TABLE of CONTENTS

CHAPTER I—THE BANNER

CHAPTER II—ONE LITTLE COMPANY

CHAPTER III—A DAY IN THE AVENUE

CHAPTER IV—A SOLDIER

CHAPTER V—LITTLE WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

CHAPTER VI—PICTURES

CHAPTER VII—SIGNALS

CHAPTER VIII—SATURDAY AFTERNOON

CHAPTER IX—THE AMATEUR DETECTIVES

CHAPTER X—A HOLIDAY

CHAPTER XI—SEA-WIND

CHAPTER XII—PARTING

CHAPTER XIII—]THE END OF SUMMER

CHAPTER XIV—SACRIFICE

CHAPTER XV—A journey’s end

CHAPTER XVI—CHELTENHAM

CHAPTER XVII—THE RETURN

CHAPTER XVIII—CHANGE

CHAPTER XIX—WHAT REMAINS

CHAPTER I

THE BANNER

CHESTNUT AVENUE is a long street, with a high wall concealing the railway lines at one end and a main road running across the other. In it is a constant noise of wheels, car-bells, distant footsteps and newsboys shouting. But as all these sounds are a little softened by distance, they mingle together and form an accompaniment to which every life in the Avenue is set.

Babies are ushered into the grimy brick houses from that vague place where new souls wait with a Swish! Boom! Ting-ting! and the high, sudden O-oh! of an engine whistle over the wall. And it is thus the tired souls go out.

But those who are actually living there do not hear these sounds at all unless they are ill, or very unhappy, or very tired; then they feel a little forlorn, like people standing alone by the sea at evening with the drawing back of the waves in their ears.

Nobody knows why the street was originally called Chestnut Avenue, for it contains only blackened plane-trees and has produced no chestnuts within the memory of man—saving only those verbal ones which fat fathers like Mr. Simpson throw at other fat fathers over garden railings after .business hours. It is, indeed, believed that the famous “When is a door not a door?” found its last resting-place in Mr. Simpson’s back-garden. He certainly still employs the joke about the curate’s egg.

On this spring afternoon of 1917 he stood resting on his spade, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a trembling hand and wondering for the moment if there were anything wrong with his heart. His round, bald head and little trim legs and big stomach curving under a thin waistcoat were strongly illuminated by the greyish, yellowish radiance which is afternoon sunshine in Flodmouth.

He had no idea at all that he was a hero. As a plain matter of fact, he would have been exceedingly annoyed had any one called him any such thing, and would have crossed over the road in future to avoid that person’s society. For he shared to the full that strange instinct which forbids the middle class to blow its own trumpet.

This is all the more strange now because everybody else does it. The upper class has blown, delicately for ages through long silver trumpets, of course; and only yesterday, as time goes in history, the working-class suddenly began to blow brass ones so loudly— perhaps in a reaction after centuries of silence—that the silver trumpets could no longer be heard. But the class to which Mr. Simpson belongs simply does not blow.

Many members of it, like Mr. Simpson’s sister-in-law, are even ashamed of being called “middle-class.”

These are the traitors. And when Mrs. Horace Simpson went to associate in Bath with a few ancient offshoots of the aristocracy who had put into port there after the storms of life, she suppressed any mention of the Simpsons and trotted out constantly an aunt of her own who had married an Archdeacon in the North Riding of Yorkshire. But beyond withdrawing her capital and further embarrassing Mr. Simpson’s business, she soon ceased to trouble her relatives in Chestnut Avenue.

It was in the September of 1914 that her husband, Major Horace Simpson of the Territorials, had suddenly ceased to go into Flodmouth every day with a little black bag and a flower in his button-hole: and almost next day, as it seemed, he had died gloriously for his country, leading a forlorn hope.

The news fell so strangely then on Chestnut Avenue. The people there had hated war and had absolutely believed in the impossibility of it, in these enlightened days. The idea of taking the life of another man with whom they had no personal quarrel seemed intolerable to them. But at the news of Major Simpson’s death they began to steel themselves, as if they had seen a friend struck down beside them.

Then time went on a little and so many things happened that he seemed to be quickly out of mind— as if he had never lived. Mr. Simpson might be forgiven for thinking—as he sometimes did think—that his only brother had died in vain. But this was not so; for a wind of the spirit passed then through the grey streets of Flodmouth, raising dead things to life in the old city like the rustling wind in the cave of Elijah. It was indeed the almost forgotten glory of sacrifice that came alive again when the news-boy ran about shouting: “Speshul Edeetion! Loss of a well-known Flodmouth officer!”

But all this took place nearly three years ago, and since that time Mr. Simpson’s only son Jim had joined up, been trained and fallen. Nobody knows what the Simpsons felt about that—nobody, that is, excepting the thousands who have felt the same—for they kept their heads up and went about as usual.

Neighbours said Mrs. Simpson was “wonderful”; and as she came down the garden path in the sunlight, it might be seen that she had perhaps been just a little too “wonderful.” Her hair was whitening very fast and her face had an opaque pallor. It was just at the most trying period of her physical life that she had been called upon to bear a shock and sorrow greater than any she had ever known. But she smiled at her husband as she saw him wiping his forehead, and said cheerfully enough—

“Honest sweat!. We shall soon all think we’re back in the Garden of Eden. I’ve just seen Binny go by with a spade over his shoulder instead of golf-clubs.” She paused. “I’m glad you took a holiday this afternoon.”

His face clouded and he left his spade in the ground.

“Yes. The fresh air seems to suit me. I—I hope to get more of it.” He waited a minute, but it was no good; he must tell her before their daughter Barbara came home, and she was expected that evening. “Harriet, I shall have to close the business down. I shan’t be going any more. There’s nothing to do. I’ve only been hanging about, playing at it, for weeks.”

Mrs. Simpson was silent, struggling with a feeling of faintness; then she said in a low tone: “You ought to have told me before, Sam.”

“I knew you would say so; but the doctor expressly warned me, after you had that last heart attack, that you were not to have any suspense or worry. I did it for the best, Harriet. I thought you’d bear it better when you had Barbara here to cheer you up.” “Was that was why you would send for Barbara?” “No, not altogether: with no servant, and you ill, the doctor insisted on my sending for her. And after all, who should she nurse before her own mother?” “She is so disappointed, though. Poor little Barbara! Oh, I do so hate bringing her home from the hospital on my account. I’d rather have done anything,” said Mrs. Simpson.

“Well, it can’t be helped,” said Mr. Simpson, advancing down the walk with his light, cork-like step, which went so oddly with his bulky figure. “We’d better go in and have supper. It will be time to go to the station directly.”

Mrs. Simpson put her hand on his arm and looked into his face with her faded blue eyes, which had been nearly as bright as Barbara’s before Jim went. “Sam,” she said, “are you keeping anything else from me ? I can’t bear that, you know.”

“No, Harriet, I’m not.”

“You mean it? On your honour?”

“I do indeed. On my honour, my dear.” He paused, then added as they entered the house: “I don’t see why you should think Barbara is so disappointed; she never wrote a word to that effect in her letters.”

“As if it were what she wrote. It’s what she’s left unwritten.”

“Oh, you women! Always trying to ferret out something underneath!” said Mr. Simpson, rubbing his feet energetically on the mat. “Anyway, with you ill, and Elsie home from school with a weak back, she’d got to come—there was nothing else for it.”

A' few minutes later they sat at the dining-table, on which Elsie, a thin, sallow, peaked-looking girl of fifteen, with great, brown eyes, had just placed a dish of curried butter beans.

“I hope you’re not tired of them, Father?” she said. “We’re told to eat beans. They say there is more nourishment to the square inch in beans than in beef-steak.”

“U-um!” said Mr. Simpson, drawing a long breath. “They smell delicious . . . delicious!”

But Elsie noticed that he did not take a large helping himself, and soon afterwards she ran him to earth in the scullery with the carbonate of soda bottle in one hand and a glass of hot water in the other.

“Ha!” she said, bursting out upon him suddenly from the door. “You think I don’t know. I do. You’ve got indigestion.”

“I have not,” said Mr. Simpson emphatically: and he added, trying to work himself up into a slight temper: “Surely I can drink what I like in my own house.”

But he had, all unawares, waved the great banner of the middle-class. It floated above the scullery sink, with its undramatic legend: “Bear and Say Nothing,” even while he concluded somewhat irritably: “Go and get your things on, Elsie. We shall be late for the train.”

So the three of them, walking very slowly because of Mrs. Simpson, made their way towards the railway station against a stream of bright-eyed, powdered, silk-stockinged clerks and typists. The brisk self-reliance of the girls made this stream as vital as a clear brook running over stones, and the dull air seemed the fresher for it, in spite of a certain odour of cheapish scent.

As the Simpsons entered the station they encountered a tall, handsome, rather heavily built man of about forty-three, who stopped and spoke to them.

“Whither away?” he said with an affectation of gallantry. “It’s ages since I saw you.”

“We are meeting Barbara,” said Mrs. Simpson.

“Oh!” He grew immediately alert and interested. “Is she coming home for a holiday?”

“No, Garret, for good,” said Mr. Simpson. “My wife has not been well and we are obliged to have Barbara at home.”

“Glad to hear that. Well, good-night. Only just going out by this train. Doing the work of three. We are absolutely understaffed and crowded with work at our office. Good-night, Mrs. Simpson. So glad to have seen you.”

“Well,” said Elsie looking after him, “it’s more than I am. I hate to see that Frank Garret bursting with prosperity—and his button-hole and all. I hate him!”

“Hush, Elsie!” said Mrs. Simpson.

“Why didn’t he enlist, then?” demanded Elsie .

“Well, you know he is over age; and he is an accountant/’ said Mr. Simpson. “They can’t be done without at this time.”

“I don’t care: I wish he would go away from Flod-mouth,” said Elsie vehemently. “He will only come sneaking round Barbara again, and she has wasted five or six years of her life over him already.”

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Simpson. “There has never been anything serious between Barbara and Frank Garret.” (She gave him both names as did every one in Flodmouth—the very newsboys and shopgirls saying on seeing him: “There goes Frank Garret!”)

“Of course there’s been nothing serious,” said Elsie. “But that wasn’t Barbara’s fault. It was he who couldn’t make up his mind to do without luxuries and live in a side street. He loved Barbara a little less than his motor-car.”

“Elsie!” commanded Mrs. Simpson. “I won’t have you talk like that about your sister. I am afraid you have got spoilt since she has been away.”

“Well, she needn’t think she is going to come the elder sister over me when she does come back,” muttered Elsie. “And I only talk like that because I love her. I hated to see him flirting round with all the girls and just tossing over Barbara a look when he felt inclined.”

“Now it’s ‘hate.’ She’s always riding some word to death,” chuckled Mr. Simpson. “Bless me, Elsie, if a young man can’t look round him a bit, things have got to a queer pass. I’m sure Barbara doesn’t bother her head about him one way or another.”

“Of course not,” agreed Mrs. Simpson at once— though her whole being had responded to Elsie’s tirade with a quivering intensity.

And as they waited, little groups of soldiers went through the station, looking already in expression and bearing a race apart, though so recently civilians like the rest. The air had the peculiar deadness common to terminus stations, and the Simpsons’ disjointed remarks fell dully on it—quite differently from words spoken in the fresh, outer air. But the three seemed gay enough as they stood there, and some acquaintance crossing to the bookstall spoke of them.

“You’d wonder the Simpsons would seem in such good spirits when you remember how their Jim went out for the last time just about this hour. I happened to be there, and I saw him—so handsome and jolly.”

“Yes. Perhaps they haven’t thought of it. People take things differently. Let’s go and see the soldiers off—”

But five minutes later, when a train ran out of the station with the lads all waving and singing, the hearts of the Simpsons seemed ready to burst. They strove to hide this from each other, though Mr. Simpson walked away a few steps muttering to himself: “I could bear it all right if only the lads wouldn’t be so dam jolly.” But he very soon came back to say with a breezy air: “Nasty draught in this station always!” He paused, then added with a poor imitation of his familiar chuckle—that fat chuckle which always seemed to be enjoying itself somewhere behind his waistcoat before coming forth: “A black draught, eh, Elsie?”

“I hate jokes when I’m tired,” said Elsie, pretending to take some grime out of her eye. “Oh, here’s Barbara’s train at last!”

' So they all turned toward the barrier, beyond which a brown-haired, blue-eyed girl came hurrying towards them. She was of middle height and plumper than she would have wished, her admiration being for lean and sinuous ladies. But with her dimples showing, and the clear red in her cheeks, she seemed lovely to the little group waiting for her.

“Mother!” she said, kissing the pale face with a quick compunction for her own reluctance in coming home. “Are you better ? Ought you to have met me ?” “Barbara!” whispered Mrs. Simpson, almost timidly, “I’m so sorry, dear, I had to send for you. I didn’t want them to tell you.”

Tears rose in Barbara’s eyes. It was all very well being reluctant to leave the hospital, and talking rebelliously to friends in the rest-room about living your own life and not being hampered by home ties—but at the sight of her mother’s trembling lip that all vanished like smoke for the moment.

“I’m glad I came. I should never have forgiven them if they had not sent for me,” she said eagerly.

Upstairs in the long attic which ran across the whole breadth of the house, Barbara unpacked while her young sister sat on the bed and talked with her. When it was all finished, she went to the window and leaned out, looking across a grimy plane-tree which grew in the little front garden. She was conscious of hearing the sounds of Flodmouth because she had been a year away, and she felt, as she leaned there watching the shadowy houses opposite, like a person who has lived in childhood by the sea and has come back after a long absence. The familiar Swish! Boom! Ting-ting! and the shrieking O-oh! of the engine were very dear to her just then.

“Nice to be back again!” So she voiced it all, not turning round from the window.

“Um. Glad you think so,” said Elsie. “ ’Fraid you’ll tell a different tale before long. You won’t find it entirely beer and skittles doing general servant without any wages, I bet.”

“I daresay not. But it’s not very funny for poor Dad either, having to give up his business.”

“It’s his business that’s given him up,” said Elsie. “Now, I s’pose he’ll have to go round cap in hand to try and find a job in somebody else’s office. Nice thing for our father—after the way he has always been looked up to.”

“Well . . . no good grousing. What has to be must be,” said Barbara. Then she pulled down the blinds and went back into the room. “You look dog-tired. Let’s get to bed, Elsie.”

“I am tired. I’m always tired. Oh, Barbara, I hate being such a crock. It is horrid.”

“Poor old Elsie! I know it must be. But you’ll grow out of it,” said Barbara, in her clear voice, which took on such deep notes—crooning notes, they were— when she wanted to be kind.

“All very well for you to talk: standing there looking as strong as a horse!” flung out fretful, overtired Elsie. “I suppose you think you are going to marry that odious Frank Garret now, and get out of it all. But you won’t. You’ll be just like Miss Lotty Pelling, who has gone on waiting and waiting for that silly old Binny next door until they are both old.”

“Rot! Nobody could imagine Miss Pelling waiting for any man,” retorted Barbara.

“No,” said the incorrigible Elsie, “I daresay not. But the kind of waiting female who shows the waiting is really saying ‘Come on!’ And he often does. Neither you nor Miss Pelling are that sort.”

“Really, Elsie,” said Barbara, “when I was your “You twiddled your thumbs when spoken to and were respectful to your elders, of course,” said Elsie.

“Come, Elsie, don’t be so cross on my first night at home,” said Barbara.

“I’m just going to be how I like,” said Elsie. “You needn’t think you can come the elder sister over me now you have got back, because I shan’t have it.”

Barbara made no remark, and the two girls went on silently with their undressing. At last the light was out, and they lay side by side on the two little narrow; beds as they had done since they were children.

“Barbie,” whispered Elsie then, stretching out a feverish claw. “I’m so sorry I’ve been such a pig on your first night at home—when you have given up your nursing and all to come and look after us. I believe it was partly because I got so excited about your coming. I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking about it.”

“Dear old Elsie,” murmured Barbara, squeezing the little hot hand.

Elsie withdrew it at once and they immediately began to speak of a blouse which Barbara had brought for a present; but even this slight caress meant a great, deal to the undemonstrative sisters.

In the room beneath the girls’ attic, Mr. Simpson layby his wife under bedclothes made extra large to accommodate the hill created by his figure; he objecting, as he always said, to “scrapping for the blanket.” Towards dawn the hillcock heaved, and Mrs. Simpson said softly—

“Awake, Sam?”

“Yes.”

“Been awake a long time?”

“Oh, a bit. Not long,” lied Mr. Simpson.

“You’re bothering about the business, of course. It is hard on you, Sam, after spending the best years of your life in building it up from nothing.”

“Lots in the same box,” said Mr. Simpson. “I don’t pretend to like it, of course. But there it is!” Silence fell again, and about the time when the first workman’s cars began to run Mr. and Mrs. Simpson at last went to sleep. They snored a little, with heavy middle-aged faces pressed into their pillow, but the banner was above their heads.

CHAPTER II

ONE LITTLE COMPANY

THE Simpsons’ drawing-room looked upon the street, and the few women gathered in it were knitting for the soldiers. The near sound of clicking needles made a delicate music to the unnoticed accompaniment of the mingled noises of Flodmouth outside, and it floated through the open window to join the music of knitters all over England. It rose—it must have risen, made by those who had suffered so much —to a heaven of pity and love.

But the women there did not realise this, of course, and talked of ordinary things.

“Barbara back again, Mrs. Simpson.”

“Yes. We were so sorry we had to bring her back.”

Miss Pelling, a tall, middle-aged spinster, with a large red nose that was perched in the centre of a charming face with the oddest effect of incongruity, put down her knitting and said rather dictatorially— “I call it silly to bring a girl like Barbara back from the hospital just to do the work of a general servant.”

“Who did?” retorted Elsie rudely, up in arms at once against Miss Pelling whom she disliked, probably because they were rather akin. “It was because mother was ill. Besides, it’s all very well for you to talk, with an excellent servant of your own to do everything for you.”

Miss Pelling restrained the words “spoilt monkey!” from crossing her lips, and said to Mrs. Simpson: “I only wish my maid were so excellent. Oh, the times I have longed for Lillie back!”

“Yes. Yes. She was indeed a treasure,” said the others in a sort of ecstatic chorus.

Then Barbara said from her place by the window, “There’s a telegraph boy going up the street.”

“Oh! Not coming here, is he?”

And they all pretended to be engrossed in their knitting, but with eyes fixed on the window. Young Mrs. Du Caine’s blouse rose and fell quickly, though she went on knitting just the same; but it was strange what an atmosphere of cold suspense could be created in a cheerful chintz-covered room by the sight of a telegraph boy cycling up the street. It was, really, as if those women saw Death and Fate stalking visibly along between the grimy brick houses, ready to pause before any one of them. At last the boy stopped just outside Mrs. Wilson’s next door—Mrs. Wilson who had a son in the trenches just then and a girl at a hospital in France—and when the lad alighted from his bicycle her heart almost ceased beating. It was a most terrible, grotesque game of “Throw the Handkerchief” that Fate and Death and the telegraph boy and these women were playing at. . . . Then the yellow envelope was handed to a lean gentleman who stood outside in the road and who opened it with obvious unconcern.

“A business telegram for Mr. Binny,” said Barbara, in an even tone from her post nearest the window.

Followed a slight rustle in the room as the women’s bodies relaxed from the rigid attitudes they had unconsciously taken, but nothing more was said concerning the telegraph boy. The conversation about Miss Pel-ling’s Lillie was resumed where it had been left off.

“You’ll never look on her like again for polishing mahogany furniture.”

“No. And so dependable. It was a tragedy for you when she got married to that soldier.”

There was a pause, then Mrs. Simpson said: “Have you heard from her lately?”

“Not a word for months,” said Miss Pelling.

“How ungrateful—after all you did. But you learn not to expect gratitude,” said Mrs. Wilson heavily. She was a woman with flat feet and the rather flat-footed mind which so often (and so curiously) goes with them.

“Oh, she behaved well to me. I shall always have a kindly feeling towards her,” said Miss Pelling.

“Housekeeping is indeed a responsibility in these days,” said Mrs. Bellerby, a lady with two fluffy daughters—the only fluffy girls left in the Avenue. “I don’t know what my poor Blanche will do when she settles down, for it will not be one servant in her case but half-a-dozen.”

“So Blanche is to be married directly,” said Barbara good-naturedly; but the other ladies had already heard all the details of Blanche’s military romance, future high connections and wedding gifts from the bridegroom’s family, and they declined a further instalment.

“I hear,” said Mrs. Wilson sighing, “that poor Arthur Garret has been killed in action. Frank Garret’s cousin, you know.”

“Yes. Frank Garret comes in for a lot of money.” “It seems a shame somehow . . . him safe at home and that poor young fellow—”

“Oh, you can’t blame anybody. Things happen like that,” said Mrs. Simpson. “But it does seem hard. The one who died was so handsome and clever and well-off; he seemed to have everything to lose.” “Yes.”

Click! Click! went the needles, and underneath surged a rebellious protest in each woman’s heart— “How can God let it go on?” But they said nothing. Then Miss Pelling remarked.

“So Frank Garret will be quite a rich man now?” And as she spoke she glanced aside at Barbara, who could not keep the red flush out of her cheeks and replied hastily to cover her nervousness: “He’ll like that, he has always hated being poor.”

“Poor! With a motor-car!” jeered Elsie.

“Blanche is to have a Rolls-Royce for her own private use immediately petrol is procurable,” said Mrs. Bellerby snatching her chance. “It is to be a present from the mother of the bridegroom. Mrs. Elliott can’t heap enough on Blanche for making the dear boy so happy. But my girls have been carefully brought up. They are so simple, as dear Hugh Elliott says. He calls Blanche his white flower.”

“Then I think she might have the grace to keep it to herself,” said Elsie. “If any one ever calls me a white flower—”

“They never will, old girl,” interposed Barbara laughing. “More like a sunflower.” She glanced out of the window again. “Oh, here is your maid Gladys coming across the street, Miss Pelling. She is carrying a hamper.”"

“Hamper!” said Miss Pelling. “I’m expecting no hamper. That fool is always making mistakes. What on earth has she done now?”

Barbara flung the window wide and called out to the pale, goggle-eyed girl on the path: “What is it, Gladys?”

But Gladys took no notice whatever; she simply blundered through the door and into the room, dumped the hamper down before her mistress and said: “There! Now my responsibility is at an end!”

“But what is it?” cried Miss Pelling.

“Just what I don’t know,” said the girl, breathing hard from her haste and the weight of the basket. “I only know I aren’t going to be in the house alone with it. It’s heavy. It made a noise inside. It may have something to do with Germans for all we can tell. That old mat-mender had a queer look to me, though you said he was all right and let him sit in the hall to mend the mat. Very likely he was a spy. Anyway, somebody brought the hamper who knew you; for there’s Miss Pelling on it, as plain as life.”

“Who brought it ?” asked that lady.

“Nobody brought it,” said Gladys, round-eyed and solemn faced. “It just come. Once I went to the door and it wasn’t there . . . next time I went and it was. And something in it made a sort of noise.” Mrs. Wilson, who had been bending over the lid, drew hastily back.

“You—you don’t mean a ticking noise?”

“N-no. No, I shouldn’t call it a tick exactly.”

“Suppose,” said Mrs. Simpson, “that we take it out into the garden to open. If it were a bomb or anything. . . .”

They bore it out gingerly along the passage and placed it on the gravel path. Barbara cut the string. Every neck was craned forward; every back leg poised for flight.

“Why, it’s only clothes from the wash!” exclaimed Barbara.

“Stop! They’re not my clothes. You don’t know what’s underneath,” cried Miss Pelling.

“There’s something heavy underneath,” said Barbara, shaking the basket.

Then a sound floated out through the white muslin and lace upon the grey Flodmouth air. It was a sound so familiar and yet startling that the little Mrs. Du Caine turned quite pale, rushed up to the basket crying out: “Oh, the poor lamb! Oh! It’ll be smothered! Oh, what a wicked shame!” and snatched forth a fat baby of about two months, old evidently under the influence of a strong dose of soothing syrup. She held it clutched tight while she glanced round at the rest as if defying them to take it from her.

But nobody wanted to. They only gaped at her with open mouths and eyes like Gladys’s and drew in their hind legs. This was not a bomb. There was no need to run. . . .

It was Gladys after all who broke the spell.

“Golly!” she breathed out. “I’ve seen ’em lay it at the father’s door in the pictures ... did last week as ever was . . . but never at the mother’s.” She stared round, bewildered. “Only Miss Pelling, she isn’t the mother neither. What is she?”

And this question so thrillingly pre-occupied all the rest that they refrained from rebuke and only leaned closer.

“Nothing,” said Miss Pelling. “I know nothing of it. I have nothing to do with it.”

“It’s incredible that any Mother. . . .” began Mrs. Wilson, who invariably said that word with a capital M, and spoke, as it were, for all maternity.

“Oh!” squealed little Mrs. Du Caine. “Here’s a letter. Here’s a letter pinned to its frock!”

Miss Pelling stretched out her hand, glanced at the superscription and flushed crimson with surprise. “Lillie’s handwriting!” Then, tearing the letter open, she read it through, her face undergoing violent and unnatural changes like, the star face in a cinema.

“So,” she gasped at last, looking up from her letter in a sort of desperation, “so this is the sort of world we live in now, is it?” She paused a moment, then broke forth still more wildly: “It’s not a world. It’s a bear garden ... a bear garden balancing on an earthquake. Listen to this. . . .” and she began to read aloud in a trembling voice—

“DEAR MISS PELLING,

“When I left to be married, you said if there was anything in the world you could do for me, you would. I regret to have to inform you that my marriage turned out a bigamy through no fault of mine, but owing to him having another wife elsewhere. But he is dead and gone at the Front now, and I bear no malice, poor fellow, for it was a lark while it lasted. Only I have to find a good home for baby until I get a place which can support him properly. I will then send address.

“I would have called in person, but did not care to come in contact with your new girl under the circumstances, nor yet with people in the street as I used to be friendly with, though I have nothing to be ashamed of. It was not me that did the bigamy, of course.

“I know you are not much of a one for babies, but I know I can trust you to treat my boy right.—Thanking you in anticipation, yours sincerely,—

“LILLIE NELSON (for a short time Brooke).

“P. S.—I don’t hold with soothing syrup. I only gave it this once as a convenience.”

“Well!” gasped the listeners. “Did you ever! Oh, what are things coming to?”

“How horribly unprincipled!” added Mrs. Bellerby, over emphasizing her “h’s” lest she should lose them, as she did when they came in difficult places.

“How odd that we should have been speaking of Lillie. But things constantly happen so,” said Mrs. Wilson.

“How could she?” said Barbara, crooning over the unconscious intruder in Mrs. Du Caine’s arms. “The lamb—the little sweet—”

“Of course,” pronounced Mrs. Wilson with finality, “you will send the child to a Home, Miss Pelling. A mother finds the bringing up of a baby a trying and difficult task. You could not possibly manage.”

Now this had also been Miss Pelling’s idea, but Mrs. Wilson’s tone instantly stirred up a feeling of opposition. A spinster was not necessarily a born fool.

“i don’t know yet what I shall do,” she said. “I shall in any case keep the child for the night and sleep on this matter.” Then she looked sharply into the corner whence an unmistakable giggle had proceeded: “Well, Gladys, what is it now?”

“On’y . . . on’y you talking about sleeping—with a fresh baby in the house that’s been asleep all day. You don’t know.”

“Then I shall have to borrow the benefit of your experience,” said Miss Pelling, controlling herself, for after all she was dependent on Gladys in this crisis. “Do you know anything about babies ?”

“I do,” said Gladys simply. “I’m one of nine. I hate ’em.” ,

“Never mind,” interposed Mrs. Simpson hastily, “the poor little mite is very welcome to stay the night here. Anyway, his father died in France for us.” Mrs. Simpson was rather a silent woman, and her presence was not much noticed in a room; only people knew when she went that the place was less full of warmth and kindness.

Perhaps Gladys may have become conscious of this moral sunshine, for she stepped forward then and said good-naturedly; “I shouldn’t behave badly to the bairn, if that’s what you think. And if Miss Pelling wants him looked after for a day or two, I’ll do it. I should be ashamed not to, when he’s a soldier’s baby that’s been killed.” And with that she took the crying child from Mrs. Du Caine with an accustomed arm which reassured even that anxious little mother.

“How funny!” said Barbara, touching the soft little fingers. “We don’t even know his name.”

“We shall have to have him christened if he stops long enough; but perhaps he has been already. Never mind, twice will only make him twice as holy,” said Elsie, staring at the baby out of her great, dark eyes. “I know. Let’s call him Kitchener. That’ll give him such a good start.”

“A little disrespectful to'the dead, don’t you think?” said Mrs. Bellerby. “I always fancy——”

Then across Mrs. Bellerby’s refined, tentative accents came Gladys’s broad-toned, indignant: “Who’s dead? Not Kitchener! He’s as alive as you or me.”

“Gladys!” said Miss Pelling.

“I don’t care. He is. A sergeant I walked out with told me so. All the soldiers know it. You bet, the Germans weren’t going to get Kitchener,” said Gladys.

“But he was drowned, you know,” said Mrs. Simpson gently.

“Who saw him drowned?” demanded Gladys through the baby’s crying. “No. Kitchener’s alive right enough. It’ll all come out after the war, you’ll see.” She paused, snatched up a bottle from the basket, exclaiming abruptly: “The poor kid’s hungry,” and was away across the road as suddenly as she had come.

To the women left behind the Flodmouth noises floated in through the window just as usual; but there was really a sound of beating wings ... of pipes playing across untrodden spaces . . . for they had just been present at that strange and wonderful thing, the birth of a legend. So arose the great myths of the past, and so, but for counter influences, would the clouds of the demi-gods gather round the figure of Kitchener to-day. In the hearts of the “common peo-pie” where all legends are conceived this one had already grown strong.

Mrs. Bellerby, however, was fully occupied with the business of the moment, and she said to Miss Pell-ing, genuinely anxious to guard her neighbour from a serious mistake: “You really ought not to encourage such conduct as Lillie’s. She has behaved with brazenfaced effrontery.”

So Miss Pelling also thought, but again her imperfect nature jibbed at guidance.

“Lillie may be brazen and irresponsible, as you say, but after all, she has had a child. She’s better than those war-brides who are simply out for a lark. Wives! I call ’em Week-Enders: that’s what I call ’em.” And she unconsciously fixed such a stern eye on Mrs. Du Caine that the poor little lady faltered out with a nervous giggle: “I’ve had two in two years. You can’t want more than that, can you?”

And very soon they all rolled up their knitting, saying on the way home how dreadfully spoilt that Elsie Simpson was, and how silly Miss Pelling had always been about her old servant, and how much older Barbara looked with nursing. But even as they spoke they were planning in their minds what they could send or do to help Miss Pelling; for now-a-days in the Avenue kindness is very near the surface, ready at any moment to well up and cover any bitter words with a flood of kind deeds.

Thus, gradually, the slow twilight fell on Chestnut Avenue. After supper the Simpsons sat reading by the fire—for it is cold in the spring in Flodmouth— and Barbara had just glanced at the clock, saying it was time for bed, when a new sound and terrible mingled with the accustomed Flodmouth noises; the sound which tells that death is hovering over a multitude of unarmed and innocent people. Before the warning buzzer had ceased, Mr. Simpson was struggling into his overcoat and fixing on his special constable’s badge.

“Good-night!” he said. “Expect me when you see me.”

But as he turned to speak hastily over his shoulder, he noticed the ghastly pallor of his wife’s face. She was not actually afraid of death, but the sudden sound of the buzzer had startled her and upset her weak heart, and she only kept herself from fainting by force of sheer will; her heart pounded against her ribs, then seemed to cease, then pounded on again.

“I’m not afraid. You musn’t think I’m afraid,” she murmured with blue lips, and tried to smile.

“Your mother’s ill, girls. Look after her,” said Mr. Simpson and he had to run out of the house.

But as he trotted down the avenue his forehead was dark red. He had never hated the Germans when Jim was killed, or when his business was ruined, but now the Evil Thing which has settled itself in the centre of the German nation and lies there spawning by the million had cast one of its filthy offspring into Mr. Simpson’s clean and decent soul. He trembled with hate as he hurried along to meet Mr. Binny.

“We’ll stick it out if we starve. We’ll stick it out if we die in heaps. We must beat ’em. We must beat ’em,” he muttered, trotting along with his jolly, round face that was meant to be so kind all congested, and his eyes glaring through his spectacles.

Then he looked up and stood still. The faint, red glare which is usually over a city after dark had given place to a pageant such as Mr. Simpson had never seen before. Great searchlights swept across the deep blue plain of the sky where all the stars were shining bright, below lay the darkened streets, and, among the stars, as it seemed, was a pale-golden thing like a pencil that the god of battles had cast down after signing the doom of the world. Just so it looked, hovering over Flodmouth, with the splendour of all the searchlights turned upon it.

He stared up, rooted to the ground, and the zeppelin seemed to waver uncertainly, as if the men steering it were blinded by the swords of light. Then it began to sail away, growing less and less against the wonderful blue and silver of the night. Mr. Simpson heard a great shout go up—the shout of deliverance, and he began to run again, waving his cap, with his bald head exposed to the night breeze.

It was about two o’clock in the morning when he and Mr. Binny came off duty. They tramped wearily, Mr. Binny, tall and lean, bending towards his short, stout companion. But the excitement of the hours just past kept them alert in spite of their fatigue, and they were even more ardent than usual in the pursuit of lighted windows. They scanned with a keen eye, as they conversed, the houses on either side of the Avenue.

“I had a good deal of bother with Miss Pelling last week,” observed Mr. Simpson. “She is tiresome about her lights. Bless me! There she is again!”

And he pointed to a wavering streak on the opposite railings.

“That’s her bedroom; she’ll have the baby in there because of the gas-stove,” said Mr. Binny; but the most censorious could have thought no evil of this intimate information had they seen his peering, anxious face. “I don’t like' knocking her up under the circumstances,” he concluded uneasily.

“Then we won’t do it,” said Mr. Simpson. “Let it pass.”

“No!” said Mr. Binny, setting his mouth. “After all, right is right. My duty as a special constable of Flodmouth comes before any feelings of—er—esteem for Miss Pelling. But it is all very unpleasant.”

Mr. Simpson rammed his hands deep into his coat pockets.

“Binny,” he said, “people seem to think we like wandering about half the night looking after lights and getting only abuse for it. It’s a beastly job. I detest it!”

“So do I,” said Mr. Binny. “But when you think of our soldiers-”

“I do think,” retorted Mr. Simpson. “Otherwise I shouldn’t go on at this game, I can tell you.” So saying he marched up Miss Pelling’s garden path and pressed the electric bell.

There was no response. It was cold and dismal in the quiet streets. With reluctance Mr. Binny left his ambush at the gate and joined his comrade on the. top of the steps.

“You shout,” he urged. “I’d rather she didn’t hear my voice—next-door neighbours and so on——”

“Well, she’s very friendly with my family for that matter,” said Mr. Simpson rather testily.

“So she is. So she is. Well, duty comes first, of course.” He sighed deeply. “Let’s shout together.”

The two gentlemen therefore paused a moment, then lifted up their voices in unison—

“Put out that light!”

Still no response, though the empty street echoed and heads began to peer from upper windows all along the Avenue.

At this the blood of Mr. Simpson and Mr. Binny, already a little heated by past events, began to be definitely up. “If she doesn’t come, I’ll hammer the door down,” said Mr. Simpson between clenched teeth.

“Wait! I’ll use my stick,” said Mr. Binny; and with a very fierce expression indeed, he poised his heavy walking-stick for a blow; when suddenly, from within, the door burst open, and the stick fell with an unpleasant “Thud!” on something soft. A second later Mr. Simpson, Mr. Binny and Miss Pelling were in a confused heap among the grimy daffodils at the bottom of the steps.

For one brief and horrible moment Mr. Binny believed that he had committed murder, and Mr. Simpson that he had been accessory to the deed.

Then Miss Pelling stirred and said feebly—

“If I hadn’t happened to have a Teddy Bear in my arms I believe you would have killed me. I was taking it up to amuse him in case he awakened again. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”

After a dazed moment or two Mr. Simpson and Mr. Binny began a very little to recover themselves, and at the back of Mr. Simpson’s brain the folly of trying to beguile a baby of two months with a Teddy Bear became dimly apparent. It was just like her— he vaguely felt—for he was not an admirer of Miss Pelling: then he sat up, and common humanity caused him to grab hold of the lady in the darkness. As soon as he found breath to articulate, he stammered out: “I hope nothing is broken.”

“No. Unless perhaps the Teddy Bear’s squeaker. It made a most extraordinary sound,” faltered Miss Pelling, also sitting,up among the crushed daffodils.

Mr. Binny on the other side, being more overwhelmed, took more time to recover himself. But at last he too sat up and touched Miss Pelling’s dressing-gown with a gingerly right hand. “I—I sincerely trust you are not seriously hurt? May I assist you to rise?” he said shakily.

“No, thank you,” said Miss Pelling; and she concluded defiantly: “I’m not going to put out that light for anybody.”

Which proved once more how slight was her knowledge of the male sex; for Mr. Simpson and Mr. Binny* had been ready to overlook a display of fireworks on her part if she had said nothing about them. Now they were on their mettle again.

“I’m sorry; but we must insist,” said Mr. Simpson, still panting slightly. “The safety of the city——”

“I’ll die before I have that child waked up again,” interrupted Miss Pelling, rising unsteadily.

“Only—” began Mr. Simpson, but even in his intense irritation he swallowed the words “only pity,” and substituted “Only difficulty is, you wouldn’t die alone. And you must consider the safety of your neighbours.”

“We are really obliged . . added Mr. Binny, thus embarrassingly placed between gallantry and duty.

Both comrades, however, were equally unprepared for the sudden retreat up the steps which left them planted there, and they stood blankly listening as Miss Pelling called through a crack of the door: “I don’t care! I don’t care! If I put the light out, he’ll wake up. He did before. You may take me to prison if you like, but I won’t wake that child up now he’s once off, not for every Special Constable in England!” The door shut. Mr. Simpson and Mr. Binny were left outside. They were conscious of several dishevelled heads peering through the darkness at them from windows round about, though nothing could be seen. They turned to each other, asking mutely what was to be done next. “After all,” said Mr. Binny, “she made nothing of an exceedingly unpleasant fall. Many women would have been in hysterics.”

“Yes: and I think there’s no further danger to be anticipated to-night,” said Mr. Simpson.

With one consent they turned away, walked down the path and out of the gate, which they closed very softly, as if with an instinctive desire to conceal even from themselves the fact that they had gone.

“Come in for a moment and have a drop of whisky,” said Mr. Binny, opening the next gate. “I expect you feel a bit shaken, and your people are in bed.”

“Well, I’m not taking any during the war, but on this occasion—” murmured Mr. Simpson, feeling his bruises.

So a few minutes later they sat on either side of the fire which Mr. Binny’s capable housekeeper had left banked up, each with a glass of pale yellow liquid in his right hand and a pipe in his mouth. They were both middle-aged men—Mr. Binny much overworked during the day—and they had both been doing gratuitous labour for which no one praised and many people abused them. But at the present moment life took on a comparatively rosy hue. For Mr. Simpson was; abstemious at all times and had been a teetotaller for a year, and he became conscious of a pleasant glow creeping through his veins and of a deeper friendship-for Mr. Binny than he had hitherto experienced; while Mr. Binny had observed much the same discipline since the first year of the war, and he, too, excited by the events of the evening and upset in two senses by the encounter with Miss Peking, was feeling very confidentially disposed towards Mr. Simpson. It was altogether one of those hours in which the carefully guarded reticence of a lifetime may be broken through, to the amazement of both parties next morning.

“Simpson,” said Mr. Binny, his long angular limbs easily disposed in a chair especially made for them, “you would almost wonder that Miss Peking had never married. She is a very uncommon woman.”

“Oh, very,” said Mr. Simpson, at peace with all mankind.

But this was not enough for Mr. Binny. He lowered his voice.

“Good-looking too, but for . . .” delicacy somehow forbade words, and he touched his nose with his pipe stem.

“Yes. Pity that: been so ever since I can remember her.”

Puff! Puff! went the pipes. Each took another sip.

“I sometimes wonder,” said Mr. Binny, “if all that one hears about married life is true.”

Mr. Simpson started a little. He was very sleepy and had begun to nod in his chair. “Eh! Oh, depends what you’ve heard,” he said, rousing himself to take a proper interest in his host’s conversation.

“Well!” Mr. Binny flushed slightly, took another sip and said with assumed carelessness: “I’ve heard that when a man has been married six months he doesn’t notice in the least what his wife looks like. All the same whether she’s beautiful, or as plain as a pikestaff.”

“Urn,” Mr. Simpson meditated rather hazily. “I should say it’s this way; you don’t notice if she looks all right but you do if she doesn’t.”

“Anything queer about her, you mean ?”

I “Yes.”

They smoked again for a few minutes in silence. It was most comfortable after the bleak night outside. Then Mr. Binny started again.

“I have known Miss Pelling a very long time.”

“Oh, yes. Excellent woman! Puff, Puff!” went Mr. Simpson.

“Simpson,” said Mr. Binny, leaning forward with such sudden intensity that Mr. Simpson also sat up straight with a jerk and became almost wide awake. “I have had it in my mind to propose to her since I was thirty and she about twenty-seven. She has a delightful way of talking. Ever so many times in the dark when we have talked over the garden wall I have nearly done it.”

“Why didn’t you then?” said Mr. Simpson.

But Mr. Binny did not answer that question directly.

He took another sip and craned his long neck still further across the hearth towards his friend.

“Simpson,” he said, “you are the first person I have ever talked to like this. But as one man to another ... is it necessary to kiss your wife every day when you are both middle-aged, or would just occasionally do ?”

“Sure I don’t know,” grunted Mr. Simpson, noncommittal. “Different people, different ways, I expect.”

“You’re naturally surprised at such a question,” said Mr. Binny hastily, more alert than Mr. Simpson had ever seen him. “But I don’t know any one else with whom I could discuss. . . . And it would be so terrible if I got her and then I really couldn’t. . . .” He paused. “Simpson, it seems a cruel thing to say, but I love that woman and yet I couldn’t kiss her. I simply can’t get over her nose.” He paused again, then broke forth: “I know it sounds awful. I know a woman could take a man having a far worse physical defect than that without minding a bit. How is it?”

Mr. Simpson flogged his quiescent mind into activity. He wanted to console Binny. Binny was a good chap.

“I know,” he said at last. “Women have been obliged to marry men they didn’t want to for ages, but men have been freer to choose. They have kept more of their instinct for natural selection—that’s why you can’t stand Miss Pelling’s nose. You’re instinctively avoiding a future generation with the same noses.”

“Ah! Where did you read that?” said Mr. Binny doubtfully. He rose and offered to fill up his friend’s glass. “Well, there it is, Simpson. I like her better than any other woman, and yet I can’t ask her to marry me. And now we’re both getting old.”

Mr. Simpson shook his head, declining more whisky, and made a sympathetic noise in his throat. As he rose he again sought words of consolation.

“Never mind, Binny,” he said, glancing at the deep arm-chair. “Anyway, a bachelor can go to bed just what time he likes and knock his pipe out on the mantelpiece.” He paused and strove for a final consolation. “Perhaps she wouldn’t have you now,” he concluded helpfully.

“No. No. Most probably not,” agreed Mr. Binny at once, but he rubbed his chin and seemed imperfectly comforted.

Then the two friends went to the front door.

“I can rely on your discretion, of course,” remarked the host, already, as the chill air blew in upon him, beginning to wonder at his own expansiveness. “Perhaps I exaggerated in what I said to you about Miss Pelling. A bachelor naturally speculates on such subjects sometimes without meaning anything. Goodnight.”

“Good-night,” said Mr. Simpson.

As he trudged across the road a chill dawn wind was already blowing up from the river Flod. Little Kitchener had awakened, and his long wail echoed the O-oh! of the engine whistle at the end of the Avenue. Mr. Simpson thought what a queer world this was, as he inserted his latch-key into the lock of his own front door.

CHAPTER III

A DAY IN THE AVENUE

EVEN before Mr. Simpson fell asleep, country wagons were jolting past the street end; work-men’s cars started running; the first milk-cart rattled up the Avenue; trains came faster and faster on the other side of the blank'wall. . . . All the great orchestra of Flodmouth was in full swing again, after that strange moment on the preceding night when Death hovered among the searchlights over the city.

Mr. Simpson came down to breakfast rather late, and he could see, as he descended the stairs, that the front door was open and the bright, cool morning air was stirring Barbara’s cotton frock in the passage. Through the doorway he caught a glimpse of those remaining daffodils upon which Miss Pelling and party had not sat, and the Bellerby girls were just going past to help at a Flag Day, with light dresses all a-flutter and slim ankles twinkling as they hurried along.

Mr. Simpson was filled with a sudden triumph and exultation. He was alive and well on this glorious morning. Amid the carnage and suffering of a world, he was all right!

Then, instantly, he had a pricking sense of shame. He snatched up the paper and forced his mind to take in the details of the fighting on the Western front.

But both exultation and shame were wholly unconscious. Mr. Simpson was not aware he had indulged in either as he drank his tea and munched his toast, or that a million men and women in Europe had experienced the same on that jocund morning.

The window was open and two maidservants stood outside in the sunshine—Gladys and a friend.

“Heard about our baby? He! He!” said Gladys.

“Yes. Rum thing a baby at your house. He! He!” and they giggled together.

“Well,” continued. Gladys, “it won’t be at our house long: that’s one blessing. I ain’t so soft as I look.”

“Why, what did you do? Give in your notice?”

“No. I didn’t do nothing. That’s just it ” Gladys paused. “Not that I would have let the poor little bairn cry to harm itself, of course. But we did have a night of it, I can tell you. And she was off by eight o’clock this morning to make arrangements with Mrs. Hobby, the porter’s wife, that lost her baby in January. She’s paying a good lot, but it’ll be a fine thing for Mrs. Hobby, and she’d ha’ pawned her petticoat. I do believe, before she’d go through another such night.” She paused again. “Not that I should have minded giving in my notice.” '

“What for? Going into munitions?”

“No, I can’t; I’ve a bad chest.” She paused and brought forth vehemently: “No, it’s this rationing business I can’t stick—weighing and watching every mouthful you eat. A poor girl must eat if she’s to do her work.”

“Yes. This rationing’s only anojther name for meanness. It’s all got up by the rich to do the poor folks in some way.”

They looked up and down the street, their young faces dull and suspicious for a moment. Then they smiled at each other.

“Well, so long. Glad you’ve got rid of the kid, though I’m sorry for it. The mother must be a rum ’un.”

“It’s Miss Pelling’s Lillie. Her that was such a pattern of a servant,” said Gladys. “They think I don’t know, but I couldn’t help hearing. They seem to fancy servants hasn’t got ears.”

“You’re right. I’m sick of being a servant. Everybody looks down on you and you’ve no freedom. My youngest sister is in an office, and look at her. . . . “Well, I must be getting on.”

They parted.

Mr. Simpson rose from the table as the postman passed the window, and went out to receive the letters at the gate. At the furthei end of the Avenue stood little Mrs. Du Caine, with one baby holding her hand and the other in her arms. Mrs. Wilson pretended to weed the front garden, not desiring the neighbours to see that she was watching openly. It was the same at nearly every house in the Avenue, and in every street in Flodmouth. You could almost hear, among the chorus of city noises, the faint thud! thud! of women’s hearts beating as they waited.

But in the Simpsons’ house that sort of waiting was now over; and Mr. Simpson took his batch casually, delivering a letter to Barbara, and saying as he went in: “Here’s a love-letter for you, Barbara.”

“Don’t be so silly, Father! More likely a bill,” said Barbara. All the same, she flushed as she looked at the handwriting, and slipped the letter into the pocket of her overall.

Some time, however, had to elapse before she opened it, but at length in the cool solitude of the bathroom when she was polishing brass taps, the opportunity arrived, and she sat on the bath edge to peruse the following epistle—

“DEAR MISS BARBARA,

I am so very glad to hear you have come back. If I can possibly get away I will call early this afternoon on the chance of finding you in. It seems such ages since I had a talk with you alone.

“Yours very sincerely,

“FRANK R. GARRET.”

It was not impassioned, but Barbara’s face, bent over it in the diluted light which fell through the thick window, was awed and wide-eyed; and Elsie, peering in at the door as she passed silently on the carpet outside, was moved to stand still and call out—

“Goodness! What a subject for a Christmas Annual Supplement, entitled ‘His Letter,’ or ‘Shall I; or shall I not?’ ”

Barbara started and folded up the letter.

“Don’t be an idiot!” she said sharply. “I do wish you would mind your own business. It’s horrid, the way you poke and pry into everything.”

Elsie laughed shrilly but good-naturedly.

“Come, Barbie,” she said, “don’t get shirty because I interrupted you reading a note from Frank Garret. I only saw the envelope, but I know just what’s inside; tepid pleasure in Miss Barbara’s return and a promise to come and see her soon. Bah! I could show him how! He’s what I call the Cautious Kipper, and you’re the Willing Winkle.” She laughed once more, then added in a different tone: “I suppose he wants to take you on again now you are on the spot. Don’t do it, Barbie, old girl. If it was me I’d see him jolly hemmed first.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Barbara. “You read far too many novels and get your head filled with nonsense. Please go and get your milk; it is eleven o’clock.”

But though Barbara could dismiss her sister with dignity, she felt even less disposed than before to tell the household that Frank Garret might be coming to call. She could bear the suspense of that waiting herself, but not if it were shared by a jeering Elsie and a mother anxious lest she should be hurt or disappointed. One was as bad as the other in her present frame of mind, and she worked herself up into a fever of expectation, which caused her literally to feel sick by the time she had successfully manoeuvred Elsie upstairs, Mrs. Simpson on to the back-room sofa, and Mr. Simpson—unwillingly—into the back garden.

At last she stood alone by the kitchen table, ironing pocket handkerchiefs. The house was very still; Elsie lay on her bed resting her weak back and devouring books as usual, while Mrs. Simpson had fallen asleep after her disturbed night.

Then a bell sounded faintly in the kitchen and Barbara glanced at the trembling indicator on the wall as if it were a writing of Fate. But her feet seemed weighted with lead as she softly opened the kitchen door and went down the passage. She wanted to see him and yet she wanted to run away. That underlined “alone” seemed to be alive before her. Now that the moment was perhaps coming, of which she had dreamed with such shy rapture since she was eighteen, she felt unable to face it. Her eyes were dilated and her hand shook as she opened the door.

“Oh! Is it you? Will you come in?” she said nervously, scarcely looking at him.

“You got my letter all right, then?” .

“Oh yes.”

He stood smiling at her from his great height with his handsome face bent towards her and his fine, dark eyes looking into her blue ones. The faint lines which the vague girlish passions he had roused and left unsatisfied had traced round her fresh mouth were visible in the early afternoon light. He had a moment’s thought that she had “gone off.” Then she flushed under his gaze and he thought her prettier than he had remembered.

“Let us go into the garden,” he said with sudden ardour. “We shall be by ourselves there. I want to see you alone.”

She glanced at him hesitating.

“If you really. . . . But Father is in the garden.”

“Oh, that won’t do then.” He paused, touching her sleeve and smiling, very sure of himself. “I say, Barbara, surely there’s some place in the house? . . . Think a bit”

She looked up at him, her eyes asking questions without her knowledge. Was it true what Elsie had said? Or perhaps he was really going to propose to her just because he had had his fling and wanted to settle down ? She turned slowly away from the door. “Well . . . I’m in the kitchen ironing handkerchiefs. Only it’s awfully hot in there.”

He closed the front door softly and pressed her arm as they went down the passage. She withdrew a little and he pressed nearer, seeing in her movement the innocent freshness which had always appealed to him in her.

“Hush!” he whispered, more for the sake of whispering into her pretty ear under the brown wave of shining hair than anything else. “Tread quietly, Barbara. I don’t want them to hear.”

“They’ll only think you are Father’s collars from the wash,” said Barbara soberly.

She was still in that odd frame of mind. The moment towards which all her girl’s dreams had tended was almost here; Frank was going to tell her he loved her; and yet she did not feel as if the heavens were opening. Suddenly, on the threshold of the kitchen, she turned round. “No. Don’t let us go in there. It is too hot. We’ll go into the drawing-room.”

He put his arm tightly round her and said rather breathlessly: “If you won’t come I’ll make you. Shall I? Shall I?”

She could feel his breath on her cheek.

“I can’t move if you hold me like that—let me go.”

They stood facing each other now in the warm kitchen with the door closed. He put his arm about her again, touching her elbow gently.

“Did I knock it against the door-post? I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, girlie.”

She shook her head without speaking.

“You like it,” he murmured very low. “Whisper, Barbara; did you like it?”

She broke away from him again.

“Oh, I don’t know! I don’t know!” she said, half crying.

“Silly little girl! What is there to cry about?” he said. “Come here!” He caught her to him and held her fast, looking down into her upturned face. Then he suddenly bent his head and kissed her passionately on the lips.

“Oh! let me go,” she murmured faintly. “I don’t like it.” She paused. “I hate it!”

“Sweetest, you’ll get over that. It’s because I am the first. I’ve upset you. But I wouldn’t have you otherwise for the world,” he said.

She pushed him away and sat down by the ironing board, leaning her forehead on her hands.

“No—no. It’s not that, Frank. I don’t know what it is.” She lifted her head and looked at him with dishevelled hair and those faint lines round her mouth deepened; her blue eyes were black with the intensity of her emotion. She had the air of some distraught and tragic woman who sees her dearest treasure putting out from the shore and is powerless to utter the word that would hold it back. “I only know that if I really loved you, I shouldn’t have to get used to you kissing me. I should like it now.”

“But, Barbara—it seems a caddish thing to say—I haven’t been able to help seeing that you were fond of me. You can’t suddenly stop, after all these years, just because I kissed you. The thing’s simply not comprehensible.”

“I know. I can’t understand it myself,” said Barbara hopelessly. Then with a sudden onrush of feeling she realised with him the utter incomprehensibility of this end to the dreams of her young girlhood. “If any one had told me. . . .”

“You don’t mean to say that you don’t care for me after all?” exclaimed Garret. “Then all I can say is, I think you have behaved disgracefully. You always led me to suppose you cared for me.”

“I did. I am sure I did,” said Barbara.

“Then what earthly reason—”

“I haven’t one.”

He began to walk agitatedly up and down the kitchen.

“I suppose you have heard about my cousin’s money? I am now very well off, and in a position to marry at last. And the moment I am in that position, I come to you. I couldn’t do more. No man could. I can offer you everything that my wife ought to have.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Barbara, leaning once more on her hands. “Oh! it’s dreadful! It’s dreadful! But I don’t want you. I can’t marry you.”

“I have a right to some explanation—after all these years.”

“I know you have.” She groped desperately for words in which to express herself. He had a right to that knowledge floating vaguely in the back of her' mind if she could only get hold of it.

“Then you don’t mean to say you never have cared for me ?” he demanded.

“No. I couldn’t say such a thing. I fell in love with you at my first dance and I’ve never cared for another man since. But now . . She paused, still groping. “I believe I must have waited too long. . . .” She paused again: “Oh, Frank! You don’t know what it is for a girl, having to hide everything up from everybody, and so ashamed of being the one to care most—no man ever can know.”

“So that’s it!” He drew a breath of relief to think it was only wounded pride after all which had prompted her refusal. “Why, my dearest little girl, I’ve wanted to propose to you dozens of times. I only refrained because I had made up my mind never to marry until I was in a position to give my wife every comfort. We should neither of us have been happy in a small house in a side street with one grubby maidservant.”

“Happy! Oh, Frank!” ,said Barbara. Then she began to weep bitterly, not for the present but for that vanished time when she would have shared a hovel with him and thought it Paradise.

“Then what is the matter?” he demanded, naturally exasperated.

She wiped her eyes and said, struggling desperately to express what she felt, for his sake: “It’s all those years ... I think they did something to me . . . You know how they say in Flodmouth you’re 'past’ your meals when you have waited so long that you can’t eat anything? Well, I—I think I must be past \ your love, Frank. I wanted it so long. And now it’s come, I can’t take it. I don’t want it any more.”

“But this is senseless,” said Frank. “Do you realise that you are ruining my happiness and your own for a mere fancy? Come, be reasonable, Barbara.”

“I am,” wept Barbara. '“That’s just what I am. I wish I were not. I don’t love you any more in the way you mean. I can’t marry you.”

“But why?” persisted he.

She looked round the kitchen as if some further argument might be written on the walls, then let her hands drop hopelessly in her lap.

“I wonder if I got over you when I was nursing in Bournemouth and didn’t find it out until I saw you again. I worked so awfully hard there that I hadn’t time to think about anything in the day, and at night I slept like a log. I don’t know!”

“Well, I think I have been abominably——” began Garret, when Mrs. Simpson’s slow footsteps sounded in the passage outside. “There’s your mother 1”

“Yes. Don’t you want to see her?”

“No.”

“Then come out this way.”

She ran through the scullery and he followed her. The door banged with a sound of empty finality, and Barbara—whose soul was somehow peculiarly attuned to the meaning of sounds—came back into the kitchen and faced her mother.

“Well, has the woman brought the collars?” said Mrs. Simpson.

“No.” Barbara paused. “It was not the collars, Mother.”

“Who came then ?”

“Frank Garret.”

“What!” cried Mrs. Simpson. “Frank Garret in the kitchen! Why didn’t you bring him into the room ?”

“He wanted to see me by myself.”

Mrs. Simpson looked eagerly at her girl—her beloved girl for whom she so passionately desired happiness. But she said nothing.

“Mother, he asked me to marry him.”

“Dearest, I’m so glad,” said Mrs. Simpson, restraining the words of love she knew her daughter did not want just then, and forcing herself to stand quietly waiting.

“There’s nothing to be glad about. I refused him.”

“Refused him!” echoed Mrs. Simpson stupidly. “Why, I always thought-”

“So did I. But I found out I didn’t.”

They looked at each other. Then Mrs. Simpson kissed her Barbara’s soft cheek once and drew away.

“Are you sure, dear?” she said gently.

“Quite, quite sure, Mother.”

“Then what are you crying for?”

“Because . . . because I don’t love him any more.” And this time, of her own accord, she threw her arms round her mother’s neck and wept on that kind shoulder as she had not done since she was little.

But very soon she lifted up her head and wiped her eyes, saying briskly: “Time to get tea ready. You go back to the dining-room, Mother, and I’ll bring tea in, in five minutes.”

Mrs. Simpson hesitated a moment, then smiled her pretty, timid smile at Barbara and went out of the kitchen, though she longed to remain and talk it all over. But to her quick, sensitive mind Barbara’s desire to avoid further confidences had been quite as clear as if it had been spoken aloud.

The girls had gone to bed and Mr. and Mrs. Simpson were alone in the back room. There was a long silence, during which Mrs. Simpson now and then looked at her husband over the top of her newspaper. At last she said:

“Well, Sam, what is it?”

“Nothing. I don’t know what you mean,” said Mr.

Simpson irritably. “Seems to me the Russians——”

And he returned to his paper.

“I’m afraid you are disappointed about Barbara refusing Frank Garret. So am I.” She sighed. “It would be a great thing to feel the girls had somebody to look after them in these uncertain times, in case anything happened to us.”

“Oh, I don’t worry so much about that,” said Mr. Simpson shortly. “After all, girls can fend for themselves now-a-days.”

“They can while they’re young,” said Mrs. Simpson. “However, I wouldn’t for the world have Barbara marry a man she did not love.”

“No—no! Pity it has happened so, that’s all,” said Mr. Simpson.

There followed another silence, disturbed only by the rustling of newspapers. Mrs. Simpson again broke it.

“See anybody when you were out after tea ?”

“Yes. I saw Walters.” (Walters being the clergyman of the parish, whose son Ted had been Jim’s great friend in their boyhood.)

“Any news of Ted?”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to tell you to-night?”

Mrs. Simpson’s eyes contracted with that nervous dread of sorrow which comes in these days to people who have suffered greatly and are in bad health; then she pulled herself together to bear what was coming and her pupils dilated again.

“Has he fallen?”

“No. But I don’t know that it isn’t worse. He’s wounded and a prisoner in the hands of the Germans.”

“Oh! Poor Mrs. Walters! Poor things!” said Mrs. Simpson, wiping her eyes.

Mr. Simpson grunted.

“I said I’d better not tell you to-night. You won’t sleep.”

“What’s that matter?”

Silence again: the clock ticked so loudly.

“Well, our being down in the dumps won’t help matters,” said Mr. Simpson, turning his paper.

“I know. But all these young lives. Sam, I can’t understand it. All the mothers praying . . . If I were God . . .” Her incoherent words trailed off into a sigh.

Mr. Simpson put his paper down on his knee and looked straight at her with troubled eyes gleaming through his spectacles.

“Harriet, I sometimes begin to wonder if there is a God,” he said in a low voice.

“You can’t help feeling like that,” said Mrs. Simpson, almost whispering. “All these Flodmouth boys full of spirits and promise that we’ve known all our lives. . . . But we wouldn’t have kept our boy back, Sam.”

“No. His country was attacked and he had to defend her, same as he would you.”

They sat on either side of the fireless grate, most desolate, as if a wind blew across them from a place in which there was no hope. . . . But this was the very first time in their whole lives that they had really talked of God together.

Then the clock struck. Mr. Simpson jumped up from his seat and flung down his newspaper.

“Dammit!” he said. “The brutes have killed my boy and my business; they shan’t kill my faith in God!”

It was after midnight, and every one was in bed at No. 28 Chestnut Avenue, but important things in the history of the souls under that roof were being enacted.

Gradually, the rush and clang of the city had died down and ceasecl to accompany their thoughts, but there was still the occasional high shriek of the engines over the wall at the end of the Avenue, the dull sound of shouting, the reverberating footstep of some belated person coming home.

Each of the Simpsons slept in odd snatches, and woke every time to find themselves whirling round, round, round, on the unresting wheel of thought—most sleepers know that waking, and the feel of the wheel beginning to turn, turn, turn again, with an ache in every revolution.

Thus Mr. Simpson, lying so quiet by his wife’s side, was obliged to clutch that dizzying wheel. Words flashed by him in the darkness. Pain . . . pain . . . the young lives. ... We must stick it out to the end, or they’re all wasted. ... He turned over, trying to find ease, but never for a moment getting free.

And Mrs. Simpson by his side, seeming so quiet that he thought her asleep. She too hung in a sort of agony on that wheel, with the sweat breaking out upon lips and forehead that she dared not wipe away lest her husband should feel her movement and be troubled at her wakefulness. Round, round, each time a deeper agony . . . Men suffering, lads lying dead on forlorn battle-fields . . . No! No! Surely not there. . . . O God, help me to see the dead where they really are; they are . . . safe—happy—out of it all . . . God help me—if there is a God!

So, swinging on that terrible wheel, dazed, almost despairing, Mrs. Simpson lifted up her soul.

No comfort came. There seemed to be no one at all in the dark void to which she looked. Then, gradually, after a long while, she began to feel a response. There was a lightening of her despair. New courage began to flow along some unseen channel into her soul. She felt the comfort of God though she could not grasp His Presence.

There is no explaining such an experience: only Mrs. Simpson fell asleep as sure of God as she was of Mr. Simpson snoring slightly on the next pillow.

Barbara also, in a midnight hour which seemed endless to her, awoke to find herself clutching the maddening wheel. Round, round, round it went: though her thoughts seemed light and trivial enough when compared with those in the room just below. But the faith of youth in the supreme importance of love alone keeps the world sweet enough for youth to bloom in at present, so her thoughts mattered after all. Do I love him ? I must ... I did so long—long . . . Oh, that kiss ... (A burying of the face in the pillow, and a rush of unrecognised emotions.) Oh, I don’t know: I don’t know!

Elsie, on the other bed, kept awake by the pain in her weak back, stared starkly up into the ceiling. But she was the happiest of the four people in the house as she murmured a verse which she had just composed: for though the lines were crude and school-girlish enough they made her free of that country which is a refuge from life. She glowed as she lay there, pinched and sallow-faced and full of pain, with that joy of expressing herself in words which is no more to be explained than any other emotion.

But at breakfast next morning the Simpsons bore no trace whatever of the experiences which they had passed through in the night. Barbara poured out the coffee with the calm, bright face of morning girlhood which hides so many things, and Mrs. Simpson acknowledged that she had slept rather badly, while Mr. Simpson was very cheerful, rubbing his hands and making little jokes.

Over the breakfast table they talked of the approaching Bellerby wedding, and of the war news and the weather.

“Pass the butter,” said Mr. Simpson.

And that started the old argument as to whether margarine were pronounced like Margaret or like Marjory.

It would seem incredible—were it not so common— that each of the four Simpsons had but just come back from those forlorn and desert places where human souls wander alone in the night.

CHAPTER IV

A SOLDIER

BARBARA and Elsie were walking in the long road where the trams run when they encountered Mr. Frank Garret, and the greeting on both sides was so constrained that a sharp younger sister, after passing on, inquired at once—

“Whatever’s up now?”

Barbara, brightly red like a rose in a shower, said with abruptness that nothing was, up, and that she was sick of such nonsense . . . time Elsie went'back to school!

All the same, the facts of the case could no longer be concealed, and a pledge of secrecy seemed less dangerous than a refusal to give desired information.

“Only, I won’t hear another word about it,” said Barbara.

But when night came she went upstairs to find Elsie, of course, sitting on the side of her bed, with dark eyes flaming like lamps under a roughened mop of dark hair: for the girl was all afire with vicarious romance, despite the girding and critical spirit which kept her from dreaming precocious dreams on her own account.

“Oh, Barbara,” she said, as soon as the door was closed, and speaking in italics as usual: “I can’t help feeling thrilled at your refusing Frank Garret. What did he say ? Did he go down on his knees ? I suppose you refused him just to pay him out for dangling such a long time, and keeping you on a bit of string. But what shall you do if he doesn’t ask you again?”

“Don’t talk rot. We no longer live in the dark ages of woman when three Noes meant one Yes,” said Barbara. “You get off to bed and let me do the same.”

“I think you are very mean,” said Elsie, reluctantly beginning to undress. Then she reflected that Barbara was probably keeping her romance sacred in the virgin recesses of her own heart—vide a novel devoured on the previous day.

But in any case Barbara was certainly disappointing, for she did none of those things which Elsie’s idea of romance demanded. She neither leaned from the bedroom window gazing pensively in the direction of the suburb where Frank Garret resided, nor did she take a long time in brushing her hair while staring into the looking-glass. On the contrary, she made as much haste as possible, splashed herself at the wash-stand, prayed with a serene and obtrusive absorption and jumped into bed saying she was dog-tired and should go to sleep at once.

“Oh, very well,” said Elsie, also kneeling down and taking refuge in the Courts of the Infinite.

In a short time—a very short time—she rose from her knees. A gentle snore proceeded from the other bed. Elsie bit her lips and frowned angrily, but she continued to undress in silence, glancing every now and then at a bright brown plait and a piece of white-clad shoulder. At last she approached the bed, when another snore, rather louder, greeted her. Then she seized hold of the shoulder and shook it fiercely, her hair hanging round her in a black cloud and her great eyes shining through.

“Stop that!” she said. “If you won’t talk to me about your private affairs, say so straight out. I don’t care. I don’t want people to confide in me who don’t want to. But I won’t be deceived by snores that wouldn’t deceive a child in arms, snored by people who never snore. I won’t! So there!” She broke off and choked. “You think it’s just curiosity. It isn’t. It’s —it’s because I’m so fond of you. I want you so to be happy, Barbie.”

The snoring abruptly ceased and Barbara sat up. “I never meant to be horrid, Elsie. The only thing is ... I simply can’t talk about it.” After a moment or two, she added softly: “Good-night, old Elsie.”

Elsie crossed the room and blew out the light. “Well, you can go to sleep now,” she remarked. “But don’t snore this time or I shall tell Frank Garret that you are a confirmed snorer. Then the game really will be up. Good-night.”

“Good-night,” echoed Barbara, almost meekly, burying her head beneath the bed-clothes away from this terribly articulate young sister.

Next morning she drew up the blind and spoke joyfully to Elsie, who was still in bed.

“I say! Glorious day for the wedding.”

And all up and down the Avenue, through the smoke haze which had a delicate, pearly loveliness quite different from the blue and gold of the morning beyond the town, these words or similar ones were being spoken. For the women’s hearts turned through all the sadness of life now to the thought of Blanche Bellerby’s happy wedding, as you may see flowers in a dark place yearn towards the sun.

So, at the appointed hour, those who were free began to move in twos and threes towards the dirty, yellow-brick church. Workers in uniform, or in the shabby gowns they had worn while packing for prisoners of war, hurried in to mingle oddly enough with the last year’s finery of the rest; a few women in deep mourning made black patches among the goldish pitch-pine pews that stood nearly empty at the back of the church, but even they had a sort of reflected sunshine on their faces. . . . Here were hope and youth and love after all still alive in the world then. They greeted the sight of it as one does the first crocus after a long, sad winter, with a tightening of the heart-strings and yet a sudden rush of joy.

It was thus little Mrs. Du Caine felt, as she watched the bridegroom waiting, and thought of her husband in France and of her own wedding. Near her were Barbara and Elsie and Mrs. Wilson, and they all whispered about the bridegroom, whose clean-cut, nervous profile was outlined strongly against the pale wall of the church.

“They say he has been awarded the Military Cross.”

“Any amount of money, I hear.”

“Yes: and the Elliotts are very well connected. Blanche would never have come across him in peace times, of course.”

“Well, I call it a fine face.”

They paused, watching him move nearer the altar steps.

“Fancy,” murmured Elsie, with intensity, “any one even looking like that about Blanche! Blanche Bellerby, that used to call names over the wall and crack nuts with her teeth. Love must be a queer thing.”

“Hush!” said Barbara, “here is the bridegroom’s mother coming in. I know her by sight from that picture in the Princess. She turned her country house into a hospital and acts as Commandant, though they say she spent most of her days in bed before the war.”

“Oh, lots like her. Wonderful, isn’t it?”

“How lovely she must have been,” murmured Barbara, as the tall, frail-looking woman went past them up the aisle with her thoughts so fixed on her son that the other people in the church were plainly invisible to her.

Elsie leaned close to Barbara, her dark eyes shining in her little, gaunt face.

“Now I see what it is!” she whispered eagerly. “She’s given him Blanche just as she’d give him. the heart out of her body if he wanted it. Poor mother! Poor mother! I do wish she’d got somebody better than Blanche.” . . .

“Don’t be silly! Blanche’ll turn out all right,” said Barbara.

Then Mrs. Wilson said in her ponderous way—

“I dislike these hurried war-weddings. I cannot understand how any mother——”

“Oh,” interrupted Mrs. Du Caine, “here she comes! Here she comes!”

And as Blanche came up the aisle on the arm of her most presentable male relative, wearing the beautiful veil and necklace of pearls that Mrs. Elliott had worn on her own wedding-day, all the hard thoughts which the onlookers might have had about the bride fled away for the time being, and those kind wishes which the wedding angels bring were hovering very tenderly over the young soldier and the girl by his side when the service began.

As Barbara sat looking at them with wide eyes and a bright flush on her cheeks, she heard a little movement and saw Frank Garret enter a pew close by. For a moment she felt the old nervous beating of the pulses—the old, half-sickening: “Will he speak to me? Won’t he? Oh, I wonder if that girl he is near will keep him?” Then it all cleared away as if a fresh wind had passed over some stagnant place; and she knew, with a sudden sense of freedom, that she didn’t care a button whether he sought her out or not. She had truly—during that year of hard work, and grim realities at Bournemouth—“got over him.”

She listened to the words of the Marriage Service, which have for the ears of a girl like Barbara an eternal newness and beauty, and remembered with a sort of wonder how she had sat behind Frank Garret at another wedding five years ago. Then the whole church suddenly seemed to swim in a golden mist, while she clung half-fainting to the edge of the pew before her—and all because she had seen a vision of herself standing in white with Frank before that same altar. i; That was indeed her girl’s waking to the physical side of love, though she remained even now unaware of the fact; for her delicate young dreams had always been suffused with a sort of glory haze which left outlines indefinite.

Now she glanced at Frank’s fine figure in front and the few silver hairs at the side of his head, which only increased his good looks, just showed from where she sat He turned his head. She noticed that his neck bulged in a red fold over his collar at the back.

The long habit of worship held. She drew back startled from such blasphemy. But immediately her spirit used its new freedom and she said to herself: “It does bulge! it does! How could I not have noticed it before? I must have been blind.”

Then the short service was finished, and bride and bridegroom came down the aisle man and wife. But the young soldier saw nobody in the church save Blanche: not even his mother, who leaned forward from her pew to smile at him with such love and wistful tenderness in her white face that Elsie muttered, half aloud—

“Look, you fool! Look! You’re not going to get that any more in this world, even if you marry fifty Blanche Bellerbys.”

“Hush, Elsie!” said Barbara.

“I don’t care! I could murder Blanche if she doesn’t let him go on thinking her that—at any rate, till he gets back to France. Oh, Barbie, I do so hope she will!”

So it was all over, and Barbara bowed to Frank as he came out, and—most wonderful! most strange— was not in a fever of anxiety lest he should fail to catch her up and walk home with her. She even said to herself, “Am I a beastly flirt that only wants to make sure of a man and then has no further use for him?” But glancing back at the dim, flowery altar from the light doorway, she knew it was not that: she had prayed so often amid the excitement of heat and music at a Sunday night service here, that he might truly love her.

She felt a wistful pity for the girl she was then as she passed in the porch without speaking. And yet they might have been coming out husband and wife together.

But it was true enough, as Miss Pelling said in walking home, that a wedding always leaves a blank feeling behind; something seems about to happen which doesn’t; so a deserted greyness with an illusive scent of orange-blossoms in the air haunted Barbara for the rest of the day.

This state of mind drove her out restlessly when her work was done, to call upon Miss Pelling. The room where they sat looked out upon the dry road steeped in late sunshine and the first strawberry barrow of the year went past: “Strawberry! Fresh strawberry!” Fruit barrows were rare in the Avenue now, and this one seemed to Barbara like a long echo from those past summers which now appeared to have been all strawberries and tennis and careless young men in white flannels, with a blue and gold seaside holiday planted somewhere in the heart of them.

Then Mrs. Wilson came out from the house opposite to buy fruit from the barrow with a bowl in her hand, and if she did it with rather the air of a princess going a-milking, and did murmur to herself that talisman: “In war-time . . .” which has gone so far in setting the middle-class free from a thousand little snobberies, she bought fruit off a common barrow unashamed, all the same.

The Bellerbys’ house lay closed and quiet while the family of the bride caroused mildly at the hotel, but a bit of white flower drifted up the road among the dust A soldier coming along trod on it, and then glanced down, saying to himself: “A wedding in the street!” But not kindly, rather as if fools must be fools. He looked at the numbers of the houses as he came along! and Miss Pelling and Barbara watched him idly, saying to each other—

“I wonder who that wounded soldier wants?”

“Yes. Well, he evidently knows the number.”

“He’s crossing over.”

They leaned forward to see better.

“Goodness, Miss Pelling, he’s coming here!”

“Some message from the Hospital, I dare say,” said Miss Pelling, rolling up her knitting.

“I’ll go to the door,” said Barbara.

She opened the door and stood in the gloom of the passage. Outside, in the full light, stood a very thin, weather-beaten soldier of middle height in his ill-fitting blue garments of glory.

“You ... I am not speaking to Miss Pelling?” he said.

“No. Do you want to see her? Will you come in?”

“Thank you.” And he entered, despite the stiffness of his left arm, with an extraordinary lightness and easiness of gait, as if every muscle were made of steel and running smoothly.

“Lovely weather,” said Barbara, going on before him.

He muttered some unintelligible response, for he was recently home from France, where he had spent over a year practically without speaking to a woman, and he was for the moment overcome by that odd sense of embarrassment which many soldiers know in the presence of a girl after a year’s uninterrupted intercourse with their own sex. It is a sensation which wears off almost at once, but it was very disconcerting to a man who had been easily used to female society all his life before the war.

“Oh, have you come from the Hospital?” said Miss Pelling. And her directness, and—strange to say— her nose, almost restored his normal balance.

“Yes,” he said. “I am here for massage and electricity before joining my regiment at Scarcliffe for light duty. I’ve had a bullet through my left arm.”

There was a pause: at last Miss Pelling said, helping him—

“I suppose you have a message for me about the strawberries? I promised to send some to the Hospital.”

“No,” said the soldier, “no.”

He was so awkward and the words, “What do you want, then ?” hovered so plainly on Miss Pelling’s lips that Barbara said quickly, “I like strawberries, don’t you?” her soft, clear voice taking on that deep note which always came into it when she was very anxious to be kind.

“I’m looking for a Miss Nelson,” he said, then gathering himself together, “Lillie Nelson. I think she once lived with you.” He paused, glanced at Barbara and added with a rise of colour, “My name’s Brooke.”

“Brooke!” cried Miss Pelling, jumping up. “You’re not dead! Oh, poor Lillie—”

“I’m not the man who married Lillie Nelson. I’m his brother.”

Miss Pelling sat down again, feeling rather shaken. Barbara gazed at Brooke with flushed cheeks and anxious eyes.

“Have you come about the baby?” she said, wondering at the evident good breeding in this brother of a private soldier of the old army who had taken two wives at once. “Little Kitchener, you know?”

“Little Kitchener!” said Brooke, staring at her. “Oh, you mean Lillie’s kid? She’s called him that?” “No,” said Miss Pelling, “we did. Lillie left him in a hamper on my doorstep without a name, and then she disappeared again. So I took over the responsibility. Somebody had to. You couldn’t let the poor little thing be neglected.”

Brooke looked down, twirling his cap in his hand. “It was hard on you. You’ve been very good. It’s time I came and took on my brother’s responsibilities. You’ve no right to be burdened,” he said, bringing out the words with an effort.

“Well,” said Miss Pelling, “your brother is gone now. No use saying anything.” . . . Then she added in a different tone: “Have you heard from Lillie?” “No. I have not the least idea where she is. She has evidently moved. That’s why I came here.”

“Then how did you get my address?”

“My brother gave me it. He said you would be sure to know where she was if I couldn’t find her in their old lodgings.”

“Have you never seen her ?”

“Never,” said Brooke. “Fact is, my brother and I had not met for ten years until—” he paused.

“Until when?” said Miss Pelling sharply.

“Well, it was in the great hall at Rouen. We chanced to get on two stretchers side by side. Things like that are always happening in this war.” There was another pause. Barbara leaned forward with shining eyes, but he did not notice her. “My brother died during the night. But we had some talk first. He said Lillie was a good sort, and there was going to be a kid, and he seemed a bit worried. Not very, because when you get to where he was—— So he gave me your address, and I said if I got home, I’d do what I could.”

“Anyway, your brother was dying for his country,” said Barbara softly. *

Brooke glanced at her with indifference; that other scene came like a curtain let down between them. But his simplicity seemed to make them all oddly simple.

“Yes. You can’t do more than that,” said Miss Pelling. “Would you like to see the child? I can arrange to let you see it to-morrow. It is with a woman quite near.”

“If you will be so kind.” He paused. “Who’s paying?” he said abruptly.

, “Oh, well ... I am. Quite all right,” muttered Miss Pelling, embarrassed as ever by her own good deeds. “Boys wanted for the Empire,” she added vaguely, trying to give it an impersonal aspect.

“You must let me undertake that, Miss Pelling,” said Brooke. “The greatest part of it—looking after the boy and seeing he is properly done to and all that—•

I will leave to you. But you must let me take on the monetary part of the responsibility.”

As Miss Pelling glanced at his private’s badge and hesitated, he suddenly smiled at her in a way that curiously illumined his dark and ravaged face. It’s all right,” he said. “I can afford to keep little Kitchener. I had a rotten bad time out in Canada at first; but in the end I made good—in a moderate style, that is.”

“Are you a married man yourself, then?” said Miss Pelling.

He paused, looking at her; and his look said as plainly as words: “I would rather not talk of this, but you have earned my confidence.” Aloud he said: “I am a widower. I married when I was twenty-two. That’s why I went to Canada; to make a home for my wife. I worked the nails off my fingers: then she caught cold, doing the chores in a severe frost, while I was laid up with a sprained knee.”

“How sad!” said Miss Pelling. She had to say something, though the words sounded very futile to herself.

Barbara did not speak. She only turned her eyes from his face lest she should see something there that he would rather hide.

“I look older than I am,” he continued. “I came at the end of a big family. My father was a country parson on a hundred and eighty a year, and we had to live on that and pretend to keep up a position like the country gentry and doctors, and the parsons with private means. But we were always thankful to cadge a good meal with any of the farmers round, and they knew it. We weren’t half educated. Then my brother got into trouble and ran away, and enlisted in the Regulars long before the war. I hold no brief for my brother; but with his temperament, I don’t think he had much of a chance.”

“No.” Miss Pelling flushed crimson. Brooke’s plain words deeply moved her, and she blurted out, most anxious to do something for the dead man: “You can’t blame anybody. You never know what’s inside people. If it hadn’t been for my nose hedging me round like a barricade against men, I should probably have been a regular high-kicking, champagne-popping bad woman myself. I had it in me, and when I see such-like going past, I always say to myself : ‘But for a nose and the grace of God there goes Lotty Pelling!’ At least,” she added truthfully, “in some moods I do.”

“Quite so,” said Brooke uncomfortably, and he turned to Barbara: “Do you know Scarcliffe ? I am going there soon, I believe.”

“Oh yes. A dear little seaside place,” said Barbara, falling in hastily into the change of subject. She was thinking about his face, how strangely worn for a young man’s, with that mark of a shrapnel wound on his forehead and the deep lines on his cheeks. No one could possibly call him well-preserved. . . . And with that word there floated across Barbara’s mind the image of Frank Garret, far less lined and scarred than this man of twenty-eight. “But the Canadians are not at Scarcliffe,” she added aloud.

“No, I am not with them. I came over and joined up in England,” he answered; and with that he rose to depart, standing near the window where the full light fell on his face. Barbara saw that it was even more ravaged than she had thought: he had not been afraid of life, at all events—exile, love, marriage, poverty, fighting, pain—of the great experiences there only remained death. ... As she looked at his thin, shortish figure in the window, the phrase formed itself, oddly defiant, within her: “Well, he’s ready for death!”

On the top of this, his commonplace, “Then I’ll come in to-morrow if I may, Miss Pelling, and fix everything up with you,” sounded almost incongruous. Then he shook hands with both ladies and went away down the Avenue, an ordinary little blue-suited, wounded soldier, having a firm alertness of step which was yet so unlike Mr. Simpson’s cork-like buoyancy.

Barbara had a chance to compare the two footsteps because the men passed in the Avenue, each deep in his own reflections and unaware of the other. Mr. Simpson afterwards manifested great regret at his absent-mindedness, and said emphatically that Brooke must be a very decent chap. Few men would have gone out of their way to take on such an apparently permanent responsibility as little Kitchener.

Mrs. Simpson sat in her armchair at the time, hiding her pallor with such a radiance of eager interest that it passed unnoticed.

“How wonderful the two brothers should come across each other like that,” she said. “Amongst all those thousands of men.”

And immediately, for the four Simpsons, the cheerful walls of their room dissolved into a great, high, vaulted space, quite different from actual reality and yet wonderfully near to it in another way. A great place filled with pain. . . .

Elsie first revolted from the vision: it was not there: she was not going to bear it.

“Well, I can’t believe they ever could come across each other like that, and I believe it’s all a made-up tale. If I were Miss Pelling, I should keep an eye on Gladys.”

“It certainly does seem strange that Brooke should go out of his way to get mixed up in such an unpleasant affair,” said Mr. Simpson. “I can’t see that he has any real responsibility, particularly as the brothers had not met for years.”

“Father!” cried Barbara. “You know any man would promise his brother anything at a time like that. It wouldn’t matter a toss how long they’d been parted: they’d once been little together.”

“Um!” said Mr. Simpson, sitting down to his newspaper. “We had better wait until to-morrow. Time will show. Perhaps now he has made sure that the child is being properly looked after, he won’t turn up again.”

“I’m sure he will, then!” said Barbara hotly.

Mrs. Simpson glanced at her daughter’s flushed cheeks.

“What sort of looking man is he?” she said, with apparent carelessness.

“Oh!” Barbara paused, obviously unready with a description. “Well, he is rather short and has a scar on his forehead and looks frightfully worn and weather-beaten.”

“Young?” said Mrs. Simpson.

“Yes, but he seems much older than he is. He has rather a Canadian accent.”

“Married?” asked Elsie. “But he probably wouldn’t tell.”

“Yes; at least he is a widower.”

Mrs. Simpson heaved a little sigh of relief. She so passionately loved her girls that she was over-anxious about every trifle concerning them, though she tried to hide it lest they should be fretted: and she therefore felt glad to hear this new-comer into Barbara’s circle was so obviously unromantic. The brother of Miss Pelling’s Lillie’s bigamous husband might be chivalrous in intent, but a vague prejudice against him lingered in the back of her mind, all the same.

CHAPTER V

LITTLE WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

NEXT day Barbara was laying the table for the midday meal somewhat listlessly, having reached that stage when all the glamour of a new beginning goes off and only solid reality is left behind. The endless round of domestic duties looked terribly dull and aimless to her at that moment, and she longed to be out in the world among the other women, working and spending, doing something definite for her country or herself. The very fork she was holding would be soiled, washed, placed on the table again, soiled again.

The sounds of Flodmouth beat monotonously through her head, though she was not conscious of them. With an impatient gesture, as if choking for air, she flung up the window and stood breathing deeply; then she heard her father enter from behind, and her mother immediately followed. She shut the window and took up the tray without speaking, but as she was crossing the room something in her father’s appearance struck her as being slightly unusual. He looked jaded and excited and yet flat—if such a combination be possible—while Mrs. Simpson kept glancing rather anxiously at him from her seat by the empty fire-grate.

“Well, Father?” she said.

“What’s the matter?” said her daughter, more directly. .

“Nothing,” said Mr. Simpson.

“Well, you don’t look in very good spirits.”

“On the contrary,” said Mr. Simpson, with decision, “I am in very good spirits indeed.” He paused. “I’ve found a job at last.”

“Oh, where? Where?” cried Barbara excitedly, putting down her tray. Then she ran to the room door and called out: “Elsie! Elsie! Father’s got something to do.”

As Elsie came running into the room, Mr. Simpson glanced at Mrs. Simpson with the cowardice in his eyes which occasionally attacks all good husbands in the presence of all good wives. He was afraid of what she would say when he told her, because it would be what he so acutely felt. But he only said nonchalantly: “Yes. Wagstaffes have taken me on.”

“What! The office in which you were placed as a boy, before you set up in business for yourself! How splendid!” said Mrs. Simpson. “But, of course, they would be the very ones to know your true value.” “Um! Well, I rather hope not,” said Mr. Simpson, smiling uneasily. “The screw isn’t—— But I’m so dead sick of earning nothing and hanging about the place idle.”

“What are they giving you?” said Elsie; for in the Simpson family everything was open to discussion; there were no mysteries and reserves in it.

“Well, it sounds very poor,” said Mr. Simpson, looking at his wife. “But anything’s better than nothing, you know. They’re giving me thirty shillings a week.”

“What!” cried Elsie. “Oh, Dad, to a clever business man like you! Why, Irene Markham up the street is getting twenty-five, and she’s a perfect silly.”

“Of course, Wagstaffes will give you promotion,” said Barbara. “Your experience will soon tell, even in a different trade from your own.”

“Oh, no doubt! No doubt! I ought to have learned something in my time, but it takes a wise man to know his own father, but a wiser one to know by instinct what’s at the bottom of a fruit case.” He chuckled anxiously—a feeble imitation of his familiar jolly chuckle—as he glanced from one to the other: and something in his look and manner made the tears spring to Barbara’s eyes.

“What does it matter what you get, Dad?” she said impulsively. “You are releasing a man to fight for England.”

“That’s all very well,” said Mrs. Simpson, “but I do think something better might have been found for you, Sam. So many friends as you have in the town.” Mr. Simpson hesitated, turning from his wife in her nervous agitation to his two daughters, who gazed intently at him, anxious and bright-eyed; then he answered reluctantly—

“I didn’t say anything before. I thought I’d wait until I had something to tell. But I have been to a score of offices in Flodmouth.” He paused, and added with difficulty, looking down at the carpet: “It wasn’t easy . . . old friends . . . cap in hand . . . and me used to taking my place. . . .” He paused once more. “Having had a business of your own goes against you. Men are afraid you won’t stand being ordered about.”

There was a short silence. Then Barbara said—

“But Mr. Binny knows you so well. Did you try him?”

“Yes. I went to him yesterday. I kept him for the last because I didn’t like . . . our being so intimate and all ... I knew he’d make a berth for me if he could.”

“And didn’t he? Oh, you never mean to say old Binny turned you down?” cried Elsie; and, pale with vicarious hurt pride and a deeper love for her father than she had been conscious 'of before, she flung her arms about him and half-strangled him in a sudden embrace. “Oh, the pig!” she sobbed. “Oh, the long-legged, shiny-booted, mean-spirited old pig! I do wish I had him here!”

Mr. Simpson chuckled, genuinely this time, and disengaged himself; the odious tension of the interview was relieved.

“Come! Come! I dare say he would wish the same—and you can’t blame a chap for being particular about his boots, Elsie.”

“Yes, I can. . . . And always a grey tie matching his suit . . . and England’s fighting for life.”

“You do Binny an injustice, Elsie,” said Mr. Simpson. “He is doing badly in his business and is overworked, besides giving away every penny he can spare. Why has he gone without a holiday since the outbreak of war, do you think? And why has he given up golf? And why doesn’t he get home most nights until seven or eight o’clock? You don’t imagine he does it for fun?”

“Well, he never says anything. He seems jolly" enough,” said Barbara.

Elsie turned round on her sister with one of the quick changes of mood that her elders found trying.

“Don’t we all ?” she retorted. “Goodness, isn’t that what we’re all doing from morning to night—keeping it up and saying nothing?”

“But about the job, Father?” said Barbara, letting that go as one of Elsie’s flings. “What did Mr. Binny say to you?”

“Well, he offered to take me on, as I thought he would,” said Mr. Simpson, with a return of his former uneasiness. “Afterwards, when I walked home up the Avenue, I thought I ought to have taken it. But when I was coming out of his office, I couldn’t help saying to him: ‘Now, Binny, do you really want me, or are you doing this out of friendship? For it seems to me a girl typist on twenty-five bob a week would suit your purpose better than I should.’ He said: ‘No,’ but I could see he agreed with me, though he tried to argue otherwise. So I couldn’t go in with it after that. I know I ought to have done. It was all my silly pride. But at the moment I somehow couldn’t.”

“Of course not, dear,” said Mrs. Simpson, but only half-heartedly, for the future loomed steeply in front of her and her nerves were all unstrung.

Barbara, however, was still full of the vigour of youth, and she added emphatically—

“I should have done just the same. And so would Elsie. Wouldn’t you, Elsie?”

“I should,” said Elsie. “I couldn’t go where I wasn’t wanted—not even if it was to heaven. I’d say: ‘All right, I’ll go to hell!’ I used to feel like that when Mrs. Wilson said little girls that made faces would never go to heaven. I couldn’t help making faces: they made themselves.” And with the unwonted excitement her mouth did indeed begin to twitch a little as it had done in the days of her early childhood.

At once Mrs. Simpson rose from her chair and threw off her apathetic sadness.

“Of course, you acted for the best, Sam,” she remarked quite briskly. “And as Barbara says, you are releasing a man for service. Besides, thirty shillings a week will be a very great help.”

“Better than nothing, I suppose,” said Mr. Simpson once again, but without conviction.

“Many a working-man has to live on it,” said Barbara. “It will just make all the difference to us.”

“Well . . . when you come to think . . .” said Mr. Simpson. And he allowed himself gradually to be persuaded in the direction where his ever sanguine thoughts were so anxious to go, until when they finally sat down to a dinner of stewed beef and beans—a great many beans and a very little beef—he was in a position to revive a prehistoric joke told him by his grandfather, about a soupe de bouillon which consisted of one bucket of water and one onion.

“It’s only the sugar that really bothers me,” said housekeeper Barbara, taking the matter seriously.

“Sugar! I’m sick of sugar-talk,” said Elsie. “You should see old Barbie nid-nodding and talking with all the old girls in the street about it when she goes out shopping. I believe when the war is over the word ‘Sugar’ will be found written on the hearts of the women of England like Calais on Queen Mary’s.”

"‘Barbara does splendidly” said Mr. Simpson. “Never fed better in my life.”

But after luncheon, when he awakened from his mid-day nap, his digestive organs protested that they, at any rate, were not going to accept substitutes without a struggle. He bore this manfully, and it was only when a very superior lady, in a Sunday newspaper, deplored all the talk about food from a high altitude of not caring, that he did, in common with a good many other middle-class people on the following Sunday afternoon, feel as a martyr might if somebody tried to snatch his halo.

Miss Pelling was in the same case, having since childhood loathed porridge for breakfast, yet now she gulped it down with a heaving sensation in her stomach and an endeavour to sing “Rule, Britannia!” at the same time in her soul: not a very easy feat, but one she performed successfully almost every day.

As Mr. Simpson looked at Miss Pelling’s house on this particular Saturday afternoon, he thought of his conversation with Binny, and was interested to see little Kitchener being brought up the Avenue in the arms of the porter’s wife. Cries shortly floated through an open window, and Miss Pelling could be seen dancing the baby up and down; then the porter’s wife hurried out as if it were a busy day at home and she full of urgent affairs. After that there came an interval, punctuated by sudden cries which were mysteriously stilled, and at last a soldier in blue hospital uniform came down the street. Mr. Simpson called out through the doorway behind him—

“Barbara! Here’s your soldier turned up again!”

“Has he?” Barbara came running. “I knew he would,” she said, standing by her father at the window.

Miss Pelling’s front door opened and shut: then Brooke’s lined face and very bright, dark eyes and white teeth appeared beside little Kitchener’s in the window.

“They’ve a look of each other, even at this distance,” said Mr. Simpson, adjusting his spectacles.

“The eyes, perhaps,” said Barbara.

“Well—can’t be the teeth,” said Mr. Simpson, chuckling as he turned away from the window.

The group opposite also disappeared into the interior of the room. Mr. Simpson went into the garden. Elsie came slowly through the door, looking pale and pinched.

“Head bad ?” said Barbara.

“Um,” said Elsie, then she added sharply, “What on earth are you waiting there for? Want to see Miss Pelling’s soldier come out?”

“No. I’m waiting for Dorothy Bellerby,” said Barbara. “I promised to go for a walk with her.”

“But you don’t like her,” protested Elsie.

“I know I don’t very much; but Mrs. Bellerby has been so kind in bringing flowers and fruit for Mother,” said Barbara.

“Oh yes,” said Elsie, mimicking Mrs. Bellerby’s over-refined way of speaking: “ ‘My dear daughter sent these from her mother-in-law’s place in the Midlands. Really a mansion, with a park and acres of greenhouses. I assure you, Mrs. Simpson, we had no idea of his prospects until after they became engaged. But an innocent girl’s heart is her best guide. Don’t you agree with me?’ Oh, it makes me sick!”

Barbara laughed.

“Anyway, Mother enjoyed the grapes; and it is kind of them to think of her.”

“Barbara,” said Elsie, fixing her sister with solemn eyes,“do you know what will happen to you one of these fine mornings? You’ll wake up to find yourself married to a man you don’t care tuppence about because you’ve slid into it through being grateful to him for being kind: just as you’ve slid into a friendship with Dorothy, whom you don’t care for a bit. Now I wouldn’t be friends with anybody I didn’t really like, not if they busted themselves up with being kind. It’s me liking them—I don’t care what they do”

“Oh, you’re a clever one, you are,” said Barbara easily. “Well, Mother, tested ?”

“Yes, dear. By the way, Father met Frank Garret in the train this morning, and he asked after us all.”

“Very kind,” murmured Barbara, flushing.

“Kind! There you are again,” said Elsie. “Mother, if I were you, I wouldn’t have him hanging round Barbara any more. She doesn’t want him, but he’ll keep her from wanting anybody else.”

“What do you know about it?” So Mrs. Simpson dismissed her, smiling. “Going for a walk, Barbara ?” But Elsie interposed in a burst of shrill impatience: “Yes, you may smile, and you may smile, but you’ll smile on the other side of your face when Barbara gets to be a discontented old maid with a red nose like Miss Pelling, and you’ve done it. You and Father ought to have nipped Frank Garret in the bud. You let him dangle too long.”

There was a sufficient element of truth in this tirade to chime rather unpleasantly with the reproaches of Mrs. Simpson’s own conscience. She ought to have interfered; but that exquisite timidity which hedged her round had made her hesitate to brush the bloom off anything so lovely and unconscious as her young daughter’s first love. This excuse, however, naturally did not occur to her now, and she felt only that she had failed in her duty as a mother—the sort of Mother constantly mentioned by Mrs. Wilson with a capital “M.” So she sighed and sat down, saying nothing: a most sure way of bringing her youngest daughter to repentance.

“There!” exclaimed Elsie impulsively. “Now I’ve been horrid again. After all the vows I made to myself last night. It almost seems as if the more vows I make the worse I am. But indeed and indeed, I only went on like this because I want dear old Barbara to have what she wants—not what wants her— and she’s a wobbler.”

With that she flung out of the door, leaving Mrs. Simpson to remark hesitatingly—

“You are sure you don’t regret having refused Frank Garret, dear?”

“Oh!” cried Barbara, half-laughing, half-exasperated. “You’ll make me wish I were back in Bournemouth again, Mother. At least, nobody was there to keep a constant eye on the barometer of my affections. Fair! Set fair! Changeable! And you and Father and Elsie standing round and tapping. You make me feel crowded!”

At that moment, however, Dorothy came up the little path, and Barbara ran out, all unaware how vividly to every last detail that scene would come back to her in later life, and how dear would seem the surrounding love and care which she now resented.

Mrs. Simpson took up her knitting resolutely and steadied her lips from trembling: her heart fought hard during the next half-hour against that realisation of separateness which it takes a mother such a long (time to learn—and then she does not learn it. She looks forward to a future when her daughter will feel as she does then, and understand.

Perhaps the smell of orange-blossom from the war wedding still lingered about the Avenue, or perhaps it was that a rather mangy syringa in bloom behind Mr. Binny’s house gave out wafts of fragrance which led the thoughts unconsciously in the direction of romance. Anyway on that Saturday afternoon little Mrs. Du Caine at the end of the street—thinking of past happy Saturdays—wrote in her letter to her husband : “Do you remember that old inn on our honeymoon with the syringa under the window? I smelt some somewhere about to-day. We’ll have another honeymoon there when the war is over, won’t we, dear ?” While Mr. Binny, nearest to the bush and engaged in digging new potatoes, was inspired to put the best in a basket as an offering for Miss Pelling.

It was no doubt the soft, sunny haze and the scent of the syringa which inspired him as he carefully chose and cleaned the potatoes. With a certain sense of adventure, he washed his hands energetically for a long time—washing being a sort of passion with him— and thus fortified he took his basket and knocked at Miss Pelling’s door. She opened it herself, and her nose was redder than usual, having recently suffered from too much of little Kitchener’s attention; but Mr. Binny had come up the path on a strong tide of feeling, and was not going to let himself be baulked by a small check now.

“Are you—are you at home?” he said, idiotically and rather breathlessly.

But Miss Peking, like the rest of the human race, was unaware of the important happenings concerning herself which were going on a few feet away from her in another person’s mind. She simply saw that Mr. Binny was a little agitated about something, and the dustman at once occurred to her. The man had been very tiresome last week, and had declined to take meat tins and old bottles. So she introduced this subject at once, after explaining that she awaited the return of Gladys, who was fetching the porter’s wife and the perambulator.

“There! There!” she said, soothing the restive child against her grey blouse in an awkward fashion, but thereby somehow raising Mr. Binny’s feelings to a still more adventurous height. He touched the tiny fat hand on her shoulder.

“Seems a bright little chap,” he murmured, having abruptly closed the subject of the dustman. “I hear his—er—uncle has taken over the responsibility of bringing him up. Very creditable! Very creditable!”

“Yes; Mr. Brooke has just been to see the child, and we have got everything satisfactorily settled. I must confess I think he has behaved splendidly,” said Miss Peking.

“Nice little thing,” said Mr. Binny, abstractedly adjusting his eye-glasses and bestowing on the hand on Miss Peking’s shoulder such a chilly and ill-practised kiss that little Kitchener, who was a connoisseur, naturally resented it by kicking violently and bursting into a howl.

“Hush! Hush!” soothed Miss Pelling.

“Yah-ooh!” wept little Kitchener.

“Come! Come!” urged Mr. Binny gingerly, touching a waving foot.

It was a touching domestic scene. But little Kitchener, with the reckless selfishness of youth, spoilt it all by suddenly grabbing Miss Pelling’s nose and glaring round at Mr. Binny. This was his nose. Let Mr. Binny go to a place of sour bottles and disregarded pins!

Mr. Binny fell back a few paces.

“Queer little fellow!” he said, smiling; but it was, in a sense, a smile of agony. For he felt once more that he simply couldn’t do it; and yet he had a great need of Miss Pelling in his life.

Very soon he went away, feeling lonely and old and rather ashamed of himself; but he decided not to try any more.

After a while the porter’s wife wheeled little Kitchener down the street, and it did seem quite incredible that such an atom of humanity should already have influenced the destiny of two sensible, middle-aged people in Chestnut Avenue.

Mr. Binny turned from the window, lit his pipe and sat down in the easy chair. After all, a pipe was a great comfort.

CHAPTER VI

PICTURES

ON Monday, about a quarter to three in the afternoon, Barbara stood by the looking-glass putting on her hat to go out shopping. Elsie lay on the bed. Shadows from the dancing leaves of the plane-tree moved about on the flowery chintz wall-paper. A dull quiet lay upon the Avenue, with the sounds of Flod-mouth breaking beyond like the tide in a forgotten cave.

“Oh dear!” said Elsie. “I wish I had something really jolly to do, don’t you? It’s simply rotten going on like this.”

“Well—” Suddenly Barbara herself was con scious of a keen reaction against the daily round of small economies and hard work with no glory attached. But she answered mechanically: “It’s a shame to grumble when you think—”

“Oh, I know! Same old tale—remember the poor lads in the trenches,” interrupted Elsie petulantly. “Well, I do. That’s just what I do do. I’m—I’m worn out with remembering. It’s like a sort of toothache that goes off a bit and lets you feel almost perky and then—grind it goes again. Oh dear!”

Barbara took up her gloves.

“Poor old Elsie! It’s very hard for those who can’t work in this war-time. I don’t know how I should live.” . . . She kissed the little narrow face. “You’re so much better for the rest from school, though; and just think of the years you have before you to do all sorts of wonderful things in.”

“I know I’m a beast,” said Elsie; “but I do feel as if I wanted a bit of real fun with nothing dragging at me from behind. You understand what I mean?” Barbara understood very well on that greyish golden afternoon; still she had to put up that barrier which those who live together erect in unconscious defence of their souls' privacy; so she only replied—

“I’ll change your book at the Library; they may have got the one you want in by now.”

And ten minutes later she was walking down the wide road leading into the city. Trams clashed and jangled: clear-eyed sailors with the tan on their faces from that wonderful, silent watch on the North Sea stepped nimbly along in gold-laced uniforms; a squad of soldiers tramped by the edge of the curb. . . . “ ’Nother little drink, ’nother little drink, 'nother little drink wone do usennyarm” . . . singing squalid songs to the deathless tune of glory and sacrifice. The same queer British instinct to hide the best was causing two sailors behind Barbara to tell their girls tales of practical jokes, leaving out all mention of the storms and hardships and nerve-racking, ceaseless vigilance.

At the corner was a great Cinema Palace, like a scullery-maid’s dream of the heavenly mansions; and near it, hovering before a picture in the doorway, stood the guardian of little Kitchener. He loitered slowly, his ill-fitting blue clothes hanging loosely on his thin limbs; and in spite of his virility there was something rather forlorn and wistful in his 'attitude. Barbara hesitated a moment, and then went up behind him.

“Well? Wondering whether you should go in or not ?” she said pleasantly.

He swung round and she was struck afresh by the extraordinary keenness and brightness of his eyes and the whiteness of his teeth in his dark, scarred, weatherbeaten face. It seemed ridiculous, but she almost felt as if some electric current flashed between them in that moment when he swung round to welcome her. It was not—she vaguely felt—the ordinary pleasure of a lonely man in meeting a pretty, friendly girl; it was the relief of a soul that has wandered into those lost places outside human fellowship whose mists breed crime and suicide.

Perhaps at that moment he had got lost there, for when men are weakened by the long strain of battles it is a place easily found and the road may be the veriest bypath ... a sudden gust of cold wind with paper blowing in it . . . desolation . . . pain . . . And the way out quickly before the mind’s eye.

But immediately Brooke said, smiling—

“Yes. I was wondering if I should turn in. But it’s not much fun going alone.” .

“No.” She hesitated. That craving for fun which she had felt before coming out worked in her mind, though she herself was only conscious of a desire to cheer a wounded soldier. “Well, supposing we went in together for an hour? It’s ages since I was at the pictures.”

“Will you?” She noticed how his face creased round those very bright eyes as he stood erect, smiling at her. “I say, that is jolly of you.” Then his face shadowed and he added quickly: “Look here! You —you needn’t come if it’s inconvenient, just because you’re sorry for me. I’m all right.”

She laughed, and the slight awkwardness and tension about the interview vanished altogether. Brooke noticed the dimple in her cheek for the first time, and thought to himself that every girl ought to have a dimple like that.

Then she said gaily, for her spirits were rising: “Why on earth should I be sorry for you? You’re getting well, all right, and you have light duty at Scarcliffe to look forward to, and a girl to go to the pictures with: what wounded soldier wants more than that?”

“Well? I guess this one doesn’t, anyway,” said Brooke.

He led the way in, and the picture palace which had before seemed dull and sordid to him now appeared delightful and rather exciting; it was such a change as comes to an ugly farm-house on a ridge when seen against the sunrise . . . Only Brooke imagined that he had done with such experiences. He liked girls —but he had loved once, and that was enough. The torture of that experience left him disinclined for any further stirring of the depths of passion. He knew the force of his own feelings and dreaded it instinctively.

But he had been so long away from civilisation, first in Canada and then in France, that the whole thing now seemed to him rather magical and unreal. The girl attendant with her flashlight, walking backwards with little curtesying movements into the gloom, was like the attendant in some enchanted castle. A man ran swiftly across the screen ... a tiger . . . the empty jungle . . . elephants with howdahs rocking. . . .

Of course it was an ordinary film of a tiger hunt, but something of the toil and wonder of the forces of Nature which had been chained to produce it thrilled Barbara and her companion as they sat down.

“Colossal game of tig, that?” he said, settling himself into the red velvet seat. “The forfeit either the man or the tiger.”

“Yes. So you play tig out in Canada?” said Barbara letting the words ripple forth as they came into her head: it did not seem to matter what she said in that soft darkness because she felt—though she was not aware of feeling—that the words themselves did not matter.

“Oh, I don’t know! Not many children about where I was.” He leaned just a little nearer. “I remember how we used to play tig at home when we were kids. At school-treats especially. My mother used to get tired and go home and it turned hazy over the fields. . . . The trees felt damp when you touched them.” . . .

He talked on in a constant stream, seized with that strange garrulousness which sometimes attacks reserved and lonely people in the presence of strangers 'who are sympathetic to them. He told Barbara all sorts of trifles about his early life and the old home which he would have thought an hour before to have been absolutely forgotten. A thousand others welled up in his memory too fast to be given out; how his mother looked when she sat at the evening meal in the low Vicarage room with its three windows facing the garden; the shadow of his father’s head on the wall behind the pulpit on summer nights when the candles were lighted and there was sunset still through the west-window; the sound of the old parish clerk’s A-a-men! at the end of the service.

And now here was Barbara’s clear voice close to his ear. “How you must have loved your home. Were you very lonely out in Canada after ... I mean when you lived alone ?”

“Oh, I rubbed along all right.” He roused himself, wondering. “ ’Fraid I must have bored you awfully, Miss Simpson.”

“No—no! And I like hearing about Canada.”

“Well, I suppose everybody gets a bit lonely at times. You say to yourself on winter nights when the, chores are all done: ‘I wonder what they’re doing to-night?’ And you picture them sitting round. But very likely they’re doing something quite different.” And he laughed, beckoning the chocolate girl.

But Barbara’s quick mind responded again to what was behind the words. She heard in this garish hall filled now with a soft darkness the eternal chanting of that wistful chorus which sounds from all the lonely places in the world: “I wonder what they’re doing at home to-night!” In her sudden rush of warm desire to comfort every one of them she moved a little closer to Brooke, saying eagerly—

“But it’s so glorious to be a pioneer. It’s the grandest fight there is—a man fighting Nature for a living : and that won’t stop whatever they manage to do about the other kind of war. It’s bound to go on while the world lasts. You can put your whole life and soul into learning now to continue that night, and feel it will always be worth while.”

“Think so?” he said casually. But his arm touched hers in the dark, while a deep sense of companionship after long loneliness pervaded his being—nothing more as yet: and the pictures slipped quickly along before their eyes, making the pause natural. “I say—you’d be the right sort for a colonist’s wife.”

Again silence between them, and the warm darkness: a man mouthing and gesticulating on the screen . . . an unnameable, delicate thrill going in from one to the other which was not passion, but bore the same relation to it that the first stirring of the dawn wind in the dark bears to the dawn.

“Wonderful how they get these films!” He bent his head sideways, speaking in her ear, but his coat-sleeve scarcely touched her blouse—he would not have pressed coarsely upon her for the world.

“Wonderful!”

Instinct was also alive in her as she felt the light touch of the cloth through her thin sleeve, though her mind feigned cool aloofness and would know nothing of it. But she suddenly grew rather afraid of that warm darkness which enveloped them, and jerked out mechanically: “Do you intend to go back to Canada after the war?”

“Oh! After the war!” he echoed.

And a further echo of that phrase seemed to go on and on interminably, dying at last into a silence which was only a sign that it was still travelling.

“Yes.” Barbara paused; she too listened to that empty echoing. “You feel like that. It’s no use planning. You only get upset if you try. The only thing is just to live from day to day.”

They ceased talking again, their minds hanging on to that. ... A fat man climbed up a ladder; two lovers came from behind a yew-hedge and kissed in the sunshine; three girls ran out laughing, with roses in their hands. ...

“Looks jolly, eh? Nice even to see a bit of fun.”

Barbara nodded, and a fierce reaction of youth against the tremendous pressure of suspense and pain and sorrow took hold of her.

“I didn’t mind having no fun when I was working in the hospital,” she said abruptly, eagerly. “But I’m simply fed up with being general servant at home. All the other girls are doing something that really matters and here am I ... I feel as if I couldn’t bear it any longer.”

“It’s a grand thing, making a home though,” he said.

“Grand! That’s all you know.” She sighed. “However, Mother is ill, Elsie delicate, and Father’s business is closed down, so I have no choice, of course.”

He cleared his throat, staring at the pictures; then said: “Plenty would have done differently.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Barbara, but the very absence of glibness in his words carried conviction, and she felt warmed and heartened in her turn as he had been earlier in the conversation. They sat together in an atmosphere of mutual appreciation that made liking grow very rapidly indeed.

“I must go after this,” she said, all at once aware of something getting ahead of her that she must arrest for a while until she had considered it; “my people will wonder where I am.”

“Oh come! You’ll have a cup of tea with me? Shame to spoil such a kind deed by half-doing it,” he urged.

She was silent a moment or two. . . . The fat man on the screen came down the ladder and surprised the lovers. Comic business. Exit fat man. Lovers holding each other close in the sunshine. . . .

“All right,” she said. “I’ll come if you like. Only you must not expect much of a tea in these days. Two-ounce limit, you know.”

They both laughed, though there was nothing to laugh at.

“I say,” he whispered. “It’s real good of you.

You can’t imagine what you are doing for me. I’ve been lonely enough out on the prairie; but nothing to what I was when I came home to England wounded. Most of the men in the hospital where I was at first had somebody to write to them or come and see them; but there I lay with nobody to care a damn whether I got better or I didn’t.” He paused. “I was weak and run down, or I shouldn’t have felt like that, of course. My sisters in Glasgow did write later; only they are married and naturally full of their own concerns.”

The light went up; some sort of spell which had lain upon the place and upon them was lifted: they were already wondering at themselves.

“If I had known, I would have written to you in hospital,” said Barbara soberly. “I would to any soldier who had nobody.”

“That is kind of you.”

So they talked during tea, rather stiffly, and with a sense of frustration and disappointment . . . What were they unconsciously expecting that they did not get?

Brooke blamed the band. Barbara the tea-cakes. At last the pauses in the conversation—so different from those pauses in the Cinema Hall—became so embarrassing that Barbara rose from the table.

“Well, I must be off now. Thank you so much.” ' “No, indeed. It is I who have to thank you.” Brooke accompanied her, and as they walked the odd sense of irritation began to wear off: they found themselves laughing and talking naturally as they made their way through the crowded streets. At the door of 28 Chestnut Avenue, however, Barbara’s self-consciousness again returned, and she said nervously, holding out her hand—

“Well, good-bye. I am sorry I cannot ask you in to-day, but Mother is not very well. Do come and see us some time before you leave.”

“Thank you. You bet I shall.”

Their hands loosed and they moved away from each other, both feeling unwilling to part like this. But all the same there seemed nothing more to say. Then Brooke saw Miss Pelling at the opposite window.

“I know what I was going to ask you,” he said hastily: “can you suggest a toy for little Kitchener? He’s not old enough for a Teddy Bear?”

Barbara came back a few steps.

“No. Oh, anything fluffy and bright coloured that makes a noise.”

“Sounds as if you were describing a girl for a sub on leave. But I s’pose males go on having the same tastes in toys. . . . Then he did realise that he was look- ing at Barbara’s dimple and ceasing to talk sense. “Miss Simpson, it would be fine if you would go with me to buy the toy,” he said directly, pulling himself together.

“I shall be shopping about eleven,” she said. “I may see you in the town.”

“I’m not sure if I can get out, of course.”

“No? Well, in case you are. . . .”

“Good-bye.”

They really parted this time, and Barbara went up the little path into the house.

The Simpsons sat round the table at their evening meal, dropping little phrases into the silence. An engine shrieked at the end of the Avenue. A local evening paper lay across a chair with the great headline “Air-raid on London!” Before the meal was quite finished Mr. Simpson pushed himself away from the table with his great stomach, rose, and went out of the room. “Going to have a pipe in the garden,” he said.

Mrs. Simpson was left with her two daughters at the table.

“Has Father been put out at the office?” said Barbara.

“No,” said Mrs. Simpson. “At least, it is rather trying to be found fault with and ordered about by a man who was an office boy when he was an articled clerk, of course. And I think he rather hates having to click a sort of thing when he goes in and out, to show if he is punctual. But he says it is necessary and all right. He doesn’t worry about little things like that, really.”

“Then what is it?” asked Barbara.

“I believe it upsets him to think of all those children being killed and injured in the London raids,” said Mrs. Simpson. “You know what he is about children.”

“It’s all very well you talking about God sending trouble and working for the best,” said Elsie, suddenly looking up with her white face from her almost untasted meal. Then she flung across a phrase like a gage: “I don’t believe God cares tuppence!”

“Hush, dear,” said Mrs. Simpson, “I know how you feel, and nobody can understand it all. We can only trust and leave it”

Barbara glanced at her mother’s white face and trembling hands, and rose, taking a dish from the table.

“This beef will do for rissoles to-morrow, won’t it?” she said, frowning at Elsie.

Mrs. Simpson put a hand to her aching head.

“Yes. Put plenty of lentils with it and then there will be enough. I suppose you got the lentils this afternoon?”

“I forgot.” Barbara paused, fighting down her odd disinclination to speak of Brooke and added quickly: “I met that soldier who came about Lillie’s baby. He was standing outside the Picture Palace looking so awfully lonely that I went up to him. I felt sorry.” . . .

A moment’s pause, then Mrs. Simpson said—

“Well, it does seem hard that these Colonial soldiers should come over to fight for England and not find a friend.”

“That’s how I felt,” said Barbara eagerly. “So when he asked me to go with him to the pictures, of course I went I simply couldn’t refuse, could I?” “N-no,” said Mrs. Simpson without enthusiasm, for after all it was one thing to wish to befriend all Colonial soldiers and quite another to hear that a cherished young daughter had been alone to a Cinema Hall with th' brother of a bigamist who had never been in the Colonies at all. “Only I should let it end there,” she added.

“But I didn’t!” cried Barbara, disproportionately angry and moved. “I went to tea,, too. And I’m very glad I did.” She paused and added in a burst: “I do think you are unkind. What should we have thought if dear Jim had been out in Canada and nice girls there had been ‘careful’ lest he should contaminate them?”

Mrs. Simpson glanced searchingly at her daughter a second and then dropped her eyes. She knew quite well that Barbara would never have brought Jim forward as an argument unless she were in some way deeply moved.

“You must remember how badly Brooke’s brother behaved to poor Lillie, Barbara,” she said.

“Yes, I know. But if all the good brothers in England were tarred black to match the bad ones, we should see something very queer indeed. It’s not like you to be unfair, Mother.”

Mrs. Simpson waited a moment, looking at the tablecloth; then she smiled at her girl—that beautiful, timid smile which came straight from the heart.

“Well, Barbara, you must do as you think right. I trust you. I have always trusted you.”

Instantly, Barbara blurted out:

“I’ve promised to meet him in the morning.”

“I say, that is going it,” said Elsie languidly, rousing herself from her brooding silence.

“It’s only to buy a toy for little Kitchener,” said Barbara. “He didn’t quite know what to get.” She paused and added with an effort: “Do you want me not to?”

“No, dear. As you have promised you must go.

Only—” Mrs. Simpson paused, looking at her daughter.

“It will be all right, Mother,” said Barbara impatiently. “You take the matter too seriously. You live in such a narrow groove that you don’t understand how men and girls go about together now-a-days with nobody thinking anything at all about it.”

And as Mr. Simpson came into the room again at that moment, bringing a flower for his wife and a new joke about potatoes, the subject of Brooke was allowed to drop.

CHAPTER VII

SIGNALS

NEXT morning very early, not long after dawn, Barbara awakened to hear the moving of stealthy footsteps in the house. She immediately thought of burglars, because some minor burglaries had taken place in that part of the city, and her first instinct was to prevent her mother from being startled. So she threw on a dressing-gown and ran down without waiting to think what she would do with the burglar if she got him.

But the actual creak of a board and a faint clatter of iron did give a check to her enterprise. She crept very softly indeed to the kitchen door with her heart throbbing against her ribs and peered in. Then she leaned for a second against the doorpost, the colour coming back into her face, and said most irritably— “What on earth is this?”

And indeed the black-a-vised gentleman who whirled round to face her with the whites of his eyes rolling nigger-wise in his grimy countenance, and a red and yellowish bath-towel tied round his inflated middle, was sufficiently unlike the ordinary Mr. Simpson of Chestnut Avenue and the Empress Wharf to make his identity almost incredible. He let a blacking-brush fall noisily on the fender and said with the oddest mixture of caught guilt and defiance—

“What are you coming down now for? It is not time yet. I—I was just amusing myself blacking the grate.” And his tone plainly added: “Can’t a man ever have a little private amusement without a lot of females nosing round?”

Barbara laughed, but there was a very deep and tender shining in those blue eyes behind the laughter as she ran across the kitchen and threw her arms round him, grime and all.

“You silly, silly old Dad!” she cried, kissing him. “Oh, what a horrid taste of soot! But you don’t take me in with your bluster; you caught sight of me doing the grate yesterday morning. I know you!”

“Well, I hate to see—” Mr. Simpson stood blusteringly on the defensive again, blacking-brush in hand.

“What nonsense!” interrupted Barbara. “You’ve nicked my favourite job. I love doing grates: there’s something to show for it.”

“Well, I think I was getting on fairly well.” He surveyed his handiwork with a sort of proud humility. “Only it seems to use rather a lot of stuff. I can’t help thinking it rather an extravagant method.”

At this Barbara began to laugh again, but softly, lest she should waken the sleepers upstairs.

“Oh dear! You don’t know how funny you look! Why, you’ve used enough blacklead to do every grate down one side of Chestnut Avenue. You are an old Silly Billy of a father to get up in the middle of the night like this, when you know how your new office job takes it out of you.”

“I wouldn’t say that—nothing but ordinary clerical work-” murmured Mr. Simpson.

“I know you wouldn’t say it,” retorted Barbara, “but you have done no routine work of that kind since you were a young man, and it worries you having to be so accurate or get found fault with.”

He stared at her, oddly surprised and serious in his queer garb.

“How did you know that?”

“Oh, clever girl, I am!” she said lightly. “Now go along and wash your hands.”

She drove him before her into the back kitchen and shut the door lest sounds should be heard upstairs. In a few minutes a little tin kettle boiled on the gas ring and the two laughed and whispered over their cups of tea with an odd sense of jollity and adventure. Barbara set wide the scullery door which led to the back garden and the sweet freshness that comes with early summer mornings even to little town gardens blew in upon them.

“Bless me! I really think this is the best cup of tea I ever tasted!” said Mr. Simpson, beaming upon his daughter with a smeared but comparatively clean face. “I don’t know when I' have had such a cup before.”

“It tastes like that in hospital when you have been on night duty,” said Barbara. “Oh, Father, I should like to have a statue erected in every town in England to the man who first thought of making tea-leaves into tea ... or the first woman. I almost think it must have been a woman. I can’t understand why some great poet doesn’t write a poem about tea, can you? When you think of all the sad people it has comforted.”

Thus she ran on, while Mr. Simpson drank with relish, and thought nobody in the world had such girls as his girls. But it was what they did not talk about that touched them most, and gave such an atmosphere of love and laughter to the little meal.

For instance, Barbara knew well enough that her father must have been awake a long time in the night before his thoughts culminated in a fierce: “She shan’t blacklead fire-grates any more if I know it!” and a descent in a bath-towel.

And Mr. Simpson kept to himself, mainly because he was not conscious of it, that ideal of the middle-class man which is—or was—to keep his women-folk in idleness. Such a man would chain himself to an office desk for thirty years to feel rewarded in the end if he could keep two servants instead of one, and his wife and daughters need not even dust the drawing-room. Part of this was snobbishness, and the two maids a sign of that caste which these men and their fathers had worked and saved and sacrificed to gain or keep; but the other part was pure chivalry—the unique, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class sense of chivalry towards women, which is not greater, perhaps, but different in essence to any other.

Thus Mr. Simpson had not stood for himself alone as he kept vigil during the previous night, but for a million other such bald-headed, commonplace, unconscious idealists.

When Barbara opened the front door to take in the milk a scent of flowering beans came down the Avenue, as if some country fairies were dancing through the city and you could smell their fragrance without seeing them. So Barbara’s spirits danced too, because she was young and healthy, and also—though this went unacknowledged—because she was going to meet Brooke about eleven. A little sense of change and adventure came into her dull life with the thought of him which was very pleasant; for she missed the emotional excitement of her relation with Frank Garret more than she knew, though she did not want him any longer. Still he had filled a certain place in her thoughts for so long that she was unconsciously sensible of a blank; for she was not, as Elsie might probably become, a natural celibate. There was a need in her, fostered by Garret’s discreet love-making from early girlhood, which could only be satisfied by her mate.

So now she smiled at the milk-woman, saying it was a lovely morning, and the little, oldish, rosy-faced country-woman smiled back.

“Oh yes; morning’s all right. But the price of meat and everything! If this goes on we shall have to have a revolution.”

She said it as casually as one might say—“We shall have to have a spring-cleaning”; and went off clattering her cans.

But Barbara stood still for a minute, looking after her. It was so odd to hear in such a way that terrible suggestion of blood and tears. The woman did not realise what her words held, of course, but it was a startling sign of the way in which the tide passing over Russia had eddied into the remotest little inlets of Europe. Barbara was vaguely startled, as if she had come across a child in a buttercup-field playing with a live bomb.

The impression soon faded from her mind, however, and she went forth to do the shopping with her basket on her arm and that high, unconscious “God’s in His heaven, All’s right with the world,” which is the natural morning mood of such a girl as Barbara, who has to spring up taut in the sunlight like a flower on the grassy side of the road, whatever is going to pass by that day.

So freshly self-poised did Barbara look to Brooke as he watched her come across the great square, where the tide of giving which has swept across and across Flodmouth ever since the outbreak of war, once more caught the passers-by with little badges and tin boxes. Barbara put in her coin like all the rest, beginning at once to plan what she must go without because she had given it—just like all the rest, too. Because that is what giving means now among people such as the Simpsons.

Then she looked up to see Brooke’s thin figure and worn face and his extraordinary bright and vivid glance seeking hers—compelling it. She was keenly aware of'his alert gait which gave such an impression of unspent energy, despite his stiff left arm.

“Oh, lovely morning,” she said.

“Yes, isn’t it glorious?”

But the banality of their greeting was all part of something so natural and deeply appropriate that they remained unaware of it: indeed, with all due deference to Milton, it seems likely that when Adam first greeted Eve he said it was a fine day for the apple-blossom.

So these two turned and walked together, jostled by soldiers and sailors and women hurrying for the cars. Brooke was rather silent, trying to put a strong curb on his excitement, for he was conscious of the folly of feeling like this about a girl whom he had only seen twice, and who might vanish out of his life at any moment. It seemed to him like one of those sudden gusts of passion for a girl’s face on the stage or at a window which he had always viewed in other men with tolerant contempt, not giving it the name of love. But he could not help rejoicing in her nearness all the time, even while he remained outwardly dull and uninterested.

| - And Barbara’s gay morning mood shone back responsive to what he felt, not to what he said. The old bridge and the gay streets became so a-sparkle with the joyousness of these young people that they saw everything glorified—the very trams rushing along in happy haste to reach the busy, opalescent river. Clang! Clang! went the hideous car-bell, seeming to them but an urgent call to passers-by to go about some merry business. The noises of Flodmouth sounded nearer and richer and more home-like to Barbara than they had ever done before, though she was not conscious of hearing them. It was like that moment in an opera when the orchestra is working up to a climax. She was—unknown to herself—filled with a tremendous sense of expectation.

“Market-day. Lot of people,” said Brooke, but he really felt himself to be shouting aloud: “I say, isn’t it a lark to be alive? Isn’t it a lark for us to be alive together, whatever happens next ?”

And Barbara answered in words: “Yes, the country-people come to do their shopping,” though she was really laughing out in eager response: “Yes! Yes! It’s glorious fun for us two just to be alive together in the world.”

But while such a conversation is thrillingly interesting to take part in, it is very dull to describe; because even those who have held it cannot recall afterwards the delightful little shock of thoughts unexpectedly meeting and fusing, and the spark which flies up then, lighting all existence for a lovely minute. Such things refuse to come back even in the happiest memories.

When Barbara and her companion reached the toyshop of which they were in search, however, this magic circuit was broken and a sense of dull insufficiency fell upon them. They became blankly self-conscious and disappointed, groping, without knowing it, to set up the connection again. This is a moment when half-lovers often feel disappointed with each other and say to themselves: “He—or she—is not what I thought,” and so go away for ever.

Thus they entered the shop rather like the peacocks who have been walking along, thinking themselves monarchs with shining tails, and now suddenly find their tails have moulted: each wondering how they can have been deceived by such a dull bird.

“Oh!” said Barbara to the attendant in a stiff, unnatural voice. “Have you any toys for a baby, please ?”

“Our choice of toys is limited,” said the woman severely. She looked as if she had never been a baby and hated toys. “War, of course. How old is your baby, madam?”

“Oh, quite small.”

“Can’t walk yet,” added Brooke gruffly.

The grim spinster cast upon them both a look of pitying tolerance and brought forth her most expensive woolly toy which rattled dismally somewhere inside.

“Noisy: and soils quickly, of course. But babies always love this doll, and I find parents don’t seem to mind when it’s the first.” And once more she squeezed and shook with the same drearily contemptuous air, as if long processions of young parents who were fools filed through the past before her eyes. “I always say—

“I’ll take it,” interrupted Brooke; then he remembered that Barbara had expressly come out with him to choose the toy: “That is, if the lady likes it.”

Barbara nodded and the woman signified approval of this quick purchase by a wintry smile and an obviously over-worked jest. “I generally find ladies do choose this when they come with their husbands, sir. But as I always say, no use taking both a husband and a purse out with you, is it, madam? Either one or the other.” She paused and drew forth a tray of ivory rings. “What about one of these? While you are doing? The baby is sure to need one, and they last for half a dozen if required.”

“No, thank you,” said Brooke, holding out the money. Then grasping the doll he walked out, leaving Barbara to follow.

The woman looked after him and followed Barbara to the door.

“Please forgive me,” she said, and to Barbara’s intense surprise her eyes filled with tears. “I wouldn’t hurt the feelings of any one serving at the Front—not for worlds. I lost a nephew of my own there that was like a son to me. And of course your husband can’t be certain—there’s no knowing if he will be there to see even this baby teething . . . I’m sure I meant no offence.”

Barbara patted the woman’s arm, in her own emotional state touched quite beyond the occasion, and with her eyes also swimming in tears.

“The toy is not for us,” she said. “We are not married. We were just buying it for a present.”

“Well, so long as there is no offence.”

And the woman gazed after them wistfully for a moment before she went back into the shop.

They were talking more naturally now, and soon entered the grimy looking archway into the Market Hall, which seemed very dim and cool with its piles of fruit and bunches of pinks and roses after the busy street.

“Here’s the stall I go to,” said Barbara. “See that young officer standing there? He’s the woman’s son and was in a grocer’s shop. I like him for not being ashamed to come here.”

“Why should he be?” said Brooke. “I helped in a store in Canada when I first went out. The man I was with at that time came over to enlist when I did— a splendid fellow!”

“Where is he now?” said Barbara, choosing her lettuce carefully.

“Oh, he’s fallen. I went to see his mother last week. He’d planted a garden for her out there and she was to have gone to him. But he had to come when the war broke out. We all had. I remember how we talked it over one night in Calgary—twenty of us—and I do believe any one of them would have turned their backs on a million of money if it had been offered them to stop out there. They were mad to take sides with England.” He paused, pushed his cap back and took a strawberry. “Some strawberries, these!”

So Barbara knew that he did not want to say any more about the war, but all the time they were walking round the cool, arched hall between the fruit and flowers and piles of green vegetables, she saw before her those twenty men, eager-hearted, burning to help the Motherland. Brooke’s face was among them, but seemed already, as it appeared now, his eyes glowing with the same inward fire.

When they came out into the narrow, crowded streets of old Flodmouth where the banks and great businesses still go on, the sunlight through the soft haze made quite a dazzling brightness after the cool twilight of the hall. And here and there among girls and women carrying fruit and flowers back to the outlying parts of the town, were neat, well-brushed, middle-aged men and boys going about their morning’s business. Just as they passed the corner of the street leading towards the docks, Frank Garret came running down the steps of an impressive building and raised his hat to Barbara, then went on quickly.

But she was angry to feel the hot blood surge up into her face, colouring even her neck and forehead, and almost bringing tears of embarrassment into her eyes. It was somehow so particularly hateful to her at that moment, that he should still have power to move her in this way: and though Brooke was looking straight before him she knew he had seen that painful blush—the badge of an old slavery which she could not after all be free of, though she had felt an absolute freedom on the day of Blanche’s wedding. It was a shame. He had had all the fresh dreams of her girlhood and she could never take that back again. There must always be this secret bond between them.

She stared down at the flowers which Brooke had given her, letting people bump into her without being sufficiently conscious of it to evade them—bewildered with the puzzle of life. And Brooke tramped by her, conscious once more of the pain in his arm which he had forgotten until he saw her blush crimson over forehead and neck at another man’s greeting. He did not put his feeling down to this cause, but rather to a dull sense of fatigue which made him suddenly not care whether he ever saw Barbara again . . . One of those strange withdrawals which accompany the beginning of a great attraction; as if human nature instinctively feared the stress of what was coming.

At the end of the Avenue Barbara stood still and took from him the basket which he had insisted on carrying with his good hand, and in giving him the toy she said artificially—

“Dear little Kitchener! How delighted he will be with his present!” Then she laughed at nothing.

“Hope so. The old girl in the shop seemed certain of it.” And he, too, laughed aimlessly.

But sudden with those words there flashed across their foolish unreality the quick recollection that they had been for a moment, in the eyes of a fellow human being, husband and wife. It was thus the shopwom-an’s thoughts had joined them, and they could not yet put themselves quite asunder—though they both fought against the utter ridiculousness of it.

“Well, good-bye, Miss Simpson. Thanks so much for helping me to choose.”

“Oh, not at all. Good-bye.”

But again, as on the last occasion, they made ready to part and suddenly could not let each other go; they must create a way by which they could still keep hold of a thread that might lead them back each to the other.

He fumbled with the toy.

“I don’t believe I quite got the hang of this thing. You couldn’t just come round with me to present it, could you?”

She waited a moment: “No, I have been out too long already.”

“Oh, of course I ought not to trouble you. You’ve been awfully good.” And he saluted and moved on.

But something about his figure as he turned away— a wistful loneliness so at variance with his hardened look and excessive vitality—struck that same chord in her that had made her go up and speak to him outside the Cinema Hall and struck it more deeply. Her whole being was vibrating as she caught him up, but the fire which leapt into his eyes when her hand touched his arm and he swung round towards her, made her pause again.

“I was wondering—

—” she began, incoherently—

“would you come—that is, I wondered if you would care to have tea with us to-morrow afternoon and then we could take the toy round afterwards ?”

“I should—I should indeed,” he answered.

But they both felt as if they had just been losing each other in a terrible maze where they might never meet again, and had somehow managed at the last minute to catch each other by the hand. They were left a little breathless with the curious strain and sudden relief of it.

“About four o’clock?”

“Yes. I have massage to-morrow morning. I expect I can get off at that time.”

“Then you’d better let me keep the toy until tomorrow.”

“Thank you. Oh, that’ll be splendid. Nowhere to put anything in hospital.”

They parted again, some subtle instinct warning him against offering to walk all the way home with her. He had already got so much . . . every fibre in him was now responsive to those delicate advances and withdrawals in her.

Barbara had no sooner reached the house than she began to wonder what on earth had induced her to invite a stranger to tea on a Saturday when Mr. Simpson was at home and she herself was always particularly busy. Surely there was work enough, in all conscience, on that day in a servantless household, without going out of the way to entertain soldiers. So Barbara reasoned within herself, feeling quite certain that she did not want to see Brooke so soon again, and yet restless until he came. Her household tasks were performed with a furious energy that left no place for thought; and yet all the time she was conscious of a thousand pricking regrets and embarrassments which she intended to put right in his eyes by her dignified and charming demeanour when they next met.

Why had she said this? Why had she not said that? Why had she looked so?

And then a sudden tide of warmth came flowing all over her as she remembered his eyes looking into hers over the market bunch of pinks and roses.

By supper time, however, she was again certain that she regretted having asked him, and she said as much to Elsie while they were laying the table. But when Elsie replied: “Don’t you like him then?” she was conscious of an untruthfulness in her own immediate : “Oh, I like him, but I don’t think I should care to see much of him, that’s all.”

“Well,” said Elsie, banging down the mustard pot, “I only hope you won’t see much of him if it always makes you as jumpy and irritable as you have been since luncheon. You keep snapping my head off first about one thing and then another.” She paused, looking critically at her sister. “And yet it can’t be because you have fallen in love. You always used to come home from walks with Frank Garret in a mild and affectionate frame of mind. I remember you gave me your Tennyson one time, and a pair of scissors another.”

“Oh!” Barbara curbed herself and used her ancient weapon. “You are too young to talk about! such things. It will be a good thing when you start going to school again.”

Elsie laughed.

“Good old Barbie! You shouldn’t be so nice that the young men get gone on you. It’s your doing, not mine.”

Then Mr. Simpson’s light tread in the hall—so always light that it told nothing—put an end to the discussion. He looked fagged and worn, however, and they all three tried to ply him with the choicest morsels, pretending to have no appetite that evening for any- thing but bread and margarine, and surreptitiously-trying to make him eat what remained on the dish. So after a while he grew more alert and cheerful, telling them various scraps of news from the town according to his usual habit.

“Saw Binny to-day. He seems a bit shy of me. I think he feels uncomfortable about not giving me a job—though he did offer.”

“I hope he does,” said Elsie. “But you’re all right where you are.”

“Oh, of course,” said Mr. Simpson rather heavily. He had been reprimanded during the afternoon by the office boy of his own day at Wagstaffe’s for some clerical error and still felt sore, and ashamed to be sore: a complicated and unpleasant feeling.

“It’s hard to come down in business,” said Mrs. Simpson. “Nobody knows but those who have done it.”

“Well, Father may be going down in the world” cried Elsie fiercely, “but he’s gone up in our thoughts; hasn’t he, Mother? Hasn’t he, Barbara? I think Dad’s every bit as splendid as Uncle Horace, who went to the Front. He’s lost nearly everything, and is having a perfectly piggy time, and no pay, hardly, and not making a fuss. I think he’s simply splendid.”

Mr. Simpson got up from the table and took his pipe from the chimney-piece. After a moment or two he turned round: “I say, girls, I’ve thought of a riddle: Where do you go up when you think you’re going down? Why, South Pole, of course.” And he chuckled.

Elsie once more felt keenly irritated by this specimen of “Father’s jokes,” which the girls had learned to regard with impatient tolerance almost from their cradles, but Mrs. Simpson looked across at her husband and thought wistfully how dear he was; because she had come to that stage in human life when we know that our loved ones are loved most intimately just for the little things we laugh at in them.

CHAPTER VIII

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

IT was early on Saturday afternoon that Miss Pelling stood in her little front garden gazing up into the sky. Gladys was close behind her, and the strange new sound which had come to mingle with the old Flodmouth noises buzzed insistent through the screaming of an engine. The bird-like thing moved quickly over the roofs of the houses.

“An aeroplane.”

“Yes; I hate ’em,” said Miss Pelling.

“So do I,” said Gladys, still goggling, though the object of her search had disappeared into the blue-grey distance. “They’re wrong. If we’d been meant to fly we should ha’ been given wings on our shoulders.”

“Nonsense!” replied Miss Pelling briskly. “You might as well say if we were meant to go by train we should have been given boilers in our insides.” So Gladys retired, and Miss Pelling remained to greet Mr. Binny and Mr. Simpson, who were walking down the street at that moment, talking with the sort of important and confidential seriousness which had been absent from their conversation for some time.

“You are quite right,” Mr. Simpson was saying. “An unprotected lady ... the man lodging only next door. . . He paused. “In absolute confidence, of course,” he added weightily.

“Of course. I thought you would agree with me,” said Mr. Binny. “There may be nothing in it, but in these days it is impossible to be too careful.”

Mr. Simpson dropped his voice a shade lower.

“I suppose you are certain it is a wig?” “Absolutely,” said Mr. Binny, with great firmness. “I took the opportunity of gathering my apples, though they were not ready—there are five on my tree this year, by the way, but I did not apply for preserving sugar—and from the top of the ladder I could see across Miss Pelling’s garden and into the next. The man was asleep, and his wig had slipped on one side. There was no mistaking it.”

But Mr. Simpson still preserved enough of that generous tolerance, which before the war would have permitted any sort of malefactor in any sort of disguise to live unsuspected in the Avenue, to make him say rather doubtfully—

“There’s nothing wrong in a wig, as such. Doesn’t he do anything else?”

“That’s just it!” cried Mr. Biriny. “He doesn’t do anything else. He sits all day poring over some sort of papers.”

“Has he a foreign accent?” pursued Mr. Simpson. “N-no,” acknowledged Mr. Binny. “I asked him the time one day, and I am bound to say his th’s are all right—quite all right! I dare say he was born in England.” Then he wagged his head wisely: “Foreigners are not the only ones.”

“I don’t like to think that,” said Mr. Simpson warmly. “I don’t like to think that at all.”

“Simpson,” said Mr. Binny, putting a finger on his friend’s sleeve, “that is just where you are to blame— you and your like; you think too well of human nature. This war would never——”

Then they had to return Miss Pelling’s salutation at close quarters, and the conversation was broken off for the present. When both gentlemen stood outside the iron gate and the lady just within, Mr. Binny gave a conspirator’s glance up and down the Avenue and said in a very low voice—

“We were just speaking of your next-door neighbour. I believe I saw him bringing you a basket of flowers and vegetables last evening—quite by accident, of course—and I thought it only right to give you a word of warning.”

Miss Pelling started and glanced at Mr. Simpson, but his face was also bodeful and glum.

“There’s nothing wrong with the man, is there?” she said. “He seems a very agreeable neighbour and perfectly harmless.”

“They all do,” chanted Mr. Binny from somewhere deep in his cadaverous stomach.

“We just thought we ought to give you a hint, that’s all,” said Mr. Simpson more lightly. “The man certainly wears a wig and only goes out after sunset. And Mr. Binny thought of your unprotected state.”

“Did he?” said Miss Pelling; then she seemed to bite off some further remark, and added calmly: “Well, it is very kind of you both. But in my opinion Mr. Montgomery is perfectly all right. Thank you, all the same.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Mr. Binny nervously, “it might be as well not to accept any more gifts from him. On the principle—Ha! Ha! Fear the gifts of the Greeks!”

“Oh!” Again Miss Pelling paused and an inscrutable look crossed her face. “The fruit and vegetables were delicious. They came from a friend of Mr. Montgomery’s near Bradford.”

“Well, of course they may have done. It was only that we felt it right to give you a hint. Wasn’t that so, Simpson?” said Mr. Binny, beginning to move away.

“Lady alone . . . kindness the only motive, I’m sure,” muttered Mr. Simpson, also vaguely disconcerted by something in Miss Pelling’s attitude.

Her door closed on polite farewells. The two gentlemen walked a few steps down the street in silence.

“Simpson,” then said Mr. Binny, with a red face, “I believe she thinks I am jealous—jealous of a lodger from goodness knows where in a wig! That shows what it is to do a kindness to a woman. He may poison her with his green peas in future for all I shall do to prevent it!”

“Never mind!” said Mr. Simpson, “if she does think you’re jealous she’ll only be flattered.”

“I don’t care what she thinks,” said Mr. Binny violently, going towards his own gate; “but I shall keep my eye on that man for the sake of the Avenue.”

Barbara was preparing tea in the kitchen, in a fume of irritated sensibility very unlike her usual clear self-control. She regretted having invited Brooke, and said to herself that she hoped he would not come, but when four o’clock was past and Elsie said casually: “Your soldier’s evidently not going to turn up, Bar- bara,” she experienced an extraordinary sense of irritation, and her heart began to beat, not in its normal, unnoticed fashion, but with a thud, thud, thud, which made her feel slightly sick. She wanted Brooke to come quickly . she never wanted to see him again. . . . Oh, it was perfectly hateful!

The clock ticked on as she sat there, so quiet to look at but consumed within by an intolerable restlessness.

Tick! Tick! went the clock, and the Flodmouth noises outside sounded louder and louder with the same sort of hideous cadence they took on when one was ill and had a high temperature. Summ . . . Summ . . . Summ. . . . And that hideous high shriek of the engine which one watched for and found unbearable when it came.

“Barbara,” said Mrs. Simpson placidly. “I think we had better have tea. Will you tell your father? I saw him outside a minute ago with Mr. Binny.”

“Oh, yes. Quarter to five.”

Barbara went out smiling; but as she was pouring the hot water into the tea-pot, she felt a sudden leap of the pulses and an almost uncontrollable anger. He should come! He must come!

She carried the tea-pot down the passage, physically troubled by this strange, unwonted gust of anger that had assailed her. But when the iron gate clicked and alert footsteps hurried up the path, she was able to answer the door and call out in a cool, pleasant tone, “Oh, good afternoon, Mr. Brooke!” so that no one living could have guessed how her knees shook under her in the sudden relief from suspense.

Mrs. Simpson also came forward, holding out a cordial hand.

“We were afraid you were not coming, Mr. Brooke,” she said.

“I am very sorry, I couldn’t get away from the Hospital before,” he answered; and his absolute simplicity influenced the Simpsons as it had done Miss Pelling. They were able at once to talk of ordinary things— safe and comfortable things, such as Brooke’s wound and the war and the weather—while Mr. Simpson unloaded several of his best anecdotes.

Barbara sat down in silence and began pouring out tea. She did not want to say anything. A warm tide seemed to be flowing all through her, to the tips of the work-reddened fingers that hovered so capably among the cups. She felt for the moment that she had everything she wanted in the whole world. She was satisfied with his presence as he sat there talking to the others and glancing at her now and then. She knew now that she had not been deceived. His eyes did indeed glow with that same inward fire which she had seen last night when she lay on her bed in the dark, and there was the deep seam on his left cheek that made a furrow when he smiled.

She looked away, the red colour creeping over her face from neck to forehead; then she glanced up half nervously and saw his eyes upon her. She saw him remove his glance with an effort. . . .

And all the time Mr. and Mrs. Simpson and Elsie and he talked together while these two seemed to be saying nothing at all to each other. But what they said was indeed making the tea-scented air of that little room vibrate beween.them; the most tremendous signals that can pass between a man and a woman were being flashed every minute. As Barbara sat filling the tea-pot and pouring fresh tea, a sort of passion-lit space enveloped him and her, and produced the illusion that the rest were a long way off.

Then Mr. Simpson asked Barbara a direct question, and she had to join in the conversation, though the extreme distance between her words and what was going on unspoken, made her seem stilted and formal. After a while she unconsciously ceased to answer or make those flashing signals, and blank nothingness stretched between her and Brooke: so he, too, became formal, and felt vaguely disappointed without knowing why.

But they had both longed so intensely for this meeting and built such impossible hopes upon it, after the fashion of lovers, that they were now suffering a reaction. Brooke listened mechanically to Mr. Simpson’s anecdotes: “So the soldier said, I’ve already had my face washed nineteen times, miss,” . . . and to the clang, clang! of the car-bell in the distance.

Brooke began to wish he had not come. He sat there, unwilling to go and equally unwilling to stay, while Barbara began to feel a blind unreasoning irritation against everybody, Brooke included. He was somehow failing her—she was not getting what she wanted—something for which her whole being was keyed up for and expectant—and yet she did not know what she wanted.

He saw more clearly. It was plain enough to him that if he could but get rid of the Simpson family and be alone with Barbara—even though they only talked of the weather—there might be some chance of reestablishing that wonderful state of things which he mentally called “hitting it off together.”

At last he rose to take his leave, and said: “Well, I think I must be going on to interview this baby now, Mrs. Simpson. Your daughter kindly said she would help me to brave the lady in charge and present the toy. I’m rather frightened of Mrs. Hobby—she does seem so capable. I have a feeling she might smack me and send me to bed.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Simpson hesitated, unable to refuse; but Mr. Simpson came to the rescue with the obtuseness not rare in the fathers of pretty daughters. “Look here, Brooke,” he announced handsomely, “I’ll walk with you as far. I am going that way to see the Vicar about some Coal Club accounts which I audit. Kill two birds with one stone, eh?” And he accompanied his guest out into the little hall, feeling sure that any man must prefer his society to Barbara’s.

“Thank you very much,” said Brooke, without enthusiasm. “Good-bye, Mrs. Simpson. Good-bye, Miss Elsie.” He kept Barbara for the last, hoping against hope that she would offer to accompany her father and yet finding himself, unable to suggest it because of some subtle withdrawal in her attitude which made him uncertain of her wishes. Didn’t she, after all, want to come? . . . And she could not break the spell which her own emotions and the presence of her family laid on her ready tongue. For some preposterous reason which she vaguely despised and failed to understand, she was unable to say, plump out: “I’ll come too, Father.” All her clear simplicity seemed to have departed as she touched Brooke’s hand, murmuring : “Good-bye. I hope your arm will soon be quite better.”

“Looks like it.” And he got himself a few steps nearer to the door. “Scarcely hope to see you again. I’m going to Scarcliffe the beginning of the week, I expect.”

“Beautiful air: you’ll like that,” said Mr. Simpson,

“Oh, you’ll love the sea-bathing,” said Elsie.

They stood for a moment in a group round the front door, then the two men detached themselves, walking away down the Avenue. Mr. Simpson was talking and they could hear his familiar chuckle. A few yards away Brooke looked over his shoulder and Barbara waved her hand, but so did Mrs. Simpson and Elsie.

“I wonder if we shall ever see him again,” said Elsie, closing the door.

“Most likely not. He will no doubt return to France after a few weeks’ light duty at Scarcliffe,” said Mrs. Simpson, going back into the room. “But I am very glad to have shown him a little attention; he has behaved so well about that child, has he not, Barbara ?”

Mrs. Simpson took up her knitting as she waited for an answer, but the eyes of her soul were bent on her daughter.

“Oh, yes; he seems quite a decent sort,” said Barbara after a momentary pause. “Well, I’d better get this tea cleared away.”

“Yes; the bread-and-butter will do for supper,” said Mrs. Simpson readily, at once allowing the door to be closed in her face. She could not overcome this delicacy which had perhaps allowed the girls too much freedom, but which had given room for something very vital and real to grow up in them. The same ^quality brought her many affectionate acquaintances and few friends, but she was so engrossed by her passion for her children that only leavings remained for outsiders, a thing people are quick to instinctively realise.

But Barbara remained unaware of this, and as soon as she was beyond the door put down her tray and ran very quickly up to the top of the house, where she leaned far out of her bedroom window with both hands on the grimy sill, and just managed to catch sight of the two men before they turned the corner of the Avenue: her father slightly looking up as he talked, with his cork-like step and his waistcoat advanced, as usual; Brooke, alert, lean, but somehow having the air of forlornness about him in his ill-fitting blue suit which had struck her first outside the Cinema Hall. It struck her now, with the subtle appeal which the rare dependence of a high-spirited child will have for a grown-up person.

She leaned further out. ... It seemed incredible that they should be going out of each other’s lives for ever in this way. Then she saw him swallowed up in the crowds that passed the end of the Avenue.

“Barbara!” said Elsie’s voice behind, “what are you doing? You’ll fall out!”

Barbara drew back and faced her sister.

“Well, what now? Can’t I even look out of the. window?”

Elsie sat down on the bed with her hand pressed to her back, but smiling impishly.

“Mother feels rather relieved he has gone for good.. But she needn’t worry herself about him coming where he’s not wanted. He’s as proud as Lucifer. I’m rather surprised you weren’t a bit more decent to him, though.

You asked him, and then acted as if you didn’t much want him.”

“What rot!” said Barbara. “Your imagination runs away with you.”

“Well,” said Elsie, “my imagination makes me see real things sometimes that other people can’t; and my advice to you, Miss Barbie, is to leave that young man alone.”

“I never thought of doing anything else,” said Barbara.

“Well, you won’t have a chance. But he isn’t the kind you can send off and whistle back and do as you like with: no Bellerby tactics wirf succeed with him, my girl.”

“How ridiculous you are! As if there were any idea of anything!” cried Barbara.

“I’ve eyes in my head if I am only fifteen, said Elsie. “The way he looked at you! However, he’s gone now, and you will probably never see him any more.”

And as Barbara went down the stairs those words echoed drearily through the house, or so it seemed to her, though they were only echoing and re-echoing in her own mind.

Mr. Simpson returned after a while saying that he had met Frank Garret; they stopped to speak, and he was introduced to Brooke, whom he had remembered seeing with Barbara in the town on Friday morning. “Asked if he were a Canadian cousin, when I said the young man came from Canada—green-eyed monster, eh, Barbara? He seemed worried to hear it wasn’t even a half-cousin.”

For Mr. Simpson felt convinced that his daughter and Frank Garret would make a match of it in the end, and that her present attitude was only a needed discipline which she was giving her tardy lover. He’d taken his time, now she would take hers—and Mr. Simpson approved, but thought it should not go on too long. In the present insecurity of everything he clung to the idea of having one daughter safely established who might afford an asylum to her sister and mother if anything happened to him: for the old security had gone from the Avenue and from Flodmouth and from life—they had, whether or no, to live dangerously.

Later in the afternoon Mr. Simpson once more acutely realised the change which war had brought into the mental atmosphere. He was sitting in a back room with the Vicar, who had been out when he called and had followed him later to No. 28. The Coal Club accounts were in order on the table, and the two men sat for a few minutes talking of parish matters. Then the Vicar suddenly said—

“Simpson, will you tell me the truth if you know it? Why do the congregations get smaller every Sunday? I work my heart out, managing with no Curate and taking all the daily services myself. God knows how we get along ourselves on the stipend, with the price of everything doubled, but we do. I don’t want to say anything about that. Only it seems terribly hard to see less and less interest taken in the Church and everything connected with it. I know I must have failed somewhere, but I can’t tell where. I feel beaten, Simpson.”

Hard work, a delicate family, poor food and a high-strung, nervous constitution had sapped Mr. Walters’s power of resistance, or he could never have done the thing he did then, which was to hide his face in his hands and say with a sort of groan: “Oh, Simpson, it’s agony! I see my people groping for comfort, and I don’t seem able to help them. They don’t want me. They don’t want the Church. And yet we ought to be giving out strength and comfort. I go to see those who have lost sons and husbands, and they look at me so terribly, asking why God lets it all happen . . . and I can’t tell them ... I don’t know myself. I can only tell them to trust. And they want a definite answer.”

Mr. Simpson fidgeted with the papers; though he and the Vicar had been intimately associated in Church work during several years, they had never before talked together about their faith in God. He found it impossible to say anything about that, so he replied uncomfortably: “You do your best. Every one knows you do your best. Your own son is a prisoner. You can’t do any more.” He paused. “All places of worship have diminished congregations.”

The Vicar uncovered his face, which was white and drawn and rather mean of feature. “Well, I must go home and write my sermon for to-morrow night,” he said, rising.

“Every one knows how carefully you prepare your sermons,” said Mr^ jSimpson, seeking to give comfort. “Binny was only] remarking last week how scholarly they were and well expressed.”

A faint light glimmered over the Vicar’s face, the sign of that indestructible susceptibility of the preacher or writer to public praise. “I’m glad Binny liked it.” Then his look clouded again. “I don’t know how it is. I don’t seem able to get hold of the people. They stand aside and say the Church has failed, but are as much a part of the Church as I am. It’s they; who have failed as well as me.” He sighed. “Sometimes, Simpson, I almost feel as if Christianity had. failed. But I know it’s not that. If only I had the-power to seize hold of it and show it as it is, flamingly-alive. . . . Why, it’s religion alone which is making-people able to endure so wonderfully the loss of alL they hold dear, but it’s so much a part of them that they don’t realise it is a heritage—they don’t know where they get the power of an endless life from.”

“No,” said Mr. Simpson, almost as embarrassed as if he had met his clergyman in the Avenue without clothes—there was something equally strange to him in this glimpse of the Vicar’s naked soul.

“Well, Mr. Simpson, the accounts are all right. I must be going now.” And they shook hands, the Vicar in his usual clerical manner and Mr. Simpson with that odd, mingled sense of superiority and inferiority which an ordinary Englishman feels in the presence of his spiritual adviser. Then Mr. Simpson stood on the doorstep and watched the thin, rather shabbily clad figure go down the Avenue. He felt sorry and yet faintly contemptuous.

And the Vicar brooded unhappily as he walked, turning over mechanical platitudes for the next day’s sermon in his mind and oppressed by a heavy consciousness of failure.

He did not realise that at the very moment of his deepest discouragement, more people in the Avenue were seeking after God than had ever done so since the bow-windowed houses were first built. It might not be in his way, but quite surely all the prayers and agonies of those who wanted light were flowing into unseen channels—working in silence on the tremendous scale of the Creator. It was perhaps a faint consciousness of this, deep beyond knowledge or reason, which just kept the Vicar from despair.

But no sign of these things was apparent in his bearing as he pulled up to speak with mechanical cheerfulness to Miss Pelling about her hospital work, and then plodded on once more to his belated tea.

CHAPTER IX

THE AMATEUR DETECTIVES

FROM the outside, No. 28 Chestnut Avenue looked much as it had ever done—a comfortable, middle-class residence lived in by well-clad, sufficiently fed people. But to another way of seeing it was a little house standing half-dismantled and forlorn. The storm of war had indeed torn across it with such startling suddenness that those inside were yet gathering what remained to them from among the wreckage with a kind of patient surprise.

In thousands of houses, even in Floodmouth, others were doing the same; silently, without a tear that could be seen, they were getting on with this first work of reconstruction which has to come before all the rest. But almost every day their hearts were hurt afresh by wanting something that had been spoilt or broken. For instance, Mrs. Simpson’s birthday came, and there was no present from Jim, though he had always bought her one with his own pennies since he was two. And now it was the August Bank Holiday which the Simpsons had annually spent with Uncle Horace at his pleasant suburban villa. They had sometimes wished they were not going, but now they thought of him coming out to greet them with his light suit and his sweet-pea in his button-hole and his unenthusiastic wife in the background, and they longed inexpressibly —or, at least, Mr. and Mrs. Simpson did—for such a sunshiny day to come again.

But Mr. Simpson did not seem at all like this as he shouldered his spade on this August Bank Holiday and went forth to dig his own new potatoes—nor did the other Flodmouth folk in like case. There was, indeed, quite a pleasant sylvan chorus murmuring through the town.

“Seen my peas? Wonderful peas!”

“My potaties are,a picture—you should come along and have a look at them.”

“Now, I have a vegetable marrow——”

But though it all sounded so trivial, it had helped thousands of sorrowful people in England to keep sane in mind and body until the very worst of their suspense or sorrow was over, and it had also made potatoes so plentiful that they could be sold in the midst of war-time for a penny a pound. As Mr. Simpson and Mr. Binny came down the Avenue together, comparing the size of the potatoes in their baskets, they were not just a tall, thin man and a little fat one talking rather foolishly about gardening— they were a sign of the tremendous latent vitality of England which is everywhere, only awaiting the right call.

These two gentlemen were both on an errand of gallantry, taking an offering to little Mrs. Du Caine at the end cf the street. Mr. Simpson’s potatoes of his best, but put in carelessly; Mr. Binny’s most neatly packed, with a sprig of mint on the top. A few minutes later, Mr. Wilson also walked ponderously by on a similar errand, and on the very doorstep he encountered little Dean, a clerk with a weak chest and five children, who was all alight with the pleasure of being “in it” with the other men in the street, and having something to give. The way he cocked up a perky eye at the important, white-spatted Mr. Wilson and said with a jovial man-to-man air, “Have you sprayed yours?” was really pleasant to see. And they walked back down the Avenue side by side for the first time in all the years they had lived there together.

In the afternoon Mr. Simpson was assailed for a few moments by a sense of the blank “queerness” of this Bank Holiday as compared with the past, but Barbara had asked Mrs. Du Caine and her babies to tea, and they were soon all laughing and talking in the back garden: Mr. Simpson rather pleased to bring out a tale he had recently abstracted from a comic paper, about a nurse and a tattooed sailor, for the benefit of the guest, and Mrs. Du Caine hiding deep in her heart all her own thoughts about those past Bank Holidays which now looked like little glimpses of Paradise. Mrs. Simpson did not talk much, but the effect of her presence lay on the group like sunshine; though they were hardly aware of her, it would have been all different without her.

Talk went on round the table, punctuated by the cries and gurglings of the children, and they spoke of the Bellerbys next door, who were staying with Blanche.

“Did you see that picture of the bride in nursing dress in the Daily Pictorial? It’s perfectly lovely, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Du Caine.

“But she doesn’t nurse, does she?” said Barbara. “No. I think she is somehow attached to the Hospital run by her mother-in-law.”

“Hullo, Barbie,” exclaimed Elsie. “Blanche has bested you again! You never got your picture published anywhere, even after sticking at it for over two years, here and at Bournemouth.”

Barbara laughed.

“I’m sure I don’t care. Look at the military awards! They say nearly all the men do things worthy of a decoration over and over again, only nobody happens to see.”

“That’s it. Well, they don’t do it for that.”

And dimly a feeling, too vague for thought, glowed in the hearts of the little group . . . they didn’t do it for that, either. . . .

Mrs. Du Caine spoke.

“I hear that wounded soldier who came to see about Miss Pelling’s Lillie’s baby is still at Scarcliffe.”

Barbara moved a plate and said quickly, with her eyes on it: “Who told you so ? Has some one heard from him?”

“Yes; Miss Pelling. Seems she had a letter from him this morning. He expects to leave for the Front in about three weeks. His arm has mended wonderfully quickly in that fine air.”

“He behaved very well,” announced Mr. Simpson once again. “I walked with him myself to Mrs. Hobby’s, where the child is being brought up. He said it had eyes just like his brother’s.”

“You never told us that before,” said Barbara.

“No; didn’t think of it. In my opinion——”

“Wow-oo-oh!” interrupted Mrs. Du Caine’s youngest baby—and the peaceful group being broken up, there was no more mention of Brooke.

On the following Saturday afternoon Miss Pelling was in her garden entertaining little Kitchener from a sense of duty which prompted her to see for herself if the child were well and happy. Verbal communication on this point with the party most concerned being impossible, she set him on her knee, sent Mrs. Hobby to take tea in the kitchen, and anxiously scrutinised his limbs and general appearance. He already seemed less fretful than on first arrival, and smiled at the red flower which Miss Pelling dangled before him. A gentle peace lay on all the little back gardens' at this hour, and from over the wall on the right came a gentle but none the less quite audible snore. From the one on the left came the gentle chink of a tea-cup, proving that Mr. Binny took tea in the open air after an unusually trying week at business, complicated by a slight liver attack.

From where he sat he could not avoid seeing the domestic group on the other side of the wall in a sort of hazy silhouette against the sunshine. Nothing definite, but in the general effect of Miss Pelling’s neat head and erect figure as she waggled the red flower, he saw something rather intimately charming.

Without any definite intention of making advances —and yet knowing in the pleasantly titillated depths of him that it was an advance—he moved to the wall, coughed and remarked—

“Delightful weather. That is—er—a favoured young person.”

But at that precise moment the snores over the other wall ceased, perhaps owing to Mr. Binny’s cough, and the lodger got up, settled his tie, rubbed his eyes and said pleasantly—

“Delightful afternoon, Miss Pelling.”

“Beautiful!” said Miss Pelling, addressing both gentlemen by moving her head first in one direction and then in the other. She was a very sensible, high-spirited woman, but the fact remains—though no doubt new conditions can alter the laws of nature—that the presence of two males endeavouring to attract attention has thus far power to stimulate the most sensible female.

“Fine laurel, that,” said Mr. Binny, ignoring Mr. Montgomery and assuming an intimate air. “When I planted it for you, Miss Pelling, I scarcely thought—”

“Those laurels grow in every cottage garden where I come from; they remind me of home,” said Mr. Montgomery.

Mr. Binny lifted his head like a war-horse slightly past its prime, but with a lot of kick still available.

“Your home, sir?” he said. “May I ask where you formerly resided ?”

“Neighbourhood of Bradford,” replied Mr. Montgomery, with what Mr. Binny felt to be intentional vagueness. “As I was saying before to you, Miss Pelling—”

“I hate mignonette!” said Mr. Binny defiantly; “coarse-growing thing, I consider it.”

“Ah!” .said Mr. Montgomery, gathering up his newspaper. “I dare say you’re no flower lover. Odd thing, some men don’t—”

“Roses!” interposed Miss Pelling hastily, like one who throws a wet cloth on a rising fire. “Roses are my favourite, of course.” She smiled from one gentleman to the other. “Can’t beat roses, in my opinion.”

“Yes, yes,” agreed Mr. Binny at once, “you always have been fond of roses, of course. I well remember—”

“Well, give me mignonette!” repeated Mr. Montgomery, who was not an easy person to shut the door of a conversation on. “I will send you some that I have received from the country to-day, Miss Pelling, and you will be able to judge for yourself.”

With that he bowed—as could be judged by the disappearance on the other side of the wall of all but his forehead and discreet grey toupee—and then walked away leaving a flowery prospect behind him, which Mr. Binny deeply resented: otherwise it seems probable that a conversation which took place rather later, when the baby had been sent home, could never possibly have been shared by so just a gentleman.

At about five o’clock then, Mr. Binny was still in his garden, occupied by this most warping of all emotions, when Miss Pelling came out to fetch some knitting which she had left on her garden seat. This time they observed the strict back-garden etiquette of the Avenue, which is to ignore a neighbour’s presence unless invited to become aware of it, then to say, with artless surprise, “Oh, you there, Miss So-and-So!”

Mr. Binny was rigid in these matters, as a rule, but humanity is humanity after all, and when he tried to fix one eye on Miss Pelling and the other on a weed he failed, pulling up instead a promising young carrot: so he straightened his back, advanced to the wall, coughed, and made himself officially visible.

“Looks like rain.”

Miss Pelling gave the slight start which is deemed correct, and answered in a company voice—

“Oh, that you, Mr. Binny? Yes, the weather does seem to be breaking up.”

She wore a magnificent spray of mignonette, and this may have unconsciously inspired Mr. Binny’s next remark: anyway he came very close to the wall, dropped his voice and said gravely: “Miss Pelling, I have been feeling inwardly a little uncomfortable of late.”

“Oh! Do let me get you some of the peppermint cordial I always have by me,” she said. “It is a most excellent remedy.”

Mr. Binny flushed slightly.

“I was not referring to—er—physical symptoms,” he said. “The fact is, you are a lady living quite unprotected and alone.” He paused. It cannot be denied that Miss Pelling wondered, with a faint thrill, what was coming. “You have to be careful about your neighbours,” he concluded.

Something very deep within Miss Pelling cried out: “Is that all?” But she answered briskly: “What on earth do you mean, Mr. Binny? Are you thinking of stealing my silver? If so, I may as well tell you it is at the bank.”

Mr. Binny afforded her the politeness of a mechanical smile before continuing: “You may have noticed Montgomery wears a wig. Why does he wear a wig?”

“Because he’s bald, I suppose,” said Miss Pelling, rather surprised.

Mr. Binny came closer. His knees touched the bricks, his chin just hung over the top of the wall.

“But is he bald?”

The portentous gravity of Mr. Binny’s tone caused Miss Pelling also to press close to the wall, looking up, but she said nothing.

“If he’s not bald why does he wear a wig?” pursued Mr. Binny.

“I don’t know,” said Miss Pelling.

“Ah!” said Mr. Binny. “That’s just it.”

They rested on this for a moment; then Miss Pelling shook off the too intense gravity of the mental atmosphere.

“What nonsense!” she caid. “You really can’t pretend he has a German accent. It’s English, and, what’s more, it’s West Riding. You can’t have anything much more English than that, can you?”

“Um! . . . There’s no knowing. . . Mr. Binny’s pauses held far more than his words.

“You don’t mean to say—” And Miss Pelling, influenced against her will, also dealt in impressive pauses. She stared up at him and he stared down at her.

“I say nothing. The crux of the situation lies in this: is he bald, or is he not bald? If he is, then the use of a wig is legitimate, of course. But if he is not—”

“Yes?”

They goggled at each other, pausing again oh that— a pause fuller than ever of a number of things.

“Is it because he wants to conceal his hair?” asked Mr. Binny.

“You mean a disguise?” murmured Miss Pelling.

“I say nothing,” repeated Mr. Binny. “But you are a woman of keen perceptions and clear thoughts. Why would a man with brown hair wear a grey wig— or vice versa?”

“There certainly is something not open about the idea,” agreed Miss Pelling.

“And those papers he is always writing and never visibly posting ?”

“And his going out only after dark?” added Miss Pelling.

“Possibly to take them to a distant post office,” suggested Mr. Binny.

“It certainly does look odd, when you begin to think about it.”

Blacker and blacker grew the shadow upon Mr. Montgomery. Closer and closer drew Miss Pelling and Mr. Binny.

“I think we ought to do something,” said Miss Pelling, by now rather anxious herself. “We ought to find out definitely if he is all right or not. If he is, we are doing him a great injustice. If he is not, we ought to inform the police. But if we inform the police and he turns out to be quite harmless, he will leave the Avenue and Miss Brown will lose a good lodger for nothing. And she has a hard enough struggle to keep her old mother as it is.” Miss Pelling paused, and the joys of the amateur detective vanished before the thought of poor, harassed Miss Brown. “Oh, Mr. Binny, I don’t think there is any real need to interfere, do you?”

“We must think of our country,” said Mr. Binny, and he threw out his chest as he spoke, believing himself to be animated by pure patriotism. But Miss Peking was still concerned with Miss Brown.

“If we could only secure a proof one way or another without Mr. Montgomery knowing,” she said, and her brain worked backwards and forwards, like a mouse in a trap, seeking a solution of the difficulty. At last she cried out, “Oh, Mr. Binny! I’ve got it!”

He looked rather superior and incredulous.

“Well?”

She bent nearer and whispered eagerly. His gaze focused. She whispered some more. His superior smile vanished, then he also whispered; finally they drew apart.

“I shall see you to-morrow afternoon, then, if fine?”

“I forgot; it’s a Sunday, Mr. Binny.”

“Oh! I’d forgotten it. Well, soldiers fight on Sundays. They have to. Anything for the sake of your country.” . . .

“That’s just it.” "

They nodded with immense meaning at each other, then Miss Pilling went back to the house to prepare for her night’s work at the Hospital.

Next morning rose showery, and the amateur detectives went about with an anxious eye on the weather. But towards noon it cleared, and the whole of Flodmouth was luminous in misty sunshine as Mr. Binny. returned from the old church in the heart of the city. He saw the tall warehouses and the spars of ships rising into the greyish-gold air, but he did not realise the beauty because it was a part of his life, and of his father’s and grandfather’s lives before him. He loved the old town unawares, as Mr. Simpson did, and Miss Pelling, and many others who often said they disliked it. When he got home he read during the Sunday midday meal as usual, but the words failed to convey ideas because he was going over in his mind the programme of the afternoon. Precisely at two he took up a book and went to Miss Felling’s door.

“Oh! Is Miss Pelling at home?” and he displayed the book to afford a pretext for his visit.

“Yes; will you walk in?” said Gladys, already in outdoor attire, having been given a long afternoon’s holiday.

He entered, and the door of the room closed upon him. Miss Pelling was discovered bending over a fishing-rod.

“You’ve found it, then?” said Mr. Binny in a low tone, advancing with eagerness. “Does it run all right ?”

“Yes; haven’t had it out for years, but I put it away carefully.”

“Hush! Is that his step?”

The room was at the back of the house, and they could hear heavy footsteps through the open window.

“He’s going into the garden,” said Miss Pelling tensely, glancing at the clock. “He’ll sit down in his usual place near the wall under the lilic bush. In ten minutes he will be asleep.”

“We will remain by the window and speak very softly,” directed Mr. Binny.

The front door banged. Mr. Binny and Miss Pelling started violently.

“Only Gladys going out,” breathed Miss Pelling.

The house seemed intensely quiet. . . .

“I hope you have put on a large, strong hook,” whispered Mr. Binny.

“Yes. You ought to be removing your boots now. It will save time,” said Miss Pelling.

“I scarcely like—” began Mr. Binny, drawing in his boots as a mute protest against stocking-feet in the presence of a lady.

“Bosh! If it were your shirt—when it’s your duty to England!” retorted Miss Pelling.

“Very well,” said Mr. Binny, rather stiffly, and he went out into the passage; he was not going to take his boots off in a lady’s drawing-room even for England.

He returned, stepping gingerly, acutely conscious of his socks; then they went down the garden path together. A pebble hurt Mr. Binny very much indeed, but he uttered no sound. She, in thin stockings, bore the situation with equal fortitude. They both silently mounted upon a seat in Miss Pelling’s garden, which had been placed back to back with one in Mr. Montgomery’s garden. Miss Pelling held the line as being more used to handling it and author of the idea.

“Hush!” she said, gently moving apart the branches of the lilac tree. “You keep them in that position. Now!”

A snore proceeded from the seat below.

“How long does he generally sleep?” whispered Mr. Binny, rather anxiously, having no mind to be caught even by a spy in this situation.

“Half an hour at least; every afternoon, in fact,” whispered Miss Pelling. “Whatever you do, keep those branches apart!” she entreated.

Mr. Binny did as he was told, but it was immediately after Sunday’s lunch and his strained attitude would have been trying to an empty young man; to a middle-aged full one it was almost apoplexy.

Then Mr. Montgomery stirred, and Mr. Binny suddenly let go the branches. Miss Pelling gasped. They waited in tense silence for a space which seemed an hour, but was really just three minutes, and then began all over again.

“Hush!”

“Hush!”

The branches once more apart—Miss Pelling once more dangling the fish-hook over Mr. Montgomery’s unconscious wig with a dexterity born of many pleasant hours in Bridlington Bay.

“Now!” whispered Mr. Binny.

Miss Pelling leaned far forward. The hook descended : caught. There was a wild yell from the little gentleman next door, and an exceedingly well-made grey wig dangled on the line behind the lilac boughs which Mr. Binny had again ceased to hold apart.

In one second, he and Miss Pelling alighted from the seat, hid the rod under the wall with a dexterity and speed incredible in any lady or gentleman over twelve, and sat down trying to look calm. But in that one moment they had noticed the innocent, egg-like baldness of Mr. Montgomery, and the situation loomed perfectly terrible before them. In addition to the pain in his feet, Mr. Binny endured acute mental agony. He considered what would be said on ’Change during the ensuing week, and already the ribald jokes of the Flodmouth merchants seemed to be hurtling about his ears.

It was then that Miss Pelling’s resourcefulness rose to a point far above anything Mr. Binny could have imagined. Jumping up, she called into the next garden, “Oh, Mr. Montgomery! I have had such a shock. I fear something of yours has come over the wall. If you will wait a moment I will pass it back.” “What’s happened?” bleated Mr. Montgomery, holding his hand to his scalp and still dazed by his heavy after-dinner nap. “What’s taken it?”

“Perhaps the wind,” suggested Mr. Binny.

“I can’t understand how such a thing could happen,” said Mr. Montgomery pathetically, still holding his head with one hand while he accepted the wig from Miss Pelling with the other. Then his brain cleared a little. “And there is no wind.”

“Perhaps a—a bird,” said Miss Pelling. “I have heard of magpies taking rings, and eagles carrying off babies, and so on.”

“Did you see one?” said Mr. Montgomery, adjusting his disorganised wig as well as he could. “This certainly does seem as if it might have been torn by the beak of a strong bird, but I can scarcely think it possible.”

“I fancied I did see a—a something just flick over the wall,” faltered Miss Pelling. Then it came over her all of a sudden that she wasn’t going to imperil her immortal soul alone. Mr. Binny was going to be in it too. “Didn’t you see something?” she said, addressing him.

“Y-yes,” said Mr. Binny reluctantly. “I couldn’t make out any—any particular plumage, though.” “Dear me! This really is most strange,” said Mr. Montgomery, immensely interested now that he had his wig on and felt himself again. “I really must put down all the particulars at once if you will dictate them exactly in your own words. This episode will form a most valuable addition to the book of reminiscences which I am now engaged upon.” He lowered his voice confidentially. “As a matter of fact, I came here to obtain leisure and freedom from interruption . in order to complete my book. I found this impossible at home, owing to the many claims on my time. Having been Mayor of my native town on three occasions, and Sheriff twice, I am naturally much engaged in public matters.”

Mr. Binny and Miss Pelling did not look at each other. At last Mr. Binny said in a subdued monotone : “I shall hope to buy a copy of your book.”

“No, no. I shall hope to send you one. And I may give your names to verify this most interesting experience? It certainly seems to point to the existence of eagles still in this part of Yorkshire. Perhaps at Scarcliffe—”

“If you don’t mind,” said Binny miserably, “I think Miss Pelling has rather an objection to any sort of— er—publicity. I think she would rather you mentioned no names.” He turned an agonised, beseeching eye on her. “Wouldn’t you, Miss Pelling?”

She paused a moment, irresolute. Here was a chance to pay him out for all his sins of omission during many years. Then her real liking for him took the upper hand once more. “I certainly should prefer keeping the matter between ourselves,” she said. “Any mention of my name or Mr. Binny’s would bring crowds of curious people to gaze at our houses, and we should be deluged with inquiries. I am sure you will see the objection yourself, Mr. Montgomery?”

“A lady’s privacy is very dear to her,” urged Mr.

Binny, “and so many great men have had troubles with their hair. Delilah . . .1 mean Absalom . .

He mopped his brow, his voice trailing off into silence under the eye of Miss Pelling, and he began to grow angry with her—he began to say to himself that she had led him into this ridiculous situation by an insane plan that only a woman—

Then Mr. Montgomery interposed, not without dignity: “Of course, I should never use a lady’s name against her will,” and he retired indoors to put his wig straight.

Almost immediately Mr. Binny pleaded pressing business and went away too. He did not desire to discuss the situation. It was to be as if it had not taken place. But his sense of justice obliged him to say in parting: “The fellow is obviously perfectly respectable.” He paused and added with an effort, “The whole affair has been extremely foolish.”

“You did what you thought right. Nobody can do more than that,” said Miss Pelling; and so subtly steadied Mr. Binny’s wobbling pedestal.

CHAPTER X

A HOLIDAY

BARBARA was on her knees doing the doorstep, when Mr. Simpson went forth to business with that unfamiliar sense of hurry created by the picture in his mind’s eye of a clicking instrument upon which he must register his punctuality or unpunctuality. The morning wind blowing through the open door into the house and among the heavy furniture, was like an outward and visible sign of that new freedom in the Avenue which permitted Barbara to do the doorstep openly. The very scouring cloth which she waved at her father as he passed became thus a flag of freedom, celebrating the release of the Avenue from a thousand mean, petty conventions.

But Mr. Simpson could not yet see it in that way. As he passed his daughter, his head drooped dismally, and he was filled with the odd sense of shame and failure which used to attack all kind, decent, middle-class men of a certain age when they were no longer able to keep their women-folk in semi-idleness. It remained a deep humiliation to him to see his pretty Barbara doing the doorstep, for the hiring of some one to perform these tasks has been for generations of Mr. Simpsons the sign of a place in the world very hardly won, and kept by heaven knows what thrift, self-discipline and hard work. No one outside can realise the sacrifices such middle-class families have made to hide disgrace, and to keep clear of debt in times- of sickness and adversity. And though ignoble fears and a petty snobbishness have had their part in the struggle, it is not quite the share outsiders have thought; for the main thing has been the pursuit of an ideal—the ideal of an upright, decent way of living. . . .

“I don’t like to see you doing that, Barbara,” Mr. Simpson said, as his daughter went with him to the gate.

She laughed gaily, shaking her head at him.

“You naughty, old Father!” she said. “It’s all wicked pride: you don’t like the Avenue to see me doing it.” She leaned over the gate and waved her scouring-cloth towards the street this time. “That for the Avenue!”

Mr. Simpson lifted his head from its depressed angle and smiled. He had to, at sight of so much radiant independence; but all the same he felt vaguely as if he were being carried away by a tide against his will, while Barbara rode willingly on the crest of it.

Barbara was making bread about eleven o’clock. Mrs. Simpson had gone to see the doctor and had not yet returned. Elsie looked up from polishing spoons and fixed a keen eye on her sister, whose face showed rather worn and pale now she did not know any one was watching her.

“I say, Barbie—you’re a pretty Polly Perkins kind of beauty—it won’t do for you to get thin or you’ll get plain,” said this candid younger sister.

‘I’m not getting thin,” said Barbara.

“Yes, you are: and I know what it is; you’re working yourself to death for us all.”

“Nonsense!”

“Then what is it? Surely you’re not in love again. You’d be a decent kid, Barbara, if you’d only leave the young men alone.”

“I do!” said Barbara indignantly.

“Um . . . then why did you send that box of cigs to Miss Pelling’s wounded soldier?”

“Elsie, you are a horrid girl! You’ve been poking about in my drawers.”

“Ha! Ha!” laughed Elsie impishly. “Sold again! I never knew you had done. I only guessed because I heard you asked Dorothy Bellerby what were the best brands ?”

“Well, if you can’t do a kindness to a wounded soldier without—” began Barbara.

“Be calm!” interrupted Elsie. “I never meant it was not a noble thing to do. What did he say when he wrote to thank you?”

Barbara took up the bowl, placed it on the fender, and said shortly, reluctantly, with her back turned to Elsie—

“He never did write. I wanted no thanks, of course!”

“Then why did you send the cigs? Don’t tell met And you’re worried because you haven’t received an answer from him though he may be in France by this time for all you know.”

“I’m sure I don’t—” began Barbara, when the girls heard Mrs. Simpson at the door and ran out to meet her.

“Well, what does the doctor say?”

“Oh, I am improving; but he was talking about Elsie more than me. He says she must have a fortnight at Scarcliffe before the winter sets in. So I went round to Miss Pelling’s, and that is why I have been such a long time. I thought she might know of some suitable place where you two girls could go alone.”

“But, Mother, it is absolutely impossible for me to go,” said Barbara. “You take Elsie, and I will look after Father.”

“No, dear,” said Mrs. Simpson. “You can’t do the work of this house all the winter-unless you have a change. You have looked quite worn and pale lately with working so hard in the hot weather.”

“Then even you noticed that, Mother?” said Elsie eagerly.

Mrs. Simpson looked at her younger daughter with whimsical affection—as if a look or shadow on their faces escaped her! And yet she had managed to let ihem feel themselves so free. . . .

“Yes, dear,” she said. Then she turned to Barbara. I want you to go. Miss Pelling knows of a soldier’s widow who will come for a fortnight—a thoroughly nice girl who lived with some friends of hers—so that is all right!”

“But we can’t afford it; can we?” hesitated Barbara.

“Oh yes, we can!”

And Mrs. Simpson smiled at her girls with a deep joy in her look that they remembered it long after; but they never knew what gave her smile that particular radiance. It was because she had a little money of her very own saved to buy a warm winter coat; and the joy of being able to give them it was so keen—a keenness of joy in pain like that felt by the mother bird who pecks the feathers from her own breast to shelter her young, and resembling none other on earth.

Elsie glanced at her sister in secret surprise. She could hardly believe that Barbara was really contemplating going to Scarcliffe.

“Mother, we can’t go and leave you like this,” she protested.

“You’ll have to,” said Mrs. Simpson. “I asked Miss Pelling to go in at once and see Mr. Montgomery about the rooms.”

“Mr. Montgomery! The old chap with the wig!” said Elsie. “Surely he doesn’t let lodgings at Scarcliffe?”

“No, but he has an elderly cousin who does. I believe it was hearing about her really made me so anxious for you to go. Miss Pelling was talking about her last night and saying how highly Mr. Montgomery recommended her. I should hardly have cared for two girls to go alone to ordinary rooms with so many soldiers about the place.”

“What old-fashioned ideas you have, Mother,” laughed Elsie. “But I say, it does seem rum for us to owe our holiday in a way to old Wiggy, doesn’t it? You never know who is going to take a hand in things, do you ?”

But Mrs. Simpson and Barbara were in no mood for abstract speculation.

“I don’t see how I can leave you, Mother,” said Barbara again—only so half-heartedly that even Mrs. Simpson felt a little secret astonishment at her readi- ness to go. For no mother, however loving, can remember her own girlhood’s emotions with 'sufficient intensity to see them as they are in her daughters— she is bound to look at them through the wide end of the telescope. So though Mrs. Simpson remained very young at heart, she could not have credited the whirl of thought and feeling in which Barbara packed to go to cheap lodgings in Scarcliffe.

The two sisters sat facing each other in the railway train—Elsie with her back to the engine, because she had unfortunately caught a slight cold in the change from glorious dry weather to a spell of cold and wet, and Barbara silent, thinking of her mother on the platform as they said good-bye, and assailed by a pricking sense of self-reproach which was not less uncomfortable for being rather indefinite. She ought to have insisted more on her mother coming instead of herself. . . . No, it would have been no use. . . . Yes, if she had insisted enough, perhaps it might. . . . Why on earth hadn’t she ?

But she knew where the answer to that question waited if she would dive down to seek it—only she wouldn’t. She was afraid of that force within herself which seemed to be making her trample down all the small barriers of will and conscience between her and Scarcliffe, because she was sub-consciously aware that it would have taken her in the same manner across barriers far more important. She only knew, officially, that she was “mad to get to Scarcliffe” as Elsie phrased it, and would not allow, even to herself, that she was fiercely bent on tracking Brooke and finding him before he went to France.

Then across this ferment of hidden feeling, with the light play and sparkle on top of it, of her holiday mood which became more defined as the train neared its destination, came the sound at a railway station of a band playing off a draft. Her emotions were so active that the sound swept her along in a sudden burst of pride and patriotism. She hung out of the carriage window, waving and shouting: “Good luck!” with the tears standing in her eyes. How splendid! How splendid! And then the heart-gripping thought—How many will come back? Then she sat down again as the train moved off; and it was incredibly the overstrung, excitable Elsie who had to say to her: “Barbara, how can you go on like that? You’re like a maidservant out for a spree. Do keep quiet!”

“I can’t sit like a log with those boys going off to fight for us, if you can,” said Barbara hotly. But she was a little ashamed as she dried her eyes and stood up to straighten her hat before the oblong piece of glass in the railway carriage, though every fibre of her seemed to be aflame and vibrating with patriotic fervour, and she felt fiercely that, whatever Elsie said, she was ready that minute to die for England. Then she suddenly thrust her face nearer to the glass and her bright eyes shot out beams of apprehension— there was a pimple on her chin! Instinct jumped, quivering, to the knowledge that this might hinder her in the quest of which she declined to be conscious. .The pimple was a nearer and more vital thing at that moment than all the vague glory of the moment before, when she had waved the soldiers farewell.

She sat down again, saying anxiously: “Elsie, I have an awful spot coming on my chin.”

“Badness coming out,” said Elsie carelessly. “Goodness me, Barbara, I do wish you’d sit still for a minute. You’re like a cat on hot cinders. I never knew you so fidgety before. It’s generally me that gets excited while you keep as calm as a cucumber.”

“I suppose I want a holiday,” murmured Barbara, and she forced herself to sit still for the remainder of the journey.

They were settled in their lodgings, and Elsie sat by the fire which the landlady had lighted, for she, too, was suffering from a cold owing to the change of weather.

“Sticks bust be damp,” Mrs. Clarke remarked fretfully, poking a piece of paper between the bars. “I can’t understand eddybody coming to Scarcliffe that could go on to the South Coast; but my cousin, Mr. Montgomery, lets me have this house rent free, so I stay here.”

“Atchee!” sneezed Elsie. “There, I’m getting worse you see. I might just as well have gone out with Barbara, after all.”

“You were too tired,” said Mrs. Clarke unanswerably.

There followed a silence. Mrs. Clarke sank herself in a newspaper and Elsie read a book which she had brought from the Flodmouth Free Library. At last Mrs. Clarke looked up at the clock.

“It’s half-past nine; time your sister was in, with all these soldiers about. She said she was just going to run out for half an hour. Have you any friends stopping in the place?”

“No,” said Elsie: then she remembered Brooke, who had not been mentioned at all when the plans were being made for coming to Scarcliffe, but of whom Mrs. Simpson had said on the railway platform casually: “Perhaps you will see little Kitchener’s friend.” And Barbara had replied with equal carelessness: “Oh, I daresay he has gone off to France by this time.” Now Elsie said to Mrs. Clarke, “Why, yes, we do know one soldier who was stationed here; but I don’t expect he is here still.”

“Officer, of course?” said Mrs. Clarke.

“No. Private,” said Elsie.

The conversation again lapsed. Mrs. Clarke was a fat woman with a fine white skin that had gone a little grey to match her hair, protruding false teeth and a fluffy, grey shawl; her remarkable resemblance to a tame rabbit was increased in some subtle way by the cold in her head. At ten o’clock, the grating, throaty chime of the clock whirred through the room. She glared puffily at the white dial and then at Elsie.

“Not in yet?”

“It is easy to mistake the time when you are out walking,” said Elsie. “Do you want to go to bed? I can easily sit up for my sister.”

“Certainly not. I was asked to look after you like young relatives of my own, and I shall do so as far as possible. Of course no one has any control over the girls of the present day.” She paused and added, for she was deeply curious like so many stupid people: “Was there anything between your sister and this young man ?”

“Which young man?” said Elsie flippantly. “She’s had lots. Quite a one for the boys, is our Barbara.”

Having given this misleading piece of information Elsie continued her book. Mrs. Clarke meditated muzzily, sniffing eucalyptus, then she pronounced the nett result of her reflections: “I suppose you understood that I do not receive young men visitors at this house?” She was not going to have her residence turned into a meeting-place for a flighty girl and her admirers, that she did know: and she blinked heavily at Elsie.

‘Tm sure we don’t want you to,” said Elsie light-heartedly. “Oh, here’s Barbara at last!”

They turned expectantly towards the door, but when it was flung hastily back Barbara paused for a moment blinking stupidly, blinded by the full light after the darkness outside, and choked by the heat and eucalyptus fumes on coming in from the cool sea air.

“Well, this is a nice time of night,” said Elsie. “Mrs. Clarke began to think you had eloped with some soldier or other.”

“Why, what time is it?” said Barbara.

“Long after ten,” pronounced Mrs. Clarke, her speech not blunted but rather edged by a confusion of b’s and p's.

“After ten! Oh, it can’t be,” said Barbara.

“You must have been spending your time very pleasantly. Did you find your soldier friend?” said Mrs. Clarke.

To Elsie’s surprise Barbara flushed crimson.

“I came across a man we know, when I was listening to the band. I went for a little walk on the cliff. The moon came out. I had no idea it was after nine.”

“Well, with some girls I should have expected it,” said Mrs. Clarke, “but my cousin told me you were exactly the opposite of that.” She paused, filling a cup with cocoa. “I have kept this hot for you. Of course I have no responsibility. But as I have just told your sister, I do not expect to see young men visitors at this house. I am a very quiet person, and I can’t be bothered with them. In addition to which my permanent lodger, Mrs. Scrope, would be very much upset. She dislikes the smell of tobacco.”

“She’ll soon have to go to another world if she wants to get out of that smell,” said Elsie. “Perhaps she is very old?”

“Hush, Elsie!” said Barbara, then she added to Mrs. Clarke: “I’m very sorry to have made you uneasy. I had no idea it was so late.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Clarke, dabbing her nose, “I suppose we have all been young once.”

But it seemed incredible to the two girls that this rabbity bundle of female humanity could ever have walked with a young man in the moonlight.

“Good-night, Mrs. Clarke,” said Barbara. Her woice sounded very clear and her eyes seemed filled with the fresh darkness of the summer night, her face bloomed like a cool flower in that hot, little room.

“Good-night, Miss Simpson,” said Mrs. Clarke. “And do remember the thinness of the walls, please. Mrs. Scrope once distinctly heard a lady in the room where you are sleeping ask her husband how his corns were.”

“Well, we haven’t any corns, at any rate,” said Elsie.

“Of course we will be careful, Mrs. Clarke,” said Barbara.

Then the two girls ran upstairs hand in hand, subduing their laughter until the bedroom door was-shut.

“Oh, Barbara!”

“Oh, Elsie! Do be quiet! Think of the tobacco-hating lady next door.”

Upon which they laughed again, pressing handkerchiefs upon their lips and rejoicing in the comicality of something not comical at all, after that fashion of youth which age scorns because it only sees the silly seeming outside, and has forgotten the exquisite sense of fun and jollity that used to lie beneath.

“I say, what a lark your coming across Brooke!” said Elsie. “I suppose he is in khaki now. Does he look very different?”

Like a picture, only more vivid than any picture, the lean, alert figure of Brooke with his dark eyes shining out of his lined face as he came towards her in the bright moonlight appeared once more before Barbara. But the sense of achievement and satisfaction—of finding at last what every fibre of her body was tensely waiting for—that could never come back again, because memory can only hold the echo of emotion.

“No,” she said casually, “he looks much the same.”

“Well, I shall always remember him best in that red, white and blue affair; it seemed to suit him,” said Elsie. “When is he going out to France ?”

“In about a week, he expects.”

“Then we were only just in time to find him here?”

“Yes.”

That was all Barbara said about it, and she immediately began to make fun of the lodgings again: but at Elsie’s words a sudden shock of fear, such as comes at the mention of a vital danger only just surmounted, made her tremble a little. He had so very nearly gone out of her life before she could reach him. And yet she did not realise what she thought, because thought was in abeyance and feeling had usurped its place. She only knew that she was looking forward to her stay here with intense pleasure. She was filled with an acute sense of the dancing waves and the sharpness of the sweet air and the intensified beauty of everything round her. It was not first a bird’s glow of new plumage at the approach of love, but the human miracle of a whole world putting on glory in the eyes of a lover.

When the throaty clock—to which it did seem strange the particular permanent lodger had not taken exception—chimed the hour of twelve through the house, everyone save Barbara was fast asleep.

She lay awake with the window a little open, and the waves sounded very plainly. Swi-sh! Swi-sh! Swi-sh! went on the shingly beach outside. The green curtains had been drawn back and a twilight of the moon came through the linen blinds: it was an exquisite light, just made for waking dreams. And yet Barbara was not dreaming. She was in that strange, happy state of suspended thought which comes before dreams begin.

CHAPTER XI

SEA-WIND

THE little sitting-room without a sea-view in which the girls were cheaply accommodated, rather as a favour to Mr. Montgomery than as a means of profit, was this afternoon warmer and more scented by eucalyptus than ever, for Elsie had developed a cold to match Mrs. Clarke’s, and they sat sniffing in turns on either side of a small fire. Barbara stood by the table with a book under her arm.

“Anything else I can do for you? Poor old girl, it is hard lines!” And Barbara said it all the more emphatically because she was really glad that Elsie had a cold. She did not acknowledge this, of course, but she had a half-remorseful consciousness of it. First, Mrs. Simpson, then Elsie . . . but she would have pushed aside Mr. Simpson too had he stood in the way. For the time being there was only one clear purpose in her life; she had to go out alone at those hours when she could see Brooke. She must walk with him and talk with him and meet every now and then those ardent eyes that quickened her into such a vibrating sense of being gloriously alive. But she still told herself—and half believed—that the change to sea air and sunshine had caused her joyful exhilaration, though some depth within her knew it would have been just the same in one of those slums, smelling of fish and beer and tar, which linger still in old Flodmouth. For it was indeed a wind of the spirit that had blown across her as she went along the sands that evening by Brooke’s side at the edge of the little waves; though she also thrilled with'the physical passion which is the other half of true love.

Sp now she was sorry for Elsie on the surface as she stood there with the library book in her hand; and she was really like a homing pigeon straining to be released.

“Then there’s nothing else?” she said, making herself pause another minute. “You wouldn’t care for me to stay in too, Elsie?”

“Don’t be an idiot!” said Elsie. “You might bring me a few peppermints, if you liked; they’re comforting.” And she added, drawing a shawl closer round her: “Oh, dear, this is a holiday!”

“Poor old Elsie!” repeated Barbara, fidgeting with the door handle. “Anything for you, Mrs. Clarke?” “Thank you, I’m nearly run out of eucalyptus,” said Mrs. Clarke. “And if you could see a bit of fresh fish anywhere. Fish would be nice and light for supper.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Barbara. “Good-bye!”

She breathed deeply as she shut the door like a person thankful to escape, then hurried down the passage and out into the street lest she should be called back for further commissions.

Mrs.' Clarke looked across at Elsie, her eyes round and watery, her nose-end pink, her resemblance to a tame rabbit with an inquisitive mind more pronounced than ever.

“Off after that young man again!” ,she said, with a sort of placid vindictiveness.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Elsie abruptly. “Barbara is not like that.” And she was all the more sharp because the idea had occurred to herself.

“They’re all like that when they come to Scar-, cliffe,” said Mrs. Clarke. “Soldiers and sands mixed, seem to go to their heads. I don’t know why it is so, but it is,” and she sniffed again.

“You’re quite mistaken,” said Elsie, and she sniffed also before returning to her book, so there was a certain bond between them which made the situation supportable, and Mrs. Clarke was very kind in the way of creature comforts that afternoon.

Barbara meanwhile walked briskly along the seafront to the main street where the shops were situated, and was fortunate enough to secure the desired book and the peppermints. Carrying these in a bag, she returned at once to the cliff edge and ran down the steps which led to the beach. Then she began to walk slowly, loitering by the edge of the incoming tide, picking up bits of seaweed and letting them fall, seeking flat stones with which to make ducks and drakes on the water. At last she saw an erect, lean figure in khaki coming towards her, and even at that distance, and in spite of the heavy sand which caused his step to be laboured instead of briskly alert, she knew it was Brooke. Her whole being leapt to the recognition before she had time to think: “That is he!” But she stood quite still facing the waves until he came up behind her. Then she turned round.

“Could you see me a long way off?” she asked.

“Yes, from the end of the Parade. You stood so still I thought you’d turned into a clump of sea-lavender before my very eyes.”

“Oh! Why?” She glanced at him, looking sideways and half smiling, not thinking at all what she said.

“Because nymphs always did turn into something like that when they were pursued. It was the proper thing for a nymph to do, and I knew you’d try to do the proper thing.”

She glanced at him doubtfully.

“Don’t you?”

“Don’t I what?” he asked, smiling.

“Why, want to do the proper thing.”

“Depends.”

“What on?” she said, moving a pebble with her foot.

“How much I want to do the other thing.”

They laughed together, the utter futility of their talk in some queer way making it all the more delightful to them—perhaps because it thus interfered less with unspoken conversation they were holding, and which was so exquisitely enjoyable. Their laughter had a pleasant sound there—young laughter on the sea’s edge—and her girl’s rippling tone was the complement of his deeper one.

“Well, you broke your rule when you came to that Cinema Show with me,” he said. “I’ve often wondered—you being you—what made you ?”

“I don’t know. You looked lonely.” She paused and glanced up at him with her sweet face grave. “I think since Jim went I somehow feel as if all soldiers were brothers of mine too.”

He drew nearer, touching her arm.

“Dear little girl ... I believe that is the explanation. There never was anybody like you, Barbara.” He paused. “But I don’t feel like a brother, you know.”

For a moment—the briefest second of time— Barbara thought of that other girl whom he had loved and who had died out there in Canada. He must have said there was no girl like her, once, of course. Then the moment passed. She was glad he had lived all his years and not hidden in safety, afraid of life. But for that brief space . . .

And as if in consequence of it, he said gravely—

“I’d been very lonely before I met you. A man is lonelier, I believe, when he has been married. She was so splendid—my poor little wife; but I ought never to have taken her out there. She was meant for a sheltered life in a country parsonage in England. She could have stood that all right; but it was the unsheltered bigness of everything that broke her heart. She hated the prairie and the wind blowing across it. She hated everything in Alberta. And now I have a piece of land on the other side of the Rockies, in the fruit-growing country where the climate is fine. The trees were just coming to their best when I left, and I had to put a man in charge. But I’m afraid she might not have cared much for that either. She wanted green lanes and home. At the last she used to cry when she heard the wind.”

As Barbara listened she felt a pang at her heart. It was like hearing about a little friend for whom life had been too hard, and the shadow of jealousy lifted and passed away. But she could not find anything to say, and they walked on a few steps in silence.

“I never talk about that time.” He broke the silence with an effort. “Only I felt I should like to tell you. I don’t suppose I shall mention it again.”

Her quick mind leapt responsive; she knew perfectly well that he was closing a door on memories that a decent man keeps sacred.

“No . . . of course. . . .” She kept her eyes fixed on the sea.

But he was sure of her understanding because their spirits had just then spoken most intimately together— in the way that nearly all conversations of a personal nature that matter deeply are spoken, when such words as do come are rather by way of punctuation, showing pauses and the end.

After a while they noticed the flowing tide getting near to the cliffs, and saw they must return unless they wished to spend several hours between sand and sky on a precarious edge of rock. In speaking of this, the current of their thoughts changed, and as they walked back to the Parade, talking easily about anything that came into their minds, Barbara experienced that most delightful sense of ease and freedom which a girl often knows just before her lover declares himself. She is so certain everything she says must be charming and right because she says it, and yet she has not been told so, even by her own heart. This time is so brief that many forget it afterwards in thinking of love but it has the tender, evanescent loveliness of a flower opening and not yet open, of a butterfly just fluttering out to meet the sunshine. . . .

So they walked together and told each other all sorts of things with no more effort than the waves rippling on the sand. The strange influence which makes people tell in that hour what they have kept to themselves all their lives was not less powerful in Brooke through having experienced it before, because an eternal newness in love is part of the economy of nature. And Barbara confided to him her inmost thoughts and hopes and affairs with the abandon which those know best who have always—beneath a surface frankness—been rather reserved; the shallow trickling confidences of the habitually expansive are not to be compared with this stream.

At the end of the afternoon Barbara parted from her undeclared lover in a glow of deepest happiness. She felt so much nearer in spirit to another human being than she had ever thought possible. They were both so wrought on by this afternoon hour that they believed themselves on the verge of escaping forever from the loneliness of spirit which is human life. “You’ll come out again after supper?” he said.

“Oh, I can’t! Poor Elsie!”

“Then may I come in ?”

She shook her head.

“So sorry. Mrs. Clarke’s permanent lodger seems to object to gentlemen callers. Isn’t it ridiculous?” “Then you’ll come to-morrow afternoon?” he said. “To-morrow’s Sunday. After to-morrow I can only be certain of an hour or two in the evening and not always that. Won’t you come, Barbara?”

It was the first time he had called her Barbara.

“I will if I can. I’ll try. I don’t know.” She stood poised, ready to go, the lovely colour creeping over her face.

“I shall wait on that seat at the end of the Parade all the afternoon,”

“Oh, don’t!”

He looked at her very directly, smiling, and yet with something behind the smile which she dared not disregard.

“I won’t if you really would rather not.”

“Oh! You know.”

She turned and ran up the steps into the tall house fronting the Parade.

Elsie looked round, blinking her eyes and holding her book with one finger inside, after the fashion of the born bookworm.

“Well, you have been a long time—thought you were going to be late for supper.”

“Got the fish?” said Mrs. Clarke, bustling into the room.

“Got everything!” laughed Barbara. And, indeed, she felt she had; the world was hers and the fulness of it.

The Sunday midday dinner was over and Mrs. Clarke rested from her weekly row with the permanent lodger, who presented the usual combination of permanence and less endearing characteristics. Elsie gazed wistfully at the little garden behind the house and thought how beautiful the sunshine must be on the sea.

“It seems to have turned warmer since yesterday,” she said. “Don’t you think I might go out for a walk ?”

“Not after staying indoors all the morning,” said Barbara quickly.

“But it is so warm now,” pleaded Elsie.

Mrs. Clarke looked up.

“Don’t be so foolish! You might get pneumonia, and a nice thing that would be in war-time with all the doctors so busy.”

“I want to go,” said Elsie. “What do you really think, Barbara ?”

Barbara did not speak. She could not, to be plain, because of that ridiculous throbbing at her heart.

Elsie sighed and sat down again.

“Oh, well! I don’t want to do anything mad, of course.” She glanced aside at Barbara, who still stood by the window. “You going?”

“I think I shall take a turn.”

“Do. No use our both stopping indoors,” urged Elsie generously; and Barbara felt almost impelled to offered her sister company—almost but not quite, for fear the offer should be accepted.

“Good-bye, old girl, I’m so sorry,” she said; and she went out, ashamed that she was not sorry.

But before she reached the end of the row of houses all regrets had vanished, and she was only glad that any chance on earth—even the spoiling of poor Elsie’s holiday—had given her this glorious afternoon alone with Brooke. For the time being she was utterly selfish, like many another kind-hearted girl in love, at whom people look astonished, unable to understand the change.

As Barbara crossed the road she saw Brooke sitting on a seat in the distance, in the attitude of alert repose which belongs only to strength of mind and muscle; but before she reached the entrance to the Parade he had risen and hastened forward to meet her. They walked fast and spoke rather disjointedly until the long stretch of grey-white promenade between the sea and the tall houses merged into a rough path on the top of the cliff, then they slackened their pace and began to look at each other between the trivial sentences, taking up, where they had left off, the wonderful unspoken conversation of yesterday.

At last they were a mile beyond the town. The band, tootling under the glass dome, could no longer be heard at all. A couple of soldiers passed them, glanced with a wink at Brooke, and went on. Faintly on the light breeze came a whistling chorus: “Who’s your lady friend?” But it just meant a jolly sense of comradeship on that glorious summer Sunday afternoon. He’d got a pretty girl—they only wished gaily that they were in the same boat—but he was one of themselves and had a right to love and beauty.

That was what the whistling conveyed, and it merged happily enough with the birds’ singing through the boom of the sea.

“Shall we take this field-path?” said Brooke.

“Yes, I like walking by the edge of the corn,” said Barbara.

She wore a white dress crisply washed and a plain straw hat with a red ribbon in it: there were also red poppies among the corn which awaited the late harvest of the North. The sky above, was of that lovely blue which is quite different from the colour of skies that are always blue—more delicate, with no more hard suspicion of permanence than the colour of a wild flower—and Barbara suited it all as if she had been painted there by a master hand.

“I say—shall we sit down a bit?” said Brooke suddenly.

“All right, but I’m not tired.”

She sat down on a bank under the hedge with the cornfield spreading out in front of her and the sky above. He stood for a moment longer until she was settled. While memory lasted he was to keep the memory of her as she sat there—the blue and white and gold with splashes of scarlet among the com and above her shining eyes. It was a glory of pure colour matching in its exquisite clearness something in her frank forehead and clear-cut, tender lips.

“Barbara,” he said, kneeling down beside her, “how am I going to leave you?”

She shook her head, her eyes unconsciously seeking, fixed on his.

He took her hand.

“It seems so queer, Barbara.” (He could not speak her name too often, lingering over each syllable.) “It seems so queer that you could be in the world and I not know it.”

Her fingers lay in his, quite still; she pretended not to see they were there.

“Yes.” Then somehow she suddenly thought of Frank Garret, and took her hand away.

He continued gravely, broodingly: “How strange things are: me, going about the world—and you in that narrow, sheltered street all the time. . .

They wondered at life together—old life wearing a mysterious new mask. He told her of his fruit orchards in spring, which he hoped to go back to after the war, and she could almost smell the blossom through the warm sea-wind that came over the sunlit corn. But their talk, though so engrossing, really meant nothing to either in itself just now; it was like the overture that is only leading up and up to something beyond— the ears of their souls were all the time listening for a wonder to come. And thus the beautiful afternoon hours went by, until it began to grow late, when Barbara drew forth the old fashioned watch on a long gold chain which Mrs. Simpson had lent her because her own was broken. Brooke touched the watch too, bending over to see it more clearly because they could not believe the hands had reached a quarter to five. And as he touched it, he felt the warmness which the gold had gathered from lying under her blouse, and suddenly pressed the watch to his lips. It was still held by the slender chain, and she gazed at him over it with lips parted and eyes dark and wide—like a pictured Madonna too rapt to be afraid. There was, indeed, something very solemn and lovely in her look at that moment. Then the chain broke.

“Oh! Mother’s chain!” she cried, startled. “Please give it me.”

She held out her hand and he looked at her putting the watch back into her blouse. They were both trembling.

“I must go now,” she said.

“No.” He forced the word out rather than spoke it. “Sit where you are.”

“But I must—”

He flung his arm round her and held her.

“Barbara! Can’t you see I’m mad for love of you? I didn’t mean to tell you. I’ve been keeping it in. But I can’t—I can’t—”

She let him press his head against her soft shoulder and hide his face there. A long minute passed. Then he heard her murmur: “Poor boy! Poor boy!”

She said it in the voice which she had only learned when she felt his weight upon her—just as a mother learns a new voice when her first baby comes—the crooning notes that had always come when she wanted to be kind were there, but grown deeper and far more sweet.

“I do love you so, Barbara. I couldn’t leave you without telling you.”

“Of course you couldn’t.”

He sat up and looked at her.

“Why not?”

She smiled deep into his burning eyes.

“I shouldn’t have let you.”

“Oh, my dear! My dear!” And they clung together again while the sea boomed and the birds sang and the salt wind came across the corn. Then she said—

“I must go now. Elsie and Mrs. Clarke will have had tea long since. They will be wondering what has happened?”

“What does that matter? This is our last afternoon together. We may never——”

He stopped short, but her heart filled in the gap. They might never be together in the sunshine any more.

“Oh, Julian, I feel as if it would kill me to let you go,” she cried. “How am I to live through'the time until you come home again ?”

He took her in his arms again, very gently this time. “Poor little girl,” he said. “That’s all my love is bringing you. I ought to have left you alone.”

“No! No!” she said. “I couldn’t have borne that.

I—” She paused and looked him in the face with her colour deepening painfully. “You must never blame yourself. Always, always remember that! I— I came to Scarcliffe because—because I wanted you!”

“How sweet—to tell me,” he whispered, holding her close. And it was a moment when young passion was converted by a mixture of the soul’s love into something wonderfully beautiful. All the rose and gold and pearl of that most magic draught shone through the crystal bowl they held up between them.

“You’ll never let this spoil your life—not if anything happens to me ?” he said.

“No, Julian, I won’t. I won’t!” she said, half sobbing. It was the cry of brave weakness taking on strength through love, but he knew that she spoke true as she looked at him, her sweet mouth a little twisted by keeping back her tears.

So she, too, gained a picture of her lover which was to stay with her always—his hair against the mellow afternoon, touched golden where it was ruffled by leaning on her shoulder; his dark eyes blazing with passionate adoration as he looked down at her. She came into his arms again of her own accord and closed her eyes, leaning her cheek against his coat. The rough feel of it and the smoke odour were to remain with her while she remembered anything.

“My own girl: I can’t leave you,” he murmured, his love-cry no less monotonous than that of all other living creatures. “Barbara, I’m going to buy our wedding-ring before I go. I must put it on and see how it looks.”

“Dearest, I’ll wear it on a ribbon round my neck and kiss it every night.”

Thus they came upon that divine futility of lovers which cannot bear repeating, but is a part of love like all the rest. As he measured her finger and put the knotted string in his pocket, she felt that a new thing had been done in the world; and at last they started to walk back along the cliff top in the beginning of the sunset.

“I must write to your Father,” he said.

She looked at him, suddenly grave and pale. This was no lovers’ fairy tale then: something hard and real had come into it already.

“I think I had better tell Mother myself first. She is in bad health, and I think a letter like that would upset her.”

“You don’t mean you want to keep it a secret?” he said sharply. “I hate that sort of thing.”

“Oh!” she paused. “Well, I do too. I’ll tell them the minute I get back.”

“Why not write?”

She hesitated, looking down.

“They—they are rather foolish about me. And they are a little prejudiced, in a way, because your brother . . . though father does think you behaved so splendidly about little Kitchener ... I think it would come better by word of mouth.”

“I don’t like going without seeing Mr. Simpson,” said Brooke.

“Well, he can’t get over. And you can’t get leave to go to Flodmouth. Besides—” she hesitated again and told the truth—“we have only three more days, Julian. Don’t let us spoil them by all sorts of bothers. You can come to see Father the very first time you are home from France.”

“You mean you think your parents will make difficulties?”

She turned round and suddenly clung to him.

“Oh, I don’t know! I don’t know! We can’t spoil our last bit of time together.”

What she left unspoken—the tragic, unanswerable “It may be all we ever have”— influenced him against his'better judgment, just as her sudden, spontaneous embrace disturbed his senses: he ceased to see clear.

“Will you do as I say, Julian?” she urged. “Will you? Will you?”

He bent and kissed her upturned face.

“I’ll do anything on earth you want, dearest. But you’ll promise me to tell them directly I am gone?” he added quickly.

“I promise,” said Barbara.

So he took her hand and they began to walk along the cliff top towards home. The evening star came out through the sunset. They were happy.

As they halted at the end of the Parade, they looked up into a clear sky.

“Another fine day to-morrow. If we could only spend one whole day together, Barbara!”

“Anyway, there’ll be the evenings. Elsie will not be well enough for two or three days to go out after supper.”

“They may try to keep you in,” he said.

“No, I’ll manage it somehow.”

“Don’t they suspect anything?”

“Oh, I dare say Elsie does; she is as sharp as a needle. But I shall not say anything. I want to tell Mother first.”

“Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

They said it, and as they turned back to say it again, he saw the door of a little tea-shop open and shut.

“Look! There’s a tea-place open!” he exclaimed with joyful haste, like one seeing a reprieve. “Your people will have finished tea. Won’t you come?”

She hesitated, glancing away from him.

“I’m awfully late. They’ll wonder.” Then she looked at him. “Why, you’ll want something yourself, of course.” And she began to walk towards the shop, saying defiantly: “Mrs. Clarke should have let me bring friends home with me. But she took us at a very low rate. Anyway, it’s her fault.”

They found a table in a corner of the half-empty place, with a waitress who muttered something about supplying “soldiers only” on Sundays. But in the end they were allowed to take their little meal together, with cake like sawdust and very indifferent tea. They did not notice this, however, because they were really partaking of a love-feast whose sacredness made the actual food no matter. It was the last meal they were to share before the parting, and beneath their merry words and their looks towards each other, their hearts performed silent acts of worship of which they remained unconscious. They only knew as they came out into the star-light, brushing off the crumbs, that they had just done something very beautiful and solemn.

For the old, old instincts of the hearth rise up again whenever a man and girl who love each other truly take their first meal together as declared lovers, even though it be in a fly-haunted tea-shop.

/

*

CHAPTER XII

PARTING

TE last evening on which Brooke could be sure of meeting Barbara had come. His draft was to leave forty-eight hours later for the Front, and he would probably be detained in camp the following night. Barbara stood in the sitting-room nervously fidgeting with some wool that she was winding for Mrs. Clarke over the backs of two chairs. The blinds were down and the gas was already lighted. At last she said carelessly—

“Now I think I’ll go out for a turn. You’ll be all right, Elsie ?”

“Right as I’ve been every night. But my cold is much better. I could quite well go out to-night.” Barbara looked fixedly at her wool, but her fingers shook so that she let go the ball. It was curious how this drama of her love working out against a wide background of sea and sky should yet be controlled at every crisis by Elsie’s cold in the head.

“What do you think, Mrs. Clarke?” pursued Elsie. The grey rabbit dilated her pink nostrils, considering, and it was the voice of fate Barbara waited for, because she knew herself unable to either tell Elsie openly to stay at home or to explain how matters stood. She endured the strange moment common to most lives when a sensible human being with ordinary strength of will is like a trembling bird fascinated by a snake; physically able to escape from the embarrassing circumstance, yet, like the bird, incapable of doing it.

“I’m sure I shall be all right if I put a scarf on,” said Elsie going towards the door.

Barbara opened her lips, closed them again and tangled the wool: then she spoke with her face bent over it—

“You sneezed at supper.”

“Ah! I’d forgotten the sneeze,” said Mrs. Clarke. “I really think, Elsie, I should stay in for one more night.”

“Very well,” said Elsie, glancing sideways at her sister. “I suppose I had better do as Mrs. Clarke thinks best, then?”

Barbara steadied herself against the back of the chair. The revulsion of feeling was perfectly ridiculous, but it almost caused her to feel faint.

“That’s a good girl, Elsie. I’ll just go for an hour,” she said, putting the wool together.

“Barbara!” cried Elsie sharply. “You are tangling that wool so that nobody will ever be able to wind it.”

Mrs. Clarke looked round over her grey-shawled shoulder.

“I hope you have not given your sister your cold, Elsie,” she said. “Miss Simpson looks very pale tonight and her eyes are over bright. I think she would be best indoors, too.” She paused. “You stay quietly indoors too, Miss Simpson.”

“No!” Barbara jerked out the word in a stress of nervous irritation that was becoming almost uncontrollable; but at the door she forced herself to turn and smile.

/

“Good-night, Elsie. It is hard lines on you.” And there was something in that wavering smile which vaguely touched Elsie, though she only called out—

“Crocodile!”

“Hush! Hush! Nice name to call your sister,” said Mrs. Clarke, who was nothing if not literal.

“Barbara doesn’t mind. Barbara knows I could say something she’d dislike a lot worse than that if I liked,” said Elsie.

The door closed and Mrs. Clarke put her knitting down to look across at Elsie, for curiosity about the meanest trifles had power to galvanise her at once into a resemblance of animation: “Do you think she’s gone to meet any one in particular?”

“Don’t know, I’m sure.”

“I expect it’s that Brooke you spoke about. Somebody said a draft was going off to-morrow night. Do you think he is going with it?” pursued Mrs. Clarke.

“I never think—hurts my head,” said Elsie smoothiy.

Mrs. Clarke stared at her—let the words slowly sink into her comprehension and reddened.

“I’m sure I had no wish to intrude. But surely a friendly interest in young ladies under my charge——”

She sniffed and rose.

“Well, I was rude,” said Elsie. “But it would make any one rude stopping in night after night, when you have only one fortnight in the whole year, wouldn’t it, Mrs. Clarke?”

And her face looked so wistful and peaked in the full light of the lamp that Mrs. Clarke’s slowly gathering indignation against Barbara came to a head.

“She doesn’t want you, Elsie. She wants to be trapesing about alone with some man or other. I call it very unkind and selfish.”

“Oh no, Mrs. Clarke! Barbara is not selfish. You don’t know Barbara,” said Elsie loyally. But she was unable to conceal the truth from herself, for even in the mornings when they went out together the elder sister was rather silent and took no real interest in anything.

“If this is being in love,” she reflected, “I think people ought to take something for it, and wear a band round their arm like they do for vaccination, so that you can keep off them until it’s over. But how perfectly awful if Barbara doesn’t get over it, and stops like this for ever!”

When Barbara got safely outside she stood still for a moment and drew in a breath of the sea air. The night was misty and softly dark, as if a veil had been thrown over the world; the very sound of the little waves seemed muffled as they broke upon the shore.

Brooke slipped up to her quietly out of the darkness where he had been waiting and put his hand through her arm.

“Where shall we go?” he said speaking low as if in tune with the night.

“The tide’s out. Let us go along the shore.”

They said very little as they walked along under the shadow of the cliffs, for the weight of the impending parting lay heavy on them. When they reached a gravelled space sheltered by a jutting angle of the cliff they sat down, and for quite a long time they sat holding each other quietly, his cheek against hers, which remained cold and pale in spite of their nearness.

The hush! hush! of the little waves seemed to Barbara’s ears like the voice of things lost for ever—never to be found again. She had always thought she should be so brave if she were married or engaged, and her man went to the Front, and now she was feeling like this; the only thing she could do was to keep quiet and refrain from saddening him more.

“Barbara!” he whispered at last. “I feel as if I couldn’t go and leave you.”

“You’ll soon be back on leave. A few months will soon pass,” said Barbara, in a flat, dull tone she scarcely recognised as her own.

“You don’t love me as I love you or a few months would seem for ever,” he answered, kissing her. “Oh, Barbara, if only you could have married me before I went! I longed to ask you, but I feared to take advantage . . . you two girls here alone. You might have been my wife by now if we had only chanced it. It’s the first time in my life I have stopped to consider risks, but it’s because I love you so.”

“And I love you. I don’t feel as if I could let you go. I’m a coward, I know; but I feel as if I couldn’t.” She fought against her tears but they would come. Her low sobbing mingled with the sound of the little waves on the shore. She felt herself to be utterly miserable as she lay there sobbing with his arm close about her, knowing the greatness of his love; but she was really tasting one of those few joys in life which are so keen that they are scarcely distinguishable from pain. . . .

“You’ll stick to me, Barbara?” he said. “Whatever happens, you’ll stick to me!”

“You know I will! You know I will!”

So they clung together and there were tears in his eyes too. After a while he sat up and fumbled in his pocket.

“Here’s the wedding-ring, Barbara,” he said. “I want you to take care of it until I come back. Then it’ll be all ready—”

“Oh, Julian!”

“Oh, Barbara!”

They clung together again . . . they were unhappy and yet all the joy in the world was theirs . . . they believed in perfect happiness.

He parted her slim fingers in the dark to find her wedding finger.

“Let us see if it fits,” he said. Then he pressed it to his lips. “My little wife. . . . Oh, if you only were!” . . .

“I couldn’t be any more faithful then than I shall be now,” she answered.

“Darling! My own Barbara!”

For a long time they sat there, holding each other close and murmuring words of love. At last they rose and began to walk back towards the town. And now; both began to say how quickly the months would pass, and how often they would hear from each other. A stranger walking behind would almost have thought Brooke pleased to go back to France, and Barbara pleased to have him go.

As they went the moon rose, and it was shining mistily above the town when they stopped for their last embrace at the end of the terrace. Brooke took her left hand again and kissed it passionately.

“My wife!”

Then they stood murmuring together again those things which cannot be written. At last she dragged herself away from his arms and started running blindly towards the house. He caught her up and held her again. They heard a clock chime the hour and he had to leave her.

“Julian!”

It was her whole being that called after him as he hurried along, but he could not hear her—in a little while she slowly went up the steps into the house.

She paused outside the room where Mrs. Clarke and Elsie sat reading and said through the half-open door—

“Good-night!”

There was the rustle of Mrs. Clarke and Elsie moving.

“You’re not going to bed yet, Barbara? Aren’t you going to have some cocoa?”

“No, thank you. I’m tired.”

She remained in shadow, remembering suddenly that she still wore the wedding-ring. She tried to remove it and it would not come off.

“Barbara!” called Elsie.

She ran upstairs without answering, wrapping her hand in her handkerchief. In two or three minutes Elsie followed to find her bending over the wash-basin with her hand in the cold water.

“What is it? Hurt your hand, Barbara?”

Barbara muttered something which might be Yes or No.

“Let me see,” said Elsie.

Barbara covered her hand with the sponge and said impatiently: “Oh, it’s nothing! Don’t worry me!”

Elsie went away and sat down on the bed.

“If that’s how you take it!”

And they talked no more until Barbara was about to put out the light; when Elsie said—

“Finger better, old girl?”

Barbara’s nerves were in that overstrung state when the least touch makes them quiver responsive with a keenness that hurts, so she felt the tears rising to her eyes and turned out the light hastily to hide them, saying in a muffled voice—

“Yes, thank you. Sorry I was so chippy!”

There was a pause, then Elsie’s voice came low and excited across the darkness.

“I say, that was a wedding-ring! It’s no use pretending I didn’t see. What’s happened, Barbara?”

There was another pause. Then Barbara said—

“I’m engaged to Brooke. This ring is ready for us to get married when he comes back.”

“Engaged! Oh! what will Mother and Father say? Why, you’ll be sister-in-law—sort of—to Miss Pelling’s Lillie!”

And Barbara felt a tremendous relief at this sudden loosening of an almost unbearable tension which Elsie’s remark had somehow caused.

“As if that mattered!” she answered. “People don’t bother about such things now. The war has done that much good at any rate.”

“But he’s a widower,” said Elsie. “And he lives in Canada when he is not a soldier. I don’t know how you can!”

Barbara sat up, bright-eyed in the darkness.

“I don’t care! I shouldn’t care tuppence if he had been married a hundred times and lived at the North Pole. So there!”

“Poor old Barbie!” said Elsie, her sharp, girlish voice in queer contrast to the elderly tolerance of her tone. “I suppose you can’t help it. Now you’ll have to turn out before breakfast to get that ring filed off, unless you want Mrs. Clarke to see it—and the shops won’t be open till nine. You won’t get back until breakfast is all cold and I shall have to tell some lie or other about your going bathing.”

“You needn’t do that! I shall bathe, of course, if I say so,” responded Barbara, suddenly aware that her accustomed elder-sisterly role was slipping away from her for good.

CHAPTER XIII

]THE END OF SUMMER

WHEN the girls returned to Chestnut Avenue after their holiday the summer was over—leaves already blowing in a coolish wind—and the autumn not yet set in. Mr. and Mrs. Simpson unconsciously watched the flight of a grimy plane-leaf across the window; then Mr. Simpson said—

“We’re not parents in a play. If Barbara will have him, we must make the best of it. But I must own that I am bitterly disappointed—bitterly disappointed!” “So am I; only we want our girl to be happy, and young people will look for happiness in their own way. We wouldn’t have her marry any man unless she loves him,” Mrs. Simpson said.

“She used to fancy she loved Garret, though,” argued Mr. Simpson. “What’s the fancy of a girl who changes like that, against a good husband and a good home? We can’t live for ever. ... I do wish you would show more common sense, Harriet.”

He knocked out his pipe impatiently, angry with his wife because he was anxious and troubled for her and his children, after the manner of the decent husband all the world over.

“Well, it’s done now,” answered Mrs. Simpson. “Nothing we can say will move Barbara.” She paused, then added in a low tone: “Don’t worry so,

Sam. Brooke may never—” She paused, turning away from her husband.

“Oh, I shouldn’t like to count on that!” he said hastily.

“Of course not.”

There was a pause, both Mr. and Mrs. Simpson knowing what they had almost hoped—then he said: “Well, we must go into all the pros and cons when Brooke comes back. He is at the base. He’s sure to come back all right.”

“Yes. His arm is not perfectly sound yet. Of course they won’t send him into the firing line. I feel sure he will come back safe.”

Thus they soothed with words that shame which stirred like an ache in the bottom of their minds.

“I am sending him this pair of socks,” said Mrs. Simpson beginning to knit again.

“Good idea.” Mr. Simpson touched a beautiful peach on a dish near. “I suppose Frank Garret grows these.”

“Yes. He has that place outside Flodmouth that belonged to his cousin, on his hands still. He told me he was just keeping the gardens from going to ruin.”

“The girls are using the tickets he sent for the Red Cross Matinee to-morrow after all,” said Mrs. Simpson, beginning again after a pause. “Elsie was keen to go, and I think Barbara feels she neglected her sister at Scarcliffe. She seems anxious to do anything she can to make up for it.”

“Poor Barbara! I know she was dreadfully upset when she found you'couldn’t get a charwoman after all while they were away,” said Mr. Simpson.

“There’s no doubt the work did knock you up. You have been worse again since.”

“Then I shall get better again,” said Mrs. Simpson smiling. “Poor Sam, to have such an old crock for a wife!”

“Well! I’ll go and get a lettuce for supper. I saw there was one just ready last night: a beauty,” said Mr. Simpson.

But though that was all his response, Mrs. Simpson knew quite well what it meant: and when he brought his fine lettuce in, so proud of its firm heart and large size, she knew it to be a token of love. For Mr. Simpson had loved his wife as Barbara loved Brooke, though Barbara would have deemed this so impossible in a father of his age and figure. But while Mrs. Simpson loved her husband dearly, her passion was for her children.

“What am I to say to Barbara, then?” she asked, looking at him over the fine lettuce on her knee. “That we agree to the engagement, but don’t want it to be made public until Brooke comes home on leave ?”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose so. But I don’t like it. Seems a bit rough on Frank Garret, too. He seems to be hanging about again.”

“We won’t consider that,” said Mrs. Simpson flushing. “He did not consider Barbara much during all those years.”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right, though,” said Mr. Simpson.

And there you had it—there you had a million Mr. Simpsons—a power to move the world were they but united and conscious of their power. And yet perhaps then something irreplaceable would be lost. . . .

“But we must do our best for Barbara,” urged Mrs. Simpson. “We both think Brooke an undesirable match for her and if anything were to happen——”

She paused. “It seems no use advertising the engagement until we are sure.”

Mr. Simpson frowned.

“I don’t like it,” he repeated.

“But, Sam—” Mrs. Simpson’s breath came fast because her heart was throbbing unpleasantly, but she was going to stab her husband all the same if it would bring an advantage to her child. “You must remember that your business is gone. It was no fault of yours, but you can do nothing for your daughters. You must put your personal feelings on one side and let me judge in this matter what is for the best.”

Mr. Simpson waited a moment, staring at his boots, filled with a dreary sense of failure such as he had never known before, even in his worst moments. Then he turned round to his wife.

“Very well,” he said. “I can’t do anything for them. Do as you like.” And he went out.

She saw how she had hurt him, but knew too much to touch the wound she had made.

Barbara felt the slight unevenness of a letter tucked into her blouse as she put away the bread, but she awaited a time when she could be undisturbed. Her own turbulent thoughts and emotions made her unwilling to read Brooke’s first letter from France under the keen eye of her younger sister. She had an unconscious intuition that if Elsie saw her doing it, that tiresome young person would know more about her state of mind than she did herself.

At last she was free to seek her harbour of refuge, the bathroom, and she locked the door in a frenzy of irritation quite beyond any reason for it. Her hands shook as she took the crisp, thin paper from the envelope and the words all ran together. She sat down on the wooden ledge of the bath. Gradually, the words ceased to dance in the greenish light which shone through the thick glass of the bathroom window.

They settled down into words of golden fire, though they were neither more nor less eloquent than thousands coming across to England by the same post. But they, like the rest, set up a circuit of thoughts and emotions, and had no more actual relation to a wonder achieved than the telegraph pole; they were but the instruments through which Barbara was able to feel once more for a moment or two as she did upon the sands at Scarcliffe. The thrill of contact on first reading was so real that it seemed like his lips on hers; but with the second time it faded, though reason struggled against feeling and made her tell herself this was not so; while at the end of half an hour the letter was just a very dear love-letter which had once been alive, and would be dear always—but never alive any more.

Nothing would have made Barbara own this even to herself; and indeed the paper his hands had touched and the plain account of his days, with a phrase that would read to strangers like utter folly towards the middle and again at the end, did have a value for her beyond all reckoning.

She sat dreaming in the green twilight of the bathroom like a maid of legend in the pellucid depths of the ocean—as far from conscience—as removed almost from the real issues of life. Then Elsie rattled at the door, and all the complicated machinery of human existence once more sounded in her ears, breaking the spell. She rose, and called out sharply—

“What do you want? You can’t come in.”

“I say, Barbara! What is it? There’s nothing wrong is there?” asked Elsie in a low voice through the crack of the door. “Brooke is not ill or wounded again ?”

Barbara flung open the door impatiently.

“Hush! Mother will hear. Surely my being in the bathroom is no sign of anything wrong with Julian, silly!”

“I knew you came here to read his letter,” said Elsie, shutting the door behind her. The girls were very near together in the narrow, enclosed space with its white walls and greenish light. “Barbara,” she continued earnestly, “do you really want him or don’t you? If you don’t, you simply shan’t stick to it because you’ve promised. I’ll write to him and tell him the truth myself first. You got carried away. I’m sure that was it. And now Frank is hanging round again you see you have made a mistake. I detest Frank, but it seems as if you must have a young man: so I’d rather you had one we know something about.” “I don’t want Frank to send things,” said Barbara. “It seems like encouraging other men while Julian is away at the Front, and I think girls aren’t fit to live who do that sort of thing.”

“So do I. That’s why I think you ought to be engaged openly either to Brooke or to Frank Garret. I hate a lot of secrets when there’s no need for them. It’s like sitting in a stuffy room with all the windows shut, when you’ve only to get up and open them. I don’t know how you can.”

But neither could Barbara tell what undercurrents of feeling had made her promise against her will that. she would wait until Brooke’s next leave before announcing her engagement. It was really the subconscious knowledge that she was prepared to sacrifice her family for her lover which made her ready to give them what she could now, in a spirit of remorseful tenderness. She had always loved them so, and yet now they scarcely mattered vitally any longer. She felt urged all the time to make it up to them while she could.

“Look here, Elsie,” she said, “don’t you bother yourself any more. I—I wouldn’t change him for a duke with a million a year.”

“Um! Well, it’s your affair, of course,” replied Elsie. “Only never say afterwards that you had nobody to take an interest and so were forced to follow the dictates of your own blind heart, like a heroine in a novel.” She bent forward, staring at Barbara with fierce, yellow eyes under her great mop of dark hair. “You’ve me!” she added. “Never you forget that! I’m always ready to talk things over and tell you what I think.”

Barbara was obliged to laugh at that though she felt rather worried and overstrung.

“No fear!” she said. “Here, get these taps polished if you want something to do. What do you know about love ?”

“Well, I can understand Romeo and Juliet, so I should be able to understand, Barbara Simpson and Private Brooke,” said Elsie, going out of the room with her head in the air.

Thus it came about that Barbara’s engagement was not spoken of in Chestnut Avenue, where the occasional visits of Mr. Frank Garret once more began to cause comment as they had done years ago before the neighbours had ceased to expect any further developments. Very little was said, after all, because every one was too busy, or too sad, or too anxious, to care greatly about Barbara Simpson’s love affairs, but there remained that tendency to gossip which must exist in every community small enough to be in any sense a human family.

It was rather comforting than otherwise to Miss Pelling, for instance, to know that her neighbours were discussing her diminished income and the fact that she was learning with difficulty to clean and bake in the intervals of hospital work. She did not know this, of course, and imagined that she was annoyed by their curiosity; still she was deeply aware in some region beyond her clear-cut thoughts that anything was better than nobody caring. But her appearance after the operation of blacking the kitchen grate for the first time was such that Mr. Binny, chancing to be at a back window and seeing her emerge with the ashes, was impelled to murmur solemnly: “Thank God I didn’t do it! I might have run away.”

All the same when Barbara said to Miss Pelling, “I’m afraid this housework is an awful bother to you,” she was met with such a violent “I tell you I’m enjoying it!” that there was no more to be said.

This, however, was no heroic pose on the part of a spinster who could not be transformed into a perfect domestic worker by the great influence of patriotism in about a week like a lady in a book, but the defence of one who hated pity even more than she hated housework—which was saying a good deal.

It was an example of the way in which everything in life was being turned upside down that Miss Pelling should glance forth from her window during the afternoon with a mark of black dust over one eye. A tall, smart lady was coming up the path, wearing a fashionable costume, and with the most exquisite complexion that could be bought for money—so exquisite indeed, that one artistic flaw would have left the admiring onlooker uncertain whether it was a gift of Providence or a purchase from a different quarter. However Miss Pelling was no respecter of persons, and went to the door prepared to greet anybody from a shipping magnate’s wife to a young lad from the shoemaker’s round the corner.

“Good-afternoon,” she said briskly.

The lady said nothing, but stood and stared at Miss Pelling. Miss Pelling stood and stared at her. There was something familiar. . . .

No, she hadn’t seen the lady with the elaborately waved hair and lovely complexion before.

“What can I do for you ?” she concluded.

“Nothing, Miss Pelling. You’ve done enough, you have!”

“Lillie!” cried Miss Pelling. Then she noted again the over-smart appearance of her old servant. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. And yet you have been hardly treated. I don’t know that I can blame——”

She stood there with affection for Lillie, an austere virtue, her queer conviction that she herself might— given a different nose—have been one of the “high-kicking, champagne-popping sort,” all combining to bewilder her judgment. Then she became suddenly aware of the curious gaze of Mrs. Wilson opposite.

“Come in,” she said. “We must talk things over.”

The door closed on the two women. Lillie, who had never heard the Flodmouth noises and was not conscious of hearing them now, suddenly felt the dull, familiar cadence and the high shriek of an engine whistle. It accentuated that silence of the closed house which became terrible to her as she stood on the linoleum trying to force a question over her dry lips that for the first time in her life refused to obey her. She licked their artificial freshness with her tongue and said—

“Then—Baby isn’t here? He’s not——” She could not say any more.

“No! No!” cried Miss Pelling. “He’s all right. He is being taken care of by Mrs. Hobby, the porter’s wife. He is quite strong and well.”

Lillie leaned back for a moment against the wall while the little hall with the pictures she had so often dusted swam about her.

“You did give me a turn,” she said faintly. “I thought maybe he had got smothered in the basket, or you hadn’t found him in time, or something.”

“How could you do such a trick ?” said Miss Pelling. “But come in and sit down: you don’t look fit to stand.”

So Lillie followed into the kitchen and sat down in her smart clothes on the high-backed window chair with the cretonne cushions which she had covered: while Miss Pelling took the other, with roughened hands resting on a soiled apron and shabby shoes sticking out under an old skirt. They were very grave and not thinking at all of their reversed positions as they sat in the same way as they had often done in the past when the mistress came in, in her walking things, to have a few words with her excellent servant.

“Miss Pelling,” said Lillie, “you may well wonder at me doing such a thing. But when you’re driven into a tight corner, same as I was, you do things you would never have dreamt of. And I knew I could trust you. I hadn’t been with you all them years without finding that out.”

“Um! Well, that’s something,” said Miss Pelling. “But why didn’t you just write to me for help like a sensible woman ?”

Lillie hesitated.

“I’ll be straight with you, Miss Pelling. I knew you would want to help me in your way, and I wanted you to help me in my way. That’s where it came in. I couldn’t bear to be set up in a little house to look after my baby in a sort of disgrace and people being sorry for me. I daresay I was a wicked mother, but that’s how I felt.”

Miss Pelling shook her head. There had always been a real bond of sympathy between her and Lillie which this appeal strengthened, but she considered it her duty to say rather sternly—

“Your duty to your child ought to have come before every other consideration.”

“Well-” Lillie left it at that. “So I got the offer of a good place with a lady that kept a shop for im- proving people’s hairs and complexions.” (“A real clever hand she is, you can see what she’s done for me,” added Lillie, in parenthesis.) “I was sort of general servant and did all for her in the living part of the house, and she said she was comfortabler than what she’d ever been in her life. I used to put on uniform sometimes, and help to show people into the shop and that, when they were short-handed. That was how I met—”

Lillie seemed to have a difficulty in proceeding.

“Surely you didn’t make a fool of yourself over another man? I should have thought you had had enough,” said Miss Pelling.

“If you mean Bob Brooke I don’t regret it, and I never shall!” flashed out Lillie. “He didn’t behave right, but I’m glad I came across him, and I always shall be glad. Even when that wife turned up and started scrapping with me about the separation allowance I didn’t wish I’d never seen him.” She pushed back her beautifully waved hair. “But that’s all over and done with. I didn’t come here to tell you that. I came—” She paused. “Miss Pelling, I’m going to be married again!”

“What!” cried Miss Pelling. “After all you’ve just—”

Lillie nodded.

“This is a different thing altogether. He’s an old bachelor getting into years, and he has suddenly found out he wants a good cook and housekeeper that can’t give notice—though he does go on so about my beautiful hair. And I want a good home for myself and the child. Fair exchange is no robbery.”

“Is he a nice man in himself, though, Lillie?” said Miss Pelling. “It would be dreadful for both you and the boy if you got some one who was not kind.”

“Oh yes, he’s a decent old sort enough,” said Lillie. “Only reason he didn’t marry before was because he felt frightened of not being so comfortable with a wife and family as he was without, and always kept wondering whether he wasn’t giving himself away too cheap. Such like often pick up the crooked stick at last.”

“He is lucky to get a woman such as you,” said Miss Pelling. “Is he well off?”

“Yes. That reminds me—" She took out a note case from her handsome bag. “Miss Pelling,” she said earnestly, “no money won’t pay for what you’ve done, but I should like to give you the out-of-pocket expenses you’ve been put to with Baby. He—Mr. Waggley—knows all about it, and he gave me plenty to pay up.”

“You owe me nothing, Lillie,” said Miss Pelling. “You don’t know that your—your first husband met his brother Julian when they both lay wounded side by side at Rouen. It was one of those strange chances that are always happening in this war.”

“Oh, Miss Pelling! Did you hear what Bob said? Did he tell his brother about me?” asked Lillie. “It seems like a message from the dead.” And she began to weep.

“He spoke of you and gave my address. That was how Mr. Julian Brooke found out where Baby was, and he insisted on paying for the child’s maintenance,” said Miss Pelling.

“Julian?” said Lillie. “I think I’ve heard Bob mention him. He was the youngest. But they hadn’t seen each other for a long time and my poor old man never had much to say about his relations. You can’t wonder.”

“You can’t indeed,” said Miss Pelling grimly.

“But I should like to see this Julian. I want to hear what they said, and how Bob looked—poor feller!” said Lillie.

“You can’t do that, I am afraid. Julian Brooke is in France,” said Miss Pelling; then she hesitated, but at last her good heart had its way: “I’ll pop across and ask Miss Barbara to come and speak to you. She saw something of your man’s brother and may be able to tell you more than I can.”

“You are good to me,” wept Lillie, quite overcome. “I’ve liked you better than anybody in the world but him, for all you were so aggravating about bringing the dirt out of the garden into the front hall and being late for your meals.”

Miss Pelling ran across to the Simpsons, where she briefly explained her errand, and in five minutes she . and Barbara entered the kitchen together.

“Oh, Miss Barbara!” cried Lillie. “Miss Pelling says you saw my man’s brother; Julian, they called him.”

Barbara flushed deeply. She found it so odd to hear that dear name, which no one had used in her hearing but herself, come so casually from the lips of Miss Pelling’s Lillie. Of course the situation was quite natural and expected, but still Barbara did find it strange to be confronted with the fact that she was, in a way, a sister-in-law of Lillie. But this only lasted a moment, and immediately afterwards—despite the girl’s tinted complexion and superficial smartness—her heart went out towards one who had lost Julian's brother.

“I’m afraid I know so little,” she said. “But when your man was dying he made Julian promise to seek you out and stand by you. His last thought seems to have been for you.”

“You didn’t get to know what he said exactly—not any words you can remember? I should like to have known the words,” said Lillie eagerly. “If you could only have remembered one thing Bob said: just one little thing.”

“I can’t,” said Barbara. “I’m so sorry.” Then she stood looking at the pattern of the hearthrug before the kitchen fire: diamonds—squares—the red oval in the middle; and yet she was only trying to fix her mind on that lest it should betray her into something vague, not definitely perceived, that she would be sorry for afterwards.

“Well,” said Lillie as she rose, sighing; “I shan’t see Julian now, even if he does come home, and it isn’t a thing you can get to know by writing—not to any sense. The gentleman I’m going to marry is easy enough in most ways, but he won’t let me hold no communications with any of the Brooke family. He said so flat, and he means it, and I suppose you can’t blame him. After all, a bigamy is a bigamy, even if it comes out all right in the end. Only I do wish I could have known what poor Bob said that night. It would have been a sort of comfort to me. There’ll never be anybody like him.”

Still Barbara counted; diamonds—squares—the red oval: then she ceased to count.

“Lillie,” she said, “I’m going to trust you and Miss Pelling with a secret. I—I’m engaged to Julian Brooke. And when he comes back I’ll find out as exactly as I can what Bob said and write it to you. I know—oh! I know how you feel!” And to her surprise, Barbara felt the tears running down her cheeks.

“It’s very kind of you, Miss Barbara,” said Lillie quietly and gravely. “I hope your young gentleman will come home safe from France, and that you’ll live happy with him. There’s nothing on earth like getting the one you’re really gone on, and if it doesn’t last you’ve had it: haven’t you? Things has turned out all right, but if they’d been ever so bad I’d rather have done as I have done, than stopped comfortable with Miss Pelling. And now, I must be going to Mrs. Hobby’s to see about taking Baby away.”

“You’ll return here for the night at any rate?” said Miss Pelling.

“No, thank you. I wasn’t sure how you’d look at things, and so I took a room at a temperance hotel. But I shall come to bid you good-bye,” said Lillie. So Barbara and Miss Pelling accompanied ’ er to the door, and she bade them farewell, but seemed unable to go, hovering uncertainly on the mat.

“I haven’t said . . .” she'began, then stopped short. “You must think ...” she started again, and again broke off. At last she managed to blurt out: “I don’t want you to think I didn’t want my baby. You don’t know . . . them nights!” And she went away down the Avenue with Barbara and Miss Pelling staring after her fashionable, imposing figure until it turned the corner.

“Is this true about your engagement, Barbara?” said Miss Pelling turning to Barbara then. “But of course it is! You wouldn’t be likely to make a joke of such a thing at such a time. I suppose your father and mother don’t approve and want it kept dark?”

“Yes! I have promised to say nothing until Julian comes home on leave. I ought not even to have told you.”

“Oh, I’m safe!” said Miss Pelling.

“Of course I know that,” said Barbara. “Well, I must hurry off now. I promised to take tea with Mrs. Du Caine and the children.”

“And I must get ‘cleaned.’ I wonder what Lillie thought of my blackleading,” said Miss Pelling with a laugh.

But she thought rather sadly that Barbara came very seldom to see her now, and yet she realised that youth must cling to youth; it was natural enough that these two girls with a husband and a sweetheart out in France should be drawn closer together while she was left outside. So she washed herself with a quite fierce thoroughness and went forth to take night duty at the Hospital, thanking God for work, like many another lonely woman in Flodmouth that evening.

In going down the Avenue she encountered Mr. Binny, who was coming home rather grey-faced and drooping, his long, lean figure gaunt against the twilight, and she stopped in neighbourly fashion to tell him about Lillie.

“Dear! Dear! You’ll be very glad,” he said. “You behaved with quite unusual kindness to your maid. It all fits in, no doubt, with your democratic ideas.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” retorted Miss Pelling. “I liked Lillie. But if you mean to say I join hands with the working man and prance round a statue of Anarchy so as to be ‘in it’ in case anything happens—well, I don’t! I leave that to the titled ladies in the newspapers.”

And she whisked away down the street, leaving Mr. Binny to sigh as he entered his own gate. Her sharpness pleasantly titillated his rather sluggish mind, and he felt lonely and tired and vaguely desired cheerful female company beside his hearth. So long as his sisters lived he had been all right but for the stirrings of emotion from which no man is exempt, and there had been no alternative—he was obliged to remain unmarried in order to keep first a mother and then his sisters. Only now when he could afford to take a wife, the ardour which would overcome all obstacles had petered out: he simply could not get over Miss Pelling’s nose.

By all the laws of justice and sentiment this should not have been so, but it was: Mr. Binny sighed again and went into the house while Miss Peking walked cheerfully along the Avenue, not troubling about her nose at all, for the mental enamel which she had instinctively developed to protect the quivering sensitiveness of a child who was different from other children, had become permanent, and she could never again feel the agony she knew in her schooldays when the boys shouted “Nosey!” after her in the street.

Next morning Barbara chanced tp see little Kitchener being taken away in a cab to the railway station by his mother, and she suddenly realised that the one outside link between Brooke and Flodmouth had been severed. Nothing could connect him with the place or even bring him back there, but his love for her.

CHAPTER XIV

SACRIFICE

THE Daylight Saving Order had ceased for the time being, and it seemed then, with the sudden shortness of the days so brought, as if winter came all at once to the Avenue. Not the pleasant settling down to the indoor interests and amusements, which had once given to Flodmouth at this time of year the aspect of a jolly family coming back to work and play after the summer holidays; but the beginning of the fourth winter of the war.

Mr. Simpson, returning from his office some two hours later than he used to do, with a heavy cold on him and damp fog irritating his bronchial tubes, thought heavily of what that change signified. As he passed a public-house he heard two dim figures talking together—

“Time this war was finished one way or another: I’m dead sick of it. It ought to get stopped at any cost. What are we going to get out of it?”

And for the moment his own tired heart echoed what he heard. ... It was true enough. In a few years he would be out of the whole affair, anyway, and he was losing everything. What was the good of it all? He sneezed violently, permeated with a sense of the utter uselessness of his fortitude and suffering.

Then he turned into the Avenue and bumped up against Mr. Wilson: he would have given almost anything at that moment to avoid speaking to Mr. Wilson, but was forced to brace himself up to it.

“Good evening. I’ve just heard . . . I’m truly sorry, Wilson.”

“Thank you. You’ve lost your lad, too. You know what it is. . . .” All Mr. Wilson’s pompousness had faded out of him and he was just a desolate, middle-aged man going home through the raw, chill darkness of a Flodmouth autumn evening.

After a moment or two Mr. Simpson spoke again—

“How’s Mrs. Wilson?”

“Oh, she’s splendid after the first shock. A Mother feels it as no one else can, of course.”

And this echo of Mrs. Wilson’s capital “M” sounding through her husband’s dull voice was somehow no longer ludicrous but deeply pathetic.

“Good-night, Simpson.”

They parted with relief, and yet they were the better for having spoken to each other; though they had, in a sense, said nothing at all. It never occurred to either of them, of course, to speak of that place to which their only sons had gone. Mr. Wilson, indeed, rather thought that he had no definite religious opinions and no definite belief in a future life; but as he plodded into his house where his wife sat trying not to cry for his sake, he did most deeply believe that his boy was alive with God, and in the glorious company of youths who have died for England.

For nearly every life in the Avenue now, consciously or unconsciously, possessed a little window opened upon heaven. Those having it might be profoundly unaware of its existence, but they could not help their lives becoming illuminated by the light of the world to come. It was this their boys had done. As they went, they opened that window.

So Mr. Simpson, though with a bad cold and fretted by unaccustomed routine work, felt absolutely certain that he had not lost sight of Jim altogether. And as he walked on he began to feel a little less miserable without knowing why. But there is no doubt that Wilson’s soul had looked out of that window and bidden Simpson’s soul to do the same. For a moment they had stood—two middle-aged, tired men on their way from a tedious day’s business—and had looked into heaven as surely as any prophet in his vision.

Supper was ready almost as soon as Mr. Simpson entered, and the family sat round the table talking of the night before, when there had been a zeppelin alarm in the city. They did not mention young Wilson’s death because each was afraid of saddening the other, but they were all most acutely conscious of the shortness of life, and its uncertainty, and the nearness of the world to come. In Barbara’s case—as in the case of many ardent young women since the beginning of history—this feeling began to dominate unduly the plans and actions of her present existence. The humdrum daily round, after her year’s hard nursing in a hospital away from home, had forced all those feelings of high patriotism and high-strung endeavour into another groove, and a less obvious one, where they had no particular outlet and were likely to become a danger to herself. The atmosphere about her was so vibrating with thoughts of sacrifice that she began to see sacrifice as an end in itself, and no longer as a means only. She began to find the sort of perverse joy in giving up which has been a power in the world ever since men began to think deeply; and she shared in a measure the state of mind which belongs to the holy man on a pillar who forces nails into his body and feels he is coming near to the eternal holiness because the nails hurt so.

With all this, she was quite a normal, healthy girl so far; but she had deep feelings and a nature which responded ardently to suggestion. As often happens at times of crisis in life many small happenings combined to accentuate one trend of thought; or perhaps thought, in these circumstances, exercises a sort of unconscious selection, picking out and dwelling upon what will sustain a point of view. At any rate, to Barbara’s over-sensitive perceptions at this period the Avenue was no ordinary street inhabited by people with a thousand varying impulses, but a place of sacrifice. One incident among many which served to deepen this impression, took place on a wet morning when she called with a magazine at that house next door to Miss Pelling’s, where Mr. Montgomery had lodged before he went away from Flodmouth with his finished book of reminiscences. As no one answered her knock she entered to lay the magazine on the hall table, and found Miss Brown fainting near the hat-stand. Then it transpired that the poor lady had become a fruitarian—mostly on cheap apples— in order to provide her bed-ridden mother with strong beef tea. Barbara remedied this state of things with Miss Pelling’s help so far as Miss Brown’s urgent pleadings for secrecy and her pride would allow, but the impression remained.

Her love for Brooke was mingled with these emotions, giving them a thrilling keenness which hurt and yet produced a sensation of rapture. The smart of shrewd pricks running deep into her heart, in some way intensified her passion for her lover. Gradually he began to appear to her against a gold-dusted haze, less like a real man than a girl’s day-dream; a knight such as a girl sees when she is very young at heart and looks half-wistfully down the road of life to see who is coming.

It was indeed this innocent freshness, this clear youth of hers which made the deepening lines round her mouth seem so oddly appealing, that had drawn both Frank Garret and Brooke. They sensed without knowing it the exquisite pleasure that could come from that admixture of freshness and passionate feeling; and in Brooke’s case some unconscious inkling of its dangers to a lover gave her a last and most powerful attraction. He burned with such a white heat of high emotion during these days that the bundle of her letters which he carried about with him among the mud and noise and sordid details of war seemed a talisman which must keep him safe for their love. They could no more really imagine it frustrated—brought to this for nothing—than they could imagine the earth dissolved. Their letters to each other told nothing of what they felt, and yet told everything; because each possessed the key by which to read the cipher.

So when Brooke wrote: “Don’t worry about me— I’m in the pink,” Barbara read: “I wouldn’t bring a shadow of trouble on you for all the world—your love keeps me safe for you.”

And when she replied: “It is chilly and miserable even here; real Flodmouth weather. Do be sure to change your socks when they get wet,” Brooke read into that: “All places are unhappy ones without you. Take care of yourself for the sake of your beloved.”

Occasionally, at the end of a letter, both got a little nearer in words to what they meant, and Brooke read such a one in a half-ruined cow-stable in France by the light of a guttering candle, which almost made the frosty, dirty place into a bridal chamber. He felt so near to her afterwards as he lay in the dark watching a streak of moonlight cross the face of the snoring comrade beyond him, that he and his love did indeed seem to have been joined in that midnight hour by bonds that nothing on earth or in heaven could break asunder.

But a dog-tired soldier cannot long keep vigil, even with the phantom bride of his imagination, and he was soon asleep. The streak of moonlight moved across from the other man’s face to his own, showing most plainly the scars and lines that war and a hard experience of life had made upon it. Even in sleep it was a vigilant face, with closed lips and an alert strength ready to assert itself in the first second of awakening: but about the utterly fatigued attitude of his body as he slept there was that slight suggestion of forlornness which had first caught Barbara’s heart.

Barbara also lay asleep in the greyish brick house which, despite all dangers and changes, seemed by comparison so sheltered—so beautifully safe—like a bird’s nest in a wood beyond the range of fire though within hearing of the guns. She held tight in the hand that was pressed against her face, the broken wedding-ring which had been filed from her finger the morning after she and Brooke parted. It was the only way she could enjoy her treasure because all romantic methods of wearing it round her neck or against her heart were open to detection by the keen-eyed Elsie, and not for worlds would Barbara have exposed the secret rapture of her thoughts to such a touch. They were wonderful—sacred—to be hidden from every one, for all time, but her lover. It would be a glory to show them to him, equally as it would be a shame to let any one see them. She possessed to the full that fierce modesty of the soul which is the joy of every lover able to detect it—which adds the last high rapture to possession.

And during that hour, while they both slept, a thing happened which they told each other in letters received by each on the same day- Both dreamed they met under a great elm-tree whose yellowing leaves were falling all round them, but after a first embrace the whole scene dropped into nothingness, as if a connection were suddenly shut off. And they awoke with a sense of loss out of all proportion to the occasion— their very life seemed to depend on knowing what followed that embrace under the elm-tree and yet something, somewhere, would not let them know.

But even when Barbara learned that Brooke had endured the same experience at the same time, common sense said it was a likely enough thing to happen. Autumn had come with the change of foliage both in England and France, and they always fell asleep think ing of each other. War and the extraordinary nearness of the spirit-world made people read into all sorts of things a meaning they would never have seen in ordinary times. So they both just hugged the dream to their souls as a sign of nearness and then forgot all about it.

At the moment of waking, however, Barbara still trembled with that strange sense of loss—of everything she so ardently desired in life fading suddenly into a blank nothingness. She clutched the broken ring tight in her hand until it hurt her flesh as if to make sure of that at least. Then came Elsie’s voice, startled—

“They’re moving about downstairs!”

“What is it? Another alarm? I never heard the buzzer. Oh, there’s Mrs. Bellerby’s voice at the door,” said Barbara, springing out of bed. “She’s all alone in the house with Blanche and Dorothy being away: I expect she is nervous.”

“Silly fool! Why didn’t she go to Brighton with them if she feels like that,” said Elsie, fastening wrong buttons in her haste, and irritably rebuttoning. “I hate people like her. I wish they’d all go away. And now you’ve got my stockings.”

“I haven’t. Here they are,” said Barbara, throwing them across the room.

“That shows you did have them,” said Elsie, eyes blazing under her wild hair. “I do wish to goodness—”

“Come, old girl; no need to get ratty because there are zepps about.”

Then Mr. Simpson’s voice up the stairs—

“Is that you moving, girls? You’d better come down. I have to go out now.”

Barbara ran to the top of the stairs, fastening her dress as she went.

“All right, Father. Will you have anything before you start?”

“No, no. Time I was off.”

The door shut. Barbara heard Mrs. Simpson speaking to Mrs. Bellerby in the passage—

“We’ll sit in the kitchen. The fire is still alight there.”

“I hope you don’t mind my troubling you.” . . .

But to Barbara all this seemed as yet far less real than the moment under the elm-tree. She went into the kitchen where the shadows of the two women looked unreal and grotesque on the wall as the candle wavered in the draught: then came a sharp whistling sound and a heavy thud. All the windows shook.

“Where’s Elsie?” cried Mrs. Simpson, running out into the passage.

“Here! I’m all right,” said Elsie from the darkness.

“Why don’t you come in here? Don’t be afraid, dear. We are only taking our share of danger with all the rest,” said Mrs. Simpson, very pale, with her weak heart beating unpleasantly.

“If we are to be bombed, we shall be,” said Mrs. Bellerby, who was quite calm; to the surprise of the Simpsons. (But that is another of the surprises in this war-time: you never know who will be unafraid.)

“Come on, Elsie. I’m going to make some tea,” said Barbara.

“Yes; do come in here, dear, out of that cold passage,” added Mrs. Bellerby. “You are no safer there, you know, and it only worries your mother.”

Suddenly Elsie was in the midst of them, her face twitching as it used to do when she first began to be ill.

“All right!” she said violently. “Look at me, then! Look at me. And let Mrs. Bellerby go away and say I’m frightened to death in an air-raid when I’m less frightened than any of you. I wish I could tear the outside of me off and show you. I’m—I’m just blazing inside with not caring, only that rotten face of mine would begin to twitch. That’s why I stopped outside in the dark by myself. I hate you to see it.”

There was another thud, further away. They turned their faces towards the sound.

“It’s going—”

“Yes. I wonder what it has caught.”

They paused. Barbara took the kettle off the fire, her soft girlish face set in a stern mask on which the gleam of firelight played strangely.

“They do it to frighten us. They don’t care so much what they hit.”

“No. It’s just bullying on a gigantic scale,” said Mrs. Simpson.

“We shall be obliged to do the same back,” said Mrs. Bellerby.

Elsie turned upon them, face twitching still, eyes on fire.

“Yes: and can’t you see that’s the worst thing they’ve done to us. They’re forcing us to be like themselves. The devil must be helping them. Only the devil could—”

“Hush, dear,” said Mrs. Simpson, handing a cup of tea. “Sugar? You’d better have some to-night.”

“I don’t want anything. And I can see you all think I’m upset because I’m frightened, but I’m not. I wish I could be like Charlotte Corday, and kill the man who sent them out, and die for it next minute. I’d die gladly. I’d glory in dying so.”

“We’ve got to live and bear things quietly. That’s harder still,” said Mrs. Simpson. “Here, sit down and drink your tea, Elsie.” And something in her voice made Elsie sit by the table and gulp down the hot tea.

After a while they began to talk of ordinary things, and Mrs. Bellerby became once more just a garrulous woman, snatching refinedly at the more difficult h’s as she described the glories of her daughter’s sojourn at Brighton.

“Dear Blanche’s mother-in-law, Mrs. Elliott, you know, is so devoted. And as Hugh is in France, she thought a week or two at a gay hotel would cheer up poor Blanche, so took her to the Metropole with no expense spared, and wired to Dorothy to join them. It just shows what bringing girls up simply will do. I can assure you, Mrs. Simpson,” she lowered her tone though Barbara and Elsie were in the scullery, “that my dear Blanche believed the story of the doctor and the apple-tree right up to the time she was married.

It undoubtedly gave a freshness——”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Simpson.

“Dear Hugh worships Blanche; simply worships her,” continued Mrs. Bellerby, “and now Dorothy— but perhaps I should not mention this, Mrs. Simpson. I used to have an impression that Mr. Frank Garret and Barbara—?” She paused inquiringly.

“How ridiculous!” said Mrs. Simpson gaily, but her heart sank within her all the same at what might be coming, for she and Mr. Simpson had hoped still that in the end Barbara and Frank would marry. A vague feeling concerning Brooke also lingered in the back of their minds. They did not even put it into thought. Such vague floating phrases as came to the surface: “You never know,” “Accidents always happening in war-time,” “He has been wounded before” . . . they pushed quickly under at once and declined to be aware of. But they were conscious that they would not grieve too much if Brooke never came back, and were uneasily ashamed of the feeling. It was therefore on the top of all this, most uncomfortably, that Mrs. Bellerby laid her next item of information.

“Frank Garret is staying at the same hotel. He and the girls seem to be going about everywhere together, and he is charmed with Mrs. Elliott. He thinks her perfectly delightful, though Blanche says she is rather silent with him. Only she is so glad to make things pleasant for any old friend of Blanche’s. She always is giving things to Blanche and trying in every way to please her, just as Hugh would like to do himself. Isn’t it wonderful?”

Mrs. Simpson thought a moment. Should she have done the same for her boy had Jim left a wife behind him? She didn’t know . . . she didn’t know. . . . At any rate she could and did appreciate the rare quality of this other boy’s mother.

“It is wonderful,” she said. “Blanche has indeed been a fortunate girl.”

“And now about Dorothy—for as there really was never anything, I may as well tell you that she and Frank are almost engaged. He has met some of Blanche’s new connections down there and they are all most pleasant together, though of course they don’t mix with everybody in the hotel.” She lowered her voice again, though on a different note. “It almost seems providential that Frank never paid Dorothy any particular attention until he got all this money. And when you think of all the girls in Flodmouth he has run after, and never gone any further! I feel at times as if my lonely widowhood were being made up to me.”

Mrs. Simpson murmured something, remembering with vividness the late Bellerby, who was a violent-tempered man, not too sober, and whose passing and leaving his income more or less intact behind him at an early age, had been the greatest good fortune of Mrs. Bellerby’s life—greater even than the great Elliott alliance.

Then Barbara stood in the doorway leading to the scullery.

“Did I hear you say Dorothy and Frank Garret were engaged?”

“Not officially,” said Mrs. Bellerby, with a giggle in which triumph and refinement struggled against each other. “But I rather fancy dear Dorothy may have some news to tell me soon.”

“How perfectly delightful!” said Barbara with enthusiasm. But she did not feel as she spoke; on the contrary it seemed for the moment a sort of insult that the man who had had her youth should be going to marry Dorothy Bellerby. She would not have married him herself now to save her family from destruction, for the calibre of her love made that sort of sacrifice impossible to her. In fact her whole emotional life was so wrapped up in her lover that she could not have allowed another man to touch her in the way of love, and yet she was angry that Frank Garret had ceased to want her so soon. . . .

Mrs. Simpson swallowed a sigh and said cheerfully—

“Dorothy will make a pretty bride.”

“Yes. It seems like Tennyson, doesn’t it! ‘Oh! happy bridesmaids do make happy brides!’ It goes something like that, doesn’t it? And so true.”

“Well, I only hope—” began Mrs. Simpson.

Then she broke off; and they sat, heads raised, eyes fixed, listening.

“That’s the ‘All clear’ buzzer, isn’t it?”

“Yes!”

“Thank goodness!”

Mrs. Bellerby rose and put on her shawl.

“Then I’ll be going. I need not inflict myself on you any longer. I’m sure you’ll want to get off to bed.”

They went with her down the passage and stood in the faint light of dawn that lit the Avenue through a choking dampness that passed like a real presence from the great River Flod to the mainland.

“You’ll be done up after this, Mrs. Simpson.”

“Oh no. So glad you came. Do be sure and come-any time you are at all uneasy, Mrs. Bellerby.”

They spoke aimlessly, wearily, glancing at the . houses opposite.

“Good thing for Miss Pelling she’s away.”

“Yes. She went almost immediately after Lillie took the child to London.”

They paused, wanting to go to bed, and yet unable to say the last word.

“I have often wondered what happened to the soldier who came to see about that child.”

“He’s out in France.”

“Well, I don’t suppose we shall ever see him again. Nothing to bring him to Flodmouth. But he behaved very well about the child.”

At last Mrs. Bellerby departed, and Mrs. Simpson and the girls banked up the fire against Mr. Simpson’s return.

“We’d better go to bed. No use sitting up, is there ?”

“No. Leave the kettle on the hob. Your Father will only be worried if he finds us here.”

They went upstairs and the two girls closed the door of their big attic bedroom: dawn was strengthening outside as they drew up the blinds, letting in the cool, damp air.

“I wish we’d all stayed in bed,” said Barbara.

“Um!” Elsie sat on her bed edge, frowning and thinking deeply. She looked grey-white and exhausted, but her eyes burnt very bright. “Barbara, I wonder if we can none of us help it—not the Germans or any of us. I wonder if it’s just some terrible law of Nature that drives men to kill each other when the world gets too settled and too full. If you read history it seems to happen so—over and over again——”

“How can you think such things, Elsie?” cried Barbara, turning sharp round from the looking-glass.

“I don’t think them. They think themselves. I hate thinking them,” said Elsie, half crying with pain and fatigue.

“Poor old girl!” said Barbara, on that crooning note of hers. “Here, get your things off and pop into bed. It’s because you’re worn out.”

Elsie, saying no more, undressed quickly and lay down. Her sister was soon asleep on the other bed, breathing quietly, while she remained awake with all sorts of half-formulated thoughts seething in her mind. However she tried to keep them back, they would crowd up through the surface, hurting her, mocking at all she held sacred. At first she prayed in bed: “O God, help me not to think things like this! Help me not to think things like this!” But that made no difference at all and she slipped out of bed to kneel shivering on the floor: a poor little figure in the dawn, confronted by the most terrible problem this age has had to solve. And she prayed harder than she ever had done in her life—until her head began to swim and she had to get up from her knees. Still it was no use. It was like praying into a wall of cotton wool. So she went back to bed again and lay awake staring into the grey twilight: hoping for nothing; expecting nothing.

And after quite a long while she began—as Mrs. Simpson had once done—to experience a very faint sense of light and calm spreading over the turmoil of her soul. It deepened. She was conscious of the response while scarcely aware that it had come.

Soon she fell asleep, having passed through one of the greatest experiences of the human soul. Only when she woke in the morning she remembered nothing of it. The knowledge was stored deep down in her girl’s memory until she should call upon it.

Morning rose grey and chill at this time of the year, and the Simpsons were breakfasting to the accustomed sounds of Flodmouth . . . the Zum! Zum! Swish! Ting! Ting! all merged together, and the high O-oh! of the engine over the wall. Now came a nearer sound, a motif making itself clear above the rest: the heavy rumble of a removal van going past the window and the raucous coughing of the man who accompanied it Mr. Simpson glanced out through the window, continuing to eat hurriedly—

“Who’s that removing?”

“Deane. He’s going to a terrace house somewhere: they can’t live here with food so dear.”

As the Simpsons thought of the little clerk at the railway end of the Avenue a shadow seemed to fall across their own table—a shadow of what was coming; but they only said—

“Three houses changed hands on one side this, autumn.”

“Yes. The doctor’s house at the corner is to let, too; there’s no telling when he’ll come back, and he can’t get a locum.”

“And Miss Pelling has given notice, of course. She wants a smaller house.”

“She’ll feel it—after all these years.”

But none of the Simpsons mentioned the fact that they also had given notice and would be leaving next Lady Day: the girls because they knew vaguely that Mr. Simpson in some mysterious way felt himself to blame for bringing his family down to a smaller house in a back street, even though he knew he was not to blame at all; and the parents because they nervously avoided at that hour of the morning a subject which was painful to both of them. For it was not, to them, just leaving a house in Chestnut Avenue for a smaller one elsewhere—it was leaving the material fabric on which their lives had been built, for something new and cold, unwarmed by the pleasant habit of years.

“The Avenue will soon seem quite different,” said Barbara.

“Yes. Pass the bread, please.”

And a picture that was not so much a picture as a vague inner vision already formed itself with slight differences in each mind; a vision of this little company of the Silent Legion disbanding as silently, to take their stand once more in a strange place with no memories to keep them warm. The winds of life blew pretty shrewdly across poor shabby Mr. Deane as he Lurried past the Simpsons’ that foggy morning, and "he had the indescribable ragged-feathered and forlorn look of a bird turned out of the nest, though he was as tidy and neatly brushed as usual. But all the same —though he did not dream of such a thing—he was really carrying the banner down the Avenue for the last time, with the Flodmouth noises playing him out just like any other soldier of England. The inscription : “Bear and Say Nothing,” in all its dull, undramatic commonplaceness could be read plainly enough by the eye of the soul as he turned the corner.

Mrs. Simpson unconsciously did so see it.

“We must go and call on Mrs. Deane as soon as they are settled,” she said.

“You never called when they were in the Avenue,” said Barbara. “Mrs. Deane is a tiresome, gossiping little woman.”

“Oh, I think we’ll go,” was all Mrs. Simpson said.

“Very decent chap—Deane,” said Mr. Simpson rising; for he also—though even more unconsciously than his wife—had seen the banner go past. “Well!' Time I was off!”

Elsie took in the letters from the postman and ran upstairs to her bedroom. When the door was shut she opened a long envelope with fingers that trembled; then her face went very pale and her eyes shone like stars under her untidy mop of dark hair. On the flimsy paper were printed four verses of four lines each—nothing more than that to cause such a look of rapt exultation. And yet after all it was something more; it was a document making Elsie Simpson free of that brotherhood who have loved and rejoiced and suffered for the written word throughout the ages. She was like an initiate just received into some great, mystery as she stood staring out of the window at a grey cat on the sparsely leaved branches of the plane-tree. One part of her longed to run downstairs shouting out: “Mother! I’m an Author! They’ve accepted my verses! I’ve got a real proof to correct! I’m an Author!”

But some other feeling, stronger even than that, forbade her to tell them. The sort of wild secretiveness which belongs to the time when real literary talent is growing in the mind of such a girl as Elsie kept her fast by the window with her back to the room even when Barbara entered. At last she had to turn round, but it was with a face so startlingly pale and eyes so bright that her sister dropped the pillow and exclaimed, startled—

“Elsie! Whatever’s the matter?”

“Nothing l”

She moved to her own bed and began to make it, while Barbara hastened to help her: as they straightened the sheets, Barbara said—

“Is your back hurting?”

“No. I wish to goodness you’d leave my back alone.”

“Oh, all right; I only wanted to get you something for it. You needn’t be so snappy.”

“I—” began Elsie; then to Barbara’s surprise she burst out crying. “Oh, Barbie, I didn’t mean to be horrid . . . only—only The London Gazette has taken my piece of poetry and they’re paying me t-ten and sixpence for it.”

“Why, Elsie—our little old Elsie!” cried Barbara, running round the bed. “Oh! Mother always said you would do something, some day!”

As the sisters hugged each other, with the clatter of the milk-cart coming in through the open window, they saw a grotesquely impossible picture of an author’s career: but even as they drew apart, the emotional moment ended, and Elsie shamefacedly “put the lid on such slopping over,” as she mentally expressed it, with a terse remark about clean toilet covers.

“But I must talk about it,” urged Barbara. “Oh, Elsie, I’m so pleased, I don’t know what to do. Fancy, when your first novel comes out and we see it on the Library shelves when we go to change a book!” '

The genuine joy in Barbara’s tone so touched Elsie and she said abruptly, holding out the proof: “Here, you can read it! But don’t say anything. I don’t want to hear anything about it.”

She believed herself to be speaking truth, though all the while she was consumed by the desire for praise or blame which is the oil which makes genius burn— though genius often denies this—and as she unnecessarily beat a pillow she stole an eager look at Barbara’s downbent face.

“It’s lovely,” said Barbara at last, looking up. “Where did you get your ideas from—a child like you? It’s simply wonderful.” She paused. “Why, I’ve felt just like that myself, and I never put it into words.”

Elsie took a deep delicious breath, drinking in her first draught of the elixir which makes all toil and bitterness worth while—the joy of self-expression when it goes home to another human soul. But she only said casually—

“Oh, it came into my head one night, so I put it down and sent it to the newspaper. I didn’t think it was any good after I’d got it posted.”

That was all she had to say about the triumph and ecstasy of creation—the reaction afterwards when the words seem without meaning and void—the new surprise of finding them good after all. But the joy of this morning when she stared white-faced at the cat in the plane-tree, she could never try to describe.

When Mrs. Simpson was told about it, she flushed rosy like a girl in her happy pride, though beneath her joy the delicate tentacles of her soul were already conscious of a little cold wind blowing. She already shared this experience with the wistful, beautiful type of all such mothers: the one who came up every year to the Temple, bringing a garment she had sewn during twelve long months of parting.

CHAPTER XV

A journey’s end

AT midday the sun came through the mist and shone pleasantly on the narrow street where Mr. Simpson stepped cork-like among his peers, past many shops that had been there ever since he could remember. At the end of the street, facing him, was a tall pillar bearing the statue of an Apostle of Freedom which over-topped the bridge and the dock offices, and shot up straight into a greyish sky permeated with soft light. Mr. Simpson felt heartened at the sight of it somehow, for it had represented to him since he was a little boy what he now understood England to be fighting for.

As he walked along he nodded to this person and lifted his hat to the other, cracking jokes when he paused for a moment, with waistcoat advanced and head a little on one side, as usual. “Heard about our new typist? Fluffy; silk stockings! And, ‘Oh, Mr. Simpson, I’m so bothered—ten per cent.—how much is that a year?’ But an uncommon nice-looking little girl, I must say . .

And Barbara, just behind, emerging unseen from the shop where her grandmother’s wedding dress had been bought, felt an utter sense of surprise and almost outrage that her father could speak in that tone of any little girl—he being, of course, to her, not a man, but a father; a distinction clear enough to anybody like Barbara.

Then her father’s friend glimpsed her over his shoulder and said jauntily—

“Oh! Good-morning, Miss Simpson. Lovely day for the time of year.”

But Barbara responded with a slight distance in her tone—she somehow blamed this friend for her parent’s lapse—and the man passed on.

“Well, Barbara, been buying the shop? I saw you through an office window going in an hour ago,” said Mr. Simpson, unconscious of offence.

“I’ve just been getting a few things,” said Barbara. Then she blushed, and tinglingly aware of this she flushed deeper and deeper until the crimson flood invaded her neck and reached her hair. “Everything is awfully dear,” she added, with a nervous laugh, looking away from her father.

He saw her discomfort and it touched him acutely, for he imagined that she thought he blamed her—poor child—for spending her bit of money there. His own face grew rather red as he held out the shilling he had intended to spend on his lunch.

“Here, get yourself a few goodies on the way home, lass!”—the dialect put on to conceal his emotion after a Flodmouth fashion.

“No! No!” But he slipped the shilling into her pocket and she turned and walked with him, though rather silently. They approached the tall monument, and Mr. Simpson looked and seemed, then, almost exactly as he had done five years ago. Almost! The difference was so subtle as to be practically invisible, and yet it affected all he said and thought and did— it was indeed tremendous. For he was a man without a dream. In boyhood he had meant to do all sorts of wonderful things, but after Jim began to grow up he stopped dreaming for himself and transferred the dream to his boy. Jim was going to make all he had hoped for of life come true. Now that was over; and the loss affected every sense and every member, yet no one could detect where the change was, not even Mr. Simpson himself.

He and Barbara met several Flodmouth men who had also lost only sons, and they were just like him; they, too, were men walking about without a dream.

Barbara crossed the bridge in silence, then broke through her father’s anecdote of a soldier and an inquisitive lady to say abruptly: “I had a letter from Julian this morning.”

“Julian!” For the moment Mr. Simpson, engrossed in his tale, failed to remember who Julian was. “Oh, Brooke, you mean. Of course.”

“He’s in England!”

“England!”

Mr. Simpson had a sudden memory of that conversation with Mrs. Simpson, and said hastily: “I hope the poor fellow is not badly wounded?”

“Not wounded at all,” said Barbara; and Mr. Simpson knew he ought not to have felt disappointed; so it was to put himself right with himself that he jerked out heartily—

“We shall be seeing him soon now—eh, Barbara? That’ll be something like; eh?”

“Not yet,” said Barbara, smiling gratefully. “Julian is at a hospital in Cheltenham. His old wound in the arm has broken out again and he has been suffering from neuritis as well.”

“That’s bad.”

“Yes.” Barbara paused. “Father, I want to go and see him.”

“Oh!” Mr. Simpson looked sharp round at her. “What does your Mother say?”

“I don’t think she wants me to go,” admitted Barbara reluctantly.

“Well, I must say I’m of the same opinion myself, Barbara,” answered Mr. Simpson. “You see, I can’t go with you—I can’t get off from the office.”

“They might let you off as a great favour. It’s not as if you were an ordinary clerk, Father; you were in business yourself before, and that must make a difference.”

“It’s just why I can’t possibly ask,” said Mr. Simpson.

And Barbara, not so dense but that she caught a glimmering of what he meant, was fain to respond reluctantly—

“Well—if you feel like that——” Then she added: “But there’s no earthly reason why I shouldn’t go alone. We don’t live in the days when girls had to have somebody tacked on to them wherever they went for fear they should get ‘up to’ something.” She raised her head proudly: “I’m to be trusted.”

“I know you are. Still, we must think of appearances, you know.” Thus Mr. Simpson clucked on the edge of the pond, never having quite moulted his Mid-Victorian feathers. “I really don’t think you ought to go alone, Barbara.” Then he saw his pretty girl look unhappy, and he so hated to see it that he concluded weakly: “Perhaps Elsie——”

But Barbara did not want Elsie.

She’d only get knocked up with the long journey. You know that, Father; besides, think of the awful expense!”

“Yes,” agreed Mr. Simpson, seizing on this idea with avidity. “Of course, now the fares are raised it will be quite an expensive journey! I don’t see how I am to find the money.”

“You won’t have to,” said Barbara. “I went to the Savings Bank and took out all my birthday and Christmas money I had in there. It was quite a lot—over twenty pounds.”

“I’m sorry you did that,” said Mr. Simpson. “You had no need to do that. If your Mother and I had agreed to let you go, we should have found the money somehow. I wish you hadn’t done that.” As he spoke they were passing down a street not far from the Savings Bank, and he added gravely, but kindly: “Come with me now and put it back again, Barbara. You may want your little nest-egg far more than you do now.”

But Barbara stood still a moment and let the people at that busy corner surge round about her unheeded.

“No, Father,” she said, looking him straight in the face. “As long as I live, I can’t want it for anything more than I do for this. I must go. I must. You don’t know. You can’t understand.” Her lips trembled. “I want to see him.”

“Then where do you imagine you are going to stay?” he said. “Do you contemplate going to the hotel by yourself?”

“I shouldn’t mind that!” flung out Barbara. “But as it happens I have the address of a sort of boardinghouse where Miss Pelling stays sometimes, and I have wired to ask if they can take me in.” She looked round and her defiant mood immediately turned into rather shaky laughter. “Oh, you dear old Dad! For goodness’ sake, don’t look like that! There’s simply not a soul at that boarding-house under sixty, I believe.”

“Wired!” gasped Mr. Simpson. “You’ve actually wired without consulting anybody!”

“I told Mother,” said Barbara.

“Told Mother!” repeated Mr. Simpson. “So this is what we get for years of devotion, care and the hundreds we have spent on your schooling—told Mother!” And he made a noise between a snort and a grunt, being all the more fierce and blustering because he felt he was just going to give in. “Why can’t you wait till Brooke comes here? It’s just a fancy you’ve got.”

Barbara gave him a side look, very odd and inscrutable, full of the circuitous woman’s wisdom which is born in the female child and no man can quite understand. But she hid her deep motive and let it go as a whim, like millions before her.

“You can’t help having fancies. I feel I must go to him now he is in England.”

“Well, if you will, you will, I suppose,” sighed Mr. Simpson; but a stirring of the jealousy which a father feels in hearing his girl speak of her lover made him add testily—

“Go, then, if you are so set on it! Though I must say I can’t see anything so wonderful about the fel low.” Then a sense of justice forced him to add: “Not that I know anything against him—on the contrary.”

Barbara slipped her hand through her father’s arm and squeezed it tenderly.

“Thank you, Dad.” And she added, smiling: “I know what you have against Julian. You wanted me to marry a sort of sainted millionaire with a good temper and plenty of pleasant relations.”

“Nonsense!” Mr. Simpson also smiled, reluctantly. “I’m only thinking about your happiness, my girl; you know that.”

And he thought he spoke the truth, but it was only a half truth; for he desired also, like most fathers, to be proud of his daughter’s marriage, just as he had hoped to be proud of his son’s career.

When Barbara reached home she found the cold lunch of which the female members were partaking in Mr. Simpson’s absence already on the table. Mrs. Simpson looked up from cutting the bread with her pretty, anxious smile—

“Well, dear? Got the margarine?”

“Oh, I forgot! I’m so sorry,” said Barbara.

Then Elsie entered, carrying a large cardboard dress-box which she placed on the sofa.

“This has just come from Harrison’s: marked ‘Urgent.’ Whatever have you been getting, Barbara ?”

Barbara frowned and flushed deeply again as she had done when she came out of the shop and encountered her father, but she walked straight to the box, took up a dinner knife and cut the string.

“There!” she said, lifting out a pretty, neat coat and skirt of dark blue and a blouse of pale apricot colour. “That’s what I’ve got; they’re to go to Cheltenham in.”

“My dear! You must have spent nearly ten pounds !” exclaimed Mrs. Simpson.

“I did, Mother; but it was my own money. I had a right to spend it as I liked,” said Barbara, putting the things down on the sofa end and moving to her seat at table. “I inquired about the train, too; it leaves at nine.”

“Then you’re really going?” said Elsie, wide-eyed and rather subdued. “I thought you were just kidding before you went out.”

“Oh, did you? Salt, please.”

And the little meal was finished almost in silence, both Barbara and Mrs. Simpson feeling as if every mouthful were mixed with sand; but they managed to swallow what was on their plates and at last it was time to clear the table.

“You can go and rest, Elsie. I will help Barbara to wash up,” said Mrs. Simpson in a low tone; and Elsie went.

For a moment or two Mrs. Simpson stood outside the kitchen door listening to Barbara clattering the plates inside. It was an immense effort to her to force herself into her daughter’s confidence, but she had to do it. As she went in Barbara looked round from the sink without smiling.

“Why aren’t you lying down?” she said curtly.

“Barbara, what does this all mean?” said Mrs. Simpson.

“You know. It means I’m going to see Julian,” said Barbara, continuing to clatter plates.

But even in face of that Mrs. Simpson forced herself to go on. She was not in the least afraid of Barbara, but she was so terribly afraid of intruding. All the same she made herself say: “Those new clothes! You’re—you’re not thinking of getting married without telling us, Barbara?”

“No.”

“You’ll promise me not to do that, Barbara?”

There was no reply. Barbara made a noise with a pile of dry crockery and carried it into the pantry. Mrs. Simpson followed. It was an extraordinary reversal of any scene that could have taken place between Mrs. Simpson and her mother.

“Barbara, don’t you hear me?”

“I’m not going to make any promises. I told you I had no intention of marrying without your knowledge. I do wish you wouldn’t bother me so.”

“You are my daughter. I must try to take care of you.”

“It’s very good of you, Mother, but I am quite well able to take care of myself,” said Barbara; then she took up a basin of refuse and went out of the back door into the garden.

Mrs. Simpson’s lip trembled, but she controlled herself. So this was the reality of the scene she had so often pictured when she and Barbara should talk together about a wedding. Slowly, heavily, she went to her sofa and lay down.

In the evening when she and Mr. Simpson were alone together, after the girls had gone to bed, she told him what had happened.

“I can’t make Barbara out,” he said. “That man seems to have quite changed her nature. She seems to care about nothing and nobody so long as she can get to him.”

“Yes—I must say I almost wondered a little when she was so ready to go to Scarcliffe,” hesitated Mrs. Simpson. “I should have made her go in any case, of course, but I thought she would take a little persuading.”

“Dear me! I never thought of that,” said Mr. Simpson. “You may bet your life that was at the bottom of it. Otherwise she would have insisted on your going with Elsie. You wanted the change more than she did.” He rattled his paper impatiently. “The chap seems to have bewitched her. I suppose it’s no use forbidding her to go to Cheltenham.”

Mrs. Simpson shook her head.

“She would go all the same—and with a bitter feeling towards us that might drive her into any folly.” There was a pause, some ashes dropped on the hearth; then Mrs. Simpson roused herself to comfort her husband. “I wouldn’t worry too much, Sam. Barbara is to be trusted.”

“But she’s so altered. I never thought our girl could get like this, Harriet,” said poor Mr. Simpson. “She doesn’t seem to care tuppence about us—after all the love and care we’ve given her.”

“No, no, Sam. It isn’t that.” And a very sweet smile lit up Mrs. Simpson’s tired face. “She’ll come back to us: it’s only for the time being. I’ve known other girls just the same and they all came back in the end.”

“Well, I never thought Barbara would be like that,, though.”

Neither did Mrs. Simpson, really: for she had cherished unconsciously the beautiful belief of all mothers that their children will be the chosen ones who do not hurt their parents; but she ranged herself beside her daughter and said cheerfully enough: “After all, it might have been much worse. At least Julian is a gentleman and possessed of some little private means. It may be a very happy marriage.”

“I wish to goodness she’d taken Frank Garret,” muttered Mr. Simpson, “not that I care much about him, personally, only I think she would have had a greater chance of happiness.”

“Well, there it is!” said Mrs. Simpson, but after a minute or two she added vehemently: “And yet people laugh at love—when it’s the thing that shapes more lives than anything else in the world!”

“Yes.” For a minute or two Mr. Simpson also brooded. But soon he bestirred himself to say, with a chuckle that had no heart in it: “One of the key trades since the beginning and always will be, Amen; eh, Harriet?”

So they turned back the hearth-rug and lit a night-light on the mantelpiece in case of an alarm and went to bed.

When the train was once really off, and Barbara saw the familiar mud-banks running along past her carriage windows, she experienced a sense of relief which entirely ousted any thought of regret for those she was leaving behind. The newspaper which Mr. Simpson had given her lay unread on her knee while she sat back luxuriating in a cessation of the strain under which she had lived since receiving Brooke’s letter on the previous morning.

Some alteration of the train service obliged her to go round by Leeds, and she spent two hours in a place, half buffet, half waiting-room, with people constantly coming and going, and an odd gloom of unreality pervading everything—as if it were a waiting-room in a rather unpleasant dream. By degrees, however, one other passenger emerged from the general unsubstantiality, and Barbara noticed a female in a black dress sitting on the other side of the fireplace, who was evidently waiting for the same train as herself; and who kept taking some sort of meat lozenge from a small tin box, sucking it earnestly, and then abstracting another so as to be ready the moment the last was eaten. Her hair was yellow and her clothes were a travesty of extreme youthful fashion, though she must have been over forty. Barbara’s faint interest deepened into a light contempt as she watched her fellow passenger alternately patting her hair, arranging her hat and sucking. At last the woman leaned forward and said—

“Tiresome having to wait so long here. Won’t you take a beef lozenge? I find I must keep myself up.”

“No, thank you,” said Barbara.

“You’re on your way to Cheltenham, no doubt? I was going to see my brother there, but I received news this morning that he had died in hospital. We were twins and had always lived together. He was a vegetarian and wore hygienic clothing before he joined up, but we never allowed divergence of views to make any difference. We were very happy together.” She wiped her eyes. “I don’t think I can go to the Literary Lectures alone this winter. The tickets for the course came just before I started.” She looked at Barbara, suddenly frightened. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve nobody else.”

Barbara could say nothing for the catch in her throat and the little lady went on almost immediately: “That’s why I’m eating these lozenges. I am very anxious to keep up. I know he would like me to keep up. He did so dislike crying and that sort of thing.” She paused and held out the tin box: “Won’t you have one?”

As Barbara took a lozenge and held it in her hand, a deep crimson surged over face and neck. She was suddenly seized with a violent, unreasoning horror of war—such as many women have felt during the past three years. War was an evil thing. Whatever glorious deeds and thoughts came too, it was evil.

Then she heard the woman saying: “Here is our train,” and they went to it. There was no chance for further talk in the crowded railway carriage, and Barbara soon began to think of her own affairs as the train rushed along hour after hour through the autumn fields. All the same, beneath her thoughts of that meeting which drew so near now—in the same way that the Flodmouth noises and the sound of the waves had accompanied their real meetings—was a murmur that she did not notice either; but her soul heard it.

The Promenade at Cheltenham is a delightful place about tea-time on an early November day, with the sun just setting and the lights all twinkling out. An old rook going home often caws with the pleasant quaintness of a dairy-maid going through the city, and the high trees gently let fall their yellow leaves upon the stir of traffic and the constant trip-trip-trip of moving feet on the wide, clean pavement. Then, on the further side of the road are fine shops having in them all manner of gay things to wear, and florists with great vases of flowers, and splendid booksellers; while to the left of the noble pathway under the high trees are little narrow gardens set with statues and fountains, and beyond them again are seen the tall straight-fronted houses set in a row with old-fashioned primness and quietude against the advancing evening.

As Barbara came down the steps of one of these houses she received an impression of something ordered and old and leisurely which had adapted itself in the most beautiful way to the needs of the passing hour. It was so lovely and yet so fitting and English, down to the very women who walked along the pavements with their sophisticated charm and pretty faded faces—women who had been bleached under Indian suns or had grown worn-looking with following the drum to palmy, forgotten places. And that fresh youth might be there too, a string of blue-clad girls came along with eyes bright and cheeks all rosy in the cold.

For a little while Barbara forgot the worry and sadness which had preceded her journey and only felt she was going to meet her lover. It seemed right that he should come towards her on that broad walk in his blue hospital uniform, just as she had first seen him. She knew a moment of perfect happiness.

“I was so sorry I couldn’t get to the train to meet you,” he said.

And yet he said a thousand other things; the still, dampish air that was fragrant of fallen leaves vibrated between them with the lovely things they were saying to each other.

“You told me you might not be able to meet me. I found the boarding-house all right. It’s just over there,” said Barbara.

“I never thought you’d really come. Oh, Barbara, I can scarcely believe it! I can scarcely believe it yet!”

Then they noticed a smile—a very kind little smile —on the face of a woman passing; and they suddenly realised they were still holding hands.

“Let us go and have some tea,” he'said. “There’s a capital place just across the way. I say; isn’t this glorious?”

“Oh, Julian; it seems too good to be true.”

So they went across the road, he with his hand in her arm to show all the world she was his, and she leaning a little towards him to show all the world he was hers. Then they reached the clean pavement that sounded so pleasantly under Barbara’s tapping heels, and followed a fat lady into the big confectioner’s shop at the corner.

The ground floor covered with little tables was almost full, but they found a place in an alcove and looked round from that harbourage on piles of cakes, and announcements about Christmas parcels, and on the faces of people who were cheerful for the sake of others if they could not be so for themselves.

“Care!” said Barbara, taking an excuse for touching her lover. “I see your poor arm is in a sling; you must not let people brush against it.” And he was so thrilled by her touch that he could scarcely answer her for the moment.

They praised the tea—never tasted such excellent tea. They praised the cake—no one would think it was war-time. They even praised the limitation of food, and said how much better many people would be in consequence. In the end they went so far as to praise an elderly gentleman near who kept saying over and over again: “I call this a damn bad tea. Martha, don’t you hear me? I call this a damn bad tea,” and thought that he was a most amusing old person. In fact, the shop, Cheltenham, the universe —was on that November afternoon set out for their enjoying.

“I can’t understand how you ever got your people to let you come off like this all by yourself,” said Brooke suddenly, when they were half way through their meal.

“Oh, I managed it all right,” said Barbara, crumbling her cake and glancing bright-eyed about her. “But we won’t talk about things like that just yet,

Julian. Let’s simply be jolly. I’ve done——” She was sombre for a second: “I’ve done enough thinking and worrying lately.”

“Poor little girl!” He touched her hand under the table—her broad-palmed, slender-fingered hand that was now slightly roughened and reddened with work —and his touch ran through her veins like fire; she thought passionately that she would recognise that touch if she were blind—if she were dead. Her face was white and her blue eyes looked black under the shadow of her hat as she whispered—

“Oh, I’ve wanted you so, Julian! I’ve wanted you so dreadfully!”

“And me—what about me, Barbara?”

He held her hand so tightly that it hurt, but the pain only added to her joy—she liked him to hurt her. The little pain seemed to prick home the rapture of their secret contact amid this crowd of people.

“Did you think of me a lot when you were out there? Even when you went into action?”

“I never thought of you and I always did; I never had to think of you. You were always there in my mind. But when a man goes into action he doesn’t think about anything—at least I didn’t—he just feels ready—”

“Ready for what?”

Barbara leant towards him, lips parted, eyes darkly dilated, and the sight of her thus made him pull up short.

“Oh, ready for off,” he said. “Here, have another cake?” And he withdrew his hand to pass the plate.

She drew a long breath and sat straighter, feeling a little chilled and rebuffed.

“I’ve finished, thank you,” she said. “Shall we be going?”

She helped him carefully into his overcoat which hung loose over his damaged arm and covered the blue uniform. It was already almost dark when they came out, and stars were beginning to shine here and there in the sapphire sky over the tall trees on the other side of the wide road. As they felt the fresh air in their faces the mood of the last few minutes cleared away, and they felt lightly joyful once more in each other’s company.

“I say! How pretty the shops look, Julian!”

“Yes. There’s a jeweller’s here I want you to see.”

“What for?”

He slipped his right arm into hers and laughed in her upturned face.

“You know, you little humbug! By the way, where have you got the two bits of that wedding-ring I gave you?”

“I have them in my purse. I wanted to wear them round my neck, as I said; but I couldn’t, because of Elsie.”

“Elsie! What’s Elsie to do with it?”

“We share a room together. She’d see.”

“Well!” He still kept her arm, but she felt him stiffen. “You’re not ashamed of it, are you?”

“Of course not.” She clung tighter. “You know I’m not. Only Elsie makes such fun ... I didn’t want any one to . . .” She paused and said in a very low tone: “It—it was so awfully private, Julian! So just between you and me ... I didn’t like . . .”

“No, no! I see. I’m glad you didn’t.”

And in the faint light from the shop window she saw how his seamed and vivid face glowed with pale adoration of her girl’s reticence and sweetness. His dark eyes burnt into hers as he drew her away from the window.

“Come inside, dear. I’m going to choose you another.”

She held back. He was surprised and half maddened by her sudden oncomings and withdrawals, and yet he was sure she was no coquette; they were absolutely the reflection of her feeling—they mirrored something deep and hidden in her girl’s heart that a man perhaps could not understand.

“Don’t you want another ring from me, Barbara?” he said gently. “I mean an engagement ring, of course.

We will have the broken wedding-ring put together again somehow and get married with that; I couldn’t like any other so well.”

He was groping—trying to find out what she wanted —what she had in her mind.

“I’m—I’m tired!” she said with a little half-sob. “I’d rather not choose one to-night, Julian.”

“Why,” he gave in at once, “what a brute I am! I ought to have remembered—after all that long journey and the fuss and bother of getting off. . . . And I dare say you didn’t sleep much last night. Poor little Barbara! Poor little Barbara! You’ll think I shall make a nice husband. I’ll just take you to your boarding-house and go back to the hospital. It’s time I went in, anyway.”

They crossed the road to the beautiful broad walk under the high trees, and so many leaves had fallen that the dark sky gleamed through, lighted by the stars.

“All right now ?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

They walked in silence, filled with the joy of being together—everything else seemed to have faded out of their lives. Then he took her to her boarding-house and their parting was witnessed by a thin lady ushering out a female guest.

CHAPTER XVI

CHELTENHAM

NEXT morning Barbara came downstairs some-what early to breakfast and noticed through the open doorway of the dining-room that the same thin lady was before her. She paused a moment before entering, and her shoes were noiseless, so she saw her fellow-boarder hastily changing one pat of butter for another which looked larger and more appetising.

“Oh!” said the lady, caught pat on knife half-way across the room, and speaking almost gushingly to conceal the doubtful situation. “Lovely morning, isn’t it? I am starting breakfast early as I have to be at the hospital as soon as possible. Life is such a rush now-a-days, is it not ?”

And she sat down drumming with her fingers on the table, eager to give the impression that her duties of washing up crockery for a few hours two days a week kept her in a stress and strain which needed—if anything were thought by Barbara—the support of somebody else’s margarine.

But though neither she nor Barbara saw it, she was not a thin, nervous and rather unoccupied lady of the middle-class; she was a sign of something rather stupendous : a sign that the middle-class Englishwoman is no longer ashamed of work; she is ashamed of idleness.

Later in the day, Barbara sat on a seat just beyond the quaint and narrow gardens which divided the paved way before the boarding-house from the walk under the trees. A little marble fountain was playing near at hand, and the leaves fell softly, gently, every now and then; resting like flakes of gold on the water. A leisured traffic passed up and down on the main road, not enough to trouble an onlooker, and yet giving a sense of movement and life. On the broad pavement across the road, Barbara could see through this still, sunnily-misty air, the same sort of women as walked there the evening before wearing even the dowdiest, shabbiest clothes with an air which marked them out as not provincial. They had been out into the world, “for to see and to admire,” and though they might have settled down to a very narrow and bickering old age here, they bore the impress of where they had wandered in the first flush of youth. Old men moved among them, stopping to speak with a dim reflection of past gallantry, and a few lads on leave or in hospital went along either alone or in company: but whoever it was, they nearly all looked cheerily out at life, obeying the unwritten order that no British gentleman-in-arms should pull a long face.

Barbara was just beginning to feel cold in spite of the pale sunshine which lay so beautifully on the stained marble (stained greyish, and not golden, as it would have been out of England) and upon the delicate spirals of water and the yellow leaves floating in the basin. So she rose and walked slowly up and down for awhile until at last she saw Brooke crossing the road. Instantly, all that had been charming before took on an aching beauty that permeated her soul, more like something remembered than a scene actually before the eyes.

He grasped her hand and held it, searching her face, making sure of her presence; it seemed as if life could scarcely hold such happiness.

“Did you sleep well? Are you comfortable in your boarding-house ?”

Then they walked on because they were again forced to become aware of passers-by; this time a lady with a little, yapping dog who was eyeing them with fat contempt; it seemed so ridiculous to her because she had long passed by or never known that joy. And at a place where three roads met, they paused a minute and chose a wide one with the great yellowing trees still edging one side and straight-fronted, tall houses on the other. As they passed a seat with two soldiers sitting on it, one man said to the other, in a voice which the lovers could not help hearing—

“Well—arm or no arm—he's all right!”

And the lovers smiled into each other’s faces, their pleasure in some way made more keen by this expression of good-natured envy.

“Poor chaps! I wish they were in the same boat,” said Brooke.

“So do I. Oh, I do wish we could give them some treat. Is there no treat we could give them?” cried Barbara, face sweetly flushed and all alight.

But Brooke was not so altruistic as all that, and he drew her on, laughing at her tenderly.

“We can’t give them their wives and sweethearts, old girl,” he said. “Not that they’re all so very keen on having their wives; you can’t blame ’em either.”

“Fancy marriage ever getting to that, Julian!”

It seemed incredible to Barbara—incredible even to Brooke, who had known the reality of marriage, because love is like spring, renewing everything.

But the word marriage sang in his ears; he put his hand through her arm and murmured passionately: “I’ve not kissed you properly since you came. I must, somehow. I can make allowances now for the poor beggars you see making such fools of themselves in the streets and parks in an evening. How are they to do differently when they’ve nowhere else to go ?”

Barbara trembled before his fierceness and yet it was a joy to her.

“Don’t you want to as well?” he asked, almost roughly.

“You know I do,” she said very low.

“But it’s no use my going to the boarding-house,” he stormed. “The place is full of old women going in and out. Besides, I must think of you: I shouldn’t like any one to have the right to say a word of course.” He looked round impatiently at the trees and the straight old houses. “So many places and nowhere for us to go! I want to talk seriously to you and yet I can’t until I’ve had one good kiss. I’m—I’m hungering for it, Barbara.”

His voice caught harshly on that and Barbara’s whole soul melted at the sound. Poor boy! Poor boy!

She, too, looked round at the straight houses where so many lovers must have sheltered; then her quick wits, quickened by his longing and her own, made her cry out suddenly—-

“Why, Julian? I know what we can do. We can ask to see over an empty house. It says in that one, ‘Keys next door.’ ”

He hesitated; then his desire to be alone with her where no one could spy on them swamped every other consideration.

“Very well,” he said almost reluctantly.

So they went up some tall steps and an old servant with a sour face at once gave them the keys. She was embittered by answering the door for people who had looked over the house and gone away without taking it, and she turned a lack-lustre, contemptuous eye on this new pair of fools who would doubtless—despite their folly—be able to observe the extreme inconvenience of the kitchen and basements.

“Mind you lock all up well after you, and bring back the keys,” she said, shutting the door on them.

They turned the key in the lock of the house and entered the front room where the shutters were partly open. The walls were panelled half-way up and the scratched flooring was polished; a mustiness of discreet festival hung about the place, from times when the men and women dwelling here lived ordered, narrow lives, which had yet a fitness and fineness of their own which we are too near to see rightly at present. ...

But now that the time had come, both Barbara and her lover hesitated a moment, speaking of the room and glancing away from each other. Then Barbara suddenly felt herself in his arms, his mouth hard pressed on hers, his heart throbbing so that she could feel it through his thick clothes. The room seemed to swim round her and he felt her sag on his arm. Her eyes closed. But he had to satisfy his hunger for her lips. At last he let her go.

“Oh, Julian!” she murmured faintly. “Your bad arm. You’ll have hurt your bad arm.”

And this simple thought for him in the midst of her own passion, which he had felt responsive in her, brought him back to himself. He pushed his hair from his forehead and picked up the cap which had fallen on the floor.Then he went across and opened the window.

“Gome and sit on the window-seat,” he said, speaking rather jerkily and breathlessly still. “You’ll feel the sun there.”

“Yes.” She let her hand fall on her lap and the sunshine bathed her in mellow autumn radiance. Outside the last crimson trailers of the Virginia Creeper hung across the upper panes of the window and cast delicate shadows through the soiled glass 0n to her face. She seemed to him most exquisitely lovely and appealing as she sat there, tired by his passion. He wanted to protect her from that as from everything else during the moment he stood there, looking down at her. Then Barbara looked up at him and smiled.

“Don’t you wish we could have this house for our own, Julian?”

“Yes.” He paused. “No, I don’t, I mean.” He pulled himself together and smiled back at her, master of his emotions once more. “We’re going to have a much nicer house than this, Barbara, out in Canada.”

To his surprise, as he said that, all the glow and softness died out of her face: the little lines round the mouth showed more plainly than he had ever seen them before—those tiny lines he loved because they were.a part of her.

She waited a moment and then said, looking out of the window—

“You like Canada? You want to go back?”

“You bet I do,” he said. “I’ve a life out there. Here, I should have no chance at all. I never was any good at clerical work and I don’t understand English farming. Besides, my whole property is being made yet, and I could never realise at present to bring in anything worth while. I couldn’t possibly find enough . capital to start a second farm in England, even if I wanted to.” He paused, glancing sharply at her. “You don’t funk going out with me?”

“Why! Don’t you remember you said at the Picture Palace that first time we were alone, that I was cut out for a colonist’s wife?” she said. Then she added in a low tone and with a wistfulness he could not understand: “No, Julian; I’m not afraid of a life out there with you.”

“But your people, I fear, won’t like it. What do they say?”

She looked down, twisting her fingers.

“They don’t say anything. I’ve not told them.”

“Not told them! You’ve said nothing about my getting my discharge and going back to Canada?”

“No.” She waited a moment, wondering what was going to happen next; then instinct came to her aid and she rose and slipped her hand through his arm, pressing herself against him. “I wanted to get off without any fuss and discussion—I wanted so to come to you, dear.”

And the tide of his passion swept over him again; he could not keep his mind clear enough to reason out what her words meant—he only knew she was immeasurable dear and that he could feel her sweetness pressing against him. Gently, after he had kissed her —as if she were something breakable and precious— he put her down on the broad window-sill again and sat beside her with her hand in his. The trail of crimson Virginia Creeper making shadows on her pale face for some reason caused him to picture her walking in his apple orchard in spring with the wind in her hair leaning towards her with her hand tight clasped, he told her of the life out there that they were going to live together. He’d worked for it and earned it by ceaseless toil and it was a part of him; she realised that as she watched his face and listened to his voice.

“Thank God I’ve got it to fall back on now,” he said. “The doctors think my arm may get nearly right again in the dry Canadian air, but I have reached a point where I can afford to hire for the actual manual labour; or I may take the man who is looking after it now into partnership. I’ve not settled yet what I shall do exactly.” He paused, smiling with his bright, dark eyes into hers. “There’s one thing certain, and it’s the one that matters most: you’ll be there!”

Barbara released her hand and sat plucking her gown and looking down.

“You would hate to be in an office in England, of course.”

“I should loathe it. Besides, I’m no good at office work, and I could never get to be anything more than a clerk or a shopman here. My job’s out there and I’m glad of it. I like the freedom of the life.”

“Yes. I can’t picture you chained to a desk or a counter,” said Barbara still in the same odd, inward tone. “But you’d do it for me, wouldn’t you? If I had to stay in England ?”

“I would if I couldn’t have you in any other way,” he answered. “I’d live anywhere and do anything for that.”

She saw his vivid, seamed face approaching hers once more and she pushed him back with both hands, gazing at him with a sort of desperate earnestness which he did not understand or even notice through the haze of his own emotion.

“Julian,” she said, “you’d chafe your heart out here in any job you could get. You’d settle down at first, perhaps, while it was all new; but afterwards——”

She stopped short, thinking on into the future for him, as women do for their children; and she saw him dulled, fretted, narrowed, embittered, or forced into-some evilly fantastic escape from bonds that irked him unbearably: but she never once doubted that he would still love her through it all. If he stayed in England he would be torn to agony all his days by his love for her dragging one way and his love of freedom and adventure dragging the other. He had gained character from his experience which would make him stick to his job, she believed; but he would not be happy even with her love.

She stared out of the open window, turning away from him, vaguely conscious—with that fine hearing of hers—of the noises of Cheltenham, which were quite different from those of Flodmouth; lighter, more tripping and ordered, mingled always with the delicate-sound of branches moving a little in the quiet air..

And beneath that her soul listened again to the same under-sound which she had been gradually hearing more and more clearly during the past year in Flodmouth—which had, in all those months when her hands and not her mind were occupied, become a sort of obsession, colouring everything, coming into everything, while she herself remained unaware of any abnormal state of mind.

But these feelings all passed through her being in the brief time between her saying “afterwards . . .” and his replying gravely—

“Do you want me to stop in England, Barbara?” She looked straight at him, exaltation and yet clear truth in her eyes.

“No, Julian, I would rather you went back.” “Because I didn’t enlist with the Canadians, you know. I came over on my own and joined up here, so I am not obliged to go over to Canada to get my discharge. I can simply stay on here, if I wish.” “But you don’t, Julian.” She tried to smile and speak lightly, touching his hand; for she had learned her power to distract him by touch from seeing too clearly what was in her thoughts.

So he took her in his arms again, murmuring close to her soft cheek: “You don’t mind this, dear? Do you ?”

“Mind!” She clung to him. “What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. You looked so pale sitting in that window. As if I’d tired you out, somehow.”

“No, no.” She pressed her head on his shoulder and let her body relax, saying in that strange, inward voice: “No! This is rest.”

“Barbara, to think of the time when I shall have you always: coming in from work and you there; and. no saying good-night. My own little love. You do love me, don’t you?”

“Oh, Julian, I do love you!” she whispered. “I’ve, lain awake and thought of you and wanted so to kiss the scar on your face: I don’t know why I always thought of that.”

“My little girl; my sweetheart!” he murmured in a transport of tenderness. “We must be married soon, whether I can take you over with me at present or not. But if I once get you how can I leave you ?”

She lay in his arms a few moments without speaking, then she got up and took her hat from the mantelpiece—

“We must go now.”

“Yes, I suppose so, or we shall have that sour-faced, old party from next door coming to see if we have stolen the gas-fittings.” He looked round at the windows and the panelled walls. “Tell you what, Barbara, if I were a millionaire, I should buy this house just as it stands for us to stay in when we come to visit England. Then when we got to be old folks ourselves, and the young ones could run our place in Canada, we might come here for long spells at a time.. Seems to me Cheltenham wouldn’t be a bad place to sit down in after the day’s work was over. There’s something about these old houses that would go well with, a happy old age.”

“Oh! Don’t!” Barbara turned round sharply with, her hands still to her hat; then she began to cry bitterly, but stemmed her tears almost as soon as they began.

“Why: what’s the matter, dear?” he said, hurrying across to her. “Has the pin pricked you?”

She walked to the door and turned then, facing him with a smile. “Silly! As if I should cry because a pin pricked me!”

“Then what was it ?”

She preceded him through the hall, head bent—

“I—I didn’t like to hear you talk about getting old,” she faltered.

“Was that all ? Little goose, we shall have to grow old some day; and I am thinking of all the lovely years in between.” He paused just inside the door and kissed her once again: then he turned the key in the lock and they emerged from the shadows into the bright afternoon.

“Good-bye, old house,” he said. “We won’t forget you; will we, Barbara?”

Barbara shook her head and said nothing, biting her lip.

But when he came down the steps next door after delivering up the keys, she was quite gay and smiling.

“Come!” she said. “Let us go and have tea somewhere.”

“Right-o! I’m a true Canadian for liking a cup of tea, but I like it good and strong too, with plenty of °ugar in it.”

“You always drink it with your dinner out there, don’t you?”

And so Barbara led him on to speak of every trifling detail of his life in Canada, hanging on his words as he described the cooking stoves, and meals, and long drives in wintry weather, and parties at Christmas time, as if it were some wonderful tale of Ulysses.

Every now and then she made him repeat some trivial thing over again, as if to fix it in her mind, until even he turned upon her at last with a laugh and a jest: “I can’t remember any more, old girl, you’ll have to come and see the rest for yourself.” But he was touched by her interest in his daily life to a more real sense of the bond between them than he had ever felt before.

They had their tea in an old-fashioned confectioner’s, where the very walls seemed permeated by memories of long-past banquets provided under that roof for Nabobs who came home, after a twenty or thirty years’ uninterrupted residence out in India, to enjoy themselves on what was left of their lives after serving their country on chutney and brandy pawnee—but serving it well, all the same. There was an old waiter left who seemed to belong to the past, but the rest of the attendants were girls with crimped hair and powdered faces who belonged to the day of Barbara and her lover.

It was once more growing dark as they came out after tea, just as it had been the day before. On their way through the shop they passed by jars of potted lampreys from the Severn which were delicious enough and rich enough to make the legend of a greedy king’s end a thing that might happen to anybody, and which linked up the present with the past more acutely even than the waiter and the broad walks and the dignified houses—like a little, shrill note in this symphony of bygone times which reached the ear almost with a sense of touch, it was so clear. The idea of permanence which made the town a restful place to grow old in enveloped Brooke like a tangible atmosphere as he walked by Barbara’s side past the shops with their gay fruit and lustrous fish and all the coloured variety of their wares. In the whole of his adventurous life he had never before felt so lulled into a quiet realisation of things happy now, and going to last. His joy was so deep that it became quiet, just sparkled over at the top by little remarks he made to Barbara for the pleasure of hearing her voice and seeing her face turn to him.

When they reached the same jeweller’s that they had noticed the afternoon before, he said to her—

“We’ll go in now to buy that ring, Barbara. I won’t be put off any longer.” And he marched in, leaving her to follow.

The elderly shopman spread trays of different jewels for her to choose from, glancing with sympathy from the wounded soldier to the girl. So here it was again; war—suffering—loss—and yet love holding strong through it all, to remain when all else was gone. This was what his heart said, under his dry and starched exterior, though he was not aware of his heart speaking at all. He only made up his mind not to bring out any very expensive rings “for fear the poor chap should be run in for more than he could afford.” But Barbara so insisted on having a very cheap one without stones that he was after all disappointed a little, for he was a tradesman and human. However, he could not feel really sorry, because of that voice in his heart, and he murmured as he handed the receipted bill: “Chaste design; and it has the advantage of being suitable to wear at all times and seasons like a wedding-ring.”

Brooke beamed at the little grey man who thus so splendidly consoled him for his disappointment; and as they came out of the shop he took Barbara’s arm and whispered—

“So that was it? You wanted one you could do chores in, you darling! I just love you for that more than ever before, Barbara.” He had stopped short in 'the midst of all the people and a fresh-faced, fiery old gentleman in spats quite snorted as he bumped into the couple; then saw Brooke’s arm and said quite humbly: “I beg your pardon, sir.”

“What on earth are you stopping for, Julian?” said Barbara.

“The broken wedding-ring that wants joining together and making to fit you properly. You’ve got it in your purse, haven’t you?”

“Oh, don’t let us bother with it now,” said Barbara, hurrying on.

“But it would be so easily done here,” protested Brooke, obliged to follow her.

She shook her head.

“Not now.” Then she caught sight of a chocolate shop and seized on a distraction. “Oh, do go in and get me some chocs! I’ve not had any for such an age.”

“Well . . .” He allowed the matter to pass for the moment and came forth in two minutes with a large packet in his hand. “Now for the jeweller’s!”

“No, dear,” pleaded Barbara. “Let us go and sit on one of those seats opposite while we eat the sweets.”

“We can do that afterwards.” He hesitated; but Barbara was already making her way across the road.

It was very pleasant under the high trees, though there was a slight mist and no stars. They sat on until Brooke shivered in spite of his overcoat, and then Barbara jumped up with a self-reproachful—

“Oh, Julian! I forgot you are an invalid. How selfish I am! You are getting cold here.”

“Nonsense! I’m perfectly all right. Do stay. It is all your fancy,” he pleaded.

But she was not to be persuaded, and he had at last to walk with her past the narrow garden to the boarding-house.

“To-morrow at the same time, then?” he said, as they parted.

“Yes.” She paused on the bottom step. “You know to-morrow’s the last day?”

“Know! I should think I do. Well, one blessing, this sort of thing will soon be ended.”

“Good-night!” She was on the top of the steps now.

“Good-night!” he answered, but in spite of feeling cold he remained standing there a long time afterwards; he seemed as if he could not tear himself away from the house that sheltered her.

CHAPTER XVII

THE RETURN

THEY sat under one of the great beeches which had grown to such a beautiful and even stature in that kindly air, and were so different from the storm-bent trees of Scarcliffe.

“You’re very quiet to-day, Barbara,” he said. “You look as if you had slept badly.”

“Do I? Oh, I did rather.” But she did not turn to him, and continued to stare before her with dark encircled eyes.

He moved a little closer and took her hand that lay on her knee under her muff.

“Cheer up, old girl! We’ve had a glorious time whatever happens next.”

She turned to him now but there was still no smile on her face, and she said with a brooding gravity— “Then I was right to come?”

“Of course you were. What do you mean, Barbara?” he said, beginning to be a little puzzled and uneasy.

“I thought it all out: the hours I lay awake at home, thinking—” She paused. “And now I have only made it so much harder.”

“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?” he said sharply.

She stared before her again. She felt she could not tell him yet, and yet she must. . . . When that soldier had crossed the road she would tell him. No, when that woman had turned the corner. Now!

She gave a little gasp, catching her breath: “I came to Cheltenham to tell you I couldn't marry you. I thought I might hurt you less than by writing—and I’ve only hurt you more.”

“Barbara! You’re a bit over-wrought and hysterical, dear. You don’t mean it. You can’t mean it,” he said. “Good God! The way you looked when I met you on the Promenade under these trees—and yesterday in that empty house. You’re in love with me. Whatever you say, I know you love me as I love you. I could feel it when I held you in my arms. You can’t make me believe you don’t love me.”

“I’m not trying to, Julian,” she said sadly, and her very quietness only alarmed him the more.

“But if you do care for me—what in the world is all this about?” he exclaimed. “You can’t mean to say you 'let me kiss you as I did, all the time knowing you were going to turn me down? The thing’s incredible !”

“I did very wrong.” She waited, biting her lip. “I—I couldn’t help it, Julian. I couldn’t send you away from me all at once as I meant to. It all seemed so sunny and lovely here that first afternoon, and you with me.” A tear rolled down her cheek and she felt a salt taste on her lips, but she did not wipe it away. “I couldn’t bear to spoil it all. I felt as if I must have a bit of good time if I died for it afterwards. It would have to last—” She broke off, fighting down her emotion.

He looked at her and took her hand again.

“Poor little girl! Dear little girl!” he murmured, moving close to her on the seat and disregarding the supercilious glance of a passer-by. “What maggot has she got in her brain now? Come, out with it!” She shook her head and said with a sort of dull obstinacy, clinging to one phrase like a shipwrecked voyager in a stormy sea: “I can’t marry you. I came because I thought it would be cowardly to write. I thought it would hurt you less if I told you by word of mouth. I’m sorry I did now.”

“But this is stark nonsense,” he protested. “You admit you love me and yet you go on like this. You won’t even give me your reason for not wanting to marry me. I have a right to know that, at least. Can’t you realise that you are behaving towards me with the grossest unfairness ?”

“Yes, Julian; I know all that,” she said in a low, hopeless voice that disarmed him again.

“Come, Barbara dearest, tell me!” he urged, looking into her face. She was conscious of his ardent gaze burning through his drooped eyelids and her whole being yearned towards him, but in proportion as it hurt she felt justified in what she was doing; the very agony made her feel she must be right.

“Don’t urge me any more, Julian,” she said faintly, white to the lips. “I can’t endure any more.”

And it was so wrung out of her, like the cry of a martyr on the rack, that Brooke could not persist; he was bound to pity her despite his sense of thwarted bewilderment.

They sat a moment or two in silence, yellow leaves like flakes of gold floating down upon them through the misty, sunshiny air—and in the silence a sudden recollection of their odd dream came to Brooke. He pushed the thought back, knowing that a coincidence had made it come true—and yet it had come true.

Irrationally, he was all at once weighed down by Barbara’s hopelessness; the blank sense of utter loss he had felt in the dream returned upon him now. He wondered if she remembered, but she did not at that time, because all her powers were concentrated in bearing an agony which she knew a word would free her from at once.

“I’d better be going in now; I have to pack,” she said, rising rather unsteadily.

He rose, too, and put his hand through her arm.

“Your packing won’t take five minutes,” he said. “I am determined to talk this out with you, Barbara. You won’t get away from me like this.”

She sat down again, seeming glad to be spared the effort of standing.

“Very well. You have a right to that, Julian.”

He looked down at her, maddened by the resistance of a thing so frail that he could not bend; then he flung himself upon the seat with his right arm about her, pressing her to him. An elderly gentleman scowled round, outraged, but he did not care if all the world looked on and frowned.

“Barbara!” he whispered fiercely. “I’m going to marry you before you leave this place. Do you hear ? I’m going to marry you before you go home. You can stay on a few days and I’ll get a special license and we’ll be married. Then we’ll talk—we’ll talk all you like. But I’m going to make sure of you first.”

As he felt her body relax and press against his arm, and heard a little sigh come from her parted lips, he thought he had triumphed and rejoiced already like a bridegroom over his bride. Then Barbara’s attitude stiffened and she drew herself away from him, filling him with a wild anger that was beyond her conception; his very manhood seemed to be frustrated, outraged. With an incoherent sound between a word and a cry he jumped up from her side and stood trembling, white with rage, the scar showing livid on his drawn face.

“Then you really have been fooling me all the time? You wanted my love-making but you didn’t want me? And I thought you too good——” He choked on the words. “So that was the reason you wouldn’t have the wedding-ring mended: I see now. You knew you wouldn’t want it. Go home, then! Go home and marry a man that’s better off than me if you can find one. I don’t care! I’ve done with you!”

He turned round and tore off down the wide road towards the open country. At first her eyes were closed because the old houses and the yellowing trees all swam round her, but when she opened them he was still visible a long way off, walking with his light alert step in the pale sunshine. She saw him going so out of her life and she felt she must die then of life’s intolerable emptiness; but after a while she got up and went back to the boarding-house.

All next day, while she was travelling, the country through which she passed seemed quite unreal. She was conscious of an acute pain in her head and a sense of unutterable fatigue, but behind or beneath the agony, shining through it, was a sort of exaltation which alone kept her from going under. All through the intolerable journey her thoughts were dulled and indefinite, save for the stabs of agony which came every time that Brook’s last words repeated themselves in her mind. The recollection of their love-making among the golden leaves and the sunshine was spoilt by the sharp pain which must now always go with it. She endured that last pain of love which comes when love’s memories are spoilt.

As she sat in a middle seat, crushed against a fat woman on the one side and a restless child on the other, she experienced the blank despair of youth which sees no opening in the darkness. She did, indeed, envy the wife whom Brooke had married and buried, for that girl had only died and he could still think well of her.

At last she alighted, cramped and weary, at the arched station which had as yet been the bourne of all her journeyings; and the Flodmouth noises again accompanied her thoughts unnoticed as they had always done, accentuating by their very familiarity the strange misery in which she came home. Now she knew that when she went to Cheltenham she had been comparatively speaking, happy; there was still a hope at the bottom of all her resolves that something would happen to prevent the sacrifice. This hope lives undetected in the heart of every human being who offers up something almost beyond their power, and Barbara had been inspired by it during those first two days at Cheltenham.

Now the incredible had happened after all, and she was stunned for the time being by the magnitude of her loss—the time was yet to come when the recurring stabs of pain would be a constant agony. Her look was such that Mrs. Simpson’s heart failed when she saw her daughter: fears sprang bristling to the surface. . . . What had that man done to her girl? But she said quietly enough: “You look tired, Barbara. Come and have some tea at once!”

“Father in yet?” said Barbara, forcing herself to respond.

“No; he will be in directly.”

Then Elsie came into the room with the tea-pot and they sat down by the table. To Barbara the very sameness of it all after what she had passed through made it seem strange.

“I see you have been taking some of the pictures down,” she said.

“Yes; haven’t you heard? You do look a worm, Barbara, Cheltenham hasn’t done you much good. I thought Mother had written to tell you,” said Elsie excitedly.

Barbara turned to her mother with a listlessness that Mrs. Simpson noted with a pang of apprehension.

“What is it, Mother?”

“We are leaving this house,” said Mrs. Simpson. “I did write, but the letter must have missed you.”

“Leaving? At once?” said Barbara, stirred out of her self-engrossment.

“Yes; we have an offer to sub-let it if we can be out in a fortnight. Some man on one of the Government jobs wants to take it. Your Father thinks as I do, that we ought to close with the offer and go into a much smaller house at once,” said Mrs. Simpson. “Don’t you agree?”

“Oh yes. Less coals and everything will be needed in a little house,” said Barbara.

“Goodness!” cried Elsie. “You talk about leaving this dear old house where we all grew up as if it were buying a new dish-cloth! Aren’t you sorry to go?”

“I’m very sorry,” said Barbara duly. “Have you heard of another house that will do, Mother?”

There is one of those little new houses in Thornley Street to let; sitting-room, kitchen, three bedrooms and bathroom. All we need.”

“Oh yes.” Barbara roused herself. “I thought them very nice little houses.”

“I rather wish there wasn’t a piano on one side and a baby on the other and about ten little boys always playing and yelling outside,” said Elsie. “But that’s a detail.”

“Oh, we shall get used to it; and you were a crying baby yourself once,” smiled Mrs. Simpson.

Then Mr. Simpson’s key sounded in the lock and Barbara ran out to greet her father.

“Well! Well!” he said. “What news from the seat of war, eh? Wounded warrior' going on all right ?”

Barbara felt all the blood rushing to her face, then it receded, leaving her very pale.

“He seems well in himself, but his arm remains tiresome. They are going to give him his discharge,” she said.

“That’s bad luck—about the arm, I mean,” said Mr. Simpson gravely. “What will he do for a living?”

“Oh, he is going back to his fruit farm in Canada,” said Barbara, sitting down to the table again.

“Soon?” said Mrs. Simpson quickly.

“Yes, I expect so.”

Elsie laughed.

“Expect so! As if she didn’t know. I dare say she has fixed up to go with him.”

“I don’t fancy they let women travel just at present,” said Barbara. Then she hesitated, fingering her teaspoon. “But that won’t matter to me one way or another. I’m not going at all.”

Mrs. Simpson glanced up anxiously.

“Not going at all? What do you mean, Barbara?” “I am not—” She paused a moment and moistened her lips. “There is nothing between Julian Brooke and me any longer, Mother.”

“What!” shrilled Elsie. “You’ve broken it off? Well, I was never much for him, but I do call that mean, just when he has crocked up and knows his arm won’t get right any more.”

“They say it may come all right in the dry air of Canada,” replied Barbara in a low voice.

Mr. Simpson stared at her in innocent amazement. “You can’t have chucked him for that, Barbara?” “Of course not,” said Barbara, roused to faint indignation. “Nobody in their senses could think such a thing.”

“Well,” said Elsie, “I know what I should think if I were Brooke.”

“He never would—” began Barbara angrily; then it swept over her all in a minute that he had so thought of her ... he had thought that of her. . . . Again she saw him walking away from her quickly through the pale sunshine, awkwardly clad in the blue uniform and rough khaki overcoat, and yet the thin alertness of his figure showing plainly even at a distance. “I can’t help what he thinks,” she added, pressing her finger on her lip to stop its trembling.

“Well, I can’t say I’m sorry so far as you are concerned,” said Mr. Simpson cheerfully. “I suppose girls do get these infatuations for soldiers, and I can understand it right enough. Sort of ‘Give the boys a good time’ feeling; knowing how plucky they are. Dessay I should have been the same myself if I’d been a girl.”

“And I hope you wouldn’t!” cried Elsie indignantly. “I’m ashamed of you, Father; as if that were all our brave soldiers were good for! And I call it most awfully mean of Barbara if she has turned down Brooke just because of his bad arm, after going on with him all this time.”

“Elsie!” said Mrs. Simpson with gentle vehemence; “you must not talk like that. You know nothing at all about it. I am perfectly certain that Barbara has some other and good reason for acting as she has done.”

Mr. Simpson flushed purple and blurted out—

“Surely the chap behaved properly ? He—he didn’t try to take any advantage of your being there by yourself ? I said you never ought to have gone.”

“Father! How can you say such a wicked thing?” cried Barbara, starting up; “you—who know Julian!” And she wept, hiding her face in her hands. “He’s so good,” she sobbed. “He’s as honourable as you are, Dad. I—I can’t bear you to say such things.”

Mr. Simpson came nearer and patted her shoulder.

“There, there, my girl!” he said uncomfortably.!

“I never meant to be unkind; only you must have had some reason, you know.”

“It had nothing to do with Julian; nothing at all. I can’t bear for you to think ill of him. I’m the one who did it all. He was in a terrible way when I told him.”

“Well, well; a girl can’t always know her own mind,” consoled Mr. Simpson. “Don’t you fash yourself too much, Barbara. I’ve no doubt he’ll find another girl before long and cheer up all right.”

“Funny thing about Barbara,” said Elsie, “she thinks she wants them until she gets them and then she doesn’t want them any more; but when it’s a wounded soldier, I think she ought to settle up with herself before it comes to that pass.”

“Oh!” Barbara suddenly began to sob hysterically, worn out with sleeplessness, fatigue, and emotion. “Oh, I did it for the best, and now you all turn round on me. I never thought you would treat me like this.” So saying she pushed back her chair and hurried away from the room, calling over her shoulder: “Nobody need come up. I don’t want anybody. I only want to be left alone!”

The three left behind stared blankly at each other. Elsie was the first to speak, glancing at her Mother’s stunned face. “Don’t look like that, Mother,” she said. “Barbara will get over it. Oh, dear! I hate all this fuss about young men. I wish to goodness she would get married and have done with it.”

Mrs. Simpson forced herself to smile and said almost easily—

“I dare say it is only a lovers’ quarrel. Or she may find that she cannot care for him after all. You see they really knew very little indeed of one another.” Mr. Simpson frowned uneasily.

“We ought not to have let her go to Cheltenham alone to meet the fellow. It was a wrong thing to do. I think you ought to pop upstairs, Harriet, and see what she has to say about it.”

But Mrs. Simpson loved Barbara enough to leave her alone, though every fibre of her mother’s heart was being drawn with a sort of agony towards the bedroom upstairs. She even managed to distract Mr. Simpson’s attention to the new house and the discussion of those larger articles of furniture which they would be obliged to part with, until at last it was time for Elsie to go to bed.

Elsie went into the bedroom and saw Barbara still dressed upon the bed with her face towards the wall. She stood in the middle of the room hesitating for a moment, and then said softly—

“Asleep, Barbara ?”

“No. My head’s bad.”

“Shall I get you something for it?”

“No, thank you.”

Silence again, while Elsie went about her undressing ; then Barbara felt a shawl gently laid over her and moved impatiently—

“Don’t worry me, Elsie. It’s very good of you; but I only want to be quiet.”

All the same the dull absorption of her grief was disturbed and she soon rose and began to undress also. The Flodmouth noises came in through the slightly open window. . . . The sharp O-oh! of the engine at the end of the street went through her head, and that further roused her deadened sensibilities. She began to see that she must say something to the pale, half-scared girl who was tremblingly unpacking her suit case.

“Don’t bother, Elsie. I’ve got out all I want for to-night,” she said in a kinder tone.

“All right. I’ll just hang up your new coat and skirt.” Elsie walked to the cupboard and then turned round: “Barbara, why on earth did you spend all that money on this if you were going to throw him over ?”

Barbara said nothing. After a while Elsie exclaimed, peering through her cloud of dark hair: “I’ve found out! You wanted him to remember you looking nice all his life.” She paused, her dark eyes wonderfully shining and dilated as her quick, intuitive thoughts flew here and there, catching at slight threads and binding them together. “I—I know . . . you’re in love with him still—you don’t want to give him up. Then why—” As she stared at Barbara with piercing eyes in her thin face and chin thrust out and wild hair about her, she was like a witch; a couple of hundred years earlier she might have been taken for one with her temperament. “Why!” she cried, “it’s us . . . you’re sticking to us . . . you think you oughtn’t to leave us!”

“Don’t talk nonsense!” said Barbara, turning away.

“That’s what you always say,” answered Elsie, still gazing tensely upon her sister. “But I’m often right. I’m right this time. And I’m not going to let you do it. Father and Mother and I don’t want you to martyr yourself for us: we shall manage all right.”

Barbara, amid all her own pre-occupation, felt a pang of tenderness and pity as she saw the little vibrating, fragile figure drawn up so gallantly in the childish white night-dress.

“Elsie, you’re not going to communicate your ideas to Father and Mother, I hope?” she said quickly. Then, as her sister did not reply: “Elsie! You must mot do that, you know.”

“Then it is so!” cried Elsie. “You wouldn’t mind me telling if it were not true. Well, I shall tell them. I’m not going to have you spoil your life and Brooke’s for nothing like a silly girl in a story-book. I hate all these misunderstandings that needn’t happen at all if people had any common sense.”

“But, Elsie . . .”

“It’s no good saying anything, Barbara. I’m just not going to have you offering yourself up like a sort of burnt-sacrifice to look after us. I shall tell Mother, and so there!”

Barbara sat down, pressing her hand to her aching head. There was no help for it; the thing must be talked out now.

“Look here, Elsie,” she said. “You remember how seedy Mother was when we got home from Scarcliffe ?”

“Yes; but it was not your fault she couldn’t get a charwoman while we were away.”

“That’s neither here nor there. The thing is that I saw the doctor one day and he told me Mother might live one year and she might live twenty—— it—it depended upon us.”“Oh!” Elsie gave a little cry; then she said in a low tone: “I see how hard that makes it. If you had been marrying any one in England it would not have mattered so much. Can’t Brooke stay in England?”

“He could; but as a broken man with all he has worked for out there sacrificed. I daren’t let him run the risk, with his temperament. Fancy if I had to watch him getting all spoilt and different through me. That would be worse than giving him up, Elsie.”

“Yes.” Elsie stood brooding, a strangely old look on her face. “Yes; you’ve got to take it-all in a piece.” Then she hid her face and began to cry quietly: “Poor old Barbie! Poor old Barbie!”

“Don’t, Elsie! I can’t bear it,” said Barbara sharply, and Elsie choked and swallowed and managed to control herself.

“I promise not to tell, if that’s any comfort to you,” she said. “On my honour, I promise not to.”

“Thank you, Elsie: and now we’ll never talk of this subject any more,” said Barbara wearily. “Try and get to sleep. You must be tired.”

Elsie turned the light out and said, with a pitiful struggle to do what Barbara would like: “It’s a fine night, Barbie; the stars are shining. There’s a cab just driven away from Mrs. Bellerby’s house: I think she has come home from seeing Blanche. Isn’t it sad about Hugh Elliott having fallen ?”

“Poor Blanche! Good-night, Elsie!”

Then there was quiet in the room but for the sounds coming in through the open window. Barbara heard them now, beating through her aching head; and beneath them her soul listened to that other chorus deepening and gathering strength with every moment of the day and night . . . millions chanting the Song of Sacrifice.

What did her lot of sorrow and sacrifice matter in the face of all that? She felt it was nothing. She was carried along by that mighty chorus to which her soul listened. Though she lay still on her bed, she was following the great company of those who have so gloried in the beauty of sacrifice that they saw in it not a means but an end. All these months her responsive ardent mind had been tending towards that condition, and now she experienced the result.

In the absorption of her own feelings, however, she failed to weigh justly the wrong she was doing Brooke, because in her present state of mind she felt that a sacrifice which hurt so terribly must be the right one. She knew that it would have hurt her comparatively little to turn her back on those who have cared for her all her life and to go out into a strange country with a man she had known a few months. And so she argued that her difficult course must be the best.

But every time she closed her eyes she could see the wide road at Cheltenham, with Brooke’s alert figure disappearing into a hazy, sunshiny distance; and there was always a touch of loneliness and forlornness about the vanishing figure.

CHAPTER XVIII

CHANGE

BARBARA came down next morning to begin a fortnight of such physical hard work as left no time for thinking of her grief. It hung like a heavy cloud over all she said and did; but beneath that cloud she had to wrestle with the immediate difficulties of a removal from a comfortably sized house to a little one. Wardrobes and sideboards bought in those safe and spacious days of the Simpsons’ wedding and intended to last through a prosperous life-time could not be bestowed in rooms suited to furniture of the “Where Maggie got her home for ten pounds” description, so a great deal had to be sorted out and sent to the salerooms.

Two days after Barbara’s return from Cheltenham, Mrs. Simpson broke through the defensive and aggressive cheerfulness with which her daughter had surrounded herself. They were sorting out a drawer in the sideboard which had contained cookery recipes ever since Mrs. Simpson began to put them there as a young bride, and it was some waft of summary air from that first year of her marriage and which a recipe for Strawberry Trifle with Macaroons caused to blow across her memory, that made her force a way timidly into her daughter’s confidence.

“Barbara—you don’t regret? You’re not fretting after that man?”

“Do I look as if I were fretting?” said Barbara, continuing to sort recipes.

“No.” Mrs. Simpson paused. “But you wouldn’t, you know.” She paused again. “Why did you go to Cheltenham if you did not care for him? I must have some explanation of that, dear. You owe it to both your Father and me.”

“Very well.” Barbara threw a bundle of papers into the basket. “I went because I thought it seemed cowardly to break off my engagement by letter. At least, that was the reason I thought I had,” she added in a low voice, anxious to speak the exact truth to her mother.

“You wanted to see him? That was the real fact of the matter,” pursued Mrs. Simpson.

“Partly. . . . Oh, I suppose so.”

“You are a queer girl, Barbara. You were very fond of Frank Garret until he proposed, and then you had no further use for him. Now it seems to be the same with Brooke. You must be careful that you don’t throw too many chances of happiness away. There comes a time when a girl does not find any more.”

“I don’t want any more, Mother; not of that kind,” said Barbara rising. “It’s time I put the pan on for dinner.” She went across the room and paused at the door. “I’d rather not talk about this if you don’t mind. After all, what goes on between a girl and a man is their business; neither side has any right to give it away. It’s—it’s about the one thing that you ought to keep to yourself. I’m not going to say any more about it, Mother.”

Mrs. Simpson bent her head over her recipes and said nothing; but something in her pose both angered and touched Barbara to the heart. There was a moment’s silence; the Du Caines went past—he warworn and thin, but cheery, and she in a new cheap hat, radiant with happiness. They were living in that short ten-days’ leave, with death behind and death waiting, a year’s joy pressed together and sharpened to something—not abnormal—but most clearly, finely adventurous. Barbara was stirred to a high emotion as she saw them go swinging by . . . they were not just the Du Caines with him on leave, but the whole glory and horror and sacrifice of the great crusade for freedom. She turned to her mother with eyes a-shine and face palely smiling—

“Goodness, don’t let’s worry any more about me and my petty little love-affairs!” And her tone triumphantly added: “What do they matter?”

But in her secret heart she was unconsciously aware that youthful love must continue to matter while the world lasted. However it might seem to be swamped by the dreadful turmoil, it would spring up again unaltered like corn on a deserted battle-field: it was equally of the substance of human life.

This, however, was what she felt; what she thought just then was quite different. And she went out into the kitchen with a belief that she did, indeed, consider her “bit of happiness” an affair of no great moment. She had been pressed too close—poor Barbara!—to the windows that death had opened upon the life of the world to come. Middle age may look so close and bear it, but ardent sensitive youth is often impelled either to snatch with desperate fingers every pleasure obtainable because life is so short, or to become like Barbara.

A heavy fog hung over Flodmouth, and Barbara stood at the gate watching a removal van go down the Avenue. It loomed oddly in the grey air, gigantic, almost threatening—as if it were taking away into nothingness a great deal more than handsome suites of mahogany and rose-wood furniture for sale. Mrs. Bellerby came out of the next gate with a tray in her hands.

“I was just bringing this in, Barbara,” she said. “I thought you might be in rather an upset to-day, and glad of a cup of tea all ready.”

“How good of you,” said Barbara, touched almost to hurting point by this little kindness, as happens when the heart is very full.

They went in together and sat down with Mrs. Simpson and Elsie in a dismantled room through which the cold winds of strangeness seemed to be already blowing—it was not home any longer. But they joked cheerfully about the good tea and the little hot cakes that were not at all like war-time, and the spectacle of Mrs. Bellerby—whom they had laughed at so often— chasing her difficult 'h’s,” was somehow intimately dear to them. She was—curled fringe, refinement and all—a part of that life in the Avenue which had been on the whole so happy. She was like the broken pump at the end of the village when you are saying good-bye.

The attitude of mind of the Simpsons penetrated her understanding clearly enough, and she responded to it the best she knew how, saying quite earnestly: “You needn’t think a little house will make any difference to your true friends, Mrs. Simpson. I shall think nothing of the walk in fine weather and early in the afternoon. I am only sorry you have a public-house at the corner, but no doubt it will come in useful if you need brandy in case of illness.” She paused. “That reminds me, poor Blanche sent her love to you. A widow—so young—they say she looks terribly pathetic in her weeds. My Dorothy is still with her, you know, and Mrs. Elliott has taken them again to the hotel at Brighton. Blanche could not bear the quiet of the country—it got on her nerves. And a sort of second cousin of dear Hugh’s is there who has been such a wonderful comfort to her, poor girl. He is invalided out of the army and has a place larger than the Elliotts—the eldest son of an Earl. It is very delightful for dear Blanche having such nice connections, and a great comfort to me. Mrs. Wilson seemed to think a mother ought to be the one to remain with her, but I perfectly understand her clinging to Hugh’s people; don’t you?”

“Yes, Mrs. Bellerby,” said Mrs. Simpson very gently.

And Elsie restrained the words that rose to her lips, only saying to herself with a sort of moved fury: “Now it’s Mrs. Bellerby like all the rest. Why is it like that? Why couldn’t God make something in daughters to match what there is in mothers? I hate Blanche for not wanting her mother.”

But Mrs. Bellerby rippled on: “Blanche is so good; she writes to me constantly, and so does Dorothy. ' I am very fortunate to have two such successful daughters. Not that poor Blanche—— Only, of course, she is young yet. Did I tell you that Hugh made the most wonderful will ? Everything left absolutely; not a word about marrying again. He was a noble character.”

Then Elsie spoke—she could hold herself in no longer—

“He is,” she cried. “You don’t think he’s stopped being because he has died for his country? He’s as much alive now as you or me. More; because he hasn’t to bother about a tiresome old body. And he’s going on being splendid all the time. Can’t you feel that?”

“Yes, of course,” said Mrs. Bellerby uncomfortably.

“Elsie, don’t be so vehement,” said Mrs. Simpson.

“Poor old Elsie, she doesn’t mean to be rude, she only talks in italics because she’s so horribly in earnest,” said Barbara, smiling at her sister.

“Well, I think I must be going,” said Mrs. Bellerby. Then she added to round off her departure: “You know, Miss Pelling returns to-night? She must have been away some weeks.”

“Yes. We shall be delighted to see her back,”'said Mrs. Simpson.

“Oh! we all shall,” said Mrs. Bellerby.

And they accompanied her to the door, Barbara carrying the tray down the path and listening to a detailed account of the fur coat which Mrs. Elliott had given Blanche.

When Mr. Simpson came home from business he also felt a cold wind of strangeness blowing through the house which he had prepared for his bride—such a warm and safe nest—in the spring-time of his manhood. He did not give himself up to sentimental reflections of this sort, and was, indeed, unconscious of having them at all; but they took the form of an attack of indigestion and extreme irritability about the drainage system of the new house. It seems queer that such beautiful and deep feelings as a man’s love of the home he made for the wife of his youth should express themselves in such a way, but they did; and his strictures fell as a last straw on the shoulders of his jaded family. It was Elsie, as usual, who felt bound to become articulate.

“Really, Father, we can’t help having to move into a little house. It is just as horrid for us as for you.”

But there she spoke falsely; because Mr. Simpson suffered, in spite of reason, from the middle-class man’s feeling that his females ought to have been guarded by him against such discomforts and hardships. He was enveloped that evening in a fog of failure through which he was unable to see clearly. After a while the evening post came, and he went heavily to take in the letters.

“One from your Aunt Horace,” he said, opening the envelope without any interest. “What does she want? She’s got all her money safe enough. She’s all right.” He read listlessly, than his expression changed and he looked excited: “I say, Harriet! Whatever do you think? Wonders ’ll never cease. She—she actually offers to send Elsie to a good school in Scotland where special attention is given to the girls’ health, and afterwards to stand expenses at College.”

Mrs. Simpson sat down.

“Goodness! You take my breath away, Sam. What can have induced her to do it?”

“Seems she has come across somebody from Flodmouth at her boarding-house in Bath and has heard we are obliged to leave this house. I think she really was fond of Horace in her way, though she was spoilt with having a large independent income of her own and always doing just as she liked. Anyway, there it is.” He turned chuckling to Elsie: “That’s a bit of all right, eh? I shall have to buy you a pair of blue stockings I saw hanging in a shop-window to-day, eh?” And he rubbed his hands and chuckled again, so glad to have something to feel jolly about once more that the rest of his troubles seemed for the moment not to matter.

“I say, Elsie—how glorious!” said Barbara, flushed and smiling. “Mother, aren’t you delighted?”

“Yes, dear,” was all Mrs. Simpson could say, so ardently was she thanking God: though at the same time she saw a vista of years during which her girl must go farther and farther away from her; and yet she continued to give thanks because it was the fulfilment of Elsie’s dream.

Elsie herself sat quite still, twisting her thin fingers; then she burst out: “Oh, Mother! Oh, Father! I’ll never hate anybody again.”

They laughed, relieved to have some excuse for loosing the tension.

“What makes you say that ?” asked Barbara.

“Well, to think how I have detested old Aunt Horace, and then she comes down like this and gives me the one thing I want most in life. Oh! fancy me at a good school where I can learn everything and get strong at the same time; and then the glorious fun I’ll have at College. I feel as if it can’t be true. It’s too good to be true!”

“Nonsense; nothing is, when you are sixteen,” smiled Mrs. Simpson. She turned to her husband: “How pleased Horace would have been. You and he got on so well together at the office, though she never cared much about us. I expect she misses him now more than she did at first, and has made this offer for his sake.”

“Perhaps her conscience troubles her a bit too,” said Mr. Simpson. “It was her withdrawing her capital from the business that just finished me off, and I told her so.” He paused. “But I might have gone, anyway. I didn’t bear her any malice.”

Mr. Simpson, speaking thus, spoke for a generation of such just and tolerant Englishmen—but Elsie sounded another note. “I know you didn’t. But you want to bear malice sometimes, Father. I call it washy not to; until the person does something to make you feel different.”

Mr. Simpson chuckled indulgently: “She’s a real firebrand, our Elsie is; she’ll be setting the old Flod on fire one of these days, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Barbara sat quietly among them, seeing the long, monotonous years of a narrow life stretch out plainly in front of her. Her future was settled now that Elsie was going; and a stillness came down upon her troubled spirit like the stillness before an altar. This moment was a logical sequence of that other moment three years ago when she heard the Flodmouth newsboys crying, as they did then, the death of her Uncle Horace. And with the loss of every Flodmouth man. she knew, or knew of, who had fallen since, the call to sacrifice unwittingly grew clearer and clearer. Now, when the door-bell rang and she had to speak to some one at the door, it was as if she really rose from her knees before an altar of the spirit, having found peace.

Mr. Binny’s housekeeper stood on the step, longfaced and stolid.

“Mr. Binny’s compliments, and he would be obliged if Mr. Simpson could step across for a few minutes on a matter of business.” And she retired at once without waiting for an answer.

“Father!” called Barbara from the passage. “Mr. Binny wants to see you on business.”

“Oh! I wonder if he’s going to take Dad into partnership,” said Elsie, having swung round to the point where only good seemed probable. “I shouldn’t wonder a bit if that is it.”

“Rubbish!” said Mr. Simpson, taking his cap from the rack.

He walked across the road and up the little path to Mr. Binny’s house, where the door opened at once by no visible agency. It closed, and Mr. Binny stood with Mr. Simpson in the dimly lighted passage. There was an atmosphere of restrained emotion about Mr. Binny which any woman would have felt at once, but Mr. Simpson was masculinely impervious to it as he put down his cap on the hall table.

“Well, what is it, Binny? Torn up your sugar-card by accident and want me to save you from being dragged in chains before the Lord Mayor; eh?”

Mr. Binny frowned. “Simpson,” he said rather severely, “will you please walk into the front room?” He shut the door, and in the full light it could be seen that he was even more excited than his voice indicated; his forehead was mottled in red patches and he was without a tie. Five of these ornaments of attire, however, lay on the table beside a basket of brussels sprouts and a bundle of leeks. He grasped his mottled forehead with a hand so scrupulously washed after gardening operations that the very skin seemed to be worn thin, and said desperately: “You’ll excuse me, Simpson, for sending in to you when you are no doubt engaged in packing up, but I have looked at these ties until the colours all run together. I am unable to exercise a calm judgment.”

Mr. Simpson stared—naturally. It seemed very odd that Mr. Binny should have sent a formal message by the housekeeper in order to consult him about ties. Still, he was a good-natured man and ready to do his best, so he stood by his friend's side and examined the five neutral-tinted pieces of silk with attention.

“Blest if I can see any difference by this light,” he said at last. Then the oddness of it all again overwhelmed him and he cocked up his eye anxiously at his long, lank friend: surely the pressure of work and war wasn’t— He broke off, even in his thoughts; and concluded: “What are you driving at, Binny? What the dickens does it matter?”

“Everything matters in—in affairs of this sort,” said Mr. Binny, rubbing his chin nervously. “A delicate female taste is so sensitive to these trifles.”

Then Mr. Simpson began to see daylight. He looked from the ties to the brussels sprouts, and from the brussels sprouts to the leeks, with a countenance. growing more and more illumined. But he was still far from realising the seriousness of the situation.

“Shut your eyes and take the first tie that comes/’ he said. “You’ll be just as welcome to Miss Pelling in any tie—so long as you take the leeks with you. Ho! Ho!” And he chuckled in what Mr. Binny, despite old friendship, felt to be a very vulgar and irritating manner.

“This is serious, Simpson,” he said; then after a pause he added with an effort: “Have you seen her since she came back?”

“Who? Miss Pelling? No,” said Mr. Simpson.

Mr. Binny moved nearer, though the room was so small and the door shut fast, and he dropped his voice: “She looks beautiful, Simpson!” Then the ingrained truthfulness of a lifetime forced him to spoil the effect by adding: “At least, as near beautiful as makes no matter.”

“What!” said poor Mr. Simpson, again beginning to have grave fears of his friend’s mental balance. “Oh, you’re joking, Binny!”

“Do I look as if I were joking?” said Mr. Binny, with such unconscious pathos that Mr. Simpson averted his eyes from his friend’s mottled countenance and muttered hastily—

“No doubt her long absence . . . you must have missed her. ... I can quite understand——”

“No, you can’t,” said Mr. Binny surprisingly. “No, one ever could, who hadn’t actually seen her. I chanced to be at the station when she arrived and— and—I don’t mind telling you, Simpson, though I wouldn’t breathe it to any one else in the world—I hid behind a luggage barrow.”

“Because she looked less—less—that is, more good-looking than usual?” gasped Mr. Simpson round-eyedl'

“Yes. I couldn’t face her. I felt I had been such?, a poltroon to allow myself to be put off for all these years by a—a nose.”

“Well!” . . . Even in Mr. Simpson’s bewilderment: he was conscious that no over but good old Binny would have used the expression poltroon, and he responded rather feebly: “No, no! I couldn’t call you-, that. I couldn’t call you that. After all, it is a great drawback.”

“Was!” whooped Mr. Binny excitedly. “Was! It’s gone! It isn’t any more.”

“You don’t mean to say the poor lady has lost her nose,” said Mr. Simpson, sinking his slight aversion to Miss Pelling’s conversation in his genuine concern for an old neighbour. “I’m very sorry to hear that! Very sorry indeed!”

“She’s lost her old nose, I mean,” said Mr. Binny. “It never will be small, but I don’t care about that at all. It—it’s exactly like other people’s.”

Mr. Simpson meditated. Miss Pelling was a lonely woman getting on in life, who was about to leave her comfortable house because she could not afford to live in it any longer. He hated to do her any injury. And yet Binny was his friend and fellow-Mason. “You—you don’t think she has been putting some of that thick whitewash stuff on it out of a bottle?” he said reluctantly at last.

Mr. Binny shook his head.

“I’ve seen her with stuff on it, in times past. No! This is a real alteration.”

“Must be!” said Mr. Simpson, thinking deeply. “I think I can give you a clue: Lillie.”

“Lillie! Why, she is married and doesn’t live in London any more, so far as I know,” said Mr. Binny.

“No, but she was employed as housekeeper with a woman who kept one of those beauty shops,” said Mr. Simpson. “And she was very grateful to Miss Pelling. She would no doubt urge the poor lady to go that time when she fetched little Kitchener away. I’m told they can do anything nearly at these places.”

“Where did you hear it, Simpson?” asked Mr. Binny eagerly.

“Well,” Mr. Simpson betrayed reluctance, “the fact is, I sometimes just glance through the ladies’ papers. I once chanced to see in the advertisements that these beauty specialists can remove little red veins and all sorts of things. Not that I ever took much notice.” . . .

“Of course not. Well, I suppose that must be it,” said Mr. Binny dolorously. “In any case I ought to have proposed to her before she had it done. I really went to the station with that object in view, but she would never believe me. I can’t expect her to.” He sank into a seat and held his head again. “I shall die a lonely old man with nobody to look after me in my declining years. And I shall deserve it. I shall deserve it.” Then he jumped up again and began fingering the ties: “I think this is the most refined. I shouldn’t care to go in anything flashy on such an occasion, you know.““Great Scott, man!” said Mr. Simpson, rousing himself to hearten the despondent lover. “You could go to a funeral in any of them. But you’re not intending to visit Miss Pelling to-night, are you?”

Mr. Binny’s look changed. With a sort of sly shame-facedness he tapped Mr. Simpson’s sleeve, and said: “I don’t want her to know I saw her at the station. Do you take me? I—I intend to propose in the dark passage. She’ll think I’ve not seen her. My excuse for unceremonious entrance will be to put down the baskets of vegetables which I could not give into her hands both at once.”

“But if the maid comes to the door?” suggested Mr. Simpson.

For a moment Mr. Binny felt that anger against Mr. Simpson which we all feel when a friend sees a fault in a well-thought-out scheme; then he remembered that Miss Pelling was servantless.

“Really, Simpson, I should have thought you knew she had no servant now,” said Mr. Binny, cheering up; but immediately he added, down in the depths again: “She won’t have me. She’ll naturally think I might have done it before or not at all.” He paused again and said meditatively: “I don’t want to blame circumstances, but I should have married when I was twenty-five if it hadn’t been for my mother and sisters. Only I was like a good many young men of that age, and had to control my feelings. So I suppose they got so used to being controlled that they wouldn’t run away with me when I wanted them to.”

Mr. Simpson hesitated and cleared his throat: it was not easy for him to round off with a platitude this account of Mr. Binny’s sacrificed youth. But the platitude had to come.

“Anyway, you can always have the satisfaction of knowing you did your duty by your mother and sisters,” he said.

“I suppose that is something,” said Mr. Binny a little wonderingly—almost as if quite unconsciously he asked that question of civilisation and the God Who made him a man; then that issue faded again into the dim recesses of his mind and he returned to the concrete: “I feel convinced she will refuse me!”

“She won’t—” Mr. Simpson paused—“she won’t refuse you if she wants to marry you. She’ll never cut off her nose to spite her face.”

He felt immediately that it was an indelicate form of speech under the circumstances, but all the same he had borne involuntary witness to the fundamental common sense and generosity of a woman he had never much liked, and that subtly pleased his inborn sense of justice. So he continued in a more vigorous manner : “Take your vegetables and be off with you. Faint heart never won fair lady. Kiss her first and ask afterwards!”

“Really—” began Mr. Binny, but he subdued his first sense of outrage in consideration of his friend’s services, and added in an anxious tone: “So this tie is really all right? I think I’ll take the sprouts in my right hand and the leeks in my left so that I may give her the sprouts, if any—— What do you think?”

Mr. Simpson did not say what he thought; he merely took his cap from the hall table and preceded Mr. Binny to the gate.

Two hours later the Simpson family had retired to bed, with the exception of the master of the house, who was going upstairs with a lighted candle, when a heavy knock resounded through the house. He hastily put down the candle and opened the front door.

“What’s that? I’m sure I thought our lights were all right,” he said, peering out into the darkness where he expected to see a brother Special Constable. Then he said in another tone: “Why, Binny!”

“Yes; I felt I must just run across and let you know.” And even in the pitch darkness Mr. Binny radiated like a beacon. “It’s all right,” he added unnecessarily.

“Splendid! I congratulate you,” said Mr. Simpson. “Won’t you come in?”

“No, thank you. I promised—er—Lotty to look out some papers for her soldiers,” said Mr. Binny with importance.

Mr. Simpson went upstairs chuckling. “I promised Lotty”—just like that—it did sound funny. ... “I promised Lotty.” After all, it sounded rather nice and comfortable too. . . : As he reached the bedroom door behind which his wife waited ready to talk everything over with him, he felt very glad for poor old Binny.

CHAPTER XIX

WHAT REMAINS

THE Simpsons had now settled in their new home, where the large oil-painting of Grandmother Simpson—which they had not the heart to do away with—took up most of the wall-space side of the room opposite the fire. Indeed it was so close to the table that Grandmother Simpson at first appeared to be looming tremendous over every meal, demanding what the old middle-class—a type which she, in her cap and her gold chain, and with her plainly indicated sense of dignity and duty, so obviously represented—was coming to? Mr. Simpson’s lurking sense of blame and responsibility for having allowed his family to be brought to this, was increased and sharpened for a time by his constant vision of the redoubtable old lady as he ate, but after a while the keenness of the impression wore off, and he began to remark how very snug it all was, which was literally true. And they all four expressed the opinion, at various times, that there was something about the air of Thornley Street not observable in the Avenue—which was equally true, because of a tannery near at hand which brought across the street bitterish, leathery odours when the wind was in the right direction. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood further added that the smell was healthy and productive of length of years, which is a thing people with their pathetic loyalty to the spot of earth that gives them refuge, will come to say of almost any place. But when Mrs. Simpson went out of the front door one Saturday morning, she was glad to remember this cheering belief of her neighbours, for the smell followed her down the street like something alive and particularly unpleasant.

After a ride in the car and a short walk, she came to her old shopping district which was familiar to her from long use; and on entering a shop to buy a meat-pie she encountered Miss Pelling. As the two ladies emerged together, and stood talking on the pavement, Mrs. Simpson really had some difficulty in restraining her gaze from resting too particularly on Miss Pelling’s face, for the alteration in it was so obvious as to be almost disconcerting at first. They spoke of Mr. Binny, and of the approaching marriage, but all the time Mrs. Simpson could not help thinking how well Lillie had repaid Miss Pelling what she owed on the score of little Kitchener. It gradually became apparent to Mrs. Simpson, as they talked, that this baby, who came so oddly and unwantedly into the Avenue, had made a tremendous difference to the lives of several people: and thus thinking she was scarcely surprised when Miss Pelling began to speak of the child.

“I’m going out to buy a Christmas present for little Kitchener, but he’s not going to be called that any more now, of course,” she said. “I have a letter in my bag from Brooke, who is now at Scarcliffe again, previous to getting his discharge. At least, he has really got it, but they are now obliged to remain three weeks longer, you know. He wants to send the child something, and he thought it had better go through me for .fear Lillie’s husband might not care for any connection with the Brooke family.”

“Quite right,” said Mrs. Simpson confusedly, not thinking of what she said; then she added: “When does Brooke leave Scarcliffe?”

“On Monday,” said Miss Pelling.

“And will he be coming to see you?”

“Oh no, he is going to Liverpool,” said Miss Pelling.

“Then we may never see him again ?” pursued Mrs. Simpson.

“I dare say not,” answered Miss Pelling. “But I must be off now. I have to get my wedding-dress fitted—dark grey, you know. No old ewe dressed lamb fashion for me!” She took a letter from her bag. “You can look at this and let me have it back later, if you like.” And she was away after a passing car.

Mrs. Simpson stood alone on the pavement with the letter in her hand, bumped and jostled by passers-by for quite a long time. At last she began to walk slowly towards the station, where she took a ticket and sent off two telegrams. Then she got into the train, and sat there with her eyes closed and nervous flushes coming and going on her pale face, until she reached Scarcliffe.

It was already a little raw and cold when she got out: the best of the day over and a chill mist coming up from sea. She looked eagerly round the station with her heart beating in her throat in a way which made her feel suffocated; but one by one all the people, and even the porters and station-master filed out, and she was left alone. She sat down on a wooden seat damp with sea-mist and looked with straining eyes towards the entrance of the station. Once a soldier came in and she jumped up, flushing and trembling; but he was a stranger and walked straight into the office on some regimental business. She peered at her watch—the minutes were slipping by, and in another hour she must take train home again, or Mr. Simpson and the girls would be in a terrible state of mind. She had wired to Barbara saying she was lunching in the town, at the same time as she had sent the telegram asking Brooke to meet her at Scarcliffe Station; but that meant she must be back by six or seven at latest.

The sea boom—boomed! beyond the station; the sun began to set in streaks of wild orange, bleak and desolate, over the stunted wind-blown trees which she could see from where she stood. A couple of soldiers passed by and she ran after them, but was too exhausted to speak when she reached them. They turned round and saw the desperate entreaty of her look and her hand pressed to her side.

“Take time, Ma,” they said kindly. “What is it?”

She drew out Brooke’s letter with fingers that shook so they would scarcely hold. “Do you—do you happen to know a man called Brooke ?” And she gave his regiment and number.

“No; I’m sorry. He doesn’t belong to our lot,” said one soldier.

“They’re on the Flodmouth road, I believe,” said the other. “You’d best walk that way, and you may meet him coming. It’s Saturday. He’ll very like be out early.” They paused, reluctant to leave her—for they knew trouble when they saw it. “I expect you’ll meet him; there isn’t but one road to his camp,” they said, and moved slowly away.

She turned from them and plodded on, her heart thudding suffocatingly against her ribs; but she did not care. She would probably miss the train, but she did not care about that now either. She was going to see Brooke. If she died for it, she was going to speak to him.

The way led past houses until she came to the beginning of the open country, which looked inexpressibly dreary and forlorn, with the road deep in mud and the trees and hedges silent and dim. Every step was an effort, but she would not own herself beaten. At last she saw Brooke’s unmistakable figure coming swiftly towards her and she sat down on a stone heap by the roadside because her knees would not support her any longer. He was hurrying by, not noticing her huddled figure in the waning light, when she called out to him and he stopped short.

“You here, Mrs. Simpson?”

With an immense effort she pulled herself together and went towards him. Just so, if she could, would she have risen from her dying bed to fight for her daughter’s happiness.

“You got my wire?” she said.

“No. They are sometimes rather slow now. I must have left camp before it came,” he said, staring at her in bewilderment.

“I asked you to meet me at the station,” she answered ; “I wanted to see you before you left this part of England. I thought you might be going off to Canada.”

“Yes?” he said.

“And I had to see you first.” She moistened her dry lips with her tongue. “Barbara . . . Barbara . . .” She could not continue.

A fire leapt into his eyes.

“Has Barbara sent you? Does she want to whistle me back again for a while? Then I tell you I’m not having any. I’ve had enough.”

“She doesn’t know. I didn’t tell her I was coming,” said Mrs. Simpson. “Only—only she is so miserable.” And the poor woman began to cry softly.

“She should have thought of that before,” said Brooke grimly. “It’s no good, Mrs. Simpson. If you knew exactly the way I have been treated you would not expect it of me.”

“Don’t you know why she did it ?” said Mrs. Simpson, wiping her eyes.

“No doubt she thought it wasn’t good enough when it came to the point,” said Brooke. “She was like plenty of other girls; she liked the fun but she didn’t like paying for it. Well, she’s not going to get any more fun out of me.”

Mrs. Simpson shook her head, smiling; it comforted her in some subtle way that she could still see so much further into her girl’s thoughts than this man whom Barbara loved better than herself.

“She gave you up because of me. I am delicate, as you know, and we have moved into a smaller house where we can keep no servant. Elsie is not strong either. Poor Barbara felt she could not turn her back on us.”

“She might have seen all that before. The circumstances did not change much after she knew me,” said Brooke stubbornly.

“No. She ought not to have gone so far and then thrown you over.” Mrs. Simpson paused and added with a great effort, suddenly weeping again: “Oh, she wanted you so, she couldn’t help it—and then she gave you up for my sake. How am I going to live, and see her going about every day, and feel it is I who have ruined her happiness? I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it. I have borne a lot in my life, but I can’t bear this.”

Brooke was touched by her desperate sincerity in spite of himself.

“How do you know all this ?” he said gravely. “Did Barbara tell you?”

“Tell me!” She looked at him almost triumphantly smiling through her tears. “As if a mother needed telling!”

He walked away from her down the road for a few paces, then back again, a thousand memories thronging into his mind. He remembered the freshness of Barbara’s lips against his own, the sensation of her young body in his arms—and yet, after all that, she had thrown him over. No, he could not believe in her any more.

He stopped before Mrs. Simpson and said gently enough: “I’m sorry. But it is no use beginning the whole thing over again. I can’t believe after what passed between us that she would throw me over for such a reason.”

“Canada is so far,” urged Mrs. Simpson. “I am sure she thought of that.”

“But I offered to remain in England. That was no excuse.”

“You did?”

Mrs. Simpson stood quite still, her eyes fixed on him, unseeing, her mind working.

At last she cried: “So that’s it. Poor Barbara! Poor little Barbara!” “What do you mean ?”

“Mean? Why, do you think she would ruin your life by making you remain in England with a useless arm and no prospects whatever? Not if she loved you as I think she does; she’d rather break her own heart.”

“Why couldn’t she say so then ?” he persisted.

“And spoil it all? No; she was going to give you a fresh start after your fighting and all your handicaps in life; nothing left to clog you from behind. She doesn’t do things by halves. It was like our Barbara.” He stood looking down the dreary road which grew more and more indistinct; at last he looked at Mrs. Simpson.

“You’re right,” he said. “I suppose it was like our Barbara. Well, I can stay in England now.”

For a moment Mrs. Simpson faltered; she felt physically unable to start a fresh fight on this issue, but it had to be, if Barbara was to be happy.

“You and I,” she said, smiling at him with white lips, “must just put our heads together and do what is best for her. She has, perhaps, become a little excited and overstrung with the pressure of the war. She has seen everybody giving up, until she is ready to sacrifice her happiness and yours and mine as well. But we mustn’t let her. She is just suited for a free life out there with you, and she will help you to reap the result of all your hard work before the war. I can be perfectly, perfectly happy thinking of you two in Canada among your orchards and fruit-fields, but I should be miserable to see you doing unsuitable work and living in a narrow street. So you and Barbara and I would all be less happy than we need; and all for nothing.”

He looked down at her eager face, dimly understanding the passion of mother-love which urged her on; he even vaguely felt, without putting his feeling into thoughts, that it could drive her just so into a burning fiery furnace; with that same high look and nervous smile. And he acknowledged this in his reply.

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll do what you think best.”

But he thought it an odd thing that instead of being invigorated by this announcement as he expected, she should drop suddenly upon the stone heap. Her faintness soon passed, however, and she rose and walked slowly with him in the direction of the railway station.

On arriving home she went straight to bed without giving any information beyond the rather misleading statement that she had been with Miss Pelling. But next morning when the extremity of her exhaustion had passed off she told Mr. Simpson all that had taken place. They were in bed at the time, and Mr. Simpson started up to say vehemently: “Never heard of such tomfoolery in my life f You might have died on such an expedition,” for his first thought was for his wife. But immediately afterwards he said: “Barbara has been a good girl: she thought of you before herself. We’re lucky to have such children, whatever other troubles we have.”

“We are indeed, Sam.” And she saw radiantly the joy their children had brought and forgot the sorrow.

“All the same, I don’t know how you will manage without Barbara in the house, especially now Elsie is going away,” he said.

“Oh, I am getting stronger again and shall no doubt be perfectly well in a year or two,” said Mrs. Simpson. “A little more housework will do me good, take my thoughts off.”

“Well, perhaps it may,” said Mr. Simpson doubtfully. “We shall have to see. what can be managed. The war may be over soon and my business come back again,” he concluded, beginning to talk himself into the optimistic view as usual.

But Barbara was not so easily convinced, and after the first burst of surprise and happiness she began to dwell again on her mother’s health. At last she mentioned something of what the doctor had said.

“It was that time you got ill because I left you to go to Scarcliffe,” she said. “He was very angry with me for leaving you to do all the work.”

“Oh, I know he was; and that made him speak as he did,” responded Mrs. Simpson. “He got the silly idea that you were a selfish daughter who needed frightening with proper attention; but he has assured me over and over again that I shall be as strong as ever in a year or two.”

“I wish I could ask him,” said Barbara, still not satisfied.

“Well, you can when he comes back from the Front,” said Mrs. Simpson. “Meantime, you’ll perhaps continue to believe your own Mother.”

So in the end Barbara allowed herself to believe her mother as she had always done; and the next day Brooke came to Flodmouth

It was late afternoon when he arrived, and Barbara walked home with him from the station along the slippery pavements covered with the greasy mud that seldom quite dries in Flodmouth at this time of year. Sailors, soldiers, girls tired but gay after their day’s work, school-children running riotously, newsboys hawking papers—all these ebbed and flowed round the lovers, who remained unconscious of them and yet were aware of a jolly stir of life which made their own joy more secret and intimate. This was a fruition— as with all lovers—of childhood’s' pretty glee in “talking secrets.” And it mattered as little to Barbara and Julian what the secret was so long as they alone shared it. They were in that state of divine folly when it was most rapturously sweet to mumble to each other during a block at a street corner: “Do you see that woman’s hat, Julian?”

“Yes, Barbara, I shall not let you have one like that when we are married.”

Married! And immediately the word set joy-bells ringing and clashing all over the world—or at least they felt it to be so as they clung together in crossing the road. They had such a delightful sense of safety, of belonging to each other.

But these things can never be told at the time by true lovers, and Brooke just said fervently: “We’ll spend our honeymoon at Cheltenham. We must take lodgings in an old house like the one we went into that afternoon. But you’ll be my wife this time— my own wife. Will you go there, Barbara?”

“Yes.” She paused a moment. “Oh, Julian, I can’t believe it yet. It seems like a dream, when I think how miserable I was only on Saturday morning.”

He pressed her arm, looking down at her rather gravely—

“It shall not be my fault if you are miserable- any more so long as you live,” he said.

“I can’t be if I have you,” said Barbara.

“No!” he answered. “We can never be really unhappy now, whatever happens, so long as we have each other.”

Thus wrapped warmly in their dream, so that the cold realities could not come near them,'they turned off the main road into the little, dull streets that lay near Barbara’s home. They talked of Canada until they saw, instead of the grimy, narrow houses, great vistas of wind-swept sky and flowery orchards always in the sunshine, and there was a straight road running through it all which was their own lives. The sounds of Flodmouth remained quite unnoticed, as usual, but after a while they gave to Barbara’s thoughts the sort of tenderness the exile feels when hearing songs, not beautiful in themselves, which have been known long and may never be heard any more. She was aware of a great kindness for the town where she was born.

But it was only late in the evening when the pleasant family meal was over and the lovers were alone, that they fully realised the depth of their love for each other. They had so suffered each for the other that every word of love and every caress was like something given back to them which they had thought to have lost for ever.

When the young people had gone to bed, Mr. and Mrs. Simpson sat silently before the fire, for they were not young and they were tired.

After a while Mr. Simpson said, bestirring himself: “I think Barbara has chosen the right one.”

“Yes; it’s nice to see them so happy,” said Mrs. Simpson.

“And we are very comfortable here,” said Mr. Simpson, unconsciously answering something wistful in his wife’s voice. “Oh, we shall be as snug as a bug in a rug here.”

“Yes, you can so soon get this room nice and warm,” said Mrs. Simpson. “That is a great thing when people are growing old like you and me, Sam.”

“Of course it is. We shouldn’t want large rooms for just us two even if we could afford the——m. The children all gone—”

“No, this house is exactly the thing for us now.”

They were silent again, both thinking of Jim; they were able to look with hope and joy through the window their boy had left open.

And above them the banner floated.

THE END