Flower and Thorn
Author: Whitby, Beatrice
Date: 2017-01-04T06:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction
Description: Ebook prepared by crutledge@knology.net
Rights: Public Domain

TABLE of CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER I

“Rain, sun and rain! and the free blossom blows;
Sun, rain and sun! and where is he who knows?
From the great deep to the great deep he goes.’’
—The Coming of Arthur.

Mrs. Guthrie was paying a stiff price for a month’s sea air on the east coast, and she was not getting her money’s worth; lamentable scats of rain had for twenty-four hours beaten against the lodging-house. The lady in question was an invalid; she had not gone to Felixstowe for enjoyment—she had never at the best of times a faculty for enjoyment— she had gone because her doctor had ordered her to do so. Now she lay like a martyr on her couch, listening to angry bursts of wind and rain that shook at the French window of her sitting-room.

In fine weather she spent whole days on the sands, sallying thither painfully enough on her crutches, to lie listening listlessly to the monotonous drum of the waves. She never read nor sewed; she never occupied herself at all; she spent all the strength she had in “resting.”

Nevertheless, she was an adept at finding employment for those about her. Her niece Jane and her son David were never idle if she could help it. In her gentle way she broke in those youngsters thoroughly. The boy, David, took the weather more philosophically than did his mother.

David was not a rattling, breezy, inconsequent schoolboy. He was quiet, thoughtful, old for his fourteen years. Though he was an only child, he had had no over-share of indulgence. Poor Mrs. Guthrie was far too interested in her hip and her headaches to spare much attention for her son, who was as strong as a horse and as self-contained as his father.

Mrs. Guthrie was in no relation of life a success. No elements of success were in her. She expected a vast deal, but she gave little. In her girlhood she had not been happy; her mother had not come up to her moral standard of what a mother should be.

Though she had fallen in love with great ease, emotion, and frequency, her affections had been easily quelled by disappointment.

Finally her husband had disappointed her; that had been a serious matter for them both. She had none of the vaunted strength of the New Woman, but she had thirstily imbibed all the requirements of those Amazons. The end of it was that neither husband nor wife were broken-hearted when climate finally effected a judicial separation between them, Colonel Guthrie remaining in India to serve his time in the Bengal Cavalry, while Mrs. Guthrie settled in England to see after David’s education, and to have a hand in the boy’s moral development.

She expected a great deal of her son, and though, for his age, he was a model of manners, morals, and consideration, yet David was not quite all her fancy pictured a son should be.

When he was by, he certainly waited on his mother assiduously, but he had a knack of being out of her reach. He would carry her couch to the beach, arrange her pillows, and help her thither, but as soon as she was comfortably established at her post he would be off. “He was selfish,” she said; “heigh-ho, ’twas a most selfish world.”

Now on this wet afternoon David, after having finished his library book, grew restless; he loafed to the window, watching the rain and the grey monotony of sea, listening to the wind that swayed the ill-grown clump of trees and rustled the untidy bushes of stunted shrubs in the neglected garden of Harland House.

And as he watched, he kicked at the already damaged wainscotting of the window. This carefully reared boy, whose youthful instincts had been disciplined from his birth, was thrown off his balance by a few hours of bad weather.

“Oh, David, have mercy on my head. Dear boy, do something. This is the sort of day on which to get forward with your work. You are not clever, and if you fail for Sandhurst I shall break my heart. Do some mathematics, they will at least keep you quiet.”

David turned away from his window docilely. He was a tall boy, broad-shouldered and lean-flanked. His features were good, he was pleasant to look at, but he gave people the impression of being older than his fourteen years: so quiet, so deliberate in action, so slow of speech was he. His mother’s strenuous efforts to put an old head on his young shoulders had taken effect upon him to a certain point.

The boy had only one passion, which was for soldiering. Brain or no brain, he would be a soldier. He would “get through” somehow. He let the games which he loved go to the wall; he worked till his head was woolly and his understanding dim, in the effort to make sure of the awful examination that was looming many and many a month off him still. How often Mrs. Guthrie had quoted his tutor’s opinion, how often she had picked out that small disparaging remark from amongst a modifying environment, and told her son that “he was not clever.”

“He will do better than others with double his wits, Mrs. Guthrie—he means it; but he is not clever. His work, I should rather say, does not come very easy to him.”

That had been the tutor’s judgment, from which Mrs. Guthrie extracted the nucleus, “You are not clever.” It did not do for a soldier to be a coward, but David was afraid of his own stupidity. He turned to his mathematics dutifully; every duty on earth, save the duty of happiness, had been impressed on the boy. How soberly his grey eyes looked out on the neutral-tinted world around him.

He had settled down to his work and a silence would have reigned in the room, such as Mrs. Guthrie required for “resting,” had not the upstairs lodgers defied decency by a sudden outburst of revelry in their precincts overhead. Feet pattered, laughter rang, diversified by war-whoops and warlike outbursts of din and tumult.

David smiled at the sounds, but his mother groaned. The boy was naturally affectionate and sympathetic, so when the uproar heightened, his smiles died, and he looked round anxiously at the invalid.

“Ring the bell, David, I cannot bear this. I spoke this morning to Mrs. Browne; I told her that those new people were insufferably noisy. I told her that unless she could keep them quiet I should most certainly leave this house. People are so inconsiderate, so selfish.” She spoke fretfully; fretfulness was a sign of weakness which touched her son.

An over-worked maid, with an impassive, anaemic face, answered the bell at her leisure, and perhaps did not hurry herself to deliver Mrs. Guthrie’s message, begging for a cessation of tumult; for the upstairs lodgers continued the pandemonium, increasing rather than modifying the pace.

Tears filled Mrs. Guthrie’s eyes.

“Mrs. Browne says there is but one child and a governess in those rooms. Do you hear that pounding, that earthquake, that avalanche? Oh, David, my head throbs, I cannot bear it. It must be stopped. Go yourself, dear boy. Jane is shopping for me in the town, or I would have sent her. Go up to the room yourself. Tell them your mother is an invalid, that the doctors forbid noise. Please go, David; perhaps you are shy, but that is foolish, and you must get over it.”

David was too little self-conscious to be overwhelmed by shyness; moreover, ever since his legs could carry him, he had been constantly employed in his mother’s service, and many a tough job against the little lad’s grain had he accomplished. A selfish mother is so excellent and wholesome a discipline, turning out such creditable offspring, that ’tis a pity there are not more of them. David did not hesitate to obey Mrs. Guthrie, though he did not like the business.

He ran upstairs and rapped at the offending lodger’s door. The tumult hushed at once. A dog growled. A child’s voice cried, “Mademoiselle, here is tea.”

Simultaneously with the words the door was opened from the inside, and a little girl and a great black dog bounced out against the incomer.

An elderly lady with untidy hair sat at a table by the window, reading. Her head was supported by her hands; against the lobe of either ear she had pressed an index finger. The little girl ran over to her, touching her hand.

“Here’s that boy,” she cried. “Mademoiselle, he comes up from downstairs to see us.”

“Entrez,” said mademoiselle, turning her book upside down, with a bow of abstracted politeness; “we are very happy to see the young gentleman.”

“I came with a message,” said David. He was an orderly youth; his mother was, and prided herself upon being, scrupulously, primly neat; the disorderly aspect of this room was terrible indeed. “My mother is an invalid, and to-day she has a headache. We have rooms below yours. I came up to ask whether you would mind being quiet; the doctors say noise is bad for my mother’s nerves, and we hear all the movement up here quite plainly.”

Mademoiselle listened, then she looked about her. Losing her air of abstraction, she brought elbows, eyebrows, shoulders and voice to bear upon the situation.

“Valerie is indefensible, incorrigible, irreclaimable,” she cried, pointing at her pupil. “I beg a thousand pardons, monsieur, of your afflicted mama. I had but closed the ear for a short space. I was most deeply engaged in my study of the literature; I heard nothing.” By a deft movement she covered the title-page of her very French, French novel with her work-bag. “In the future all pre- cautions for peace I will myself undertake, and your mama shall not again be disquieted.”

Suddenly her parchment-like skin, which had lain in lines of studied amiability, broke into wrinkles and puckers of fierce displeasure, as she turned upon the little girl, who stood silent and demure, listening.

“Valerie, what desolation is this that you have brought into this apartment?”

“It’s so dull when it rains,” said the child, addressing David. “Kaiser and I were only steeplechasing; he can jump over the card-table, but I can only vault.”

“But steeplechasing is not for girls, or the house. It is pounds and pounds your mama will have to pay for the destruction of these articles. Here is a table-leg shaken, and here is wood cracked. Perhaps this very amiable young gentleman will help me to replace these many things you have disordered. I have no strength of wrist; the dust lies everywhere an inch thick. It is a sin of you, Valerie; such tricks of monkeys are incomprehensible. You are, of all my pupils ever I had, the most savage.”

Valerie laughed, she never took her eyes off David.

“There was nothing to do; it rained, it was dull. Kaiser liked romping, and I liked it also. I had no book, and you, mademoiselle, you were reading.”

The upstairs lodgers talked fast and with gesticulation. David helped to set things to rights, mademoiselle’s French touch soon tweaked the chaos around into order. Valerie stood watching, she did nothing; Kaiser had flopped down at her feet and fallen asleep.

For the past few days David had interested himself in the upstairs lodgers. The child was pretty, unusually pretty. He had never seen such soft brown eyes as hers, such burnished hair, such a laughing mouth about which its baby arch still lingered. Her bright hair contrasted strangely with her great dark eyes. It was conspicuous hair; in fact, to be candid, it was not altogether natural; its pristine fairness had been artificially preserved by the forethought of her mother, who understood such arts in all perfection.

David had watched Valerie at play on the sands, Kaiser and she indulging unchecked in their love of water, whilst the elder mademoiselle was engaged in her study of literature. He had watched with an indulgent smile the inconsequent gambols, the inexhaustible spirits and gaiety of those irresponsible friends, Kaiser and Valerie.

The room was in order now, David had delivered his message. He felt that he had no excuse to stay, though he wanted to further his acquaintance both with the dog and child. The little girl was of his mind.

“Don’t go,” she said, when he was about to leave her. “Please stay. Please stay and talk to me.” She slid a hot little hand into his. “I have no one here to play with me. At home I have lots of friends.” Then she looked up at him, her eyes laughing. She knew he would laugh, too, at her forthcoming remark; people always laughed at the sentiment. “But I like boys best,” she said. David did not smile, he liked boys best himself, and was not surprised at her taste, but he looked at mademoiselle. He was a respecter of persons. Authority, though it was French, impressed him.

“Might I stay?”

Mademoiselle also liked boys best.

“But certainly, you may stay, monsieur,” said she graciously, “if your afflicted mama permits it. Valerie is used to companions, she is triste without the young. There is no world here. But for Kaiser she would pine. We lead a gay life always, but not here.”

With the gracious ease of a society damsel, the triste Valerie took David at once into her confidence.

“Thank you. I am so glad you will stay. I am friends with lots of boys, some of them quite as big as you are. I miss mummy, she takes me everywhere, but now she has gone away. She has gone to Germany to get thin, and my new dad has gone with her. He is not quite so kind as he used to be. I don’t care for him very much, no more, I think, does mother. Our clothes cost a lot of money, you see, and he scolds sometimes.” Valerie held out a gossamer skirt which was sadly torn, fingering the rent pensively. “Kaiser did that. He’s pretty rough. You see, he’s puppyish, and gets wild.” She stopped to tenderly pat the offender’s beautiful coat. “We have only had him a few months. He is a lovely dog. He has such a lot of fathers and grandfathers. One of the officers gave him to me. I do love him so, and he loves me.”

Kaiser opened his sagacious eyes, and thumped upon the floor with his tail.

“How well he swims,” said David. “I have often watched him.”

“And I’ve seen you, and I wanted to play with you before, but mademoiselle said your mummy looked particular, and would not let me speak to her, or to you. Will you play with me to-morrow?”

“When I have done my work.”

“Work!” her mouth fell. “I hate work; it always gets in the way everywhere.”

When Jane, David’s cousin, came back from the town, she was surprised to find Mrs. Guthrie alone. “Where is David?”

“David took a message from me to those people upstairs. He has not come back. Please put those things down, Jane, and get off your wet clothes. You are splashed to the waist.”

Jane Blunt was the daughter of Mrs. Guthrie’s dead sister. She had been left without kith or kin, mother or money, at an age when she wanted care most, and Mrs. Guthrie had charitably received her into her household. At seventeen she was repaying her aunt’s charity by definite domestic toil, and had become an inseparable part of that lady’s sufferings. She was a wholesome-minded, wholesome-looking girl, never meeting the daily burdens of an unattractive life half way, but bravely set “upon wresting happiness from fate’s hard hands,” with a thickish skin and an unimpaired digestion to aid and abet her undertaking.

It was not her way to say more, or to feel more than she could help. She put down the bromidia and latest novel of Marie Corelli’s beside her aunt, without reflecting that those commodities might have been dispensed with in this deplorable weather, and she sloshed off upstairs, dripping as she went.

The door of the first-floor sitting-room was wide open. David was there, apparently quite at home, for he knelt on the floor holding a retriever’s collar, whilst a fairy-like little maiden tried to balance a biscuit on the nose of the dog.

When Valerie laughed David laughed, and inquisitive Jane from the threshold laughed too. The laugh of the latter was audible; she intended it to be heard, and it was heard. Mademoiselle looked up from her “literature” staring. The boy was all very well, but who wanted this blunt demoiselle with her downright air, audaciously, ostentatiously English? Mademoiselle fklgetted; her hero, her heroine were interesting her immensely, but politeness must be maintained.

“You are required, monsieur. This young lady fetches you.”

David did not relish “fetching” any more than a gentleman of twice his years would have done.

He liked his cousin Jane; they were good friends, but just now he did not want her, and he frowned.

Jane advanced to the very threshold and stood there, damp, smiling, and good-humoured. A grey-eyed, rosy-cheeked, wide-mouthed girl, ready to meet any friendship or kindness three-quarters of the way, but blind to frowns and small feelings. Mightily practical was Jane for her seventeen years.

“1 don’t want David,” said she genially. “I only looked in as I passed by. I am wet through.”

Valerie left the dog and David to examine the truth of this statement.

“You are wet. I wish mademoiselle would let me out. I love rain. I like a great spattering on my face.”

“You are talking nonsense, aren’t you?”

“Won’t you come in too? And then David can stay.”

“I must go on and change my things.”

“Will you come in by-and-bye? There will be three of us then; we could play ‘Old Maid.’ That is my favourite game of cards.”

“Valerie, you are most presumptuous. You have always the idea that all the whole earth should play with you. Here comes your tea. Do not presume to trespass more upon the time of this young monsieur. He is amiable, we know, but you are but a small child, and what is a game to you is ennui to him. Adieu, monsieur, and you, mademoiselle, if you do value health, quickly get into the dry clothes. At the seaside one is always cold catching.

Eyebrows, elbows, and shoulders, as well as words were brought to bear upon mademoiselle’s companions. David went, and so did Jane, whilst Valerie bemoaned herself using some terms of impoliteness to her commander-in-chief.

“You are indulged beyond all things, Valerie. Life was not made for you, nor are your fellow-men; in time you will learn so for yourself. At present there is but one thing in all the world, and the one thing is your desire. This time you will not get it. There is no one with whom to play that pitiable nonsense of cards, ‘Old Maid.’ ”

Before an hour had passed, before the lengthy ceremonial of Guthrie tea was quite over, a light rap sounded on the panels of the Guthrie sitting-room, and Valerie glided like a sprite into the room. By a happy instinct she addressed herself to the mistress of the chamber, her voice and manner softened into an ingratiating and plaintive softness.

“I have come,” said she, “to see if I may play here? It is a quiet game, but I cannot play it alone.” She held out her hands. Between her little palms was a pack of cards; she shook back the clouds of burnished hair from her face, and looked beseechingly at Jane. “Can you play ‘Old Maid?’ It is easy to learn; it is so interesting, and I would teach you.”

Mrs. Guthrie smiled, and then the thing was done. Everyone wanted something to do, and even that “pitiable nonsense of cards, ‘Old Maid,’ ” as a way of filling time, was not to be despised.

“Poor child, it is dull for her, Aunt Carrie. Shall we play?”

Valerie went close to the couch and addressed its occupant. Her ways were irresistible. “Will it tire you? The table could be put quite close.”

She used no wiles upon David, she was sure of him; he was a friend.

And it came to pass that when mademoiselle had finished her novel, and had awakened to the fact that Valerie had disappeared, the little lady had played cards until she had tired of “Old Maid,” and was at the dreaded hour of bed-time sitting with the downstair lodgers, entertaining them with her glib tongue, telling them her history and the history of many friends at Leigh, and showing vast interest in everything pertaining to her new comrades.

Even Mrs. Guthrie forgot her headache, and allowed herself to be entertained by the quaint child, with her innocent acuteness, her babyish worldliness, her gracious prattle, and perhaps above all by the attraction of her expressive little face. The wistful beauty of the dark eyes, the laughing lips, the conspicuous hair, were fair to see. And then Mrs. Guthrie liked all things and all people who were new. Everything fresh was good and to be believed in, until the inevitable time came when its mere humanity became apparent.

When the conclave was finally broken up by a torrent of ejaculation and apology from mademoiselle, and Valerie was marched, still smiling and unrepentant, off to bed, the Guthries sighed. The womenkind discussed their uninvited guest when the door had closed upon her, dissecting her ways and looks and words, as the sex will. David, manlike, listened, but held his tongue.

“Will you play with me to-morrow?” the little intruder had asked him as she left.

And he had answered, civilly and readily, that he should be at her service.

CHAPTER II

“All my life long
I most have prized the man who knew himself
And knew the ways before him, rough or smooth,
And from them chose, not blindly brave,
But with considerate courage, and calm will,
And having chosen with a steadfast mind
Pursued his purposes.”

A fortnight had passed: the day preceding the Guthries’ departure from Felixstowe had arrived. The holidays were nearly over.

In the eye of the noon-day sun, stretched at full length on the warm sand, lay studious David, with a book in his hand.

The busy sea heaving to the horizon, and breaking in hurried uneven waves upon the slanting shore, did not disturb him. He did not lift his eyes to see the white-sailed boats that went scudding briskly by in the breeze. Hard by him low rocks, overgrown by fragrant seaweed, newly laid bare by the receding tide, on which bare-legged children roamed at will, did not attract him over-much. In the briny, redolent, fresh, clear, invigorating air he lay, and worked his best.

“David,” said a dear little voice, which though subdued was persistent, “you don’t allow me here. I didn’t mean to come, but I have come. I know you are working”—her pursed-up lips were close to his ear—“but I want you, dreadfully, I want you.”

Ever since their introduction, for two frolicking weeks, David had been this small speaker’s servitor. She had encroached upon his good nature, and he had made no attempt to evade her encroachments.

But though in some ways he had been slavish, he had maintained his superiority up to a point, inasmuch as during his two hours’ daily work Valerie had found that she and her requirements must go to the wall. She had learned with tears that this decree of the boy’s was absolute. The child was all very well, but soldiering was paramount. Books, here, led to battle, through pen to sword. David could be firm.

“Let me say it,” in an earnest whisper; “just one word.”

David put a finger upon a spot on the open page before him, and looked up, a fog of mental obscurity between him and the longing face.

“All right, one word. Fire away.”

“A circus.”

“I don’t understand. What circus?”

“The procession goes through the town at one. It is nearly one now. I want to see it.”

“Well?”

“Mademoiselle won’t come, she’s reading. She says she is tired. Will you”—the voice broke with a fervency of desire—“take me, David?”

David was dreamy, his brain woolly. Personally he would have liked to cease his labour; though the spirit was willing the flesh was weak. So he had himself to discipline, and he answered gruffly: “Rubbish, Valerie. It will be a wretched show, not worth seeing. Lots of riff-raff. I must do my work. You go,” more gently, “you go and dig.” Close by Mrs. Guthrie lay on her couch, half asleep. Beside her sat her niece Jane, stitching in the shade of the Guthries’ tent. Close to the sea mademoiselle and her book were ensconced; to her right and left frisked a flock of happy children.

That very afternoon Valerie’s mother was to arrive at Felixstowe, when mademoiselle’s study of “litterature” would be interrupted. Mademoiselle made her hay whilst the sun shone, her eyes and thoughts safely glued to her book.

Standing with Kaiser’s black nose in her palm, the little maiden, Valerie Talbot, halted and looked at David, looked at hard-hearted, kind-faced David. Her intuition was precocious, feminine; she understood he was not the sort of boy who changes his mind.

At last she turned away from him with a sigh; he was no good at all. She shook some sand off her serge skirt, settled her shady hat on her conspicuous hair, and, with Kaiser at her heels, she turned her back on the sea-shore. Slipping behind the Guthries’ tent, she mounted the few steps leading to the road; gliding rapidly away over the sandy track that led along the beach, she made her way up the hill, past the big hotel, to the heart of the town.

The noon-day was red-hot. Valerie’s short legs had many a step to make before she reached the corner of the street, whence she intended to see the sight that drew her thither; but she was an excitable child, feeling neither heat nor weariness so long as she was amused.

The circus procession had attracted a great crowd of sightseers. Valerie only laughed at the jostling she received, and held her place steadily in the front rank of the people, whilst she strained her eyes to admire the lumbering by of gaudy vehicles, the ambling of curbed steeds, the glitter of tinsel, the attraction of paint and fluttering garments. Open-eyed, open-mouthed, she absorbed all the wonders of the pageant.

The fun, such as it was, was over all too soon. The circus procession had passed. The crowd melted away, leaving Valerie free on the narrow pavement to come or go at her liking.

Just then a clock overhead struck the hour of two, startling the truant in earnest. The show had gone, it was over. Valerie had had her way. The piper must be paid, mademoiselle must be faced. Making every allowance for lodging-house unpunctuality, the school-room dinner would be stone cold by this time. Valerie knew it.

“Kaiser! Kaiser!”

The child till this moment had forgotten Kaiser. Now he was out of sight.

“Kaiser! Kaiser!”

She shouted his name till she was hoarse, but Kaiser did not come. He had disappeared. A terrier looked curiously at her in passing, an unpleasant-looking man stared, but Kaiser had gone.

The streets were no longer full; Valerie could see far and near. In the distance a concourse of people marked the route of the departing procession. In that direction she fixed her eyes. Amongst legs and petticoats she fancied that she espied a busy black object, which might prove to be the hind-quarters of the lost dog.

“Kaiser! Kaiser!” Valerie loved Kaiser better than she loved anything in the world.

“Have you lost your dog, little missy?”

The speaker had an odd voice, and a face from which Valerie hastily averted her gaze; it was unprepossessing in the child’s fastidious eyes. But in her present helpless condition she was even more ready than usual to make a friend.

“Yes,” she answered eagerly, “I have lost my dog. I can’t go back without him. I think I see him following the show.”

“What sort of a dog, little lady?”

“A retriever, wavy-coated. He’s called Kaiser. He never follows very well. He is young. Look there, just at the corner. I think,” nodding her head quickly, “I see him there.”

A lady passing looked hard first at the speaker, and then at the man.

“I’d run after him, missy, and call to him,” said the nasty-looking sympathiser, hastily. “I expect it’s him.”

Valerie was glad to follow any advice. She hurried off in the direction the speaker indicated, and he, quickening his slouching paces, followed her.

* * 5|« * s|e >(:

No frivolity was introduced into the sober meals of the Guthries. Mrs. Guthrie ate to live, she nibbled wholesome food with a display of her lack of appetite. The case was different with her son and Jane. Under protest, as it were, they satisfied vast sea-side capacities for stoking steadily; they were aware of offending fastidious taste, but preferred offence to hunger.

Luncheon that day was silent and earnest as usual, the cheese and biscuit superfluities of the meal were drawing the ceremony to a close, when the Guthries were unexpectedly disturbed by the advent of mademoiselle. Poor mademoiselle, who burst into the room in an agitation which was infectious from its very sincerity.

“Mille pardons. This intrusion is unwarrantable, but I am distracted. Davide,” with a motion towards “Davide’s” mother, “I trusted, might perhaps help me in my trouble.” She laid her expressive nervous hand upon the boy’s arm. “I can find Valerie nowhere. I have sought her far and near.

She is nowhere, up or down, in or out; she is gone —lost.”

“Valerie lost?” cried Mrs. Guthrie, her attention fully arrested. “Dear me, how unfortunate.”

“Alas, yes. Her mama arrives at three. How can I break to her that her child is gone? She will die with horror. I, too, am ready to die. Lost! A child lost in your land is terrible, terrific. She is found dead. She is cut to pieces; she is thrown down in parcels over hedges by the highways. She is battered, drowned, decimated, murdered. Picture to yourself my horror!”

Breaking off, the speaker released David’s arm, and, catching her temples in her hands, ran with a cry to the window, gazing with starting eyes upon the expanse of sea.

It was all very well to be born Britons, but the Guthrie family had their own species of emotions. Mademoiselle would have disquieted a sphinx. They all three got up. As they did so a shrill shriek thrilled their nerves. Mademoiselle was pointing with a tragic gesture to the shore.

“Come, Davide, see. The waves reveal it. She floats. That dark object by the rocks. Alas, alas!”

All three Guthries were behind mademoiselle. Jane was spokeswoman.

“Pouf,” she said, “that’s not Valerie. It is the post of a breakwater. Can’t you see that?”

Mademoiselle left off pointing, and wrung her hands.

“Where is Kaiser?” asked David. He spoke very quietly.

“Alas, he too has gone.”

“It is only two o’clock, mademoiselle. This morning Valerie wanted me to take her to the town to see the circus procession. I refused. She wanted to go badly. Of course she has gone, and she has taken Kaiser. They will both turn up in a few minutes. There is no reason to be frightened.”

French reaction is acute. The well-developed lines of social politeness returned to mademoiselle’s face, for the boy spoke with a reassuring conviction.

“You are wise, Davide. In my fever I had forgotten the cirque. Valerie is of all mortals the most wilful. I go to meet her. This time she shall not escape punishment.”

With elbows, shoulders, hands, and eyebrows at work, mademoiselle left the room, as precipitately as she had entered. A minute later she tore down the hilly garden path, and scurried off at an amble through the wooden gate towards the town.

Jane laughed.

“No lunch, and no litterature,” commented she. “Poor little Valerie.”

“She is a sadly spoilt child, I fear,” sighed Mrs. Guthrie, limping painfully back to her seat.

“The wrong sort of spoiling, too,” Jane went on, taking a biscuit; “spoilt to save trouble, not because she is over-loved.”

“Jane, you are always ready to jump on people.” “Well, David, mademoiselle isn’t the sort of person I should care to leave in charge of my child.” David still stood at the window.

“What a fuss,” pursued his cousin, with a little laugh at the remembrance of mademoiselle’s excitement. “What a commotion about nothing.”

“It is not nothing.” David frowned. “Girls don’t understand. If Valerie doesn’t soon get back mademoiselle has every right to be frightened.” He spoke as a lord of the creation; his faith in the superiority of his sex was enormous. “Mother, may I go? I can get up to the town on my bicycle, and save time. I will ride after her.”

He was gone. The two womenkind looked at his unfinished biscuit, and Mrs. Guthrie sighed again.

“Oh, Jane, that boy is extraordinarily like his father. He lays down the law. He goes his own way; he has no regard for other people’s judgment or opinion; he is almost offensively independent and self-reliant. He has a strong, but, I fear, not a loveable character.”

Jane looked quickly at the speaker’s face. Its discontent matched the plaintive voice, but she did not speak.

“I thought you were going to blackberry at Bordsey, dear. It is selfish to desert you.”

“He is better employed,” said Jane stoutly. “No doubt he would rather blackberry than play hide and seek.”

“Your manner is so blunt, Jane, as to sometimes border on roughness. Don’t waste this last day of sea air; take your sewing to the sands. I shall rest a little; my head buzzes after that scene with the Frenchwoman. I must shut my eyes and think of nothing, or I shall be hardly fit for my journey to-morrow.”

Jane’s conscience was not abnormally developed. Her obedience was sometimes for peace, not principle. Now she took her sewing in her hand, and went out. Once out of sight she put her work-basket down, and walked empty-handed out upon the road. Her rosy face was sober, her broad, good-humoured lips set steadily, her ordinary blue eyes inordinately grave, even gloomy. The fate of lost children was unsavoury. It was terrible to think of Valerie dead, cut into dice and scattered behind the high hedges of Suffolk. To avert such a fate Jane was ready for action. In the blazing sun she, too, hurried after the searchers towards the town. At the foot of the hill, by the donkey stand, she encountered mademoiselle, in a deplorable condition of mental and physical heat. This poor lady had spent the last quarter of an hour in running to and fro over a thousand yards of sandy track, undecided whether to advance in Valerie’s interest or to retreat in the awful necessity of meeting Valerie’s mother.

“Ah, Mees Jane Blunt, to see you is to greet an angel. Madame Beauchamp will be here before it is possible for me to return from the town. Will you be so amiable as to inform her of my absence? It would be reasonable to hide the cause of our fear, no doubt, until I come back with news of the unfortunate Valerie.”

Jane’s nerves and Jane’s common sense outmatched the speaker’s. Jane’s life did not encourage leadership, but here she could exercise authority.

“It would be better to go and meet Mrs. Beauchamp yourself,” with the positiveness of seventeen. “I should not know what to say. Meanwhile David and I can look for Valerie. I am on my way to give information to the police. That is what we did when Aunt Carrie lost a dog. She got him back. It would be best for you to go straight home and meet Valerie’s mother.”

The deliberate conviction of Jane’s voice Impressed mademoiselle. She went home.

The bright September day rushed by, the hours galloped past. Soon, too soon, the creeping twilight settled on the land, and across the uneasy sea, the light of the Cork ship began to twinkle.

Night was coming, and Valerie had not been found. The anxious hours of day were to give way to the sevenfold more acutely anxious hours of darkness. The police were busy. David was out on his bicycle. Mrs. Guthrie sat watching from her window. Jane had been backwards and forwards to the town a score of times.

Valerie’s smart mother, with a queer faded look on her handsome face, was driving hither and thither with mademoiselle. Like the fabled man and his ass, she lent her ears to all advice, and galloped in every direction suggested to her, so far all to no purpose.

Valerie was lost.

A child answering to David’s description had been seen in the town talking to a tramp. A lady had seen her.

A thin, pale-faced child, with dark eyes and conspicuous hair, dressed in blue serge, with a broad-leafed white hat, had been seen later in a field beyond the town by the station, where the circus was bivouacked. Again this self-same child had been noticed by a countryman, who had passed her in a cart by the lane off the road leading to Bordsey. David ran this rustic informer down himself, and questioned him.

“There was a black sportin’ dog in the lane too, a bit further on. The little lady was not far off the ‘Half-way House.’ She was loitering there. Aye, she was alone. He took notice of her because of her hair, which was the colour of copper and brass a’most. It was a lonely part, as perhaps the young gentleman knew, but blackberrying folk were about this month. If he’d thought about it at all, he’d made sure the little lady was out a-blackberrying.”

“What is the shortest way to ‘Half-way House?’ ”

“Right along the road to the Mill, and take the turn to the right. You can’t miss it.”

David was on his bicycle and out of sight, his face betraying how much his heart was in this weary day’s work, before the man had done speaking. Meanwhile Jane Blunt was defying all precedent, and wandering in the dark lane behind Har-land House alone. She had risked peace by breaking from all authority, by refusing to pack, or to sew, or to talk, or to listen, showing by this lapse of discipline less sense of practical personal advantageousness than was her wont.

Of course she did not expect to find Valerie in the lane. She could do no one any good by staying in the road, but there, nevertheless, she elected to stay.

Mademoiselle’s imagination, fed on the literature of her native land, was not reassuring. Both she and Valerie’s poor mother stood hand in hand in the porch, mingling their tears and fears in ungovernable paroxysms of emotion.

Their way of meeting trouble was not Jane’s; hers was a reserved and consequently irritable anxiety, and she had slipped away from this poor pair of women, and wandered alone far up into the lane.

Jane’s life was not exhilarating. Never before that night had she known acute joy, never before had she known the leap of pulse and throb of heart that comes with a sudden relief from fear—a sharp, unlooked-for release from apprehension.

Here in this dark lane she was to have a new experience. Towards her through the dusk there rattled wheels; the hoofs of a trotting pony scattered the stones. She backed into the hedge out of danger.

“Take care,” she cried; “you’ll run me down. Take care.”

The pony was pulled up on his haunches, the cart stopped, and David’s voice cried exultantly:

“I’ve got her. She’s here. It is all right. Here’s Valerie.”

Jane’s throat closed, her lips refused to obey her; something swelled in her side to pain. Mademoiselle’s emotion was infectious.

“All right,” cried David again, and the ring of his sturdy voice put an end to Jane’s emotion.

“Naughty little girl,” she cried, and no one saw Jane’s wet eyes in the dark. “She has given every one a fright which they will never forget.”

Tears, kisses, scoldings, money and words were lavished by Valerie’s mother far and near that night. Long after Valerie herself was fast asleep in her little bed, David sat with Valerie’s pretty mother listening graciously enough to many warm expressions of gratitude. Like her daughter, Mrs. Beauchamp “liked boys best,” and had a caressing manner for them which David thought pleasant.

Jane found herself reaping the harvest she had sown in company with trunks, portmanteaux, and a displeased aunt. She felt dull, flabby and inert after the tension of the day.

The story of the lost child gave food for reflection in this case.

Valerie told it quite simply; she had been in such distress over the loss of Kaiser that she had jumped at the strange man’s offer to find him. He had told her it would cost money. She had given him all she had, a sixpence, and, at his suggestion, her bangle. He had helped her to search the circus field and the outlying shows, but they had not found Kaiser.

He had left her to consult some friends in the “Red Lion,” and later he told her that Kaiser had followed a cart to Bordsey, and had been detained on his way thither at a house by the roadside.

“I was very tired,” Valerie said, “but I went after Kaiser. He said we should find Kaiser. It was a long way, and very hot—the man was thirsty, and he went into places a good deal to drink. We went right out in the country, and he told me to sit down and wait, and I did, and he went into the inn. He was gone a very long while. I suppose I was very tired, for I went to sleep, and David woke me. His bicycle lamp looked like a star. I am glad he found me and Kaiser too, and got the cart. I don’t believe I could have walked another yard. Is Kaiser tired?”

“He is stiff,” said David shortly. “I came across him just before I found you. He was playing with a puppy in the lane.”

The police found the tramp asleep and very drunk in the “Half-way House.” After a night in the cells he was dismissed with a caution.

And cautions were the form of punishment meted out lavishly to Valerie. “If Davide,” said mademoiselle to the delinquent, “had not been of all boys the most constant and clever, you, Valerie, might lie dead and cold on the country side.”

“Yes,” said Valerie’s mother, “you and I, Val can never be grateful enough to David. Kiss him, dear, and thank him again. He is going away.”

Valerie did as she was told.

“Don’t go altogether,” said she. “Come soon and see us at Leigh.”

“Yes,” said David, “I shall be sure to see you again. Your mother has asked me, Valerie.”

CHAPTER III

“Many suns arise and set
Many a chance the years beget.”

There was a certain air of luxury about the room. Upon the lace and fine linen of the dressing-table lay costly knick-knacks that gleamed in the blaze of candle-light—silver, ebony, ivory. An embroidered quilt covered the bed; down cushions lay on the padded springs of the sofa. By the fireside stood an armchair, deep, wide and inviting. Bright curtains were drawn across the window, the door was sheltered by a portiere. The walls must have been four terrors to a conscientious housemaid, so covered were they with pictures, photographs, and pretty rubbish valued only by its possessor.

The owner of this cosy room stood before a cheval glass of oval form, looking with a gentle criticism upon her fair reflection. She was not elated by her beauty, she stood there as a critic. Good-looking? Of course she was good-looking, but was she good-looking enough? To do what was expected of her was not the simple thing it seemed. Great things were expected of her; she was burdened with expectations.

The reflection which this lady criticised was beautifully and carefully dressed for an artillery ball which was to take place that night. She thought just for a displeasing moment of the bill as she looked at the white satin dress. Madame Malmaison’s studied simplicity was effective, but expensive; in fact, the cut of this gown meant more than its wearer could in decency afford to pay for it.

The reflection smiled at her double; she was . looking her best. Without aggressive vanity, she appreciated beauty, she valued it highly. She had been the belle of many a ball; such triumphs were to be hers again. For four long years her teens had been innocent things of the past; she had never felt the loss of them. She always danced. Though her people did not entertain, had not even an average share of money, though her stepfather had no shooting, she always danced; she could ignore the advantages of money, and shooting, and open house.

She was still much what the Valerie Talbot at Felixstowe many a year ago had been. “Brown eyes like a stag, hair the colour of brass and cop- per.” She had grown tall, and she was thin—a trifle over-thin about the long white throat. A string of pearls did not hide, though they might modify, this salient defect. Just of late she had been worried.

By training, by necessity, if not wholly by inclination, she was worldly wise, and she had found herself embarked upon a somewhat serious campaign, the end of which it was hard to foresee.

The great match of the county, an eldest son, possessed of good looks, good manners, decent brains, had singled out Miss Talbot for his favours; he had pursued her not stealthily but openly, defying his good people’s disapproval. He had not grudged making this young person conspicuous by his attentions. Month after month, nay, a year had passed, during which he had manifested his preference—but the end had not come.

Would he? Wouldn’t he? What did he mean? Why had he not?

Every woman in the shire with a marriageable daughter had eyes—lynx eyes, not over kindly— set to watch for Valerie’s fate.

She knew it, and she did not like it. The affair had not been of her seeking, not her fault. If the tongues and eyes could but be blindfolded, or defied, or ignored, life would be pleasanter. Public opinion is a bogie to us all.

Valerie’s girlish pleasure in this ball was out of the question. The thing had become a business, an anxiety. She was to be watched, wondered about. How odious it was. A knock sounded at the door, and a maid brought in a square deal box, the species of which Valerie recognised with a smile, and handed it to Miss Talbot.

It was not, by any means, the first bouquet which had been sent to Valerie, but it was the first sent to her by this special man, by this desirable parti.

“I have undone the lid, miss; the flowers smell like ’eaven.”

When the maid had gone, Valerie stood looking down upon the flowers in her hand, and her face changed. She was always pale, but she grew notably paler. Her eyes darkened, her mouth sobered —the orchids and the foliage trembled as she held them.

For a moment she had felt a glow of pleasure, not wholly gratitude, at the sight of the bouquet; but she did not care for orchids—she had a dislike, a proclaimed dislike to orchids. It was odd that the donor should not know her tastes. As a sign of the times this bouquet was significant, it meant much. Was it possible it meant over-much? It was the chase, not the fox, that she loved.

She was afraid to think; an unaccountable spasm of apprehension seized her. She would be disgraced in the eyes of her world should she lose him, and yet she realised that she was in no hurry for the end.

She was afraid of matrimony. No one had blindfolded her so that she was eager to explore that fateful land of hills and vales, of mountains, chasms and abysses.

Her feelings were not lightly moved, she was not impressionable. She had so often been told that she was heartless that she had begun to believe that of which she had been assured.

She remembered her mother’s second marriage; it had begun auspiciously, but it was not a success. She lived in daily contact with its friction—had shared in a childish way in its disillusions.

This bouquet, which some of the womenkind would envy her, had for the moment given Valerie the blues. She ought to be ashamed of flying in the face of a propitious fate.

Here was she shivering at the fear of a husband who was even a greater laggard in matrimonial love than are most of those gentlemen who know their own value. He knew his, why not? For she knew it too. No doubt this bouquet was not the first token of the sort which he had sent, although it happened to be the first that he had sent to her. With a smile at her own expense, she laid her flowers down, whilst she donned the beautiful white cloak that had been one of her lamentable late extravagances.

Fate had provided Valerie with no handmaiden to help with any dull routine of toilette. No Cinderella coach came to take this fine lady to her ball, but she presently heard the rattle of a cab stop at the street door below her window.

Then she blew out her candles and made her dainty way downstairs to a room where a thin, faded woman sat close to the fireside. This woman was Mrs. Beauchamp, Valerie’s mother. Once upon a time, long ago, she too had been a beauty, and through all the seams and scars that life had left upon her there lurked the shadow of the old attraction still. Once a beauty always a beauty, only the degree varies with the flight of years. They were singularly alike in feature, this well-favoured mother and daughter, but the younger woman’s stag-like brown eyes were deeper set than her mother’s, her beautiful mouth was wider, and the lips firmer and more decided. She was an inch taller, and she had a strength in her face which the elder lacked.

Mrs. Beauchamp appreciated Valerie’s external advantages; she had reared her to use them for her benefit. She herself had reaped no material benefits from her good looks; please Providence her daughter should do better than her mother had done. She laid down her novel, and rose to examine the incomer, looking Valerie slowly up and down, from head to foot, with an anxious eye, which brightened, however, when it fell upon the bouquet, the conspicuous and magnificent bouquet of orchids.

“Is that from him?”

“Yes.”

The triumph of her mother’s little laugh grated on her daughter.

“Valerie, you look your best.”

“I always like white.”

“Turn round; your hair isn’t what it was, dear. Surely it gets darker.”

“Does it, mother? It was over-bright. Startling hair is not rare now, it is so cheap.”

“Dear Valerie, be careful to-night, be very care-fill. It is a critical time—you young ones little know how critical. You are not in your first youth. It will not do to—to throw away a great chance— like—this. Once or twice before you have stood between yourself and a good match. At Plymouth there was Mr. Hayter. You remember how badly you behaved. I wish I was strong enough to chaperon you myself, but late hours kill me.”

“Good-night, mother.”

“But you promise me, Valerie, to be prudent. Don’t let any stray man whom you find pleasant dance frequently with you. Other men don’t like it. Girls with no money don’t often make such a match as this. Think of it, Valerie. Eric has been to me again to-day. He wants me to raise more money to last till you are married, then we must retrench. Heigh-ho! there is but little more money left to raise. I don’t often worry you like this, but this bouquet is serious”—the little triumphant laugh broke out again. “I pray you to take it seriously. Oh, my dear, my dear, if you only knew what little difference there is in men, you would be better able to understand what store we elder women set on money.”

With all her surface frankness, Valerie was not given to wearing any heart she might possess on her sleeve. If she did not like the advice given to her, she did not betray herself.

“Mother, women don’t often marry quite as their people would like. Without great luck or great beauty, King Cophetuas, in robes and crowns, don’t step down to us. I will be good, don’t worry.

I have this bouquet here in my hand; just for the present that is all you must expect of poor Mr. Wetheral. Orchids look to me like antediluvian gnats and spiders, but I am not educated up to them. Good-night, mother.”

“Good-night. Come in and see me when you get back. I shall so want to know how you”—she changed the end of her sentence suddenly—“have enjoyed yourself, my darling.”

One ball was very like another, Valerie thought, as she, clad in the beautiful soft white coat, and carrying her conspicuous bouquet, followed in the wake of her chaperon to the cloak-room. That night the decorations of the ball-room were unusually good, and the uniforms of the men glorified the entertainment. Apart from these distinctions, there was an essential sameness about the pursuit of Terpsichore.

Valerie was thoroughly at home in a ball-room. Anxious, nervous, newly-fledged damsels looked with envy upon her. Her knack of arranging her programme astonished them. Her partners were all men, real men; she escaped boys. She escaped all those dull pleasure-seekers, the beardless youths who ravished their waltzes from the uninitiated at the doorway, and with whom they unwillingly eked out their lagging engagements.

A ball to these fledglings was all heart-burning and ecstasy, inlaid with the sickness of great excitement. Valerie had the savior-faire of that peculiar specimen of matron who does so much to spoil the fresh pleasure of the innocents.

That night Miss Talbot’s arrival at the ball was premeditatedly late. Accepting a proffered arm at the exit of the cloak-room, she broke gently through a business group of programme-fillers at the ball-room entrance, with an empty card dangling at her fan.

Men are so like sheep. Just now Valerie was the fashion. She knew it, of course, and she gave herself airs.

Her present partner was one of the givers of the ball, quite a person to dance with, and Valerie always danced with him if he asked her to do so. She enjoyed the waltz with him, and when they paused one or two men came up to her to ask for dances. She had been taught from her youth up only to see certain people in a ball-room, but she did not take readily to the lesson—she always wanted to enjoy herself.

Later on, once or twice, her eyes roved quickly through the ball-room. Her eyes were not given to roving; habitually she bestowed them and her whole attention upon her comrade, whoever he or she might be. But now they roved, and the bouquet, which was so heavy as to tire her hand, she did not grumble about, nor relinquish.

It was not Valerie’s way to go back to her chaperon’s wing if she could avoid doing so, but presently she retreated deliberately to the dais, and stood like a lamb waiting to be chosen.

Mr. Wetheral had given her the bouquet, but he was in no hurry to follow up his lead. He was at the other end of the room, talking incessantly to his partner, whom Valerie saw was a very pretty girl, a stranger, new to his neighbourhood, new to Valerie, and withal extremely fair to see. Miss Talbot’s head was going up rather high. It was hardly fair to keep her waiting here—he never minded hurting her pride. He did not care for her. Pshaw!—he did not know what love meant.

Neither, fortunately, did she. Though once at Plymouth several years ago—

“Will you give me a dance, Valerie?”

“I was wondering whether you would be here,” said she, “at the very moment you spoke. I thought it was just possible. I heard you were coming to the depot. When did you come?” “Only to-day.”

She was looking pleased, frankly, flatteringly pleased. She scanned her card slowly.

“Will you have a supper dance, David? Will the first of the three supper extras do for you?” She smiled at him. His straight brave eyes smiled back.

“May I not have all the supper dances? They always go together, don’t they, Valerie?”

She hesitated. Her father had been a soldier. She liked soldiers.

This handsome, manly friend of hers was soldierly from the top of his dark head to his regulation boots.

His face was a strong, clean-cut, dogged face, kind and eager now, but a face that could be set and hard. His eyes were straight and brave, easy to deceive, simple, not suspicious, not given to the ferreting out of treachery; but eyes it would be better not to offend.

The face of a faithful friend and generous foe, faithful in both capacities, but a face with which it would be pleasantest to be upon friendly terms.

These deductions are not Miss Talbot’s. She only thought that Captain Guthrie was a desirable partner, that her white dress looked well by his scarlet coat, and that she would give him the three momentous supper dances for the which he had petitioned.

Valerie looked at him, handing her programme to him with a friendly laugh. Mr. Wetheral was at her elbow now. She had been aware of his presence some seconds before she, turning, greeted him carelessly. He had a princely way of ignoring programmes, for he generally got what he wanted without prematurely booking his wishes.

“May I have this dance, Miss Talbot?”

“I’m so sorry, but I am engaged.”

“Then what dance may I have?”

“Captain Guthrie, please give me my card.”

He handed back card and flowers together, and strolled off. Safe set before those three coveted waltzes he had inscribed, “D. G.,” “D. G.,” “D. G.” His good time was coming. He could afford to wait. He was content. But his content was shaken presently. He knew Wetheral; superficially he knew all about him. By-and-bye he was to know yet more of this man, to be told of all the hopes that he had raised, and which it was expected he would fulfil that very night.

Long before the advent of the supper dances, a garrulous partner with whom Captain Guthrie was dancing the Lancers had let him into the secret. Miss Talbot and Mr. Wetheral were dancing vis-à-vis to them, and Captain Guthrie was watching her with over-expressive eyes. “What a graceful, debonnair woman she was—no one in the room could compare with her,” he thought, and the acute fledgling, his partner, whose father had the best shooting in the county, broke into his meditation with an innocent query.

“Do you admire Miss Talbot?”

“Yes,” said he, shortly. Admire her? To his cost he admired her unreasonably.

“So do I. But she looks foreign. Her colouring is odd. Her eyebrows and her eyelashes are so much darker than her hair. Hers is a foreign, odd, pathetic sort of beauty.”

“Pathetic?” he repeated. He wanted to go on talking of Valerie. He was not going to talk of her to-morrow, he should be busy; to-night he could do as he wished. “Pathetic? I don’t think she looks at all down on her luck.”

“Not at this minute,” said the very young girl, who had elder sisters and was not so juvenile as her years. “But those weird sort of ox-eyes are always sad. Look at her eyes, Captain Guthrie. I think they are beautiful.”

He looked and set his lips tight. Coquette. Wetheral wanted a bullet through his head to teach him manners. Look at all the old cats round the room staring at him! Men who really care for a woman don’t make her conspicuous.

Ahem! this was no business of his. Three thousand pounds in consols and Captain Guthrie’s pay would not keep a wife—a Valerie type of wife— in decency. He did not mean to drag his wife about after him on a baggage wagon. He had never asked Valerie to marry him, but he had told her the reason why he had not done so. She had understood him. She had talked like an angel. She was, of course, an angel; that was but one of her smallest attractions. His regiment was his wife, an exacting wife, but he loved her; he loved his work. Since those days, those few mad days at Plymouth, he had put Valerie out of his mind.

She was in his heart. His heart—like his politics —was Conservative—-he could not get her out thence.

Wetheral was not a bad chap, they said. Perhaps he was less of a fool than Captain Guthrie thought him. Pshaw, he, David, was no better than a dog in the manger, scowling at a man who had got the hay for which the scowler had no use at all.

“Do you know Miss Talbot?”

“I knew her as a child. I have always known her.”

“What a lovely bouquet. Everyone”—lowering her voice—“says they are engaged. But his people don’t like it, so it is not given out.”

“Why shouldn’t his people like it?”

“She has no money, and is nothing very particular, you see. The Wetherals think a lot of themselves. But I don’t believe they are engaged at all. She has such a lot of new dresses. If things are settled, she wouldn’t get new frocks. They are not necessary.”

“Why not?”—with a rather cantankerous denseness.

“She would wait,” demurely, “for her trousseau.”

The good time for which Captain Guthrie was waiting was losing its allurements somewhat; luckily for him that it was so, for the good time was destined not to come at all.

Great people sup early; they gather their worms betimes. Mr. Wetheral and Miss Talbot descended with the magnates to the supper-room. Supper dances are all very well for inconsequent youth. Valerie deliberately wasted two of Captain Guthrie’s waltzes over a quail and a glass of champagne. The band sang overhead. She heard, but she did not heed it. She had other fish to fry. A slim fish, who sat beside her, and at whom she directed her dark eyes, and to whom she lent her little ears. Her thoughts were not running so smoothly as her fortunes.

This slim man with a small sleek head, with unusual height, and narrow shoulders, long nose, prominent eyes, well-cut mouth, and retreating chin, was good-looking enough. What did she know of him but the cut of his coat, and the size of his nose? He had sent her orchids; he knew as little of her tastes as she knew of his.

An hour of his company at supper was a preliminary sort of canter. Amongst the various matrimonial diversities of life, husband and wife must meet at meals. Oh, the many, many meals in one short year. Every day, every week, every year, to munch, munch, munch in concert till they died. Her thoughts ran on rather wildly, though her manners were demure.

Ridiculous! A woman got used to it all; she did not count out the drawbacks to success. She did not rake about to find out what a failure, crying aloud for compassion and sympathy, a couple here and there might have made of matrimony.

Valerie was never satisfied. If Mr. Wetheral retreated, she advanced. Should he appear to be seriously advancing, she retreated. She was going to make an end that night of such folly.

This desirable parti was a great talker. His mind was a lady-like one, and he liked gossip. He was discussing diamonds. He knew a great deal about diamonds, and about lace. He knew for a fact that Lady Murray’s tiara was paste. He whispered the secret to Valerie. She opened her beautiful eyes very wide, nodding her conspicuous head.

“Really? Impossible! How extraordinary! How hard to believe!”

He had little stories to tell her to the detraction of most people; they were having a sort of feminine tea party tête-à-têtc. He liked her best when she gossiped, and when she laughed at his jokes. She did both now, and he liked her very much.

It was he at last who made the move. They strolled together to the ball-room, and stopping on the threshold, they severally examined their programmes.

“Dear me, how annoying,” he said; “I had forgotten that I was engaged for this last supper dance.”

He adjusted his eyeglass in his eye, and looked through the thinned ranks of dancers. The handsome girl whom Valerie had noticed before danced by, looking at him and laughing wickedly enough, and shaking her head.

“There she is. It is all right, she is dancing.”

He turned to Valerie. Her eyes were on her programme. “D. G.” “D. G.” “D. G.”

“D. G.’s” third dance was nearly over.

“May I have this waltz?”

“I, too, am engaged.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to wait for him?”

“Yes,” she said, with a smile and a sigh. She was tired of the ball; her eyes followed her rival. Valerie had an intuitive knowledge that that fair girl was a rival, and one whom she could not afford to despise. As her eyes roved, they fell upon the man for whom she had ostentatiously told Mr. Wetheral she would wait. She made a gesture with her hand, and he came to her at once.

“I have been at supper,” graciously. “I am so sorry.”

“So am I,” said he, with his straight grave eyes on hers. Then he put his arm around her, and they danced on and on till the music stopped.

Captain Guthrie had no feminine faculty for chitchat. He found it difficult to express himself, and required a more than ordinary pressure of feeling to induce him to put such feeling into words. He was a good listener; he expected Valerie to talk to him. Gossip did not amuse him, he forgot the points of it. Valerie understood this, but when she cared to do so, she knew just the best knack of interesting him.

Mr. Wetheral, with his eyeglass in his eye, watched her from the door of the ball-room. The pathetic foreign beauty of her face, the little tricks of manner that he liked, the grace of movement; he stood and watched them eagerly, openly, for all this corner of the observant world to see.

“Dear, dear, all alone, Mr. Wetheral, and I let you cut me out, and I wasn’t offended,” laughed a fresh voice at his side.

The speaker was such a nice child, such a beautiful child, who had taken a great fancy to him, he was told, who liked his company, and who envied Miss Talbot in a frank, ingratiating way. This girl was staying with his mother. He was in the house with her. She was a desirable young person of position; she had been asked to Malden for a purpose which Mr. Wetheral divined. As a protest against this purpose the orchid bouquet had gone to Valerie. This slim young man with the small head could not be driven. His parents knew it. They invited Alice Campbell, and she came. She was a pink and white, fresh girl, who admired Miss Talbot beyond reason, and who seemed to think Mr. Wetheral was booked for good and all. Mr. Wetheral felt a Briton’s love of freedom nevertheless.

It is not displeasing to know that the worfien-kind are all alive to your advantages. Life was very smooth to Mr. Wetheral. To be a “parti” has its pros and cons like other states. Mr. Wetheral did not wish to be married for his acres, but for his charms. He would have liked to play the Lord of Burleigh, but it is never a safe game.

That fellow, Guthrie, was a haggard, whitefaced fellow with a pair of wicked-looking eyes. Sinews and inches are attributes that fragile-looking women admire. What a broad, thin-flanked. well-made, good-looking chap the fellow was. How well Valerie’s white gown, and her beautiful white arms and shoulders, looked by the red coat. When uniforms are about, women should wear nothing but white.

“Supper cut you out, Lady Alice, not I.”

“What a clumsy apology.”

“I’m a clumsy man, I know, but will you dance this next thing with me?”

She shook out her tulle skirts, and stationed herself beside him complacently.

“All right, I don’t mind. I will forgive supper and you. Only don’t be jealous, and stare at Miss Talbot’s partner, but just for five minutes attend to me. She will appreciate you all the more later on.” There was wisdom in these words. Mr. Wetheral “attended” to Lady Alice for more than the specified time. Later, he found Valerie as the girl had predicted, namely, more appreciative than before.

The crisis was near at hand; during the concluding dances Mr. Wetheral remained in devoted attendance on Miss Talbot. It was a toss-up whether he spoke to her in the corridor or not. There were momentous words on his tongue more than once, but Fate conspired against him—he never got an opportunity to seal his fortune. Valerie grew a shade constrained and nervous. She did not help him out.

The ball was nearly over. In common decency she could not stay longer. Her squire waited for her at the cloak-room door. She came out slowly, her small face looking very pale above the soft white coat she wore. Her bouquet was still in her hand, but drooping and weary. She took Mr. Wetheral’s arm. He led her to the carriage, talking all the way. She could not withdraw from his enclosing hand, and bid him good-bye in the brisk orthodox mode. He was holding her hand fast— his head very near hers. There was a prematurely possessive air about him.

“Good-bye. Good-bye till tomorrow,” he said; “only till tomorrow. I shall come and see you tomorrow.”

The cab rattled and jarred on its homeward way. Valerie’s chaperon leaned forward and smiled upon her. Mr. Wetheral had not lowered his voice, he had spoken clearly.

“May I—may I congratulate you, my dear? I must be the very first to wish you joy.”

Valerie thought over the words a moment before she answered. It was, of course, virtually done. She felt oppressed.

“I have enjoyed my ball very much,” she said demurely, “but that is all, dear Mrs. Hamilton. The joy is over, I am afraid. I am stiffening already. I danced hard.”

Mrs. Hamilton held her tongue, and nodded her head. She had made a faux-pas, but if Miss Talbot was not engaged, she ought to be.

Valerie was not dubious as to her position, and she did not trouble herself about Mrs. Hamilton’s views. She was to be given her chance to-morrow, when all the whispers would cease, and the tongues be let loose. Mr. Wetheral was assuredly going to ask her to marry him. She never doubted that he would do so, nor did she doubt what her answer would be. She did not object to her reprieve, but she wished the momentous interview over. Heigh-ho! She would be glad when to-morrow had turned into yesterday.

CHAPTER IV

“Where art thou, beloved to-morrow?
When young and old, and strong and weak,
Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow,
Thy sweet smiles we ever seek.
In thy place—ah, well-a-day!—
We find the thing we fled—To-day.”

The day following the Artillery Ball was one of the longest that Valerie Talbot ever remembered to have spent. She rose unrefreshed, after a dreamy, troubled sleep. A strong undercurrent of excitement spoilt her breakfast, and kept her strained and unnatural.

It was no good to reason with herself—she could not face the coming têtc-à-tête calmly. Mr. Wetheral would be as essentially mild a lover as he was mild a man, yet she was loath to come to conclusions. He would break no bonds nor would he carry her off her feet by vehement assault.

She never dreamed of letting herself off the coming crisis, but she shirked it. He had virtually told her what he meant to do. She believed him.

She was a candid person, and she always expected people to do as they promised.

It did not strike her that “colours seen by candle-light do not look the same by day;’’ it did not strike her that Mr. Wetheral allowed himself license. An Englishman’s word was his bond. He had said he would come, and of course he would do what he said. Women were not always to be trusted, but she believed in this young man.

Mrs. Beauchamp was excited too. She had no qualms to spoil her pleasure. After lunch she went to her room to lie down, her head seething with trousseaux and weddings, men-servants and maidservants, and “strangers-within-gates.”

Valerie had said Mr. Wetheral was coming; she had said it was all right, and Valerie was to be trusted. Mrs. Beauchamp had sent her husband to the club with the good news warming his breast, and in an odd, indirect way filling his pockets, so that he was readier even than usual to stake monkeys and ponies and paltry fivers on cards and horses, and to back his own opinion for somewhat more than all it was worth.

The Beauchamps’ drawing-room was a seductive room, cheery with chintz and flowers. The floral decorations were left to Valerie, and she did her part of the business with artistic hand. Palms and ferns and flowers she bought most lavishly, and arranged to advantage.

“A room without flowers is as impossible as a life without love.”

Mrs. Beauchamp had instilled this principle into her daughter from the days of sock and coral. Valerie must never grudge herself either such necessity of existence.

The early winter darkness had come on. Valerie was glad to draw the curtains, and to have the lamps brought in as soon as there was an excuse for them that afternoon. Artificial lights are a consolation when artifice of any sort is a necessity. Three o’clock—four o’clock—half-past four struck —still she sat alone in the drawing-room. The jonquils, the hyacinths, the cityssus scented the air. A vague apprehension came unbidden, and undermined the excitement which had brought colour to Valerie’s cheek. She had a robin-like look in her brown dress with a touch of red at her breast. Brown went well with her dark eyes and her copper-brass hair.

But the long delay was telling on her; she was beginning to look tired, she was growing pale, and her eyes were haggard; she looked all eyes.

A servant was bringing in tea on the best of all the Chippendale trays.

As Anne closed the door, a bell rang a loud, consequential peal.

Valerie drew a great deep breath. If her heart and soul, as well as her mind and head, had been concerned in the audible arrival, she could not have been more choked and deafened by the beating of her heart.

Why had she expected him before? Tea-time was, of course, the hour he would choose.

She fought for self-possession. The whole female population was mostly married. Was she going to lose her head at a mere preliminary of the ceremony?

The door opened. With a faint smile she turned her head towards the incomer.

“Captain Guthrie, ’m.”

Valerie’s smile died. She got up, holding out her hand.

David took it, and stared at her.

What was she afraid of? he asked himself. What on earth was she afraid of? They had settled long ago that she had nothing to fear. He would not have paid this purely formal call of civility had there been anything dangerous behind. He told himself this, and he believed it. Cordial friendship he deserved; his position demanded it.

He drank his tea; it was delicious, creamed and sugared, hot, fragrant. She offered him the delicacies around, but he did not eat thereof. She knew the axiom, “Feed the beast,” but hardly understood this axiom did not literally apply to spinsters. It is later in the programme that cooks come in with supreme importance in the relations of the sexes.

Presently he found out that she was absent, that whilst she was talking to him she was listening for something besides his voice. She had asked him to come and see them. She had said that Mrs. Beauchamp longed to talk to him of Kaiser, of Felixstowe, of dear old days. And, the invitation falling in with his inclination, he had come—and she did not want him. He felt that.

With a sudden thrill of something which he did not call jealousy, he realised what it meant.

“Whom were you expecting?” he said, with a trace of the old Plymouth days in his eyes. “I don’t fancy you want me, do you, Valerie? I—I believe you were expecting someone.”

Five o’clock had come and gone. Valerie looked at the clock. She could always tell David anything—he invited confidence. It was better he should know. Why should he not know? She had got to marry someone, a someone not David.

Mr. Wetheral was late, but he was sure to be here soon. She had not dreamed of such humiliation as to be left in the lurch at such an advanced station on the road. She had done nothing to deserve such a fate.

Mr. Wetheral had said everything needful, except the putting of the last short question. At this moment he must be nearing the house, intent upon the fateful interrogation, Aye, or Nay.

It was better that David should know, and that he should go. Mr. Wetheral would not like to find him there when he came.

“Yes, I am expecting Mr. Wetheral,” she said, looking up and meeting the grey eyes, the keen directness of which struck her anew. In contrast with their strong, fierce light, all other eyes looked spiritless and dull.

“Is it—?” asked David. His voice was deep and kind, very gently pitched—the voice of one to whom her weal or woe was dear. “Is it all settled, Valerie? I hope—I hope that you’ll be happy.”

“He is coming this afternoon,” she answered, her voice lowered too. “I am expecting him.”

Captain Guthrie got up. He lifted his brows, his expression changed.

“Haven’t you heard?” he said. “I thought you were sure to know.”

“I have heard nothing. What is it?”

“The Malden people came to grief on their way home last night. The horses took fright at the lodge, and bolted across the park, crashed up against a tree, and turned them all out. No one was much hurt. Wetheral got a bad shaking, and that pretty girl with them broke her wrist. Harding was there; he came back to-day and told me about it. He said it was a mercy no one was killed. But Wetheral is laid up for a bit with a damaged rib and a scratch or two. Of course I thought you knew. I thought you would have heard. There is nothing to be frightened at, it’s quite a trivial hurt.”

He supposed she cared for the fellow; women’s tastes were odd.

He felt, with a pang, that acres and money-bags and the flesh-pots of Egypt were amazingly fine things to possess. To those who had much, much was given.

You could not buy love, though. Those men with money got a wife for a wink—but it must be mighty difficult for them to know whether she came for what she could get, or because she liked her husband. No doubt men and women got used to all the money goods of life very soon, but the want of an appreciative helpmate must be always with you.

Captain Guthrie, anyhow, would never be married for money. He did not at that moment contemplate being married for convenience, but such was to be his fate, and ere long he proceeded open-eyed to walk into it.

The nerves of the miserable Malden horses that Hed from a line of washed linen fluttering in the moonshine had much to answer for. They turned the wild wheel of matrimonial fate in this western corner of the world with a vengeance.

Valerie expected Mr. Wetheral in vain. He did not send, he did not write, he did not come. She heard nothing from him.

She suffered from many wounds, wounds of divers sorts and kinds, but she escaped the worst wound of all, for she had no genuine heartache. The pin-pricks of a thousand mortifications, the pity of her neighbours, the chagrin of her stepfather, the acute unhappiness of her disappointed mother, the wretchedness of want of money, the collapse of day-dreams, of power, of the whole future, were wounds which were all alike inflicted upon her. She lived through a month of her people’s candid anxieties, surmises, conjectures, apprehensions.

Mr. Wetheral was not at Malden; he was staying in Norfolk. This much they knew. They feared worse, and rightly feared it, for worse was to follow. But Valerie, until the announcement in the Morning Post, the public notice of Mr. Wetheral’s engagement to Lady Alice Campbell, dispelled all illusions to the contrary, had carried a bold front, had refused to discuss the matter even with her nearest and dearest, and repeatedly stated to her mother that what was all wrong would come all right.

Mr. Wetheral was to be married at Easter, and Miss Talbot’s pride had had a fall.

She did not like it. What woman, of the many who have to suffer it, undergo such a position gracefully?

Valerie did the natural thing. She pretended not to mind. She knew that she was a nine days’ wonder, that she was laughed at, pitied and despised. Whilst the nine days lasted, she pretended very well, but when they were over, and all the dramatic part of the situation at an end, she began to show signs of the evil days through which she had passed. She wanted to go away from Leigh, but to do so was to show the white feather. The situation had to be faced out, and Valerie determined to face it now and get it over.

Her detractors, and these people were numerous, for Miss Talbot had been so marked a success in the social word as to arouse envy, malice, and all uncharitableness, were spiteful about her. They beat the subject of her humiliation out thin, and still hammered away on the shreds of it.

Captain Guthrie was dead sick of it. Never did he dine out, nor see a friend, nor pay one of the necessary calls of a new-comer, without directly, or indirectly, hearing something “nasty” about Miss Talbot.

Some men are slaves to public opinion; most men are biassed by it. Captain Guthrie had until now deemed himself as the rest of the world, but he was not sufficiently influenced to join in the stonethrowing at forlorn Valerie. On the contrary; he was otherwise affected by it. The chivalry of his nature, the friendship, the more than friendship, he had felt for this traduced person, the compassion of a naturally kind heart, a manly dislike to gossip, a good hatred for Mr. Wetheral, pity for the most attractive woman he had ever met, were sufficient emotions, when blended together by a certain doggedness of disposition, to drive this canny Scotchman into making a fool of himself.

Of course, in cold blood he would not have suggested such a thing to himself as the possibility of marrying a disappointed lady to help her to look as if she had not been disappointed. Those few thousand pounds in the funds had not swelled as his heart swelled. That hunter would have to go. And the small shoot grow smaller yet, and—and—poor David—but poorer Valerie, with all these knives stuck into her by these tongues about him.

Pity’s kinsman took him in hand, and an all-powerful kinsman he proved himself. Captain Guthrie had kept out of Valerie’s way for many a week, but he had not forgotten her. He had never thought so much of her since those far-off Plymouth days. He could do nothing to help her, but he was ready to do what he could.

CHAPTER V

“And women, things that live and move,
Mined by the fever of the soul—
They seek to find in those they love,
Stern strength and promise of control.
They ask not kindness, gentle ways;
These they themselves have tried and known.
They ask a soul that never sways
With the blind gusts that shake their own.”

March had left off roaring. Relinquishing all lion-like propensities, it had mellowed down in its old age, until the yearly wonder of its lamb-like death struck the world afresh.

With spring sunshine flooding the country side, and pungent spring scenting the air, it is hard to wear the willow, hard to remember that willows are much worn.

Valerie had been to a dinner party on the evening preceding this joyous spring day. Captain Guthrie had taken her in to dinner, and he had been pleasant and kind; she had liked him.

Other people had an observance, a shade of curiosity, a something new, in their manner towards her, which she recognised and resented, without defining. Captain Guthrie’s cordial preference did her good.

She had almost enjoyed herself in her old way until the end of the evening came. She was making her adieux, when she was rudely reminded of her willow.

Valerie was always attractive. She attracted attention unwittingly. Her conspicuous hair, her willowy height, her quick, eager manner, her fair, expressive face could not easily be overlooked.

That night she had worn white—a white dress with a bunch of jessamine tucked into the green sash that bound her slender waist, and jessamine bound in the deep waves of her hair.

She had risen, and was in the act of bidding her hostess good-night.

Captain Guthrie’s eyes were not the only ones which were observing her. No wonder that a sharp-faced woman with a plain daughter could not resist the temptation to be ill-natured about her.

By an untoward, but not unusual, social acck dent, a sudden silence fell on the room, one of those unaccountable pauses in a babble of general conversation in which some speaker’s voice falls in strong relief upon an awkward stillness.

“Green and white, deserted quite,” said such a voice. “Miss Talbot has dressed in character tonight.”

The voice was subdued, but clear and impressive. Everyone in the room heard the remark.

Miss Talbot did not pretend not to hear. Her stag-like eyes opened widely, she pretended nothing. She finished her good-byes hurriedly. Like another Cinderella, recalled by a sound to a sense of her forgotten status, she left her party.

One of the guests said more than his prayers as the door closed behind her. He had looked away from her in a moment, but he had seen enough on her face to make his heart beat and his eyes kindle.

“Green and white,
Deserted quite.”

Vapid doggerel, but he guessed how she felt the vapid doggerel running in her ears. He could do no good; he could not help her. He wished he could get a few quiet words with Wetheral, only a word or two, and then perhaps Captain Guthrie would feel more comfortable in his own mind than he had done since the Artillery Ball.

Next morning the sun shone with a promise of summer, the air stirred with life. To be “deserted quite,” and yet to get up and to enjoy the vigour of the morning, seemed possible somehow to Valerie. She was not going to throw up the sponge, though she had cried herself to sleep the night before. But then she did not bargain for more clouds than those personal ones which had of late been driven her way from heaven. Things took a different aspect when, later on in the day, she came down to the drawing-room and found her mother lying with her face in a sofa cushion, crying her eyes out.

“What is it, darling?” said Valerie, tenderly. She was very fond of her mother. Hers was not a critical mind; she would have shrunk from a modern talent for finding flaws in faulty parents, had she possessed it. She had not been civilised away from natural affection.

“Oh, Valerie, Valerie, I am worried to death. I am beside myself. This, indeed, seems like the end of all things.”

The trouble soon came out. Murder will out, and so, alas, will lesser sins. The end of all things, as Mrs. Beauchamp called it, was serious as the Judgment. It took the present form of a lawyer’s letter, concerning the wishes of the Beauchamps’ long-suffering landlord, informing them that the rent was twenty months overdue, and giving them a curt notice to quit their house at Lady Day, which had been sold to a new tenant over their heads.

Valerie listened to the story. She had been brought up in a world of money worries. Nothing more serious than an overflow of half-yearly bills had hitherto befallen the household—surprise bills, which had, nevertheless, to be reckoned with, had formed the Beauchamps’ cross in life. Valerie had taken them lightly, as a matter of Christmas and Midsummer, but she could not take this Lady Day trial serenely. She re-read the lawyer’s letter with a sigh.

“How very unpleasant, mother.”

“It is more unpleasant than you know, Valerie. I really don’t believe Uncle Archibald will ever die.” She alluded to her husband’s uncle, from whom Mr. Beauchamp had expectations. “Eric has had the money. I gave it to him for rent, and of course he put it on horses. You know what horses are—the wrong one invariably wins; and then, when poor Eric meant to make his fortune, he loses the only money we have just now. I’m sure I don’t know who makes money on the Turf. It sounds so simple. I have tried it myself, but I have never done any good. There is nothing straight about it.”

Valerie’s eyes were still on the letter.

“I wonder if it’s legal,” said she, “to have sold this house now, without letting you know.”

“My dearest, we can’t go to law; we cannot afford that. It is as great ruination in its way as the Turf, with no amusement either for your money. We shall have to turn out, and this house suits us so well; such a large drawing-room, and a south aspect, and everything fitting properly.”

“I suppose we must pay him the rent, horrid man.”

“Of course. He is not in a mood to wait; one can see that from his letter.”

“It is short notice.”

“It hardly gives one time to turn round. Valerie, you are smiling. How can you smile?”

“I was not smiling.”

“Perhaps after this annoyance we have all had lately, it is pleasanter for you, dear, that we should go. But I”—and here Mrs. Beauchamp cried afresh—“had hoped to live for the rest of my life here. I know Eric will want to go to London. He will live at the club, and we shall be as poor as rats, and in a horrid part of London. My settlement was very small, only four thousand pounds, Valerie, and I have been raising and raising money so since I married again, that there is really very little left besides my settlement. If you marry, I shall not worry. Eric and I could pig it somewhere out of sight. I daresay we shall not get any of Uncle Archibald’s money. I could stay with you, dear, when I wanted luxury. But there, we agreed not to discuss it, didn’t we? The most attractive women seldom marry young. I did not marry young myself.”

Poor Mrs. Beauchamp! Her daughter sat down beside her, taking her little faded hand in hers, and set to work to comfort her.

They would not go to London; they would go abroad. Mrs. Beauchamp loved Continental life, and Valerie would set herself to like it too, though hitherto she had not felt the allurements of the Continent.

A little money more must be raised, of course, for this audacious landlord, and then, with clean heels, the Beauchamp contingent might go abroad, and economise, hard by a Kursaal, somewhere in the dear Fatherland, where Valerie would fiddle and—ahem!—amuse herself, and her mother take waters.

Valerie dressed up the project, until it bore an almost festive air, and Mrs. Beauchamp dried her eyes, and her still pretty lips began to curve again into faded smiles, and she was presently induced to allow herself to be tucked up on the sofa, to take her daily afternoon repose, whereby she kept such fragile health together as was hers.

“And are you going out, Valerie?”

“Yes, I want a walk, and cook wants eggs. I am going to Dowells’ farm to order them.”

“Shall you be back for tea?”

“Oh, yes, I shall be home by five quite easily.” Valerie set out for this long country walk in sober mind. She had put down several surface roots in this home of hers, which it was a wrench to drag up. Nevertheless, she did not bemoan the turn which her life was taking. Everyone who formed Valerie’s world would hear why she was leaving Leigh. They would hear that the Beauchamps’ house had been let over their heads; they would understand that Miss Talbot was not shirking their compassionate observation.

On the whole she was glad to go, glad to leave a neighbourhood where she had been introduced to the Valley of Humiliation, glad to be saved impending garden parties, where she would be called upon to meet the bride and bridegroom, the feting of whom would form the nucleus of summer dissipation. She was glad to go, but she sighed as she walked along the winding lanes, with her face turned to the hills, amongst the undulating slopes of which the Dowells’ farm lay perched, for she loved this country side—it was her home.

The restfulness of the country seemed attractive to-day. Valerie felt no disgust at the domesticity of it all. Money, and the things money gave, seemed less desirable than usual. She was ready to turn her back on the joy of clothing, the love of purple and fine linen, the desire of gems and jewels, of sparkle and excitement, and to spurn the pride of life that had allured her in the past. She was ready to envy Mrs. Martin, who passed in the governess’ cart with four children, a mushroom hat on her prim head, ambling along on her slow way to her dowdy husband in the dowdy cottage, miles off on the valley side.

Aye, Miss Talbot, in this chastened mood, was keenly alive to the beauty of the landscape, and the better fortune of her neighbours.

The newly-thatched roof of the farm was yellow as corn in the sun. Behind it, on higher ground, rose a group of red-tiled outhouses and neutral-tinted ricks. The farm was approached through a trim garden, bordered with square yew hedges.

On either side of the mossy path of the garden grew clusters of white pinks that scented the air far and near.

Mrs. Dowell was standing in the porch when Miss Talbot reached it, and she greeted her and her florin, and her order civilly. Valerie had a taking face, and Mrs. Dowell answered to its charm.

“A pretty farm. Yes, miss, but dull enough unless you are too busy to think of it, like I am. But I am glad to hear you admire it. Some folks I know do think a lot of this side of the country.”

“I like an excuse to come here, Mrs. Dowell. It is the loveliest farm in the county.”

“But there, we can’t live on looks, miss. Times are bad. They don’t improve. They are no better with farmers than they have been now for years, so me and my master have rigged up a couple of rooms—a good bedroom, miss, and the parlour here. In summer-time we hope to let them from the spring to autumn. If you.-should meet with anyone wanting some such place, please think of me, and I shall be most thankful, I’m sure.”

“I won’t forget, but I am going away from Leigh very soon.”

“Going away?” genially. “I heard as much, and I’m not surprised. I’ve passed the remark to Dowell times upon mind how much I’ve wondered to see such a young lady as you left behind. There, miss, I mustn’t stop. It’s a busy day with me, but I’m sure I wish you joy. Don’t be too long, or it comes to the crooked stick at last.”

“What lovely flowers. They do well here.”

“If you’d care to have a pink or two, you are very welcome to them. They are in their prime today. They won’t last in this fierce sun; it’s fetched them all out in their thousands. I can’t bide to pick, but fill your hands, miss, if you fancy ’em. No one sees them here but me and master and the little ones.”

Valerie was not in any way a thrifty soul. Where flowers were in question she was lavish, lavish as nature at the Dowells’ farm.

She stooped and gathered the pinks slowly. Pigeons on the dove-cote above cooed and strutted, bees hummed, a finch sung close to her shoulder from amongst the thick foliage of the mulberry tree. Thrushes were singing their hearts out in the little wood beyond the pond. A broad meadow lay between the wood and garden, from which lambs and sheep added their voices to the many sounds. A clear brook that sung over a bed of pebbles through green banks of turf intersected the flock.

When her hands were full, Valerie smelt the fragrant pinked-out petals of her flowers. They were sweet, soft, white, warm, as was her modest desire that her life might be.

As the twig is bent the tree inclines to grow. Valerie had been what a gardener would call carelessly planted. No sort of training or pruning had been hers. She made for the sunshine naturally.

She turned a shoulder to the shades of life if it was possible to do so, but now, on her way through the garden to the lane, she stumbled over a dog, a wretched lame old sheep-dog, that lay dying slowly by inches in the sun.

Miss Talbot had a tender heart for animals. She stopped to smooth his poor rough coat. His pathetic eyes hurt her, insisting upon the suffering side of life, such suffering as those of her pleasureseeking creed brace themselves to ignore. He was not responsive to her pity, but growled at her, showing his loosened fangs.

How far, far kinder to have put the poor wretch out of his pain, and out of sight. She drew away, and walked on, with tears of compassion in her eyes.

The fates that day were busy as the bees. Valerie’s emotions had been so stirred by circumstance that tears rose to her eyes because a dog had had his day, and lay dying.

The sun had brought out the pinks, and had warmed the scent alike of them and of the green freshness of the hillside. Captain Guthrie was riding through the lane this afternoon. The fates had sent him upon his way. His heart was light. He had had good news that morning, news which set him in tune with the spring. He was thinking of the future, and into his thoughts that little uncomfortable, awkward contretemps of the night before intruded itself persistently.

Women were hard on one another. Women never said kind things of Valerie. Poor Valerie. That powerful kinsman of pity, with whom Captain Guthrie had not reckoned, arose in his strength at this moment. Here the girl was. She came through the gate out under his horse’s feet.

He got off his horse, and she stood smiling at him in his path.

“Green and white,
Deserted quite.”

Yes, a green hedge behind a small white face. Yes, yes, white flowers in her hand, ferns and rank green grass in the bank beyond her. Deserted? Those dark eyes, wet with tears, and the red lips, and the smile, and the voice like a bell, and the friendly greeting. Deserted? Not by him. Never by him.

Money—money? Who cast a thought to prudence, and a fitness for a poor man’s wife, and bad matches, and a woman who did not know the value of money, when Pity’s omnipotent relation put out his strength? and tears were here, and smiles, and a gentle greeting.

Valerie knew the look on his face. She had seen it there before. She knew what was coming. She wanted time to think. Aye or nay it must be. This man was not to be trifled with. She might not play fast and loose with him. He was a man. He would take her “No” or her “Yes,” and stick to it.

“Why are you crying?”

“I am not crying.”

“There are tears in your eyes.”

“I saw a wretched dog at the farm—dying.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes. I couldn’t bear the dog’s eyes.” She was nervous and constrained, and talked jerkily.

“Dumb, you see. It must be so terrible to want to speak, and yet to be dumb.”

“But was it only the dog?”

“Yes. Yes and no. The dog was a climax. I have been worried.”

Captain Guthrie’s face set. He thought a moment.

“Is it a worry you can tell me of?”

“Yes, if you care to hear.”

“You know I care. Tell me. What is the matter?”

“Our landlord is turning us out. He has sold our house, and the new owner is to live in it. We are leaving Leigh.”

“Is that all?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

There was a silence; it was coming. Her heart beat none the faster, but her fingers grew chilly, and the pinks in them trembled.

“Valerie, I want you to listen. I want you to answer me a question. Did—did you care for Wetheral?”

She shook her head at once.

“You forget,” she laughed, nervously, catching her breath, “my sex don’t care too soon. It is not —done.”

“Seriously, Valerie?”

“Quite seriously.”

“I never thought you did—and yet you would have married him.”

She turned her head aside. He saw her lip tremble, and it was all over.

“Valerie, will you be my wife? Will you marry a poor chap like me? You’ll not marry me for money, I know that. Can you marry me for something else?—for love, darling, for my love, Valerie, because I love you.”

What peace was here offered her. What a peaceful posture she might take if she put her head down on the frieze shoulder, that looked strong and broad enough for an eternal rest. What a temptation to count no costs, and to lift her face to his, and answer him as he wished to be answered.

To be settled like dowdy Mrs. Martin, and fat Mrs. Dowell in the farm. Married and settled— ambition and all its attendant train of restless spirits laid in a lowly home, once and for all.

“My darling, I will be tender to you. I will be true to you,” he was repeating half-incoherently to her, with white lips, and light in his keen eyes.

Tender, true. Words of promise these, leading to the land of promise, smoothing the way thither.

She looked him in the face. Eyes so dark and beautiful as hers spoke language of which their author was innocent.

“Valerie, Valerie, do you mean it? Will you try me? Will you? Will you?”

And it seemed she would. She was conscious of what she was doing. She could watch him and weigh his words, but he had lost his head, and had let himself go, showing the side which such a man does not usually face the world with.

Captain Guthrie’s horse, which he had by the bridle, broke through the tender scene. He was young and of high temper. He rebelled at his part of the programme, and let his master hear of it by a stampede upon the loose flint stones of the lane. In calming his steed, Captain Guthrie calmed himself, and Valerie regained her self-possession. She liked the man, his gentleness to the animal, his suppressed strength, his sudden passion, his assault upon her.

“You are rather mad,” she said. “I don’t quite know why things are possible to-day which were impossible when last you thought of them.”

“You are worried, Valerie; things are different.” He was accurate, always over-accurate, saying in consequence what was true, not what was pleasant, more often than was sometimes polite. “You have had a lot of worry one way and another. To-day I heard I’ve got the adjutancy of volunteers here. It’s a five years’ appointment—not a bad thing. It gave me a freer hand. I could just about afford it now. Luxuries won’t be rife, but there need be no worries, sweet. There shall be none if I can help it.” “Then you don’t care for me,” she said. “Valerie!” Not care, and he a canny Scotchman, marrying her with his eyes open.

“I won’t be married for pity.” Her eyes challenged him. “You are marrying me for pity.”

Her tone had changed; she spoke gaily. The adjutancy was such a great relief, and five years’ appointment gave one breathing time. One could live out of one’s boxes. India and all the drawbacks of a soldier’s wife might be banished to the background for a while.

Valerie’s prudence was not a spontaneous growth; it had been knocked into her by her mother, and by the surroundings of her life. Essentially frivolous in her uprearing, she had been taught to live for such joys of life as are not domestic. In accepting Captain Guthrie’s suggestion she would marry him without a qualm as to her fitness for the wife of a poor man, in an expensive profession.

Her mere acceptance conferred favour upon lim. He swore, not once or twice, but twenty times, that he was the happiest man in the world, md she well believed him.

She was going to marry him, to relinquish am-)ition and to settle. She had had misgivings at the apprehension of Mr. Wetheral as a husband. She had no misgivings about David.

He had been a friend of hers all her life, ever ince the days when she had lost herself at Felix-towe, and he had found her. She was a little awed by the thought of her future mother-in-law, with whom David spent his long leave, and of the cousin Jane, whose photograph David had shown her at Plymouth, and of whom he spoke with great friendliness. She had always told him that he would end by marrying his cousin Jane, but some vears ago his cousin Jane had spoiled the prophecy »y marrying a Government official, who had lately been appointed postmaster at Leigh. Therefore, before long, cousin Jane would be a relation-in-the-law with whom Valerie would have to reckon.

It was past six o’clock. Tough bread and butter, cold drawn tea, and a vexed mother awaited Valerie when she entered her home.

“My dear child, I thought you were lost,” Mrs. Beauchamp cried, when Miss Talbot came into the room.

“Do you remember when I was lost at Felixstowe?”

“I shall never forget it.”

“Remember it now, mother.” And Valerie, ex cited, agitated, with dewy eyes and unsteady lips, came over to her mother’s side and looked into her face. “Remember it now, because you will scold me if you forget it.”

“Valerie, I don’t know what you mean. You talk rubbish.”

“It is not rubbish, mother, it is quite sensible. I am coming to it. I met Captain Guthrie—David Guthrie. He has been made adjutant to the volunteers. It’s a five years’ appointment. It’s a very good appointment—a horse kept for him and some money for a man, you know, and all that sort of thing, I believe—I mean—I expect. Five years, • mother.”

“What is that to us? Are you off your head, Valerie? You are looking ready to cry.”

“It is a very great deal to us, mother. I—I am going to marry him.”

Poor Mrs. Beauchamp sat down on the sofa, covering her face with her hands. There was a desperately long silence between the two women. “Won’t you wish me joy, mother?”

“Wish you joy! Joy—with a man without a penny. A man with a temper—it is in his face. What do you see in him, Valerie? He is as dull as an oyster, as silent as a sphinx. What do you see in him?”

“He is fond of me, mother.”

“Of course he is, but it won’t last. It never lasts in such a case as this. He is a pis-aller. My dear, you should have waited—you should not have been in such a hurry. If the other man did fall through, he is not the only man in the world. You are better-looking than ever; you have plenty of time. To marry a man in a marching regiment, without a sixpence! I could never have believed it of you. Well, you have often disappointed me, Valerie, but never so terribly as now.”

“Mother, he is a good fellow; he is all right. He is not a pauper. I am not going to disgrace you. Surely it might be worse.”

Mrs. Beauchamp burst into tears.

“I wanted you to be happy. I wanted you to get something better than fate has sent your mother.

No one would compare with you, if you could afford to go to the very best people for your things. If you marry this man, you will have to make your own clothes; you will be wretched—you have no knack of contrivance. I know exactly what you will be. There will be children. He is one of those manly sort of men who don’t know how to help their wives, who don’t fit into a house, who are always an extra in their homes. He is not easygoing—do you remember that horrid, strait-laced, ugly woman, his mother? He will be imbued with her notions—men are always like their mothers; it comes out sooner or later. Your poor father was like his own mother. Oh, how unhappy she made me. She was so strict and difficult: so hard to satisfy: ready to see harm in the most trivial amusements. Oh, Valerie, Valerie, you little know what you are undertaking. Married life is not as easy as you girls are led to suppose.”

Valerie’s face fell, her eyes sank to the ground. There had been, in credit to David it must be allowed, a light and laughter in them when he had, some minutes previously, bidden her farewell.

“Mother, I am going to marry him. Had we not better make the best of it? Mr. Wetheral was a better match, but, you see, he did not want me.

This man does want me. He is a bird in my hand, and, if he isn’t a golden pheasant, he is game enough for me. Good-looking? I may be good-looking; I am good-looking, but pretty women are as common as blackberries. I was told to my face to-day by the farmer’s wife that I mustn’t wait much longer. ‘You’ll be driven to take the crooked stick at last,’ she said. Now, mother, Captain Guthrie is not crooked; he is as straight as a man can be—and I am going to marry him.”

“Valerie, don’t pretend that you are in love with the man, because I know better. You never had any heart, and women are safer without them. You would have married years ago if you had had more heart—men don’t like to do all the work. If you had had any heart, Mr. Wetheral would not have left you in the lurch.”

“Don’t scold, mother. I thought you would be glad.”

“I feel as if I could never be glad again,” wailed the poor lady, wringing her hands. “There have been so many worries to-day, and this is the climax.”

These were the first congratulations which fell to Miss Talbot’s share.

CHAPTER VI

“A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
A heart as sound and free
As in the whole world thou canst find—
That heart I’ll give to thee.”

Waiting for dead men’s shoes is ill work. Mr. Beauchamp from his boyhood had lived in expectation of inheriting money from a bachelor uncle. There was nothing certain about this old gentleman. His temper, the amount of his fortune, and the disposition of the same, were alike uncertain. The only reliable feature in his character was his age. He was ninety years old, and it seemed likely he would live to be a hundred, so hale and hearty an old man was he.

Mr. Beauchamp had for years counted himself a rich man on his prospects, and his wife had taken him at his own valuation. It was only of late years that it had become less easy to live prospectively. Hope deferred had in this case done more than make hearts sick; it had made pockets empty, and pigeonholes full. It was driving Mr. Beauchamp to seek his fortune elsewhere; it was ruining Mrs. Beauchamp’s health; it was even marrying Miss Talbot to Captain Guthrie.

It was full time that Uncle Archibald died.

Valerie and David had chosen the month of roses for their prospective wedding. David had been sentimental over the suitability of June, and Valerie had let him have his way. She was spending the last weeks of her spinsterhood, dismally enough, in rooms in Ebury Street; her trousseau getting was her only interest. Uncle Archibald’s enormous age could not but excuse the lavishness of its character.

“It is the last time you will ever be able to afford anything good,” said Mrs. Beauchamp, encouraging her daughter to buy. “And the poor old man can’t live for ever. Influenza cuts people off in a few hours and it is very much about.”

And the thought of influenza was cheering in a way, and drove the women to deal bravely in Bond Street, in lieu of Bayswater merchandise.

The future Mrs. Guthrie had one great matrimonial advantage—she had been happy at home without expecting over-much of anyone.

Her mother was fond of her, but not unreasonably fond. She had never spared Valerie. If any one could be spared work or worry, it had been Mrs. Beauchamp. Even now, when Valerie had a girl’s natural desire for some token of extra affection, of a certain deference and consideration for the last days of her maidenhood, she got nothing of the sort. She was shown that her people thought that she was making a fool of herself, that she was marrying badly, that she was a disappointment. She had been attractive, and she had nothing to show for it. She was a failure, and no one disguised the fact over-carefully.

Only David did not think so. His letters came daily; he paid flying and other visits to town. He did all the practical work of matrimony: he took a furnished house on the outskirts of Leigh, he swallowed the wretched stable of the tenement because the drawing-room was desirable, and because there were roses creeping up the walls by the windows.

His cousin Jane, Mrs. Mallam, was now living at Leigh, and she found him a couple of promising maids, and she saw to household necessities beyond his province. It was at her instigation that he asked Valerie questions about wages and larders, housemaids’ closets, cooking utensils and crockery, over which the bride-elect smiled, and which she invariably forgot to answer.

However, Jane was ready to settle any question that arose. She told her cousin what everything would cost in the future. She permitted him to keep a cart. Government provided the horse.

It was simple as A B C, as she set it down on paper. She dotted down every imaginable expense, leaving a respectable margin for extras and sundries. No wonder he felt justified in securing a very beautiful travelling bag for his bride, over and above the diamond hoop with which he had decorated the slim finger that was so specially Captain Guthrie’s own possession. He took Valerie with him to pay his invalid mother a week’s visit at Bath, and the visit had gone off better than he had dared to hope. Valerie’s natural charm was such a help in life. Mrs. Guthrie liked her—the week was not long enough to find out flaws in the pleasant, pretty woman who deferred to her graciously, who was interested in the hip and the headaches, and who never overdid Mrs. Guthrie with her company or her conversation.

Captain Guthrie was in love, and Valerie set herself to please him.

If occasionally she spent over long a time about the writing of letters, and the sorting of patterns in ' L.01 v. her own room, and chafed him with her length of absence, all soreness went when he saw her.

The lovers wandered about the beautiful old streets, and climbed the surrounding hills, and sunned themselves in the great park, and David dreamed lover’s dreams of a perfect life, and an angel on his arm, and a little local heaven in the villa at Leigh.

He did not talk much, but Valerie talked, and he was a lover, and therefore a good listener.

She was no dreamer of dreams. She knew David never grated upon, nor bored her. She knew that now he was her lover. She took what the gods provided, and did not look forward to the husband days as anything likely to be better or easier than the present.

A coloured photograph of General Guthrie in uniform hung over Mrs. Guthrie’s writing-table in her morning-room.

“I think he has such a splendid face,” Valerie said, standing before the picture, and addressing David. “I admire that strong, manly sort of man. I was wondering”—she lowered her voice—“why they did not get on, David. I was wondering what went wrong.”

“India did not suit my mother.” The son looked constrained; he did not like the subject. “She came home, and—and I suppose he was a bit hurt at her leaving him. He did not say much, but it altered him, and they grew apart gradually, don’t you see? I don’t imagine there were any actual rows at all.” “When did he die?”

“The year I got into the service. It was quite sudden; he was just coming home.”

Valerie wore a blue silk blouse with pink roses embroidered upon it. There was some delicate lace round her throat; she was looking very girlish and attractive. Her dark eyes had returned to their study of General Guthrie.

“He is like you,” she said; and then she, who was chary of any demonstration, slipped her hand within David’s arm, dropped the lightest of kisses upon his coat sleeve, and spoke with a sigh. “David, does it ever frighten you at all? Do you think we shall get on?”

“We must risk that,” said he, tenderly. “We weren’t born yesterday; we know there is a risk.” “But you love me now?”

“I shall love you as long as I live.”

“But men always think that.”

“But I know it.”

“Has it ever struck you we might not get on?”

“No—yes, not latterly. Ages ago, before you promised to marry me, I did not think you were the sort of woman who would like to be poor.”

“I have always been poorish. At least, I have always spent more than I had.”

David laughed.

“You will have to be really poor, Valerie; but you are older now, and I think you understand.” “Money runs away, David. I look in my purse, and there is always a sovereign less than I expected to find there. A sovereign isn’t much, but it is a nuisance when it goes.”

David laughed again.

“I imagine,” said Valerie, “however rich one was, one would get used to all the luxuries and the money-bags in a month. If one marries for position there is always some one who has a smarter husband still; but I should like to be smart. We shall never be smart, David, shall we?”

“Middle-class,” said David, cheerily, but he looked a little anxiously into the face with which he was so deeply in love at this moment. “Valerie, you are getting off it? Middle-class and poor you will be. I’m not over-gay. I am a silent, dull chap, I know.”

She caught the anxiety of his voice, and turned on him, laughing.

“You are as dull as ink,” she cried, shaking her head, “and when we give a party, I foresee you’ll stare, and never speak. Mother says you are too manly a man to be a companion to your wife, and we shan’t ‘do everything together,’ as some dear molly-coddling couples boast they do, to neglected women such as I shall be!”

He rose to her attack, as she intended him to do, and was not over pleased at an interruption when a maid brought the letters from a midday post.

“Don’t read now, Valerie.”

“But I must, David. There’s one from mother, and it is sure to want an answer. It’s on trousseau business, always trousseau business. You little know how hard you have worked us both.”

The letter proved on business indeed. Uncle Archibald was dead. The dead man’s shoes were empty, and Mr. Beauchamp’s long-deferred fortune was his at last. The extent of the inheritance was not mentioned, but it was enough to send Valerie’s mother into the seventh heaven of delight.

“I feel now that the only regret I have in the world,” she wrote in her exultation, “is your mar riage. Even before this good news came, you knowhow I felt about it all. If one had had any idea of what good luck was in store for us, there need have been no sort of anxiety about your immediate future. I do think a will, as soon as it is made, should be public property. In that case Eric could have forestalled what he wanted, and we should never have had to consider expense as we have done. Eric does not tell me exactly how the poor old man divided his money, but he is quite content with what he has got. We are moving into the Cecil to-night. I feel a girl again. As long as we can we must enjoy ourselves together, mustn’t we? etc., etc., etc.—”

I do not think it ever struck David that the Beauchamps did not like the match. They had never heard all the tongues at work at Valerie’s expense as he had heard them. They had no “giftie gi’en” them to see with the eye with which others saw Miss Talbot. He had been told tales; he knew of the desertion, of the wearing of the green and white, of all the pricks of social failure, which had come their daughter’s way.

He was humble, because he was in love, but he was not over humble, except with Valerie.

He little guessed that Mrs. Beauchamp thought it no shame to urge Valerie to reconsider her engagement, that it was suggested that she should postpone the wedding, even if she could not be at present induced to break the entanglement altogether.

Valerie never seemed to understand hints, and, when her mother spoke out, she laughed, as though the whole idea was a joke.

When her mother grew vehement, and there was no possibility of laughing, then she spoke soberly, and to the point.

“J-I-L-T spell the ugliest word in our language, mother.”

“Not so ugly as others you may learn in time.”

“Too ugly for me to spell, mother.” And she tossed up her head, and closed her lips and frowned.

Valerie was not strait-laced, but she had some elementary ideas of what was ugly and what was not.

Though she had had a discreditable number of suitors in her time, an engagement was a different matter altogether.

There was a strain of her grandmother’s Puritan blood in her, perhaps. Anyway, she knew that David had come too close not to stand towards her in a relationship that was serious, permanent. It was against his coat that she had elected to rest her conspicuous but maidenly head. She had given free kisses to that very frieze shoulder; she had planned out her future life with him. No man could do more for her than he had done. He had given her all he had. It was their mutual misfortune that all his worldly goods were so limited.

Valerie had been reared to consider admiration the aim of life, but a husband a necessity of existence. The husband was the necessary drawback of a free hand; he was a mere appendage, tolerated because he could be squeezed of all those things pertaining to the happiness of his wife. It seemed odd that David, who was an agreeable lover, must by the turn of fate turn into a husband.

And the day came when he did so turn.

Valerie was too pale a bride to do her lovely gown justice. Contrary to all expectations, she was nervous, she trembled, her voice was inaudible, and when she walked down the aisle with her steadfast-eyed, erect, proud husband, her cheeks were wet with tears.

It was what is popularly called a gay wedding; a long string of bridesmaids, guests galore, flowers and music and presents. Everything but the bride was festive.

The bride's mother was calm and dry-eyed. She could not shed tears; she felt that she could never cry again now that Uncle Archibald was dead, and they could “do things properly.”

With such a divine bonnet on her head, and such a brocade trailing at her back, a daughter’s wedding was not a thing to weep about.

“Of course it is a bad match,” she said to the many friends who had gathered around her, “but he is dear Valerie’s choice. She might, of course, have married anyone. With her attractions nothing would have surprised me. But she had no ambition. I believe Captain Guthrie is a smart officer, and thought very well of in the army, but there is little scope for prosperity in his profes-sion.

People laughed in their sleeves, over and above smiles and congratulations. Pouf! Valerie had done all she could to marry Mr. Wetheral, and she had failed. Every soul knew that, and they were not likely to forget it. The matrons could afford to be good-natured now that the match was made that laid Valerie upon a plain deal matrimonial shelf, well out of the way.

Valerie “went off” in a white gown, with a white hat that was an artful and expensive effort after simplicity, that quite took the husband in, and which he admired in the ignorant, uncultured way which amused her.

“You look like a school-girl in your early teens to-day,” he told her tenderly. “How do you do it? In church you were such a swell I was half afraid of you, and then you cried. It was the first time I have ever seen you cry since Dowells’ farm. What was it, Valerie?”

“It was all manner of things. I am not sure it wasn’t your cousin Jane. She is so matter-of-fact. She sat down last night; she told me all about the villa and the maids. I felt ignorant, and stupid, and depressed. When at last you did come, she got hold of you, and talked to you sensibly, as if she were another man. 1 looked at you, and you took no notice, and I said to myself, quoting that horrid play we saw together, ‘I lost my lover, for— I married him.’ ”

Then Captain Guthrie swore boldly that she had lost nothing, and would never lose what she wished to keep.

On that June day the oath seemed true enough, and that Valerie would reign for ever. For this proud gentleman would kneel humbly at her feet, and worship dutifully at her shrine, and would live prodigally on a smile, or starve on a frown, and exist for her at a very high pressure of ardent devotion.

In his case there would be no shade of change such as overtook less constant lovers. Her throne was established for ever. She would not be expected to step down, and to lend a hand in the hard work of the work-a-day world, into contact with which this royal lady had wandered.

A happy couple! Of course the Guthries would be a happy couple.

An angel with wings and a .kneeling figure, what attitude could fit, with more seemly grace, into villa existence than this?

Valerie could play her assigned part with no effort. David’s was his own choice. He could have nothing on earth to grumble at in the posture he had eternally assumed.

CHAPTER VII

The sunshine, the delicious air,
The fragrance of the flowers were there.

Captain Guthrie was lunching alone. It was a hot summer day, and he had come in from duty tired and hungry, in a sort of mood which would have lent itself to soothing easily, and which was also as easily prone to be irritated.

He had stridden up his villa garden. His front door stood open. He had entered the little hall, and had called his wife.

“Valerie! Valerie!”

No one had answered. He had opened the door of the pretty drawing-room. It was scented and gay with flowers, cosy with low, deep seats and downy cushions; a most effectively-arranged spot, and one upon which Mrs. Guthrie spent time, thought, and money, but which she had, at this juncture, deserted. He knew the look of this sanctum; he saw it had on its war-paint. It was ready for eyes not his; Valerie was expecting some one. The trimness of the chintz, the freshness of the roses, the neatness—everything spoke of Valerie’s usual habit of life, “people coming.”

He pulled the bell, and waited a weary while for the answer to his summons.

“Where is Mrs. Guthrie, Rose?”

“Mrs. Guthrie is lunching at the Manor. Mrs. Brook came this morning, but she will be back to tea, sir. She is expecting some people. They are going to the Club later; it’s the Club day.”

“Bring up my lunch, Rose.”

“It is on the table, sir.”

Indeed it was on the table, and in this overwhelming heat had already been there somewhat too long. The cold beef had been on the table upon Sunday and upon Monday already. To-day was Tuesday.

Captain Guthrie cast an eye upon it.

“Take away the beef, Rose, and bury it; it is ripe for burial. Bring me the cheese.”

“Won’t you have some sweet, sir? There is a jelly.”

“Bring me some cheese. There are no biscuits in this tin. Take it away and fill it.”

Rose looked sympathetic.

“Mrs. Guthrie was to order the biscuits this morning, sir. They have not come.”

She discreetly withdrew, leaving her master to the loaf and the gorgonzola, and his own acute reflection. The lilies in the half-dozen vases amongst the starvation of the luncheon-table were very beautiful, very beautifully arranged, and very strongly scented.

A verandah sheltered the French window of the dining-room, which opened upon the garden, and the air blew in less hot from the shade. Captain Guthrie ate, and as he cooled down physically he became likewise mentally cooler.

His bachelor days were long over; he had been ^married for over three years. Three years ago last month he had married a wife. It was wonderful to think how soon he had got used to his good fortune—how soon he had grown accustomed to the bliss of Valerie’s constant presence, of Valerie in his home, of Valerie opposite to him in her chair, of Valerie’s step on the stairs, of Valerie’s ways and looks and voice.

God bless her, though blessing had been far from him some minutes back, the commingled scents of lily and gorgonzola being singularly irritating. Pansies for remembrance. There was a bed of these modest flowers on the lawn within his sight. Heartsease for remembrance. Now and again David did throw his mind back, and remember the old heartsease days, just to stretch the matrimonial shoe when it pinched him.

He was quite sane now, and on his feet. It was inevitable that the three years would have got him up from his knees and set him in a more natural posture. If, in one sense of that somewhat sickly word, he was no longer Valerie’s lover, she found nothing in him to grumble at as a husband.

He was reliable, kind, considerate. With some subtle, undefined sense of self-congratulation she was happy in her tiny house. Of course they were very poor, but the fact did not inconvenience her at all. She always seemed to get what she wanted, but her expenditure was never absolutely rash. Her trousseau she had had to rearrange; fashions changed—she could not always be seen in the same frocks. Rechauffes cost something, they were not cheap.

And Mrs. Guthrie was seen a good deal. She was sociable and popular; she had many friends at Leigh, and round about Leigh. Men liked her husband; a good shot, a straight rider, a simple, kind-hearted fellow such as Captain Guthrie was welcome everywhere.

And the Guthries went everywhere, and did everything, David falling in with his wife’s views up to a certain point at any rate. Sometimes he had qualms about expenses, but Valerie managed, or, as he candidly told her, mismanaged, the housekeeping on his allowance. Her mother augmented her daughter’s dress allowance now and again by a sudden big and welcome cheque.

When, two years back, the boy was born, David had suggested letting the stable, but, as Valerie pointed out, the expenses of hire would be prodigious, and as the horse and half the man’s wages were provided, it would be cheapest to go on as before, so that sacrifice to comfort was not thought essential.

Cousin Jane had found Davy’s nurse, and had set Mrs. Guthrie’s nursery on the smooth wheels on which it economically ran. The boy was a healthy youngster, who grew in wisdom and knowledge, and in size and strength, without worrying any one. Valerie took the credit for the robust child, which should rightly have been divided between Providence and Jane Mallam, and her husband was ready to believe that it was Valerie’s cleverness that kept the doctor out of the house, and Davy as rosy as a young cottager.

It was well for Captain Guthrie that his wife’s catering did not include tobacco, for he was more sure of his pipe than of a meal. He got into his deck-chair on the verandah presently, and puffed awry, with his newspaper in his hand, and the big pansy bed, with its velvet-like eyes staring up at the sun beyond him, feeling as though his lunch had been a satisfactory repast enough.

There were no secrets in this thin-walled villa. He could hear the hum of kitchen chat, and the fuss cf the nursery departure for its afternoon constitutional.

As his boy passed down the passage David called him, and, keeping him for company, encouraged him to climb in the verandah, patting his head, and watching him with fondly-foolish eyes. Sandy the second had been a riddle till just lately. In a nervous, ignorant way his father had loved the child. Now he was growing more at home with the stalwart, handsome boy, who bore Valerie’s dark eyes and fair hair, and was a son to be proud of.

Whm the bustle of Sandy’s departure was over, the peace of the afternoon was invaded by a long, soft ring at the door-bell, a decisive, but gentle, ring, which might have told its tale to a more observant ear than that of the bell’s master.

Captain Guthrie heard the front door bell ring complacently. It rang a great deal, but usually concerned Valerie alone. She liked all the people that came to see her; as long as they left him in peace they were welcome to come. But now the bell had rung on his account, worse luck; rustling petticoats were audible behind him; he heard himself greeted by name.

“Oh, it’s only you, Jane. That’s all right. Can you bring out a chair? There is no room to pass, but it’s decently shady and cool here this time of day.”

Only Jane; she fitted in anywhere, she ruffled no one, he was always glad to see her. Her comfortable smile and wholesome face were good in his eyes. Jane was not hard to please; she expected little, was interested in everything, making David’s interests specially her own; she ignored no ore. All the domestic virtues were hers; her capacities, except for the essential capacity of dressing well and looking fair, were deep and wide. Her menus were at her fingers’ ends; she forgot nothing. Her breakfasts for variety and beverage were hard to beat. Her health was superb, her temper sublime. Mrs. Mallam was not emotional, her feelings were not get-at-able, she never gave herself away. In her youth she had had a blunt tongue. It was clear still, but it was smooth. There was nothing acute about her; she could blend with all sorts and conditions of men.

Jane was always the same. You knew where to find her, she never blew hot and cold, and she always wore the same appearance. She did not age or flag—look plain one day, handsome the next. If you wanted her, she was there; if you neglected her, if you left her alone, she did not seem to notice your defection; she never took offence.

Whether this sort of comfortable indifference was due to fortitude, philosophy, or toughness of hide, did not matter. It was a convenient faculty. Every one liked Mrs. Mallam.

David was most partial to her. She was an ally, an aid, a constant help to him in many a small way of his life.

She was as sensible as a man, but possessed all womanly lore. In more than one household dilemma David had sought Jane’s advice, and, all primed with her wisdom, had saved Valerie many a worry. David was hungry for his wife’s peace of mind, for her happiness. Jane did not take these things to heart. She did not get blue shadows under her eyes, and sit and brood as Valerie would have done, when David heard scandals about his kitchen and stable. Valerie only worried; Jane acted. She was not afraid to speak out in the kitchen. Valerie was afraid, and her own incompetence acted and re-acted upon her.

Jane had time for everything. She was never hustled or bustled in this life of hurry, but then she had no children. One had been born to her six years ago, a girl who had lived eight months. She never mentioned it, never alluded in any way to her loss. After a decent period of mourning, she was again to be seen about, not altered a whit by a sorrow such as sometimes metamorphoses the character, health, even life itself, of the bereaved.

Mr. Mallam was a recluse. When he was not busy in his profession, he dabbled in science, and, beyond giving an occasional lecture of the Earth, Air, Fire, and Water species, did nothing to impress his identity upon his little corner of the world. His wife quoted him occasionally in conversation, otherwise his existence dropped out of his friends’ memories.

“David, how lazy,” said his cousin, taking the chair far off so as not to interfere with his ease. “You have had lunch, you haven’t changed. Never mind, you look your best as you are.”

“Have you seen Valerie?”

“I met Valerie this morning, and she asked me to meet the people who are having tea here before we go to the golf ground. There is a cricket match at the Manor, and she wanted to stay there till the last moment, and was afraid that some one might turn up before she got home.”

“There is a ring now.”

“None of the tea people could have come at this hour. I came early; I wanted to see Sandy, and Sandy has gone out. I met him. Isn’t it rather a hot sun for the little chap, David? And your road leading to Leigh is like a furnace. Nurse had to go into the town for some messages, otherwise the lanes are so much cooler. You can get shade there.”

“Valerie likes him to be out all day. Some one told her that children do better who are always out. I don’t suppose she thought of the sun—it has only got hot the last few days. Ah, that ring was the post. Yes, Rosa, give me that letter. By Jove! it’s from old Beauchamp; he doesn’t often treat me to this. I hope my mother-in-law isn’t ill or anything. Valerie is so keen about the Barstow ball; it would be a great disappointment if she is wanted in town. You know they send for Val if Mrs. Beauchamp has an attack of asthma. She doesn’t grumble; she likes an excuse to get to London. May I read this, Jane?”

Jane nodded, and sat there enjoying the heat like a cat purring at the fireside. No one knew better than Mrs. Mallam that her back was round, her waist fiat, and her neck short. In her youth she had mourned these deficiencies. At her age they were no longer drawbacks, but advantages.

No one was jealous of Jane. She might walk in gardens where good-looking women might not look over walls. There was a freedom, a safeguard, a balancing quality in plainness which added to the comfort of her life. For a plain woman the sex question has lost much of the vague terrors with which certain people love to surround it. Her sex is not for ever thrust upon her notice.

Jane sat, admiring the pansies, averting her face from her cousin when she heard his smothered ejaculation of something like consternation over the precious document.

There is a recurrent terror to some unfortunates over the arrival of the penny-post from which they can never free themselves. But the lives in the one-brick villa had been alike independent of hope or dread at the approach of H. M. S. of the Post Office. Jane was no one. I mean it was as natural to him to worry her with any worry that had befallen him, as it was to save Valerie from discomfort of mind.

“Here’s a nice job,” he said, fingering the letter and frowning. “Old Beauchamp is broke, Jane, stony broke. I am to send him a cheque, a mighty big one too, and Valerie is not to know. A pretty sort of mess he’s made of it, by his own showing. He has fooled away his money on the Turf, and some one now has to pay the piper, so he’s chosen me, because I’m so deucedly well off, I suppose. Here, Jane, do read it, I know it’s safe with you. Can you help me? The Lord knows what I am to do.”

Mrs. Mallam looked infectiously grave over the news. Without wasting words she read the proffered letter, which ran as follows:—

—Club,
“Pall Mall.

“Dear David,

“I am in a bit of a hole, and the truth is I don’t know where to turn for five hundred pounds. Can you let me have it? I will send you an I O U, and return it shortly, if I can. I had an infernally bad week at Ascot, and the money I came into from my uncle was cut down a lot by death duty, and never amounted to more than twenty-five thousand pounds, all told—no great riches, after all. London is an expensive place to live in, and my wife has no idea of the value of money, though she would hound me off to some God-forsaken hole to economise if she knew about this business, where I could not call my soul my own.

“You will thus understand why I keep any difficulty I have to myself, and prefer my own way of settlement. I don’t want Valerie to hear anything about this business. You know what women’s tongues are. They keep no secrets but their own.

“Yours ever,

“Eric Beauchamp

“The debt is a debt of honour.”

“Well, Jane.”

Mrs. Mallam’s face seldom expressed anything save a uniform good-humour. David read nothing there, though her blue eyes were fixed upon him. “Well, Jane, what am I to do?”

“Do nothing. Say ‘No.’ ”

“Very awkward to say ‘No.’ ”

“Yes, but the awkwardness would be over when you had said it. Say ‘Yes,’ and the awkwardness would have no end.”

“Poor Beauchamp must be worried to death.” “Temporarily worried, no doubt, but you would be permanently worried. Your money is settled on your wife. You would have to raise the five hundred pounds. You would never get it back.”

“The debt is a debt of honour, Jane.”

“Not your honour, David.”

“It amounts to almost the same thing. Valerie—” he broke off, his head was not business like.

Jane tapped her foot on the ground.

“Pouf!” said she, “don’t be hyper-sensitive, David, you can’t afford it. Mr. Beauchamp has not come to the end of his tether; he is only afraid of being made to economise if his wife knows. You have asked me what I say, and I say, emphatically, refuse. Tell Valerie all about it, and refuse.” Captain Guthrie stared. Women and men don’t think alike on such subjects as were now under discussion. He would not worry his wife, neither could he make up his mind to refuse off-hand in this way.

“Write to him, David. Tell him the truth; he knows your circumstances. Urge him to be cau- tious; the end of his tether will come some day if he isn’t pulled up, and that will be serious for you all. It would not be fair on your boy to let him have this money. You can’t afford the luxury of giving it, David.”

“That’s true. So you want me to send him advice instead of the money, poor old chap. As you say, one doesn’t see one’s way to the end of this. It is not going to end here, and I don’t want Valerie to be bothered.”

“You certainly can’t allow her to be beggared by the gentleman.”

“You are as hard as nails, Jane.”

“Only sometimes, David. I know I could let you have the money. My mother-in-law left it to me and Wilfred lets me do what I like with it. There it is, all ready for anyone, for you yourself if you wanted it, but not for a case like this. I don’t feel qualms about so-called debts of honour.”

“Women don’t. You have your strong points, but this is not one of them. If I have got to say ‘No,’ I had better go and do it, and get the beastly job over.”

Jane nodded. It was useless to appeal to her; she had hardened her heart. Captain Guthrie went off to write his letter, and Jane sat on in the verandah and thought.

She saw monetary rocks ahead for her cousin; she knew how such rocks would impede the easy life in the little house. She had a housekeeper’s hard-headed contempt for Valerie’s domestic incapacities. The hugger-mugger regime of the ornamental villa and its ornamental mistress distressed her. She saw the melting of the sixpences and shillings, and nothing comfortable to show for them, and her Scotch soul was vexed within her. She had not kept her lineless face smooth by the meeting of troubles halfway.

Only once in her life had she lain awake o’ nights full of life’s possibilities. Those day-dreams were laid at rest under the daisies; she would never look forward any more.

She was not one of those women to whom no calamity comes for the first time, so amply does their imagination supply them with dress rehearsals of every ill that may befall our mortal flesh. One death would suffice her; she was not of the stuff to suffer a thousand.

Her cousin did not take life so easily. He came back from his letter-writing looking glum, and went off unsociably early to his club, to drown his worries in whist and evening editions.

Jane waited to meet Valerie’s expected guests. Valerie was late, uncourteously late, and it took tact and diplomacy to prevent anyone realising that such was the fact, but Jane accomplished it, and Valerie, when she did arrive, was so lively and gracious, and moreover looked so radiantly good-looking, that Jane, who, like most ugly people, worshipped good looks, had not the heart to scold her.

“How late you were, Valerie,” she said, when the golf was over, and the two hostesses sat down to rest in the villa drawing-room. “I had almost given you up.”

“I very nearly did not come at all,” with an air of contrition. “I was enjoying myself. The Wetherals were there; I went down to the American garden with them. I had never seen him since I married, and I enjoyed a chat about old times. She is pretty, and she was looking her best, pasted into her gown. Heigh-ho! I wish I could afford a little more such paste, Jane, but I have got a new gown for the Barrows’ ball, pretty enough; I must show it to you. A mysterious garment such as Madame Malmaison loves. She is a genius, that woman.”

“Yes, and she knows it,” said Jane, drily.

“Yes, she quite knows her value. But I have been good; this is the first dress I have had from her since I married. You are going to the Barrows’, of course, Jane. It is going to be a good ball; a splendid ball. I do hope it won’t be quite so hot next week. One does not care to dance with the thermometer at ninety.”

“I have to walk home, Valerie; I must go. We dine at eight.”

“Our hours are all convertible,” said Valerie. “Cook is good-natured. That is one advantage of bad servants, they are always good-natured. David flares up occasionally, soldiers are punctually-minded, and then we are regular for a week; that is all that happens. Life isn’t long enough to fuss oneself into clock-work, is it, Jane?”

“It lengthens life to fuss it into clock-work. A day with no clock-work in it gallops by. Clockwork suits me, for the daily round has a way of furnishing me with even more than I need to ask. Good-bye, Valerie.”

“Are you coming to-morrow to the Kings’ picnic?”

“Yes.”

“Then we shall meet. By the way, how are you going?”

“Biking.”

“I had hoped you were driving, and that you could take me. David wants the cart.”

“How selfish of him! Good-bye.”

CHAPTER VIII

“One not tired with life’s long day, but glad
“ I’ the freshness of the morning.”

“Your temper is going off, David. There is getting to be a married tone about it. It is deteriorating day by day,” said Valerie, confidentially.

She was standing by the pansy bed, stooping over the flowers, and not looking towards the person whom she addressed. In fact, she was picking off withered heads of her blossoms, in an idle, desultory way that, nevertheless, accomplished work, as though some purpose really lay behind the slow movement of her white hands.

The person addressed was smoking, seated on the verandah, with a newspaper in his hand and his eyes on his wife. The pair were on excellent terms. Their relationship was of the free and easy style; there was no check anywhere on the pleasantness of their companionship—the man unconsciously gave, and the woman as unconsciously took, harmony resulting as the comfortable consequence of this arrangement.

There was no pecking either by cock or hen at the villa. The hen, had she been inclined to peck, would have had to subdue her inclination. David gave, but not under compulsion. His will was masterly, his strength great; but these attributes of his lay dormant; they were not called into domestic action. There was no combat of power between Captain and Mrs. Guthrie. He wanted his wife to be happy. She was actively happy, and he was content.

“What’s wrong with my temper?” mildly.

“You won’t come to the Kings’ picnic at Wa-tersbrook.”

“My dear Val, I have work to do at Poole today.”

“When we were married, your work never used to take you away when I wanted you.” She spoke softly, but her smile was malicious. “I want you, and I want your cart to-day.”

“Iam very sorry.”

“That’s no good to me. Your sorrow won’t take me to Watersbrook.”

“I am afraid you will have to bike,” calmly.

“Oh, the flints, and the hills, and the heat, David.”

“Stay at home,” with decision.

“No—no—no. It’s the very day for a picnic. I must go. Sir, do you recollect when you walked to Poole to see my train pass, in the pre-matrimonial days? You shake your head; you have forgotten all about those days, of course. Do you know how to lose a lover, David? Marry him. It is a cure.” She shrugged her shoulders petulantly. “You would not walk half a mile to see me now. You have changed, yes, you have changed.”

“Don’t attack me, Valerie. I know you don’t mean it, but I don’t quite like it.”

“Naturally you don’t like it. No more do I.” “Are you joking, or are you serious?” trying to look into her averted face.

“You are an accurate, serious Scotchman; think it over. Have you changed, or have you not?”

A wry smile passed over David’s face.

“If I have changed, I suppose it is because one can’t live comfortably at fever heat. I will allow that perhaps it is different, but I don’t like you any the less, Val.”

“I told you so,” with a sigh.

“I don’t quarrel with matrimony, do you, Val?” “Sometimes, a—little,” sweetly.

“Don’t quarrel with me, will you?”

“How can I help being cross?’’ with an air of gentle solicitude. “You have coolly said that I am doomed to live without a lover till I die.”

“Or until I die, Val. As a widow you may get another chance.”

Then Valerie, upon one of the rare occasions when she was sentimental, turned her brown eyes upon her husband, and, crossing the strip of lawn intervening between them, held up her face to his.

“When you die,” she said quickly—“don’t talk of it, David. I want to live for ever. This life of ours is good enough for me. I”—she stretched up one hand towards the upper storey of her home, and waved it to the little smiling face that she caught sight of at the window overhead—“I love my life, every single day of it.”

“The butcher has called for orders, ’m,” Rose broke into the dialogue without concern, “and he’s in a hurry; he can’t wait no longer.”

This mundane summons sobered Mrs. Guthrie, and, gathering up her muslin skirts in her hand, she followed the cook to the larder, meek as Moses.

“I’d forgotten to order dinner,” she confessed, with a faint smile, as she passed her husband. He shook his head at her, as if he meant it. Nothing but the tradesmen’s weekly bills were regular at the villa. aHad he changed towards this fascinating inmate of his house? She had said so, and he had owned to it. If she had looked into his heart of hearts that day, she would not have grumbled at what she found there.

As soon as Valerie was out of sight, down went the morning paper. Captain Guthrie, shaking his ashes from his pipe, withdrew from the verandah, and disappeared.

Dinner was ordered, the gardening over. Valerie had written some notes, read some portion of a ladies’ paper and had time to grow tired of her own society before he reappeared.

“You went off in such a hurry,” she said, with a faintly reproachful air, when he came at length and rejoined her.

“Yes, I had something to arrange before I went to the barracks. You are a spoilt woman. You need not complain that you have no lover still. I went for you. Dawson will take the things I want to Poole. I will bike, and you shall have the cart. Does that please your Majesty?”

It pleased her exactly. Her thanks were eager. Biking would do her husband good; he always wanted exercise; it was as necessary to him as friends were to her. How thankful she was that she had married David; how well they pulled together—at least, how well he pulled for both of them. No woman of her acquaintance had such a peaceable husband as hers.

She had forgotten the ambitious dreams of her girlhood till the meeting with the Wetherals yesterday had somewhat revived them. Why had Mr. Wetheral left her? It was odd. Yesterday he had been very glad to see her, very eager to talk to her. He had never been more flatteringly friendly in the old days. People would say she had refused him for David’s sake! Would to heaven she had done so. What a proud position for the Guthries that would be! Pouf! They all did very well as they were.

David knew the truth—he had an overweening contempt for subterfuge of all kinds—and David was content.

She had been civil to Mr. Wetheral. She hardly understood why. He had behaved badly, badly, badly—he knew it as well as she knew it—and yet he had greeted her cordially and had not left her side. Perhaps, in those bitter days of old, someone had made mischief, perhaps some pressure had been put upon him; perhaps the badness of his behaviour had not been voluntary. Her vanity—and who is the mortal who has no amour-propre?— which had been bruised unbearably by him, now called out to be reinstated in its proud position, and suggested any cause but failure for its humiliation.

The Wetherals had just taken a house near Leigh. They had been living in London since their marriage. His health had suffered; he had been ordered to the country.

Report said that Lady Alice had a temper, and that her husband suffered from it. She was an out-of-door, robust, high-spirited girl; he was none of these things. Valerie remembered that she herself had not altogether relished the thought of a life spent within hail of the small-headed, high-nosed, well-bred young man, that she had quarrelled in private with the seemingly propitious fates. Now that there was no chance of seeing or of hearing too much of him, she no longer objected to his conversation, or to his profile.

David was a silent man, eminently manly in mind, and therefore difficult to talk to. Mr. Wetheral prattled on as easily as a woman; he was interested in feminine subjects such as David was slow to understand, or deaf to hear.

Poor David! As Saladin trotted fast through the warm air on the way to the Watersbrook picnic, Valerie thought of him biking over the rough hilly road to Poole, and blessed him lightly in her mind.

Some form of pride had prompted her civility to Mr. Wetheral. She had come back from her meeting with him, and had told her husband about it. Her confidences to David sometimes slipped through one ear and out at the other, as is the wont of the absent marital ear, but David had listened attentively to these disclosures.

“Don’t overdo it, Val. You were not good enough to marry.”

“Perhaps—there was some misunderstanding.”

“Don’t you make any mistake, my lady. When a man wants to marry a woman, he asks her to do so. No misunderstandings, nothing on earth prevents his speaking out.”

“All men are not like you,” with a significant smile.

“In that way they are.”

“Don’t be magnificent. It was only by some slip, some mere coincidence, that you asked me yourself.”

“So you say.”

“Was it not for pity?”

“Never mind what it was for; I try to make you a decent husband.”

“Is it such an effort?”

“Sometimes it is,” unflinchingly.

“The Wetherals are going to the Kings’ picnic.” “Are they? I am not consumed with jealousy; they are quite welcome to be there. The paths of Dives and Lazarus won’t clash too much for comfort down here.”

Then David became once more immersed in his Sportsman, leaving Valerie to her reflections.

The Kings’ picnic was held in one of the most beautiful parts of a beautiful county.

In a hollow between two hills lay a deep wooded valley, through which flowed a fast, wide stream, a stream so broad that here and there it rose almost to the dignity of a river. Boulders and stones strewing its bed broke the water into noisy action on its way; midstream it hurled itself in a foaming, angry torrent against the obstacles in its path, but gurgled calmly and softly beneath its deep, reedy banks.

In this picturesque neighbourhood, a score of light-hearted people picnicked happily and innocently enough. The picnic was much like its fellows, except that its uniformity was destroyed by an accident—an accident of a most unalarming, though of an annoying nature.

Mrs. Guthrie had finished tea, and had elected, in company with her old friend Mr. Wetheral, to explore the banks of the brook, where meadowsweet and pink mallow, and large, vividly-blue forget-me-nots, and reeds and rushes, and fern grew in tangles from season to season. And it was here that the annoying incident took place, for Mrs. Guthrie dropped her parasol into the water, and Mr. Wetheral, who was the only man within hail, hurried down stream and climbed out gallantly upon a boulder, to stay the doomed parasol on its downward career.

“Come back, for Heaven’s sake!” cried Valerie; he turned and his foot slipped, and he himself, following the fate of the parasol, rolled down into the water. Fortunately the stream was gentle, the water warm. In a few strokes he reached the land, and laid the retrieved parasol at its owner’s feet.

Mr. Wetheral did not lose his temper, and it was a little hard on him that both his wife and Mrs. Guthrie should do so. Mr. Wetheral had put Mrs. Guthrie into an awkward position. Any other man in the county could have drenched himself on her account, but she did not like Mr. Wetheral’s doing this. Why could not he have let the parasol go? It was ruined, anyway, without his making a fool of himself. What a tiresome, clumsy person he was. She would tell David about it; he would not like the story. She did not like it herself. She stood, her head held very high, looking at her parasol. Lady Alice was coldly uncivil, and Valerie froze at her tone.

Mrs. Mallam, from a little way down the stream, watched the scene. Then she walked up and joined her cousin’s wife, who for once in a way looked as though she wanted social support. Mr. Wetheral had an empressé manner for all women-kind, and was given to the making of speeches, for which just now Valerie had no patience.

“They will dry you at the farm in the lane,” said Mrs. Mallam. “It is not a hundred yards off, and I know the people. The woman would do everything she could for you, I am sure.”

“Mr. Wetheral catches cold if the dew falls,” said his wife, as though this weakness of his was by no means a pleasing one, “so it is a little rash to stand dripping here under the trees. I should go at once, Rupert.”

And Rupert went, this reminder of his delicacy setting his teeth chattering, and filling him with gloomy forebodings. Jane piloted him to the farm, and, whilst he was drying out of sight, Valerie, to whom Lady Alice had been frankly rude, ordered her cart and drove home. Her parasol had been ruined, and she wished Mr. Wetheral at the bottom of the river. Valerie told herself that she pitied any man who had married such a cat. Lady Alice was a child now. What would her talons be like in ten years’ time? Talons are the only feminine attribute that age cannot wither, that the years perfect. Poor Mr. Wetheral!

David had returned when his wife reached home, and he went out to meet her, helping her down from her perch with the pleasant greeting that she took as a matter of course, accepting it as the usual matrimonial manner.

She made a bee line for the most easy of the drawing-room easy-chairs, and sank into it, as though she had been the person who had traversed the dusty, stony road on a rough bike that hot summer day. She took off her hat, and smoothed back the careful arrangement of conspicuous hair from her forehead. She did not mind David; he did not object to her unadorned.

“ I’m tired, David,” looking at him with large pathetic eyes.

‘'Are you? What have you been doing?”

“The usual things. The Platts, Simcoes, Porters, and Tregarnons were there, and some of the officers. The place is exquisite—such ferns and moss, and a wild sort of mountain stream. The picnic was cheery enough, but I let my parasol, that good lace one, fall into the water.”

“Have you lost it?”

“It is ruined.”

“Never mind,” suavely, “I will get you another one.”

“Another one. It cost fifteen pounds, David— real lace, don’t you see.”

“Poor Valerie.”

“What idiot do you think got it out?” gloomily. “What who?”

“What clumsy idiot do you think tried to get it out, and fell in himself and got soaking wet, and did no good?”

“Well, you don’t seem grateful. He was a gallant idiot, at any rate.”

“How I hate gallant men. The word is enough; it is expressive of a nasty surface manner.”

“Who was this squire of dames of yours?”

“It was—Mr. Wetheral.”

“Poor man. What did his wife do?”

“She was grande dame, and put me in my place. David, I shan’t go and see her. I shall not call on her.”

“I don’t suppose she will mind, one way or the other.”

“I could make her mind,” said Val, looking mechante, and speaking softly.

David looked puzzled and grave. Then he got up.

“Come to the nursery and see the boy. He is in his cot, and asking for you. Come and get rid of the cobwebs with him.”

Val put her untidy head against her husband’s shoulder.

“It makes me feel wicked when I am snubbed,” she said, with a sudden change of tone.

“You are not snubbed at home. I don’t snub you, and your boy clamours for you. Listen to him.”

Mrs. Guthrie’s cobwebs soon vielded to a nur-sery welcome. Davy climbed from his cot into her arms, peachy cheeks, soft curls, warm limbs, and smiles were hers. David stood and watched his dear belongings, playing in that understandable mother-and-child way which is pleasant to watch, and which made his heart hot within him. He cast no backward thoughts, no more did she. They did not quarrel with domestic life at the villa, it suited them.

Some days later the parasol episode was dramatically revived at the villa breakfast table.

Valerie was later to descend than David; he was halfway through the discussion of his eggs and tea before she appeared. An unexpected parcel lay upon her chair, over which she commented with much interest before she opened it.

“David,” she said, “here is a huge parcel. What can it be? Mother has not sent me a present for months. Of course it’s from her.” Then she cut the string, and the papers rustled. “David, David, look here. What luck. Exactly what I wanted. A parasol, and such a parasol. Mother has the best taste in the world, and she is so generous. It is point d’Alengon, so exquisitely fine. Mother will end her days in the workhouse; I always tell her so.” Suddenly Mrs. Guthrie’s face changed, a flatness fell upon it. For a moment she held her tongue, and her husband looked up at her to see what had gone wrong.

“Ah, how annoying,” she said, blankly, “ the thing is not from mother. Do you hear, David; mother did not send me this parasol. Here is a note by post. Mr. Wetheral sent it to me. Most unnecessary, I think, but he seems to fancy it was his duty to do it. Read this.”

She tossed a letter across the table to her husband, which he read slowly, and in silence.

“19, Cadogan Square.

“Dear Mrs. Guthrie (it ran),

“I hope you will no longer mourn for the parasol which I was so clumsy as to ruin last week. I saw this in a window to-day, and it struck me that it might replace yours exactly, or nearly so. I hope it will reach you safely.

“Yours cordially,

“Rupert Wetheral.”

David made no comment. A moment later he got up and rang the bell.

“What did you ring for, David?”

“Fresh marmalade; this is fermented.”

The maid brought what he ordered, and was retreating when he spoke to her.

“One moment, Rose.” He got up, and fetched the opened package from the chair by his wife. “ Here is a present for you,” he said, handing Rose the whole Wetheral bundle—box and tissue paper, and parasol and delicate trappings.

“It’s very hot weather. If you haven’t a parasol, you must want one. If you have a parasol, sell this or give it away. It is yours. Take it with you.”

Rose was as staggered as her mistress by this sudden action of the master of the house, but some women know when to hold their tongues. Rose was an unimaginative person of few words. With some brief thanks she bore her trophy off to the kitchen, and they heard her cry:

“Look, cook! Look at the present I’ve had given me! It’s a parachute fit for a countess.”

There was a heavy, somewhat electrical silence in the dining-room for a full minute after the departure of Rose and her parcel. Then David lifted his eyes. They were keener even than usual, and he fixed them upon his wife.

“You could not return it, Valerie. Rose is pleased. Don’t”—he went over to her side—-“be angry with me.”

“It was very unnecessary of him, of course, David.”

“It was so unnecessary as to be annoying. It wasn’t your fault, but you will know how to prevent such a thing happening again, Val. Wetheral can’t go straight. No Wetheral can. Keep out of his road.”

He spoke with authority; his orders were short and stern. Never before had he put his marital foot down. Valerie, woman-like, did not object to the just pressure of it.

“That parasol is most unsuitable to Rose,” she said, demurely. “People will think she stole it.” “Who cares what they think?”

“You never do care for public opinion.”

“One parasol is just like another.”

“Is it?” with expression.

“Look here, darling, you married a pauper, but you know you did it with your eyes open. You can have any mortal thing which I can afford to give you, but nothing more. God knows, I am sorry it is so little.”

“Mr. Wetheral has made you angry, David. Don’t be angry, he isn’t worth it. I am glad you minded”—here she went over to his side, and with gentle solicitude laid her hand upon his arm. “I should not like you so much if you had not minded.” “After what happened between you and Wetheral, it is bad taste of him to send any present of any sort. I’m not particularly jealous, but I draw a pretty fast line for you, Valerie.” He was smiling now, and her hand was in his. “I remember when Norris in my regiment married that fiddle-headed wife of his, and some one of us said something uncomplimentary about her before the ceremony, how coolly he took it. ‘Don’t make any mistake, old chap,’ said he. ‘I am marrying my wife for myself. I don’t want a wife for you fellows to flirt with.’ I didn’t marry a fiddle-headed woman, I married you, but I am just of poor old Norris’s way of thinkmg.

Valerie laughed, blushing too, and the parasol episode ended peacefully enough in the villa.

CHAPTER IX

“ ’Twere easy told
That some grow wise, and some grow cold,
And all feel time and trouble:
If life an empty bubble be,
How sad are those who will not see
A rainbow 'in the puddle! ”

If life were often as simple a process as was the early life of the Guthries in the villa at Leigh, Jeremiah, and all his host of modern plagiarists, would not have proved popular authors with mankind; their lamentations would not have hit the public taste.

In the height of the summer Valerie had warmed her husband’s heart by a declaration of her content with existence. By the autumn, such is the inconstancy of fate, her views had changed.

“This life of ours is good enough for me,” she had said. And David had rejoiced over her words, and had stored them in his mind as worth hoarding.

There is a cynical old saying, that on Poverty coming in at the door, Love takes his flight through the window.

Hitherto the villa poverty had been of the comfortable sort, to which Love has no objection—a poverty that can afford to feel the cold, and which does not suffer from any worry in connection with dinner, except that of selection.

Uncomfortable poverty, which eats warily, and cannot afford to feel the cold, may have its bitterness, but its clutch does not paralyse, deaden and destroy happiness, as does an insufficiency at the Bank to pay the bills. The strain of an endeavour to indulge expensive tastes on an inadequate income scares Love into using his wings. Alas! for the potter’s vessels which elect to swim the stream in company with the elegant brass pots!

Mrs. Guthrie, without knowing whither the swim would lead, chose the brass pots for comrades, and, with a husband who was a Scotchman, and had a loathing of debt, she insensibly spent more money than she had got, or was, as it unfortunately happened for her, likely to get. She did not sin with her eyes open—she suddenly found she was in debt, and decided that it would be better to let things slide till something, in the shape of a long-expected cheque from her generous mother, should turn up. Meanwhile a whispering sheaf of bills had, little by little, accumulated in her bureau drawer. She locked them away, but later some of their unreasonable owners clamoured for payment.

A well-known London firm grew insistent, and then Mrs. Guthrie silenced them from out of her housekeeping purse. The butcher and baker were pleasant people to deal with. When one of those great cheques came from Mrs. Beauchamp, Valerie would get straight again.

Every day—day after day, week after week—she waited, growing anxious and concerned as time passed and the cheque never came. David must not be worried; he was ridiculous about bills; he was bourgeois in his prompt payment. His wife could not keep up her reputation for beauty upon nothing at all; beauty wanted trappings, or it lost its status. A shoal of intimate friends cannot be in and out of the house constantly on nothing at all. The boy’s frills and silks and laces cost money. Would the cheque never come?

Then, upon one black morning, Mrs. Beauchamp wrote that she was in great trouble—that Valerie must come to her. So Valerie went, and when she reached the charming house in Walton Place, she heard a tale of woe that was sobering in the extreme.

No cheques from Mrs. Beauchamp would be forthcoming any more. Valerie never thought of this part of the tragedy whilst she was listening to the outpouring of her parent’s sorrows, for she found that the inherited money of her stepfather had been exhausted, and she was too full of their wretchedness to remember her own difficulty. There was nothing to show for Uncle Archibald’s legacy at all. No one concerned in the smash blamed anyone but the lawyer, who was the only person, Valerie thought, who seemed able to understand or to arrange anything.

Finally, after some most agitating weeks, the Beauchamps found themselves on the Continent, with a very small income, but amongst congenial companions, with the same way of taking life as they did, who were bent on enjoying themselves to the extent of their capabilities. The life was better than they had anticipated it would be. Birds of a feather flock cheerily together; tragedy is only for the unit in an alien flock.

Meanwhile Valerie, depressed by the Beauchamps’ fate, came back to her home. She found herself valuing the unobtrusive care, the strong, untiring service of her husband, as an almost new find, and yet she was irritable with the knowledge that something must be done about those perplexing bills of hers. Something vague that would pay them without annoying David. She wanted to stand well with him; she had a wholesome respect for David’s integrity. She was half in love, she told herself, with a laugh, with her own husband.

Surely something would turn up to help her out of her quandary. When the Barrows spent a thousand pounds on roses for their ball-room, a just Providence would not permit the ruin of happiness for a mere hundred and fifty pounds.

Alas, alas! The books of the butcher and baker grew longer and longer, puffing out and swelling with the fatality of unchecked half-yearly accounts, and the sheaf of bills still whispered and rustled in her bureau drawer.

Mrs. Guthrie had been reared with those people who laugh at their liabilities, frame their receipts, and make a joke of debt; but she began to find no joke in it at all. She began to be haunted by those blue possessions of hers. Far from amusing were those tradesmen’s letters that she found no difficulty in opening, under her unsuspicious husband’s nose, without his observance.

She took to dreaming about them. She could not enjoy herself at home or anywhere else. Vague visions of backing horses, of gambling in stocks and shares, of borrowing money at the bank, of writing a novel, or of taking out a patent, filled her mind.

She was sure, later, that David had changed in his love for her. He was getting tired of her; she missed something from his manner, and tormented herself by her imaginings.

In truth she herself had grown so difficult, so moody and glum, so capricious, that David held himself proudly aloof, hoping that this phase of villa life might shortly change for the better, and putting all the blame charitably upon Valerie’s sympathy for her own people’s misfortunes.

Feminine nerves, which Val, though he had not remembered it, possessed—her blessed nerves pleaded her cause.

Upon one sunny morning in the following spring, when east wind, a bad night, and a tradesman’s letter had all combined to drive Val mad, it happened that the Guthries’ son and heir was disporting himself amongst the beds of sprouting bulbs upon the lawn, in charge of his mother, who, looking pale and chilly, stood absently fulfilling her sheep-dog morning duties upon the gravel walk.

A few yards off her husband was playing with Nip, the nursery dog. His face had caught something of his wife’s expression, though his eyes brightened, alighting upon the inconsequent gambols of the boy, who frolicked from father to mother, bubbling over with the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.

Sandy was no saint. The parental was a distinctly limited monarchy, and now, in a sudden spasm of evil, the three-year-old baby rushed upon the forbidden ground of a flower-bed, and tugged off two hot handfuls of temptingly vivid blue scilla heads before his mother and father saw what mischief he was about.

Mrs. Guthrie loved her scilla bed. She had toiled in her Holland spring garden. She had planted the thousand unpaid-for bulbs that she loved. The little miscreant, he had ruined her scillas. She was angry now, furiously angry, with the hot anger that a background of anxiety breeds. She ran after her boy, and, catching him by the tunic, she cuffed his curly head until his pitiful cries echoed far and wide through the Guthrie Elysium.

Captain Guthrie ended the scene of violence. He came close, and he looked at his heated wife, and she stayed her hand. Then he picked up the sobbing child and carried him into the house. Naughty boy, and yet his shrieks went to his mother’s very heart. Valerie chose to be offended both with son and father. She did not choose to follow them, but mooned on in the garden. She hung over her scilla bed, trying to nurse her wrath and keep it warm at the sight of the ravished stalks. When at last she went back into the house, she found it empty. Sandy had gone for his morning walk, and his father had departed to the barracks.

David had left the villa without wishing her goodbye. It was the first time, she told herself, that he had done so in anger since their marriage. Four years is a long time; habit has become second nature in four years. She did not like to break habits; her cheeks were wet.

Things were going wrong. People who speak with authority know that matrimony is an impossible sort of institution. Going wrong? Of course things would go wrong. It was really creditable, she assured herself, that until lately things had gone fairly right. She had read a magazine article, which described matrimony as a tangle of absurd vows, a network of unworkable machinery, a contrivance patched together by a feeble priesthood. A happy married couple was as rare as a black rose.

The Guthrie paradise had been a fool’s one. David, too, was beginning to find that out for himself. She saw the knowledge dawning in his face.

Alas! Her temper was getting violent; she was becoming a virago. Long ago, in a thoughtful mood, as a mere bride, she had had a pansy bed set on the lawn. Pansies she had chosen for remembrance. Every year the heartsease had been renewed, and she had been vaguely glad to see them flourish in her soil. She might be relieved to remember that she had beaten her small boy over the scillas; she had not disgraced herself over her heartsease.

Children were certain cares, doubtful blessings.

When poverty came in at the door love flew from the window. The depression after anger is unconquerable. Valerie sank into the blues. She told herself that there was no reason why her case should be an exception to accepted rules of existence. David and she were going to be a wretched pair, a cat and dog couple. The Guthries had certainly no dramatic troubles that she could remember. But trivial irritations, domestic cares, want of confidence undermine happiness, and she had introduced these destructive rifts into the villa lute.

She had intended to go into the town—she had shopping to do. She was one of those expensive women who shop for shopping’s sake—but she had not energy even to spend and buy.

Valerie’s mood was dangerous; she was courting disaster, running out to meet it. In this frame of mind she went to her bureau, and, dragging out her drawer of bills and books, began to turn them over and over. For the first time she took a pencil up, and essayed counting on her fingers, and muttering in an amateurish endeavour to add up the total of her liabilities.

She must do something, and get this gnawing worry over. Somehow — anyhow — the money should be paid. Great fortunes were to be made on the stage. It was a rich profession amongst such artistes at least as allow their incomes to be published.

Mrs. Mallam was on intimate terms with her cousins, the Guthries. She was on those disastrously intimate terms that ignore the formality of the front door-bell—terms that should be unpermissive, under all circumstances, to the Briton whose home is his castle.

On some friendly mission, Jane had found opportunity that morning of making her way to the villa to see Valerie, and she boldly turned the handle of the front door upon her arrival, making a noiseless way into the Guthrie fortress, as was her constant wont.

The drawing-room door stood ajar. She pushed it open and walked in.

Mrs. Mallam, who was not emotional, and whose skin was not finely sensitive, felt at this moment that door-bells should be respected, and that she would in future announce her arrival through the hallowed face of the lion in the porch.

For she caught her cousin’s wife at a disadvantage. She found Valerie in an abandoned attitude of grief, her face covered with tears, and an outspread sheaf of bills lying before her on the bureau. She had trapped Valerie red-handed.

Jane had always guessed at the existence of villa bills, and here they were in unmistakable array before her eyes. Alas! poor David.

Although these two matrons were on terms of intimate friendship, although they spent a great deal of time in each other’s society, circumstance, not mutual preference, had contrived their friendship.

Jane knew all about Valerie—her past, her present, her income, her method of spending it, her household difficulties. She knew all about the Guthries, father and son, all about the daily villa life.

Now and again Valerie felt this conversance, this intimacy, as a restraint. She felt the burden of a critical mind in her home. David never criticised, but she was not so sure of David’s cousin. Familiarity, she remembered, breeds contempt.

As a rule Valerie accepted Jane as a kind, cheerful person, whom it was a little difficult to know well— a person who gave an ear to all and her confidence to none. Perhaps unconsciously Valerie resented her reserve; it is not a fair bargain to give confidence, and to receive nothing of the sort in return.

Mrs. Mallam’s entry on that glowing morning was a distinctly bad moment for both people concerned. Valerie got up. She was not in a mood to pretend anything; besides, she felt nothing could be gained by mincing matters. The sun shone on her wet eyes, disfigured cheeks, and upon the bills. She never doubted but that Jane took in the whole situation at a glance.

“Good morning, Jane,” she said, steadying her voice. “You have come at an unlucky moment; you have found me out. I was actually moved to tears over my accounts. They are more hopeless than usual.”

“Poor thing,” said Jane, but her voice was cold.

“Can you sympathise? I should fancy you had a mathematical head, and never muddled anything.”

“I believe I rather enjoy the weekly settlements, but then my cook is a treasure.”

Valerie winced. Here was an opportunity to pretend that the depression arose from a lost threepenny bit, or an undiscovered sundry or an extravagant grocer’s book. But Valerie was never an adept at pretence; she was a fairly transparent person. Jane went on quite gently:

“Can’t I help you, Val? Two heads are better than one. I might be some good, if you can explain what has gone wrong.”

Of course she could explain. It would be an enormous relief to tell someone. David had reliance on his cousin’s opinion. Indeed, Valerie had been jealous occasionally of Jane’s long head. Jane was the only creature who could be told. She never gossiped; she never said ill-natured things of erring neighbours. She had her points, had Jane.

She might put Valerie on a winning horse; she might place the unwritten novel; she might think of some quick way of wiping out this hateful money trouble.

Mrs. Guthrie took two or three paces up and down the floor, and made up her mind to make a clean breast to the intruder.

“I am in debt, Jane,” she said, speaking very soberly, and wringing her hands together.

“That is dreadful for you, Valerie.”

“It is dreadful; I never thought anything could be so dreadful. I don’t know what I am to do.

You see I bought things, only trifles, little trifles, from time to time, but they ran up into big sums when they were added together. I was expecting a cheque from my mother, and I was not worried about it. Then their smash came, and of course I got no cheque. Poor mother, she would give away her head if she could. With no cheque, and no chance of getting extra money, and with all these bills, I can’t imagine what is to be done. It has been going on for weeks and months. I can’t think what I am to do.”

Jane sat and thought, Valerie watching her face. Nothing was to be read there but the usual invincible good-humour.

“Have you told David?”

“He would be more wretched than I am. He has a worse horror of bills than any old maid, Jane.”

“I know he has.”

“I am”—this time with a mighty effort after the clean breast—“six months behind-hand with my housekeeping. I used some of that allowance to get rid of one or two people who were bothering for their money. I haven’t paid any tradesman here since the summer.”

“You have been robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

“That is what it comes to.”

“I should tell David.”

Valerie was silent. She sat in thought, very mournful and depressed.

“I should tell David; it is nothing if you tell him. If he knew it, and not from you, it would be a pity.”

Jane interpreted her cousin’s mind to his own wife. Valerie wished she had held her tongue. Tell David. Anyone could have thought of that. It was simple as A B C.

“He won’t mind the money, Valerie. He would mind the ‘not knowing.’ ”

“Not mind the money? Not mind a hundred and fifty pounds to pay when we are as poor as church mice? We are overdrawn at the bank till the dividends come in. Of course I could tell David, but what I wish to do is to pay myself—to make some money, and to pay.”

Jane spoke shortly this time.

“There are thousands of women who want to make money—anyhow. It is hard enough to make twopence—somehow. I should tell David.”

Valerie began to cram back the bills into the drawer with unsteady fingers. To tell David—oh, the relief and comfort of it, had she but the moral courage to do so. It was not wholly to save David’s feelings that she had kept her secret; she did not want to fall in his estimation, she did not want to risk anything. She had told herself all manner of lies, all sorts of false reasons why David should not be told.

But now she would tell him. Together they would adorn the stage, or back the horse, or thrill the public with a story. Together they would pay the bills. These should be the last bills that should ever curse the villa post-box, or desecrate Mrs. Guthrie’s bureau drawer. Valerie would make her own clothes, and David’s, sooner than “enter” the merest bagatelle in a tradesman’s book!

She was visibly cheering up with her decision. Jane’s decisive words had given her the 'fillip that she morally required. Action is an absolute necessity to anguish of mind, and Valerie, that morning, had worried herself into a feverish condition of misery.

“I know you are right,” she said, generously enough, “and I will tell David. I will try to tell David. It is not as easy as it sounds. I have thought of a great many other ways out of this tight hole, but I think your way, Jane, is best.”

Now, to have your advice accepted, and to be thanked for a gratis gift of opinion, is soothing to the mind. Jane was gratified. To be saviour in an alien household is to be in a proud position. Though Jane was burning with pity for her cousin, she was glad to have heard the worst, and to have done what she could.

“Money melts,” said Jane, going over to the window, and staring out upon the scillas. “If you once forget it, it melts and melts till it is gone. One wants to keep £ s. d. eternally in the foreground of one’s mind, to preserve it in one’s pocket.”

Valerie agreed humbly. Money did indeed seem an almost omnipotent power, either for good or evil. Hitherto she had not considered this form of the question. She had, in the long ago days of girlhood, intended to make a good match—not for love of money, but because it was a difficult thing to do, and things just out of reach are always attractive. Hitherto she had missed nothing in her life with David. The smoothly flowing, domestic, villa existence had had nothing dramatic about its happiness; she would hardly realise its depth and strength until it had gone out of reach.

Tears were in her eyes again, whilst unimpressionable Mrs. Mallam stood charitably looking out of the window.

CHAPTER X

“Take joy home
And make a place in thy great heart for her,
And give her time to grow, and cherish her;
Then will she come, and oft will sing to thee,
When thou art working in the furrows.”

An inevitable fate wars against the keeping of moral resolutions such as are popularly designated “good intentions.”

It seems that a little spiteful cherub sits up aloft, and makes it his business to fight them. All the world knows how, in an elfish, eerie manner, he battles against, and finally worsts, the plans of their owners. Who can forbear a gibe or jeer at the notable possessor of a good intention?

Valerie’s good resolutions were to be no exception to the rule. They soothed her conscience as is their dangerous wont, they stroked her mentally smooth. She went so far as to plan out where and how David should be told. Whilst Jane Mallam stayed on with her, and they had talked of other things, absent Valerie was preparing her confession to her husband.

She could not anticipate that fate would intervene, and drive all mundane thought of money matters from her mind. She could not prophesy that a mere worry was going to be dwarfed by an overwhelming fear of irreparable loss—that she was going to be led face to face with something like despair —that life was to be shown her in a new aspect of wretched possibilities.

Across the feverish uneasiness of Valerie.’s guilty mind there had been shooting tender thoughts of her poor little miscreant, Sandy. She wanted to kiss the peachy cheeks that she had cuffed, to press the dewy mouth. Both he and his father had left her in anger. She was not often in the wrong with these indulgent members of her household. She wanted them to come back to her that she might make her peace with them, but they did not come.

Jane stayed on late, but she was not asked to luncheon, and at length she made a protracted farewell and went away. Still Valerie’s husband and Valerie’s son delayed their return.

Valerie, who had a justifiable reliance on the influences of appearance, as soon as her guest departed had gone up to her room with some vague intention of bringing David’s mind back to gentler days by the putting on of purple and fine linen, but her heart misgave her, and she fell to brooding. Soon the bustle of arrival disturbed her; she heard her husband’s voice. For a moment she shrank back; she had to tell David, and she was afraid. Wresting herself free from a feeling she abhorred, she went out upon the landing. Afraid of David? Heaven knew she had no need to be afraid. For if the feverish biting passion of old days had passed, as it inevitably must do, surely there abode in her husband the calm, deep, protecting, faithful love of a strong man for his own.

He was on the staircase now, coming up himself to meet her. In her preoccupation she did not for a moment notice the drawn whiteness of his face. He was at her side before she spoke. He had an arm round her.

Angry with her? No, it was not anger, but there was something wrong. Even before he spoke, she began to know of some impending trouble that was to hurt her.

“Val, darling, you are not to be frightened. You are to believe what I tell you. You know I would not keep anything back.”

“What is the matter?”

“Someone is hurt.”

“Is it Sandy?”

“Yes. His mail-cart has been knocked over by a bicycle. For a little while he was stunned, but he is better now. The doctor is with him downstairs. They are going to bring him up here to bed. He is to be kept quiet.”

Then David broke into some tender, bracing, personal comfort for Sandy’s mother. “You go, sweet, into the nursery, and get his cot ready. I must go down and help them. Don’t speak to him, Val, you understand, for a bit; he must be absolutely quiet.”

Valerie nodded. She did not answer; she obeyed orders. She went softly on tiptoe to the nursery, shook the pillows, smoothed the mattress, pulled back the trappings from her boy’s cot. Toys were lying about; the room was untidy. She set it softly in order, pulled down the blind, and drew across a curtain to exclude a strip of sunshine.

An oppression, like a band of steel, was round her breast, a sick fear in her heart.

She stood back in the shadow to let the little procession enter. Dr. Mellor was carrying Sandy; his tangled curly hair was resting on a pillow. With strange, dazed eyes he looked about him.

Still Valerie stood motionless, and let this new authority in her nursery lay Sandy in his cot, and draw the coverlet over Sandy’s comely limbs.

“Shut your eyes, my boy, and go to sleep again,” said the doctor, and Sandy obeyed, a dead silence falling heavily upon the room.

No one broke it. Later on the doctor slipped away, beckoning to David to follow him, and Valerie was left to watch alone. Then she crept gently to the sleeper’s side, and stood with her eyes on his face. Soon David stole again to her right hand. She smiled wanly to greet him. Poor parents! side by side with God’s great gift of love comes the deep curse of sin, the suffering dread of life’s uncertainty.

Two days and nights the Guthrie tension lasted, and then, with bewilderingly rapid strides, their boy grew better. Nay, he was his romping, merry, rosy self again before his father and mother had left off quaking for him. How they gloated over his recovered strength, and laughed foolishly over his pranks and prattle but a few short evenings later.

“You were really good, Val,” said her husband, thoughtfully. He was dragging his boy, who sat astride a donkey, slowly round the room, and the boy’s mother was looking on with soft eyes at the performance. “You did not lose your head when you saw Sandy brought in. You were calmer than I was. You came out, Valerie, you know, as a bit of a heroine.”

The heroine smiled, not ill pleased.

“Pouf!” she said, “a heroine is not a natural person, but artful. I’m not heroic. Why, the very worst wild-beast mothers do their best for their wild-beast babies. It is only nature. You said ‘keep quiet,’ so I was quiet.”

“Very praiseworthy obedience,” said David, laughing from sheer light-heartedness. “I hope, Val, you will develop this new phase of character; it suits me nicely.”

Valerie laughed too.

“Run, daddy, run,” cried the boy, lashing at donkey and father indiscriminately. Sandy was taking advantage of his guardian’s access of tender devotion to extract much service at his hands, but David had had enough of the toil.

“I’m worn out, old man. You must think of some less exhausting fun. I am going down to the club to recruit myself. I have not been near the place for a week. Good-bye, Val; have you any orders for me? No, nothing at all? What an unusual thing.”

He went away very happy, happier than he had been of late, for the nursery storm had cleared the villa air. Valerie was herself again. Moods, vapours, uncertain humours, those disturbers of domestic peace, had left her. David told himself she had got over the effect of all the Beauchamp worries at last, and he rejoiced.

He was finding his cap in the lobby, when Rose pounced upon him from the kitchen.

“If you please, sir,” she said, “Mr. Manley would like to speak to you for a minute. He is in trouble, sir, or he would not have taken the liberty to worry you.”

“Show him into the dining-room,” said David cheerily, so recently out of trouble himself as to have a kinship with Mr. Manley, the butcher, and not to be chary of sympathy.

The interview was a long one, and when Mr. Manley finally left the dining-room, poor David looked as though he had taken Mr. Manley’s troubles upon his own stalwart shoulders. His boyish buoyancy had all gone. He was standing in the hall in a sort of bad dream, in a nightmare horror, when his cousin Jane entered, and confronted him face to face. She had a parcel in her hand, a parcel she had brought for the invalid.

She gave Sandy some present daily, and had in consequence got nearer to Valerie’s heart the last week than she had ever done before.

Jane looked at David, and asked abruptly:

“Isn’t he so well?”

“Oh, he's all right,” with emphasis on the pronoun.

“Then what is wrong, David?”

They looked into each other’s faces. Jane knew more about David than he had ever troubled himself to learn about her. She laid down her rustling-parcel, and backed dexterously into the little dining-room, he half-unconsciously following her. She was not a fastidiously-minded person; she did not object to “finding out” if she wished so to do, and could fulfil a good purpose in so doing. She wanted to help David. Ice can always be broken with sharp-pointed steel; it is not difficult to do if you know the way.

“David, you remember what I told you about that money of mine? If you want it, it is there; you can have it.”

“In heaven’s name, what do you mean?”

“Just what I say. If you haven’t enough money just now, mine is doing nothing; you can have it.”

“What makes you imagine that I want money?”

“Did not Valerie tell you that I knew?”

“Knew what?”

Jane was puzzled.

“By your face, I thought you had been told.” “Told what?”

Jane looked at him again.

“Has not Valerie told you about her bills?”

He shook his head; his eyes asked questions, though he was silent. Jane averted her eyes from his agitated face, and went on speaking. There was no more shrinking about her words than about her thoughts. She had grappled with her subject, mastered it, and now hurled it complete, a concrete mass of minute evidence, lumped into conclusion hard as granite, at David.

“Do you know nothing?”

“I know”—he reflected a minute—“something.” “Poor Valerie,” said his cousin. “I came in one day last week and found her in distress. She told me she was in debt—she missed her mother’s presents. She had had bills which she had always paid with Mrs. Beauchamp’s cheques when they came. When they did not come, she paid her bills with the housekeeping money. You understand how simply she got altogether wrong?”

“One moment, Jane. Did Valerie ask you to tell me all this?”

“No, David. I advised her to tell you, and she said she would. It was on the day of Sandy’s accident. I expect she put off telling you till he was better.”

David’s eyes were less gloomy as Jane spoke.

“She was going to tell me?”

“Yes, yes, she had made up her mind to tell you. She was only afraid of worrying you. I am talking of it now, because I feel it is half my fault. You used to consult me, and I thought you two could manage in this house. But, David, I have changed my mind, I don’t think so now. It is the little trifles that mount up and up, and make it impossible to meet the ends of your income. I know, David, the strain of it all would worry you to death. You are not asking my advice now, you are abhorring me for talking. Ever since Valerie told me— dear Valerie, she is much too beautiful and too charming to have a sordid, penny-saving mind— ever since she told me I have been brooding and bothering myself about you. Very impertinent, eh, David? But you see you have taken me so much into your confidence that, perhaps, I feel I have a right to walk in uninvited.”

A possessor of confidence possesses a dangerous gift. Sensible, clear-headed women can be unbearable company, the listener found.

“Do you remember how we used to do all your accounts together before you married, David? I kept the papers. I have been going through them again. The boy makes more difference than I thought, and I know how money melts if one gets behind-hand at all. David, I am sure you cannot live as you are living now. You will have to make a change.”

Some inarticulate sound from the hearer paralysed Jane’s tongue for the moment, and her cousin spoke.

“This is so newly sprung on me, Jane, that I would rather think it over before I talk of it, even to—you.”

“All right, all right, I understand; but I wanted you to remember that my money is idle—ready for you, if you will have it. No, don’t thank me at all. Blood is thicker than water; we all know it. I won’t talk any more, you hate it. Be off to your club. I will go up to the boy.”

David turned to the door, and there on the threshold, facing him with grave eyes, stood his wife. She was no actress, she was sincere; her face betrayed her. The villa walls were thin; the door was ajar. Though Jane had lowered her voice, David’s voice had been loud, harshly loud. Valerie had overheard him.

“I came for Jane,” the intruder said, in a hard voice. “Sandy heard her talking, and he wanted her. He would not rest until I fetched her.”

“I will go,” said Jane. With commendable alacrity she left Valerie to her fate.

They had had tiffs, this man and wife—lovers’ quarrels, and later disagreements a trifle less loverlike. Hitherto nothing had gone seriously wrong between them. They had fallen out, they knew not why, and the reconciliation had been prompt and pleasant enough.

The case now was otherwise. Looking into each other’s eyes, with heavy hearts, they knew it. The change, which Jane had foretold as inevitable, was at hand.

“If you had only told me,” he said, his voice as cold as ice.

“David, I meant to have told you.”

There was a pause, during which he seemed to weigh her words. Then he said slowly:

“How much do you owe? I have paid Manley.

I have given him a cheque for £30. He came to me just now for the money.”

Valerie stood clasping and unclasping her hands. “Then Jane did not tell you,” she cried quickly. “I thought Jane had told you.”

It is presumptuous of a sinner to ride any horse, much less a high one. Valerie was in the wrong. It is not a soothing position—a humble-pie diet does not digest so as to conduce to lowly sweetness. And Valerie’s wounds were fresh—she was raw—everything hurt.

“It is no matter who told me—you did not,” he said, looking on the ground. “You told other people, but not me.”

“It was not a voluntary confidence to Jane,” said the sinner, looking straight at David. “She came in here—one day; she walked straight in, and— found me. She had no right to tell you, none at all.” “It does not matter who told me,” he repeated harshly; “you did not. She saved you that. What do I owe? How much? To whom? We had better have it all out, clearly, between us now.”

Valerie put her hand to her head in thought.

“I can’t remember quite. I wrote it down. I’ll look.”

He followed her into the drawing-room and waited in silence, whilst she, with trembling hands, hunted amongst her papers, and, extracting a long sheet of accounts therefrom, read out huskily:

‘Two hundred and ten pounds, David. It comes to that. I added the sums all up several times. I could not believe it was so much, but it is. It always came to the same amount.”

“Show me the bills.”

“Will you sit down here and look at them?”

So he took her place at her bureau, and, as she had so often done of late, there he sat with a sheaf of bills spread out before him. He was a long while at his work. His head was not much more commercial by nature than that of his wife.

He looked up at her at last.

“Is this all?”

“Nearly all.”

“What do you mean? What more are you keeping from me?”

“Only a muslin blouse, David. It cost two guineas. The bill is upstairs; it came to-day. There is nothing more. David, don’t look at me like that. I—I know how wrong it has all been, as well as you know it. Even if you can never forgive me, I am glad you know. Glad.”

He repeated the word “glad,” dropping his head upon his hands. If she had only told him of her own free will, he could have taken it like a stoic. He was wounded to the quick by her having kept such a secret. His trust, the comfortable faith upon which their married life had flowed, was dried up like a potsherd. She had cut away the foundations of his daily life.

“Would you fetch me that last bill, Valerie? I must get the whole sum down, and—pay it.”

She went docilely in a moment. She was some time gone, and came back with swollen, but dry eyes; he saw her face still quivering.

“It is no good crying over spilt milk,” he said austerely, unsoftened. “The money has to be paid, and we must see that we don’t get into such a hole again. I have been forgetting I’m a poor man, and you have been forgetting I am an honest one, Valerie.”

“For months, David”—wincing from his words— “I have tried to find out some way of making money. I thought I could, if I had time.”

He did not seem to hear her. He was at the bills again. The silence might have been felt, it lay so heavy in the room.

“Two hundred and twelve pounds,” he said, slowly. “What money have you of your own just now?”

She brought her purse from her pocket, and spread out its meagre contents for his scrutiny. Her half-childish ingenuousness usually charmed him. He was not to be imposed on any more. Her frankness was mere trick of manner. She was not pleading extenuating circumstances; she did not excuse herself at all. He was grateful to her for this. He was trying not to say what he thought; he was trying to hold his tongue with a bridle. He knew they had got to go on living together, and to make the best of this devastating misfortune that had come upon them.

“What can I do?” she asked at last. “How can I help you, David?”

“Jane will help me,” he answered, slowly. “I must accept her offer, and pay these bills with her money.” “No, no,” said Valerie, wringing her hands. “It is too much to owe—a woman.”

“It is worse to owe tradesmen, who are working for their daily bread,” drily. “I can see no other way. We can pay Jane back by degrees.”

Jealous of Jane? Was it possible that Valerie could be jealous of that wholesome woman with rosy cheeks, and a wide mouth?

A common-place, thick woman, with no bent for fashions, who wore ugly, ill-made clothes? Who had bad feet, and a not specially fine ankle. Useful? Of course Jane was useful; an unattractive woman’s salvation is to be useful. Jane knew her subjects— trains, distances, dates, sums, facts, politics were at her fingers’ ends; she could cook, she talked sensibly like a man.

And there was an air of comfort about Jane. A self-satisfaction that was aggressive. The woman was not conscious of her own deficiencies; she was self-reliant and natural.

Alas, alas! she had many a solid recommendation which David’s wife sadly lacked, and David’s wife knew it. It flashed upon her now.

Personal attractiveness is nothing accounted of in the category of the domestic qualities which are essential to the forming of what is popularly called a “good wife.”

Mrs. Guthrie’s self-esteem was not deeply-rooted; it was not built upon the rock of conceit—it was rather founded on the sand of lover-like speeches and masculine approbation.

Standing in her confessional before her stern-eyed judge, she was full of humility towards him. She forgot that he had once been upon his knees at her feet. As not unusually happens, the matrimonial tables had got turned.

“David,” she said—there was a forlorn sort of dignity in her composure, in her acceptance of her position—“I do not think we need borrow this money.”

“What other plan have you?”

“I might write—a book.”

“Do you think anyone would read it? No, Valerie, we can’t pay this in some future cloudy way. It must be paid now.”

She had sinned; punishment followed crime. Always, always, it follows crime. She looked out at her garden, then round about her home.

Anything would be better, less wretched, than to use this superfluous money offered to him.

David was watching her, reading her face. She pointed with a sweep of her hands to her environments.

“Let us sell our—things—our furniture, David, and leave the house, and go into lodgings, and be very careful. And—and I will try to save. Then we could pay, David, just by ourselves, we could pay.”

Poor David covered his face with his hands.

“I must think, Valerie,” he said. “We can’t break up our whole life in a moment. I can’t stand it.”

He broke off, and got up abruptly.

“I am dazed. I can’t clear my brain. I’ll go out.”

Valerie watched him out into the lobby, and listened to the click of the door behind him. Then she went back to the nursery.

“Don’t talk, muvver. Cousin Jane is telling a ’tory. Go on, please go on, Cousin Jane. Hush, muvver, don’t interrup’.”

Valerie sat down and listened. Her boy’s yellow head nestled back against Jane’s clumsy shoulder, as though it were turned like a swan’s.

Mrs. Guthrie had the assured, natural manner of a spoilt woman. She had lost that manner now. Perilously near tears, her pride resorted to artifice. She had invaded her nursery with head held high, and steady lips.

“If you please, ’m,” said Rose, from the doorway, breaking into Cousin Jane’s story, “Mr. Wetheral has called. I have shown him into the drawingroom.”

The call lasted some time. David returned before the visitor had departed, and before Cousin Jane had finished adding yet another climax to rapacious little Sandy’s story.

The master of the house came to see his boy, and to put a finis to fiction.

Cousin Jane and he talked of stern fact. David walked some of the way to Leigh with her, when at last she bade Sandy farewell.

“I can never thank you enough, Jane,” said Captain Guthrie to his cousin, when he left her. “It is most kind and good of you.”

“Rubbish, David, you will pay me interest, and you'll pay me back. It is unfriendly of you to insist on a lawyer, and unnecessary law; but I give in. Perhaps you are right—you generally are.” Then, lowering her voice, she added, “You know how sorry I am, deadly sorry for you—for you both.”

CHAPTER XI

"Ah! fools were we and blind—
The worst we stored with utter toil,
The best we left behind.”

Even in the past days of peace Captain Guthrie had not always relished his dinner of herbs.

Now that the villa herbs were not made palatable by peace, they were bitter in the teeth.

Rigid economy set in at the Guthries’ with its usual severity. The cook left; Rose gave notice; nurse’s face grew long. The master of the house spent his spare time at the club. The cart was sold. Valerie refused invitations. She had nothing to wear; she could get nowhere. Poverty began to pinch; husband and wife alike ached beneath its grip.

Mrs. Guthrie’s spirits waned. She got no pity. People said the Guthries had outrun the constable, and had had to pull in. It was no misfortune, but their own iniquitous fault. Mrs. Guthrie had dressed ridiculously well, and had lived as though her husband had lots of money. Poor fellow, it was all very hard on him.

Jane Mallam said nothing; she merely looked on. Things had begun to go wrong at the villa. To what desperate straits in this difficult world that going wrong might descend, who could tell? Little beginnings have gigantic finishes.

Jane often went to see the Guthries, but, though Valerie was civil enough, she was not cordial. She talked fluently, as usual, but entirely upon surface subjects. She no longer sought for advice from Jane on matters domestic.

She did not allude to her poverty. It was so constantly present to her mind nowadays that she could hardly help bringing it into her conversation. Of what the heart is full, the mouth speaketh, but she buried the subject with the sagacity of an ostrich. Jane could have been useful to her. Valerie wanted to understand those intricacies of management which make a shilling do its full quantum of work; she was struggling to be domestic. She was putting her mind into the economics; she was beginning to buy in the cheap market, and to admire accomplishments which she had once despised.

“Wild-beast mothers did their best for their wild-beast children.” This primitive instinct no doubt was hers. But was it for Sandy’s sake alone that she was metamorphosed?

Jane could have been useful to her, but Valerie would not be helped. Was not the debt to Jane too heavy to be borne already? Were not the parings and scrapings, all the crop of wearing economies, instituted to lessen this debt? Tradesmen might legitimately wait, but Jane must be paid. Whatever the cost, Jane must be paid.

Did not weeds overrun the pansy-bed, and choke the roses, because a gardener was a luxury, and Valerie had not the heart herself to take his place?

There was not a drop of Palestine blood in Mrs. Guthrie. Bargains are often as pearls without price to the British matron. Dire necessity alone recommended a bargain as a bargain to Valerie. Whether it was merely honesty which made her feverishly anxious to repay the money to Jane, she did not stop to consider; she only knew that the debt weighed upon her intolerably.

Valerie had had no wordy quarrel with her husband, but the old relationship had changed. Their free and easy intercourse was no more. They were civil enough mutually, but now and again the difficulties of the present life told on the temper; little irritable speeches, the bitterness that came of their position, broke through their tongues, and they wounded one another. No reconciliations cooled the heart-burnings. There followed no oiling of the wounds, no renewing of friendship. The scars were smoothed over. The pair went on again, with no open rupture, but with jarred and jolted course.

Valerie was the sinner; she bore the brunt of the punishment, as was just. David was busy; he was not much in his home. At first Valerie’s days were intolerably long, because less occupied. But soon she began to find that there is a useful law of compensation in this world. She began to find that when people have no money to amuse themselves with they have work to do which fully fills their time. She began to “do things,” as she vaguely designated her labours. She stitched, she contrived clothes for her son. She worked herself stiff and headachey in the fashioning of them.

Many a wretched week passed, and no change came to vary the daily villa life.

She was looking white and wan in the heat of an August day, as she sat with her work in her hand, plying needle and thread. She, who had been fed on lover-like speeches, and enthroned, sat alone and deposed.

Self-pity was not usually one of her failings; she should go up presently, she told herself, and have a cup of tea with Sandy. Nursery tea was a necessity, and Sandy was always frantic with delight at having her for his guest. Nowadays Valerie’s maternal love was a passion; she yearned over the boy. She spoilt him. All the pleasure she got out of life was through him.

When that hot seam was felled, she intended to go upstairs. Heigh-ho! how soon did women get used to this sort of dog’s life, with nose to the grindstone? Poverty was not rare, and indifferent wives and indifferent husbands as common as blackberries. Did the indifference always grow, watered with the blood of hearts, propagated with tears and deadly pain? Was it customarily brought forth with the intolerable throes of human birth?

Her thoughts were spoiling her labour, weakening her fingers.

“How soon does the pain go? How soon shall I settle down into life like—this? Thousands of women do it. How do they live and do it? How is it done?”

Ah! Valerie would go to the nursery now, before she lost her pluck. It was a melting day; she had no self-control in this heat.

She put her hands down upon the linen in her lap, and gave a long, low sigh, that was kinsman to a sob.

“Can you give me a cup of tea, Val?” said her husband’s voice from the doorway. David was seldom in his home at this hour, and she started at seeing him; she had been too engrossed in thought to hear his approach.

“Will you ring, David, and order it?” she said, with a little air of ceremony, as though the occasion was no ordinary one.

He did so, and she smiled, glad of company.

“I always have tea in the nursery nowadays,” she explained. “It is not so lonely, and it is cheaper.”

Valerie was naturally amiable; there was no moroseness, no malice about her. If her temper was roused, it was quick, passionate, reckless. If her anger was strong, it was not long; it did not last.

Living on bad terms with her neighbour was unnatural to her. She had been nurtured on approbation. To be in disgrace weighed upon her night and day.

As she sat facing him in the frank, tell-tale summer light, her husband looked at her, and he saw how she had altered. From a wan, white face, her dark, pathetic eyes looked back at him wistfully.

He was fresh from luncheon with Jane. Jane had engineered a possible smooth path for the Guthries, and had pointed it out to him. He supposed she had been giving him advice. Anyhow, he had left her, and had made his way home, primed with a new method of patching up the difficulties of daily life. Jane had suggested a remedy.

David’s life was not going easily. His want of power to act, his helplessness, had done something to harden him. His masterful nature kicked so as to hurt itself, so as to damage its finer edges against his own impotence.

Money is a two-edged sword; too much of it or too little of it damages and devastates heart, mind, even the life itself of its possessor.

He had meant to make Valerie happy; he had meant things to go right. Her face was not the face of a happy woman, and things were going wrong.

Now and again he had fought to get back into their old pleasant relationship with each other— it was worth fighting for; but, though for an hour or so Valerie and he might seem to be as of yore, some hasty word, or dangerous subject, invariably rose between them, and a barrier, an insurmountable barrier, erected itself to bar a return to peace. God knew he was not in his heart hard upon his wife because she had spent more money than she had. Jane had explained what Valerie had been too proud to mention. It was the Beauchamp smash, and the stopping of the cheques, in consequence of that smash, that had done the mischief.

Perhaps he had, more or less, hardened his heart because Valerie had not, in the first place, told him of the trouble. He did not like having been deceived. It was that thought that rankled, that was the devastating mischief. If Valerie would have even now talked it out with him, it would have been different, but she never alluded to it; she ignored the subject.

When he saw her face now, he forgot his grievance against her. Her words, too, went to his heart.

“It is less lonely,” she had said, “and it is cheaper!”

He sat down by her side, his eyes softening as he watched her.

“Loneliness” and “cheapness.” Poor Valerie.

“Dear Val,” he said, “you have been having a rough time of it. All the cherishing I swore to do does not seem to amount to much. You took me for richer, for poorer, didn’t you, poor Val? And it wasn’t for richer, I am sorry to say. Don’t you think, if we put our heads together, that we might, between us, make a better job of it?”

Her throat swelled, but she did not speak. She laid her tired, hot head against him, by way of answer.

“I’ve had an offer for this house,” he said. “I can let it furnished for a year, till my time is up. It would be a good thing to do, for meanwhile you and I can go into rooms. No maids, you see, great economies, Val,” cheerfully. “Then, when my appointment is up, I go back to the regiment, and we sell our furniture, pay back everything that may be left owing, and save the rest for frocks and emergencies. Our bad time won’t last forever. Cheer up, Valerie. It has been wretched, but here is daylight for you.”

Hers was always, even when in disgrace, the most beautiful face in the world to David. He watched its expression now, with a light in his eye. Love was a poor sort of work-a-day possession if it was to be totally disabled at a blow, even by a blow to pride. But, alas! it has but a delicate life.

She, poor soul, had been thinking of late that her existence was never going to be anything but friction, never anything but a series of economical struggles to make two and sixpence do duty for a crown. She pondered her husband’s words, and smiled into his face.

“David,” she said presently, under her breath, “then we can pay Jane.”

“Yes, and without too appalling an effort.”

“David, once before I suggested we should give up the house.”

“Yes, but that was at first. I couldn’t bear the idea of giving it all up then. We have—at least I have—been very happy here.”

She assented gently, and, tea coming in at this moment, she dispensed it with a resumption of her old animated assurance that could not but please David. Melancholy or depression in a wife must be always a vague rebuke to her protector, and is never popular.

“Where did you find your tenant, David? How good, how clever of you to have sprung such a surprise upon me.”

“It is all Jane’s doing,” said David, frankly. “She suggested the whole thing. I lunched with her today to meet the Mirehouses, and we came to terms there and then. He will take the house off our hands as soon as we like. In fact, Mrs. Mirehouse is coming in presently to talk over matters with you.”

“With me,” said Val, with a new tone in her voice that roused her husband’s attention. “Am I to be consulted? I wonder Jane did not settle everything. She is such an excellent manager.”

“You are not generous about Jane,” said Jane’s cousin, his voice, too, stiffening as hers had. Alas! nowadays he never could talk for any length of time to Valerie without friction of some sort. Had she ever been the amiable woman he had believed her to be? She was now all pepper and vinegar. “Her idea was to make things a bit easier for you; it was the sole idea we had when we concocted the plan. She is clear-headed and sensible, and I never heard her say anything that wasn’t kind about you. Lately, Val, you can’t lose an opportunity of getting a knife into her.”

“Jane is not the mistress of this house. I am.” “You are unreasonable, Valerie.”

“You always say so; perhaps I am. Men should marry reasonable women. They never seem able to find sufficiently reasonable women. Then, perhaps, there would not be so many cat and dog lives to be answered for.”

Cat and dog? Had it come to this? Valerie openly called this life of theirs “cat and dog.” A minute or two ago a glow of something like the old happiness had warmed David’s heart. He rose; he would go back to the club; he could not trust himself here. He was distressed, agitated, wretched.

It was at this unfortunate moment that Sandy burst into the drawing-room and clamoured for sugar from the basin.

“Certainly not, sir,” thundered his father.

But Sandy was out of hand and mutinous in the heat, and he darted at the forbidden basin, and helped himself to its contents under his parents’ nose.

Captain Guthrie lifted a hand in righteous wrath.

“You are disobedient, Sandy. I can’t allow you to disobey. I shall punish you for this. You hear what I say, I shall punish you.”

Sandy broke from his father, and caught hold of his mother’s skirts. Then David saw that his wife’s face was deadly white and agitated.

“You shall not touch him, David,” she said. Her lips trembled; she spoke with painful emotion. “I won’t let you touch him. I like him to do wrong. I like it. He won’t despise me then. He may pity me, if he is not—not immaculate.”

If her voice had not broken, and if tears had not wet her passionate eyes, the scene might have been “cat and dog” to the end for David.

As it was, their good angel intervened. Sandy looked reprovingly at his defender.

“You needn’t cry, muvver,” said he, advancing to his father bravely. “He’d bettern’d hurt me if he likes, cos I can’t be a soldier if I don’t obey. Muvver can’t help crying, faver; she’s only a woman. / don’t mind.”

And, to do him justice, he would not have minded if he had felt the weight of his father’s hand; but the form of his punishment was to be changed.

“Run away, Sandy; run away upstairs,” said David gently. “We are talking, and a lady is coming very soon. Run away.”

The boy was glad to be let off so lightly, and he went. There was ahvays a question whether Sandy would see fit to obey or defy commands; his companionship was fraught with anxiety.

Valerie had brought pride to her aid, and had resumed her self-command.

“Mrs. Mirehouse will be here soon, I suppose, David? What am I to say to her?”

“Agree to everything she wants. I have arranged all the big business with her husband.” He looked searchingly at his wife; the barrier was up again.

“Dear Val, don’t harden your heart against me. Let us begin—begin again.”

He was pleading with her for the first time since the day of his awakening? but she was not to be appeased. She told herself that he took his worries to Jane, that together they discussed her; that he was hours and hours of each day away from his home; that his cousin received all his confidences; that he leaned upon her opinion and despised Valerie’s.

The fact was that Valerie was jealous; she envied.

Envy is at the root of most of this world’s miseries. The tenth commandment should be chief of all the commandments; it is seldom discarded with impunity. “For envy ye have delivered Him.” For envy hearts are bruised and mangled, the god-like propensities of humanity are torn, fretted, destroyed by the almost universal possession of envy. That inherent and devastating vice gnaws at the root of human nobility; it is possessed of a fatal capacity for destruction.

“I am endeavouring,” said Valerie, ignoring David’s overtures, and speaking lightly, “to begin again. I am trying to be all a man wants as a wife. I shall never make a housekeeper, for I can’t dovetail to-day’s dinner into to-morrow’s luncheon, without your knowing it, David. All the cheap things I buy are nasty things. When I look at cook, I think of a leg of mutton. I can never think of anything else.”

“Val, it is beside the mark. Don’t put me off like this. It is not what I mean, and you know it.”

“Is it beside the mark? I think not. Don’t let us dig down; what is the good? All this wretchedness is my fault, not yours. It is I who have got at the foundation of our good time, and spoilt it. You don’t believe in me. You will never believe in me again. One can’t smooth out the surface, when the foundation is all wrong. There, go—go. That is a ring at the bell. Mrs. Mirehouse is coming. If we talked from now till the Judgment Day it would do no good.”

Poor Valerie; it is the perverseness of the evil spirit such as possessed her to murder its owner’s best interests, to drive away the affection it fiercely covets, to show its owner in a vile light, to increase the difficulties of the narrow path, to be reckless of consequence in an insane desire to wound the heart that had wounded hers.

To see David wince, to see his face work, his very lips grow white; to see the shadow of pain under his eyes; to know that at any rate she could make him feel that she was capable of hurting still, was Valerie’s barbarous desire.

The new tenant, Mrs. Mirehouse, was now shown into the room, and put a stop to the dialogue.

The incomer was too self-engrossed to notice Mrs. Guthrie’s preoccupied manner. The latter soon shook herself free from mental encumbrance, and did her best to carry out David’s desires. She would let her house if it was possible to do so, and she would be pleasant about it.

Mrs. Mirehouse was an agreeable person with whom to deal. Apparently she was more anxious to impress upon Mrs. Guthrie the Guthrie insignificance by contrast with the magnificence of the clan of Mirehouse, than to drive any bargain. She said that it was the smallness of the villa which attracted her; that the restfulness of having all her possessions within arm’s length was alluring! She mentioned that she had “just come from staying with her husband’s father; that she was tired out. Caderwallergo was such a huge place; her bedroom had been in the west wing, a quarter of a mile from the drawing-room. She really must find a contrast to Caderwallergo; as a contrast this tiny villa was delightful.” She was prepared to be satisfied with anything, if only it was small enough.

Mrs. Guthrie was impressionable enough, for she opened her eyes very wide, as she ushered her instructive companion about her premises, pointing out its attractions meekly. She was even apologetic when Mrs. Mirehouse asked to see the garden.

“It is untidy now, I am afraid,” said its owner, going out into the fierce sunshine on the grass, and looking down at the weeds in the pansy bed. The pansies had deteriorated; they were wild, blossomless, disorderly—there are few flowers which, under neglect, degenerate so rapidly as do pansies. “But if you have it properly looked after, Mrs. Mirehouse, it will do well. The soil is splendid, and that little clump of trees give a thick shade, you see.”

“What a queer little end of a lawn; no room for croquet.”

“If you were to turf the flower beds, croquet might be managed.”

“Yes”—hopefully—“I had not thought of that. The whole place is like a doll’s house. It will be an excitement to fit oneself into it.”

Mrs. Guthrie’s heart swelled suddenly, till she caught her breath.

“There is a garden, anyhow,” continued the new tenant, agreeably. “It is better than nothing.”

This was what paying a debt meant, thought Valerie; to pay a debt was better perhaps than to owe, but honesty hurt.

“Better than nothing”—her pansies and her garden better than “nothing!” Valerie’s home was dear to her; it was vastly better than the “nothing” to which she was going.

“I must bring my palms,” said the new tenant, returning to the house, “if we can manage to get them in. My aunt in Cheshire has an acre of the most exquisite palms under glass; she gives me what I want. They die so soon, poor dears. I am having a dozen pressed—preserved, you know; they answer all the purpose and save trouble.”

“Live things always give trouble,” said Mrs. Guthrie suddenly. Then she went on slowly, returning to business. “Would you like to see the nursery? It is a sunny room.”

“I have no children,” said Mrs. Mirehouse, with an air of superior sagacity. “When one isn’t well off it is a great convenience to be without them. I hate jammy pinafores, and a nursery within earshot. Children without plenty of space, and plenty of nurses, drive one mad.”

“You would like them preserved and pressed, no doubt,” said Mrs. Guthrie. “That also would save trouble.”

“Mr. Mirehouse is the ninth son,” said his wife. The Mirehouses were lavish in every relation of life, it seemed. “There were seven sisters. Of course such a family impoverished them dreadfully. By the way, Mrs. Guthrie, you know my cousins, the Wetherals. We really settled to take a house here because of them. It is so pleasant to know the nicest people in any neighbourhood, and the Wetherals are quite charming.”

“Quite,” said Mrs. Guthrie, politely.

“Do you know Rupert and Alice well?”

“Fairly well. I have not been out much to anything just lately, but I have met them a good deal. We have no cart now, and the distance makes calling difficult. I am always hoping to get an opportunity of calling on Lady Alice Wetheral.”

This was a statement merely founded on fact. “One of my husband’s brothers,” said Mrs. Mirehouse, instructively, “married a cousin of the Wetherals; it is not a near relationship, but it is a tie. Rupert told me, too, what a pretty house yours was. He was enthusiastic about it; he seemed to know it well.”

“He has been here once,” said Mrs. Guthrie, gravely, recalling that interview of theirs on a momentous day that marked a turning point in the villa life, and wondering what they had talked about—she could never quite remember.

Everyone knew the Wetherals did not get on. “A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.” Valerie felt full of pity for them both.

“I hope soon to go and see them.”

“Let us take you,” said Mrs. Mirehouse. “I have a very decent cob, which my husband is trying to match. I can’t exist without horses. I used to hunt four days a week. We had magnificent horses; my father drove four-in-hand, and he mounted anyone in the house. Since I was two I have ridden every day of my life, but I had a frightful accident some years ago; I broke every bone in my body—almost, and it gave my husband a shock, and shook his nerve. He doesn’t hunt himself now, and he won’t let me. Do you ride?”

“A bicycle,” said Mrs. Guthrie, with a whimsical smile, “and I don’t much like it.”

Mrs. Mirehouse felt that she had established her position. Brag is a good dog. If Holdfast is a better, she knew nothing about it. Brag was good enough for her. Brag is a pliable beast, never shirks his work, is not lightly cowed, and can make his way wonderfully well in the world, for a mongrel.

“I like your tiny house,” she said, pleasantly, when she had done the work of inspection from end to end—there is a subtle, unreasonable offensiveness in a tenant, of which the speaker was happily unaware, but of which Valerie was ashamedly conscious—“and I am glad Montie has made up his mind to take it for a year. Your time is up then, isn’t it? and Captain Guthrie’s appointment ends? He goes to India then, Mrs. Mallam tells me. I can’t think how you women with children can face the separation of India. If you leave your husband, he is sure to be huffy, and if you leave your children to outsiders it is sheer cruelty. How you choose between them I can’t think! I have a sister in India, looking after a wild sort of husband. Her two little girls died of scarlet fever last year. She is a wreck, a broken-down wreck, she really is. Women without children wear better; children bring suffering and anxiety from first to last. Dear me, you are looking so tired. I always forget that people get tired. Personally I am as strong as a horse. I can walk ten miles in the heat without feeling it.”

Mrs. Guthrie politely disclaimed fatigue, opened the door, and accompanied her visitor to the gate. When Mrs. Mirehouse was out of sight, the mistress of the little villa went back into her home, looking as though she had seen a ghost.

CHAPTER XII

“We have careful thought for the stranger,
And smiles for the sometime guest;
But oft for our own the bitter tone,
Tho’ we love our own the best.”

Valerie spent the following evening alone, for, during the afternoon, she received a note from her husband, written from the club, saying that he was going to dine with a friend, and would not be back at the villa until late. Over her dinner of herbs Mrs. Guthrie read a book—fiction was a refuge from the perplexing facts of daily life.

David, on his walk to Leigh, had come across his cousin Jane. He had not been in the humour for a petticoat, but she had accosted him eagerly. She was curious to know whether her arrangements for the transfer of the villa had been successful, and though David’s face did not invite confidence, she was not to be evaded.

She looked with great good humour into his set countenance.

“How do you do, again, David? I want to know—has Mrs. Mirehouse been to see Valerie?”

“I have just left her with Valerie.”

“Is it all right?”

“I hope so.”

“I hope so too; but Mrs. Mirehouse gives one the idea that she might be erratic.”

“No doubt she is erratic. Most women are.” “You don’t think she is likely to change her mind?”

“I know nothing about her mind. Her husband settled the show.”

“Was Valerie glad?”

“Glad? Umph, she was not exactly pleased at the cracking up of the doll’s house.”

Jane’s face fell slightly. Poor David, he had been made, as usual, to suffer for Valerie’s incapacities. He was out of humour. No doubt he had just cause.

“Doesn’t Valerie want to let the house?”

“I don’t think she knows what she wishes,” said her exasperated husband; and then, finding that his wretchedness was making him disloyal, he added more gently, “When the wrench is over, and we are living within our income, we shall find things a bit easier. Now that she understands, Valerie is valiantly parsimonious, but it has been hard on her.”

“Poor Val,” said Jane, genially, and then for a moment she paused.

“David,” speaking in a brisk, bracing tone, “you want to get the thing done, don’t you? and off your mind?”

Indeed, and in truth, that was his human desire. Weight on his mind and weight on his heart spoilt the heavy days of his life.

He nodded his reply.

“Well,” said the universal provider, pleasantly, “I know of some rooms, they are excellent, and I thought of you, and I went round this afternoon to see them. I dotted down every particular and made a list. Here it is; take it with you and study it. Nothing better could be found, I am sure.”

Captain Guthrie smiled at last.

“Jane, that is good of you. I couldn’t think where on earth to go. It is a relief to hear of this in the nick of time.”

He reflected a moment.

“Go over and see Val about it, do, and settle it between you. I must be going on. I’m dining with a friend at the club to-night.”

Jane Mallam had not earned her reputation for good nature without labour. She expended hoards of energy upon the concerns of her neighbours.

She was never idle, her thoughts were engrossed by the necessities of humanity; the little services which tend to make life run more smoothly were her special care.

Some people appreciated her help; other thicks headed folk preferred to muddle on alone in their own way; whilst others, again, whose hearts were sore, and heads sick, and who felt the weight of their incapacity, half resented the well-meant interference of the capable, kind lady.

It may be allowed that at one time Valerie had somewhat traded on Jane’s good nature, but that night, when that energetic person bicycled up to the villa after her dinner, to see Mrs. Guthrie, to tell her about the rooms which she had found, and to hear all the news that was to be heard, Valerie did not receive her cordially, but was aggressively airy and unpractical.

Mrs. Mallam was not an offendable person, nor was she thin-skinned. She saw at once that Valerie was in what she lightly called “a difficult mood,” and she tried to soothe her with a view of a straight path before her feet.

“How do you do, Valerie? I knew David was dining out, so I biked up to see you. My husband is asleep; I had nothing to do, so I thought I would come up to have a chat, and to hear your news.” “Very good of you, I’m sure. You are the most indefatigable of women.”

Valerie’s voice was slow, thin, forced; she heard its strangeness herself, and wondered whether her visitor noticed it too.

“Don’t come here for news, Jane—the domestic treadmill has none. The trivial round furnishes me with all I need ask. There is no space for the introduction of news.”

“But I wanted to hear about the Mirehouses.” “Then you should hear Mrs. Mirehouse, Jane. She would oblige you.”

“I mean I wanted to hear your news.”

“My news? Pouf! the news was yours—David brought it to me. You do everything for us: you have let our house. It would only be fair to ask you to take the inventory.”

“Then it is settled that the house is to let?”

“Yes, we go out next week.”

“Where are you going to?”

“Not to the workhouse—yet.”

“I mean, seriously—have you thought of rooms?”

“Have I thought of heaven, or the other place? In the abstract, no more.”

“If you have nothing in your eye, Valerie, I know of a capital house. I went over the rooms to-day; I really don’t think you could do better. I know you hate being bothered, you poor dear, but David referred me to you. I’ve got the facts dotted down on this paper.”

“Have you sampled the cooking, Jane? You know how happiness—I mean the peace of married life—rests in the kitchen range.”

“Of course I do,” stoutly; “that was my first consideration. The woman has been a cook, a good cook.”

“That means,” said Valerie, “that the woman has a temper. No one can cook well and be placid, so David has the advantage. I shall reap the inevitable results of his good dinners through the landlady. That is the give and take of matrimony.” “There is a nice south room for Sandy. The drawing-room might be made pretty, it has capacities. There is plenty of light and air everywhere, and no extras.”

“What is your commission, Jane? You are incomparable, you handy business woman! You might make a dozen men happy instead of only one. You can ‘feed the beasts,’ and flatter them, and manage them, and enjoy it all. I envy you. I was not meant for matrimony. I told David so, years ago. It was second sight.”

“Dear me, Val, what nonsense.”

“Very grim sense, Jane.”

“Lately I have often thought,” kindly, “that you were turning into quite a good manager.”

Mrs. Guthrie tapped her foot on the ground.

“I take to management about as readily as a child takes to his lessons, as a savage to civilisation. A good manager? I am afraid my ambitions never lay in that direction. I know now that meanness is management, and meanness is a necessary adjunct of want of money.”

“I don’t see that one should waste one’s husband’s money, however much he has,” said Jane, nettled.

“I know you don’t.”

There was a distinctly dangerous silence, and then Valerie began to gossip, swooping down lightly on a dozen subjects in succession, and treating nothing seriously. It was impossible to Jane to feel that she was any sort of use to Valerie upon this occasion, and before long she rose to say goodbye. “Her husband woke up about ten, and they played backgammon,” she said; “she must be on her way home.”

Valerie did not press her to stay, but just before she left, she, with some vague prickings of conscience, began to express her gratitude to Mrs. Mallam.

“It is very good of you, Jane, to bother about us.”

“My dear, you know we Scots are clannish. I look upon you Guthries as a part, and a very big part, of myself. Your interests are my interests. I do wish I could be some substantial help to you.”

Valerie looked up quickly at the speaker. Those full elastic lips of Jane’s were not quite steady. Valerie, with a sudden generous impulse, took her cousin’s large white hand in hers, and wrung it.

“You are a trump, Jane,” said she, “and I am a brute.”

The face of the brute looked pale and wan. Jane kissed it gently.

When she had gone, Valerie drew a long, shuddering breath.

“She is a trump,” she repeated, and then she wrung her hands together. “And we were deadly near a quarrel. I’m a failure”—tears were on her cheeks. “He would have been happy with her; she is a wiser, better woman than I am. She is a good wife, an excellent wife; I’m only the sort of person to love and to tire of.”

She paced to and fro in thought. She had been struggling against a breakdown for hours; she had been calm, but the new emotions of anger and selfdepreciation, jangling in amongst unhappiness, set the tears upon her cheeks.

Later she went over with a slow, half-reluctant step to her writing bureau, and, touching a spring, opened a drawer therein, which was crammed to the hilt with letters. Selecting at random a few of these multitudinous epistles, she sat herself down on the nearest chair, and began to read them eagerly, the leaves of the paper fluttering between her trembling fingers.

It was an innocent occupation, for the letters were from David—ardent, fervent love-letters, every one of them, and written in the pre-nuptial % days of long ago. How little she had valued all these protestations when she had first read them. And now they seemed to her as pathetic as letters from the dead.

She read herself into a bitter fit of crying. “He used to like me,” she said; “he used to, he used to.” Her wretchedness tired her out; she leaned her head against the back of the chair, and wept till she was too weary to feel acutely; then she fell a-think-ing, and her thoughts were long, so long that they presently grew dreamy, and from dreaming turned later into sleep—sound, heavy sleep that knew nothing of time, or place, or solitude.

Captain Guthrie stayed late at his club. Why should he hurry home? The villa life was not se-ductive. Valerie never asked him where he had been, nor seemed desirous of his return. She left him free.

Such freedom this Briton did not prize, though he took advantage of it. The cathedral clock struck the hour as he neared home. It was one o’clock. David saw lights in the windows of his house as he approached it, and he hurried his footsteps with a new vague uneasiness added to his mental heaviness.

For many months the Wetherals had died out of David’s life; he had never cast a thought to them.

Upon one occasion Mr. Wetheral had been to the villa, but its mistress, heeding her husband’s attitude upon the parasol question, had so conducted herself that the visit had not been repeated.

On turning into the lane which led to his home David was startled and amazed to find Mr. Weth-eral’s dog-cart drawn up at the villa gate.

The cart was empty; a groom stood at the head of a chafing horse.

It was not dark—it is never wholly dark on a summer night, and the man, recognising David, and answering to his astonished start, set to easing his mind wdthout delay.

“It is nothing much wrong, sir, after all. We were dining at Maitland, and driving back home this way. As we came along we heard shrieks and screams coming from your house, and we stopped, sir, to see what was wrong.”

“Good Lord!”

“It’s all nothing, sir; it was the lady was frightened, and the servants too. A tramp coming dowm the road saw a light, and he found the door open, and came in, and they couldn’t get him out. He was drunk, sir, and rough. It woke the child, and it screamed for the loudest. My master soon settled him.”

David tore up his staircase two steps at a time, making straight for his nursery, where all his household were assembled—Sandy in a shawl, sitting on Mr. Wetheral’s knee, flushed with excitement and talking shrilly; Valerie, pale and unnerved, hanging over her little son; the maids, promiscuously attired, and full of animation, in the background of the scene.

If a householder neglects his dependents, leaving them unprotected, and if his place be successfully filled for him, he should be properly grateful to the preserver of his family.

David was in the wrong, and he accepted his position stoutly. No one could have shown more tenderness for the nerves of his scared household than did this wanderer on his return. There was nothing small about David; he blamed himself, compassionated the womenkind, and was grateful to their rescuer. He forbore to turn up his nose at the feminine panic.

Presently, when he had pitied and praised them all sufficiently, he sent the maids back to bed. Sandy’s eyes were closing, so he was laid back once more in his cot, and then David invited Mr. Wetheral downstairs for a whisky and soda. Mrs. Guthrie accompanied them; she was still agitated and emotional, and distinctly disinclined to be left alone. Captain Guthrie settled her in a chair, and sat himself close beside her.

“Tell me all about it, Val,” he said, looking at her solicitously.

“I sat up late, and I got sleepy, David. I had been reading.” He, who knew her face by heart, watched her with a stab of sharp compunction; he saw by those beautiful eyes that she had done more than read; her face was stained by tears. Mr. Wetheral looked, too, puzzled. “And I went off to sleep in the drawing-room. When I awoke, I awoke with a start. I heard you—I mean that I thought I heard you—in the passage. I was wide awake in a second, and I got up to put some papers back in my bureau. I was a minute in doing it, and in shutting the lock. Then I took my candle and went to meet you. Oh, David, there was a shocking-looking man in the doorway! I thought he was a burglar. I know 1 ought not to have shrieked, but I lost my head, and I did shriek—and I woke them all, and they came out on the landing, and shrieked too. Then I remembered Sandy, and I tried to talk to the man. I saw he was drunk, and I offered him money to go away. He didn’t seem to understand, and he got hold of my arm and held me, and I couldn’t move. And then, oh! then I heard wheels; the front door was open all the while. I thought it was you, David, but it was Mr. Wetheral. He was so kind; he was so clever, he got the man out of the house in a minute, and he calmed us all. I was never so thankful to see anyone in all my life as to see him.”

Mr. Wetheral certainly accepted the situation gracefully. He was much interested and gratified himself.

“It was such extraordinary luck that I should have happened to be where I was wanted,” he reiterated repeatedly. “I was dining at Maitland, and I ordered the cart early, but I kept it waiting. Upon my soul, it was lucky I did keep it waiting. That boy of yours, with the shrieking women, might have been frightened to death, Guthrie.”

“You let the man go?”

“Good heavens, yes. What could we do with him here, Guthrie, under the circumstances? He swore that he found the front door open, and that he merely called for some cider. No one stopped shrieking till he was off the premises. I was thankful to let him go.”

“I am sorry the brute got off scot free.”

“So am I, but he was a great big chap, and I wasn’t sorry to get him clear of your house.”

“You were very valiant,” said Valerie, graciously. “You ordered him off. I thought you had not noticed that he was a head taller, and a foot broader, than yourself.”

Then Valerie proceeded to tell the story of her former rescue from a tramp at Felixstowe, years ago.

“Guthrie had the luck then,” said the hearer, “so it is only fair I should have had my turn.”

A great many anecdotes of burglars and burglaries cropped up from the fluent tongue of the Guthries’ guest, David maintaining a polite attitude of interested attention. His gratitude to Mr. Wetheral strangled his yawns, and when at last he had departed, and the man and wife were left alone, David continued to express his gratitude to the deliverer.

“You must get over and call on his wife, Val, now. It must be done.”

And a few days later this visit was accomplished. Lady Alice was at home, and Valerie, laying herself out to please, was fairly successful in her endeavours.

What wonder if this poor girl was variable, bitter, hard, cold, proud, uncertain, hard to please? What wonder? The Wetherals “did not get on,” it was a fact that was public property, “they did not get on.”

She was not likely to endure the unbearableness of such a position and keep an equable manner for the world outside. Valerie would not be prone to take offence; she would do the little she could to soothe the wounded. Very little it was, she knew. Nothing from without can help the man and wife who “do not get on.”

The dawning knowledge that estrangement was to be their fate must be like death. They had been called upon to suffer the first sharp stinging pang of bereavement, then the long dull aching of an irreparable loss. Men felt such miseries less acutely than women; they could wean themselves more lightly from the life of home. But Valerie was full of pity for them both.

He was at home when she called; he took her out into his garden, and sent her back into those dreary lodgings, to which the Guthries had just moved, laden with carnations such as would transform her dingy sitting-room into a semblance of home.

If she had made a mull of life, Mr. Wetheral never guessed it. He had been eager, assiduous to please her. She had been just for the time reinstated in her old imperial position. She drove homewards with a pleasant taste in her mouth.

She had set out that afternoon in bad spirits. David had helped her into the cart.

“You look tired, Val,” he had said, and the kijid-ness of his voice had brought tears to her eyes, which she had turned away to hide.

“All the fuss and work of moving here tired me rather,” she had answered. “A few days’ rest is all I want.”

She wanted more than that, and David knew that it was so, as he stood with a heavy heart watching her drive away.

He turned back into this new domicile in Priory Terrace, looking about him with a deadly disrelish for the place. His keen eyes were dulled by the tame, unlovely friction of his lot, but his heart was softened towards the poor sinner who had just driven off, a martyr to social duty. Could he do nothing to bring smiles back to the lips he had loved so well?

“You here, David?” broke in a voice upon his pre-occupation, the genial but monotonous voice of his cousin Jane. “I thought you had driven to Rexstead, and I brought these flowers for Valerie.”

“How kind of you. I haven’t gone to Rexstead; Val has driven to the Wetherals’ instead; she had to call there. She is looking seedy; she wants air. She has had her head in a box for a week.”

With one comprehensive look round the room, Mrs. Mallam grasped the situation.

“Valerie hasn’t unpacked any of her household goods yet,” she said. “The whole place is hoed up, but not raked over.”

“Poor girl, she has been too tired for any extra work; she is going to get things straight next week. There are two boxes upstairs ready to be unpacked.”

“Are you busy, David?”

“I’ve nothing to do.”

“Then come and help unpack, and we’ll transform this room by the time Valerie comes home. It is enough to give you all the blues as it is now.”

He wanted to please his wife, and of course Jane knew best the way to do it.

Together the cousins unpacked Valerie’s knick-knacks; together they moved furniture and hung curtains; together they concealed angles and broke lines; together they strewed china and photographs about the room, till the environments of Priory Terrace grew pleasanter and pleasanter to its inmates’ eyes.

The villa vases were filled with Jane’s flowers as a final touch, and David laughed at his own astuteness, gloating over the pleasing preparations for Valerie’s return.

CHAPTER XIII

'‘The woman’s cause is man’s; they rise or sink Together, dwarfed or god-like, bond or free.”

Valerie's cheerful mood lasted her all the way home, and David was on the steps to greet her, and he led her, with a little air of ceremony, into a transfigured sitting-room.

“I thought you would be glad to get some bits of your own drawing-room about you, Val,” he said, looking at her.

And she was glad; she thanked him as the Valerie of yore might have done, with the assured graciousness of an indulged woman.

“How kind of you, David.”

She walked about, looking at the improvements in her domain, tweaking here, rearranging there, interested and animated. Her quick, graceful movements appealed to his sense of admiration; he sat watching her with kindly eyes. Tea was brought in. There had not been so exhilarating a domestic tea-drinking at the Guthries’ for many a day.

“We have touched up this dismal little den of yours rather successfully, haven’t we, Val?”

“It’s a very pretty room, David—now.”

“It is nice of you to say that.”

“There won’t be so much worry here, David,” wistfully, “and far better cooking. We must try not to mind anything.”

“I shan’t—mind.”

She looked down at the carnations lying piled on a chair beside her.

“I have asked the Wetherals to tea after the flower show.”

“All right. You have been a lonely, dismal Jimmy lately; it isn’t natural. You always used to like people in and out.”

“David, everything costs money. You would not believe it, but bread and butter is expensive. In-and-out people are dear.”

“You won’t have to skin your flints so closely now, Valerie.”

“I shall be stingy as long as I live.”

“Have I taught you such an abominable lesson, Valerie, as that?”

“Let us call it ‘cutting our coats according to our cloth,’ David. That sounds virtuous—virtuous, and fairly easy.”

“I hope,” irrelevantly, “you won’t go on cursing the day we came across each other in that green lane, Valerie. I hate to think you curse it.”

She lost her new air of gaiety, and looked at him.

“Have you cursed it?” she asked him, staring into his face.

His keen glance met her anxious eyes for a moment in silence.

“Never,” he said, steadfastly. “Never once, Valerie.”

She smiled, a not quite steady smile, and went over to her flowers.

These two people were conscious of possessing feelings so explosive that a chance turn of subject might fire a mine and bring about disaster.

Habit is second nature, and until lately their habit of life had been so peaceable a one that they had learned no knack of warding off these new combative dangers.

Valerie brought an impersonal turn to the dialogue by introducing the safe topic of carnations, and shortly her husband took leave of her and went out.

He went out with fresh hopes running high. He hummed the air of a sentimental ditty of Valerie’s, the words of the song striking him as specially pleasing:

“One morning, oh! so early, my beloved, my beloved,

All the birds were singing blithely, as if never they would cease:

’Twas the thrush sang in the garden, ' Hear the story, hear the story,’

And the Lark sang, ‘ Give us glory,’

But the Dove sang, ‘ Give us peace.’ ”

David was of one mind with this dove. Give him peace, the untold, inexpressible, daily blessing of peace.

Elusive as a will-o’-the-wisp, peace now evaded him. Occasionally it seemed to hover over his household, but he lacked dexterity to secure it.

In this exalted mood, David came across an old friend of his at the club, and asked him to come and dine at Priory Terrace, and the friend accepted the invitation. David thoughtfully dispatched a note to acquaint Valerie with the arrangement.

“Dearest” (he wrote),

“I have asked Duncan to dine at 7.45 to-night. I let you know at once.

“Yours as ever,

“D. G.”

At twenty minutes to eight belated David tore up the stairs to dress. He had brought his guest.

“Val, Duncan is here. I waited to show him the way.”

Her face was an enigma, but it was not gracious.

“I’m sorry I am late, but I won’t be long. Was, it all right? Have you enough dinner?”

“I hope so.”

“Duncan is staying at the ‘Rougemont.’ I hadn’t seen him since I was at Plymouth. He is a good sort. I thought you would like him.”

“My dear David, don’t apologise; I shall welcome anyone who breaks our solitude à deux.”

And David had left this home dreaming of peace. The truce had been an armistice of an hour; war had broken out afresh. The next moment the door of the dressing-room closed sharply; its inmate was nettled—stung to the quick. He had left Valerie gracious and gentle; he had returned to a defensive, artificial woman. God knew why. He was sick of the riddle.

In former days, people who had partaken of Guthrie pot-luck had been people to be pitied. In the school of adversity Valerie had learnt some practical lessons; she had learnt the importance of dinner.

The men were to-night soothed by the excellence of the little repast set before them; and the alluring hostess, in a white dress, with a green ribbon in her hair, set herself to please, and did as well in her department as the cook had done in the kitchen.

When the men were left alone, and Valerie had gone to the other room, the guest told David “he was the luckiest chap in the world, and that he, Duncan, only wished that he could afford to marry and the loyal host nodded, agreed, and turned the subject.

He who wears the shoes suffers the pinching, and onlookers don’t always see much of the game.

Captain Duncan fidgetted to get back to his attractive hostess. She was in a mood that night strangely unfamiliar to her husband. What, in heaven’s name, had gone wrong? David sat apart, moody and quiet, whilst she sang French songs, and coon songs, and entertained their guest. She was restless, excited; she laughed too easily, and talked at random. She was a charming person, but she was not Valerie.

Furtively, she said things to wound one of her hearers. He, recognising that such was the case, grew wrathful and combative himself.

Captain Duncan stayed late, and on his way back to the ‘‘Rougemont” he decided that Guthrie had gone off—that he was a bearish, sulky fellow, and that his wife was a great deal too good for him.

After David had made his curtailed adieux to his guest, he went back to the little drawing-room to put out the lights. Valerie was still there, putting away her songs that had been scattered over the piano.

David was in that dangerous station, the dark. He did not know his offence; he could not divine the cause of her anger towards him. How could he guess that she was jealous of Jane? The idea was too preposterous to enter his mind.

Sandy had done the mischief; he had invaded the downstairs premises as soon as his father had left the house, and he had been prattling of the joys in which he had been allowed to share.

“I helped unpack your ’normous great boxes, muvver, and cousin Jane let me carry what wasn’t very breaky, and I helped faver, too; it was fun.”

“Was Jane here?”

“All the whole time. She fought of every fing; faver and me did it. We made the whole room bootiful, didn’t we?”

After these confidences, Sandy’s mother gave up playing and began to think.

“Don’t fink, muvver,” the frivolous youth implored. “It isn’t at all nice downstairs when you fink; you’ve funk a lot lately.”

But his mother did not shake off her meditations, and the boy’s hour was disappointing. He went off later to bed, willingly enough.

“Muvver’s gotten to fink,” he explained to his nurse, “or she’s gotten a headache. We haven’t ’joyed ourselves at all.”

Now that man and wife were at last alone, David, hardening his heart, turned to defend himself from the imaginary offence for which he was being punished.

“What is the matter, Valerie? Upon my soul, I cannot understand you. I left you this afternoon cheery and nice, I came back this evening and found you uncivil, prickly as a porcupine, aggressive. How have I offended you? What have I done?”

For a moment she looked interrogatively into his face. Then she spoke, coldly, lightly:

“Don’t you think we might rub along better without explanations that can’t mend matters? Our life is likely to be difficult enough, without stripping thoughts bare which are not in the nature of things comfortable. Don’t let us make it worse than it need be.”

David winced; had it got so bad as this, that explanations must be foregone? It was like the foregoing of hope.

“You are unreasonable, Valerie; unreasonable and unjust. I am conscious of no offence. If I had treated you vilely, you could not speak to me with a greater show of contempt. What have I done? At least let me hear that.”

Valerie’s eyes blazed. That great motive power which wrecks many a life had got her in thrall.

“You have married the wrong woman. It is not much, but it is enough. You have married me; you should have married a good upper servant, a useful, domestic woman. You,” with her head held high and her angry eyes upon his face, “you should have married Jane.”

“I wish to God I had!” he cried, exasperated beyond endurance.

A silence fell on his words like death.

She turned quickly and hurried from the room; he heard her stumble unsteadily on her way upstairs.

“When some beloved voice, that was to you
Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly.
And silence against which you dare not cry
Aches round you like a strong disease.”

He paused, struggling with himself, then he hurried after her with a sudden gush of tenderness, of misgiving. But he had not been quick enough; she had turned into her boy’s sleeping-room; the nurse was there. The boy had wakened, dreaming and frightened; his mother had him already in her arms, and was lulling him back to sleep.

When next her husband saw her she was quite composed and self-contained, and he sought for no further explanation.

Dreary time passed on; David was beginning doggedly to accept the almost unbearable petty adversities of his daily life.

Such existence is not improving; his naturally hot temper, which he had ruled zealously for the sake of the love he bore his wife, would not be cowed by other motive powers.

Over most trivial domestic offences he would, nowadays, break into sudden anger; with whetted tongue he would storm at his household. I do not think he ever directed his indignation at Valerie; she sat mute, with her eyes on the ground during these thunderstorms which broke over her home.

Occasionally, the monkey-tricks of his irrepressible boy called for the parental anger, but Valerie never provoked argument, nor did anything to excuse Sandy from punishment. Her meek demeanour did not cool Captain Guthrie. He knew too well that the amenable surface was but skin-deep. He felt full of offence towards her. He had things now of which to repent in his treatment of her. Do what he would, the cool civility of a reserved daily contact could not retain its uniform mutual politeness. He could not act a part for ever in his home. When he was driven mad by his own incapacities, by his own failure, some evil power lurking within goaded him into making bad worse, rather than remain inactive. Life could not be stationary; if it was not to be lifted up, it should be driven down. He threw his mind more than ever into his work. He made the most he could of it. It employed him for the greater part of each day. Three evenings a week, sometimes more, he set apart for it.

His boy was old enough now to walk out proudly with his father. Sandy was a manly little lad, and David delighted in him. Secretly, Valerie fostered the love between father and son.

She had given up the skin-flinting and the mopping of her days of penance. The debts would soon be paid now; she need not brood over her sins. She set herself to the duty of enjoyment, of gaiety, of mixing with her fellows, and of taking such pleasure as lay in her path—the pleasure was not much to boast of.

David’s body began to sympathise openly with his mind; he ailed generally; he became a martyr to headache. He took a fortnight’s leave at his doctor’s advice, and went to stay with his mother at Bath, to get the change which had been recommended to him. It was not suggested that his wife and son should accompany him, and he went alone.

A brief absence makes the heart grow fonder, and David, idle and lonely, getting rid of headache in that beautiful city of gentle memories, thought that perhaps it might not be impossible to get quit of heart-ache at the same time.

It was here, upon this shady seat in the leafy Park, that Valerie and he had once sat together, and had talked so long and gaily. Side by side they had wandered in the Abbey; it was there, through the painted Abbey window, that the sun had thrown a sudden beam which had caught on Valerie’s bright hair; the sun had shone out of an overcast sky; he had been glad to see it, and had taken the light and brightness as an omen of his future life. He could remember how Valerie had spoken on that day, how she had looked upon another; he thought of her continually.

“Lord, keep our memories green—in verdure clad.”

He would write to Valerie. Write his soul down. She could reject or accept what he had to give; she could take it or leave it; but she should believe and see that it was there. He could write truth, such as he could not speak. Of late she had fenced with any earnestness on his part. Face to face an explanation seemed hopeless. His tongue blundered.

Lately, Valerie had not seemed to fret over their estrangement; her light manner had revived; she had not lost her knack of charm; her popularity had not waned. David did not go with her, here, there and everywhere, as had been once his wont; she went mostly alone. He heard her laugh over and narrate her doings as if she had zest for the society and junketings of the neighbourhood.

But, in repose, there was an almost sullen sadness in the eyes he knew so well. Her movements were listless, her lips drooped, if no interest from without roused her. Of course she was sometimes restless as a child, frivolous as a Frenchwoman; her mood varied from hour to hour. David never knew whether to be nettled by her liveliness, remorseful over her glumness, or alarmed at her frivolity.

He would write to her; he would certainly write.

His mother had found Valerie out long ago; she had disappointed this captious person during a fatal long leave that the family from Leigh had spent in Bath.

Sandy had not been of an age to respect his grandmother’s delicate health; it was decreed Sandy was spoilt.

The opprobrious epithet clung to Sandy, harassed his career amongst his relations as does the proverbial bad name given to the dog.

Every day David heard that Sandy was spoilt, and that Sandy’s mother was to blame. “Poor Valerie; what can one expect, David, with such a bringing up as hers? She had the worst kind of spoiling; she was neglected and indulged by turn. The spoiling of love is less deleterious.”

David listened, his heart yearning for the sinners far away.

He was acting the part of a well-brought-up son. He banged no doors; he smoked amongst beetles in the kitchen; he walked abroad by his mother’s chair; he read aloud to her; all day he did those things which he did not want to do, and his thoughts wandered more and more to the home in which he was master.

By virtue of inheritance, he respected his mother’s headaches nowadays. Standing below his father’s picture, he looked long at the manly face, at the clear, keen eyes, at the firm, strong mouth there depicted; then his glance fell, and passed to the peevish, lined old woman who sat in the light of a curtained window.

All his life, from his boyhood until now, he had secretly accused his mother; he had told himself that for the separation between his parents, she was to blame; that the evil arose from the foibles of her character alone.

Live and learn.

A fatal clash of temperament, an adverse fate, the cruel finger of circumstance, had perhaps hands in his parents’ calamity.

With a chilling pang at heart, he recollected that these tormenting headaches of his. were inherited. He shuddered at the doctrine of heredity. Had some clink of temper, some stiffness of neck, some deadly hardness of heart, some rift in genial nature fallen to his share of inheritance, such as consumes all happiness within and around its owner? David was getting the blues. He would write, write nobly, humbly, fully. Poor Valerie. He would write.

But ten days of David’s leave had passed, and the letter had not gone. It had been written, torn up, rewritten and rejected many times.

Daily telegraphic communications went to Leigh; items of news with conventional tails and headings, and all the love to Sandy. Daily letters, founded on David’s pattern sheet, returned from Valerie, all the love again in their case from Sandy.

The last two days at Bath were made more tolerable for David by the unexpected arrival of Mrs. Mallam; she paid a couple of days’ annual visit to her Aunt Carrie, and she judiciously chose the time when Mrs. Guthrie had a visitor, and offered her own company.

It was ridiculous of a man to be homesick; it was absurd to find how glad David felt at seeing a face from home; he rejoiced over the arrival of Jane, he talked to her of his belongings, he began to enjoy himself; the days no longer lagged. He even grumbled when Jane took over-long about the shopping, by which a great deal of her time was engrossed. He took her to the Abbey; he sat with her in that special seat of hallowed memories. He shook off his blues and was no longer moody.

Mrs. Mallam was a genial comrade who soothed all emotions, levelled life, expected nothing as far as he knew, and relished every small pleasure that came her way.

CHAPTER XIV

"Let her know her place,
She is the second, not the first.”
—In Memoriam.

Valerie, alone at home with her son, was not making much of her freedom; its effect upon her was not stimulating; on the contrary, it seemed to depress her. She ignored her social engagements, cancelling such as she had not forgotten, and imperilled any elementary morals that Sandy possessed, by devoting to him her time and attention.

He was a boy of tenacious mind, and had definite desire to rule; he worked his white slave fairly hard just now.

“We’ll go and see jackdaws to-day, muvver.”

It was a sunny, summer morning, very hot even in the shady house, and Valerie did not jump at Sandy’s suggestion; she threw cold water.

“Nurse can take you to see them presently, but it is very hot.”

Sandy had a passion for jackdaws; he wished for the society of jackdaws at all hours of the day and night.

“Faver takes me his own seff every time when I asks him. When he gets to the Fedral, nurse won’t never stay.”

“If I take you, Sandy, if I dress and take you to see these jackdaws, you must hold my hand all the way through the streets.”

“I will walk close to you, muvver; but faver don’t hold my hand. Soldiers march straight; they don’t hold no hands; men don’t want no hands.”

“It is safer to hold hands, dear. Everyone is safer if they hold hands. We can’t go straight quite alone.”

“I can. I’m like my faver.”

She looked at him with her partial anxious, tender mother-eyes.

Like his father? Nay, like him in little but the firm set of the baby mouth and the keen, straight stare of the sagacious baby eyes. Sandy was a fair child, with a peachy skin and dewy lips, with bright, flaxen hair, and eyes brown, soft, deep-set as his mother’s. He was straight as a pine; he held himself as if he had been drilled, for soldiering—over and beyond the jackdaws—was his passion. Within the radius of their capacities, he and his nurse missed no military spectacle.

“Sandy, we shall meet motor-cars, and bicycles, and prancing horses all the way to the Cathedral,” she proceeded, firmly; “we must hold hands if we go.”

“You may hold my hand in danjous places then,” yielding; “that will be awful safe.”

Valerie weakly allowed this compromise, and was then hustled off at once to dress. The verb to wait is not conjugated by the young.

Mother and son started off as fair and fresh as the summer morning. Sandy, stripped of his blue pinafore, was wearing a white tunic, belted like a soldier, a shady straw hat set a little to one side on his light curls. His mother rustled and creaked in a cotton frock fresh from the wash. It was of pale lemon colour; her hat shaded with it, and in her ears she wore blue turquoises. She was always an effective person; her crimps and frills became her. Some trick of touch, a tilt, a fold, a bow, a knot, a pin, did the thing, but how was it done? Who can describe the art? But there the product is for those who appreciate such vanities to mark and to admire.

The dangers of the streets through which the pair passed were heating and exhausting; Sandy looked at everything, was interested in everything; he never ceased talking; he held hands on rare occasions. He laid out a penny to vast advantage, wearing out the patience of the shop attendant in the doing. He patted tradesmen’s horses at shop doors; he flattened his nose at windows, and wanted to follow up each passing attraction.

Valerie was pale and tired long before they reached the cool Cathedral yard. They halted in the shade of one of the venerable elms growing there, and Sandy stared up into the tree.

“This rook sort of jackdaw is clever, muvver; when the trees get so old that they blows down, them sort of kind of jackdaws don’t build no nests; they go away, faver says.”

“Rats and rooks desert falling houses,” said Valerie; “less shrewd animals stick to their homes, Sandy.”

“Don’t understand,” said Sandy. “Am all birds jackdaws? Am a duck a jackdaw?”

“You are a lover, Sandy; you have only room for one black feather in your foolish little heart.”

“Come on round to the Fedral door, muvver, and see them; there’s lots and lots of jackdaws sitting on the funny stone men up high.”

At this moment his mother was accosted by an acquaintance; the two grown-ups, to Sandy’s disgust, began to talk; he was a jealous comrade, with no tolerance for a rival, and whilst his guardian chatted he softly slipped away.

When Valerie had bidden the offending lady good-bye, and was free again, she turned to address Sandy, and found that he had disappeared. She hurried on and soon saw him in front of her, but some hundred yards ahead, standing out on the road, his head in the air, his attention riveted by a row of jackdaws which were perched on the crumbling saints that adorned the west end of the Cathedral.

As she advanced, a carriage turned the sharp corner of the road beyond Sandy, and a fast-trotting pair of greys came up the narrow way upon the absent child.

The driver of the carriage yelled. Valerie darted forward, tore out upon the road, caught Sandy by the arm, and in the twinkling of an eye dragged him out of danger.

“Good God! that was a narrow shave.”

It was the Wetherals’ stanhope which had so nearly done for Master Sandy, and Rupert Wetheral, who was driving it, got down from the box looking white and concerned at what might have been a nasty accident.

He laid an unsteady hand on the child’s shoulder.

“You were within an ace, young man, of being run over,” he said. “It was your fault, but your mother would never have forgiven me as long as she lived.”

“Wouldn’t she?” rather impressed, but with a wandering eye that still hankered after the jackdaws. “I hold hands in danjous places, don’t I, mummy?”

“We don’t always agree as to what is dangerous,” said his mother, laughing, but speaking with white lips.

“Sandy, you have frightened your mother very much.”

“Have I?” looking at her, and allowing his little brown hand to be squeezed tightly in her cold fingers. “She’s often frightened; she’s afraid of cows; they are not never allowed on the pavement, I told her, but she’s afraid all the same. Faver and me are not frightened ever, except when Mrs. Timms’ dogs growls very loud at my legs. I don’t like that, but faver says soldiers aren’t never cowards.”

“Let me give you and this young man a lift home, Mrs. Guthrie. You don’t look much up to walking. Though that scare was over in a moment, it was bad while it lasted. Alice drove over a child about three years ago. I was with her. The youngster was not hurt, but I’ve never got my nerve back. When I saw your boy there I was sort of paralysed; if I’d known it was Sandy I could not have been knocked sillier. Listen, Sandy; would you like to drive home with me? Ask your mother if you may. I will take you if you may come.”

“We’ll come,” said Sandy, graciously. “We would like it very much, wouldn’t we, muvver? Your grey horses prance and go so fast. Can I hold the whip?”

Mrs. Guthrie, nothing loth, was marshalled to the seat on the driver’s left hand; Sandy sat on her knee, dumb with enjoyment, so that his elders’ dialogue was not pierced by the shrill inconsequence of his prattle.

“I thought I should meet you at Rexford, Mrs. Guthrie, or at Abingdon,” Mr. Wetheral said. “You have been nowhere. What has been wrong?”

“Nothing but laziness.”

“You haven’t been ill?”

She shook her head.

“It isn’t always easy to get about; one wants a vast amount of energy. We have no cart, you know.”

“But I never see Guthrie, either.”

“He is away just now.”

“He is working them all very hard; I’m told of no end of extra work; shooting, drilling all over the country; he is waking the men up, I can tell you.”

“Is he?” said his wife, looking thoughtful. “He is always busy in the summer; the outlying places are so far away sometimes. His appointment will be up in the summer.”

“So I heard. What does he do then?”

Valerie looked at her son.

“I don’t quite know.”

“His battalion is in India. How shall you like India?”

“I shan’t go to India,” quickly. “I hate heat.”

Mr. Wetheral liked to hear the news; he was always inquisitive; in this case he was interested; he thought deeply.

“It is a dog’s life,” he said softly, “following a baggage wagon.”

“It is a dog’s life which most women envy,” lightly, with a baffling smile. “I am only joking. Of course a soldier’s wife goes to India if—she is wanted there.”

Mr. Wetheral was conscious of having blundered; he was never reserved, and he was too great a talker to be discreet; he took most of his friends into his confidence; to Valerie he was amazingly outspoken.

“My wife talks of going to India next year; some of her people are going, and she would like the trip. This winter she is off to Egypt; she can’t be still; she’s as restless as a swallow; she is never at home. England is good enough for me; I’m staying down here; I’m fond of the place.”

The listener’s expression changed, growing gentle and sympathetic.

“I’m not restless, either,” Valerie said, nodding her head. “I like to stay where I am. I hate change.”

“You are faithful.”

“No, not faithful; merely cowardly. I am always afraid that any change may turn out for the worse. I fear I might be even less well off elsewhere than I am here at home.”

“I don’t believe that is the only reason.”

“It is the principal reason.”

It was pleasant to Valerie to have her words analysed, weighed, treated seriously; marital ears are not so attentive. An imperial position is attractive; Mr. Wetheral as a courtier made himself agreeable.

“There’s a butterfly in that garden,” cried Sandy, suddenly. “Stop, stop a moment, please.” Baring his yellow curls to the sun, he tore off his wide-brimmed hat and thrust it over the back of the carriage into the groom’s hands. “Will you please run and catch that lovely white butterfly?” breathlessly. “Run quick, quick! Dear me, it’s rising up; it’s going over the wall! It is no good now; it’s too late.”

“Sandy,” said his mother, reprovingly.

“My dear boy, we can’t stop to catch every butterfly on the road. Life is not long enough. There are lots of butterflies at my place. Will you come up there and catch them? Catch as many as you like.”

“I’ll come now,” said Sandy, cordially, “if muvver likes me to.”

“Bring him to-morrow, Mrs. Guthrie; bring him to lunch; Alice will be delighted; she likes children. I’ll send for you, and I will send you back. Any time you like to fix, the carriage shall be at your service.”

“You are very kind.”

“Muvver, can we go?”

She hesitated.

“Sandy,” said his genial host, laying a trap, “I have a brace of jackdaws, only they are white ones; and I have some gold fish and a fountain; a garden full of flowers, which you can pick just as you like. Will you try and come?”

“Muvver, you can come, can’t you? He really and truly wants us to come,” urged Sandy.

“It is very kind, but—” she demurred. “I hardly know whether it is possible.”

“It will be kind of you if you will come. I want Sandy.”

“Sandy would enjoy it very much. I have some engagement. I could put it off.”

“Of course you could. That is very good of you. Then you’ll come to lunch? Do make it lunch.”

“To tea, if you please.”

“I do please very much; I only want you to come. You shall be fetched at a quarter to four.”

“We are getting near our home now,” put in Sandy, addressing the last speaker. “It isn’t a long drive. I’m so sorry.”

“So am I,” answered his host, gravely. “But we shall meet to-morrow, Sandy; that is something for us to dream about. And the drive to my house will be very long. I think it very long sometimes.”

“But I don’t like very long anythings. Muvver and I get so tired, don’t we?”

“Yes, we do. At least, I know you do.”

Sandy, in a thoughtful mood, bid the Wetheral equipage farewell. He shook hands absently with Mr. Wetheral, lifted his face to kiss the groom who helped his descent to the ground, and then ran off with a sudden eager impulse of expectation into his home.

When Mrs. Guthrie entered her little drawingroom she found Sandy on the floor engrossed with a horse and cart.

“You have been an awful long time talking/’ he said, “and I wanted you to mend my trace.”

“Why did you not go to nurse?”

“I likes you best. You ties better. And I won’t go to that gentleman’s house at all. I never heard of no white jackdaws; jackdaws isn’t white. And I don’t like werry, werry long drives; they make me sleepy, and I won’t do it at all. And you can’t go neither, ’cos I shan’t.”

“Sandy, it is time for you to get your midday nap. Go up to nurse.”

“I’ll ask faver whether jackdaws can be white, ’cos I don’t think they can. When is faver coming home?”

“The day after to-morrow.”

“How long is that?”

“Forty-eight hours. Don’t be naughty; go to bed.”

“I’m not naughty. I’m going by-and-bye.

I want to talk first. Muvver, will you listen?”

“No, dear, I won’t. I’m going to write a letter.”

“To faver, I s’pose.”

“No, to Mr. Wetheral, to tell him that his jackdaws are black after all, and that he lives so far off from us that we can’t go and see him.”

“Are you sorry?” There was a note of anxiety in the child’s voice. “Did you want to go? Are you disappointed?”

“No,” quickly. “I did not want to go at all.”

“The kind man will be disappointed?” interrogatively.

“Go to bed, Sandy. It is getting so late.”

Sandy did as he was bid, and even whilst the patter of his feet sounded on the stairs she sat down and wrote the promised note to:

“Dear Mr. Wetheral,

“My imperious son” (she wrote), “quite foreign to the rights of his sex, has elected to change his mind. No bird that is black can be white, he says, and he declines to believe in your jackdaws. Moreover, you laid stress on the vast distance between us, and he argues that it is too long a journey to take, even in search of fountains and flowers.

“This allegorical letter means that we are afraid we must decline your kind invitation for to-morrow after all. Many thanks all the same.

“Yours sincerely,

“Valerie Guthrie”

She had blotted her note; it lay between the sheets of blotting paper, and she was directing the envelope, when the arrival of the midday post with a letter from David stayed her hand. She went out to the post-box with an odd, sick qualm, half hope, half apprehension, with which she daily received his correspondence.

Though at present she was allowed to see only the alienated life of her husband, she had just lately, half by instinct, by intuition, guessed vaguely at his leaning towards happier things. Was she once more to be admitted to his confidence, to be quit of the ruffled surface life, to get back to the deep, still underflow of love upon which she had happily glided, and which she would give her life to find again.

She stood with his letter in her hand. Was he coming back to this miserable makeshift life of theirs? Would his anger last for ever? was it immortal?

Her moods were trivial; they could be shivered at a blow. Was his mood hard as granite, that only a blast could shatter it?

She broke the envelope, read the first few words with a quick smile on her lips.

“Dearest Val,

“I shall be back by the express. I wonder if you can guess how glad I shall be to see you both ? I have been homesick. It isn’t so very long since you and I were here at Bath together; not so long that I have forgotten. You will try to remember, too, dear Val, won’t you?

“Till Friday, good-bye.

“As ever yours,

“David Guthrie.

“Jane has just come in; she won’t travel down till Saturday. By-the-bye, in case I forget, she says you can get that Welsh mutton at Reed’s, in Fore Street.”

It was no good to argue, no good to reason; noth' ing was any good. Valerie was jealous of the woman who inspired that fatal postscript. She threw David’s letter down and stood in thought.

Jane’s wide mouth, robust cheeks, her solidity, her lack of grace, were all alike outweighed by her housekeeping genius. Welsh mutton swamped every attraction in Mrs. Guthrie.

What were scents and crimps, and a bent for fashion, and a talent for the choosing of raiment, in opposition to a series of variable breakfasts, attractive dinners, flanked by low books of tradespeople?

Valerie bent her head; she was worsted, and though she told herself at first that her rival was to be despised, in her heart of hearts she envied Jane as a better woman than herself, as more capable of bringing comfort and peace into the life of the man she loved.

Jane was interested in politics, read all the papers, had an even temper, could cook well, and talk sensibly; she never depended on the attraction of sex; she possessed an accurate memory, a just mind. Alas, poor Valerie! that David should have awakened so late in the day to Jane’s wondrous advantages.

Valerie was jealous; reasonable or unreasonable, she was jealous.

CHAPTER XV

“Hath any wronged thee? Be bravely revenged. Slight it,
And the work’s begun; forgive it, and ’tis finished.”
—Quarles.

David was at home again. It was the morning after his return; he sat before his wife’s writing-table writing a letter; she was seated in the chair by the sunny window, reading a book. For an hour past dead silence had reigned in the room, an unbroken peace which had grown oppressive.

“Valerie.”

“Yes.”

“Here is a letter of yours in your case unsent.”

“Is there? To whom?”

“To ‘dear Mr. Wetheral/ Why were you writing to him?”

“Read it, David, and then you can tear it up, please.”

“What an extraordinary obscure letter.”

“It doesn’t matter whether it was obscure or not, for it did not go.”

“Why did it not go?”

“I changed Sandy’s mind for him, and I took him to the Wetherals.”

“So Sandy told me.”

“He enjoyed himself very much.”

“So he said.”

Valerie returned to her book; David’s pen began to scratch softly again; she looked up quickly when he broke the silence by a sudden inconsequent question.

“Do you remember that once you drowned a parasol, and Wetheral saved it?”

“Of course I remember.”

“Don’t forget what I told you then, for what I meant then I mean now.”

“It is your turn to be obscure.”

“I will be plain. I have trust in you. I am not afraid of you; but you shall not for any reason under the sun become a prey for people’s tongues. I can and will protect my wife’s name, if such a curse should come upon me that it should want protection.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“You mean that while you were away I should have stayed at home, dreaming of you and your headaches,” with a levity that blunted his earnestness. “People must talk of something; no doubt they talk of us. Long ago they have ferreted out the fact that we find matrimony laborious, but that is too common to be worth gossiping about.”

The bitterness of her cool voice wounded him like a knife. Again the heavy silence fell in the room, through which a pen scratched and a leaf now and again fluttered. At length David closed the writing-case and got up. He stood looking down at his reading wife; she raised her eyes to his, scrutinising the honest face above her, until he grew conscious of her scrutiny, and she saw that he did so.

“You look well,” she said, coldly. “A change was what you wanted.”

He did not answer; he turned away. A change —it was a change that had come upon him. God knew how unbearably bitter to his angry heart.

“I am late; I must be off to the barracks,” he said, and went out of the room.

Then Valerie threw her book down and got up, wringing her hands.

Hope was gone; she had herself to curse for this more wretched aspect of her life, and she was mutinously aware that it was so.

They did not get on.

Why should she kick so unceasingly against the common bramble pricks that lay in every path?

Ah, it might be commonplace, ordinary, inevitable, to jar along the matrimonial road, but it hurt. God only knew how it hurt. And the pain was like a toothache—acute, a spoiler of life, but not so rare as to gain compassion. Of self-pity she had a store and to spare—unwholesome, enervating self-pity to blind her faculty of sight, of judgment. Self-pity is a dangerous luxury in life.

With this mental toothache gnawing the heart out of man and wife, the Guthries’ life dragged on through wretched days and months.

They were not even tormented by the high pitch of any passionate quarrels. Now and again the clouds with which their domestic sky was darkened would gather and break in a tumult of angry pain. Then, shamed by the uncontrolled outburst, followed a calm. Alas, a surface calm only, but a calm which for a while promised better things.

Mrs. Guthrie wore no willow, and Captain Guthrie did not carry his heart on his sleeve; only a close observer could detect that this man and wife had made a hash of matrimony, and chafed against its obligations.

The date was drawing near when David’s appointment would end. Separation approached them. His wife, tormented by the thousand tortuous windings of a jealous mind, persuaded herself that his banishment to India would be welcome to her. She wanted him away; she wanted him away out of reach. She should not be near him, but then neither would this practical, clever, cultivated house-wife, Jane, who had weaned him from her.

If clouds lay on the Guthrie horizon, so too the clouds gathered on public affairs.

A rumour of war reached the country, permeating it from end to end. This rumour disquieted none but the better informed; the public discarded the bare suggestion of such a possibility.

Valerie discussed the subject with Mr. Wetheral.

“No such luck,” he said; “the Boers know better; they are not such fools. You look anxious; are you thinking about your husband?”

She answered: “No,” quickly, “my husband is going out to India.”

“He won’t join the route march to Pretoria, then, ” smiling; “but you need not be afraid, Mrs. Guthrie, if you are ambitious of service for your husband, he is more likely to see it on the Indian frontier. There will be no war in South Africa, take my word for it.”

His word was never over trustworthy, but Valerie swallowed the vague misgivings which the rumour had aroused, and the days in the Priory Terrace lodgings grated ignorantly on to their finish.

There was a streak of the masculine mind in Mrs. Mallam; she lacked that faculty of quick intuition common to her sex, and though it was impossible not to be aware that Valerie’s mind and manner to her were neither cordial nor cousinly, she did not trouble herself to ferret out the cause thereof, nor to break through the attitude of formal civility which had usurped her former intimacy with Valerie. Once or twice Jane had tried to break down the barrier which had been erected, but she had not been successful, and of late she had “kept her foot from her neighbour’s house,” and given up any attempts at a revival of friendship.

But one morning in September, Valerie heard a quick, heavy step treading the passage leading to her precincts, and lifting up her head, she listened with a quick apprehension to the tread of her approaching visitor.

“Mrs. Mallam, if you please, ’m,” was announced.

Valerie rose, becoming instantly aware from Jane’s face that she had come with some set purpose to see her.

The women kissed one another; they were both well—the weather was changeable—the boy was out—it was ages since they had met—they both seemed afraid to quit their trivial conversation for a time; then Jane abruptly broke into the dialogue with her preface to the coming scene. She spoke in a soft, unnatural tone, with her wide open eyes full on Valerie.

“I want to talk to you. Valerie.”

Valerie trembled.

“Yes, Jane. I am listening.”

“Has David come back from London?”

“He came back the day before yesterday.” “Valerie, he looks—ill.”

“Do you think so?”

“Everyone thinks so.”

“I am sorry to hear that.”

“Everyone is sorry.”

“He never complains.”

“His face complains; it speaks for him.”

There was a pause.

“Valerie, do not be angry. Try not to be angry. You must listen. I have come here to talk to you.”

“Think, Jane, before you speak.”

“Do you think that I have not thought? I have thought, and I have—prayed before I came here— it was not easy to come. Harm is done by silence, Valerie, irreparable harm.”

“I have no belief in the virtue of speech. Silence is best.”

“You are wrong. Expression is a great good. To know all is to forgive all. How in God’s name are you to find truth without expression? Have we time to judge a man by his life? We have neither wit nor leisure to find out for ourselves a character persistently hidden from us. Reserve is a curse to our nation. We English are misjudged because we do not try, nor wish to express ourselves. When we feel we should speak, speak out so that we can be judged justly.”

“Speak, Jane, then. What is it? What do you want of me?”

“Valerie, open your eyes when David comes home to you, and look at him. Look at him, and see what you are doing.”

“What am I doing?”

“You are doing wrong; you are doing him wrong. I must speak. I will speak. You took an oath to make him happy; you know the words.

What woman’s memory yet was ever short enough to forget such words as those? and you have broken that oath of yours. Look at David and see what you have done. Who is to blame? Who is in fault? How am I to judge between you? Human as you both are, who is the perfect one? But you are a woman, it is to you, to you that I can speak.”

The hearer sat pale, motionless, with her eyes upon the ground.

Jane spoke with a sudden gust of passion that was so new in her as to change her very personality.

“Jane.”

“Let me say what I have to say, and have done with it; then I will go once and for all. You are driving David to the devil; he is not weak; he will not drink, nor gamble, nor break faith with you; but for all that you are spoiling him, body and soul. You could have done anything with him, and you did nothing. His happiness was in your hands and you threw it away.”

Valerie essayed to speak.

“To talk is easy,” she stammered, “but to live— is—hard.”

“Hard,” repeated the other, quickly. “God only knows how hard. When I look round and see how men and women marry, sure of happiness, confident of themselves, thinking the dual life of bliss comes naturally because they love one another, I shiver. I shudder for them.”

Valerie lifted wide, expectant eyes to her cousin’s face.

“Long patience, steadfast principle, eternal hope, wide charity, tears, sacrifice, suffering, those are the foundations for a blessed mortal life in this hard world.”

Yet expectant, Valerie held her breath to listen.

“ ‘We will give and take,’ they say, ‘give and take.’ But I say, ‘give;’ think only of the giving; give all you can. Oh, Valerie, you have the gift we all of us desire; you have power. Use it for good, for the best, the highest. You can help him —you have not helped—you hinder. You can soften him if you will.”

“I can do nothing,” Valerie cried suddenly, “I can do—nothing.”

Down Jane’s permanently red cheeks tears fell, her eyes were blinded with them.

“Try, Valerie; try, before it is too late. Try because of the boy; try because of your early life with David, because of our mortal weakness, because of the shortness of time, because—because of death.”

“He doesn’t care for me,” said Valerie in a hollow whisper. “It is no good, he does not care.” “He cares for no one else; you know it; he cares for no one, nothing else.”

“He does,” said Valerie, hoarsely; “he cares for you; he should have married you; our marriage was a mistake; you would have made him happy; you should have been his wife.”

Mrs. Mallam stared, her tears lying incongruously upon her astonished eyes.

“Valerie, are you mad?”

“It is so natural. You are a better woman than I. You are clever, and he tells you everything.” “Valerie, do you mean to say that you seriously believe that David ever in his life cast a thought beyond a practical one to me—to me—to a coarse, ugly cook of a woman like me?”

All Jane’s emotions had been swept away by the preposterousness of Valerie’s suggestion; her incredulous attitude was beginning to take effect. Valerie, ashamed, and yet defiant, nodded her head.

“He likes you best,” she said, but not convincingly.

“I suppose you mean what you say?”

“Do you think I should say such a thing if I did not mean it?”

Jane thought for a moment in silence, staring at Valerie in blank dismay.

“You were jealous of me?”

“Yes.”

“Are you now?”

“I don’t know.”

“No one has ever been jealous of me, Valerie. You, you, to be jealous of such an unattractive woman as I am. From his youth up I have been fond of David, but not in the way you are fond of him. You are a beautiful woman; your ways cannot be my ways. The love I have gained in my life has never been spontaneous; I have won it slowly, laboriously. David never thinks of any woman as a woman but you, and, thank God, my temptations do not lie in wandering fancies or sentimental preferences; my heart is not soft, not soft by any means. I came to speak out, and I am speaking more than I thought.”

Valerie caught her breath, she could not answer; she was looking at Jane.

“Valerie, I don’t feel as much as some people. I was born thick-skinned and blunt-hearted. My own people, who might have taught me tenderness, died, you see, and I got into the world through a hardening school—dependence. I always wanted to be happy; when I met my husband, he was wearing the willow for another woman. We married, I was a pis-aller to him, he to me meant independence. But there are many pairs who marry for love, and who like each other less than we do. Facts like these turned me cynical about sentiment.”

Jane paused, and Valerie, watching close, saw a wave of pain pass over her face before she spoke again.

“I don’t often talk of myself; I shirk; there is not much to say, and I’m British, and our love of reserve is a national passion, but I want you to understand. I must explain. I told you how much I always tried to be happy, and worked for my own happiness. Then—then you remember, don’t you— three years after I married that we—we lost our little child? I can see her as she lay in my arms.” Jane’s lips contorted in speaking. “I can see her as she lay in my arms and looked up at me, and—died. I have had a cold spot somewhere in my heart where the warmth should be ever since.”

Valerie shivered in the silence that followed.

“When David talked to me, and asked my advice,” Jane proceeded, recovering her composure, “it was always done to save you; always to save you. I was useful; it was to be of use I wanted. I was a reference, nothing more. How you could ever have been so insane as to dream that David thought of me, except as conducive to your advantage I cannot comprehend. Many, many an hour I have sat and talked of you. No man was ever more completely in love with his wife than David.” She spoke always in the hopeless tense of the past.

“I am very unhappy, Jane.”

“I know you are. So is he.”

“What can I do?”

“Do? You know better than I.”

“He is changed; you said so. You know it.” “You have hardened him. (We are of the same blood, he and I; he, too, can harden.) Soften him. You don’t want sentiment nor passion, but truth between you too; naked truth; a patient friendship, a high and patient friendship, Valerie.”

Suddenly the door opened, and in an instant the two women had 'become composed as convention demands, and called smiles to their faces; feelings are tabooed by civilisation- save in a solitudc-à-deux.

The interruption to the scene was caused by the arrival of a telegram which the servant handed to Mrs. Guthrie.

Mechanically, hardly glancing at the direction, her mind astray, Valerie opened the document.

With apprehension in her eyes, Jane watched her. She watched Valerie read the message; she saw her attention arrested; she saw Valerie’s lips set, her eyes grow acute. Jane held her breath, waiting, divining what was to come.

“I hardly understand. It is for David, Jane. Read it.”

And Jane read:

“Can you start on Saturday next to take up your duty in South Africa as arranged?

“Karsley, pro —.”

“It is from the War Office,” said Jane.

“Yes.”

Valerie understood now.

“They want him very soon. Saturday is very soon,” she said quickly, her voice harsh. “You need not tell me; I understand. David has volunteered; he talked of it, and I laughed at the idea of war. He said no more, but he did it.”

“Yes,” said Jane.

“He is clever; he is full of resource; he is a good officer, he will be glad to go. But they won’t fight. Anyone who knows anything of South Africa knows that.”

Jane nodded. The speaker’s eyes were luminous; her face extraordinarily white.

“Did he tell you of this?” Valerie asked suddenly, lifting the telegram.

“Yes.”

“And you came because you knew?”

“Yes.”

Then followed a long silence.

“I am glad you came,” Valerie said, slowly. “But you must go now. I will take this telegram to David at the barracks myself. I will take it at once. Saturday is so soon.”

The women kissed one another, and Jane went.

There were a few minutes wasted by Valerie before she took the message to her husband.

A shadow had fallen suddenly in her path, a dense shade which she could not pierce, the end of which was out of sight. It drove her down upon her knees, in an appalling sense of her own powerlessness, of her helplessness, of her impotence. She did not cry, but her thoughts came clear and bright—strong words were in her ears:

“Let us start up and live: here come moments that cannot be had again; some few may yet be filled with imperishable good.”

It was late, sorely late, but not too late as yet, thank God.

CHAPTER XVI

“Only those are crowned and sainted
Who with grief have been acquainted,
Making nations nobler, freer,
In their feverish exaltations,
In their triumph and their yearning,
In their passionate pulsations,
In their words among the nations
The Prometheus fire is burning.”
—Longfellow.

David came out from his office work at the barracks, bareheaded, at his wife’s summons.

Alert, erect, with some expectation brightening his comely face, he hurried out to meet her.

He was glad; she watched him; his face lightened as he read his summons, and she saw that he was glad.

“I brought it at once. I understood how important it was,” she said bravely.

“Thank you.”

“It is very soon,” she said under her breath. He noted her luminous eyes, her extraordinary pallor.

“You know what it means?”

“I knew at once. It is very soon, David.”

“Very; these things are better done quickly. Let me think.”

He stood, tall, lean, with acute, keen eyes, wrapped in thought. She waited, an odd, dead sense of unreality muffling her thoughts. He explained nothing; nominally she was in the dark.

“Val, I must see the Colonel at once; I haven't a moment to spare. I must go to town to-day; my kit has to be got.”

“Yes.”

“Go straight back, Val, and put out all my things. There is a case in the box-room; have that brought down. I must send some wires; will you wait whilst I write them?”

“Yes. I will wait here.”

He went back into the barracks, and was gone for some time. She was having a first lesson in what that one little word “wait” may signify.

“I am giving you a lot of trouble,” he said, when at length he reappeared with a handful of papers; his eyes were excited, but his lips steady. “It is very good of you, Val.”

“Good?”

Her face quivered ever so slightly, but he saw, and taking her hand held it tightly in his own.

“I did not tell you, because, don’t you see, it might have come to nothing? I’m afraid I’ve brought you trouble in my time, but don’t make a trouble of this, Val. You married a soldier, you know; not a carpet soldier, if he can help it.” She smiled at him, and he went on: “I heard they wanted men; my billet here is all but up, so I went to the War Office on the chance. You don’t fancy India, and I might get a decent billet in South Africa. The boy—” there was a faint break in his voice, to which she quivered in response, “and you might both, if I’m lucky, get out to me before six months are over. It is a ripping climate.”

“The boy and you.”

Blessed words of consolation; her doom was not sealed. He wanted her still, unworthy though she was. She smiled into his face calmly; she would not make a scene; she would think only of him. She hurried away on her errands, covering the ground quickly in her light, long stride.

Though she had not known it, Valerie was so womanly a woman that sacrifice suited her; self-surrender did not hurt her. Jane had done her good.

“The more they are beaten, the better they be.”

With steady pulses, when she reached home she set to work to help David. His return was later than she had anticipated; all the preparations possible were accomplished. Sandy and she were at lunch when he came in.

‘That’s right, Val; I hoped you wouldn’t wait. I went round to Cowan, who has been out himself. I was supplementing my lists. Hulloa, Sandy boy, has mother told you that I am off to a far country?” “Muvver told me. I’d like to come, too.”

“That’s impossible just yet; you must look after your mother whilst I am gone, you know, like a man.”

“Are you going over the sea on Saturday?” he said, laying his spoon down thoughtfully. “Where are you going?”

“To a hot country, where the wild animals live.” “Are you going to kill them?”

“No.”

“Why are you going?”

“The Queen has sent me.”

“I don’t like her at all then,” said the child, suddenly. “I don’t want you to go.”

“A soldier has to go where he is sent. You can’t be a soldier if you’re a rebel.”

“Are you going to fight, faver?”

“No,” put in his mother, quickly; “no, no, Sandy, not to fight. He is to go out so as to show some ambitious people that they are not stronger than the English; that they will be hurt if they won’t obey.” “Don’t understand. Is faver going to be a policeman, then?”

“No, a soldier.”

“And not a fighting soldier? I thought you was a fighting soldier, faver.”

“I may have to—fight, Sandy,” gravely, “just—a —little.”

A child’s unproportioned imagination jumps shortly to great ends.

“If you gets cannonaded, faver, what shall mummy and me do all alone?”

“Dear Sandy, we are going out to live with father as soon as he can have us. We must wait here a little; we must be left behind, because I am only a woman and you are only a child. It is men like father the Queen wants to fight for her and for their country, and to work for her and for their country. You and I must be busy learning to help, to help— father. We must try every moment he is gone to be good and brave and true like he is, so some day we too can be of use in the world.”

David looked up at the sound of the clear, steady words and met her eyes; he looked at Valerie as he had never looked before, smiled, looked again, started, rose to his feet. A moment later she was in his arms. Close, close he caught her to him, nothing between them. Close, close, every lesser thought, every human weakness, every marring blemish swept cleanly off their love for one another, rolled back as if they had never been.

The shock of coming separation shook the surface smattering of things earthly from the good foundation, and left love bare to the light. God-given love, stained, battered, soiled by the sharpness of human life, but steadfast, seasoned, immortal.

They did not speak. They looked into each other’s eyes, hand to hand, heart to heart.

Sandy stared at them; his mouth dropped; he laid down his spoon and began to cry.

“I don’t like it at all,” he whimpered. “I’ve done my nasty dinner, and please, I’ll go up to my nurse.”

“It’s all right, my man. Look, mother is laughing.”

“I did fink she was crying.”

“You mustn’t always run away if mother cries; you must comfort her.”

“When I kiss her she cries more.”

“Ah, but it comforts her.”

“Then she shouldn’t cry,” said Sandy, gloomily. “Men don’t cry. They are never sorry.”

“Sandy, you little know. Men are too sorry sometimes to trust themselves to cry.”

“That’s the sort of sorry I likes best,” said Sandy, brightly. “Please may I have a banana for a treat, ’cos it’s the last time?”

He got his fruit, and a rather disturbing embrace with it. As the last full hours passed, the little boy left off obstructing the work of packing and arranging; he grew uneasy and depressed.

He tried to stuff his favourite toys into his father’s portmanteau. Later, he broke open his moneybox and pressed its contents upon David; he was disturbing the composure. His parents were beginning to wonder how he would take their dual departure, when Jane stepped into the breach, and wrote to invite him to pay her a visit.

“Dearest Valerie,

“I hear you go to town by the 5.50. Lend dear Sandy to me till you return. I will take care of him as the apple of my eye. I shall be at the station to see you off, and will carry him back then, unless I hear to the contrary.

“Yours affectionately,

“Jane Mallam.”

“She is the kindest woman in the world,” said David.

“She is very kind,” said Valerie. “Now Sandy will not fret; he loves Jane.”

When the Guthries got to London there was so much to be accomplished before David sailed, that husband and wife lived from hour to hour labouring steadily at the details of preparation, a dream-like unreality overshadowing them in the newness of things.

Their minds were in accord with the cloudy future before them, yet were they happier than they had been for many a weary day.

Once, as they were driving back from the stores to their rooms in Ebury Street, they for a moment discarded business and stared unsteadily into each other’s faces.

“If we could but have our time again, David,” she whispered; “if we could have just one year again.” “It’s all right now, sweet.”

“No, no, it can never be quite all right.”

“Nothing is quite all right down here,” gently; “but it’s right enough for me. We have had a difficult time, Val. We have fallen out. The devil was in it, I think—he is always in at a quarrel—but it’s come out right at bottom. God knows we love each other.”

“I am so sorry, David. So sorry, and it is too late.”

“Never too late. I’m going to duty, and you— you’ve harder duties than mine to face. Things will turn up trumps, Val, if we do our duty.” They were solemn, earnest, with lined eyes and anxious faces. Life was taking a new complexion.

“David, David, did you know I was jealous? I was jealous of Jane.”

I am afraid he only laughed. It seemed to Valerie more than a laughing matter, but his laugh cheered her.

“You never minded,” enigmatically, “when I tried to turn the tables.”

“You are transparent, sweet; you weren’t really interested; but for all that, I put my foot down. If I did not trust you, Val, I should not leave you.”

“Oh, David, David, how could I have been so wretched? Why did we quarrel? It was most miserable; it was terrible.”

“Fighting is grim,” between his teeth; “every sort is grim. You and I. Val, weren’t enough on guard against the squalls. Things don’t go on as they begin, and I was clumsy. We are only human; it isn’t easy to go straight as a bee-line; crookedness spoils the whole concern. Peace is not as simple as one thinks at the start, but God help us when we leave off making our quarrels up, and saying we are sorry with soft hearts, like the big children that we are.”

“David, you will never know how sorry I am.”

“Not know? Don’t I know by what I feel myself? No word is strong enough to express how I hate myself for every wretched moment that I have brought upon you.”

Like new lovers, but with the fear of God before their eyes, they sat in the solitude of their hansom cab. The separation came so soon, so soon. The strength of their love forced words from the depths of their very souls to comfort, to console, to help, to brace one another to face the unknown future.

Poor Valerie! It was worse, far worse, to be left behind. Worse, far worse, to be one of the group of inactive, silent people on land, who stood watching the ship off, than to be that figure on the busy, moving deck, that shrunk and shrunk and was lost to her strained eyes so soon. He was a blur, a mist; he was out of her sight; but she watched on till the people about her moved off, and she followed them with a swelling heart and dry eyes that ached.

A widow in deep weeds took the world into her confidence, weeping, unstrung with wretchedness —her son was going to Natal—life was uncertain. The world down there and about her had its heart full; it turned a cold shoulder on the woman; its own composure was dear to it, and not to be lightly risked just now.' Not so with Valerie; she attached herself to the woman; she listened; she ignored that offence to susceptibilities which such a public display of feeling incites in this country. She travelled back to London in company with the poor creature, full of sympathy and interest for this advertised, but genuine, distress.

That odd need of work, that beneficial craving for the healing of labour, was upon Valerie. That miraculous desire, divinely implanted to transact the will of God, and to find in its accomplishment rest unto the soul, was already hers.

Valerie reached Leigh late. Jane was on the platform to welcome her. She saw her home, talking fast of Sandy and of any mortal thing except of the subject of which their minds were full.

The first night in her empty home was not easy. It took all Valerie’s promises to David to keep her fairly calm. A great sense of desolation, from which was no escape, overwhelmed her. If human capacity for goodness is limited, human capacity for suffering is boundless.

Her dumb pillow told no tales, and if walls have eyes, tongues have not been allotted them, and Valerie was not betrayed. British backs, even of the slenderest make, have a brave knack of fitting themselves to their burden, and Valerie in the time to come bore hers valiantly. So much so, indeed, that some malicious tongues remarked that Mrs. Guthrie’s spirit was remarkable, and whispered, smiling, that to have “the gude man awa’ ” was not always such an unmitigated misfortune after all.

Mr. Wetheral brought her late news from South Africa; secret rumours, many a scrap of political hearsay, such as was after his own heart, and any item of which she was thirsty to hear.

Guthrie had volunteered. He chose to leave such a woman unprotected. Mr. Wetheral worked himself into a great righteous indignation against such a husband.

When vague public anxiety had taken a definite and acute form, Mr. Wetheral was in London, and wired down every floating whisper from the front to Valerie. It was very kind, but alas! he himself following close upon the heels of his latest wire, scattered her gratitude to him once and for ever. Anxiety such as she felt had made her irritable, and when she found that her visitor was, as David put it, not going straight, when she found that he was making love to her, she turned upon him like a vixen, angry with herself that her own weakness had led to such an intolerable situation.

“He comes too close
Who comes to be denied.”

Every woman knows the Gospel truth of these words, and Valerie knew it.

“Why didn’t you let me alone?” he cried at last in his wrath and pain.

“I am sorry,” she said, more humbly, her conscience smiting her.

“What a word to use, when you have spoilt my life, made it a curse, for I must live without you. Sorry! You are sorry when a dog dies.”

“I should not talk like that. I should be a more lasting curse if I loved you, Mr. Wetheral. You would have to bear all the disadvantages, and none of the conveniences of marriage for me. Let me speak out; you rail at marriage; I have listened, but I hated what you said. It is easier to be the wife of the future than the wife of the present. Women know that, but life is never play.”

Her voice was cold, steady, her attitude bracing; she did not beg the question.

The scene left her white to the lips, but he went at last. At length the door closed for the last time upon him; it would open no more.

“If he had asked me long ago I should have married him,” she cried out loud, with a self-abasement that was creditable to a spoilt woman. “I should have been his wife; but he didn’t care then. I expect, I quite expect he has got into a sort of habit of talking like that to half the women he meets, and he did not mean as much as I thought.”

Then she stamped her foot and frowned, and looked at her trembling hands, and felt the heavy thumping of her heart.

“He meant something,” she said, and burst out crying.

CHAPTER XVII

“Watchman, what of the night?
Behold, the Light cometh.”

Valerie's empty sitting-room in Priory Terrace had a forlorn and dreary air; it was littered with newspapers; the chintzes on the furniture were crumpled and disarranged; a solitary vase with dead flowers hurriedly overcrowded into it stood on the closed piano. Though it was a bitterly cold day the fire was dying in the grate.

Only about the writing-table were signs of any life; letters were piled there, newspaper cuttings lay on the blotter, the ink-stand was blotted and stood open, a half-knitted neutral-tinted sock beside it.

On the window sill outside some fluffed-out sparrows huddled together, shuffling frozen feet on the rime, waiting for the crumbs that fell daily from a poor woman’s table. It is the poor who remember the crumb-seekers—the fellow-feeling makes the wondrous kindness.

The door of the deserted room opened and Jane Mallam came in. Though she was wrapped in furs, she shivered, looking sadly about her.

The false prophets had been proved mistaken. The country was at war, and had been at war for months. War gripped at the heart and life of the nation; it gripped at the individual life and heart of the people.

Jane Mallam’s verbs were active, seldom passive. She came right in, closing the door behind her, and she set the room to rights. She made up the fire, she carried away the dead flowers, she piled up the newspapers into orderly heaps.

A Graphic lay open on the sofa; she paused to look at the page before her. She saw depicted there the flower of England. From face to face she looked. Splendid young heads—sons so comely, so full of life and promise, so young, so well-beloved, and—dead, each one of them—dead—dead. Jane caught her breath, cleared her throat, shut the paper sharply, and then stood still thinking.

Time passed, the fire revived; Jane was sick of waiting, and she rang the bell.

“Has Mrs. Guthrie come in?”

“She has not been out. I’ve been for her. Master Sandy has a cold; she is upstairs with him.” “Nothing much wrong, I hope?”

“Lor, no’m, but she’s anxious.”

“Ask her if I shall come up.”

Once or twice of late Valerie had declined to see anyone, but she did not do so now, and Jane went up.

Sandy was sitting at a table, playing with a fort. Valerie stood by him knitting.

The news that day had wrung the women’s hearts dry.

“Anything more come down, Jane?”

“Nothing but what you’ve seen, dear.”

“It’s pretty bad; it is pretty bad. 'Very hard pressed.’ ” She looked into Jane’s eyes. “Very hard pressed.”

Valerie’s face was drawn and grey; she had aged ten years in a few weeks. Now and again tears came into her eyes, but they did not overflow their boundary.

“We shall know more soon.”

“Very soon, dear.”

“And there is not anything, you said?”

“The list from the last fight is out, but nothing to do with him.”

“Is the list long?”

“Not longer than we feared. The Talbots have been in the streets all day, waiting for the list to be posted. Their boy is there.”

“Killed?”

“Yes.”

“Poor things. Poor things.”

“There is another son, the only other son, who has just left Sandhurst, and they have telegraphed. General Talbot has telegraphed to know if this lad may take his dead brother’s place in the regiment.” Jane threw up her head; her voice rang with the pride of race, and the heavy heart of the hearer swelled and glowed.

“That is the feeling of our nation, Val. They give all, all; they keep nothing back.”

The sympathetic landlady at this moment hurried up, panting, with the first edition of the evening paper. Whilst Valerie read, Jane, with an almost feverish tenderness for unconscious Sandy, joined in his martial games.

Lucky Sandy, who knew nothing of stabbed pride, sick hearts, biting anxiety, agony of apprehension that probed England to the quick. Who knew nothing of the prayers and tears of his country; knew nothing of the depth from which rose his mother’s cry to God.

Sandy had been jealously shielded from tormenting fears; he was so quick to see and to be affected by anxiety that Valerie had a wholesome incentive to calmness in her boy.

Day by day, like many another in her land, she prayed and strove.

By righteousness a nation shall be saved. Can she do nothing? Nay, but she will. She will add a fragment to righteousness; truth, sacrifice, fortitude, patience, are accounted righteous; she will, herself, personally herself, she will help.

Thousands upon thousands in her land lived new as she was living, indefinite prayers upon their lips, definite, stalwart, conquering love within their hearts; and the prayers and the tears of a great nation rose to God.

Weeks ago, Sandy’s nurse fell ill and went home. Valerie had not replaced her; the work thus incurred had been a solace.

Sometimes, by the see-sawing of his mother’s ways, Sandy would take alarm; when she assumed a gaiety, he, in his childish wisdom, distrusted it. He was apt to be puzzled and disturbed when she was reading the paper, and would put down his toys to watch her face.

"Is it funny or sad?” he would ask, staring.

Sometimes she would allow, hoarsely, that it was rather sad. At other times she would answer quickly, with kindling eyes:

‘'It is splendid, Sandy. I am reading of something brave, and true, and good. Some day you shall read it too.”

“Aren’t you crying?”

“If it makes me cry, it is not because it is sad— for it is beautiful, the grandest thing in all the world, Sandy.”

“What is the grandest thing in all the world, muvver?”

“Duty,” she answered, solemnly, in a lowered voice. “Duty, in peace and in war.”

“Do you mean fighting?”

“Yes, fighting. Long, long fighting, Sandy, all through your life. Fighting in life and in death.” At other times she would look up and find his gaze upon her, mute but observant; then she would excuse herself hurriedly.

“I was quiet, Sandy. I have a little headache.” “Does war-time make it ache, muvver? Do you sort of hear the firing and the cannons?”

“Yes, yes, dear, I do.”

“I wish I could,” enviously. “It’s the big guns banging that I like the best of all.”

So when Sandy’s acquaintance asked him after his mother, he would answer, gravely:

“Thank you, she is quite well, but war-time makes her head ache rather. Though it is such an awful long way off, she hears the firing all the same.”

Valerie was not forsaken. Every acquaintance she had seemed to have turned into a friend and to have rallied round her. Sandy was in a fair way to be spoilt with all the tenderness and toys lavished upon him.

But now, oddly enough, Valerie preferred Jane Mallan’s company to that of any other woman. Her presence was bracing; she had no exaggerated ways or words to jar the poor, strained nerves. Her very naturalness, her frankness, was a prop. She did not call bad news good, nor did she meet misfortune half-an-inch on its way. She had no “views,” but a great hope and a vast compassion.

Now and then, upon some perilous day, Valerie would shirk her friend, and spend hours pacing the street alone, waiting for early editions, for extra editions of the numerous papers now published.

When she had not found the name she dreaded to find upon its columns, relief had momentarily made a glad woman of her, and she hurried home, and caught Sandy in her arms, and laughed and played like a girl. But the warmth of heart and the bounding hope passed, a thread of cold anxiety came creeping back into her mind, the aching apprehension strained at her heart again.

Every day Valerie wrote to David; every day she added to the pages which left by the weekly mail, and which, alas, might never reach the beleaguered town in which he was immured.

What letters, with an awakened soul upon ihe pen, were those that left our shores.

This evening Jane and Sandy were close together as they manoeuvred the busy soldiers of the fort, but over the boy’s flaxen curls Jane surreptitiously scanned his mother’s face.

“It’s a bad day, Valerie.”

“It is, indeed.”

“You are conjecturing. ‘Hard pressed,’ and then came the clouds. Don’t you think that we all fight best ‘hard pressed?’ ”

“The light gone, the sun blotted out, Jane; it is terrible—like—like an omen.”

“Val, Val, don’t be superstitious. Superstition is an insult to God. You have not been out to-day; you should have gone out.”

“I get hopeful when I go out sometimes, and when I come home the truth is piercing, like something new. I dread it.”

“Feeling is in waves; it ebbs and flows.”

“Don’t talk. I can’t understand,” said Sandy, feeling himself slighted. He found something inexplicably reliable about downright Jane, and he loved her. In the forefront of his mimic battle was a battered soldier of heroic tendencies, whom he called “faver,” and whose exploits shook his hearers’ nerves more than they would have owned.

“I’ll tell you a story, Sandy. We won’t play any more; it is nearly your bedtime. Valerie, I am dining with you to-night. Wilfred is out.”

“Wilfred” of late had been out a great deal and so Valerie said, patting Jane on the broad shoulder.

Valerie had only two rooms in Priory Terrace now. To please David, she was husbanding funds. Everything that could be done for David was to be accomplished, even to the guarding of her health.

When Sandy was asleep, the two women went downstairs together to their dinner, and fell to talking, as those talk who walk as friends. It was better, as Valerie had told Sandy, not to walk through life alone. It was safer to hold hands. A human grasp is a staff and a consolation. Soon after dinner came the last edition of the paper for that day; they had been listening for it while they talked; they read it together.

“Nothing new,” they cried in one breath; but searching on breathlessly nevertheless, until no likely line nor nook had escaped them.

“Nothing more,” said Valerie. Nothing but a night filled with heavy sleep, broken by restless dreams, and an early, sudden, full awakening to a half-suspected truth, between her and to-morrow’s news—the “something more,” for which she lived.

“The Yeomanry have gone out, I see,” said Jane. “They arrived this morning. Lady Alice saw her husband off. I met her to-day. She is going to be in London so as to get the latest news. People gossiped, but she is fond of him. She is going to work among the soldiers’ wives and children; poor thing. He worked like a trooper before he sailed; his enthusiasm was catching.”

“God bless him,” said Valerie, choking. “I feel I could kiss the dust off the boots of every man who volunteers. What good there is, what boundless good in everyone.”

Then she folded her paper and rang the bell.

“This goes to the kitchen, Jane; they are so keen. Bent” (she alluded to her landlord) “is an old soldier. He never went to bed that night we heard of Nicholson’s Nek. He tramped up and down above me. We made a friendship then that will last us our lives. He puts a good face on it all to me; he won’t allow me a pang though he feels them himself. ‘Let 'em come out,” he says, ‘come out, that’s all I want of ’em, ’m, come out in the open.’ He is no pessimist; he will not allow a doubting word. He is splendid.”

“Everyone is splendid,” said Jane, slowly. “A few months ago, before we knew what was coming, detraction was the fashion. We all met together to laugh at our neighbours, to criticise, to scandalise, to pull down, to detract. We don’t now; we talk differently now; some bettor part of us has been wrenched into sight. Good, good, good everywhere. It meets us everywhere. You and I have our hearts in this war, but there are others who have none of their own at the front, but they give, and give, and yet have more to give. Look at those people, the Mirehouses; we scoffed at them; they were snobs, they bragged, they had silly weaknesses which we hadn’t. Look at them, they have pauperised themselves for the fund; they have raffled their horses and given the money to their country. They did not leave richer people to help; they helped themselves. It makes one choky, Val, to talk of it; but it is a proud thing to hear. There are a thousand, a hundred thousand instances like this one; they are too common to dwell upon, too ordinary to be impressive. Ah, we shall give up scoffing in the better days to come, please God.”

The better days of which Jane spoke were still far off.

The loosening from the tension of the bitter anguish of piercing anxiety was not yet; but there came a day, a never-to-be-forgotten day, when the heavens opened, and light fell upon the land once more.

Valerie was writing listlessly in her room; her listlessness was suddenly dispelled. She heard a sound; she heard an unknown, unexperienced new sound, a sobbing laugh, an inarticulate burst of voices, a volume of uncontrolled emotion breaking out from within the house close to her. She listened. Her pen fell from her hand. She was on her feet in an instant. Simultaneously Sandy broke into the room.

“Muvver, listen, hark, hear; it’s good news come. It is good news at last.”

The front door was open. All the household were in the road.

There was the sound of a bell; the town crier, an old soldier, who in these stirring times sat day after day at the telegraph station waiting grimly for news, was ringing his bell like a wedding peal in Priory Terrace, and shouting out his glad message to the world.

Valerie went out, tears running unknown down her cheeks, and the crier stopped shouting, and ran and shook her by the hand, and shook Sandy’s hand too, and strange people who lived near came running too. Again and again they caught each other by the hand, and they kissed the boy, and laughed, and could not speak.

Then Valerie and Sandy left their friends and went back into their room. Valerie fell down upon her knees, holding Sandy passionately to her.

“Thank God, thank God, thank God!”

Oh, joy unutterable; oh, bliss unfathomable!

“Sandy, Sandy, my own, my sweet. It is not us alone, Sandy, but our Queen and country; we must kneel—kneel—”

And Sandy burst out crying, and she was calm again, a light-headed, weird veneer of calmness over her surging heart.

She could not stay indoors. She dressed Sandy. He took a union jack off his fort, and they went out hand in hand.

The sleepy town of Leigh was awake. It was stirred to its depths; it was a fire.

From every house streamers and flags dropped from the windows. The shops closed. The people poured into the streets; they formed into groups, broke into wild cheering; they sang the national anthem; they shook strangers by the hand; they laughed and sang and shouted; they wept. Processions formed, bands played, the church bells were set ringing, the schools made holiday.

Valerie and Sandy walked on and on. She held her boy ever by the hand, drunk with the joy of it, ill with the joy of it.

Relieved, this is what the word meant to the land. Relieved, relieved. The anguish of fear had ploughed deep into the nation’s heart, and the deep furrow left bare flowed now with holy joy.

Weak and faint, with a light head and a tight throat, fever in her limbs and eyes, Valerie walked on and on, turning now and then to retrace her steps, stopping constantly for a greeting, to speak of what she never afterwards could quite recall, on and on she walked.

At last before her rose the great Cathedral pile. It was here her way had led her.

Tired Sandy drooped, holding heavily to her hand. She stooped and kissed him tenderly.

“Come in, sweetheart, and—and rest,” she said.

CHAPTER XVIII

“Whene’er a noble deed is wrought,
Whene’er is spoken a noble thought,
Our hearts in glad surprise
To higher levels rise.
The tidal waves of deeper souls
Into our inmost being rolls,
And lifts us unawares
Out of all meaner cares.”

Many a long month, fraught with a personal, if no longer with a national, anxiety, passed before Valerie got David safely home to her.

No special distinction, no decoration, nothing save the honour of a man who had fought and endured for his country was his; but in the eyes of those who loved him, this was glory sufficient.

No public demonstration was enacted for the lean, grey-haired warrior, who, with a hardened frame, and a lined, bronzed face, and a hot heart, returned to England.

But he had his reward. Our personal world is limited, and the welcome of his little world contented him, fulfilling his finest expectations, and redeeming the hard times through which he had steadfastly existed.

In many a diverse way was life henceforth to be beautified for him.

Even in the cat and dog days, when home had teen a hot-bed for breeding of difficulty, doubt and remorse, Valerie had been the one woman in the world to him. It lay in her power to make or mar his daily life, and now she chose to make it—to make it happy. She was not ashamed to press her love upon him.

With Valerie, as with David, the piercing, and yet long drawn out horrors of the momentous weeks through which they had lived, had left a track upon them, had cut a mark, the scar of which nothing on this earth had power to eradicate.

They had faced death, looked into open graves, endured separation, lived amongst a thousand forms of splendid human sacrifice, strung themselves to heroism in silence, and now that life was easier, they still were earnest; awed, serious.

They put away littleness; they lived as those who remembered that they have but a short time in which to work for the happiness of those they love. They had no longer a graceful knack of ignoring the common lot of man. They kept the inevitable well in sight.

“God rest you, merry gentlemen,

Let nothing you dismay.”

They were “undismayed,” and they were happy. He was simple-minded, as are the majority of his kind. She was not given to tall talk and vainglory. Now and again, as is inevitable, the domestic path took a difficult turn, but if that pernicious member —the tongue—threatened danger, it was evaded, for the smoothing down followed hot and eager on the ruffling up.

The aggrieved was enlightened, and understood —understood both the mortal weakness and the immortal love.

Later, David’s service told upon his professional success. He did not join his regiment in India. The separation from Sandy, to which his parents had in imagination steeled themselves, had not to be endured, for David was given an appointment on the staff at home.

Old Mrs. Guthrie had died somewhat suddenly. Sufficient money was inherited by her son to ease considerably the Guthries’ economies. There was no longer any perceptible tug at the purse-strings.

Valerie had a fresh bed of heartsease at her new quarters; one which she assiduously cultivated, and which blossomed month in, month out, as pansies do.

The new garden had no drawback, except that between it and Leigh there lay a hundred and more solid miles. Valerie was faithful to friends, and sentimental too, about her first home, and she thought of it with regret. But she had imported from thither one of her best friends; at the time of which I speak, Jane was with her; Jane was spending a week with her cousins, and at this moment, in accordance with Mrs. Mallam’s industrious habits, she was kneeling by the bed of pansies, slicing off spent heads, with a certain relish that Valerie watched from beneath the shade of a great Japanese lawn umbrella, and mildly disapproved.

“Your superior energy always quenches mine, Jane,” said Valerie, lazily. “I think you industrious people paralyse industry.”

“Valerie, you are looking suspicious. I don’t believe you like me to touch your pansies.”

“My dear, don’t you remember I am always a jealous woman?”

“Are you not ashamed?”

“Yes, I am ashamed; but I can’t help it.”

Jane got up clumsily, closing her scissors.

“Ah, Jane, you and David are equally Scotch.

You never understand the simplest joke. Go on with snippetings—you are very useful.”

Jane went on; she liked work; she liked to work and talk; she did so now.

“Valerie, you can’t bear to see this wholesale weeding out. It must be done.”

“Of course, death is not fair to see. We crowd out all tokens of dissolution.”

“Naturally. It’s more wholesome.”

“Is it? I’m not sure. It comes pretty close once, you see. Sometimes I fancy it would be a good thing to remember more. If one of our own has a mortal illness on them, how their lives get smoothed out; how we rally round, and try every minute to help them. They wonder at the sudden outpouring of our tender care. ‘How good you are,’ they say. ‘How kind you are.’ The world would be an easier place to live in if we remembered that, so to speak, we have everyone of us got a mortal disease to snuff us out.”

“Val, are you apostrophising your pansies?”

“No. I was thinking of the war. I’m always thinking of it. I mean, it shapes my thoughts.” “What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that when David was away I used to long and pray for time. Let me have time, if I may have time, only a little time. When the time is lost, we suffer, Jane.”

“Poor Valerie.”

“I don’t feel at all poor.”

“You appreciate peace.”

“The phrase ought to run—War and Peace. We cannot guess what peace is, until we have had war.”

“You and I were at war once,” said Jane. “You held me at arm’s length.”

“Yes; don’t remind me. I’m not proud of myself in those days. I was jealous.”

“I never quite believed that fable.”

“It was true enough,” ruefully.

There still lurked about this sobered Valerie an attractiveness which made itself felt in all her ways, and words, and works, and which was inseparable from her. She was charming, embued by those nameless graces of which Jane was singularly and consciously lacking. No wonder Jane was sceptical.

“It was crazy.”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t.”

“Poor David; he never knew that I, as a woman, existed.”

“Now, don’t be too humble, Jane, for I am just a shade jealous of you now. Your housekeeping, your memory, your dear nice self, makes me jealous still.”

“Pshaw, I don’t believe you. If David, dear man, had, by some aberration of intellect, made love to me, he would have been justified in so doing.”

“Why?”

“You deliberately allured Mr. Wetheral.”

For a moment there was silence.

“There is a Wetheral war truce too,” she said, at length. “You know she nursed him like a brick; he is quite strong now; they are friends.”

“So I heard,” said Jane.

“Here are David and Sandy,” said Valerie, rising. She was not sorry to change the subject, and she advanced to welcome the pair, notwithstanding the summer heat of this afternoon.

David Guthrie had been sea-fishing with his son. The son was so smeared with scales that he was instantly banished to be stripped of his fishing jersey. David sat himself down in the shade of the Japanese umbrella, and yawned with that freedom of expression peculiar to domestic life.

“Sandy wears one out; he is always within an ace of tumbling overboard, and his tongue never ceases. Where is tea?”

Valerie addressed Jane:

“Where is tea? David thinks that I drink tea from three to six every afternoon. He is aggrieved if he does not find tea freshly brewed at whatever hour he comes in. Home is always suggestive of food to a husband.”

David, with a placid smile, looked at Jane.

“I thought women drank tea all day.”

“Pouf, David, that was one of your bachelor delusions. You thought tea would be always fresh made, creamed, and ready for you. You thought your wife would be always amiable, and beautifully dressed. You thought of high living, and low books. You thought of untiring service, and dry weather—as a bachelor. Poor green men, their wishes father all these delusions.”

Jane fastened her garden scissors with a click, upon her chatelaine. “I’ll go in and hurry tea,” said she, disappearing within the precincts of the house.

Valerie remembered that at one time she would have judged this kind action to be officious.

“How good of Jane,” said she, aloud.

“She is a good sort. Nowadays, you two seem very thick.”

“At last I appreciate her. I understand her better. I’m rather characterless; both you and she have distinct characters; you puzzled me. I used to judge you by myself. It is the easiest sort of judgment.”

“I don’t think that I judge the people I love.” “Yes,” coolly, “you do. You were never so fond and foolish as to be witless, except during your courtship and honeymoon. Fools’ paradises, you see, are only for fools.”

“You are argumentative to-day.”

“You’d never talk to me, David, unless I argued. In self-defence I argue. I like you to talk. You never talked much, but since the war you are so silent; you sit and think, and think, till your forehead is furrowed, and your eyes sunken.”

She laid her hand on his arm, and her eyes were tender.

“I’m the happiest man in the world, Val.” “Then tell me so; tell me so, often. It is so strengthening to hear you say that.”

“You know it.”

“When we two sit here in a sort of understanding, silent companionship, I know it. I know you are happy. But our life is so different to what you thought it would be; there are so many up-hill places.”

“Life is all a climb, from start to finish.”

“But you started matrimony with the dream of a level plain.”

“A dream may be very sweet, but it’s only a dream. A solid bit of life-climbing is worth all the dreams in the world.”

“The climbing dogs the honeymoon, David; up together, down together, up again, or a stiff, bitter wrench apart, and diverse paths.”

“You speak as if you remember the difficulties well.”

“Do you think that a recollection of the downhill slips spoils the climbing?”

“Do you think disaster spoils the taste of later success? We all know better. It was the good news after the bad news from the front that sent the people mad with delight.”

Valerie was thoughtful.

“Don’t hark back to bad times,” he said, “except by way of contrast.”

“Don’t you ever hark back?”

“Never now. When we had the sea between us, I used to curse, because of the bad time I’d given you. I knew if they had got me, you’d have been left as poor as a rat, and it used to be hard work not to shirk the bullets. I knew you’d pare a stone, and skin a flint for Sandy, as indeed you did, and grow as thin as a bird-cage, Val.”

“A bird-cage, David. I’m not as bad as that; but here’s my plump rival, with creature comforts. Dear Jane, we are so much obliged to you.”

THE END.