do trust me, Francey?"

"Trust you?"

"You don't think it's weak of me to love you? You know I'll pass my finals, don't you—that I'll be all right? People might think I hadn't the right to love you till I was sure. But, then, I am sure—dead sure."

"I'm sure, too." Her voice sounded brooding, a little husky. She took his hand and laid it on her lap, spreading out the fingers as though to examine each one in turn. "It's a clever, beautiful hand, Robert—much the most beautiful part of you. It will do clever, wonderful things. What will you do?"

(As though, he thought, his hands were something apart and she was inquiring deeper into what was vitally him.)

He told her. It reassured him to go back to his foundations and to find them still standing. He lost his tongue-tied clumsiness and spoke rapidly, clearly, with brief, strong gestures. His haggard youth gave place to a forcible, aggressive maturity. He was like an architect who had planned for every inch and stone of his masterpiece. Next year he would pass his finals. He would take posts as locum tenens whenever he could and keep his hospital connexions warm. In five years he would save enough to specialize—the throat gave wide opportunities for research. There were men already interested in him who would send him work. In ten years Harley Street—if not before.

In the midst of it all he faltered and broke off to ask:

"Why do you love me, Francey?"

And then, impulsively, she flung her arm about him and drew him close to her. His head was on her breast, and for one uncertain moment she was not Francey Wilmot at all, but the warm living spirit of the sunlight, of the quiet trees and the grass in which they lay—of all the things of which he was afraid.

"Because you're such an odd, sad, little boy——"

3

After tea it began to rain, not dismally, but in a gentle way as people cry who have been too happy.

"In this jolly old country fine weather means bad weather," Connie Edwards commented cynically. She had reason to be depressed. The impossible poppies dripped tears of blood over the brim of the cartwheel hat. But apart from that misfortune she had never got over her original mood of puzzled dissatisfaction, and she and Cosgrave walked droopingly down the narrow lane arm in arm and almost wordless.

So much of winter days was left that it was dark when they reached the foot of the hill—the eerie luminous darkness of the country when there is a moon riding somewhere behind the clouds. Robert could see Christine and Francey just ahead of him. Christine had taken Francey's arm, and they talked together in undertones like people who have secret things to say to one another. How small Christine was! She seemed to have shrunk into a handful of a woman as though the sun had withered her. She walked timidly, with bowed head, feeling her way. Her voice lifted for a moment into the old clearness.

"His father was a wonderful man—a wonderful, good man. Unhappy. Very unfortunate. Not meant for this world. His mother was my dear friend. If they had lived—those two—— I did what I could—I think they will be satisfied—it makes me happy——"

She murmured wearily. And Francey bent her head to listen. Robert loved her for the tenderness of that gesture. Yet it was bitter, too, that they should talk of his father. He wanted to go up to them and tell the truth brutally to Christine's face. He would have liked to have told them the one dream which he carried over from his sleep. But it would have been useless. Christine would only smile with a cruel, loving wisdom.

"You don't understand. You were only a child. Your father was so unhappy——"

The myth had become an invulnerable reality and had grown golden in the twilight of her coming blindness. James Stonehouse had been a good man, a faithful friend, and broken-hearted husband. If those two had lived everything would have been different. She threw her hallowed picture of them on the screen of the dripping dusk so that they seemed to live. Robert saw them too. That was his mother walking at Christine's side, and then his father—— In a sort of shattering vision Robert saw him, a man of promise, black-browed with the riddle of his failure, a man of many hungers, seduced by rootless passions, lured to miserable shipwreck because he could not keep to any course, because he could not give up worthlessness for worth.

Himself——

He staggered before the brief hallucination. The moisture broke out on his white face. It wasn't enough to hate his father. He had to be fought down day by day. He was always there, waiting to pounce out. He lay on his face, pretending to be dead——

It was gone. He shook himself free as from the touch of an evil, insinuating hand out of the dark. This love was his strength. If Francey were like his mother, then she was also good. It was these rag and bobtail friends that poisoned everything. They would have to be shaken off. Francey was a child, fond of gaiety and pleasure, with no one to guide her. She didn't understand.

Howard and Gertie Sumners were walking behind him now with the luncheon-basket between them, talking earnestly in muffled whispers that were too intimate, and behind them again came the Gang itself, laughing, jostling one another, exchanging facetiousness in their medical-Chelsea jargon.

His father would have liked them. Connie Edwards, no doubt, would have been one of those dazzling, noisy phenomena that burst periodically on the Stonehouse horizon.

Supposing he should come to like them too—to tolerate their ways, their loose living, loose thinking——?

He remembered how that very afternoon he had tried to be one of them, and sickened before himself.

Francey called to him through the darkness.

"Miss Forsyth's so tired, Robert. Couldn't you carry her?"

And he took Christine in his arms, whilst she laughed and protested feebly. It was awful to feel how little she was. Her head rested against his shoulder.

"It's a longer road than I thought. You're very strong, Robert. Your father was strong too."

It had been a successful day. And yet, as they sat packed close together in the dim, third-class carriage, they were like captives who had escaped and were being taken back into captivity. The sickly, overhead light fell on their tired faces, out of which the blood, called up by the sun and wind, had receded, leaving their city pallor. Connie Edwards had indeed produced a lip-stick from her gaudy bead bag, but after a fretful effort had flung it back.

"What's the good? Who cares——?"

And Cosgrave huddled closer to her, wan-eyed, hunted-looking. It was the ghost of that exam that wouldn't be laid—the prophetic vision of the row that waited for him, grinding its teeth.

Only Gertie Sumners and Howard had a queer, remote look, as though in that recent muffled exchange they had reached some desperate resolve.

The wet, gleaming platform slid away from them. There was a faint red light in the west where the sunset had been drowned. Christine turned her face towards it. She was like a little old child. Her little feet in the shabby, worn-out shoes scarcely touched the floor. Her drooping hat was askew—forgotten.

"It has been a wonderful day. But I mustn't come again. I'm too old.
It's silly to fall in love with life when one is old."

Robert leant across to her. He ached with his love and pity.

"Tired, Christine?"

"A little. But it has been worth while. You carried me so nicely—so big and strong."

She leant against Francey, nodding and smiling to reassure him. And presently she was asleep. He saw how Francey shifted her arm so that it encircled the bowed figure, and every ugly thing that had dogged him in that lonely, haunted walk vanished before the kind steadfastness of her eyes.

It was as though she had said aloud:

"We'll take care of her together. We won't let her die before we've made her very, very happy."

Then he took out a note-book and made a shaky sketch of a pompous, drunken-looking house with a huge door, on which were two brass plates, side by side, bearing the splendid inscriptions:

Dr. Frances Stonehouse, Robert Stonehouse,
M.D., F.R.C.S.
Hours 10—1

He showed it to her and they smiled at one another, and there was no one else in the carriage but themselves and their happiness.