By Mary C. E. Wemyss

ORANGES AND LEMONS.
IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE.
PRUDENT PRISCILLA.
PEOPLE OF POPHAM. Illustrated.
THE PROFESSIONAL AUNT.

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

Boston and New York

ORANGES AND LEMONS

ORANGES
AND LEMONS
BY
MARY C. E. WEMYSS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1919

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY MARY C. E. WEMYSS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ORANGES AND LEMONS

ORANGES & LEMONS

I

The man who lives alone lives long;

The bird is not like that, and so—his song.

If a bishop had asked Elsie Carston, “Do you really and truly believe that islands, in far-off seas, were made islands and peopled by black races, solely in order that your brother should govern them, and you—in his absence—govern his children?” Elsie would have looked straight into the eyes of the bishop and would have answered, “I do not”; but she did.

If Marcus Maitland had been asked by any one, “Do you really think and believe that God made the hills in India solely for the preservation of the white woman’s complexion? that where He did not make hills He did not mean white women to go?” Marcus would have answered, “I do”; but he did not.

So far as Marcus knew, the island chosen for the future education of his brother-in-law, Eustace Carston, in the art of governing might have hills. On the other hand, the faith of some former governor’s wife might have removed them and taken them away with her, there being no limit to the luggaged importance of governors’ wives. Marcus knew because he had travelled. He had been on boats where every one was cramped excepting some governor’s wife and her suite. He had suffered the indignity of a tropical discomfiture in order that she might acquire an importance that was as new to her as was discomfort to him.

If it had not been for Eustace Carston, he had not travelled. When a man’s only sister marries a man he does not know, there are left to him but two things to do—to like him or to leave him alone. Marcus left him alone: left England. He had meant to travel until such time as his sister should write and beg him to come back, but she did not write and beg him to come back. She wrote at intervals saying what a delightful time he must be having; said intelligent things about tropical vegetation; and wrote, as they came, of charming babies, all exactly like their father. Marcus thought they should have been like her and therefore like him; for between him and his sister there was a strong family likeness. In Sibyl’s eyes there was no one to be compared with Eustace Carston. He stood alone. Marcus was tired of hearing that, so when an American he met on board ship assured him he was a white man, and suggested they should go into business together, Marcus, after making exhaustive enquiries about the man and his business, agreed. And he went to America; there lived and made money. When he had made as much money as he wanted, he began to long for home and he turned his face homewards, taking with him both the affection of his American friend and an interest in the business. London was still home to him; so he settled there and at certain times of the year turned his thoughts to a moor in Scotland, and at others to his collection of china, pictures, and prints, and so he occupied himself—at leisure. Before he had left England he had begun buying china. He had since learned how little he had then known.

On his return to London the only person he wanted to see was his sister and she was away; and her children were with their aunt in the country. If he could have seen the children without seeing the aunt, he would have done it, but he disliked the aunt. He wondered what Sibyl would do with the children when her husband took up his new appointment. She could not surely ask Carston’s sister to have them indefinitely.

It must have been suggested to thousands of bachelor uncles that they should take an interest in their nephews and nieces. And thousands of bachelor uncles must have responded by taking an interest—and more than a life interest—in their nephews and nieces. The methods of suggestion are usually two. Either by prayer indirectly, or by an appeal, made directly, either after church on a suitable Sunday (the hedges should be white with hawthorns, and the cows, red and white, should be knee-deep in buttercups, and if possible a trout should dart in and out the shallows of the stream); or at Christmas-time when all churches are decorated and all relations are demonstrative.

Either appeal would possibly have moved Marcus Maitland. He was susceptible to environment: had, no doubt, as a boy, tickled trout, and must have known something of the meaning of mistletoe. But of a letter however delicately expressed he was always suspicious. All letters he read, firstly, to see what was in them: secondly, to see what was behind them. In a letter Sibyl told him her husband had been appointed governor of yet another island that was as hot as it was remote: which fact she stated clearly enough. Behind it was the suggestion that no mother could subject so delicate and delicious and new a thing as Diana’s complexion to the ravages of so intemperate a climate.

Dear Marcus,—Do you feel inclined to take charge of the child while her parents are governing wisely and well that far-away island? Diana is delightful. If you had not gone round the world, just as a squirrel goes vaguely round and round its cage, you must have discovered it for yourself.

I want you to have Diana. I could leave her with Elsie, Eustace’s sister, who is a dear and so proud of Diana, but she rather resents my having the child when I am at home. So when I go away this time I want to leave her with some one else just to show Elsie I dare. It’s a tremendously brave thing to do—requiring true courage on my part—but I must do it because Elsie, having no children of her own, is centring herself on the child, and I know if Diana should want to marry, she might try to dissuade her. So, Marcus, will you have her? Elsie, dear as she is, is rather too strong-minded a woman for a girl to be with altogether. She is a little too earnest and strenuous. I want Diana to frivol. I don’t want her to see too deeply into the things of life—yet. Everything with Elsie is spelt with a capital letter, and is heavily underlined. Woman to her is so much more than mere woman. I don’t want Diana at her age to be faced with sex problems. Dear Elsie is inclined to see in man woman’s chief and natural enemy. You will understand! She wants Diana to do great things in life. I want life to do great things for her. I know you will give her the chance to see its beautiful side, and, of course, if there should be a question of her falling in love—as there is bound to be—you will guide her gently to fall in love with the right kind of man—a man like—dear old thing, you are bristling all over—did you imagine I was going to say Eustace when I want to persuade you to do something for me? I took the child to her first dance last night. She looked like a rose; her complexion is delicious.

Marcus was glad Diana had a complexion. Was she pretty? He should say not. When especial mention is made of a woman’s skin it usually means that it is the only thing that can with truth be commended. If everything else is good, the complexion is thrown in, as it were. Sibyl’s had been delicious, and he did not remember mentioning it in writing to any one—not even to his tutor at Magdalen—No!

Marcus returned to the letter. Sibyl was in London and she had not let him know—that was hard to forgive; however, she had now made a definite demand upon him and he must respond. Hitherto she had asked of him nothing more than an unbounded admiration of Carston and that he had been obliged to deny her—on principle. She spoilt Carston, indulged him, so much so that he would allow her, expect her even, to follow him to any and every part of the world regardless of whether the climate were good or bad for a woman’s delicate skin.

Marcus rang the bell. To the man who answered it, he said: “Pillar, I am expecting a young lady.”

“Ah, sir,” said Pillar, “I have been expecting this—”

“Since when?”

“Well, sir, at any time during the last eighteen years the question would not have come upon me as a shock—I saw her last night. She looked beautiful—if I may say so, sir, like a rose.”

“Who?”

“Miss Diana, sir.”

“You saw her?”

“Yes, sir; there was a ball at Rygon House. The valet is a friend of mine. I looked in. Miss Diana held her own. She stood out among the disputants. She excited a certain—a creditable amount of jealousy, among the right people. It was the opinion, expressed on the other side of the swing door, that she should go far.... Yes, sir, she is taller than her ladyship and, in a sense, fairer. I should say her hair is hardly golden, although I suspect in sunlight I should discover myself in error. Her skin is dazzling.... You will remember, sir, calling my attention to the skins of the women—in Munich I think it was?—And her carriage—you will perhaps remember drawing my attention to the carriage of the women in—the Andalusian women? Yes, sir, Andalusian—I think I am correct—How was she dressed, sir?”

Mr. Maitland had not asked the question.

“In white, sir. It didn’t look white. I mean, if you will excuse me, there were many in white, but Miss Diana looked conspicuous. She might have been in scarlet—she showed up so—stood out. I have heard you use the expression with regard to the paintings of old masters. As we left Madrid, I think it was, sir, you lamented the lost art of paintrature.”

“That will do, Pillar. Did her ladyship see you?”

“Her ladyship did me that honour, sir. I handed her a cup of coffee in order to make myself known, saying, ‘Sugar, my lady,’ if I remember rightly. Miss Diana took no refreshment. Her ladyship asked for you, sir; she thought you were not in town. I told her you had just returned from Norway.”

“Thank you, Pillar; that’s all.”

“Miss Carston comes here, sir?”

“Yes. That’s all.”

Pillar took from his pocket a small red notebook, in which he began to write.

“What is it, Pillar? What are you writing?”

“Awning, sir. So far only awning. That’s all.”

“Why awning?”

“The usual accompaniment to a wedding, sir. It’s as well to get things in hand.”

II

The woman who lives alone and weeds

Forgets her own and gives to others’ needs.

Elsie Carston lived in the country, in the village of Bestways, and her life she ordered according to the sojournings abroad of her brother and his wife. It was for their children—she told herself and sometimes others—that she lived in the country; but she knew it was not quite true. When we deceive ourselves and know it, we are on the way to salvation. Elsie was undoubtedly on the way to salvation,—a long way on,—but she did stop on the way, now and then, to look back. She liked to feel that if she had not devoted herself to her brother’s children she would have travelled. She sometimes allowed people to believe that she thirsted for deserts and longed to climb camels; but if those people had seen her in her garden fringing the skirts of the walks with thrift, and embroidering the borders with pansies and pinks, they would not have believed her anxious to leave her garden and her work. She loved Bestways. Her house was of warm red brick—Georgian, she would tell you with pride. It was old, certainly: the garden that held it in its arms—as it were, hugging it—was old too, older than the house possibly. The yew hedges had been planted by people of long ago, who perhaps spoke of the day when the hedges should be grown quite high and they not there to see. There must always be in a garden that sadness. Therefore those who have a garden should also—if they may—have children, whose children will live to walk under the trees they plant.

Elsie had no children, of course; and she would have admitted it, if asked the direct question; otherwise she was inclined to look upon her brother’s children as hers, and in no way would she have allowed that they belonged to her sister-in-law’s brother. It was in her garden they should walk in years to come, not in his.

At one end of the village Elsie Carston lived. At the other, back from the road, in a house surrounded by a large park, with every other evidence around it of riches—quiet riches—lived Mrs. Sloane. She walked under trees that had been planted by Sloanes many years before, and in church she sat beneath monuments to Sloanes: but in the pew beside her must sit borrowed children, there being no little Sloanes. They would, by this time, have been grandchildren, if there had been. Though borrowed children are not what they should be, those would slip their little hands into Mrs. Sloane’s—one from each side—just as if they had been real grandchildren, and sit quietly, longing for the sermon to be done; and if it were longer than it should be, a little squeeze from the hand of their old friend would bid them take courage. She had been a child once and she knew! So must preachers also once have been children, yet do they think of the child to whom it is real pain to sit still? Some do.

Mrs. Sloane sat in the chancel, and sometimes into the chancel would come, during the service, a little bird. Then would the words of the preacher become winged words and would find their way into the heart of every child in the congregation. So robins as well as men may be evangelists.

Mrs. Sloane and Elsie Carston were great friends. They were both gardeners, which may make for friendship. There was between them this difference: Elsie weeded her garden because in her garden there were weeds; Mrs. Sloane weeded hers because to find a weed would have been something of an excitement—likewise a triumph. Elsie Carston planted and weeded and watered entirely oblivious to the hatred that she (aunt to Diana) had aroused in the heart of Marcus (uncle to Diana). And as she weeded and watered and planted, it was of Diana she thought, and she grudged not that far-off island its flowers and its luxurious vegetation, because it gave her Diana. She no longer found it in her heart to bemoan the sandy soil of her garden and its unquenchable thirst.

For Diana’s sake she watered the flowers as much as for their own. Diana loved flowers and Elsie stooped to pull up a weed that had dared to push its way into Diana’s border. She stooped easily, much more easily than Marcus would have imagined possible. He was pleased to think of her as middle-aged and crabbed and sour and disagreeable and grasping, whereas she was thirty-six and young at that and delightful—easily amused and a friend to every one in her small world. She was expecting Diana on a long stay, so there lurked a smile at the corners of her mouth and a twinkle in her honest grey eyes. While Eustace was abroad, Diana would be hers. She was thankful Eustace had married so devoted a wife. She had known people express surprise that Lady Carston should leave her children, suggesting that however much you love your husband your children should not be neglected. Sibyl’s children were not neglected, nor had they ever been. Elsie loved them. Not even a mother could feel more for them than she felt. When Dick, the boy, was small she had said to him, “I wish, Dick, you were mine—my own little boy.”

“Why?” he had asked, not seeing the necessity.

“Well—because I wish you were.” She had no better reason to give than this.

“But you have all the feelingship of a mother towards me,” he had said; and it was true: she had. What more than the feelingship could she desire? Not even all mothers possess it. Elsie, as she watered, wondered how Diana had looked at the dance; what her mother had thought of her, what the world in general had thought of her, what any one man had thought of her. Elsie frowned, assuring herself that she wished some man to fall in love with Diana. Of course she did. The pansies at her feet knew better. They would have allowed that she was kind and strangely gentle for one so capable—but of those children, they must have admitted, she was a little jealous. She would have “thinned” the children’s relations, on the other side, just as drastically as she thinned theirs on both sides of the border. On to the sterling qualities of a generous nature Elsie had grafted some of Sibyl’s tenderness. “But,” said Diana, “you can see where it joins”; but it did join—that was something; moreover, the soldering held. At twelve o’clock the second post came in and a letter was brought out to Elsie. It was from Sibyl, her sister-in-law, and she opened it thinking here was the news she had been waiting for—the date of Diana’s coming. She read the letter, and re-read it. Then she turned back and read it for the third time.

Dearest Elsie,—no one dearer,—you know that. Shall I make you understand what I want you most desperately to understand? I am more than grateful to you for all you have done for Diana. Every time she comes into the room Eustace is grateful. For much of what she is she is indebted to you: her frankness, her honesty are yours. Her goodness, a reflection of yours. Everything, therefore, that is best in her I acknowledge as your gift to her, to me, to her father. But, Elsie, I want her to see something of the world; I want her to have the amusement a girl of her age should have. I want her to see men so that she may choose between them. I want her to stay in London for a few months and I want to leave her with my brother. I don’t think you like him? He was a dear to me when I was Diana’s age and a fierce chaperon. You have never seen him. He was so long abroad. I remember you said you had heard things about him: but they may not have been true, and if they were—if he is what you call a man of the world—it will only make him more fiercely particular with Diana than he would otherwise have been. It is my fault that he has drifted away from me. He was always jealous of Eustace. I wonder if you will understand that? No, you are too generous a nature to understand anything so small. So, will you write to Diana and say you are pleased she should go to London? Because without that she won’t stay willingly, and I want her to stay willingly. Marcus would never keep her unless she wanted to stay. That’s his way. It will be so good for him to have her. Pillar, his man, says he wants something young about the house (Marcus, not Pillar). What have you to do with that? you will say. Don’t say it. I want you and Marcus to be friends—I want Diana to see something of the world and the world to see something of her. There, it’s out! Worldly woman that I am! You have a literary recluse at your gate (they are so dangerous when they come out). I am afraid of him. You have a muscular parson. I am afraid of him. I am afraid of all men—tinkers, tailors, soldiers and sailors, rich men, poor men, apothecaries, and thieves—they are all thieves. I am afraid of all but the right one.

Your dear Eustace’s Wife

Elsie pondered over that letter—she was hurt—she was indignant—beaten—but there was one to whom she always could turn for comfort—one who always understood.

“Marcus,” she called, and to her feet came slithering a black dog, and he lay on his back before her, presenting all that was most vulnerable in his person to the tender ministrations of her wavering foot. One hind leg, to all appearances, was broken past mending. One front paw was badly damaged.

He was asking but the raking movement of his beloved physician’s well-booted foot and he should be healed. How long, how long, must he wait? There were other things to be done all on a summer’s day. There was a yellow cat—a stranger—not far off, that needed a lesson. There were more sparrows than there should be in a good woman’s garden. They needed a fright, that was all. Low-growing gooseberries there were within the reach of the shortest-legged and best-bred spaniel. He gave up the remote chance of healing by the scraping up and down of feet, and was off in the wake of the yellow cat, flushing sparrows as he went. The brambles did for him what his mistress would not. But brambles, being self-taught scratchers, have not the firmness of touch desirable; moreover, they don’t know when to leave go, or how.

“Marcus, do you hear me when I speak?” called Elsie.

“He’s that obstinate, that he be,” said the old gardener, who always came when any one was called, answering to any name if it were called loud enough.

He was deaf, so it was best to make sure: besides, his wife had lately died and he felt lonely if left entirely to vegetables.

“He just does it for the sake of contrariness,” he went on; “at his age he did ought to know better—but he don’t mean half he does—if you don’t take no notice of him he’ll come skeewithering back.”

And skeewithering back Marcus came, and resting his head on Elsie’s lap looked up into her face with that in his eyes that must forever disarm all feelings of anger, hatred, and malice against uncles—even uncles!

“Why, oh, why were you called Marcus?” she asked, and Marcus said, in his own particular manner of speech, that he had often asked himself the same question—and would now ask her.

Elsie remembered well the day Marcus had arrived—already named—in a basket. When she had opened the basket she had seen the smallest of black spaniels, and the blackest of black dogs, whose mother, judging by his neck, might have been a swan, and whose father, judging by the rest of him, the best spaniel ever bred. When she questioned the suitability of his name she discovered that he looked the wisest thing in the world—that a philosopher beside him must have lost in seriousness of demeanour. On his forehead there stood, strongly pronounced, the bumps of benevolence—so as Sibyl had named him Marcus, Marcus he remained.

The other Marcus was then nothing more than the forgotten name of a negligible brother—the children’s uncle—on the other side.

III

If a sister knows not a brother’s heart he has none to know.

“Dearest Sibyl,” wrote Marcus, “why didn’t you tell me you were in London and taking Diana to her first dance? I had always meant to give her a pearl necklace for her coming-out ball. I will take her, of course, while you are abroad, on one condition, and that is that she isn’t always rushing off to her aunt in the country. I dislike that woman, as you know. I dislike all strong-minded, self-opinionated women. You are quite right, she is no fit companion for a girl of Diana’s age. Who has a better right to Diana than I have? I can’t have Miss Carston interfering. Sibyl, my dear, I am longing to see you.”

Hardly had he written the words when the telephone bell rang at his elbow.

He lifted the receiver and heard Sibyl’s voice telling him he was a darling old owl. In answer to his gentle reproof she said, Of course she had written to tell him she was bringing Diana to London, but she had forgotten to post the letter! Couldn’t he have guessed that? There was the same tenderness in the voice there had always been. She used the same absurd endearments she had always used. He knew she must be unchanged. Might she come and see him? Now? At once? She would!

He put back the receiver—and was astonished at his emotion. The force of his feelings shocked him. He had imagined himself past caring for anything very much. His life was so easy—so well ordered—so few demands were made upon him, except for money—and those were easily met. There was nothing to disturb him—nothing to excite him—except perhaps now and then a rather bigger venture than usual in the city—which as a rule meant more money (he was lucky) with which to buy china, glass, prints, anything he liked, and to his manifold likes his room testified. His house was beautiful and the things in it were chosen for their beauty. For these things he had come to care because he had been left alone in the world. He liked to think of himself as neglected. He had felt for his sister a deep affection and she had chosen to marry and leave him.

He couldn’t compete for her love. He never competed. Even as a collector he had suffered from this amiable inability to assert himself. Now he deputed others less sensitive to buy for him. In his young days, before he had gone to America, he remembered at an auction losing a vase he had particularly wanted. He had allowed himself to be outbidden by a girl with wide, grey eyes—who wore dogskin gloves. He could have outbidden her, but something had moved him to pity. Her gloves probably—they betrayed such a lack of social knowledge. It was a blue vase he would have bought. He loved the colour of it—the feel of it. She could have known nothing of the feel of it, for she held it in gloved hands, for which lack of feeling and understanding he pitied her—pitied her ignorance. She held the vase upside down to look at the mark: even about that she was undecided—or else she was short-sighted, which probability the clearness of her eyes questioned. Having examined the mark, she handed the vase back to the man from whom she had taken it and sharply bid a figure to which Marcus could have gone if he had wished. But he had not. So the vase became hers and she looked him straight in the eyes—and her eyes said “Beaten!”

“Goth!” thought Marcus as he recalled the scene. “She held the vase in gloved hands. Vandal—nice grey-eyed, clean, ignorant woman—” But he had thought of her oftener than he knew in those days, bemuse for a certain time he had thought of her every time he had seen a woman whose eyes were not grey.

Marcus, thinking now only of his sister, walked to a mirror that hung on the wall between two windows and looked at himself anxiously. Would she find him changed? At forty-six he was bound to look different, a little grey, of course. That did not matter, so long as she was not grey. He lit a cigarette; then put it down unsmoked, remembering that as a girl she had hated the smell of tobacco. Then he went to the window and ran up the blind; then pulled it down again halfway: not too strong a light, he decided; and pulled all the blinds down halfway. It would be kinder to Sibyl. Or should he pull them right up and face the worst? Leave her to face the light? A taxi stopped in the street below. It was absurd, but he was too nervous to go down and meet her and he counted the seconds it would take Pillar to get upstairs, to open the door. One! He must have been waiting in the hall. Supposing she were grey-haired, old, and wrinkled—or fat—? How should he keep it from her that he was shocked, distressed, pained? The door opened and in a moment two arms were round his neck. He almost said, “Where is your mother?”—was delighted he should almost have said it; wished he had really said it. What prettier compliment could he have paid this delightful being he held in his arms?

She was still young—still brown-haired—still impulsive. He held her at arm’s length—Still in love with Eustace! He could see that: no woman remains so young who is not in love.

“Marcus, Marcus, you dear funny old thing!”

“Why funny?” he asked, gently disengaging himself from her arms; “let me look at you again.”

With a feeling of apprehension he knew to be absurd, he looked again, gaining courage as he looked. Had he overestimated the youthfulness of her appearance? Did not her pallor detract just a little from the radiance that had been her greatest beauty? Had he missed wrinkles? Yes, one or two—finely drawn, put in with a light hand, emphasizing only the passage of smiles—nothing more. If she had lost anything in looks she had gained much in expression. He might have left the blinds up. Her eyes were large. There were women he knew whose eyes got smaller as they grew older; that he could not have borne. Sibyl’s eyes were just as they had always been. They had lost naturally something of their look of childlike questioning. That he did not mind. The childlike woman he had long ceased to admire. He read here true womanliness; a depth of real understanding, and a certain knowledge of the big things in life—things that mattered.

“Sit down,” he said, and he drew her down on to the sofa beside him. “She looked like a rose, did she?”

“My Diana?”

Marcus nodded. “Pillar saw her.”

“Did he say she looked like a rose? Well, then it must have been very evident.”

“Not necessarily,” said Marcus, unconsciously championing Pillar. Not that he altogether trusted Pillar’s taste. He had shown in the Louvre, Marcus remembered, a weakness for Rubens’s women. He might have admired the consummate technique of a great master while deploring a certain coarseness in his choice of subjects, but he had not done so—

“Is she pretty?” asked Marcus.

“She’s rather delicious.”

“When is she coming to see me?”

“At any moment, but she’s a will-o’-the-wisp. She comes and goes as she wills.”

“She’s slight, then?”

“Oh, slight! You could pull her through a ring.”

Marcus was glad of that.

“Now tell me about your dear self, Marcus.”

There was so little to tell, he said.

“Not when everything interests me—Give me a cigarette.”

“But you used not to—” he began, handing her his cigarette case.

“Smoke? No—but Eustace likes me to sit with him, and we smoke—you get to like it in hot climates.”

“I shouldn’t have let you smoke if you had been mine.”

“No?” she laughed gently. “Dear old Marcus!”

Looking at Sibyl, and finding her so perfectly satisfying to his artistic sense, he fell to wondering what Diana was really like. And whom she was like? He dared not ask. He had no wish to hear she was like her father. She could not be like her mother or the papers would be bound to have got hold of it. He was glad they hadn’t—but still girls far less pretty were advertised.

“I’m so glad,” said Sibyl; “it shows you won’t let Diana.”

“Smoke? No, certainly not.”

“You don’t know Diana—I must tell you about her—a little about her, without saying she is like her father, is that it?” She laughed—how gay she was! When she had told him that little, omitting that much, she asked: “Does she sound nice?” And Marcus, smiling, said she sounded delicious.

“She is.”

Marcus laughed; this was the old Sibyl back again, with all her enthusiasms, the same charming companion she had been as a girl. Because of that charm of hers, he liked to think, he had not married.

“Sibyl, is she like you?” he asked impatiently.

“Yes.”

He breathed again.

“And I so wanted her to be like her father,” she added.

“I suppose so—Is his sister—the one you call Elsie—married?”

“No.”

“You said she had no children—”

“She hasn’t.”

“But naturally. It was hardly necessary to say it, was it?”

And Sibyl laughed. Marcus needed just what she was going to give him, a disturbing young thing to live with him. Marcus dreaded it, although he would not have said so because of that sister he so disliked, who wanted Diana.

“I won’t have Diana running off whenever Miss Carston chooses to send for her. That I think you understand.”

“But there will be times when you will want to get rid of her. You won’t want to give up travelling, will you?”

“Couldn’t she come with me?”

“You can’t conceive, dear, the trouble a woman is travelling. You would hate to have to think of some one else—another place to find in a crowded train—another person’s luggage to look after—another ticket to lose—you would hate it.”

“Then I shan’t travel.”

“But surely it would be easier to send Diana to Elsie than to do that.”

“I detest that woman—”

“She has—nice eyes. You are a dear old thing, Marcus, and not a bit changed.”

“I never change.”

Marcus waited all day. Diana did not come. He was disappointed. It showed a want of reverence for the older on the part of the younger generation. At last he went to bed with a volume of Rabelais to read (in order to keep up his French). He read until he grew sleepy. He put out the light and slept until a flash of light awoke him and he wondered—What was this thing sitting on the end of his bed in white—a being so slim and so exquisite!

“Darling! the same old Marcus,” the being exclaimed,—“so sleepy and I woke him up. I couldn’t wait to see him—such years since we met!”

“Sibyl!” he murmured.

“Not this time, it’s Diana—is she like Sibyl? I am so glad—well, darling, talk!”

The slim being sat on his bed and sticking out her feet, on which twin shoe-buckles twinkled, urged him to amuse her. He dreaded “This little pig went to market” played through the bedclothes. He saw Diana eyeing the spot where she must know his toes were bound to be.

“How did you get here?” he asked.

“Pillar opened wide the portal and we walked in. He wasn’t in the least surprised.”

“Not surprised?”

“Not in the least. He said we might turn up the carpet and dance—if we liked. He offered us a gramaphone—his own—to dance to.”

“My dear Diana, you ought to be in bed.”

“Ought? Why?”

“It’s time.”

“What is he reading?” She put out her hand. He seized the book.

“A bedside classic, is it?”

He put it under his pillow.

“You look nice in bed,” she said softly, “but not a bit what I expected.”

“I am not what I was, of course,” he said hastily.

“Are you a Once Was? Poor darling—does it hurt? Do you like my frock?”

He said he liked it—enormously.

“And my shoes?”

He nodded.

“Mother says I get my slim feet from you.”

“Oh, does she? Do go home, my child. How are you going home?”

“Where are your slippers?” She dived down.

“You’ve kicked them under the bed,” he moaned; “they were there.”

“I never touched them; here they are!” She slipped her feet into them; huge, red morocco slippers they were. Pillar would have remembered where they had been bought, the day on which they had been bought, and what kind of a woman she was who had passed at the moment of buying. They must have been the only size left in the bazaar. Diana sat on the edge of the bed again and put out her feet, the slippers swinging like pendulums from the tips of her toes. “Mummy must retract her words—she spoke in her haste—Marcus, my Once Was, I’ve been dancing—did you ever dance?”

“Dear child, do go, who is taking you home?”

“Six people. Pillar is taking care of them downstairs—Well, if you insist, I suppose I must. I shall love to stay with you. You don’t mind my coming like this—do you? Look at me! D’you like me?”

She was exactly—in theory—what Marcus would have liked another man’s niece to be, slight, graceful, with just that amount of assurance he found right in woman; but one does not always want one’s theories to live with one.

When he awoke a few hours later, he was firmly convinced he had dreamed and had dreamed pleasantly enough, and he closed his eyes to dream again; but the dream had vanished. Pillar remained. He brought him his tea, pulled up the blinds, put his things in order, stooped and picked up from the floor something that sparkled and laid it down on the dressing-table.

When he had gone Marcus jumped out of bed, went to the dressing-table and saw lying upon it a small stone of glittering paste. He had not dreamed then. He was glad—in a way. Diana would be a disturbing element in a quiet life—distracting, perhaps, rather than disturbing.

IV

A mother may laugh with a master; she goes and

the joke goes with her: the boy stays behind.

Sibyl Carston, having arranged things entirely to her satisfaction, straightway made preparations to join her husband in that far-off dependency. The preparations were quickly made. She went down to see Dick at school: walked with him through cool cloisters, out into the sun; paced close-shaven lawns; drank in the beauty of it all and expressed a hope that it was sinking into the soul of her son.

“Oh, rather,” said the son, a little surprised that his soul should be discussed. He realized the occasion was a special one, otherwise it was the sort of thing you didn’t talk about. It was there all right, his soul, he supposed. It stirred to the sound of beautiful music; also when he read in history of deeds of valour!—you bet it did—at the greatness of England in general; at the left-hand bowling of one master in particular. It was all there, but he didn’t want to talk about it.

“I understand, darling,” said his mother, “but don’t stifle it.”

He wouldn’t, rather not. “But, I say, what’s this about Diana and this London business and Aunt Elsie? Rough on her, isn’t it?”

“No, darling, I don’t think so. I want Diana to have some fun.”

“There’s lots at Aunt Elsie’s. There are the dogs, they’re good fun, and the rabbits, and the farm. There’s always something to do there. Aunt Elsie is jolly good fun, isn’t she?”

“So is Uncle Marcus.”

“Is he?” This doubtfully.

“He’s my brother, darling.”

“Oh, I see. I suppose you are bound in a kind of way to think him funny then—you like him in a way.”

“Very much.”

“Aunt Elsie doesn’t.”

“She has never seen him.”

“She jolly well doesn’t want to either.”

“Dick, darling, you will take care of Diana, won’t you?” said his mother, changing the subject: it was so difficult to keep to any subject with the good-bye looming in the near distance.

Any one who says good-bye to the child she loves for a long time (and a year to a mother is an eternity) drinks deep of the cup of self-sacrifice. Sibyl’s one thought was that Dick should not know what she was suffering. Of course he knew: but if it were her business—as mother—to bridge the distance across the sea, to talk of the near days when they should be together again, it was his—as son—to pretend he believed her. He assured her it was no distance: he didn’t mind: it happened to lots of boys: it was all right.

“You will take care of Diana?” she repeated—readjusting the distance.

“Yes, rather; you don’t want her to marry while you’re away, I suppose?—because I don’t quite see how I should manage that.”

“I don’t want her to marry while I’m away, of course, although I hope she may some day.”

“Taboret Major admires her so, I thought I would just ask.”

“He would be young to marry, wouldn’t he?”

“Well, so would she—anyway, he wouldn’t like me to talk about his private affairs, so don’t say anything about it. And, I say, if you do see him, I think you’d better not speak to him at all; he doesn’t like people speaking to him. He’s going to be a great writer—he thinks.”

Sibyl promised she wouldn’t speak to Taboret Major, but Mr. Wane she must see. Mr. Wane was Dick’s house-master, and Dick allowed he was very fairly decent. But Dick had started early in life with prejudices against masters and it was difficult to overcome them. When he had come back from his first term at a private school, he had resented with the whole force of his small being the injustice of being given a holiday task. Until he had got home he hadn’t known the beastly thing had come with him. The perfidy of the master had embittered him. “How could he have wished me a happy holiday when he knew all the time that he had given me this beastly thing to do?” he had asked.

It was a difficult question to answer. Masters must answer it for themselves—at that day when they too must answer questions: not only ask them.

“Oh, yes, you must see old Wane,” Dick admitted.

“We will walk about a little first—and talk—there is so much to say—isn’t there?” said his mother.

Dick nodded: she tightened the pressure of her arm on his, and it spoke volumes. He kicked at the little pebbles in the path, anything seemed to help. “How high do you suppose that tree is?” he asked. “It’s awfully old.”

The sun was in his mother’s eyes, she couldn’t see. Neither could he, but he knew; it was sixty feet high, so it wasn’t quite a fair question, was it?

“Not quite fair, my Dick.”

So much wasn’t quite fair.

If you can’t talk you can always eat an ice, at least you can if you are a boy. Sibyl suggested it. “Good business,” said Dick.

The ice was a help—a still greater help, two ices. They seemed to help the swallowing part of the business and good-byes largely consist of that. Then Sibyl went to see Mr. Wane and Dick waited outside—hoping she wouldn’t do anything funny—or try to make the old man laugh. If Sibyl had been, as a mother, a little less pretty and charming, it is possible Dick would have been—as a boy—a little less forward for his age, and might have been possessed of a character that was less surprising in its strength to his house-master. It is possible.

Mr. Wane was a just man and honourable, but perhaps, to convince himself that Dick’s mother had dimples, he may have emphasized a little more than he need have done certain things that had been “curiously brought to his notice” about Dick. A certain sterling honesty of purpose—unusual in so young a boy—Yes, they were there! Two of them, one on each side of her mouth. A very pretty mouth—a mouth that told of a certain fastidiousness of character that appealed to Mr. Wane. He only needed to give one or two instances, which bore out what he had said about Dick’s character, and a depth he had suspected, in the eyes of Dick’s mother, he found and fathomed.

“Show me a boy’s mother!” he was wont to say.

Dick had shown him a pretty mother, and had waited patiently outside while she talked about him! At last she joined him. Old Wane came out with her and he was laughing, but he seemed all right, otherwise.

Dick and his mother walked back through the cool cloisters, out into the sun and over close-shaven lawns. “Point out to your mother,” Mr. Wane had said, “architectural features of interest, my boy!” And Dick proceeded to do it. “That gate, see? It was built—I don’t know when—in the year, I don’t know what—by—I don’t know who,”—and his mother was duly impressed. To pay for this knowledge and other things there must be spent years in hot climates. Money must be saved so that when Dick was grown to be a man he should look back to this time as the happiest in his life. If all this and the sense of its past should sink into his soul, it must help to make him one of England’s proudest sons.

At the railway station they parted, and Sibyl watched till she could no longer see her small pink-faced son, who was growing, for all his smallness—so big, so tall, so reserved.

After Dick’s mother had left him, an uncomfortable way all visiting mothers have, Dick, unconscious of that curious nobility of character that Mr. Wane, somewhat to his own surprise, had endowed him with, felt very lonely. He hated islands, beastly far-off islands, rotten places for mothers to go to—what was the matter with England? He asked Taboret Major, and Taboret Major said, “Nothing, absolutely nothing—England was all right.” And he and Dick walked down to the cricket fields (their England) and it was all right.

Mrs. Wane, who had lately been brought to bed of her third son, was propped up on her pillows and Mr. Wane was sitting beside her. That he had something on his mind she knew. Mothers always upset him: they upset boys too; being altogether upsetting things.

“He is a very nice boy—a very nice boy—a particularly nice boy, I should say,” he said thoughtfully.

He had said it three times, so Mrs. Wane put out her hand and closing it on his said—“Was she so very charming and attractive?” And Mr. Wane laughed, for in spite of what Dick knew to the contrary, “old Wane” could see a joke, and that joke against himself.

“You dear!” he said to his wife, and she answered: “He is a nice boy—a very nice boy—a particularly nice boy—and there’s another just as nice—and you might tell his mother so without its causing you any after pricks of conscience, or remorse.” And she looked towards the cradle in which slept profoundly Wane Minimus.

“He’s very good and quiet,” admitted his father.

“He knows perhaps,” said his mother, “that his father is one from whom it is supposed the secrets of no small boy can be hid. By instinct he knows that: later on I shall tell him that he need not be quite so good, or so quiet; that although as a schoolmaster it is your bounden duty to know the secrets of all small schoolboys, as a father you are just as blind—and just as weak as any other well-dispositioned father. It is in order to make schoolmasters human that mothers marry them—there could be no other reason. Now tell me all about Carston’s mother and just what it was you said to her about him?”

That night, as Mr. Wane undressed, he was still a little uneasy.

“He is a particularly nice boy,” he murmured; but this it was that rankled—Barker’s mother had been down, too, and Barker was a particularly nice boy—he had faults, of course, so had Dick—but he had told Barker’s mother of Barker’s faults. He had not spared her: nor had he cared whether she had dimples or not—perhaps because she had not.

Before he got into bed he thanked God for the inestimable gift of a good wife—and he meant it; and of an understanding wife—he meant that too; and of a beautiful wife—he meant that too—in the highest sense.

V

If my sister have a child then am I straightway

an uncle, and who shall save me?

When Diana took up her abode in the house of her uncle, she arrived late, dressed, and went out again to dinner. That was not how Marcus would have had her arrive. She must understand that order was the keynote of his establishment. How otherwise could he expect to keep so excellent a housekeeper as Mrs. Oven? Pillar, too, must be considered. She must state definitely when she would be in to dinner and when not.

“I was not,” she said later, when taxed, “definitely not.”

Marcus dined alone. As he came downstairs dressed for dinner, he met a housemaid going up, with a glass of milk on a tray. On the tray there was also a plate, on the plate there was a banana, and beside the banana lay glistening a halfpenny bun. The meal of some one’s particular choosing, he should say. In no other way could it have found its way upstairs in his house. But whose meal was it?

That he had two housemaids he knew. He saw evidence of their being in the brightness of the brasses, the polish of the furniture, but he hardly knew them apart. The bun-bearer was one of them. He went on his way deploring that in his house there was no back staircase. But for whom could a vagrant banana be?

Tentatively he put the question to Pillar, as ashamed to ask it as Pillar was to answer it. Pillar murmured something about a mischance, and Mr. Maitland was quick to admit it. It was certainly an accident meeting the banana on the stairs; but the meal itself remained unexplained, and inexcused; it must have been predestined. Then it struck him that Diana must have brought a maid. It was quite right she should. He might have guessed it. But a maid who lived on buns and bananas, could she be efficient?

Marcus dined uncomfortably. The dinner seemed less good than usual. Gradually it was borne in upon him that it must be Mrs. Oven who was in bed and who was feeding on buns and bananas. She had lost her taste, her sense, her gastronomic taste—her sense of taste. Everything!

Towards twelve o’clock Diana came in, unrepentant and delightful; she floated in, as it were, on a cloud of tulle, a veritable will-o’-the-wisp, a thing as light as gossamer, as elusive as a firefly. She had a great deal to tell Marcus and told him none of it. She was lost in the depth of his huge sofa—she looked like drifted snow—blown there by the wind. He didn’t tell her that, even if he thought it. What he did tell her was that he expected his guests to go to bed early. This in obedience to an instinct that told him to begin as he meant to go on—

Diana said she could not go to bed early—that night, at all events. She would go as early as she could—as early in the morning. “I have a confession to make. Shall I make it now or wait till to-morrow? In ten minutes it will be to-morrow. To-morrow never used to come so soon.”

“Why not now?”

“No, I could not sleep unforgiven.”

“But why should you? What if I forgave you?”

Horrible thoughts flashed through Marcus’s mind. What could she have to confess? Happier thoughts—what could there be that he would not forgive? forgive her? There were things he could not forgive a man. All the things he had heard of modern girls and their ways passed through his mind, all the things he had ever heard of men from the days of man’s innocency until now. Then he looked at Diana. The modern girl was all right; she was delicious. But men—men? Would they find Diana distracting? Or was it because he was no longer young that her youth seemed so appealing, her freshness, her gaiety so infectious? He had always felt he could never have made a successful or even a comfortably happy father. A creature like this he could never have let out of his sight: all men would have become his enemies by very reason of their existence.

“Once Was,” said Diana softly, “why so dreamy? You make me sleepy. Good-morning!”

She went to bed, unconfessed, unforgiven. Pillar put out the lights downstairs. Marcus put them out on his landing. Above that it was Diana’s business. “Don’t forget the lights, Diana,” he called.

At one o’clock in the morning Diana was singing in her bath and Marcus lay in bed wondering what it was she wanted to confess. He fell asleep uncertain whether he liked a niece in the house or not. He had pictured to himself a quiet, mousey niece, demure and obedient! But how charming she had looked on the sofa!—she got her feet from him, did she? A great attraction in women, pretty feet; and none too common. He must see that she gave enough for her boots. It was where some women economized. He shuddered to think of women out in the street, on muddy days, in house shoes. Horrible!

Diana came down to breakfast. That was to her credit. To bed late: yet up early. She looked delicious: not in the least tired and very fresh and clean. A girl may be both without looking triumphantly so, as Diana did.

After breakfast with Marcus was a sacred hour, dedicated to his newspapers and his pipe, yet after breakfast Diana planted herself on the edge of his chair and proceeded to get to know him. Not until she had done that, she said, could she make her confession.

“What is it?” he asked, ready to forgive anything, if only that he might be left in peace.

“I brought Shan’t with me; do you mind?”

“A maid?” he said. “A dyspeptic maid,” he added to himself.

“Well, she’s female—certainly—I’ll say that for her.”

Marcus would have allowed that himself—in spite of her addiction to zoölogical fare.

“She’s such a willing little beast. She won’t eat if I go away—so I had to bring her—see, my Once Was?”

“Oh, a dog? My dear Diana, of course, I can’t have it upstairs, but Pillar will be delighted to exercise the little beast—”

No dog explained the banana and the milk, but he said nothing.

“Dear child!”—he was feeling very fond of Diana—“I should like to see—whatever you call it—is it trained and—”

“Shan’t! Shan’t!” called Diana up the stairs. “Come! Hurry up!”

“It was a funny way to talk to a dog,” thought Marcus. If at that moment he had looked up from his paper he would certainly have thought it a funny dog that walked into the dining-room. “Well?”

Marcus turned in answer to the interrogation and beheld a small girl of four or five, standing, beaming at him, the very quintessence of willingness and loving-kindness. “We-ell?” she repeated.

There are those in life who carry the mackintoshes of others; who leave the last fresh egg for others; the early peas for others; the first asparagus for others; who look up trains for others; find servants for others; houses for others; who cry with others; who laugh with others. They are as a rule spinsters who do these things and they do them gladly—even the crying. Yes! Shan’t-if-I-don’t-want-to, Shan’t for short, was a spinster, and Marcus recognized her as one of those born to do things for others. She could laugh and cry at the same time, run faster than any child of her age to do your bidding. She could soothe your pain with her smile: and touch your heart with her laugh. These things Marcus did not as yet know. But he was glad directly he saw her that she was not a dog, and he grudged her neither the milk, nor the bun, nor the banana, nor the distracting of Mrs. Oven from the cooking of his dinner, which said much for the fascination of Shan’t.

There she stood longing to do things, aching, benevolence beaming from her eyes. “Well?” she repeated.

“Good gracious!” said Marcus, and he got up and stood looking down with amazement on this small person, who stood so willingly waiting. Suddenly she looked at his feet and like a flash she was gone.

“Who in the world is it, Diana?” he asked sternly, but his heart had become as water, and his bones like wax. Here was the child of his dreams, the child he had played Hide-and-Seek with, told his longest stories to, taken to the Zoo, saved from drowning.

“That’s Shan’t-if-I-don’t-want-to! That’s one of her names, but she always does want to. She’s the jolliest little beggar in the world. Mummy says I can’t have her for my own, but she is my own and I am hers. Here she is. She is bound to have fetched something for you. For Heaven’s sake, say ‘Thank you.’”

She had fetched his slippers. Now Marcus Maitland would rather go without breakfast than breakfast in slippers, but he said, “Tha-ank you.”

“Now,” said Diana, “if by chance I ruffled your hair she’d be off for your hair-brushes before you knew where you were.”

“I don’t know where I am, as it is,” said Marcus, edging away from the devastating hands of Diana. He loathed his hair ruffled.

“Put on your slippers,” said Shan’t, pointing to his feet.

“But I have only just put on my boots.”

“Put—them—on and don’t—argue,” said Shan’t.

“But—”

“Pe—lease!” Shan’t looked at him, and Marcus, feeling about as determined as a worm can feel under the steady pressure of a garden-roller, stooped down and began to unlace his boots. To do it properly he must have a button-hook. Could Shan’t know to what an exquisite discomfort she was putting him?

“No,” said Diana, “you needn’t. No, Shan’t, you can fetch something else.”

“No, sit down, Shan’t,” commanded her uncle. “I want to look at you.”

She sat down on a footstool, folded her hands and looked up at her uncle. “Funny old fing!” she said, wrinkling her nose; “you didn’t know I was coming, did you?”

Marcus said he had had no idea.

“Diana said you didn’t.”

“Say your poem, Shan’t,” said Diana. “It’s her own—her very own,” she added. “Go on, Shan’t.”

“I forget it.”

“How can you forget it when it’s your own?”

“Well, I have.”

“Shan’t—One-two-three.”

Marcus knew it to be the fashion among poets to read their own works. He wondered if they needed treatment as drastic as this, or if they did it more willingly? In the muse of charity perhaps they did.

“One—two—three,” said Diana sternly, and Shan’t began:

“Swing me higher,

Oh, Delia, oh, Delia!

Swing me over the garden wall—

Only do not let me fall.

“Found in the garden

Dead in her beauty.

Was she not a dainty dish

To set before the king?”

All this very, very fast, and at the end of it Shan’t, pink and breathless, as any poet should be after being called upon to recite his own poem half an hour after breakfast.

“Does your aunt know you’re here?” asked Marcus.

“She does—now,” said Shan’t seriously.

“How did you get away without being seen?” Marcus thought that no well-brought-up child could ever escape from its Nannies and nursery-maids. The safety of England depended on the safeguarding of her children. He had heard that said, and he knew there were societies to enforce it because he had subscribed to them.

Up sprang Shan’t, the better to tell her story. A dramatic sense was hers. “I ran down the back stairs—and I ran down the drive—and I ran down the garden—and I ran froo the gates—and I ran down the road and I ran over the be-ridge. And then I didn’t run any—more. I just waited for Diana—and we came.”

A deep sigh followed this statement. The air escaping from an air cushion was the only thing Marcus could think of that compared with the exhaustiveness of the sigh. At that moment Pillar brought a telegram and Mr. Maitland opened it. Pillar glanced quickly at the child and Shan’t’s smile proclaimed him her friend. He was on her side.

“Diana, it is from your aunt,” said Marcus; “she says, ‘Return Shan’t at once’!”

“No,” said Shan’t; “shan’t if I don’t want to.” And she was off and out of the room, out of the front door, opened by the telegraph boy, who boylike was always as ready to let anything out as he was to catch and cage anything, through the door into the street: across the road and into the square through the garden gate that stood ajar.

“Let her run!” called Diana to her vanishing uncle; “she’ll soon tire.” But Marcus had gone in eager pursuit. He crossed the street, was through the gate and on to Shan’t before she had gone many yards down the straight path that ran through the square. He caught her in his arms. “By Jove, how she wriggles!” There was imminent danger of the uncle being left with the clothes of Shan’t in his arms, and no Shan’t. Appreciating the danger he relaxed his hold. Off she went, but to be caught again, and easily enough. She was hot. He could feel her heart beating in her small body, as a bird might flutter against the bars of the cage that imprisons it. She was such a little thing. “Shan’t,” he said, “come here.” He drew her towards him; he sat down and lifted her on to his knee.

“Shan’t if I don’t want to!” she whispered.

“But you’re going to want to.”

“Always do—mostly always do,” she said, crying softly; not really crying, she assured him, smiling.

“Look here,” said her uncle, “d’you know what you are?”

“Lucky little devil,” she hazarded.

“Well—but seriously—a good little girl—and such a willing little beggar, isn’t that it?”

She nodded. “Always—mostly always.”

“Look here—willing little beggars always do what they are asked and Aunt”—Marcus paused—“Aunt—what do you call her?”

“Elsie—only-aunt-in-the-world.”

“There are others, of course,” said Marcus stiffly; “Aunt Elsie—”

“Only-aunt-in-the-world,” said Shan’t; “say it!” She laid a finger on his lips.

“Well, Aunt Elsie-only-aunt-in-the-world wants you to go back to her because she’s lonely.”

“She’s got free dogs!”

“Free?”

“One—two—free—” “Free” found the tip of Shan’t’s forefinger lightly laid on the tip of Marcus’s nose.

“Yes; but she wants you—and if you are a good little girl and go back you shall come again and stay—”

“When?”