The Dark House

by I. A. R. Wylie

PART II

I

1

They came to an idle halt near Cleopatra's needle, and leaning against the Embankment wall, looked across the river to the warehouses opposite, which, in the evening mist, had the look of stark cliffs guarded by a solitary watchful lion. The smaller of the two young men took off his soft hat and set it beside him so that he could let the wind brush through his thick red hair. He held himself very straight, his slender body taut with solemn exultation.

"If only one could do something with it," he said; "eat it—hug it—get inside of it somehow—belong to it. It hurts—this gaping like an outsider. Look now—one shade of purple upon another. Isn't it unendurably beautiful? But if one could write a sonnet—or a sonata—or paint a picture—— That's where the real artist has the pull over us poor devils who can only feel things. He wouldn't just stand here. He'd get out his fountain pen or his paint-box and make it all his for ever and ever. Think of Whistler now—what he would do with it."

"I can't," Stonehouse said. "Who's Whistler?"

Cosgrave laughed in anticipation of his little joke. "Nobody, old fellow. At least, he never discovered any bugs."

The wind snatched up his forgotten hat and it sailed off up river into the darkness like a large unwieldy bird. He looked after it ruefully.

"That was a new hat. I'll have to go home without one, and the Pater will think I've been in a drunken brawl, and there'll be a beastly row."

"That's the one thing he'll never believe. Well, I don't care. It'll be over soon. If I've passed that exam. I'll get away and he won't be able to nag me any more. And you, do think I've passed, don't you, Stonehouse?"

"If you didn't imagine your answers afterwards."

"Honour bright, I didn't. I believe I did a lot better, really. You know, I'm so awfully happy to-night I'd believe anything. It's queer how this old river fits in with one's moods, isn't it? Last time we were here I wanted to drown myself, and there it was ready to hand, as it were—offering eternal oblivion—and all that. I thought of all the other fellows who had drowned themselves, and felt no end cheered up. And now it makes me think of escape—of getting away from everything—sailing to strange, new countries——"

"The last time you were here," Stonehouse said, "you'd just come out of the exam. If you really answered as you say you did, there was no reason for your wanting to drown yourself."

"But I did. You're such a distrustful beggar. You think I just imagine things. No, I'll tell you what it was—I didn't care. There I was—I'd swotted and swotted. I'd thought that if only I could squeeze through I'd be the happiest man on earth. And then, when it was all over I began to think: 'What's it all for, what's it all about? What's the good?' Suppose I have passed, I'll get some beastly little job in some stuffy Government office, 200 pounds a year, if I'm lucky. And then if I'm good and not too bright they'll raise me to 250 pounds in a couple of years' time, and so it'll go on—nothing but fug, and dinge, and skimping, and planning—with a fortnight at the seaside once a year or a run over to Paris. I suppose it was good enough for our grandfathers, Stonehouse—this just keeping alive? But it didn't seem good enough to me. Don't you feel like that sometimes—when you think of the time when you'll be able to stick M.D., or whatever it is, after your name—as though, after all, it didn't matter a brace of shakes?"

Robert Stonehouse roused himself from his lounging attitude and thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets. There was a nip in the wind, and he had no overcoat.

"No. When I've got through this next year I shall feel that I've climbed out of a black pit and that the world's before me—to do what I like with."

"Well—you're different." Cosgrave sighed, but not unhappily. "You're going to do what you want to do, and I expect you'll be great guns at it. I dare say if I were to play the piano all day long—decently, you know, as I do sometimes, inside me at any rate—and get money for it, I'd think it worth while—— But it takes a lot to make one feel that way about a Government office."

His voice was quenched by a sudden rush of traffic—a tram that jangled and swayed, a purring limousine full of vague, glittering figures, and a great belated lorry lumbering in pursuit like an uncouth participant in some fantastic race. They roared past and vanished, and into the empty space of quiet there flowed back the undertones of the river, solitary footfalls, the voice of the drowsing city. The loneliness became something magical. It changed the colour of Cosgrave's thoughts. He pressed closer to his companion, and, with his elbows on the balustrade and his hands clenched in his hair, spoke in an awed whisper.

"It does seem worth while now. That's what's so extraordinary. I feel I can stick anything—even being a Government clerk all my life. I don't even seem to mind home like I did. I'm in love. That's what it is. You've never been in love, have you, Stonehouse?"

"No."

"You're such a cast-iron fellow. I don't know how I have the nerve to tell you things. Sometimes I think you don't care a snap for anything in the world, except just getting on."

Robert Stonehouse hunched his shoulders against the wind. There was more than physical discomfort in the movement—a kind of secret distress and resentment.

"You do talk a lot of sentimental rubbish," he said. "It seems to me it's only a hindrance—this caring so much for people. It gets in a man's way. Not that it matters to you just now. You've got a slack time. You can afford to fool around."

"You think I'm a milksop," Cosgrave said patiently, "I don't mind. I dare say it's true. There's not much fight in me. I don't seem able to do without people like you can. I think, sometimes, if I hadn't had you to back me up I'd never have been able to stick things. Of course, I'm not clever, either. But you're wrong about being in love. It doesn't get in one's way. It helps. Everything seems different."

Stonehouse was silent, his fair, straight brows contracted. When he spoke at last it was dispassionately and impersonally, as one giving a considered judgment. But his voice was rather absurdly young.

"You may be right. I hadn't thought about it before. It didn't seem important enough. There was a woman I knew when I was a kid—a common creature—who was fond of saying that 'it was love that made the world go round.' (My father married her for her money, which didn't go round at all.) Still, in her way, she was stating a kind of biological fact. If people without much hold on life didn't fall in love they'd become extinct. They wouldn't have the guts to push on or the cheek to perpetuate themselves. But they do fall in love, and I suppose, as you say, things seem different. They seem different—worth while. So they marry and have children, which seems worth while too—different from other people's children, at any rate, or they wouldn't be able to bear the sight of them. What you call love is just a sort of trick played on you. If crowds are of any use I suppose it's justified. It's a big 'if,' though."

Cosgrave smiled into the dark.

"It sounds perfectly beastly. Not a bit encouraging. But I don't care, somehow. Do you mind if I tell you about her? I've got to talk to somebody."

"I don't mind. But I don't want to stand here any longer. It's cold, and, besides, I've got to be up west by six."

They turned and strolled on toward Westminster. Robert Stonehouse still kept his hands thrust into his pockets, and the position, gave his heavy-shouldered figure a hunched fighting look, as though he had set himself to stride out against a tearing storm. He took no notice of Cosgrave, who talked on rapidly, stammering a little and scrambling for his words. The wind blew his hair on end, and he walked with his small wistful nose lifted to the invisible stars.

"You see, I can't tell anyone at home about her. It's not as though she were even what people call a lady. (Oh, I'm perfectly sane—I don't humbug myself.) Mother'd have a fit, and the Pater only looks at that kind of thing in one way—his own particularly disgusting way. She drops her aitches sometimes. But she's good, and she's pretty as a flower. I met her at a dance club. I'd never been to such a place before. And then one evening it suddenly came over me that I wanted to be among a lot of people who were having a good time. So I plunged. You pay sixpence, you know, and everybody dances with everybody. Of course I can't dance. She saw me hanging round and looking glum, I suppose, and she was nice to me. She taught me a few steps, and I told her about the exam, and how worried I was about it, and we became friends. I've never had a girl-friend before. It's amazing. And she's different, anyway—— She's on the stage—in the chorus to begin with—but you'd think they'd given her a lead, she's so happy about it. That's what I love about her. Everything seems jolly to her. She enjoys things like a kid—a 'bus ride, a cinema, our little suppers together. She loves just being alive, you know. It's extraordinary—I say, are you listening, Stonehouse?"

"I didn't know you wanted me to listen. I thought you wanted to talk. I was thinking of an operation I saw once—you wouldn't understand—it was a ticklish job, and the man lost his head. He tried to hide it, but I knew, and he saw I knew. A man like that oughtn't to operate."

"And did the other fellow die?"

"Oh, yes. But he would have died anyway, probably. It wasn't that that mattered. It was losing his nerve like that."

"If I saw an operation," Cosgrave said humbly, "I should be sick."

Stonehouse had not heard. They reached the bridge in silence, and under a street lamp stopped to take leave of one another. It was their customary walk and the customary ending, and each wondered in his different way how it was that they should always want to meet and to talk to one another of things that only one of them could understand.

"Why does he bother with me?" Cosgrave thought.

But he was sorry for Robert, partly because he guessed that he was hungry and partly because he knew that he was not in love.

"I wish you'd come along too," he said a little breathlessly; "I want you to meet her, you know—for us all to be friends together—just a quiet supper—and my treat, of course."

It was very transparent. He tried to look up at his companion boldly and innocently. But the light from the street lamp fell into his strange blue eyes, with their look of young and anxious hopefulness, and made them blink. Robert Stonehouse laughed. He knew what was in Cosgrave's mind, and it seemed to him half comic and half pathetic and rather irritating.

"I don't suppose you have enough to pay for supper, anyway," he said roughly, "or you'll go without your lunch to-morrow. Don't be an idiot. Look after yourself and I'll look after myself. Besides, if you think I'm not going to have a square meal to-night you're enormously mistaken. I'm going to dine well—where you'll never Set your foot, not until you're earning more than 250 pounds a year, at any rate."

"Word of honour?"

"Oh, word of honour, of course."

A shy relief came into the pinched and freckled face.

"Oh, well then—but I do want you to meet all the same; you see, she'd like it—she knows all about you. I'm always bragging about you. Perhaps I could bring her round—if Miss Forsyth wouldn't mind—if she's well enough."

Robert Stonehouse half turned away, as though shrinking from an unwelcome, painful touch.

"She's all right."

"Then may we come? I'm not afraid of Miss Forsyth. She's an understanding person. She won't think people common because of their aitches. Give her my love, won't you, Robert. And good night."

"Oh, good night!" He added quickly, sullenly: "You look blue with cold.
Why don't you wear a decent coat? It's idiotic!"

"Because my coat isn't decent. I don't want her to see me shabby. And I like to pretend I'm rather a strong, dashing fellow who doesn't mind things. Besides, look at yourself!"

"I'm different."

"You needn't rub it in." He was gay now with an expectation that bubbled up in him like a fountain. He made as though to salute Robert solemnly and then remembered and clutched at his wind-blown hair instead. "Oh, my hat! Well, it will make Connie laugh like anything!" he said.

2

To be a habitue of Brown's was to prove yourself a person of some means and solid discrimination. At Brown's you could get cuts from the joint, a porter-house steak, apple tart, and a good boiled pudding as nowhere else in the world. You went in through the swinging doors an ordinary and fallible human being, and you came out feeling you had been fed on the very stuff which made the Empire. You were slightly stupefied, but you were also superbly, magnificently unbeatable.

Mr. Brown was an Englishman. But he did not glory in the fact. It was, as he had explained to Robert one night, his kindly, serious face glowing in the reflection from the grill, a tragedy.

"To be born an Englishman and a cook—it's like being born a bird without wings. You can't soar—not however hard you try—not above roasts and boils. Take vegetables. An Englishman natur'lly boils. And it's no good going against nature. You're a doctor—or going to be—and you know that. You've got to do the best you can, but you can't do more. That's my motto. But if I'd been born a Frenchman—— Well it's no use dreaming. If them potatoes are ready, Jim, so'm I."

Mr. Brown had taken a fancy to Robert Stonehouse from the moment that the latter had challenged him on the very threshold of his kitchen and explained, coolly and simply, his needs and his intentions. Mr. Brown was frankly a Romantic, and Robert made up to him for the souffles and other culinary adventures which Fate had denied him. He liked to dream himself into Robert's future.

"One of these days I'll be pointing you out to my special customers—'Yes, sir, that's Sir Robert himself. Comes here every Saturday night for old times' sake. Used to work here with me—waited with his own hands, sir—for two square meals and ten per cent. of his tips. You don't get young men like that these days—no, sir."

Robert accepted his prophetic vision gravely. It was what he meant to happen, and it did not seem to him to be amusing.

Brown's was tucked away in a quiet West End side street, and there was only one entrance. At six o'clock the tables were still empty, and Robert walked through into the employees' dressing-room. He put on his white jacket, slightly stained with iodoform, and a black apron which concealed his unprofessional grey trousers, and went to work in the pantry, laying out plates and dishes in proper order, after the manner of a general marshalling his troops for action. He was deft handed, and responsible for fewer breakages than any of the old-timers—foreigners for the most—who flitted up and down the passages with the look of bats startled from their belfries and only half awake. Through an open, glass window he could see into the huge kitchen, where Mr. Brown brooded over his oven, and catch rich, sensuous odours that went to his head like so many etherealized cocktails. He had not eaten since the morning, and though he was too strong to faint, it grew increasingly difficult to fix his mind on the examination question which he had set himself. He found himself wondering instead, what would happen if old Brown lost his flair for the psychological moment in roasts, and why it was that a man who had performed an operation successfully a hundred times should suddenly go to pieces over it? What made him lose faith in himself? Nerves? A matter of the liver? We were only at the beginning of our investigations. And then poor little Cosgrave, who as suddenly began to believe in himself and in life generally because he had fallen in love with a chorus girl!

The head waiter looked round the pantry door. He was a passionate Socialist who, in his spare time, preached the extermination of all such as did not work for their daily bread. But he disliked Robert bitterly, as a species of bourgeois blackleg.

"You're wanted. There's a party of ten just come in. Hurry up, can't yer?"

Robert put down his plates and went into the dining-room with the wine list. His table-napkin he carried neatly folded over one arm.

And there was Francey Wilmot.

She had other people with her, but he saw her first. He could not have mistaken her. Of course, she had changed. She was taller, for one thing, and wore evening dress instead of the plain brown frock that he remembered. But her thick hair had always been short, and now it was done up it did not seem much shorter. And it still had that quaint air of being brushed up from her head by a secret, rushing wind—of wanting to fly away with her. She was burnt, too, with an alien sun and wind. Her face and neck were a golden brown, and in reckless contrast with her white shoulders. One saw how little she cared. She sat with her elbows on the table, and the sight of the supple hands and strong, slender wrists stopped Robert Stonehouse short, as though a deep, old wound which had not troubled him for years had suddenly begun to hurt again. And yet how happy he had been, as a little boy, when she had just touched him.

It was evidently a celebration in her honour. A tall young man with side whiskers who came in late presented her with a bunch of roses in the name of the whole company and with a gay, exaggerated homage. They were a jolly crowd. They had in common their youth and an appearance of good-natured disregard for the things that ordinary people cared about. Otherwise they were of all sorts and conditions, like their clothes. Two or three were in evening dress, and one girl who sat at the end of the table and smoked incessantly wore a shabby coat and skirt and a raffish billycock hat. Chelsea or the University Schools was stamped on all of them. There wasn't much that they didn't know, and there was very little that they believed in—not even themselves. For they were of the very newest type, and would have scorned to admit to a Purpose or a Faith. But they could not help being young and rather liking one another, and the good food and the promise of a riotous evening.

Robert knew their kind. He even knew by sight the side-whiskered young man who now clapped his hands like an Eastern potentate. He had been of Robert's year at the University, and had been ploughed twice.

"Wine-ho! Fellow creatures, what is it to be? In honour of the occasion and to show our contempt of circumstances, shall we say a magnum of Heidsieck? All in favour wave their paws——"

The girl in the billycock hat blew a great puff of smoke towards him.

"Oh, death and damnation, Howard! Haven't I been explaining to you all the afternoon that I owe rent for a fortnight to a devil in female form, and that unless someone buys 'A Sunset over the Surrey Cliffs seen Upside Down,' Gerty will be on the streets? Make it beer with a dash o' bitters."

Finally it was Francey who decided. She beckoned, not looking at him, and Robert with a little obsequious bow, handed her the wine card and waited at her elbow. He was not afraid of Howard's recognition. They had never spoken to one another, and in any case Howard would not believe his eyes.

It was strange to stand near to her again and to recognize the little things about her that had fascinated small Robert Stonehouse—the line of her neck, the brown mole at the corner of her eye which people were always trying to rub off, the way her hair curled up from her temples in two unmistakable horns. He had teased her about them in his shy, clumsy way. A very subtle and sweet warmth emanated from her like a breath. It took him back to the day when he had huddled close to her, hiccoughing with grief and anger, and yet deeply, deliriously happy because she was sorry for him. It made him giddy with a sense of unreality, as though the present and the intervening years were only part of one of his night stories, which, after their tiresome, undeviating custom, had got tangled up in a monstrous, impossible dream. And then a new fancy took possession of him. He wanted to bend closer to her and say, very quietly, as though he were suggesting an order, "What about your handkerchief? Do you want it back, Francey?"

Amidst his austerely disciplined thoughts the impulse was like a mad, freakish intruder, and it frightened him, so that he drew back sharply.

"Cider-cup," she said. "It's my feast—and I like seeing the fruit and pretending I can taste it. And then Howard won't get drunk and recite poetry. Three orders, waiter."

He took the wine card, but she held it a moment longer, as though something had suddenly attracted her attention. Their hands had almost touched.

"Yes—three orders will be enough."

The company groaned, but submitted. In reality they were too stimulated already by an invisible, exuberant spirit among them to care much. From where he waited for Francey's order on the threshold of the pantry Robert could see and hear them. It was really the old days over again. Fundamentally things outside himself did not change much. The Brothers Banditti had grown up. They were not nice children any more. The innocent building-ground and nefarious plottings against unpopular authority had given place to restaurants and more subtle wickednesses. But still Francey played her queer, elusive role among them. She was of them—and yet she stood a little apart, a little on one side. Probably Howard thought himself their real leader. They did not talk to her directly very much, nor she to them. But all the time they were playing up to her, trying to draw her attention to themselves and make her laugh with them. She did laugh. It did not seem to matter to her at all that they were often crude and blatant and sometimes common in their self-expression. She laughed from her heart. But her laughter was a little different. It sat by itself, an elfish thing, with a touch of seriousness about it, its arms hugging its knees, and looked beyond them all and saw how much bigger and finer the joke was than they thought it. She was the spirit of their good humour. They could not have done without her.

And he, Robert Stonehouse, stood outside the circle, as in reality he had always done. But now he did not want to belong. He knew now how it hindered men to run with the herd—even to have friends. It wasted time and strength. And these people were no good anyhow. Howard was one of these dissipated duffers who later on would settle down as a miraculously respectable and incapable G.P. The rest were vague, rattle-brained eccentrics who would fizzle out, no one would know how or care.

Only Francey—— But even in the old days it was only because of
Francey that the Banditti had meant anything to him.

The head waiter pushed across the counter a jug of yellowish liquid in which floated orange peel and a few tinned, dubious-looking cherries.

"Take it, for God's sake! People who want muck like that ought to keep to Soho."

Robert poured out with an eye trained to accurate measurements in the laboratory. It was his practice to do well everything that he had to do. Otherwise you lost tone—you weakened your own fibre so that when the big thing came along you slumped. But he could not forget Francey Wilmot's nearness. It did not surprise him any more. But it charged him with unrest, and he and his unrest frightened him. He knew how to master ordinary emotion. Even when he carried off the Franklin Scholarship in the teeth of a brilliant opposition he had not allowed himself a moment's triumph. It was all in the day's work—a single step on the road which he had mapped out deliberately. But this was outside his experience. It had pounced on him from nowhere, shaking him.

He had to look up at her again. And then he saw that she was looking at him too, steadily, with a deep, inquiring kindness.

It was as though she had said aloud:

"Are you really a good little boy, Robert?"

The cider poured over the edge of the glass and over the table-cloth and in a dismal stream on to the lap of the girl with the raffish billycock hat.

"Well, that settles that," she said good-humouredly. "My only skirt, friends. She can't turn me out in my petticoat, can she? Oh, leave it alone, garcong; it doesn't matter a tinker's curse——"

He could not help it. In the midst of his angry confusion he still had to seek out her verdict on him—just as Robert Stonehouse had always done when he had been peculiarly heroic or unfortunate. And there it was, dancing beneath her gravity, her unforgotten, magic laughter.

At half-past ten Brown's cleared its last table. Robert Stonehouse rolled down his sleeves, picked up the parcel which had been placed ready for him on the pantry counter, said good-night to the head waiter, who did not answer, and with his coat-collar turned up about his ears went out in the street. It was quiet as a country lane and empty except for the girl who waited beyond the lamp light. He knew her instantly, and in turn two sensations that were equally foreign and unfamiliar seized him. The first was sheer panic, and the second was a sense of inevitability. The second was the oddest of the two, because he did not believe in Fate, but he did believe in his own will.

It was his own will, therefore, that made him walk steadily and indifferently towards her. His head bent as though he did not see her. It was really the wind in her hair now. It caught the ends of her long, loose coat and carried them out behind her. Her slender feet moved uncertainly in the circle of lamp-light. Any moment they might break into one of the quaint little dances. Or the wind might carry her off altogether in a mysterious gust down the street and out of sight. It was like his vision of her that evening in Acacia Grove. It made him feel more and more unreal and frightened of himself.

He was almost past her when he spoke.

"Robert Stonehouse," she said rather authoritatively, as though she expected him to run away; "Robert Stonehouse——"

He stopped short with his heart beating in his throat. But he did not take the hand that she held out to him. He could only stare at her, frowning in his distress, and she asked: "You do know who I am, don't you?"

"Yes. Francey—Francey Wilmot—Miss Wilmot." He forced himself to stop stammering, and added stiffly: "I did not know you had recognized me."

"Didn't you? I thought—— Well, I did recognize you anyhow. I was so astonished at first that I thought it was a sort of materialization. But you were absurdly the same. And then when you poured the cider out on to poor Gerty's skirt——"

"Was that one of my childish customs?" he asked. "I'd forgotten."

"I nearly stood up and shook hands."

"I'm glad you didn't."

"I thought you'd feel like that. I remembered that you had been rather a touchy little boy——"

"I was thinking of your friends. Howard, for instance."

"Why, do you know Howard?"

"By sight."

"If you've never even spoken to him you can't, of course, tell what he would have felt. Do you mind walking home with me? I don't live far from here, and we can talk better."

He held his ground, obstinate and defiant. It was unjust that anyone, knowing himself to be brilliantly clever, should yet be made an oaf by an incident so trivial.

"I'm sorry. I don't see what we can have to talk about. I'm not keen on childish recollections. I haven't time for them. And it's fairly obvious we don't move in the same set and are not likely to meet again." He burst out rudely. "I suppose you were just curious——"

"Of course. You'd be curious if you found me selling flowers in Piccadilly. You'd come up and say: 'allo! Francey, what have you been doing with yourself?' And you'd have tried to give me a leg up, if it only ran to buying a gardenia for old times' sake."

He suspected her of poking fun at him. And yet there was that subtle underlying seriousness about her and a frank, disarming kindliness.

"You think I'm down on my luck," he retorted, "and so anybody has a right to butt in."

"Not a right. Of course, if I'd met you in Bond Street, all sleek and polished, I shouldn't have dreamed of butting in. I should have said to myself, 'Well, that's the end of the little Robert Stonehouse saga as far as I'm concerned,' and I don't suppose I should ever have thought of you again. But now I shall have to go on thinking—and wondering what happened—and worrying." She drew her cloak closer about her like a bird folding its wings, and added prosaically: "I say, don't you find it rather cold standing about here?"

He turned with her and walked on sullenly, his head down to the wind. He thought: "I shall tell her nothing at all." But to his astonishment she was silent, and finally he had to speak himself.

"I'm afraid this silly business has broken up your party. Or was it getting too lively for you? Howard's beanos used to have a considerable reputation."

"He often seems drunk when he isn't," she returned tranquilly. "I think it's because he enjoys things more than most people are able to. It wasn't that. I wanted to see you so much, and I knew Brown's would be closing about now. So I sent them to a theatre. It seemed the safest place."

"And they went like lambs. But, then, the Banditti always did."

"Oh, the Banditti!" He guessed that she was smiling to herself. "The Banditti wouldn't have grown up like that. They were much too nice—never quite really wicked, were they? Just carried off their feet. Still, they were never quite the same after you left. I think they always hankered a little after the good old days when they rang door-hells and chivied their governesses. Probably they will never be so happy again."

"They had you. It was you they really cared about. Everybody did what you liked."

"You didn't."

"I did—in the end."

It was odd that they should be both thinking of that last encounter and that they should speak of it so guardedly, as though it were still a delicate matter.

"I didn't know you were never coming again. I waited for you in the afternoon—for weeks and weeks."

"Did you?" He looked at her quickly, taken off his guard, and then away again with a scornful laugh. "Oh, I don't believe it. You knew I wasn't nice—not your sort. You're just making it up."

"I wonder why you say that?" she asked dispassionately. "It's cheap and stupid. You're not really stupid and you weren't cheap, even if you weren't nice. And you know that I don't tell lies."

For a moment he was too startled and too ashamed to answer. Cheap. That was just the word for it. The sort of thing that common young men said to their common young women. And, of course, he did know. Her integrity was a thing you felt. But he could never bring himself to tell her that he had been afraid to believe too easily, or that he did not want to have to remember her afterwards, waiting there day by day, in their deserted playground. It troubled him already, like a vague, indefinite pain.

He did not even apologize.

"I suppose I should have come back sooner or later. But I didn't have the chance. My father died that night—unexpectedly." He brushed aside her low interjection.

"Oh, I was jolly glad. But after that we had to clear out. There was no money at all."

"But you lived in a big house. Your father was a great doctor."

"I was a great liar," he retorted impatiently. "I suppose I wanted to impress you. Perhaps he was a great doctor. Anyhow, he never did any work. There was a bailiff in the house when he died and a pile of bills. And not much else."

"What happened, then? Did you go with your stepmother? I remember how you hated her! You wouldn't admit that she was a mother of any sort."

"No. I don't know what became of her. I never saw her again after that night. I think she went to live with her own people. Christine took care of me."

"I don't remember Christine. I don't think you ever told me about her."

"I wouldn't have known how to explain. I don't know now. She was a sort of friend—my father's and mother's friend. There was an understanding between her and my mother—a promise—I don't know what. So she took me away with her. Not that she had any money, either. We went to live in two rooms in the suburbs, and she worked for us both. She had never worked before—not for money—and she wasn't young. But she did it."

"A great sort of friend. And she came through too——?"

He did not answer at once, and he felt her look at him quickly, anxiously, as though she had felt him shrink back into himself. She heard something in his silence that he did not want her to hear. He put his head down to the wind again, hiding a white, hard face.

"Oh, yes, and we still live in two rooms—over a garage in Drayton Mews. My room 'folds up' in the day-time, and she sits there and knits woollen things for the shops. She has to take life easily now. She had an illness, and her eyes trouble her. But she's better—much better. And next year everything will be different."

The street had run out into the still shadows of a great dim square. For a moment they hesitated like travellers on the verge of unknown country; then Francey crossed over to the iron-palinged garden and they walked on side by side under the trees that rattled their grimy, fleshless limbs in an eerie dance. There was no one else stirring. The eyes of the stately Georgian houses were already closed in the weariness of their sad old age.

But she asked no questions. She seemed to have drifted away from him on a secret journey of her own. He had to draw her back—make her realize——

"I shall be a doctor then," he said challengingly.

"You said you would be a doctor. We quarrelled about it."

"How you remember things——"

"You were such a strange little boy. Besides, you remember them too."

"That's different. I've never had anyone else——" He caught himself up. "I suppose you think I'm still bragging?"

"You never bragged. You always did what you said you were going to do—even stupid things, like climbing that old wall."

So she had seen him, after all. She had watched—perhaps a little frightened for him, a little impressed by his reckless daring.

"Oh, well, I admit it didn't seem likely. People think you have to have a lot of money. We've often laughed about it. For we hadn't anything except what we saved from week to week. And yet we've done it. You can do anything so long as you don't mind what you do. It depends on the stuff you're made of."

He threw his head up and walked freely, with open shoulders. After all, he was proud of those years, and had a right to be. They had tested every inch of him, and it would have been stupid to pretend that he did not know his own mettle. He heard his footsteps ring out through the fitful whimpering of the wind and they seemed to mark the rhythm of his life—a steady, resolute progression. The lighter fall of Francey Wilmot's feet beside him was like an echo. But yet it had its own quality. Not less resolute.

He heard her say quickly, almost to herself:

"It must have been hard going—but awfully worth while. An adventure. I can't be sorry for anyone who suffers on an adventure—any sort of adventure—even if it's only in oneself."

She was more moved than he could understand. But the wind, dashed with ice-cold rain, blew them closer to one another. He could feel the warmth of her arm against his. It was difficult to seem prosaic and casual.

"That's just it. Worth while. Why do people want 'chances' and 'equality' and things made smooth for them? What's the use of anything if there isn't a top and a bottom to it? What's the use of having enough to eat if you haven't been hungry? I'm going to be a doctor, and I might have slumped into the gutter. I'm jolly glad there is a gutter to slump into——" He broke off, and then went on more deliberately. "Christine and I mapped it out one night when I was ten years old. After school hours I used to run errands and sell newspapers. On half-holidays I went down into the West End and hunted taxis for people coming out of theatres. I took my exams and scholarship one after the other. We counted on that. I kept on earning in one way or another all through my first M.B. and during the two years I've walked the Wards. Now I've had to drop out for a bit to make enough to carry through my finals. Christine's illness was the only thing we hadn't reckoned with."

Her voice had an odd, troubling huskiness.

"You must be frightfully strong. But then you always were. You used to beat everyone——"

"I'm like that now. I've got a dozen lives—like a cat. And one life doesn't know what the other one's doing." He laughed. "Before breakfast I wash down the car of the man who owns our garage. The rest of the morning I coach fellows for the Matric. In the afternoon I swot for myself. You see how I spend my evenings. Brown's been very decent to me. I get part of my tips and two meals—one for myself and one to take home." He showed her the parcel that he carried. "Cold chicken and rice mould," he said carelessly. "We couldn't afford that."

He did not tell her that there had been times when, to keep their compact, they had gone without altogether, when Christine had fainted over her typewriter and he had watched her from out of a horrible, quivering mist—too sick with hunger to help, or even to care much. He did not want Francey to be sorry for him.

"And the tips?" she asked, with grave concern. "I hope we played the game. But poor old Howard is always so hard up——"

"Oh, good enough. Usually I get more than the others, and they hate me for it. I'm quicker and I've got clean hands. People like that."

"I saw your hands first," Francey said, "and I knew at once that you were something different."

It was too dark for her to see his face. Yet he turned away hastily. He spoke as though he did not care at all.

"Brown's a smart fellow. He knows what's coming, and what people are worth to him. We've got an agreement that when I'm Sir Robert I'm to boost the old place and do his operations free. I think he'll be rather sick if he doesn't need any."

It was half a joke, but if she had laughed—laughed in the wrong way—the chances were that he would have turned on his heel and left her without so much as a good-night. For he was strung up to an abnormal, cruel sensitiveness. Whatever else they did, people did not laugh at him. He had never given them the chance that he had given her. He had learnt to be silent, and now she had made him talk and the result had been an uncouth failure. He had thrown his hardships at her like a parvenu his riches. If she did not see through his crudeness to what was real in him, she could only see that he was a rather funny young man who swaggered outrageously. And that was not to be endured.

But she did not laugh at all.

"You're sure of yourself, Robert."

"Yes—I am."

"I'm sure of myself, too. Because I'm sure of things outside myself."

He did not try to understand her. He was wrestling with the expression of his own experiences. He threw out his free hand and turned it and closed the powerful, slender fingers, as though he were moulding some invisible substance.

"Outside things are colourless and lifeless—sort of plastic stuff—until we get hold of them. We twist them to the best shapes we can. Nothing happens to us that isn't exactly like ourselves. Even what people call accidents. Even a man's diseases. I've seen that in the Wards. People die as they live, and they live as they are——"

And now she did laugh, throwing back her head, and he laughed with her, shyly but not resentfully. It was as though a crisis in their relationship had been passed. He could trust her to understand. And he knew that though what he had said was true, it had also sounded young and sententious.

"You think I'm talking rot, don't you?"

"I only think you've changed," she answered, with a quick gravity. "Not outside. Outside you're just a few feet bigger and the round lines have become straight. But when you were a little boy you used to cry a good deal."

"I don't see—how did you know?"

"I did know. There were certain smears—I don't think you liked having your face washed—and a red, tired, look under the eyes. The point is that now I can't imagine your ever having cried at all."

"I haven't." He calculated solemnly. "Not for more than twelve years.
I remember, because it was after I had played truant at the circus."

But he did not want to tell her about the circus. He stopped short and looked at his watch in the lamplight.

"Nearly twelve. We've been prowling round this place for an hour. I've got to get home and work. I thought you said you lived near here."

"I do. Over the way. The big house. I've two rooms on the top floor.
Rather jolly—and near St. Mary's——"

"What—what do you want with St. Mary's?"

But she had already begun to cross the road, and the wind, coming down a side street with a shriek, sent her scudding before it like a leaf. She was half-way up the grey stone steps before he overtook her. She turned on him, the short ends of her hair flying wickedly.

"Of course, it's only right and natural that you should talk of nothing but yourself."

He stammered breathlessly.

"I didn't think—I'm sorry——"

"Do you suppose you're the only person who does what they say they're going to do?"

"What—not—not a doctor, Francey?"

"Not yet. I'm two years behind you. This will be my first year in the Wards. Next year you will be full-blown—perhaps on the staff—and I shall have to trot behind you and believe everything you say." She smiled rather gravely. "You will have got the big stick, after all."

He looked up at her, holding on to the spiked railing that guarded the yawning area. But he had a queer feeling that he had let go of everything else that he had held fast to—that he was gliding down-bill in a reckless abandonment to an unknown feeling. He knew too little of emotion to know that he was happy.

"Why—I shall be there too. I'll be on a surgical post—dresser for old
Rogers. And he's going to take me on his private rounds."

It was not what he had meant to say. He had meant to say, "We shall see each other." Perhaps she guessed. Her hand rested on his, warm and strong and kind, as though nothing had changed at all. Because they were grown up she did not hold back in a conventional reserve. If only he could have cried she would have sat down on the steps beside him, and put her arm about him, and comforted him.

"And I want to meet Christine," she said.

He nodded.

"Rather."

"And it's been fine—our meeting again. But didn't you always know it would happen?"

"I believe I did. Yes, I did. I used to imagine——"

And then he knew and saw that she knew too. He saw it in the sudden darkening of her steady eyes, in the perplexity of her drawn brows. He felt it in her hand that scarcely moved, as though even now it would not shrink from whatever was the truth. It came and went like a flare of fire across the storm. And when it had gone, they could not believe that it had ever been. They were both shaken with astonishment. And yet, hadn't they always known?

"Good-night, Robert Stonehouse."

"Good-night."

But he could not move. He watched the blank door open, and her slender shadow stand out for a moment against the yellow gas-light of the hall. She did not look back. Perhaps she too was spell-bound. The door closed with an odd sound as though the house had clicked its tongue in good-natured amusement.

"Now you see how it happens, Robert Stonehouse!"

At any rate, the spell was broken. Hugging his parcel dangerously close he raced back to the shelter of the trees and waited. High over head the house opened a bright eye at him. He waved back at it with an absurd, incredible boyishness.

Then he walked on deliberately, firmly.

What was it he had to set his mind on?

Of course. That question of therapeutics——